Uncle Tom's Cabin

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

A very humane jurist once said, The worst use you can put a man to is to hang him. No; there is another use that a man can be put to that is WORSE!

“Well,” said Eliza, mournfully, “I always thought that I must obey my master and mistress, or I couldn’t be a Christian.”

“I won’t be taken, Eliza; I’ll die first! I’ll be free, or I’ll die!”

Sobs, heavy, hoarse and loud, shook the chair, and great tears fell through his fingers on the floor; just such tears, sir, as you dropped into the coffin where lay your first-born son; such tears, woman, as you shed when you heard the cries of your dying babe. For, sir, he was a man,—and you are but another man. And, woman, though dressed in silk and jewels, you are but a woman, and, in life’s great straits and mighty griefs, ye feel but one sorrow!

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

“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.”

“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?”

Rollin’s History,11 Milton’s Paradise Lost, Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, and Scott’s Family Bible,

Morse’s Atlas13

Flint’s Travels in the South and West,

He says we have made them what they are, and ought to bear with them. He says their faults are all owing to us, and that it would be cruel to make the fault and punish it, too. He says we shouldn’t do any better, in their place; just as if one could reason from them to us, you know.”

“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; confess it, cousin. I know the feeling among some of you northerners well enough. Not that there is a particle of virtue in our not having it; but custom with us does what Christianity ought to do,—obliterates the feeling of personal prejudice. I have often noticed, in my travels north, how much stronger this was with you than with us. 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. Isn’t that it?” “Well, cousin,” said Miss Ophelia, thoughtfully, “there may be some truth in this.”

O! Eliza, if these people only knew what a blessing it is for a man to feel that his wife and child belong to him!

The words of holy trust, breathed by the friendly old man, stole like sacred music over the harassed and chafed spirit of George; and after he ceased, he sat with a gentle and subdued expression on his fine features.

Dinah ruled over the woolly heads of the younger members with a rod of iron, and seemed to consider them born for no earthly purpose but to “save her steps,” as she phrased it. It was the spirit of the system under which she had grown up, and she carried it out to its full extent.

“Dear Mas’r, pray to the good Lord,—‘Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief.’“

For, so inconsistent is human nature, especially in the ideal, that not to undertake a thing at all seems better than to undertake and come short.

We are the more obvious oppressors of the negro; but the unchristian prejudice of the north is an oppressor almost equally severe.”

“The Lord’s will be done!” said Tom, folding his arms and sighing heavily.

the morning star of liberty rose fair before them!—electric word! What is it? Is there anything more in it than a name—a rhetorical flourish? Why, men and women of America, does your heart’s blood thrill at that word, for which your fathers bled, and your braver mothers were willing that their noblest and best should die?

Tom grasped his hand, and continued,—“Ye mustn’t, now, tell Chloe, poor soul! how ye found me;—’t would be so drefful to her. Only tell her ye found me going into glory; and that I couldn’t stay for no one. And tell her the Lord’s stood by me everywhere and al’ays, and made everything light and easy. And oh, the poor chil’en, and the baby;—my old heart’s been most broke for ’em, time and agin! Tell ’em all to follow me—follow me! Give my love to Mas’r, and dear good Missis, and everybody in the place! Ye don’t know! ’Pears like I loves ’em all! I loves every creature everywhar!—it’s nothing but love! O, Mas’r George! what a thing ’t is to be a Christian!”