Uncle Tom's Cabin

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

What pleasure is it that he is handsome, and smart, and bright? I tell you, Eliza, that a sword will pierce through your soul for every good and pleasant thing your child is or has; it will make him worth too much for you to keep."

in such straits as these, the heart has no tears to give,—it drops only blood, bleeding itself away in silence.

souls a callin' under the altar! and a callin' on the Lord for vengeance

Revelation 6:9-10

"Pray for them that 'spitefully use you,

Luke 6:28

feed the hungry, clothe the naked,

Isaiah 58:7; Matthew 25:40

comfort the desolate;

Mosiah 18:9

"lifted up her voice and wept."

Genesis 21:16

thar don't a sparrow fall without him."

see Matthew 10:29

the Lord gives good many things twice over; but he don't give ye a mother but once.

"That is to say, the Lord made 'em men, and it's a hard squeeze gettin 'em down into beasts,"

"Better send orders up to the Lord, to make you a set, and leave out their souls entirely,"

Gen. 16. The angel bade the pregnant Hagar return to her mistress Sarai, even though Sarai had dealt harshly with her.

Phil. 1:10. Onesimus went back to his master to become no longer a servant but a "brother beloved."

'Let everyone abide in the condition in which he is called.'

1 Corinthians 7:20

"I wonder, Mr. Wilson, if the Indians should come and take you a prisoner away from your wife and children, and want to keep you all your life hoeing corn for them, if you'd think it your duty to abide in the condition in which you were called. I rather think that you'd think the first stray horse you could find an indication of Providence—shouldn't you?"

"There!" he said, "I'm ready for 'em! Down south I never will go. No! if it comes to that, I can earn myself at least six feet of free soil,—the first and last I shall ever own in Kentucky!"

"My country again! Mr. Wilson, you have a country; but what country have I, or any one like me, born of slave mothers? What laws are there for us? We don't make them,—we don't consent to them,—we have nothing to do with them; all they do for us is to crush us, and keep us down. Haven't I heard your Fourth-of-July speeches? Don't you tell us all, once a year, that governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed? Can't a fellow think, that hears such things? Can't he put this and that together, and see what it comes to?"

"look at me, now. Don't I sit before you, every way, just as much a man as you are? Look at my face,—look at my hands,—look at my body," and the young man drew himself up proudly; "why am I not a man, as much as anybody? Well, Mr. Wilson, hear what I can tell you. I had a father—one of your Kentucky gentlemen—who didn't think enough of me to keep me from being sold with his dogs and horses, to satisfy the estate, when he died. I saw my mother put up at sheriff's sale, with her seven children. They were sold before her eyes, one by one, all to different masters; and I was the youngest. She came and kneeled down before old Mas'r, and begged him to buy her with me, that she might have at least one child with her; and he kicked her away with his heavy boot. I saw him do it; and the last that I heard was her moans and screams, when I was tied to his horse's neck, to be carried off to his place."

"My master traded with one of the men, and bought my oldest sister. She was a pious, good girl,—a member of the Baptist church,—and as handsome as my poor mother had been. She was well brought up, and had good manners. At first, I was glad she was bought, for I had one friend near me. I was soon sorry for it. Sir, I have stood at the door and heard her whipped, when it seemed as if every blow cut into my naked heart, and I couldn't do anything to help her; and she was whipped, sir, for wanting to live a decent Christian life, such as your laws give no slave girl a right to live; and at last I saw her chained with a trader's gang, to be sent to market in Orleans,—sent there for nothing else but that,—and that's the last I know of her. Well, I grew up,—long years and years,—no father, no mother, no sister, not a living soul that cared for me more than a dog; nothing but whipping, scolding, starving. Why, sir, I've been so hungry that I have been glad to take the bones they threw to their dogs; and yet, when I was a little fellow, and laid awake whole nights and cried, it wasn't the hunger, it wasn't the whipping, I cried for. No, sir, it was for my mother and my sisters,—it was because I hadn't a friend to love me on earth. I never knew what peace or comfort was. I never had a kind word spoken to me till I came to work in your factory. Mr. Wilson, you treated me well; you encouraged me to do well, and to learn to read and write, and to try to make something of myself; and Go...

I'm a freeman!" said George, proudly. "Yes, sir; I've said Mas'r for the last time to any man. I'm free!"

"All men are free and equal in the grave, if it comes to that, Mr. Wilson,"

"Is there a God to trust in?"

"O, I've seen things all my life that have made me feel that there can't be a God. You Christians don't know how these things look to us. There's a God for you, but is there any for us?"

There is—there is; clouds and darkness are around about him, but righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne. There's a God, George,—believe it; trust in Him, and I'm sure He'll help you. Everything will be set right,—if not in this life, in another."

"In Ramah there was a voice heard,—weeping, and lamentation, and great mourning; Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted."*

"We have here no continuing city, but we seek one to come; wherefore God himself is not ashamed to be called our God; for he hath prepared for us a city."

see Hebrews 11:14-16

"ignorant and unlearned men,"

Acts 4:13

"they that wasted them required of them mirth,"

Psalm 137:3

Gen. 9:25. This is what Noah says when he wakes out of drunkenness and realizes that his youngest son, Ham, father

of Canaan, has seen him naked.

All things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them.'

Matthew 7:12

'Cursed be Canaan.'"

Genesis 9:25

The wild look of anguish and utter despair that the woman cast on him might have disturbed one less practised; but he was used to it. He had seen that same look hundreds of times. You can get used to such things, too, my friend; and it is the great object of recent efforts to make our whole northern community used to them, for the glory of the Union.

trader, who, considering his advantages, was almost as humane as some of our politicians,

To him, it looked like something unutterably horrible and cruel, because, poor, ignorant black soul! he had not learned to generalize, and to take enlarged views. If he had only been instructed by certain ministers of Christianity, he might have thought better of it, and seen in it an every-day incident of a lawful trade; a trade which is the vital support of an institution which an American divine* tells us has "no evils but such as are inseparable from any other relations in social and domestic life." But Tom, as we see, being a poor, ignorant fellow, whose reading had been confined entirely to the New Testament, could not comfort and solace himself with views like these. His very soul bled within him for what seemed to him the wrongs of the poor suffering thing that lay like a crushed reed on the boxes; the feeling, living, bleeding, yet immortal thing, which American state law coolly classes with the bundles, and bales, and boxes, among which she is lying.

The poor bleeding heart was still, at last, and the river rippled and dimpled just as brightly as if it had not closed above it.

tear of the oppressed,

see Ecclesiastes 4:1

Man of Sorrows,

Isaiah 53:3

"the year of his redeemed shall come."

see Isaiah 63:4

the woman had escaped into a state which never will give up a fugitive,—not even at the demand of the whole glorious Union.

"He's a shocking creature, isn't he,—this trader? so unfeeling! It's dreadful, really!" "O, but nobody thinks anything of these traders! They are universally despised,—never received into any decent society." But who, sir, makes the trader? Who is most to blame? The enlightened, cultivated, intelligent man, who supports the system of which the trader is the inevitable result, or the poor trader himself? You make the public statement that calls for his trade, that debauches and depraves him, till he feels no shame in it; and in what are you better than he? Are you educated and he ignorant, you high and he low, you refined and he coarse, you talented and he simple? In the day of a future judgment, these very considerations may make it more tolerable for him than for you.

In concluding these little incidents of lawful trade, we must beg the world not to think that American legislators are entirely destitute of humanity, as might, perhaps, be unfairly inferred from the great efforts made in our national body to protect and perpetuate this species of traffic. Who does not know how our great men are outdoing themselves, in declaiming against the foreign slave-trade. There are a perfect host of Clarksons and Wilberforces* risen up among us on that subject, most edifying to hear and behold. Trading negroes from Africa, dear reader, is so horrid! It is not to be thought of! But trading them from Kentucky,—that's quite another thing!

"come out of his place

Isaiah 26:21

"Let—not—your—heart—be—troubled. In—my —Father's—house—are—many—mansions. I—go—to—prepare—a—place—for—you."

John 14:1-2

in real life we do not die when all that makes life bright dies to us.

"You would think no harm in a child's caressing a large dog, even if he was black; but a creature that can think, and reason, and feel, and is immortal, you shudder at;

You loathe them as you would a snake or a toad, yet you are indignant at their wrongs. You would not have them abused; but you don't want to have anything to do with them yourselves. You would send them to Africa, out of your sight and smell, and then send a missionary or two to do up all the self-denial of elevating them compendiously.

God chasteneth whom he loveth,

Hebrews 12:6; see Proverbs 3:12

'He hath made everything beautiful in its season;'

Ecclesiastes 3:11

"Woe unto the world because of offences, but woe unto them through whom the offence cometh."

Matthew 18:7