The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  tion was designed to perpetuate and not to limit slavery; and

  this certainly cannot be proved, for it is directly contrary to the

  plain matter of fact.

  I repeat it, then, again--there is nothing in the language of

  this statute, there is nothing in the connexion in which it stands,

  there is nothing in the history of the Mosaic legislation on this

  subject, to limit the application of the law to the case of

  servants escaping from foreign masters; but every considera-

  tion from every legitimate source leads us to a conclusion

  directly the opposite. Such a limitation is the arbitrary, unsup-

  ported stet voluntas pro ratione assumption of the commentator,

  and nothing else. The only shadow of a philological argument

  that I can see, for limiting the statute, is found in the use of

  the words to thee, in the fifteenth verse. It may be said that

  the pronoun thee is used in a national and not individual sense,

  implying an escape from some other nation to the Hebrews.

  But examine the statute immediately preceding this, and observe

  use of the pronoun thee in the thirteenth verse. Most ob-

  viously, the pronouns in these statutes are used with reference

  to the individuals addressed, and not in a collective or national

  sense exclusively; very rarely, if ever, can this sense be given

  to them in the way claimed by the argument referred to.

  2. It is said that the proclamation, “Thou shalt proclaim

  liberty through the land to all the inhabitants thereof,” related

  only to Hebrew slaves. This assumption is based entirely on

  the supposition that the slave was not considered in Hebrew

  law as a person, as an inhabitant of the land, and a member of

  the State; but we have just proved that in the most solemn

  transaction of the State the hewer of wood and drawer of water

  is expressly designated as being just as much an actor and par-

  tieipator as his master; and it would be absurd to suppose that,

  in a statute addressed to all the inhabitants of the land, he is

  not included as an inhabitant.

  Barnes enforces this idea by some pages of quotations from

  Jewish writers, which will fully satisfy anyone who reads his

  work.

  From a review, then, of all that relates to the Hebrew slave-

  law, it will appear that it was a very well-considered and wisely

  adapted system of education and gradual emancipation. No

  rational man can doubt that if the same laws were enacted and

  the same practices prevailed with regard to slavery in the United

  States, that the system of American slavery might be considered,

  to all intents and purposes, practically at an end. If there is

  any doubt of this fact, and it is still thought that the permission

  of slavery among the Hebrews justifies American slavery, in all

  fairness the experiment of making the two systems alike ought

  to be tried, and we should then see what would be the result.

  CHAPTER XV.

  SLAVERY IS DESPOTISM.

  It is always important, in discussing a thing, to keep before

  our minds exactly what it is.

  The only means of understanding precisely what a civil

  institution is, are an examination of the laws which regulate it.

  In different ages and nations, very different things have been

  called by the name of slavery. Patriarchal servitude was one

  thing, Hebrew servitude was another, Greek and Roman servi-

  tude still a third; and these institutions differed very much from

  each other. What, then, is American slavery, as we have seen

  it exhibited by law, and by the decision of Courts?

  Let us begin by stating what it is not:--

  1. It is not apprenticeship.

  2. It is not guardianship.

  3. It is in no sense a system for the education of a weaker race

  by a stronger.

  4. The happiness of the governed is in no sense its object.

  5. The temporal improvement or the eternal well-being of the

  governed is in no sense its object.

  The object of it has been distinctly stated in one sentence by

  Judge Ruffin--“The end is the profit of the master, his

  security, and the public safety.”

  Slavery, then, is absolute despotism, of the most unmitigated

  form.

  It would, however, be doing injustice to the absolutism of any

  civilised country to liken American slavery to it. The absolute

  governments of Europe none of them pretend to be founded on

  a property right of the governor to the persons and entire capa-

  bilities of the governed.

  This is a form of despotism which exists only in some of the

  most savage countries of the world; as, for example, in

  Dahomey.

  The European absolutism or despotism, now, does, to some

  extent, recognise the happiness and welfare of the governed as

  the foundation of government; and the ruler is considered as

  invested with power for the benefit of the people; and his right

  to rule is supposed to be in somewhat predicated upon the idea

  that he better understands how to promote the good of the

  people than they themselves do. No government in the civilised world now presents the pure despotic idea, as it existed in the

  old days of the Persian and Assyrian rule.

  The arguments which defend slavery must be substantially

  the same as those which defend despotism of any other kind;

  and the objections which are to be urged against it are pre-

  cisely those which can be urged against despotism of any other

  kind. The customs and practices to which it gives rise are

  precisely those to which despotisms in all ages have given rise.

  Is the slave suspected of a crime? His master has the power

  to examine him by torture (see State v. Castleman). His

  master has, in fact, in most cases, the power of life and death,

  owing to the exclusion of the slave's evidence. He has the

  power of banishing the slave, at any time, and without giving

  an account to anybody, to an exile as dreadful as that of Siberia,

  and to labours as severe as those of the galleys. He has also

  unlimited power over the character of his slave. He can accuse

  him of any crime, yet withhold from him all right of trial or

  investigation, and sell him into captivity, with his name

  blackened by an unexamined imputation.

  These are all abuses for which despotic governments are

  blamed. They are powers which good men who are despotic

  rulers are beginning to disuse; but, under the flag of every

  slaveholding State, and under the flag of the whole United

  States in the District of Columbia, they are committed indiscri-

  minately to men of any character.

  But the worst kind of despotism has been said to be that

  which extends alike over the body and over the soul; which can

  bind the liberty of the conscience, and deprive a man of all

  right of choice in respect to the manner in which he shall learn

  the will of God, and worship him. In other days, kings on

  their thrones, and cottagers by their fire-sides, alike trembled

  before a despotism which declared itself able to bind and to loose,

  to open and to
shut the kingdom of heaven.

  Yet this power to control the conscience, to control the

  religious privileges, and all the opportunities which man has of

  acquaintanceship with his Maker, and of learning to do his will,

  is, under the flag of every slave State, and under the flag of the

  United States, placed in the hands of any men of any character

  who can afford to pay for it.

  It is a most awful and most solemn truth that the greatest

  republic in the world does sustain under her national flag the

  worst system of despotism which can possibly exist.

  With regard to one point to which we have adverted--the

  power of the master to deprive the slave of a legal trial while

  accusing him of crime--a very striking instance has occurred in

  the District of Columbia, within a year or two. The particulars

  of the case, as stated at the time, in several papers, were briefly

  these: A gentleman in Washington, our national capital--an

  elder in the Presbyterian church--held a female slave, who had,

  for some years, supported a good character in a Baptist church

  of that city. He accused her of an attempt to poison his

  family, and immediately placed her in the hands of a slave-

  dealer, who took her over and imprisoned her in the slave-pen

  at Alexandria, to await the departure of a coffle. The poor

  girl had a mother, who felt as any mother would naturally feel.

  When apprised of the situation of her daughter she flew to

  the pen, and, with tears, besought an interview with her only

  child; but she was cruelly repulsed, and told to be gone! She

  then tried to see the elder, but failed. She had the promise of

  money sufficient to purchase her daughter, but the owner would

  listen to no terms of compromise.

  In her distress, the mother repaired to a lawyer in the city,

  and begged him to give form to her petition in writing. She

  stated to him what she wished to have said, and he arranged it

  for her in such a form as she herself might have presented it in,

  had not the benefits of education been denied her. The following

  is the letter:--

  Washington, July 25, 1851.

  Sir,--I address you as a rich Christian freeman and father, while I am myself

  but a poor slave-mother. I come to plead with you for an only child whom I

  love, who is a professor of the Christian religion with yourself, and a member of a

  Christian church; and who, by your act of ownership, now pines in her imprison-

  ment in a loathsome man-warehouse, where she is held for sale. I come to plead

  with you for the exercise of that blessed law, “Whatsoever ye would that men

  should do unto you, do ye even so to them.”

  With great labour, I have found friends who are willing to aid me in the

  purchase of my child, to save us from a cruel separation. You, as a father, can

  judge of my feelings when I was told that you had decreed her banishment to

  distant as well as to hopeless bondage!

  For nearly six years my child has done for you the hard labour of a slave; from

  the age of sixteen to twenty-two she has done the hard work of your chamber,

  kitchen, cellar, and stables. By night and by day, your will and your commands

  have been her highest law; and all this has been unrequited toil. If in all this

  time her scanty allowance of tea and coffee has been sweetened, it has been at

  the cost of her slave-mother, and not at yours.

  You are an office-bearer in the church, and a man of prayer. As such, and as

  the absolute owner of my child, I ask candidly whether she has enjoyed such

  mild and gentle treatment, and amiable example, as she ought to have had, to

  encourage her in her monotonous bondage? Has she received at your hands, in

  faithful religious instruction in the Word of God, a full and fair compensation

  for all her toil? It is not to me alone that you must answer these questions.

  You acknowledge the high authority of His laws who preached a deliverance to

  the captive, and who commands you to give to your servant “that which is just

  and equal.” Oh, I entreat you, withhold not, at this trying hour, from my

  child that which will cut off her last hope, and which may endanger your own

  soul!

  It has been said that you charge my daughter with crime. Can this be really

  so? Can it be that you would set aside the obligations of honour and good

  citizenship--that you would dare to sell the guilty one away for money, rather

  than bring her to trial, which you know she is ready to meet? What would you

  say, if you were accused of guilt and refused a trial? Is not her fair name as

  precious to her, in the church to which she belongs, as yours can be to you?

  Suppose, now, for a moment, that your daughter, whom you love, instead of

  mine, was in these hot days incarcerated in a negro-pen, subject to my control,

  fed on the coarsest food, committed to the entire will of a brute, denied the

  privilege commonly allowed even to the murderer--that of seeing the face of his

  friends? Oh, then you would feel!--feel soon, then, for a poor slave-mother

  and her child, and do for us as you shall wish you had done when we shall meet

  before the Great Judge, and when it shall be your greatest joy to say, “I did let

  the oppressed free!”

  Ellen Brown.

  Mr.--

  The girl, however, was sent off to the Sourthern market.

  The writer has received these incidents from the gentleman

  who wrote the letter. Whether the course pursued by the

  master was strictly legal is a point upon which we are not en-

  tirely certain; that it was a course in which the law did not in

  fact interfere, is quite plain, and it is also very apparent that it

  was a course against which public sentiment did not remon-

  strate. The man who exercised this power was a professedly

  religious man, enjoying a position of importance in a Christian

  church; and it does not appear, from any movements in the

  Christian community about him, that they did not consider his

  course a justifiable one.

  Yet is not this kind of power the very one at which we are so

  shocked when we see it exercised by foreign despots?

  Do we not read with shuddering that in Russia, or in Austria,

  a man accused of crime is seized upon, separated from his friends,

  allowed no opportunities of trial or of self-defence, but hurried

  off to Siberia, or some other dreaded exile?

  Why is despotism any worse in the governor of a State than

  in a private individual?

  There is a great controversy now going on in the world be-

  tween the despotic and the republican principle. All the common

  arguments used in support of slavery are arguments that apply

  with equal strength to despotic government, and there are some

  arguments in favour of despotic governments that do not apply

  to individual slavery.

  There are arguments, and quite plausible ones, in favour of

  despotic government. Nobody can deny that it possesses a cer-

  tain kind of efficiency, compactness, and promptness of move-

  ment, which cannot, from the nature of things, belong to a re-

  public. Despotism has established and sustained much more
/>   efficient systems of police than ever a republic did. The late

  King of Prussia, by the possession of absolute despotic power, was

  enabled to carry out a much more efficient system of popular

  education than we ever have succeeded in carrying out in Ame-

  rica. He districted his kingdom in the most thorough manner,

  and obliged every parent, whether he would or not, to have his

  children thoroughly educated.

  If we reply to all this, as we do, that the possession of absolute

  power in a man qualified to use it right is undoubtedly calculated

  for the good of the state, but that there are so few men that know

  how to use it, that this form of government is not, on the whole,

  a safe one, then we have stated an argument that goes to over-

  throw slavery as much as it does a despotic government; for cer-

  tainly the chances are much greater of finding one man, in the

  course of fifty years, who is capable of wisely using this power,

  than of finding thousands of men every day in our streets,

  who can be trusted with such power. It is a painful and most

  serious fact, that America trusts to the hands of the most

  brutal men of her country, equally with the best, that despotic

  power which she thinks an unsafe thing even in the hands

  of the enlightened, educated, and cultivated Emperor of the

  Russias.

  With all our republican prejudices, we cannot deny that

  Nicholas is a man of talent, with a mind liberalised by educa-

  tion; we have been informed, also, that he is a man of serious

  and religious character; he certainly, acting as he does in the

  eye of all the world, must have great restraint upon him from

  public opinion, and a high sense of character. But who is the

  man to whom American laws intrust powers more absolute than

  those of Nicholas of Russia, or Ferdinand of Naples? He may

  have been a pirate on the high seas; he may be a drunkard;

  he may, like Souther, have been convicted of a brutality at

  which humanity turns pale; but, for all that, American slave-

  law will none the less trust him with this irresponsible power,

  --power over the body, and power over the soul.

  On which side, then, stands the American nation, in the

  great controversy which is now going on between self-govern-

  ment and despotism? On which side does America stand, in