Uncle Tom's Cabin: Or, Life Among the Lowly

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Stowe was simply the wife of Calvin Stowe, an eccentric and poor theologian at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine; an overworked housewife with a large brood of children; and a minor writer specializing in short, vernacular New England tales and didactic writings. Like most of the Beechers, she saw life in terms of moral commitments, but she had been a helper in Catharine Beecher’s missions for feminine education and a sympathizer with her father’s and brothers’ various crusades rather than an active organizer herself.

it was apparent that the little lady from Maine had written the best-seller of the nineteenth century. Due to an unwise initial contract with Jewett, the absence of international copyright, and her own carelessness, Stowe did not become a rich woman, but her first novel achieved and held a popularity that not even Dickens’s books could match. Countless folk songs and dramas based on Uncle Tom soon endowed it with the aura of a permanent American myth; its critical reputation, in contrast, has varied widely.

Ye know, Mas’r George, ye oughtenter feel ’bove nobody, on ’count yer privileges, ’cause all our privileges is gi’n to us; we ought al’ays to ’member that,” said Aunt Chloe, looking quite serious.

No tear dropped over that pillow; in such straits as these, the heart has no tears to give,—it drops only blood, bleeding itself away in silence.

frolicsome juveniles, who were effervescing in all those modes of untold gambol and mischief that have astonished mothers ever since the flood.

“You ought to be ashamed, John! Poor, homeless, houseless creatures! It’s a shameful, wicked, abominable law, and I’ll break it, for one, the first time I get a chance; and I hope I shall have a chance, I do! Things have got to a pretty pass, if a woman can’t give a warm supper and a bed to poor, starving creatures, just because they are slaves, and have been abused and oppressed all their lives, poor things!”

“Now, John, I don’t know anything about politics, but I can read my Bible; and there I see that I must feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and comfort the desolate; and that Bible I mean to follow.”

“Obeying God never brings on public evils. I know it can’t. It’s always safest, all round, to do as He bids us.”

“There’ll be the same God there, Chloe, that there is here.”

“I’m in the Lord’s hands,” said Tom; “nothin’ can go no furder than he lets it;—and thar’s one thing I can thank him for. It’s me that’s sold and going down, and not you nur the chil’en. Here you’re safe;—what comes will come only on me; and the Lord, he’ll help me,—I know he will.”

Tell ye what, Mas’r George, the Lord gives good many things twice over; but he don’t give ye a mother but once. Ye’ll never see sich another woman, Mas’r George, if ye live to be a hundred years old. So, now, you hold on to her, and grow up, and be a comfort to her, thar’s my own good boy,—you will now, won’t ye?”

Patience! patience! ye whose hearts swell indignant at wrongs like these. Not one throb of anguish, not one tear of the oppressed, is forgotten by the Man of Sorrows, the Lord of Glory. In his patient, generous bosom he bears the anguish of a world. Bear thou, like him, in patience, and labor in love; for sure as he is God, “the year of his redeemed shall come.”

It was plain to see how old and firm the girlish heart was grown under the discipline of heavy sorrow; and when, anon, her large dark eye was raised to follow the gambols of her little Harry, who was sporting, like some tropical butterfly, hither and thither over the floor, she showed a depth of firmness and steady resolve that was never there in her earlier and happier days.

So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why don’t somebody wake up to the beauty of old women?

“Thee uses thyself only to learn how to love thy neighbor, Ruth,” said Simeon, looking, with a beaming face, on Ruth. “To be sure. Isn’t it what we are made for?

“The Lord only gives us our worldly goods that we may do justice and mercy; if our rulers require a price of us for it, we must deliver it up.”

“I hope, my good sir, that you are not exposed to any difficulty on our account,” said George, anxiously. “Fear nothing, George, for therefore are we sent into the world. If we would not meet trouble for a good cause, we were not worthy of our name.” “But, for me,” said George, “I could not bear it.” “Fear not, then, friend George; it is not for thee, but for God and man, we do it,” said Simeon.

He says their faults are all owing to us, and that it would be cruel to make the fault and punish it too.

It’s pretty generally understood that men don’t aspire after the absolute right, but only to do about as well as the rest of the world.

“Eliza,” said George, “people that have friends, and houses, and lands, and money, and all those things can’t love as we do, who have nothing but each other.

And the fact is, that a mind stupefied and animalized by every bad influence from the hour of birth, spending the whole of every week-day in unreflecting toil, cannot be done much with by a few hours on Sunday. The teachers of Sunday-schools among the manufacturing population of England, and among plantation-hands in our country, could perhaps testify to the same result, there and here.

Like sending children to government schools all week and church on Sundays.

training children is the staple work of the human race,”

It was the first principle of Marie’s belief that nobody ever was or could be so great a sufferer as herself; and, therefore, she always repelled quite indignantly any suggestion that any one around her could be sick. She was always sure, in such a case, that it was nothing but laziness, or want of energy; and that, if they had had the suffering she had, they would soon know the difference.

I want to speak to you about your souls…. Many of you, I am afraid, are very careless. You are thinking only about this world. I want you to remember that there is a beautiful world, where Jesus is. I am going there, and you can go there. It is for you, as much as me. But, if you want to go there, you must not live idle, careless, thoughtless lives. You must be Christians.

If you want to be Christians, Jesus will help you. You must pray to him; you must read—”

“Never mind,” she said, raising her face and smiling brightly through her tears “I have prayed for you; and I know Jesus will help you, even if you can’t read. Try all to do the best you can; pray every day; ask Him to help you, and get the Bible read to you whenever you can; and I think I shall see you all in heaven.”

“What is being a Christian, Eva?” “Loving Christ most of all,” said Eva.

To him she imparted those mysterious intimations which the soul feels, as the cords begin to unbind, ere it leaves its clay forever.

“Farewell, beloved child! the bright, eternal doors have closed after thee; we shall see thy sweet face no more. O, woe for them who watched thy entrance into heaven, when they shall wake and find only the cold gray sky of daily life, and thou gone forever!”

Marie was one of those unfortunately constituted mortals, in whose eyes whatever is lost and gone assumes a value which it never had in possession.

Whatever she had, she seemed to survey only to pick flaws in it; but, once fairly away, there was no end to her valuation of it.

“But I want it done now,” said Miss Ophelia. “What’s your hurry?” “Because now is the only time there ever is to do a thing in,” said Miss Ophelia.

But no, innocent friend; in these days men have learned the art of sinning expertly and genteelly, so as not to shock the eyes and senses of respectable society.

“Well,” said the other, “there are also many considerate and humane men among planters.” “Granted,” said the young man; “but, in my opinion, it is you considerate, humane men, that are responsible for all the brutality and outrage wrought by these wretches; because, if it were not for your sanction and influence, the whole system could not keep foothold for an hour. If there were no planters except such as that one,” said he, pointing with his finger to Legree, who stood with his back to them, “the whole thing would go down like a mill-stone. It is your respectability and humanity that licenses and protects his brutality.”

“O, ye who take freedom from man, with what words shall ye answer it to God?”

Have not many of us, in the weary way of life, felt, in some hours, how far easier it were to die than to live?

No one is so thoroughly superstitious as the godless man.

Again, we have waited with him in a sunny island, where generous hands concealed his chains with flowers;

“Fear not them that kill the body, and, after that, have no more than they can do.”

Pity him not! Such a life and death is not for pity! Not in the riches of omnipotence is the chief glory of God; but in self-denying, suffering love! And blessed are the men whom he calls to fellowship with him, bearing their cross after him with patience. Of such it is written, “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

Chloe leaned her head on her mistress’ shoulder, and sobbed out, “O Missis! ’scuse me, my heart’s broke,—dat’s all!” “I know it is,” said Mrs. Shelby, as her tears fell fast; “and I cannot heal it, but Jesus can. He healeth the broken hearted, and bindeth up their wounds.”

So, when you rejoice in your freedom, think that you owe it to that good old soul, and pay it back in kindness to his wife and children. Think of your freedom, every time you see UNCLE TOM’S CABIN; and let it be a memorial to put you all in mind to follow in his steps, and be honest and faithful and Christian as he was.”

Is man ever a creature to be trusted with wholly irresponsible power?

And you, mothers of America,—you who have learned, by the cradles of your own children, to love and feel for all mankind,—by the sacred love you bear your child; by your joy in his beautiful, spotless infancy; by the motherly pity and tenderness with which you guide his growing years; by the anxieties of his education; by the prayers you breathe for his soul’s eternal good;—I beseech you, pity the mother who has all your affections, and not one legal right to protect, guide, or educate, the child of her bosom!

Do you say that the people of the free state have nothing to do with it, and can do nothing? Would to God this were true! But it is not true. The people of the free states have defended, encouraged, and participated; and are more guilty for it, before God, than the South, in that they have not the apology of education or custom.

Christian men and women of the North! still further,—you have another power; you can pray!

The writer has lived, for many years, on the frontier-line of slave states, and has had great opportunities of observation among those who formerly were slaves. They have been in her family as servants; and, in default of any other school to receive them, she has, in many cases, had them instructed in a family school, with her own children.