The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  On the first session of the General Assembly this course was

  most vehemently urged, by many petitions and memorials.

  These memorials were referred to a committee of decided anti-

  slavery men. The argument on one side was, that the time was

  now come to take decided measures to cut free wholly from all

  pro-slavery complicity, and avow their principles with decision,

  even though it should repel all such Churches from their com-

  munion as were not prepared for immediate emancipation.

  On the other hand, the majority of the committee were urged

  by opposing considerations. The brethren from slave States made

  to them representations somewhat alike to these: “Brethren,

  our hearts are with you. We are with you in faith, in charity,

  in prayer. We sympathised in the injury that had been done

  you by excision. We stood by you then, and are ready to stand

  by you still. We have no sympathy with the party that have

  expelled you, and we do not wish to go back to them. As to

  this matter of slavery, we do not differ from you. We consider

  it an evil. We mourn and lament over it. We are trying, by

  gradual and peaceable means, to exclude it from our Churches.

  We are going as far in advance of the sentiment of our Churches

  as we consistently can. We cannot come up to more decided

  action without losing our hold over them, and, as we think,

  throwing back the cause of emancipation. If you begin in this

  decided manner, we cannot hold our Churches in the union; they

  will divide, and go to the Old School.”

  Here was a very strong plea, made by good and sincere men.

  It was an appeal, too, to the most generous feelings of the heart.

  It was, in effect, saying, “Brothers, we stood by you, and fought

  your battles, when everything was going against you; and, now

  that you have the power in your hands, are you going to use it

  so as to cast us out?”

  These men, strong anti-slavery men as they were, were affected.

  One member of the committee foresaw and feared the result. He

  felt and suggested that the course proposed conceded the whole

  question. The majority thought, on the whole, that it was best

  to postpone the subject. The committee reported that the ap-

  plicants, for reasons satisfactory to themselves, had withdrawn

  their papers.

  The next year, in 1839, the subject was resumed; and it was

  again urged that the Assembly should take high, and decided, and

  unmistakeable ground; and certainly, if we consider that all this

  time not a single Church had emancipated its slaves, and that the

  power of the institution was everywhere stretching and growing

  and increasing, it would certainly seem that something more

  efficient was necessary than a general understanding that the

  Church agreed with the testimony delivered in 1818. It was

  strongly represented that it was time something was done. This

  year the Assembly decided to refer the subject to Presbyteries, to

  do what they deemed advisable. The words employed were

  these: “Solemnly referring the whole subject to the lower judi-

  catories, to take such action as in their judgment is most judicious,

  and adapted to remove the evil.” The Rev. George Beecher

  moved to insert the word moral before evil; they declined.*

  This brought, in 1840, a much larger number of memorials

  and petitions; and very strong attempts were made by the

  abolitionists to obtain some decided action.

  The committee this year referred to what had been done last

  year, and declared it inexpedient to do anything further. The

  subject was indefinitely postponed. At this time it was resolved

  that the Assembly should meet only once in three years. Accord-

  ingly, it did not meet till 1843. In 1843, several memorials

  were again presented, and some resolutions offered to the As-

  sembly, of which this was one (Minutes of the General Assembly

  for 1843, p. 15).

  Resolved, That we affectionately and earnestly urge upon the Ministers, Sessions,

  Presbyteries, and Synods connected with this Assembly, that they treat this as all

  other sins of great magnitude; and by a diligent, kind, and faithful application of

  the means which God has given them, by instruction, remonstrance, reproof, and

  effective discipline, seek to purify the Church of this great iniquity.

  This resolution they declined. They passed the following:--

  Whereas there is in this Assembly great diversity of opinion as to the proper

  and best mode of action on the subject of slavery; and whereas, in such circum-

  stances, any expression of sentiment would carry with it but little weight, as it

  would be passed by a small majority, and must operate to produce alienation and

  division; and whereas the Assembly of 1839, with great unanimity, referred this

  whole subject to the lower judicatories, to take such order as in their judgement

  might be adapted to remove the evil;--Resolved, That the Assembly do not think

  it for the edification of the Church for this body to take any action on the subject.

  They, however, passed the following:--

  Resolved, That the fashionable amusement of promiscuous dancing is so entirely

  unscriptural, and eminently and exclusively that of “the world which lieth in

  wickedness,” and so wholly inconsistent with the spirit of Christ, and with that

  propriety of Christian deportment and that purity of heart which his followers

  are bound to maintain, as to render it not only improper and injurious for pro-

  fessing Christians either to partake in it, or to qualify their children for it, by

  teaching them the “art,” but also to call for the faithful and judicious exercise

  of discipline on the part of Church Sessions, when any of the members of their

  Churches have been guilty.

  Three years after, in 1846, the General Assembly published

  the following declaration of sentiment:--

  1. The system of slavery as it exists in these United States, viewed either in

  the laws of the several States which sanction it, or in its actual operation and

  results in society, is intrinsically unrighteous and oppressive; and is opposed to

  the prescriptions of the law of God, to the spirit and precepts of the Gospel, and

  to the best interests of humanity.

  2. The testimony of the General Assembly from a.d. 1787 to a.d. 1818, inclu-

  sive, has condemned it; and it remains still the recorded testimony of the Pres-

  byterian Church of these United States against it, from which we do not recede.

  3. We cannot, therefore, withhold the expression of our deep regret that slavery

  should be continued and countenanced by any of the members of our Churches;

  and we do earnestly exhort both them and the Churches among whom it exists to

  use all means in their power to put it away from them. Its perpetuation among

  them cannot fail to be regarded by multitudes, influenced by their example, as

  sanctioning the system portrayed in it, and maintained by the statutes of the

  several slaveholding States wherein they dwell. Nor can any mere mitigation of

  its severity, prompted by the humanity and Christian feeling of any who continue

  to hold their fel
low-men in bondage, be regarded either as a testimony against

  the system, or as in the least degree changing its essential character.

  4. But while we believe that many evils incident to the system render it im-

  portant and obligatory to bear testimony against it, yet would we not undertake to

  determine the degree of moral turpitude on the part of individuals involved by it.

  This will doubtless be found to vary, in the sight of God, according to the degree

  of light and other circumstances pertaining to each. In view of all the embar-

  rassments and obstacles in the way of emancipation interposed by the statutes of

  the slaveholding States, and by the social influence affecting the views and con-

  duct of those involved in it, we cannot pronounce a judgment of general and pro-

  miscuous condemnation, implying that destitution of Christian principle and

  feeling which should exclude from the table of the Lord all who should stand

  in the legal relation of masters to slaves, or justify us in withholding our eccle-

  siastical and Christian fellowship from them. We rather sympathise with, and

  would seek to succour them in their embarrassments, believing that separation and

  secession among the Churches and their members are not the methods God ap-

  proves and sanctions for the reformation of his Church.

  5. While, therefore, we feel bound to bear our testimony against slavery, and

  to exhort our beloved brethren to remove it from them as speedily as possible by

  all appropriate and available means, we do at the same time condemn all divisive

  and schismatical measures, tending to destroy the unity and disturb the peace of

  our Church, and deprecate the spirit of denunciation and inflicting severities, which

  would cast from the fold those whom we are rather bound, by the spirit of the

  Gospel, and the obligations of our covenant, to instruct, to counsel, to exhort, and

  thus to lead in the ways of God; and towards whom, even though they may err,

  we ought to exercise forbearance and brotherly love.

  6. As a court of our Lord Jesus Christ, we possess no legislative authority;

  and as the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, we possess no judi-

  ciary authority. We have no right to institute and prescribe a test of Christian

  character and Church membership not recognised and sanctioned in the sacred

  Scriptures, and in our standards, by which we have agreed to walk. We must

  therefore this matter with the sessions and synods--the judi-

  discipline as they may judge it to be their duty, constitutionally subject to the

  General Assembly only in the way of general review and control.

  When a boat is imperceptibly going down stream on a gentle

  but strong current, we can see its passage only by comparing

  objects with each other on the shore.

  If this declaration of the New-School General Assembly be

  compared with that of 1818, it will be found to be far less out-

  spoken and decided in its tone, while in the meantime slavery

  had become four-fold more powerful. In 1818, the Assembly

  states that the most virtuous portion of the community in slave

  States abhor slavery, and wish its extermination. In 1846, the

  Assembly states with regret that slavery is still continued and

  countenanced by any of the members of our Churches. The

  testimony of 1818 has the frank out-spoken air of a unanimous

  document, where there was but one opinion. That of 1846 has

  the guarded air of a compromise ground out between the upper

  and nether millstone of two contending parties--it is winnowed,

  guarded, cautious, and careful.

  Considering the document, however, in itself, it is certainly

  a very good one; and it would be a very proper expression of

  Christian feeling, had it related to an evil of any common

  magnitude, and had it been uttered in any common crisis; but

  let us consider what was the evil attacked, and what was the

  crisis. Consider the picture which the Kentucky Synod had

  drawn of the actual state of things among them:--“The mem-

  bers of slave-families separated, never to meet again until the

  final judgment; brothers and sisters, parents and children, hus-

  bands and wives, daily torn asunder, and permitted to see each

  other no more; the shrieks and agonies, proclaiming as with

  trumpet-tongue the iniquity and cruelty of the system; the cries

  of the sufferers going up to the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth;

  not a neighbourhood where those heart-rending scenes are not

  displayed; not a village or road without the sad procession of

  manacled outcasts, whose chains and mournful countenances tell

  they are exiled by force from all that heart holds dear; Christian

  professors rending the mother from her child to sell her into

  returnless exile.”

  This was the language of the Kentucky Synod fourteen years

  before; and those scenes had been going on ever since, and are

  going on now, as the advertisements of every Southern paper

  show; and yet the Church of Christ since 1818 had done

  nothing but express regret and hold grave metaphysical discus-

  sions as to whether slavery was an “evil per se,” and censure the

  rash action of men who, in utter despair of stopping the evil any

  other way, tried to stop it by excluding slaveholders from the

  Church. As if it were not better that one slaveholder in a

  hundred should stay out of the Church, if he be peculiarly circum-

  stanced, than that all this horrible agony and iniquity should

  continually receive the sanction of the Church's example! Should

  not a generous Christian man say, “If Church excision will stop

  this terrible evil, let it come, though it does bear hardly upon

  me! Better that I suffer a little injustice than that this horrible

  injustice be still credited to the account of Christ's Church. Shall

  I embarrass the whole Church with my embarrassments? What

  if I am careful and humane in my treatment of my slaves--what

  if, in my heart, I have repudiated the wicked doctrine that they

  are my property, and am treating them as my brethren--what

  am I then doing? All the credit of my example goes to give

  force to the system. The Church ought to reprove this fearful

  injustice, and reprovers ought to have clean hands; and if I

  cannot really get clear of this, I had better keep out of the

  Church till I can.”

  Let us consider, also, the awful entrenchments and strength

  of the evil against which this very moderate resolution was dis-

  charged. “A money power of two thousand millions of dollars

  held by a small body of able and desperate men; that body

  raised into a political aristocracy by special constitutional pro-

  visions; cotton, the product of slave-labour, forming the basis of

  our whole foreign commerce, and the commercial class thus

  subsidised; the press bought up; the Southern pulpit reduced

  to vassalage; the heart of the common people chilled by a bitter

  prejudice against the black race; and our leading men bribed by

  ambition either to silence or open hostility.”* And now, in

  this condition of things, the whole weight of these Churches goes

  in support of slavery, from the
fact of their containing slave-

  holders. No matter if they did not participate in the abuses of

  the system; nobody wants them to do that. The slave power

  does not wish professors of religion to separate families, or over-

  work their slaves, or do any disreputable thing--that is not their

  part. The slave power wants pious, tender-hearted, generous

  and humane masters, and must have them, to hold up the system

  against the rising moral sense of the world; and the more pious

  and generous the better. Slavery could not stand an hour with-

  out these men. What then? These men uphold the system,

  and that great anti-slavery body of ministers uphold these men.

  That is the final upshot of the matter.

  Paul says that we must remember those that are in bonds, as

  bound with them. Suppose that this General Assembly had

  been made up of men who had been fugitives. Suppose one of

  them had had his daughters sent to the New Orleans slave-

  market, like Emily and Mary Edmondson; that another's daugh-

  ter had died on the overland passage in a slave-coffle, with no

  nurse but a slave-driver, like poor Emily Russell: another's wife

  died broken-hearted when her children were sold out of her bosom;

  and another had a half-crazed mother, whose hair had been turned

  prematurely white with agony. Suppose these scenes of

  agonizing partings, with shrieks and groans, which the Kentucky

  Synod says have been witnessed so long among the slaves, had

  been seen in these ministers' families, and that they had come

  up to this discussion with their hearts as scarred and seared as

  the heart of poor old Paul Edmondson, when he came to New

  York to beg for his daughters. Suppose that they saw that the

  horrid system by which all this had been done was extending

  every hour; that professed Christians in every denomination at

  the South declared it to be an appointed institution of God;

  that all the wealth, and all the rank, and all the fashion in the

  country were committed in its favour; and that they, like

  Aaron, were sent to stand between the living and the dead, that

  the plague might be stayed.

  Most humbly, most earnestly, let it be submitted to the