Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  which can scarcely find a parallel in any history, he managed,

  with his wife and two children, to escape into Canada. Here he

  learned to read, and by his superior talent and capacity for

  management, laid the foundation of the fugitive settlement of

  Dawn, which is understood to be one of the most flourishing in

  Canada.

  It would be well for the most cultivated of us to ask, whether

  our ten talents in the way of religious knowledge have enabled

  us to bring forth as much fruit to the glory of God, to withstand

  temptation as patiently, to return good for evil as disinterestedly,

  as this poor ignorant slave. A writer in England has sneeringly

  remarked that such a man as Uncle Tom might be imported as

  a missionary to teach the most cultivated in England or America

  the true nature of religion. These instances show that what has

  been said with a sneer is in truth a sober verity; and it should

  never be forgotten that out of this race whom man despiseth

  have often been chosen of God true messengers of his grace, and

  temples for the indwelling of his Spirit.

  “For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eter-

  nity, whose name is holy, I dwell in the high and holy place, with

  him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the

  spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.”

  The vision attributed to Uncle Tom introduces quite a curious

  chapter of psychology with regard to the negro race, and indi-

  cates a peculiarity which goes far to show how very different

  they are from the white race. They are possessed of a nervous

  organisation peculiarly susceptible and impressible. Their sen-

  sations and impressions are very vivid, and their fancy and ima-

  gination lively. In this respect the race has an Oriental

  character, and betrays its tropical origin. Like the Hebrews of

  old and the Oriental nations of the present, they give vent to

  their emotions with the utmost vivacity of expression, and their

  whole bodily system sympathises with the movements of their

  minds. When in distress, they actually lift up their voices to

  weep, and “cry with an exceeding bitter cry.” When alarmed,

  they are often paralysed, and rendered entirely helpless. Their

  religious exercises are all coloured by this sensitive and exceed-

  ingly vivacious temperament. Like Oriental nations, they in-

  cline much to outward expressions, violent gesticulations, and

  agitating movements of the body. Sometimes in their religious

  meetings they will spring from the floor many times in succes-

  sion, with a violence and rapidity which is perfectly astonishing.

  They will laugh, weep, and embrace each other convulsively, and

  sometimes become entirely paralysed and cataleptic. A clergy-

  man from the North once remonstrated with a Southern clergy-

  man for permitting such extravagances among his flock. The

  reply of the Southern minister was, in effect, this: “Sir, I am

  satisfied that the races are so essentially different that they

  cannot be regulated by the same rules. I at first felt as you do;

  and though I saw that genuine conversions did take place, with

  all this outward manifestation, I was still so much annoyed by

  it as to forbid it among my negroes, till I was satisfied that the

  repression of it was a serious hindrance to real religious feeling;

  and then I became certain that all men cannot be regulated in

  their religious exercises by one model. I am assured that con-

  versions produced with these accessories are quite as apt to be

  genuine, and to be as influential over the heart and life, as those

  produced in any other way.” The fact is, that the Anglo-Saxon

  race--cool, logical, and practical--have yet to learn the doctrine

  of toleration for the peculiarities of other races; and perhaps it

  was with a foresight of their peculiar character and dominant

  position in the earth, that God gave the Bible to them in the

  fervent language and with the glowing imagery of the more

  susceptible and passionate Oriental races.

  Mesmerists have found that the negroes are singularly sus-

  ceptible to all that class of influences which produce catalepsy,

  mesmeric sleep, and partial clairvoyant phenomena.

  The African race, in their own climate, are believers in spells,

  in “fetish and obi,” in “the evil eye,” and other singular in-

  fluences, for which probably there is an origin in this peculiarity

  of constitution. The magicians in scriptural history were Afri-

  cans; and the so-called magical arts are still practised in Egypt,

  and other parts of Africa, with a degree of skill and success

  which can only be accounted for by supposing peculiarities of

  nervous constitution quite different from those of the whites.

  Considering those distinctive traits of the race, it is no matter of

  surprise to find in their religious histories, when acted upon by

  the powerful stimulant of the Christian religion, very peculiar

  features. We are not surprised to find almost constantly, in

  the narrations of their religious histories, accounts of visions, of

  heavenly voices, of mysterious sympathies and transmissions of

  knowledge from heart to heart without the intervention of the

  senses, or what the Quakers call being “baptized into the

  spirit” of those who are distant.

  Cases of this kind are constantly recurring in their histories.

  The young man whose story was related to the Boston lady, and

  introduced above in the chapter on George Harris, stated this

  incident concerning the recovery of his liberty: That after the

  departure of his wife and sister, he for a long time, and very

  earnestly, sought some opportunity of escape, but that every

  avenue appeared to be closed to him. At length, in despair, he

  retreated to his room, and threw himself upon his bed, resolving

  to give up the undertaking, when just as he was sinking to

  sleep, he was roused by a voice saying in his ear, “Why do you

  sleep now? Rise up, if you ever mean to be free!” He sprang

  up, went immediately out, and in the course of two hours dis-

  covered the means of escape which he used.

  A lady whose history is known to the writer resided for some

  time on a Southern plantation, and was in the habit of imparting

  religious instruction to the slaves. One day a woman from a

  distant plantation called at her residence, and inquired for her.

  The lady asked in surprise, “How did you know about me?”

  The old woman's reply was, that she had long been distressed

  about her soul; but that, several nights before, some one had

  appeared to her in a dream, told her to go to this plantation and

  inquire for the strange lady there, and that she would teach her

  the way to heaven.

  Another specimen of the same kind was related to the writer,

  by a slave-woman who had been through the whole painful ex-

  perience of a slave's life. She was originally a young girl of

  pleasing exterior and gentle nature, carefully reared as a seam-

  stress and nurse to
the children of a family in Virginia, and

  attached with all the warmth of her susceptible nature to these

  children. Although one of the tenderest of mothers when the

  writer knew her, yet she assured the writer that she had never

  loved a child of her own as she loved the dear little young mis-

  tress who was her particular charge. Owing, probably, to some

  pecuniary difficulty in the family, this girl, whom we call Louisa,

  was sold to go on to a Southern plantation. She has often

  described the scene when she was forced into a carriage, and saw

  her dear young mistress leaning from the window, stretching her

  arms towards her, screaming and calling her name with all the

  vehemence of childish grief. She was carried in a coffle, and

  sold as cook on a Southern plantation. With the utmost earnest-

  ness of language she has described to the writer her utter loneli-

  ness, and the distress and despair of her heart, in this situation,

  parted for ever from all she held dear on earth, without even the

  possibility of writing letters or sending messages, surrounded by

  those who felt no kind of interest in her, and forced to a toil for

  which her more delicate education had entirely unfitted her.

  Under these circumstances, she began to believe that it was for

  some dreadful sin she had thus been afflicted. The course of

  of her mind after this may be best told in her own simple words:--

  “After that, I began to feel awful wicked--oh, so wicked,

  you've no idea! I felt so wicked that my sins seemed like a

  load on me, and I went so heavy all the day! I felt so wicked

  that I didn't feel worthy to pray in the house, and I used to go

  way off in the lot and pray. At last one day, when I was pray-

  ing, the Lord he came and spoke to me.”

  “The Lord spoke to you? What do you mean, Louisa?”

  With a face of the utmost earnestness she answered, “Why,

  ma'am, the Lord Jesus he came and spoke to me, you know; and I

  never, till the last day of my life, shall forget what he said to me.”

  “What was it?” said the writer.

  “He said, `Fear not, my little one; thy sins are forgiven

  thee;' ” and she added to this some verses, which the writer

  recognized as those of a Methodist hymn.

  Being curious to examine more closely this phenomenon, the

  author said,

  “You mean that you dreamed this, Louisa?”

  With an air of wounded feeling, and much earnestness, she

  answered,

  “O no, Mrs. Stowe; that never was a dream; you'll never

  make me believe that.”

  The thought at once arose in the writer's mind, If the Lord

  Jesus is indeed everywhere present, and if he is as tender-hearted

  and compassionate as he was on earth--and we know he is--

  must he not sometimes long to speak to the poor desolate slave,

  when he knows that no voice but His can carry comfort and

  healing to his soul?

  This instance of Louisa is so exactly parallel to another case,

  which the author received from an authentic source, that she is

  tempted to place the two side by side.

  Among the slaves who were brought into the New England

  States, at the time when slavery was prevalent, was one woman,

  who immediately on being told the history of the love of Jesus

  Christ, exclaimed, “He is the one; this is what I wanted!”

  This language causing surprise, her history was inquired into.

  It was briefly this:--While living in her simple hut in Africa,

  the kidnappers one day rushed upon her family, and carried her

  husband and children off to the slave-ship, she escaping into the

  woods. On returning to her desolate home, she mourned with

  the bitterness of “Rachel weeping for her children.” For many

  days her heart was oppressed with a heavy weight of sorrow;

  and, refusing all sustenance, she wandered up and down the

  desolate forest.

  At last, she says, a strong impulse came over her to kneel

  down and pour out her sorrows into the ear of some unknown

  Being whom she fancied to be above her, in the sky.

  She did so; and to her surprise, found an inexpressible sen-

  sation of relief. After this, it was her custom daily to go out to

  this same spot, and supplicate this unknown Friend. Subse-

  quently, she was herself taken and brought over to America; and

  when the story of Jesus and his love was related to her, she imme-

  diately felt in her soul that this Jesus was the very friend who

  had spoken comfort to her yearning spirit in the distant forest of

  Africa.

  Compare now these experiences with the earnest and beauti-

  ful language of Paul: “He hath made of one blood all nations

  of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth; and hath deter-

  mined the times before appointed and the bounds of their habita-

  tion, that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel

  after Him and find Him, though he be not far from every

  one of us.”

  Is not this truly “feeling after God and finding Him?” And

  may we not hope that the yearning, troubled, helpless heart of

  man, pressed by the insufferable anguish of this short life, or

  wearied by its utter vanity, never extends its ignorant pleading

  hand to God in vain? Is not the veil which divides us from an

  almighty and most merciful Father much thinner than we, in

  the pride of our philosophy, are apt to imagine? and is it not

  the most worthy conception of Him to suppose that the more

  utterly helpless and ignorant the human being is that seeks His

  aid, the more tender and the more condescending will be His

  communication with that soul?

  If a mother has among her children one whom sickness has

  made blind, or deaf, or dumb, incapable of acquiring knowledge

  through the usual channels of communication, does she not seek

  to reach its darkened mind by modes of communication ten-

  derer and more intimate than those which she uses with the

  stronger and more favoured ones? But can the love of any

  mother be compared with the infinite love of Jesus? Has He

  not described himself as that good Shepherd who leaves the

  whole flock of secure and well-instructed ones, to follow over the

  mountains of sin and ignorance the one lost sheep; and when

  He hath found it, rejoicing more over that one than over the

  ninety and nine that went not astray? Has He not told us

  that each of these little ones has a guardian angel that doth

  always behold the face of his Father which is in heaven? And

  is it not comforting to us to think that His love and care will

  be in proportion to the ignorance and the wants of His chosen

  ones?

  * * * * *

  Since the above was prepared for the press the author has

  received the following extract from a letter written by a gentle-

  man in Missouri to the editor of the Oberlin (Ohio) Evangelist:--

  I really thought, while reading “Uncle Tom's Cabin,” that the authoress, when

  describing the character of Tom, had in her mind's eye a slave whose acquaint-

  ance I made some years since, in the State of Mississippi,
called “Uncle Jacob.”

  I was staying a day or two with a planter, and in the evening, when out in the

  yard, I heard a well-known hymn and tune sung in one of the “quarters,” and

  then the voice of prayer; and oh, such a prayer! what fervour! what unction!

  nay, the man “prayed right up;” and when I read of Uncle Tom, how “nothing

  could exceed the touching simplicity, the child-like earnestness, of his prayer,

  enriched with the language of Scripture, which seemed so entirely to have wrought

  itself into his being as to have become a part of himself,” the recollections of

  that evening prayer were strangely vivid. On entering the house, and referring

  to what I had heard, his master replied, “Ah, sir, if I covet anything in this

  world, it is Uncle Jacob's religion. If there is a good man on earth, he cer-

  tainly is one.” He said Uncle Jacob was a regulator on the plantation; that a

  word or a look from him, addressed to younger slaves, had more efficiency than a

  blow from the overseer.

  The next morning Uncle Jacob informed me he was from Kentucky, opposite

  Cincinnati; that his opportunities for attending religious worship had been fre-

  quent; that at about the age of forty he was sold South, was set to picking cotton;

  could not, when doing his best, pick the task assigned him; was whipped and

  whipped, he could not possibly tell how often; was of opinion that the overseer

  came to the conclusion that whipping could not bring one more pound out of

  him, for he set him to driving a team. At this and other work he could “make

  a hand;” had changed owners three or four times. He expressed himself as well

  pleased with his present situation as he expected to be in the South, but was

  yearning to return to his former associations in Kentucky.

  CHAPTER VII.

  MISS OPHELIA.

  Miss Ophelia stands as the representative of a numerous

  class of the very best of Northern people; to whom perhaps,

  if our Lord should again address his churches a letter, as he

  did those of old time, he would use the same words as then:

  “I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and

  how thou canst not bear them which are evil; and thou hast

  tried them which are apostles and are not, and hast found

  them liars; and hast borne, and hast patience, and for my

  name's sake hast laboured and hast not fainted. Neverthe-