Admired such wisdom in a Yankee shape,
And showed an Irving as they show an ape.’
[Loud cheers.] And yet, strange to tell, not only of late have we been almost deluged with editions of new and excellent American writers, but the most popular book of the century has appeared on the west side of the Atlantic. Let us hear no more of the poverty of American brains, or the barrenness of American literature. Had it produced only Uncle Tom’s Cabin, it had evaded contempt just as certainly as Don Quixote, had there been no other product of the Spanish mind, would have rendered it forever illustrious. It is the work of a woman, too! None but a woman could have written it. There are in the human mind springs at once delicate and deep, which only the female genius can understand, or the female finger touch. Who but a female could have created the gentle Eva, painted the capricious and selfish Marie St. Clair, or turned loose a Topsy upon the wondering world? [Loud and continued cheering.] And it is to my mind exceedingly delightful, and it must be humiliating to our opponents, to remember that the severest stroke to American slavery has been given by a woman’s hand. [Loud cheers.] It was the smooth stone from the brook which, sent from the hand of a youthful David, overthrew Goliath of Gath; but I am less reminded of this than of another incident in Scripture history. When the robber and oppressor of Israel, Abimelech, who had slain his brethren, was rushing against a tower, whither his enemies had fled, we are told that ‘a certain woman cast a piece of a millstone upon Abimelech’s head, and all to break his skull,’ and that he cried hastily to the young man, his armor-bearer, and said unto him, ‘Draw thy sword, and slay me, that men say not of me, A woman slew him.’ It is a parable of our present position. Mrs. Stowe has thrown a piece of millstone, sharp and strong, at the skull of the giant abomination of her country; he is reeling in his death pangs, and, in the fury of his despair and shame, is crying, but crying in vain, ‘Say not, A woman slew me!’ [Applause.] But the world shall say, ‘A woman slew him,’ or, at least, ‘gave him the first blow, and drove him to despair and suicide.’ [Cheers.] Lastly, it is the work of an evangelical Christian; and the piety of the book has greatly contributed to its power. It has forever wiped away the vile calumny, that all who love their African brother hate their God and Savior. I look, indeed, on Mrs. Stowe’s volume, not only as a noble contribution to the cause of emancipation, but to the general cause of Christianity. It is an olive leaf in a dove’s mouth, testifying that the waters of scepticism, which have rolled more fearfully far in America than here, — and no wonder, if the Christianity of America in general is a slaveholding, man-stealing, soul-murdering Christianity — that they are abating, and that genuine liberty and evangelical religion are soon to clasp hands, and to smile in unison on the ransomed, regenerated, and truly ‘United States.’ [Loud and reiterated applause.]”
Address Of The Students Of Glasgow University — April 25.
This address is particularly gratifying on account of its recognition of the use of intoxicating drinks as an evil analogous to slaveholding, and to be eradicated by similar means. The two reforms are in all respects similar movements, to be promoted in the same manner and with the same spirit.
Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Madam: The Committee of the Glasgow University Abstainers’ Society, representing nearly one hundred students, embrace the opportunity which you have so kindly afforded them, of expressing their high esteem for you, and their appreciation of your noble efforts in behalf of the oppressed. They cordially join in the welcome with which you have been so justly received on these shores, and earnestly hope and pray that your visit may be beneficial to your own health, and tend greatly to the furtherance of Christian philanthropy.
The committee have had their previous convictions confirmed, and their hearts deeply affected, by your vivid and faithful delineations of slavery; and they desire to join with thousands on both sides of the Atlantic, who offer fervent thanksgiving to God for having endowed you with those rare gifts, which have qualified you for producing the noblest testimony against slavery, next to the Bible, which the world has ever received.
While giving all the praise to God, from whom cometh every good and perfect gift, they may be excused for mentioning three characteristics of your writings regarding slavery, which awakened their admiration — a sensibility befitting the anguish of suffering millions; the graphic power which presents to view the complex and hideous system, stripped of all its deceitful disguises; and the moral courage that was required to encounter the monster, and drag it forth to the gaze and the execration of mankind.
The committee feel humbled in being called to confess and deplore, as existing among ourselves, another species of slavery, not less ruinous in its tendency, and not less criminal in the sight of God — we mean the slavery by strong drink. We feel too much ashamed of the sad preëminence which these nations have acquired in regard to this vice to take any offence at the reproaches cast upon us from across the Atlantic. Such smiting shall not break our head. We are anxious to profit by it. Yet when it is used as an argument to justify slavery, or to silence our respectful but earnest remonstrances, we take exception to the parallelism on which these arguments are made to rest. We do not justify our slavery. We do not try to defend it from the Scriptures. We do not make laws to uphold it. The unhappy victims of our slavery have all forged and riveted their own fetters. We implore them to forbear; but, alas! in many cases without success. We invite them to be free, and offer our best assistance to undo their bonds. When a fugitive slave knocks at our door, escaping from a cruel master, we try to accost him in the spirit or in the words of a well-known philanthropist, “Come in, brother, and get warm, and get thy breakfast.” And when distinguished American philanthropists, who have done so much to undo the heavy burdens in their own land, come over to assist us, we hail their advent with rejoicing, and welcome them as benefactors. We are well aware that a corresponding feeling would be manifested in the United States by a portion, doubtless a large portion, of the population; but certainly not by those who justify or palliate their own oppression by a reference to our lamentable intemperance.
We rejoice, madam, to know that as abstainers we can claim an important place, pot only in your sympathies, but in your literary labors. We offer our hearty thanks for the valuable contributions you have already furnished in that momentous cause, and for the efforts of that distinguished family with which you are connected.
We bear our testimony to the mighty impulse imparted to the public mind by the extensive circulation of those memorable sermons which your honored father gave to Europe, as well as to America, more than twenty-five years ago. It will be pleasing to him to know that the force of his arguments is felt in British universities to the present time, and that not only students in augmenting numbers, but learned professors, acknowledge their cogency and yield to their power.
Permit us to add that a movement has already begun, in an influential quarter in England, for the avowed purpose of combining the patriotism and Christianity of these nations in a strenuous agitation for the suppression, by the legislature, of the traffic in alcoholic drinks.
In conclusion, the committee have only further to express their cordial thanks for your kindness in receiving their address, and their desire and prayer that you may be long spared to glorify God, by promoting the highest interests of man; that if it so please him, you may live to see the glorious fruit of your labors here cm earth, and that hereafter you may meet the blessed salutation, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
Norman S. Kerr, Secretary.
Stewart Bates, President.
Glasgow, 25th April, 1853.
Loud Mayor’s Dinner At The Mansion House, London — May 2.
Mr. Justice Talfourd,4 having spoken of the literature of England and America, alluded to two distinguished authors then present. The one was a lady, who had shed a lustre on the literature of America, and whose works were deeply eng
raven on every English heart. He spoke particularly of the consecration of so much genius to so noble a cause — the cause of humanity; and expressed the confident hope that the great American people would see and remedy the wrongs so vividly depicted. The learned judge, having paid an eloquent tribute to the works of Mr. Charles Dickens, concluded by proposing “Mr. Charles Dickens and the literature of the Anglo-Saxons.”
Mr. Charles Dickens returned thanks. In referring to Mrs. H.B. Stowe, he observed that, in returning thanks, he could not forget he was in the presence of a stranger who was the authoress of a noble book, with a noble purpose. But he had no right to call her a stranger, for she would find a welcome in every English home.
Stafford House Reception — May 7.
The Duke Of Sutherland having introduced Mrs. Stowe to the assembly, the following short address was read and presented to her by the Earl Of Shaftesbury: —
“Madam: I am deputed by the Duchess of Sutherland, and the ladies of the two committees appointed to conduct ‘The Address from the Women of England, to the Women of America on the Subject of Slavery,’ to express the high gratification they feel in your presence amongst them this day.
“The address, which has received considerably more than half a million of the signatures of the women of Great Britain and Ireland, they have already transmitted to the United States, consigning it to the care of those whom you have nominated as fit and zealous persons to undertake the charge in your absence.
“The earnest desire of these committees, and, indeed, we may say of the whole kingdom, is to cultivate the most friendly and affectionate relations between the two countries; and we cannot but believe that we are fostering such a feeling when we avow our deep admiration of an American lady who, blessed by the possession of vast genius and intellectual powers, enjoys the still higher blessing, that she devotes them to the glory of God and the temporal and eternal interests of the human race.”
The following is a copy of the address to which Lord Shaftesbury makes reference: —
“The affectionate and Christian Address of many thousands of Women of Great Britain and Ireland to their Sisters, the Women of the United States of America.
“A common origin, a common faith, and, we sincerely believe, a common cause, urge us at the present moment to address you on the subject of that system of negro slavery which still prevails so extensively, and even under kindly-disposed masters, with such frightful results, in many of the vast regions of the western world.
“We will not dwell on the ordinary topics — on the progress of civilization; on the advance of freedom every where; on the rights and requirements of the nineteenth century; but we appeal to you very seriously to reflect, and to ask counsel of God, how far such a state of things is in accordance with his holy word, the inalienable rights of immortal souls, and the pure and merciful spirit of the Christian religion.
“We do not shut our eyes to the difficulties, nay, the dangers, that might beset the immediate abolition of that long-established system; we see and admit the necessity of preparation for so great an event; but in speaking of indispensable preliminaries, we cannot be silent on those laws of your country which, in direct contravention of God’s own law, instituted in the time of man’s innocency, deny, in effect, to the slave the sanctity of marriage, with all its joys, rights, and obligations; which separate, at the will of the master, the wife from the husband, and the children from the parents. Nor can we be silent on that awful system which, either by statute or by custom, interdicts to any race of men, or any portion of the human family, education in the truths of the gospel, and the ordinances of Christianity.
“A remedy applied to these two evils alone would commence the amelioration of their sad condition. We appeal to you, then, as sisters, as wives, and as mothers, to raise your voices to your fellow-citizens, and your prayers to God, for the removal of this affliction from the Christian world. We do not say these things in a spirit of self-complacency, as though our nation were free from the guilt it perceives in others. We acknowledge with grief and shame our heavy share in this great sin. We acknowledge that our forefathers introduced, nay, compelled the adoption of slavery in those mighty colonies. We humbly confess it before Almighty God; and it is because we so deeply feel, and so unfeignedly avow, our own complicity, that we now venture to implore your aid to wipe away our common crime, and our common dishonor.”
Congregational Union — May 13.
The Rev. John Angell James said, “I will only for one moment revert to the resolution.5 It does equal honor to the head, and the heart, and the pen of the man who drew it. Beautiful in language, Christian in spirit, noble and generous in design, it is just such a resolution as I shall be glad to see emanate from the Congregational body, and find its way across the Atlantic to America. Sir, we speak most powerfully, when, though we speak firmly, we speak in kindness; and there is nothing in that resolution that can, by possibility, offend the most fastidious taste of any individual present, or any individual in the world, who takes the same views of the evil of slavery, in itself, as we do. [Hear, hear!] I shall not trespass long upon the attention of this audience, for we are all impatient to hear Professor Stowe speak in his own name, and in the name of that distinguished lady whom it is his honor and his happiness to call his wife. [Loud cheers.] His station and his acquirements, his usefulness in America, his connection with our body, his representation of the Pilgrim Fathers who bore the light of Christianity to his own country, all make him welcome here. [Cheers.] But he will not be surprised if it is not on his own account merely that we give him welcome, but also on account of that distinguished woman to whom so marked an allusion has already been made. To her, I am sure, we shall tender no praise, except the praise that comes to her from a higher source than ours; from One who has, by the testimony of her own conscience, echoing the voice from above, said to her, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’ Long, sir, may it be before the completion of the sentence; before the welcome shall be given to her, when she shall hear him say, ‘Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.’ [Loud cheers.] But, though we praise her not, or praise with chastened language, we would say, Madam, we do thank you from the bottom of our hearts, [Hear, hear! and immense cheering,] for rising up to vindicate our outraged humanity; for rising up to expound the principles of our still nobler Christianity. For my own part, it is not merely as an exposition of the evils of slavery that makes me hail that wondrous volume to our country and to the world; but it is the living exposition of the principles of the gospel that it contains, and which will expound those principles to many an individual who would not hear them from our lips, nor read them from our pens. I maintain, that Uncle Tom is one of the most beautiful imbodiments of the Christian religion that was ever presented in this world. [Loud cheers.] And it is that which makes me take such delight in it. I rejoice that she killed him. [Laughter and cheers.] He must die under the slave lash — he must die, the martyr of slavery, and receive the crown of martyrdom from both worlds for his testimony to the truth. [Turning to Mrs. Stowe, Mr. James continued:] May the Lord God reward you for what you have done; we cannot, madam — we cannot do it. [Cheers.] We rejoice in the perfect assurance, in the full confidence, that the arrow which is to pierce the system of slavery to the heart has been shot, and shot by a female hand. Right home to the mark it will go. [Cheers.] It is true, the monster may groan and struggle for a long while yet; but die it will; die it must — under the potency of that book. [Loud cheers.] It never can recover. It will be your satisfaction, perhaps, in this world, madam, to see the reward of your labors. Heaven grant that your life may be prolonged, until such time as you see the reward of your labors in the striking off of the last fetter of the last slave that still pollutes the soil of your beloved country. [Cheers.] For beloved it is; and I should do dishonor to your patriotism if I did not say it — beloved it is; and you are prepared to echo the sentiments, by changing the terms, which we often hear in old England, and say, —
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 732
