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NY PUBLIC LIBRARY THE BRANCH LIBRARIES
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UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. Library Edition. Fully Illustrated by E. W. KEMBLE.
THE SAME. Popular Edition. With Introduction, and Portrait
of " Uncle Tom."
THE SAME. In Riverside Literature Series, No. 88. THE SAME. In the Riverside School Library. UNCLE TOM'S CABIN, AND THE KEY (Two vols.)
DRED, AND OTHER ANTI-SLAVERY TALES AND PAPERS. (Two vols.)
THE MINISTER'S WOOING. THE PEARL OF ORR'S ISLAND. AGNES OF SORRENTO. HOUSEHOLD PAPERS AND STORIES. MY WIFE AND I.
OLD TOWN FOLKS, AND SAM LAWSON'S FIRESIDE STORiES. (Two vols.)
POGANUC PEOPLE, AND PINK AND WHITE TYRANNY. WE AND OUR NEIGHBORS. STORIES. SKETCHES, AND STUDIES. RELIGIOUS STUDIES, SKETCHES, AND POEMS. STORIES AND SKETCHES FOR THE YOUNG.
The above 16 vols. make up the new Riverside Edition. Printed from new plates. Thoroughly edited and rearranged. With a Biographical Sketch, and Notes. With Portraits, Views of Mrs. Stowe's Homes, and Other Illustrations on en- graved Title-pages.
A DOG'S MISSION. ETC. Illustrated. QUEER LITTLE PEOPLE. Illustrated. LITTLE PUSSY WILLOW. Illustrated.
DIALOGUES AND SCENES FROM MRS. STOWE'S WRIT- INGS. In Riverside Literature Series, Extra No. E.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON AND NEW YORK
THE CAUIN
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UNCLE TOM'S CABIN
Or, Life Among the Lowly
BY HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR
A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH: A BIBLIOGRAPHY
FIVE FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS BY E. W. KEMBLE
AND MANY CUTS IN THE TEXT
.
''""• • •
. . .
HGVJ G-HTON Mtf'FLl'N COMPANY
BOSTON i&NP JNEW YORK : : THE RIVERSiDE'^R-ESS CAMBRIDGE
COPYRIGHT, 1851, 1878, AND 1879, BY HARRIET BEECHER STOVVE
COPYRIGHT, 1895 AND 1896, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
THE NEW YORK
PUBLIC LIBRARY
ASTOR, LtMOX TILD£N
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH - ix
AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION xxxi
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNT Ixiii
PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION Ixxxiii
I. IN WHICH THE READER is INTRODUCED TO A MAN or
HUMANITY 1
II. THE MOTHER 13
III. THE HUSBAND AND FATHER 17
IV. AN EVENING IN UNCLE TOM'S CABIN 24
V. SHOWING THE FEELINGS OF LIVING PROPERTY ON CHANG- ING OWNERS 38
VI. DISCOVERY 49
VII. THE MOTHER'S STRUGGLE 61
VIII. ELIZA'S ESCAPE 77
IX. IN WHICH IT APPEARS THAT A SENATOR IS BUT A MAN 94
X. THE PROPERTY is CARRIED OFF 113
XL IN WHICH PROPERTY GETS INTO AN IMPROPER STATE OF
MIND 124
XII. SELECT INCIDENT OF LAWFUL TRADE 139
XIII. THE QUAKER SETTLEMENT 158
XIV. EvANGEt/NE. .'.-..:.....--->.., ,.,\.r.*.. 168
, ', • ' > >
XV. OF TOM'S NEW MASTER, AND VARIOUS OTHER MATTERS 180
XVI. TOM'S MiSTResft A'5i> unii OPINIONS 198
XVII. THE FREEMAN'JS DEFENCE..'. 218
XVIII. MlSS OPHELJA'a-'Ex^Btl^CFlS AND OPINIONS 237
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
XIX. Miss OPHELIA'S EXPERIENCES AND OPINIONS, CON- TINUED 256
XX. TOPSY 278
XXI. KENTUCK 295
XXII. "THE GRASS WITHERETH — THE FLOWER FADETH " 300
XXIII. HENRIQUE 309
XXIV. FORESHADOWINGS 319
XXV. THE LITTLE EVANGELIST 327
XXVI. DEATH 334
XXVII. "THIS IS THE LAST OF EARTH" 349
XXVIII. REUNION 358
XXIX. THE UNPROTECTED 374
XXX. THE SLAVE WAREHOUSE 382
XXXI. THE MIDDLE PASSAGE 396
XXXII. DARK PLACES 404
XXXIII. GASSY 416
XXXIV. THE QUADROON'S STORY 424
XXXV. THE TOKENS 438
XXXVI. EMMELINE AND GASSY 445
XXXVII. LIBERTY 453
XXXVIII. THE VICTORY 461
XXXIX. THE STRATAGEM 472
XL. THE MARTYR 485
XLI. THE YOUNG MASTER 493
XLII. AN AUTHENTIC GHOST STORY 501
XLIII. RESULTS 508
XLIV. THE LIBERATOR 516
XLV. CONCLUDING liiiiiAUKa „«.„.„. 6iiO
HAEEIET BEECHER STOWE BIOGEAPHICAL SKETCH
HARRIET ELIZABETH, seventh child of Lyman and Roxana Foote Beecher, was born at Litchfield, Connecticut- June 14, 1811. Her father was a Congregational ministeJ at that time settled in Litchfield, which enjoyed the reputa tion of being one of the most intellectual communities in New England. Her mother died when the child was but four years old, but in that time had made so distinct ar impression upon her that years afterward she could writu her recollections of her and trace the influence of her stron"
o
nature. Harriet divided her childhood between Litchfield and Nut Plains, near Guilford, Connecticut, where an aunt lived ; and it gives some intimation of the strong intellectual surroundings in which she lived, that she committed to memory an extraordinary number of hymns, poems, and pieces of prose, enough to last a life-time, as her frequent recourse to these stores afterward shows, that her favorite reading was Cotton Mather's Magnolia Chrlsti and The Arabian Nights, and that when she was twelve years old she Avrote a serious composition, which has been printed with the title Can the Immortality of the Soul be proved by. the Light <if -Nature ? \ . *-,
Although uhe <gavo these tsigns o2 ;}?ecocity, there was no reaction as sometioieSf h.ijtpeus^and she developed rapidly during the next i few years, which she spent in Hartford under the immpdi&be^eharg'o of her sister Catherine, ten or eleven years hex senior r.nd the oldest of Lyman Beecher's
X HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
children. " In school," she once wrote of this period, "my two most intimate friends were the leading scholars. They had written to me before I came and I had answered their letters, and on my arrival they gave me the warmest wel- come. One was Catherine Ledyard Cogswell, daughter of the leading and best beloved of Hartford physicians ; the other was Georgiana May, daughter of a most lovely Chris- tian woman who was a widow. . . . Catherine and Georgiana were reading Virgil when I came to school. I began the study of Latin alone, and at the end of the first year made a translation of Ovid in verse, which was read at the final exhibition of the school, and regarded, I believe, as a very creditable performance. I was very much interested in poetry, and it was my dream to be a poet. I began a drama called Cleon. The scene was laid in the court and time of the emperor Nero, and Cleon was a Greek lord residing at Nero's court, who, after much searching and doubting, at last comes to the knowledge of Christianity. I filled blank book after blank book with this drama. It filled my thoughts sleeping and waking. One day sister Catherine pounced down upon me, and said that I must not waste my time writing poetry, but discipline my mind by the study of Butler's Analogy. So after this I wrote out abstracts from the Analogy, and instructed a class of girls as old as myself, being compelled to master each chapter just ahead of the class I was teaching. About this time I read Baxter's Saint's Rest. I do not think any book affected me more powerfully. As I walked the pavements I used to wish that they might sink beneath me if only I might find my- self in heaven." • ; ; . ;
This ardent, imaginative nature -xmld. 'n-qti ;fail to be af- fected by the strong religious opinions .which prevailed in the circle in which she lived, iicr faiker, though much occupied with a system, of . .theology. 'ipjiich he held as a physician of souls for thei.cu,^ of £r>;rit\i;4 ailments, was also
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xi
an impassioned, poetic man ; and when Harriet was fourteen years old and at home on a visit, he preached a sermon on Christ and his love for the human soul, which enraptured the child, and for the time overbore her innocent misgivings at having no conscious conviction of sin, — that indispensa- ble condition precedent to conversion in the theological sys- tem under which she was trained.
" I longed to cry out ' I will,' " she writes, " when father made his passionate appeal, ' Come, then, and trust your soul to this faithful friend.' Like a flash it came over me that if I needed conviction of sin, He was able to give me even this also. I would trust Him for the whole. My whole soul was illumined with joy, and as I left the church to walk home, it seemed to me as if Nature herself were hushing her breath to hear the music of heaven. As soon as father came home and was seated in his study, I went up to him and fell in his arms saying, ' Father, I have given myself to Jesus, and He has taken me.' I never shall forget the expression of his face as he looked down into my earnest, childish eyes ; it was so sweet, so gentle, and like sunlight breaking out upon a landscape. ' Is it so ? ' he said, holding me silently to his heart, as I felt the hot tears fall on my head. ' Then has a new flower blos- somed in the kingdom this day.' :
The society in which Harriet Beecher moved in her girl- hood was one in which the supremacy of the religious nature was recognized implicitly, but the concentration of attention upon the emotional side led to an introspection and analysis of motive which often passed into morbid self- consciousness. There were not many outlets for pietistic expression, and the young girl was thrown in upon self- communing which sometimes took the form of self-torture. Her letters at this time intimate the struggle which was going on as she strove after an intellectual sanction for a warm emotional attitude, and sought to make a system of
Ill HARKIET BEECHER STOWE
theology for herself out of the current materials, which should not do violence to her instinctive belief in the su- premacy of love. It was not altogether an aid to her that her occupation was mainly that of a student or pupil-teacher, for this brought into constant activity her intellectual fac- ulties, and gave little chance for that wholesome social absorption which is the safeguard of so many growing girls. Nevertheless, her companionship with her father and with her brother Edward, who had a strong theological temper, was an important factor in her development ; for both of these men were not dispassionate scientific theologians, but looked steadfastly toward result in conduct and loyalty to the highest ideals. The important point to be noted, in this stormy experience of Harriet Beecher, is that her nature, always liable to gusts of feeling, was made steadfast in its devotion to lofty conceptions of divine charity. She was to know great currents of feeling in after life, when except for some powerful principle controlling her she would be in danger of being swept off her feet ; that principle was now, in her passage from girlhood to womanhood, taking definite form and asserting itself as a ruling force. That it was or- dering her life and transforming it from a too self-centred character is well illustrated by a letter written to her friend Georgiana May, in 1832 : —
" As this inner world of mine has become worn out and untenable, I have at last concluded to come out of it and
live in the external one, and as F S once advised
me, to give up the pernicious habit of meditation to the first Methodist minister that would take it, and try to mix in society somewhat as another person would. ... I am trying to cultivate a general spirit of kindliness toward everybody. Instead of shrinking into a corner to notice how other people behave, I am holding out my hand to the right and to the left, and forming casual or incidental acquaintances with all who will be acquainted with me. In this way I find society
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xiii
full of interest and pleasure — a pleasure which pleaseth me more because it is not old and worn out. . . . This kind of pleasure in acquaintanceship is new to me. I never tried it before. When I used to meet persons, the first enquiry was, l Have they such and such a character, or have they anything that might possibly be of use or harm to me ? ' . . . The greater part that I see cannot move me deeply. They are present, and I enjoy them ; they pass, and I forget them. But those that I love differently ; those that I love ; and oh, how much that word means ! I feel sadly about them. They may change; they must die; they are separated from me ; and I ask myself why should I wish to love with all the pains and penalties of such conditions ? I check myself when expressing feelings like this, so much has been said of it by the sentimental, who talk what they could not have felt. But it is so deeply, sincerely so in me, that sometimes it will overflow. Well, there is a heaven, — a heaven, — a world of love, and love after all is the life-blood, the existence, the all in all of mind."
In any sketch of Mrs. Stowe, however brief, it is needful to take account of this spiritual experience, for in the character thus forming lies the explanation of the force which impelled her throughout her entire career, and with this key one is able to unlock her mind as it busied itself in varied pursuits.
Dr. Lymnn Beecher removed from Litchfield to Boston in 1826, and for six years was pastor of a church there. He had married again, and a younger group of children was growing up. Harriet divided her time between her father's house and her sister Catherine's school, sometimes paying visits to her maternal grandmother. In 1832 a moro important change came. Dr. Beecher was invited to the presidency of Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, and on moving to that place, then the most important Western community, he was accompanied by Catherine Beecher, who
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
was eager to establish there what would stand for a college for women, and with Catherine went Harriet to be her principal assistant. The family began their life in Cincin- nati under many discomforts, and Harriet suffered much from ill health. But she not only aided her sister in the ambitious school they had set up, but made her first venture in writing with a school geography which was published in Cincinnati in 1833. In the winter of 1833-34 she spurred herself to further effort, and competed for a prize of fifty dollars offered by Mr. James Hall, editor of a newly estab- lished magazine, the Western Month/)/, and won it with her story Uncle Lot, to be found in the eleventh volume of this edition. She joined a literary society, and contributed papers to be read at its meetings ; but though she kept up a lively correspondence with her former school friends, she does not seem at first to have given herself much concern about writ- ing for publication. Her interest was in the plans her sister and she were forming for an elaborate system of schools in Cincinnati.
The society in which the Beechers moved was naturally affected largely by the seminary which had been established, and an intimacy existed between the several members which resulted, after the death of Eliza Tyler, the wife of one of the professors, Calvin E. Stowe, in the marriage of Harriet Beecher to the childless widower, January 6, 1836. There are one or two passages in letters written at this time which give one the impression that however deeply stirred this girl of twenty-five may have been over this change in her life, there was such a continuity in circumstance and occu- pation that she was quickly adjusted to her new relations.
"Well, my dear G.," she writes to her schoolmate Georgiana May, " about half an hour more and your old friend, companion, schoolmate, sister, etc., will cease to be Hatty Beecher and change to nobody knows who. My dear, you are engaged and pledged in a year or two to
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xt
encounter a similar fate, and do you wish to knew how you shall feel ? Well, my dear, I have been dreading and dreading the time, and lying awake all last week wondering how I should live through this overwhelming crisis, and lo ! it has come and I feel nothing at all.
" The wedding is to be altogether domestic ; nobody present but my own brothers and sisters, and my old col- league, Mary Dutton ; and as there is a sufficiency of minis- try in our family, we have not even to call in the foreign aid of a minister. Sister Katy is not here, so she will not witness my departure from her care and guidance to that of another. None of my numerous friends and acquaintance? who have taken such a deep interest in making the connec- tion for me even know the day, and it will be all done and over before they know anything about it. Well, it is really Q, mercy to have this entire stupidity come over one at such a time. I should be crazy to feel as I did yesterday, or indeed to feel anything at all. . . .
" Three weeks have passed since writing the above, and my husband and self are now quietly seated by our own fireside, as domestic as any pair of tame fowl you ever saw j he writing to his mother and I to you. . . . And now, my dear, perhaps the wonder to you, as to me, is how this mo- mentous crisis in the life of such a wisp of nerve as myself has been transacted so quietly. My dear, it is a wonder io myself. I am tranquil, quiet, and happy. I look only on the present, and leave the future with Him who has hith- erto been so kind to me. ' Take no thought for the mor- row ' is my motto, and my comfort is to rest on Him in whose house there are many mansions provided when these fleeting earthly ones pass away.
" Dear Georgy, naughty girl that I am, it is a month that I have let the above lie by, because I got into a strain of emotion in it that I dreaded to return to. Well, so it shall be no longer. In about five weeks Mr. Stowe and
XVI HARRIET BEECH ER STOWE
myself start for New England. He sails the first of May, I am going with him to Boston, New York, and other places, and shall stop finally at Hartford, whence, as soon as he is gone, it is my intention to return westward."
One may read between the lines of this letter the fluctua- tions of feeling and the restlessness of an eager nature, affec- tionate, demonstrative, swayed by impulse, and yet losing itself in large, reverential emotion. A period of hardship and strenuous labor under narrow circumstance was before her, and for the next thirteen years she was to have that discipline through sickness ard struggle with adversity, which confirmed her power of sympathy and expression at the same time that it strengthened the tendencies to retreat within herself and carry on an active commerce with her own thought, apparently unobservant of what was going on about her.
The journey to Europe which Mr. Stowe took at this time was in the interest of Lane Seminary and also of the public school system of Cincinnati. He was absent a little over seven months, and Mrs. Stowe lived meanwhile in her father's family. She continued the habit of writing she had early formed, and besides a daily journal letter to her hus- band, contributed stories and essays for journals in Cincin- nati and New York. The journal letter gives an animated picture of the life which the family led at this time. The situation of Cincinnati, a rapidly growing commercial cen- tre separated by a river only from a slave-holding commu- nity, made it inevitable that the question of slavery should be raised in a training-school for ministers such as Lane Seminary, and the period was one when the agitation of abolition views was increasing and taking the shape of or- ganization. The anti-slavery paper The PJManthropist, established in Cincinnati by J. G. Birney and Dr. Gamaliel Bailey, was suppressed and the office mobbed, and Mrs. Stowe found herself in the midst of the excitement caused by this
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Xvil
and like events. Her brother Henry Ward Beecher was editing a small daily paper which stoutly defended Birney, and Mrs. Stowe aided him in his work. Lane Seminary was threatened by the mob, and in such scenes was Mrs. Stowe's married life begun. Her instincts and her principles were strongly anti-slavery, though she does not appear at this time to have allied herself with the abolitionists.
A few weeks before the return of Mr. Stowe from Europe, Mrs. Stowe gave birth to twin daughters, and early in 1838 her eldest son was born ; and before she was thirty-seven she had a little family of six children. It was to this fam- ily that she gave her heart and soul during the years of privation and sickness which she endured. Mr. Stowe also suffered from ill health, and the father and mother alter- nately sought recovery in absence from home, resting or at water-cures. The letters which Mrs. Stowe wrote during this period bear witness to the struggles which she made foi the proper support and training of her children. She wrott continually in the midst of distracting duties, and her hus- band urged her on, not merely on this account, but because he had great faith in her ability. " God has written it in his book," he said in one of his letters, " that you must be a literary woman, and who are we that we should contend against God ? You must therefore make all your calcula- tions to spend the rest of your life with your pen." The Mayflower, published in 1843, was the first collection of her purely literary efforts, but it was merely a convenient preservation of her fugitive work, and she kept on with the same kind of writing.
There were in the collection a few sketches which bore on slavery, but if one were to judge, from this book, of Mrs. Stowe's philanthropic impulses, it would be more to the point to say that she used her pen at this time against the evils rather of intemperance than of slavery. Nevertheless, the contact with slavery during the eighteen years she spent
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
in Ohio, a time when the stress and strain of life kept her mind alert, and a period too of the rising tide of moral opposition, could not fail to make a strong impression upon her nature. As an illustration of the undercurrent which was running through her mind, we may take the account given by Miss Dutton of a visit they made together to a Kentucky estate, shortly after the Beechers came to Cin- cinnati. " Harriet," she says, " did not seem to notice any- thing in particular that happened, but sat much of the time as though abstracted in thought. When the negroes did funny things and cut up capers, she did not seem to pay the slightest attention to them. Afterward, however, in read- ing Uncle Tom, I recognized scene after scene of that visit portrayed Math the most minute fidelity, and knew at once where the material for that portion of the story (the Shelby plantation) had been gathered."
It is most to the point that Mrs. Stowe lived in a family circle which was keenly alive to what was going on about them. Her father and her most intimate friends were zealous advocates of liberty, and from childhood she had lived in an atmosphere of earnest thought about the condition of public affairs. " I was a child in 1820," she once wrote, " when the Missouri question was agitated ; and one of the strongest and deepest impressions on my mind was that made by my father's sermons and prayers, and the anguish of his soul for the poor slave at that time. I remember his preaching draw- ing tears down the hardest faces of the old farmers in his congregation. I well remember his prayers morning and evening in the family for ' poor, oppressed, bleeding Africa,' that the time of her deliverance might come ; prayers offered with strong crying and tears, and which indelibly impressed my heart, and made me Avhat I am from my very soul, the enemy of all slavery. Every brother I have has been in his sphere a leading anti-slavery man. As for myself and hus- band, we have for the last seventeen years lived on the
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
border of a slave State, and we have never shrunk from the fugitives, and we have helped them with all we had to give. I have received the children of liberated slaves into a family school, and taught them with my own children, and it has Leeu the influence that we found in the church and by the altar that has made us do all this."
In this last sentence may be read the most constant and moving power in Mrs. Stowe's life, for she was a deeply religious woman, and was stirred by a pity which constantly- carried her in thought to Jesus Christ.
Her experience, as hinted at in the passage just quoted, brought her into close contact with victims of the slave system. Two or three instances of many may be cited for their particular bearing on her later work. As she men- tions, she took into her family, to be educated with her chil- dren, some who were the children of liberated slaves. One day, the mother of one of these, a particularly interesting child, rushed in in great alarm with the news that the ex- ecutor of a Kentucky estate to which she had belonged be fore she was freed had seized upon the child, as one of the assets of the estate, and had carried it off to be sold. The money for the ransom of the child was raised by subscription among the neighbors ; but the incident left a deep mark in Mrs. Stowe's mind. Her father's house was more than once the refuge of fugitive slaves. She received into her family as a servant a colored girl from Kentucky. By the laws of Ohio she was free, since she had been brought into the State by her mistress, and left there ; but Mr. Stowe learned that her former master was laying plans to kidnap her, and was likely to succeed by the aid of unscrupulous officers, and in the dead of night he and Henry Ward Beecher drove her in a covered wagon twelve miles into the country to the house of a friendly farmer. This farmer was Mr. Van Zandt, a Kentuckian, who had set free his own slaves, and estab- lished himself in Ohio. Mrs. Stowe herself, to quote from
XX HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
her Introduction, "had been called to write the letters for a former slave woman, servant in her own family, to a slave husband in Kentucky, who, trusted with unlimited liberty, free to come and go on business between Kentucky and Ohio, still refused to break his pledge of honor to his mas- ter, though that master from year to year deferred the keeping of his promise of freedom to the slave. It was the simple honor and loyalty of this Christian black man who remained in slavery rather than violate a trust, that first impressed her with the possibility of such a character as, years after, was delineated in Uncle Tom."
In the early summer of 1849 there was an epidemic of cholera in Cincinnati. Both Mr. Stowe and Dr. Beecher were absent, the former at the water-cure in Brattleboro, Vermont, and Mrs. Stowe saw the scourge fall upon her youngest born. The. death of this child came at the end of the years of trial in the West. Mr. Stowe had been driven to the conclusion that his own health and that of his family suffered from the conditions they had been under, and he accepted an invitation to the Collins Professorship of Natural and Eevealed Keligion at Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine. He could not leave Lane Seminary until his successor had been found, so Mrs. Stowe with three of the children went East in April to make ready the Brunswick home against occupation by the whole family in the fall. It was a trying experience for her, traveling with young children, getting established in a new place, and forced at every step to count the cost in the most rigid spirit of economy, and in the midst of the season came the birth of her youngest child. She wrote to a sister at the end of the year: "From the time that I left Cincinnati with my chil- dren to come forth to a country that I knew not of almost to the present time, it has seemed as if I could scarcely breathe. I was so pressed with care. My head dizzy with the whir] of railroads and steamboats, then ten days' sojourn in Boston,
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
and a constant toil and hurry in buying my furniture and equipments, and then landing in Brunswick in the midst of a drizzly inexorable northeast storm, and beginning the work of getting in order a deserted, dreary, damp old house. . . . Then came on Mr. Stowe ; and then came the eighth of July and my little Charley. I was really glad for an excuse to lie in bed, for I was full tired, I can assure you. . . . During this time I have employed my leisure hours in making up engagements with newspaper editors. I have written more than anybody or I myself would have thought. I have taught an hour a day in our school, and I have read two hours every evening to the children."
It was in the midst of this incessant activity, and when turning to literature not only for the additions it brought to a meagre income, but because it was a natural outlet for a busy mind, that there came the great occasion when Uncle Tom's Cabin found its genesis and execution. The story of its production is so fully told by Mrs. Stowe herself that it is needless to repeat here the details, yet it should be noted that there was a concentration of influences at this time leading to her resolution to do something, however slight, toward awakening the public conscience. It may reason- ably be said that her very removal from Cincinnati had an important effect. In the quiet country town of Brunswick, remote from the centre of agitation, she was not brought into direct contact with the painful scenes which were enacting upon the border line of slave territory through the operation of the Fugitive Slave Act. All the more did memory and imagination have full play. The letters which she received from Boston and Cincinnati, and her own vivid recollection of the scenes she had witnessed, were fuel upon the flame which her moral indignation had kindled. She did not need the appeal of others, but such an appeal came in a let- ter from a sister-in-law. "If I could use a pen as you can,"
XXli HARRIET BELCHER STOWE
she wrote, " I would write something that would make this whole nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is.'''
" A member of Mrs. Stowe's family well remembers the scene in the little parlor in Brunswick when the, letter alluded to was received. Mrs. Stowe herself read it aloud to the assembled family ; and when she came to the passage, 'I would write something that would make this whole na- tion feel what an accursed thing slavery is,' Mrs. Stowe rose from her chair, crushing the letter in her hand, and with an expression on her face that stamped itself on the mind of her child, said : ' I will write something. I will if I live.' "
Yet fixed as this determination was, it might almost be said that she was but the instrument by which this book came to be written ; that it owed its origin not so much to her resolution as to a flood of conviction and feeling which swept her along to the conclusion, and that in the writing her whole religious nature found impassioned expression. The consecration of her life entered into it, and the book be- came in her purpose a Thus saith the Lord.
The publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin changed the cur- rent of Mrs. Stowe's life by giving her at once the position of a great public character. With her warm heart and her impassioned nature she threw herself into the cause she had espoused. She carried on an enormous correspondence with friends in America and abroad, she raised money for the emancipation of slaves, and she received numberless appeals from the unfortunate and oppressed of every kind. Her life of poverty was over, but her labor was increased, and she gave herself freely and without counting the cost. One story of her personal interest may be read partially in the chapter of the Key which relates to the Edmondson family. Uncle Tom's Cabin was published March 20, 1852, and Mrs. Stowe spent the weeks that followed with her brother Henry in Brooklyn. During her absence Professor Stowe
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xxiii
received and accepted a call to the chair of Sacred Literature in the Theological Seminary at Andover, Massachusetts, and the summer was largely occupied by Mrs. ,Stowe in making ready their new home there. She took possession of an old stone building which had served successively as a work- shop and a gymnasium and transformed it into a dwelling which was popularly known as The Cabin, and so long as the Stowes remained in Andover was the centre of a busy, cheerful life. There was indeed at this time an expansion of outward circumstance which had a marked effect on Mrs. Stowe's temperament. The immediate large increase of in- come, the change to a genial neighborhood, the outlook upon a useful future, brought a sense of tranquillity and hope.
" It seems almost too good to be true," Mrs. Stowe wrote from Andover to her husband, " that we are going to have such a house in such a beautiful place, and to live here among all these agreeable people, where everybody seems to love you so much and to think so much of you. I am al- most afraid to accept it, and should not, did I not see the Hand that gives it all and know that it is both firm and true. He knows if it is best for us, and His blessing addeth no sorrow therewith. I cannot describe to you the constant undercurrent of love and joy and peace ever flowing through my soul. I am so happy — so blessed ! "
If she had consulted her own pleasure only, Mrs. Stowe would have occupied herself the coming winter with writ- ing fiction, for she had already planned a story of New Eng- land life ; but the stir which Uncle Tom's Cabin produced made this impossible. She was challenged from every quarter to prove the truth of the book whose force had be- come so overpowering because it was true, and she plunged into the labor involved in the writing of A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin.
" I am now writing a work," she says in a letter to Mrs,
XXIV HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
Follen, dated February 16, 1853, " which will contain, per- haps, an equal amount of matter with Uncle Tom's Cabin. It will contain all the facts and documents on which that story was founded, and an immense body of facts, reports of trials, legal documents, and testimony of people now living South, which will more than confirm every state- ment in Uncle Tom's Cabin. I must confess that till I began the examination of facts in order to write this book, much as I thought I knew before, I had not begun to meas- ure the depth of the abyss. The law records of courts and judicial proceedings are so incredible as to fill me with amazement whenever I think of them. It seems to me that the book cannot but be felt, and, coming upon the sensibility awaked by the other, do something."
When the spring came Mrs. Stowe was sick and ex- hausted with her labor, and she and her husband gladly accepted an invitation from the friends of emancipation in England to cross the water and visit the old country. W>th them went the Kev. Charles Beecher, Mrs. Stowe's brother; and the record of the journey is contained in *jhe two volumes of Sunny Memories prepared by the Bister and brother. The journey was like a royal progress, <so interested were all, high and low, to see the author of the most popular book of the day, and the representative of a great moral cause. Professor Stowe was obliged to return to his duties in Andover in May, and Mrs. Stowe and Mr. Beecher, after a brief tour on the continent, made another rou'id of visits in England, and were in Andover once more in ^ptember.
The European experience not only heightened Mrs. Stowe's fame, it added to her voluminous correspondence; and in the years which intervened before the war, espe- cially before the organization of the Republican party in 1856, she conducted a vigorous campaign, writing letters and articles, and giving aid by money and counsel in the
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH XXV
creation of an anti-slavery sentiment. Especially did she ict as spokeswoman in appealing both to her own coun- trywomen and to the women of England. But she did not neglect her most powerful weapon. A volume of new facts regarding slavery had been accumulating, and in 1855 and during the spring of 1856 she was engaged upon the con- struction of Dred, which she designed as a complement to Uncle Tom's Cabin, throwing the weight of her argument upon the deterioration of a society resting on a slave basis.
The completion of Dred left Mrs. Stowe in great need of rest and change, and in the early summer of 1856 she went again to Europe, accompanied by her husband, her two eldest daughters, her son Henry, and her sister Mary, Mrs. Thomas Perkins of Hartford. A special purpose of the journey was to secure a copyright for an English edi- tion of Dred. Mr. Stowe returned to Andover in Septem- ber, and the rest of the party, after visiting the Duke of Argyll in the Highlands, traveled slowly southward, crossed the channel, and leaving Henry Stowe to return to his col- lege work at Dartmouth, settled for a while in Paris. There the daughters were left to study, and Mrs. Stowe and Mrs. Perkins went to Italy, where they passed the remain- der of the winter. After a spring in England, Mrs. Stowe returned home, reaching Andover in June, 1857.
The prospect of a happy future was shattered at once on her return by the sudden death by drowning of Henry Stowe, and the summer was spent at Andover with a week or two at Brunswick in slow recovery from the shock which this terrible ill had brought. The experience was to color some of her after writing, and found at this time a reflection in the allegory of The Mourning Veil, which she contributed to the first number of The Atlantic Monthly. The establishment of that magazine brought with it an urgent request to Mrs. Stowe to contribute to its pages. Mr. Lowell, its first editor, had a strong respect
XXVI HAREIET BEECHER STOWE
for her dramatic faculty, and he took a very lively interest in the serial story The Minister's Wooing, which began with the number for December, 1858, and was published as a book a year later, after its completion in the magazine.
A third visit to Europe was undertaken in the summer of 1859. As before, the completion of a new book was the occasion of the journey, since at that time the only security for the English publisher lay in the author's being on Eng- lish soil when her book was actually published. Mrs. Stowe was moved also by considerations of her own health and that of her family, and by a desire to avail herself of fresh Euro- pean experience for further writing. The youngest child remained in America, but all the rest of the family accom- panied her, though Professor Stowe returned to Andover when his academic duties recalled him in the fall. Mrs. Stowe herself did not return until the end of Jime, 1860. She had passed the winter in Italy, and out of her life there grew Agnes of Sorrento, which appeared first serially, and afterward as a book, in 1863. This story, however, was in a way preceded by The Pearl of Orr's Island, pro- jected long before, though written as a serial after Agnes of Sorrento had been begun. These two novels practically closed Mrs. Stowe's career as a purely artistic creator of fiction ou a broad scale. She was to write much fiction ^fter this, and some of it was her most characteristic work, but for the next few years other interests in literature commanded her attention, growing in part out of certain changes in her outward circumstances.
In the year 1863 Professor Stowe retired from his pro- fessorship at Andover, and it was decided to make the family home in Hartford, so identified in Mrs. Stowe's mind with her girlhood and her companions of that time, and where two of her own sisters were now living. A house was built in the suburbs of the city, and life was taken up under conditions less academic and more civilian.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xxvii
It was partly on this account, no doubt, that Mrs. Stowe's mind was turned toward subjects of social morality ; and within the next few years she wrote freely upon topics which lend themselves less to the novel than to what may be called fictitious essays, and there followed that series of books, published first in The Atlantic, which, beginning with House and Home Papers, ended with The Chimney Corner. She contributed also to magazines for young people ; but her most notable essay in pure story-telling was in the publication, in 1869, of Oldtown Folks, and, two years later, of Oldtoivn Fireside Stories, two books instinct with rural New England spirit, and embodying, moreover, the racy memories of his youth which Professor Stowe enjoyed. These two books were separated by one in a wholly different field, Lady Byron Vindicated, which grew out of an Atlantic article which she had written in fulfill- ment of an obligation which she felt she owed to a valued friend, and, as she deemed, a misunderstood and traduced woman.
Mrs. Stowe's son, Frederick William, had entered the army in the war for the Union, and had been promoted for bravery to the rank of captain ; but he received serious wounds, which so impaired his health that his mother took the step not long after the close of the war of buying an estate in Florida, hoping that he might there recover his shattered health. The plantation at Mandarin became the winter home of the family for many years, and Mrs. Stowe, with her unfailing interest in the life about her, set about various schemes for Christianizing her neighborhood. She had herself some time before transferred her connection from the Congregational to the Episcopal communion, and she was very eager to extend church privileges in the locality. The Floridian experience found expression in a series of letters afterward published as Palmetto Leaves.
Meanwhile the establishment of a weekly paper, The
xxvili HAKRIET BEECHER STOWE
Christian Union, in which her brother Henry was largely interested, led to her resuming serial writing, and she pub- lished successively My Wife and I and We and Our Neigh- bors, and in 1878 she returned in a manner to her earlier interests as well as took the opportunity to write with some reference to her own ecclesiastical change, when she pub- lished the story of old-fashioned New England life, Poganuc People. But for the most part her religious nature domi- nated now her intellectual effort, and in short stories, in poetry, and in religious meditations, she gave expression to an ever deepening sense of the Divine mystery. In writing to her son of Poganuc People, on which she was engaged, she said with sincerity : " I would much rather have writ- ten another such a book as Footsteps of the Master, but all, even the religious papers, are gone mad on serials." Her strong leaning toward religious subjects was manifest also during this period in her correspondence with George Eliot, with Mrs. Browning, and others. Her husband had known some very unusual psychical experiences, and the current phenomena which passed under the name of spiritualism attracted the attention of both, and formed a considerable element in correspondence.
Literature was distinctly a means of livelihood, yet her waning strength made composition an exertion, and what she had once done freely she did now, freely still, yet with conscious effort. The interest excited by Dickens' readings from his own works led to a more general practice of the same form of publication, and Mrs. Stowe resorted with a cheerful courage and good humored resolution to this mode of support, knowing well that her lack of strength and un- familiarity with the task were against her, but that the real desire of the public was to come face to face with a cele- brated woman. Mrs. Fields, in her Days with Mrs. Stoive, has given a graphic account of the plunge into this new career : —
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH XXIX
" Her first reading actually took place in Springfield, not Boston, and the next day she unexpectedly arrived at our cottage at Manchester-by-the-Sea. She had read the pre- vious evening in a large public hall, had risen at five o'clock that morning and found her way to us. Her next readings were given in Boston, the first in the afternoon, at the Tremont Temple. She was conscious that her efforts at Springfield had not been altogether successful, — she had not held her large audience, — and she was determined to put the whole force of her nature into this afternoon read- ing at the Tremont Temple. She called me into her bed- room, where she stood before the mirror with her short gray hair, which usually lay in soft curls around her brow, brushed erect and standing stiffly. ' Look here, my dear,' she said ; ' now I am exactly like my father, Dr. Lyman Beecher, when he was going to preach,' and she held up her forefinger warningly. It was easy to see that the spirit of the old preacher was revived in her veins, and the afternoon would show something of his power. An hour later, when I sat with her in the anteroom waiting for the moment of her appearance to arrive, I could feel the power surging up within her. I knew she was armed for a good fight.
" That reading was a great success. She was alive in every fibre of her being : she was to read portions of Uncle Tom's Cabin to men, women, and children who could hardly understand the crisis which inspired it, and she determined to effect the difficult task of making them feel as well as hear. With her presence and inspiration they could not fail to understand what her words had signified to the genera- tion that had passed through the struggle of our war. When her voice was not sufficient to make the audience hear, men and women rose from their seats and crowded round her, standing gladly, that no word might be lost. It was the last leap of the flame which had burned out a great Wrong."
XXX HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
Mrs. Stowe felt keenly the separation from her husband that this venture compelled. He had become weakened by disease, and for a long period she devoted herself to his care. But through all experiences she kept a brave faith and a willing ear for the troubles of others. Her friends remained constant to her, and she had resources in sketching and reading which were unfailing. Once there was a semi- public recognition of her greatness, when, upon her sev- entieth birthday, her publishers, in conjunction with her old-time friends, Governor and Mrs. Claflin, gave a garden party in her honor, and the world stopped for a moment to remember one of its great benefactors. But she went back to her home and to the domestic care which held her in her old age. After her husband's death, in 1886, she relaxed something of her hold on life. The seclusion which she had fallen into with him remained for herself, and she passed her old age in the quiet of her home. There, sheltered from the world, she lived, while that world went on its way, entering upon new warfares and engaged still in mor- tal combat with evil, but strengthened for the encounter by the life and work of one woman, who produced a book which once set men's souls on fire, and still inflames the imagina- tion by the ardor with which it was conceived.
She died in Hartford, Wednesday, July 1, 1896, and was buried by the side of her husband in the Andover cem- etery.
AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION
TO THE NEW EDITION.
HE introduction of a new American Edition of " Uncle Tom's Cabin " gives an occasion for a brief account of that book, — how it came to be, how it was received in the world, and what has been its history throughout all the nations and tribes of the earth, civilized and uncivilized, into whose languages it has been translated.
Its author had for many years lived in Ohio on the confines of a slave state, and had thus been made familiar with facts and occur- rences in relation to the institution of American slavery. Some of the most harrowing incidents related in the story had from time to time come to her knowledge in conversation with former slaves now free in Ohio. The cruel sale and separation of a married woman from her husband, narrated in Chapter XII., "Select Incidents of Lawful Trade," had passed under her own eye while passenger on a steam- boat on the Ohio Eiver. Her husband and brother had once been obliged to flee with a fugitive slave woman by night, as described in Chapter IX., and she herself had been called to write the letters for a former slave woman, servant in her own family, to a slave husband in Kentucky, who, trusted with unlimited liberty, free to come and go on business between Kentucky and Ohio, still refused to break his pledge of honor to his master, though that master from year to year deferred the keeping of his promise of freedom to the slave. It was the simple honor and loyalty of this Christian black man, who remained in slavery rather than violate a trust, that first impressed her with the possibility of such a character as, years after, was delineated in Uncle Tom.
From time to time incidents were brought to her knowledge •which deepened her horror of slavery. In her own family she had a private school for her children, and as there was no provision for the education of colored children in her vicinity, she allowed them
XXX11 INTRODUCTION.
the privilege of attending. One day she was suddenly surprised by a visit from the mother of one of the brightest aud most amusing of these children. It appeared that the child had never been emanci- pated, and was one of the assets of an estate in Kentucky, and had been seized and carried off by one of the executors, and was to be sold by the sheriff at auction to settle the estate. The sum for the little one's ransom was made up by subscription in the neighborhood, but the incident left a deep mark in Mrs. Stowe's mind as to the practi- cal workings of the institution of slavery.
But it was not for many years that she felt any call to make use of the materials thus accumulating. In fact, it was a sort of general impression upon her mind, as upon that of many humane people in those days, that the subject was so dark and painful a one. so in- volved in difficulty and obscurity, so utterly beyond human hope or help, that it was of no use to read, or think, or distress one's sell about it. There was a class of professed Abolitionists in Cincinnati and the neighboring regions, but they were unfashionable persons and few in number. Like all asserters of pure abstract right as applied to human affairs, they were regarded as a species of moral monomaniacs, who, in the consideration of one class of interests and wrongs, had lost sight of all proportion and all good judgment. Both in church and in state they were looked upon as " those that troubled Israel."
It was a general saying among conservative and sagacious people that this subject was a dangerous one to investigate, and that no- body could begin to read and think upon it without becoming prac- tically insane ; moreover, that it was a subject of such delicacy that no discussion of it could be held in the free States without im- pinging upon the sensibilities of the slave States, to whom alone the management of the matter belonged.
So when Dr. Bailey — a wise, temperate, and just man, a model of courtesy in speech and writing — came to Cincinnati and set up an antislavery paper, proposing a fair discussion of the subject, there was an immediate excitement. On two occasions a mob led by slaveholders from Kentucky attacked his office, destroyed his print- ing-press, and threw his types into the Ohio River. The most of the Cincinnati respectability, in church and state, contented them- selves on this occasion with reprobating the imprudence of Dr. Bailey in thus " arousing the passions of our fellow-citizens of Ken* tucky." In these mobs and riots the free colored people were threatened, maltreated, abused, and often had to flee for their lives.
INTRODUCTION. XXX Hi
Even the servants of good families were often chased to the very houses of their employers, who rescued them with difficulty, and the story was current in those days of a brave little woman who defended her black waiter, standing, pistol in hand, on her own doorstep, and telling the mob face to face that they should not enter except over her dead body.
Professor Stowe's house was more than once a refuge for fright- ened fugitives on whom the very terrors of death had fallen, and°the inmates slept with arms in the house and a large bell ready to call the young men of the adjoining Institution, in case the mob should come up to search the house. Nor was this a vain or im- probable suggestion, for the mob in their fury had more than once threatened to go up and set fire to Lane Seminary, where a large body of the students were known to be abolitionists. Only the fact that the Institution was two miles from the city, with a rough and muddy road up a long high hill, proved its salvation. Cincinnati mud, far known for its depth and tenacity, had sometimes its advan-
tages.
The general policy of the leaders of society, in cases of such dis- turbances, was after the good old pattern in Judaea, where a higher One had appeared, who disturbed the traders in swine ; " they be- sought him that he would depart out of their coasts." Dr. Bailey at last was induced to remove his paper to Washington, and to con- duct his investigation under the protection of the national Capitol, — • and there for years he demonstrated the fact that the truth may be spoken plainly yet courteously, and with all honorable and Christian fairness on the most exciting of subjects. In justice to the South it must be said, that his honesty, courage, and dignity of character won for him friends even among the most determined slaveholders. Manly men have a sort of friendship for an open, honest opponent, like that of Richard Co3ur de Lion for Salaam.
Far otherwise was the fate of Lovejoy, who essayed an anti-slavery paper at Alton, Illinois. A mob from Missouri besieged the office, Bet the house on fire, and shot him at the door. It was for some days reported that Dr. Beecher's son, Rev. Edward Beecher, known to have been associated with Lovejoy at this period, had been killed at the same time. Such remembrances show how well grounded were the fears which attended every effort to agitate this subject. People who took the side of justice and humanity in those days had to count the cost and pay the price of their devotion. In t&ose times, when John G. Fee, a young Kentucky student in Lane
XXXIV INTRODUCTION.
Seminary, liberated his slaves, and undertook to preach the gospel of emancipation in Kentucky, he was chased from the state, and dis- inherited by his own father. Berea College, for the education of Colored and white, stands to-day a triumphant monument of his persistence in w^ll-doing. Mr. Van Zandt, a Kentucky farmer, set free hia slaves and came over and bought a farm in Ohio. Sub- sequently, from an impulse of humanity, he received and protected fugitive slaves in the, manner narrated in Chapter IX. of "Uncle Tom's Cabin.'' For this he was seized, imprisoned, his property attached, and he was threatened with utter ruin. Salmon P. Chase, then a rising young lawyer in Cincinnati, had the bravery to appear as his lawyer. As he was leaving the court-room, after making his plea, one of the judges remarked, " There goes a young man who has ruined himself to-day," and the sentiment was echoed by the general voice of society. The case went against Van Zandt, and Mr. Chase carried it up to the Supreme Court of the United States, which, utterly ignoring argument and justice, decided it against him. But a few years more, and Salmon P. Chase was himself Chief Justice of the United States. It was one of those rare dramatic instances in which courage and justice sometimes bring a reward even in this life.
After many years' residence in Ohio, Mrs. Stowe returned to make her abode in New England, just in the height of the excitement pro- duced by the Fugitive Slave Law. Settled in Brunswick, Maine, she was in constant communication with friends in Boston, who wrote to her from day to day of the terror and despair which that law had occasioned to industrious, worthy colored people who had from time to time escaped to Boston, and were living in peace and security. She heard of families broken up and fleeing in the dead of winter to the frozen shores of Canada. But what seemed to her more inexplicable, more dreadful, was the apparent apathy of the Christian world of the free North to these proceedings. The pul- pits that denounced them were exceptions ; the voices raised to re- monstrate few and far between.
In New England, as at the. West, professed abolitionists were a small, despised, unfashionable band, whose constant remonstrances from year to year had been disregarded as the voices of imprac- ticable fanatics. It seemed now as if the system once confined to the Southern states was rousing itself to new efforts to extend itseli fill over the North, and to overgrow the institutions of free society.
With, astonishment and distress Mrs. Stowe heard on all sides,
INTRODUCTION. XXXV
from Tmmane and Christian people, that the slavery of the blacks was a guaranteed constitutional right, and that all opposition to it endangered the national Union. With this conviction she saw that even earnest and tender-hearted Christian people seemed to feel it a duty to close their eyes, ears, and hearts to the harrowing details of slavery, to put down all discussion of the subject, and even to assist slave-owners to recover fugitives in Northern states. She said tc herself, these people cannot know what slavery is ; they do not see what they are defending ; and hence arose a purpose to write some sketches which should show to the world slavery as she had herself seen it. Pondering this subject, she was one day turning over a little bound volume of an anti-slavery magazine, edited by Mrs. Dr. Bailey, of Washington, and there she read the account of the escape of a woman with her child on the ice of the Ohio River from Ken- tucky. The incident was given by an eye-witness, one who had helped the woman to the Ohio shore. This formed the first salient point of the story. She began to meditate. The faithful slave hus- band in Kentucky occurred to her as a pattern of Uncle Tom, and the scenes of the story began gradually to form themselves in her mind.
The first part of the book ever committed to writing was the death of Uncle Tom. This scene presented itself almost as a tangi- ble vision to her mind while sitting at the communion-table in the little church in Brunswick. She was perfectly overcome by it, and could scarcely restrain the convulsion of tears and sobbings that shook her frame. She hastened home and wrote it, and her husband being away she read it to her two sons of ten and twelve years of age. The little fellows broke out into convulsions of weeping, one of them saying, through his sobs, " Oh ! mamma, slavery is the most cursed thing in the world ! " From that time the story can less be said to have been composed by her than imposed upon her. Scenes, incidents, conversations rushed upon her with a vividness and importunity that would not be denied. The book insisted upon getting itself into being, and would take no denial. After the two or three first chapters were written, she wrote to Dr Bailey of the " National Era " that she was planning a story that might probably run through several numbers of the " Era." In reply she received an instant application for it, and began immediately to send oft weekly instalments. She was then in the midst of heavy domestic cares, with a young infant, with a party of pupils in her family to Whom she was imparting daily lessons with her own children, and
XXXvi INTRODUCTION.
with untrained servants requiring constant supervision, but the story was so much more intense a reality to her than any other earthly thing that the weekly instalment never failed. It was there in her mind day and night waiting to be written, and requiring but a few moments to bring it into visible characters.
The weekly number was always read to the family circle before it was sent away, and all the household kept up an intense interest in the progress of the story.
As the narrative appeared in the " Era," sympathetic words began to come to her from old workers who had long been struggling in the anti-slavery cause. She visited Boston, went to the Anti- Slavery rooms, and reinforced her repertoire of facts by such docu- ments as Theodore D. Weld's " Slavery As It Is," the Lives of Josiah Henson and Lewis Clarke, particulars from both whose lives were inwoven with the story in the characters of Uncle Tom and George Harris.
In shaping her material the author had but one purpose, to show the institution of slavery truly, just as it existed. She had visited in Kentucky, had formed the acquaintance of people who were just, upright, and generous, and yet slaveholders. She had heard their views and appreciated their situation ; she felt that justice required that their difficulties should be recognized and their virtues acknowl- edged. It was her object to show that the evils of slavery were the inherent evils of a bad system, and not always the fault of those who had become involved in it and were its actual administrators.
Then she was convinced that the presentation of slavery alone, in its most dreadful forms, would be a picture of such unrelieved horror and darkness as nobody could be induced to look at. Of set purpose, she sought to light up the darkness by humorous and grotesque episodes, and the presentation of the milder and more amusing phases of slavery, for which her recollection of the never- failing wit and drollery of her former colored friends in Ohio gave her abundant material. As the story progressed, a young publisher, J. P. Jewett, of Boston, set his eye upon it, and made overtures for the publication of it in book form, to which she con- sented. After a while she had a letter from him expressing hia fears that she was making the story too long for a one- volume pul> lication. He reminded her that it was an unpopular subject, and that people would not willingly hear much about it ; that one shor* volume might possibly sell, but if it grew to two it might prove a fatal obstacle to its success. Mrs. Stowe replied that she did not
INTRODUCTION. XXXVll
make the story, that the story made itself, and that she could not stop it till it was done. The feeling that pursued her increased in intensity to the last, till with the death of Uncle Tom it seemed as if the whole vital force had left her. A feeling of profound dis- couragement came over her. Would anybody read it ? Would any- body listen ? Would this appeal, into which she had put heart, soul, mind, and strength, which she had written with her heart's blood, — would it, too, go for nothing, as so many prayers and groans and entreaties of these poor suffering souls had already gone ? There had just been a party of slaves who had been seized and thrown into prison in Washington for a vain effort to escape. They were, many of them, partially educated, cultivated young men and women, to whom slavery was intolerable. When they were retaken and marched through the streets of Washington, followed by a jeering crowd, one of them, named Emily Edmonson, answered one man who cried shame upon her, that she was not ashamed, — that she was proud that she and all the rest of them had made an effort for liberty! It was the sentiment of a heroine, but she and her sisters were condemned no less to the auction-block.
It was when the last proof-sheet had been sent to the office that Mrs. Stowe, alone and thoughtful, sat reading Horace Mann's elo- quent plea for those young men and women, then about to be con- signed to the slave warehouse of Bruin & Hill in Alexandria, — a plea eloquent, impassioned, but vain, as all other pleas on that side had ever proved in all courts hitherto. It seemed to her that there was no hope, that nobody would hear, nobody would read, nobody would pity ; that this frightful system, which had already pursued its victims into the free states, might at last even threaten them hi Canada.
So, determined to leave nothing undone which remotely could help the cause she pleaded, she wrote one letter to Prince Albert to accompany a copy of her work ; another to T. B. Macaulay, of whose father she had heard in her youth as an anti-slavery laborer ; one to Charles Dickens, whose sympathy for the slave had been expressed more than once ; one to Charles Kingsley, and one to Lord Carlisle. These letters were despatched to their destination with early copies of the book, and all in due time acknowledged to th( author.
"Uncle Tom's Cabin" was published March 20, 1852. TH, despondency of the author as to the question whether anybody would read or attend to her appeal was soon dispelled. Ten thou-
XXXviii INTRODUCTION.
sand copies were sold in a few days, and over three hundred thou- sand within a year, and eight power-presses, running day and night, were barely able to keep pace with the demand for it. It was read 'everywhere, apparently, and by everybody, and she soon began to hear echoes of sympathy all over the land. The indignation, the pity, the distress, that had long weighed upon her soul seemed to pass off from her, and into the readers of the book.
The following note from a lady, an intimate friend, was a speci- men of many which the post daily brought her : —
MY DEAR MRS. STOWE, — I sat up last night until long after one o'clock, reading and finishing "Uncle Tom's Cabin." I could not leave it any more than I could have left a dying child; nor could I restrain an almost hysterical sobbing for an hour after I laid my head upon my pillow. I thought I was a thoroughgoing abolitionist before, but your book has awakened so strong a feeling of indignation and of compassion, that I seem never to have had any feeling on this subject till now. But what can we do ? Alas ! alas ! what can we do ? This storm of feeliiif
O
has been raging, burning like a very fire in my bones all the livelong night:, and through all my duties this morning it haunts me, — I cannot away with it. Gladly would I have gone out in the midnight storm last night, and, like the blessed martyr of old, been stoned to death, if that could have rescued these oppressed and afflicted ones. But that would avail nothing. And now what am I doing ? Just the most foolish thing in the world. "Writing to you, who need no incitement; to you, who have spun from your very vitals this tissue of agony and truths ; for I know, I feel, that there are burning drops of your heart's best blood here concentrated. To you, who need no encouragement or sympathy of mine, and whom I would not insult by praise, — 0 no, you stand on too high an eminence for praise ; but methinks I see the prayers of the poor, the blessings of those who are ready to perish, gathering in clouds about you, and forming a halo round your beloved head. And surely the tears of gentle, sympathizing childhood, that are dropping about many a Christian hearthstone over the wrongs and cruelties depicted by you so touchingly, will water the sod and spring up in bright flowers at your feet. And better still, I know, — I see, in the flushing cheek, the clenched hand, and indignant eye of the young man, as he dashes down the book and paces the room to hide the tears that he is too proud to show, too powerless to restrain, that you are sowing seed which shall yef spring up to the glory of God, to the good of the poor slave, to the enfranchisement of our beloved though guilty country.
Mrs. Stowe at this period visited New York. It was just at the time of Jenny Lind's first visit to this country, when the young
INTRODUCTION. XXXIX
Swedish vocalist was the idol of the hour, and tickets to her con- certs were selling at fabulous prices. Mrs. Stowe's friends, applying for tickets, found all sold ; but, on hearing of the application, the cantatrice immediately sent Mrs. Stowe two tickets to two of the best seats in the house. In reply to Mrs. Stowe's note of thanka
came this answer : —
May 23, 1852.
MY DEAR MADAM, — Allow me to express my most sincere thanks for your very kind letter, which I was very happy to receive.
You must feel and know what deep impression "Uncle Tom's Cabin " has made upon every heart that can feel for the dignity of human exist- ence ; so I, with my miserable English, would not even try to say a word about the great excellency of that most beautiful book, but / must thank you for the great joy I have felt over that book.
Forgive me, my dear madam ; it is a great liberty I take in thus ad- dressing you, I know, but I have so wished to find an opportunity to pour out my thankfulness in a few words to you that I cannot help this in- truding. I have the feeling about "Uncle Tom's Cabin" that great changes will take place by and by from the impression people receive out of it, and that the writer of that book can " fall asleep " to-day or to- morrow with the bright sweet conscience of having been a strong, power- ful means, in the Creator's hand, of operating essential good in one of the most important questions for the welfare of our black brethren. God bless and protect you and yours, dear madam, and certainly God's hand will remain with a blessing over your head.
Once more, forgive my bad English and the liberty I have taken, and believe me to be, dear madam,
Yours most truly,
JENNY GOLDSCHMIDT, nie LIND.
A more cheering result was in the testimony of many colored persons and fugitive slaves, who said to her, " Since that book has come out, everybody is good to us ; we find friends everywhere. It's wonderful how kind everybody is."
In one respect, Mrs. Stowe's expectations were strikingly different, from fact. She had painted slaveholders as amiable, generous, and just. She had shown examples among them of the noblest and most beautiful traits of character ; had admitted fully their tempta- tions, their perplexities, and their difficulties, so that a friend of hers who had many relatives in the South wrote to her in exulta- tion : " Your book is going to be the great pacificator ; it will unite both North and South." Her expectation was that the professed abolitionists would denounce it as altogether too mild in its deal-
XI INTRODUCTION.
ings with slaveholders. To her astonishment, it was the extreme abolitionists who received, and the entire South who rose up against it.
Whittier wrote to Garrison in May, 1852 : —
"It did me good to see thy handwriting, friend William, reminding me of the old days when we fought the beasts at Ephesus together in Philadelphia. Ah me ! I am no longer able to take active part in the conflicts and skirmishes which are preparing the way for the great battle of Armageddon, — the world- wide, final struggle between freedom and slavery, — but, sick or well, in the body or out, I shall be no unconcerned spectator. I bless God that, through the leadings of his Providence, I have a right to rejoice in the certain victory of the right.
" What a glorious work Harriet Beecher Stowe has wrought ! Thanks for the Fugitive Slave Law ! Better for slavery that law had never been enacted, for it gave occasion for ' Uncle Tom's Cabin ' ! "
In a letter from Garrison to Mrs. Stowe, he said that he estimated the value of anti-slavery writing by the abuse it brought. " Since ' Uncle Tom's Cabin ' has been published," he adds, " all the defenders of slavery have let me alone, and are spending their strength in abusing you." In fact, the post-office began about this time to bring her threatening and insulting letters from the Legrees and Haleys of the slave-markets, — letters so curiously compounded of blas- phemy, cruelty, and obscenity, that their like could only be ex- pressed by John Bunyan's account of the speech of Apollyon, — " He spake as a dragon."
After a little, however, responses began to come from across the water. The author had sent copies to Prince Albert, to Charles Dickens, to T. B. Macaulay, to Kingsley, and to Lord Carlisle. The receipt of the copy sent to Prince Albert was politely acknowledged, with thanks, by his private secretary. Her letter is here given : —
To HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS PRINCE ALBERT :
The author of this work feels that she has an apology for presenting it to Prince Albert, because it concerns the great interests of humanity, and from those noble and enlarged views of human progress which she has at different times seen in his public speeches, she has inferred that he bar an eye and a heart for all that concerns the development and welfare of the human family.
Ignorant of the forms of diplomatic address, and the etiquette of rank, may she be pardoned for speaking with the republican simplicity of her own country, as to one who possesses a nobility higher than that of rank or station.
INTRODUCTION. xli
This simple narrative is an honest attempt to enlist the -sympathies both of England and America in the sufferings of an oppressed race, to whom in less enlightened days both England and America were unjust.
The wrong on England's past has been atoned in a manner worthy of herself, nor in all her strength and glory is there anything that adds such Justre to her name as the position she holds in relation to human freedom. (May America yet emulate her example !)
The appeal is in greater part, as it should be, to the writer's own country, but when fugitives by thousands are crowding British shores, sue would enlist for them the sympathy of British hearts.
We, in America, have been told that the throne of earth's mightiest nation is now filled by one less adorned by all this world can gi;e of power and splendor, than by a good and noble heart, — a heart ever ready to feel for the suffering, the oppressed, and the lowly.
The author is encouraged by the thought that beneath the royal in- signia of England throbs that woman's and mother's heart. May she ask that he who is nearest to her would present to her notice this simple stoiy. Should it win from her compassionate nature pitying thoughts tor those multitudes of poor outcasts, who have fled for shelter to the shadow of her throne, it were enough.
May the blessing of God rest on the noble country from which America draws her lineage, and on her the Queen of it. Though all the thrones be shaken, may hers, founded deep in the hearts of her subjects, be established to her and to her children, through all generations !
With deep respect,
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
BRUNSWICK, ME., March 20, 1852.
Her letter to Charles Dickens and his reply are as follows : —
To THE AUTHOR OF "DAVID COPPERFIELD" :
The Author of the following sketches offers them to your notice as the first writer in our day who turned the attention of the high to the joys and sorrows of the lowly. In searching out and embellishing the forlorn, the despised, the lonely, the neglected and forgotten, lies the true mis sion which you have performed for the world. There is a moral bearing in it that far outweighs the amusement of a passing hour. If I may hope to do only something like the same, for a class equally ignored and despised by the fastidious and refined of my country, I shall be happy.
Yours very truly,
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
TAVISTOCK HOUSE, LONDON, July 17, 1852.
DEAR MADAM, — I have read your book with the deepest interest and sympathy, and admire, more than I can express to you, both the generous
xlii INTKODDCTION.
feeling which inspired it, and the admirable power with which it is eze> cuted.
If I might suggest a fault in what has so charmed me, it would be that you go too far and seek to prove too much. The wrongs and atrocities of slavery are, God knows ! case enough. I doubt there being any warrant for making out the African race to be a great race, or for supposing the future destinies of the world to lie in that direction ; and I think this extreme championship likely to repel some useful sympathy and support.
Your book is worthy of any head and any heart that ever inspired a book. I am much your debtor, and I thank you most fervently and sincerely.
CHARLES DICKENS. MRS. HARRIET B. STOWE.
The following is the letter addressed to Macaulay, and his reply : -
HON. T. B. MACAULAY :
One of the most vivid recollections of my early life is the enthusiasm excited by reading your review of Milton, an enthusiasm deepened as I followed successively your writings as they appeared. A desire to hold some communion with minds that have strongly swayed and controlled our own is, I believe, natural to every one, and suggested to my mind the idea of presenting to you this work. When a child between eight and ten years of age, I was a diligent reader of the " Christian Observer," and in particular of the articles in which the great battle was fought against the slave-trade. An impression was then made on my mind which will never be obliterated. A similar conflict is now convulsing this nation, —an agitation which every successive year serves to deepen and widen. In this conflict the wise and good of other lands can materi- ally aid us.
The public sentiment of Christianized humanity is the last court of ap- peal in which the cause of a helpless race is to be tried, and nothing oper- ates more sensibly on this country than the temperate and just expression of the sentiments of distinguished men in your own. Every such ex- pression is a shot which strikes the citadel. There is a public sentiment on this subject in England which often expresses itself in a way which does far less good than it might if those who expressed it had a more accurate knowledge and a more skilful touch, and yet even that has done good, though it has done harm also. The public sentiment of nations is rising to be a power stronger than that of fleets and armies, and it needs to be skilfully and wisely guided. He who should direct the feelings of England on this subject wisely and effectively might do a work worthy of your father, of Clarkson and Wilberforce, and all those brave men who began the great conflict for God and humanity.
INTRODUCTION. xliii';
1 much misjudge youi mind and heart if the subject is one on which you can be indifferent, or can speak otherwise than justly, humanely, and effectively.
Yours with deep respect,
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. BRUNSWICK, ME., March 20, 1852.
THE ALBANY, LONDON, May 20, 1852.
MADAM, — I sincerely thank you for the volumes which you have' done ine the honor to send me. 1 have read them — I cannot say with pleasure ; for no work on such a subject can give, pleasure, but witn high respect for the talents and for the benevolence of the writer.
I have the honor to be, madam,
Your most faithful servant,
T. B. MACAULAY.
In October of 1856 Macaulay wrote to Mrs. Stowe : —
" I have just returned from Italy, where your fame seems to throw that of all other writers into the shade. There is no place where ' Uncle Tom ' (transformed into ' II Zio Tom ') is not to be found. By this time I have no doubt he has ' Dred ' for a companion."
Soon after Macaulay's letter came to her, Mrs. Stowe began to receive letters from other distinguished persons expressing a far warmer sympathy with the spirit and motive of her work.
FROM LORD CARLISLE.
LONDON, July 8, 1852.
MADAM, — I have allowed some time to elapse before I thanked you for the great honor and kindness you did me in sending to me from yourself a copy of " Uncle Tom's Cabin." I thought it due to the subject of which I perceived that it treated not to send a mere acknowledgment, as I confess from a motive of policy I am apt to do upon the first arrival of a book. I therefore determined to read before I wrote.
Having thus read, it is not in the stiff and conventional form of com- pliment, still less in the technical language of criticism, that I am about to speak of your work. I return my deep and solemn thanks to Almighty God, who has led and enabled you to write such a book. I do feel, indeed, the most thorough assurance that, in his good Providence, such a hook cannot have been written in vain. I have long felt that Slavery is by far the topping question of the world and age we live in, including all that is most thrilling in heroism and most touching in distress, — in short, the real Epic of the Universe. The self-interest of the parties most nearly Concerned on the one hand, the apathy and ignorance of unconcerned ob-
INTRODUCTION,
servers on the other, have left these august pretensions to drop very much out of sight, and hence ray rejoicing that a writer has appeared who wil] be read and must be felt, and that, happen what may to the transactions of slavery, they will no longer be suppressed.
I trust that what I have just said was not required to show the entire sympathy I entertain with respect to the main truth ana leading scope of your high argument, but we live in a world only too apt to regard the accessories and accidents of a subject above its real and vital essence. No one can know so well as you how much the external appearance of the negro detracts from the romance and sentiment which undoubtedly might attach to his position and to his wrongs ; and on this account it does seem to me proportionately important that you should have brought to your portraiture great grace of style, great power of language, a play of humor which relieves and lightens even the dark depth of the back- ground which you were called«upon to reveal, a force of pathos which, to give it the highest praise, does not lag behind all the dread reality, and, above all, a variety, a discrimination, and a truth in the delineation of character which, even to my own scanty and limited experience of the society you describe, accredits itself instantaneously and irresistibly. There is one point which, in face of all that your book has aimed at and achieved, I think of extremely slight importance, but which I will never- theless just mention, if only to show that I have not been bribed into this fervor of admiration. I think, then, that whenever you speak of England and her institutions it is in a tone which fails to do them justice. I do not know what distinct charges you think could be established against our aristocracy and capitalists ; but you generally convey the impression that the same oppressions in degree, though not in kind, might be brought home to them which are now laid to the charge of Southern slaveholders. Exposed to the same ordeal, I grant they might very probably not stand the test better. All I contend for is, that the circumstances in which they are placed, and the institutions by which they are surrounded, make the parallel wholly inapplicable. I cannot but suspect that your view has been in many respects derived from composers of fiction and others among ourselves, who, writing with distinguished ability, have been more successful in delineating and Dissecting the morbid features of our modern society than in detecting the principle which is at fault or suggesting the appropriate remedy. My own belief is — liable, if you please, to na- tional bias — that our capitalists are very much the same sort of persons as your own in the Northern States, with the same mixtures and inequal- ities of motive and action. With respect to our aristocracy, I should really be tempted to say that, tried by their conduct on the question of Free Trade, they do not sustain an unfavorable comparison with your uppermost classes. I need not repeat how irrevelant, after all, I feel what 1 have said upon this head to be to the main issues included in your work.
INTRODUCTION. Xlv
There is little doubt, too, that as a nation we have our special failings, and one of them probably is that we care too little about what other nations think of us. Nor can I wish my countrymen ever to forget that their own past history should prevent them from being forward in casting ac- cusations at their transatlantic brethren on the subject of slavery. With great ignorance of its actual miseries and horrors, there is also among us great ignorance of the fearful perplexities and difficulties with which its solution could not fail to be attended. I feel, however, that there is a considerable difference between reluctant acquiescence in what you in- herit from the past, and voluntary fresh enlargements and reinforcements of the system. For instance, I should not say that the mode in which euch an enactment as the Fugitive Slave Law has been considered in this country has at all erred upon the side of overmuch indignation.
I need not detain you longer. I began my letter with returning thanks to Almighty God for the appearance of your work, and I offer my humble and ardent prayer to the same Supreme Source that it may have a marked agency in hastening the great consummation, which I should feel it a practical atheism not to believe must be among the unfulfilled purposes of the Divine Power and Love.
I have the honor to be, madam,
Your sincere admirer and well-wisher,
CARLISLE.
MRS. BEECHER STOWE.
FROM REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY.
EVERSLET, August 12, 1852.
MY DEAR MADAM, — Illness and anxiety have prevented my acknowl edging long ere this your kind letter and your book, which, if success bs- a pleasure to you, has a success in England which few novels, and cer- tainly no American book whatsoever, ever had. I cannot tell you how pleased I am to see coming from across the Atlantic a really healthy in- digenous growth, "autochthones," free from all second and third hand Germanisms and Italianisms, and all other unrealisms.
Your book will do more to take away the reproach from your great and growing nation than many platform agitations and speechif'yings.
Here there is but one opinion about it. Lord Carlisle (late Morpeth) assured me that he believed the book, independent of its artistic merit (of which hereafter), calculated to produce immense good, and he can speak better concerning it than I can, for I pay you a compliment in say- ing that I have actually not read it through. It is too painful, — I can- not bear the sight of misery and wrong that I can do nothing to alleviate. But I will read it through and re-read it in due time, though when I hava done so, I shall have nothing more to say than what every one says now, that it is perfect.
xlvi INTRODUCTION.
I cannot resist transcribing a few lines which I received this morning from an excellent critic : "To my mind it is the greatest novel ever written, and though it will seem strange, it reminded me in a lower sphere more of Shakespeare than anything modern I have ever read ; not in the, style, nor in the humor, nor in the pathos, — though Eva set me a crying worse than Cordelia did at sixteen, — but in the many-sidedness, and, above all, in that marvellous clearness of insight and outsight, which makes it seemingly impossible for her to see any one of her characters without showing him or her at once as a distinct man or woman different from all others."
I have a debt of personal thanks to you for the book, also, from a most noble and great woman, my own mcther, a West-Indian, who in great sickness and sadness read your book with delighted tears. What struck her was the way in which you, first of all writers, she said, had dived down into the depths of the negro heart, and brought out his common humanity without losing hold for a moment of his race peculiarities. But I must really praise you no more to your face, lest I become rude and fulsome. May God bless and prosper you, and all you write, is the ear- nest prayer, and, if you go on as you have begun, the assured hope, of your faithful and obliged servant,
CHARLES KINGSLET.
FROM THE EARL OF SHAFTESBURY.*
LONDON, December 14, 1852.
MADAM, — It is very possible that the writer of this letter may be wholly unknown to you. But whether my name be familiar to your ears, or whether you now read it for the first time, I cannot refrain from expressing to you the deep gratitude that I feel to Almighty God, who has inspired both your heart and your head in the composition of "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
It would be out of place here to enumerate the various beauties, singu- lar, original, and lasting, which shine throughout the work. One con- viction, however, is constantly present to my mind, — the conviction that the gospel alone can elevate the intellect, even to the highest point. None but a Christian believer could have composed "Para- dise Lost." None but a Christian believer could have produced such a book as yours, which has absolutely startled the whole world, and im- pressed many thousands by revelations of cruelty and sin which give us an idea of what would be the uncontrolled dominion of Satan on this fallen earth.
Your character of Eva is true. I have, allowing for the difference in sex- and the influences of a southern as compared with a northern cli-
• Formerly Lord Ashley.
INTRODUCTION. xlvil
mate, seen such myself in zeal, simplicity, and overflowing affection to God and man. It pleases God to show, every now and then, such speci- mens of his grace, and then remove them before they are tarnished by the world.
You are right, too, about Topsy. Our Eagged Schools will afford you many instances of poor children, hardened by kicks, insults, and neglect, moved to tears and to docility by the first word of kindness. It opens new feelings, develops, as it were, a new nature, and brings the wretched outcast into the family of man. I live in hope — God grant it may rise to faith ! — that this system is drawing to a close. It seems aa though our Lord had sent out this book as the messenger before his face to prepare his way before him. It may be that these unspeakable hor- rors are now disclosed to drive us to the only "hope of all the ends of the earth," the second advent of our blessed Saviour. Let us continue, as St. Paul says, "fervent and instant in prayer," and may we at the great day of account be found, with millions of this oppressed race, among the sheep at the right hand of our common Lord and Master !
Believe me, madam, with deep respect,
Your sincere admirer and servant,
SHAFTESBURY.
MP.S. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
About the same time with this, Mrs. Stowe received a letter froai Hon. Arthur Helps, accompanying a review of her work, written by himself, in a leading periodical. The main subject of Mr. Helps'a letter was the one already alluded to in Lord Carlisle's letter, on the relation of the capitalists and higher classes of England to the working-classes, as compared with the relations of slaveholders and slaves in America. Her reply to this letter being shown to Arch- bishop Whately, she was surprised by a letter from him to the fol- lowing purport : —
MADAM, — The writer of the article in " Eraser's Magazine " has favored me with a copy of your most interesting letter to him, and from it I collect that you will be g]ad to learn that I have been negotiating for the insertion of articles by very able hands on your truly valuable work in the " Edinburgh Review " and the "North" British," both which are of wider circulation and more influence than that magazine.
The subject was discussed at the Statistical Section, of which I was president, of the British Association meeting in Belfast, and I then took occasion to call attention to your work.
It became evident, then, that the book had found powerful sup- port and sympathy on English shores.
Xlviii INTRODUCTION.
Sampson Low, who afterwards became Mrs. Stowe's English pub« Usher, thus records its success in England : —
" From April to December, 1852, twelve different editions (not reissues) at one shilling were published, and within the twelve months of its first appearance no less than eighteen different houses in London were engaged in supplying the demand that had set in. The total number of editions was forty, varying from the fine illustrated edition of 15 s. to the cheap popular one at 6 d.
"After carefully analyzing these editions and weighing probabilities with ascertained facts, I am able pretty confidently to say that the aggre- gate number circulated in Great Britain and her colonies exceeded one million and a half."
Meanwhile Mrs. Stowe received intelligence of its appearance in. Sweden from the pen of the accomplished Fredeiika Bremer.
FROM FREDERIKA BREMER.
STOCKHOLM, January 4, 1853.
MY DEAREST LADY, — How shall I thank you for your most precious, dost delightful gift ? Could I have taken your hand many a time, while I was reading your work, and laid it on my beating heart, you would have known the joy, the happiness, the exultation, it made me experience ! It was the work I had long wished for, that I had anticipated, that I wished while in America to have been able to write, that I thought must come in America as the uprising of the woman's and mother's heart on the question of slavery. I wondered that it had not come earlier. I wondered that the woman, the mother, could look at these things and be silent, — that no cry of noble indignation and anger would escape her breast, and rend the air, and pierce to the ear of humanity. I wondered, and, God be praised ! it has come. The woman, the mother, has raised her voice out of the very soil of the new world in behalf of the wronged ones, and her voice vibrates still through two great continents, opening all hearts and minds to the light of truth.
How happy you are to have been able to do it so well, to have been able to win all hearts while you so daringly proclaimed strong and bitter truths, to charm while you instructed, to amuse while you defended the cause of the little ones, to touch the heart with the softest sorrow while you aroused all our boldest energies against the powers of despotism.
In Sweden your work has been translated and published, as feuille- ton in our largest daily paper, and has been read, enjoyed, and praised by men and women of all parties as I think no book here has been
enjoyed and praised before I look upon you as the heroine who
has won the battle. I think it is won ! I have a deep unwavering
INTRODUCTION. xlix
faith in the strong humanity of the American mind. It will ever work to throw out whatever is at war with that humanity, and to make it fully alive nothing is needed but a truly strong appeal of heart to heart, and that has been done in "Uncle Tom."
You have done it, dear, blessed, happy lady. Receive in these poor words my congratulations, my expressions of love and joy, my womanly pride in you as my sister in faith and love. God bless you forever !
FREDERIKA BREMER.
The author also received letters from France, announcing the en- thusiastic reception of her work there. Madame George Sand, then one of the greatest powers of the literary world of France, thus introduced it to the public : —
To review a book, the very morrow after its appearance, in the very journal where it has just been published, is doubtless contrary to usage, but in this case it is the most disinterested homage that can be rendered, since the immense success attained by this work at its publication does not need to be set forth.
This book is in all hands and in all journals. It has, and will have, editions in every form ; people devour it, they cover it with tears. It is no longer permissible to those who can read not to have read it, and one mourns that there are so many souls condemned never to read it, — helots of poverty, slaves through ignorance, for whom society has been unable as yet to solve the double problem of uniting the food of the body with the food of the soul.
It is not, then, it cannot be, an officious and needless task to review this book of Mrs. Stowe. We repeat, it is a homage, and never did a generous and pure work merit one more tender and spontaneous. She is far from us ; we do not know her who has penetrated our hearts with emotions so sad and yet so sweet. Let us thank her the more. Let the gentle voice of woman, the generous voice of man, with the voices of little children, so adorably glorified in this book, and those of the oppressed of this old world, let them cross the seas and hasten to say to her that she is esteemed and beloved !
If the best eulogy which one can make of the author is to love her, the truest that one can make of the book is to love its very faults. It has faults, - - we need not pass them in silence, we need not evade the dis- cussion of them, — but you need not be disturbed about them, you who are rallied on the tears you have shed over the fortunes of the poor vic- tims in a narrative so simple and true.
These defects exist only in relation to the conventional rules of art, which never have been and never will be absolute. If its judges, pos- sessed with the love of what they call " artistic work," find unskilful
1 INTRODUCTION".
treatment in the book, look well at them to see if their eyes are dry when they are reading this or that chapter.
They will recall to your mind that Ohio senator, who, having sagely demonstrated to his little wife that it is a political duty to refuse asylum and help to the fugitive slave, ends by taking two in his own carriage, in a dark night, o\ er fearful roads, where he must from time to time plunge into mud to his waist to push on the vehicle. This charming episode in " Uncle Tom " (a digression, if you will) paints well the situation of most men placed between their prejudices and established modes of thought and the spontaneous and generous intuitions of their hearts.
It is the history, at the same time affecting and pleasing, of many in- dependent critics. Whatever they may be in the matter of social or lit- erary questions, those who pretend always to judge by strict rules are often vanquished by their own feelings, and sometimes vanquished when unwilling to avow it.
I have always been charmed by the anecdote of Voltaire, ridiculing and despising the fables of La Fontaine, seizing the book and saying, " Look here, now, you will see in the very first one" — he reads one. '; Well, that is passable, but see how stupid this is ! "• - he reads a second, and finds after all that it is quite pretty ; a third disarms him again, and at last he throws down the volume, saying, with ingenuous spite, " It 's nothing but a collection of masterpieces." Great souls may be bilious and vindic- tive, but it is impossible for them to remain unjust and insensible.
It, however, should be said to people of culture, who profess to be able to give correct judgments, that if their culture is of the tiniest kind it will never resist a just and right emotion. Therefore it is that this book, de- fective according to the rules of the modern French romance, intensely interests everybody and triumphs over all criticisms in the discussions it causes in domestic circles.
For this book is essentially domestic and of the family, — this book, with its long discussions, its minute details, its portraits carefully stud- ied. Mothers of families, young girls, little children, servants even, can read and understand them, and men themselves, even the most superior, cannot disdain them. We do not say that the success of the book is because its great merits redeem its faults ; we say its success is because of these very alleged faults.
For a long time we have striven in France against the prolix explana- tions of Walter Scott. We have cried out against those of Balzac, but on consideration have perceived that the painter of manners and character bas never done too much, that every stroke of the pencil was needed for the general effect. Let us learn then to appreciate all kinds of treatment, tfhen the effect is good, and when they bear the seal of a master hand.
Mrs. Stowe is all instinst ; it is the very reason that she appears t<r 4ome not to have talent. Has she not talent ? What is talent ? Nothr
INTRODUCTION. li
ing, doubtless, compared to genius ; but has she genius ? I cannot say that she has talent as one understands it in the world of letters, but she has genius, as humanity feels the need of genius, — the genius of goodness, not that of the man of letters, but of the saint. Yes, — a saint ! Thrice holy the soul which thus loves, blesses, and consoles the martyrs. Pure, pene- trating, and profound the spirit which thus fathoms the recesses of the human soul. Noble, generous, and great the heart which embraces in her pity, in her love, an entire race, trodden down in blood and mire under the whip of ruffians and the maledictions of the impious.
Thus should it be, thus should we value things ourselves. We should feel that genius is heart, that power is faith, that talent is sincerity, and, finally, success is sympathy, since this book overcomes us, since it penetrates the breast, pervades the spirit, and fills us with a strange sen- timent of mingled tenderness and admiration for a poor negro lacerated by blows, prostrate in the dust, there gasping on a miserable pallet, his last sigh exhaled towards God.
In matters of art there is but one rule, to paint and to move. And where shall we find creations more complete, types more vivid, situations more touching, more original, than in " Uncle Tom," - those beautiful relations of the slave with the child of his master, indicating a state of things unknown among us ; the protest of the master himself against slavery during that innocent part of life when his soul belongs to God alone { Afterwards, when society takes him, the law chases away God, and interest deposes conscience. In coming to mature years the infant ceases to be man and becomes master. God dies in his soul.
What hand has ever drawn a type more fascinating and admirable than St. Clair, — this exceptional nature, noble, generous, and loving, but too soft and too nonchalant to be really great ? Is it not man himself, human nature itself, with its innate virtues, its good aspirations, and its de- plorable failures ? — this charming master who loves and is beloved, who thinks and reasons, but concludes nothing and does nothing ! He spends in his day treasures of indulgence, of consideration, of goodness ; he dies without having accomplished anything. The story of his precious life is all told in a word — "to aspire and to regret." He has never learned to will. Alas ! is there not something of this even among the bravest and best of men ?
The life and death of a little child and of a negro slave ! — that is the whole book ! This negro and this child are two saints of heaven ! The affection that unites them, the respect of these two perfect ones for each other, is the only love-story, the only passion of the drama. I know not what other genius but that of sanctity itself could shed over this affection and this situation a charm so powerful and so sustained. The child read- ing the Bible on the knees of the slave, dreaming over its mysteries and •mjoying them in her exceptional maturity ; now covering him with flow-
Ill INTKODUCTION.
era like a doll, and now looking to him as something sacred, passing from tender playfulness to tender veneration, and then fading away through a mysterious malady which seems to be nothing but the wearing of pity in a nature too pure, too divine, to accept earthly law ; dying finally in th» arms of the slave, and calling him after her to the bosom of God, — all this is so new, so beautiful, that one asks one's self in thinking of it whether the success which has attended the work is after all equal to the height of the conception.
Children are the true heroes of Mrs. Stowe's works. Her soul, the most motherly that could be, has conceived of these little creatures in a halo of grace. George Shelby, the little Harry, the cousin of Eva, the regretted babe of the little wife of the Senator, and Topsy, the poor diabolic, excel- lent Topsy, — all the children that one sees, and even those that one does not see in this romance, but of whom one has only a few words from their desolate mothers, seem to us a world of little angels, white and black, where any mother may recognize some darling of her own, source of her joys and tears. In taking form in the spirit of Mrs. Stowe, these children, without ceasing to be children, assume ideal graces, and come at last to interest us more than the personages of an ordinary love-story.
Women, too, are here judged and painted with a master hand ; not merely mothers who are sublime, but women who are not mothers either in heart or in fact, and whose infirmities are treated with indulgence or with rigor. By the side of the methodical Miss Ophelia, who ends by learning that duty is good for nothing without love, Marie St. Clair is a frightfully truthful portrait. One shudders in thinking that she exists, thnt she is everywhere, that each of us has met her and seen her, per- haps, not far from us, for it is only necessary that this charming creature should have slaves to torture, and we should see her revealed complete through her vapors and her nervous complaints.
The saints also have their claw ! it is that of the lion. She buries it deep in the conscience, an<\ a little of burning indignation and of terrible eareasm docs not, after all, misbecome this Harriet Stowe, this woman so gentle, so humane, so religious, and full of evangelical unction. Ah ! yes, she is a very good woman, but not what we derisively call " goody good." Hers is a heart strong and courageous, which in blessing the unhappy and applauding the faithful, tending the feeble and succoring the irresolute, does not hesitate to bind to the pillory the hardened tyrant, to show to the world his deformity.
She is, in the true spirit of the word, consecrated. Her fervent Chris- tianity sings the praise of the martyr, but permits no man the right to perpetuate the wrong. She denounces that strange perversion of Scripture which tolerates the iniquity of the oppressor because it gives opportunity for the virtues of the victims. She calls on God himself, and threatens in his name ; she shows us human law on one side, and God on the other 1
INTRODUCTION. liii
Let no one say that, because she exhorts to patient endurance of wrong, she justifies those who do the wrong. Read the beautiful page where George Harris, the white slave, embraces for the first time the shores of a free territory, and presses to his heart wife and child, who at last are his own. What a beautiful picture, that ! What a large heart-throb ! what a triumphant protest of the eternal and inalienable right of man to liberty !
Honor and respect to you, Mrs. Stowe ! Some day your recompense, which is already recorded in heaven, will come also iii this world.
GEORGE SAND. NOHANT, December 17, 1852.
Madame L. S. Belioc, also a well-known and distinguished writer, the translator of Miss Edgeworth's and of other English works into French, says : —
44 When the first translation of ' Uncle Tom ' waspublished in Paris there was a general hallelujah for the author and for the cause. A few weeks after, M. Charpentier, one of our best publishers, called on me to ask a new translation. I objected that there were already so many it might prove a failure. He insisted, saying, ' II n'y aura jamais assez de lecteurs pour un tei livre,' and he particularly desired a special translation for his own collection, ' Bibliotheque Charpentier,' where it is catalogued, and where it continues now to sell daily. 'La Case de 1'Oncle Tom' was the fifth, if I recollect rightly, and a sixth illustrated edition appeared some months after. It was read by high and low, by grown persons and chil- dren. A great enthusiasm for the anti-slavery cause was the result. The popularity of the work in France was immense, and no doubt influenced the public mind in favor ot the North during the war of secession."
The next step in the history of " Uncle Tom " was a meeting at Stafford House, when Lord Shaftesbury recommended to the women, of England the sending of an " affectionate and Christian address to the women of America."
This address, composed by Lord Shaftesbury, was taken in hand for signatures by energetic canvassers in all parts of England, and also among resident English on the Continent. The demand for signatures went as far forth as the city of Jerusalem. When all the signatures were collected, the document was forwarded to the care of Mrs. Stowe in America, with a letter from Lord Carlisle, recom- mending it to her, to be presented to the ladies of America in such way as she should see fit.
It was exhibited first at the Boston Anti-slavery fair, and no*,1
liv INTRODUCTION.
remains in its solid oak case a lasting monument of the feeling called forth by " Uncle Tom's Cabin."
It is in twenty-six thick folio volumes, solidly bound in morocco, with the American eagle on the back of each. On the first page of the first volume is the address, beautifully illuminated on vellum, and following are the subscribers' names, filling the volumes. There are 562,448 names of women of every rank of life, from the nearest in rank to the throne of England to the wives and daughters of the humblest artisan and laborer. Among all who signed it is fair to presume there was not one who had not read the book, and did not, at the time of signing, feel a sympathy for the cause of the oppressed pejple whose wrongs formed its subject. The address, with its many signatures, was simply a relief to that impulsive desire to do something for the cause of the slave, which the reading of " Uncle Tom's Cabin " appeared to inspire.
Of the wisdom of this step there have been many opinions. No- body, however, can doubt that Lord Shaftesbury, who had spent a long life in labors to lift burdens from the working-classes of Eng- land, and who had redeemed from slavery and degradation English women and children in its mines and collieries, had thereby acquired a certain right to plead for the cause of oppressed working-classes in all countries.
The address was received as a welcome word of cheer and encour- agement by that small band of faithful workers who for years had stood in an unfashionable minority ; but so far as the feeling ex- pressed in it was one of real Christian kindliness and humility, it was like a flower thrown into the white heat of a furnace. It added intensity, if that were possible, to that terrific conflict of forces which was destined never to cease till slavery was finally abolished.
It was a year after the publication of " Uncle Tom," that Mrs. Stowe visited England, and was received at Stafford House, there meeting all the best known and best worth knowing of the higher circles of England.
The Duchess of Sutherland, then in the height of that majestic beauty and that noble grace of manner which made her a fit repre- sentative of English womanhood, took pleasure in showing by this demonstration the sympathy of the better class of England with that small unpopular party in the United States who stood for the rights of the slave.
On this occasion she presented Mrs. Stowe with a solid gold bracelet made in the form of a slave's shackle, with the words, " We
INTRODUCTION. h
trust it is a memorial of a chain that is soon to be broken." On two of the links were inscribed the date of the abolition of the slave- trade, March 25, 1807, and of slavery in English territory, August 1, 1834. On another liiik was recorded the number of signature? to the address of the women of England.
At the time such a speech and the hope it expressed seemed likt a Utopian dream. Yet that bracelet has now inscribed upon its other links the steps of American emancipation : " Emancipation in District of Columbia, April 16, 1862"; "President's proclama- tion abolishing slavery in rebel states, January 1, 1863" ; "Mary- land free, October 13, 1864"; " Missouri free, January 11, 1865." " Constitutional amendment " (forever abolishing slavery in the United States) is inscribed on the clasp of the bracelet. Thus what seemed the vaguest and most sentimental possibility has become a feet of history.
A series of addresses presented to Mrs. Stowe at this time by public meetings in different towns of England, Scotland, and Ire- land, still remain among the literary curiosities relating to this book. The titles of these are somewhat curious : " Address from the Inhabitants of Berwick-upon-Tweed " ; " Address from the In- habitants of Dalkeith " ; Address from the Committee of the Glas- gow Female Anti-slavery Society " ; " Address from the Glasgow University Abstainers' Society"; "Address from a Public Meet- ing in Belfast, Ireland " ; " Address from the Committee of the Ladies' Anti-slavery Society, Edinburgh " ; " Address from the City of Leeds."
All these public meetings, addresses, and demonstrations of sym- pathy were, in their time and way, doubtless of perfect sincerity. But when the United States went into a state of civil war, these demonstrations ceased.
But it is due to the brave true working-classes of England to say that in this conflict, whenever they thought the war was one of justice to the slave, they gave it their sympathy, and even when it brought hardship and want to their very doors, refused to lend themselves to any popular movement which would go to crush the oppressed in America.
It is but justice also to the Duchess of Sutherland to say that although bv the time our war was initiated she had retired from
O v
her place as leader of society to the chamber of the invalid, yet her sympathies expressed in private letters ever remained true to the cause of freedom.
M INTRODUCTION.
Her son-in-law, the Duke of Argyll, stood almost alone in the House of Lords in defending the cause of the Northern States. It is, moreover, a significant fact that the Queen of England, in concur- rence with Prince Albert, steadily resisted every attempt to enlist the warlike power of England against the Northern States.
But Almighty God had decreed the liberation of the African race, and though Presidents, Senators, and Representatives united in de- claring that such were not their intentions, yet by great signs and mighty wonders was this nation compelled to listen to the voice that spoke from heaven, — " Let my people go."
In the darkest hour of the war, when defeat and discouragement had followed the Union armies, and all hearts were trembling with fear, Mrs. Stowe was in the Senate-Chamber at Washington, and heard these words in the Message of President Lincoln : —
" If this struggle is to be prolonged till there be not a house in the land where there is not one dead, till all the treasure amassed by the un- paid labor of the slave shall be wasted, till every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be atoned by blood drawn by the sword, — we can only bow and say, ' Just and true are thy ways, thou King of Saints ! ' '
Such words were a fit exponent of the Emancipation Proclama- tion, which, though sown in weakness, was soon raised in power, and received the evident benediction of God's providence.
" Uncle Tom's Cabin," in the fervor which conceived it, in the feeling which it inspired through the world, was only one of a line of ripples marking the commencement of mighty rapids, moving by forces which no human power could stay to an irresistible termi- nation,— towards human freedom.
Now the war is over, slavery is a thing of the past ; slave-pens, blood-hounds, slave-whips, and slave-comes are only bad dreams of the night ; and now the humane reader can afford to read " Uncle Tom's Cabin " without an expenditure of torture and tears.
For many years Mrs. Stowe has had a home in the Southern States, and she has yet to meet an intelligent southern man or woman who does not acquiesce in the extinction of slavery, and feel that the life of free society is as great an advantage to the whites as to the blacks. Slavery has no mourners ; there is nobody who wishes it back.
As to the influence of " Uncle Tom's Cabin " in various other lands of the earth whither it has been carried, intelligence has some- times come to the author through the American missionaries and other sources. The three following letters are specimens.
In a letter from Miss Florence Nightingale, October 26. 1856, she lays : —
INTRODUCTION". Ivil
" I hope it may be some pleasure to you, dear madam, to hear that •Uncle Tom ' was read by the sick and suffering in our Eastern Military Hospitals with intense interest. The interest in that book raised many a sull'erer who, while he had not a grumble to bestow upon his own mis- fortunes, had many a thought of sorrow and just indignation for those which you brought before him. It is from the knowledge of such evils so brought home to so many honest hearts that they feel as well as know them, that we confidently look to their removal in God's good time."
From the Armenian Convent in the Lagoon of Venice came a most beautiful Armenian translation of " Uncle Torn," with a letter from the principal translator.
Rev. Mr. Dwight thus wrote to Professor Stowe from Constanti- nople, September 8, 1855 : -
" ' Uncle Tom's Cabin ' in the Armenian language ! Who would have thought it ? 1 do not suppose your good wife, when she wrote that book, thought that she was going to missionate it among the sons of Haig in all their dispersions, following them along the banks of the Euphrates, sitting down with them in their towns and villages under the shade of hoary Ararat, travelling with them in their wanderings even to India and China. But 1 have it in my hands ! in the Armenian of the present day, the same language in which I speak and think and dream. Now do not suppose this is any of my work, or that of any missionary in the field. The translation has been made and book printed at Venice by a fraternity of Catholic Armenian Monks perched there on the Island of St. Lazarus. It is in two volumes, neatly printed and with plates, I think translated from the French. It has not been in any respect ma- terially altered, and when it is so, not on account of religious sentiment. The account of the negro prayer and exhortation meetings is given in full, though the translator, not knowing what we mean by people's becom- ing Christians, took pains to insert at the bottom of the page that at these meetings of the negroes great effects were sometimes produced by the warm-hearted exhortations and prayers, and it often happened that heathen negroes embraced Christianity on the spot.
One of your former scholars is now in my house, studying Armenian, and the book which I advised him to take as the best for the language is this ' Uncle Tom's Cabin.'"
Two or three other letters will conclude this repertoire.
86 SAUCHIEHALL STREET, GLASGOW,
16th April, 1853. MRS. H. B. STOWE,
MADAM, — When persons of every rank in this country are almost vying with each other who is to show you most respect, you might per-
Jviii INTRODUCTION.
haps think but little at being addressed by an exile, who. offers you hit heartfelt thanks, not for the mere gratification which the reading of " Uncle Tom's Cabin " afforded, but for the services you have rendered to the cause of humanity and of my country. You may be surprised at hearing of services rendered to my country (Poland) ; yet so it is. The unvarnished tale you published cannot fail to awaken the nobler feeling? of man in every reader, it instils into their minds that fundamental Christian precept to love our fellow-beings, and it is by the spread of universal benevolence and not by revolutions that the cause of humanity is best promoted.
But you have done more than that, although you may be unconscious of it. A mother yourself, you have given comfort to other mothers. That foreign land where such pure benevolence as is taught in " Uncle Tom's Cabin " is honored, cannot be a bad land, and though letters from their children do not always reach Polish mothers, your book is accessi- ble to them, and gives them the conviction that their offspring, far as they are from them, are still within reach of maternal feelings.
A still higher good you have done to many a man by the picture of the patient faith of Uncle Tom. It was the custom of some persons to sneer at faith, on the supposition that it implied a blind belief in all that the clergyman utters. Your book has helped to dispel that delusion, and faith begins to be seen by some as something nobler, as the firm convic- tion of the mind that higher aims are placed before man than the grati- fication of his appetites and desires ; that it is, in short, that strength of mind which restrains him from doing evil when his bad passions lead him into temptation.
I cannot address you in the name of a body, but as an exile, as a man belonging to the family of mankind, I beg to offer you my thanks and my wishes. May God bless you, may your days be many and prosperous, and may the noble aim you proposed yourself in writing " Uncle Tom's Cabin" be speedily accomplished ! If I may add a request, I would beg of you to pray now and then for the poor Polish mothers, — a good per- son's prayer may be acceptable.
I am, madam,
Your most obedient servant,
CHARLES F. MULLER.
WAVERLEY IN BELMONT, October 26, 1860. MRS. H. B. STOWE.
DEAR MADAM, — I will not make any apology for the liberty which I take of writing to you, although I cannot claim any personal acquaint- ance. At any rate, I think you will excuse me. The facts which I wish to communicate will, I doubt not, be of sufficient interest to justify me.
It was my privilege, for such I shall esteem it on many accounts, to
INTKODUCTION. lix
receive into my family and have under my especial care the young Brah- min whose recent visit to this' country you must be acquainted with. I mean Joguth Chunder Gangooly, the first and only individual of his caste who has visited this country. Being highly intelligent and famil- iar with the social and intellectual character of the Hindoos of his native land, he gave me much information for which, in my scanty knowledge of that country, I was unprepared. Among other things he assured me that " Uncle Tom's Cabin " was a book as well known and as much read in Bengal among his own people as here in America, that it had been translated into their language, and been made a household book. He himself showed a familiar acquaintance with its contents, and assured me that it had done not a little to deepen the loathing of slavery in the minds of the Hindoos, and also to qualify their opinion of our country.
The facts which he gave me I believe to be substantially true, and deemed them such as would have an interest for the author of the book in question. Though I grieve for the wrong and shame which disgraces my country, I take a laudable pride in those productions of the true- hearted that appeal to the sympathies of all nations, and find a ready response in the heart of humanity.
With high respect,
Yours truly,
JAMES THUKSTON.
From MRS. LEONOWENS, formerly English Governess in the Family of
the King of Siam.
48 INGLIS STREET, HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA,
October 15, 1878. MRS.H. B. STOWE.
DEAR MADAM, — The following is the fact, the result of the transla- tion of " Uncle Tom's Cabin " into the Siamese language, by my friend Sonn Klean, a lady of high rank at the court of Siam. I enclose it to you here, as related in one of my books.
" Among the ladies of the harem I knew one woman who more than all the rest helped to enrich my life, and to render fairer and more beau- tiful every lovely woman I have since chanced to meet. Her name trans- lated itself, and no other name could have been more appropriate, into ' Hidden Perfume.' Her dark eyes were clearer and calmer, her full lips had a stronger expression of tenderness about them, and her brow, which was at times smooth and open, and at others contracted with pain, grew nobler and more beautiful as through her studies in English the purposes of her life strengthened and grew deeper and broader each day. Our daily lessons and translations from English into Siamese had become a part of her happiest hours. The first book we translated was ' Uncle Tom's jCabin,' and it soon became her favorite book. She would read it
\x INTRODUCTION.
over and over again, though she knew all the characters by heart and spoke of them as if she had known them all her life. On the 3d of Jan- uary, 1867, she voluntarily Unrated all her slaves, men, women, and children, one hundred and thirty in all, saying, ' I am wishful to be good like Harriet Beecher Stowe, and never again to buy human bodies, but only to let them go free once more.' Thenceforth, to express her entire sympathy and affection for the author of ' Uncle Tom's Cabin,' she always signed herself Harriet Beecher Stowe ; and her sweet voice trembled with love and music whenever she spoke of the lovely American lady who had taught her as even Buddha had taught kings to respect the rights of her fellow-creatures."
I remain
Yours very truly,
A. H. LEON OWENS.
The distinctively religious influence of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" has been not the least remarkable of the features of its history.
Among other testimonials in the possession of the writer is a Bible presented by an association of workingmen in England on the occasion of a lecture delivered to them on " Uncle Tom, as an Illustration of Christianity."
The Christianity represented in the book was so far essential and unsectarian, that alike in the Protestant, Catholic, and Greek church, it has found sympathetic readers.
It has indeed been reported that " Uncle Tom's Cabin " has been placed in the Index of the Roman Catholic Church, but of this there may be a doubt, as when the author was in Rome she saw it in the hands of the common people, and no less in those of some of the highest officials in the Vatican, and heard from them in conver- sation expressions of warm sympathy with the purport of the work.
In France it was the testimony of colporteurs that the enthusiasm for the work awakened a demand for the Bible of Uncle Tom, and led to a sale of the Scriptures.
The accomplished translator of M. Charpentier's edition said to the author, that, by the researches necessary to translate correctly the numerous citations of Scripture in the work, she had been led to a most intimate knowledge of the sacred writings in French.
The witty scholar and litterateur, Heinrich Heine, speaking of his return to the Bible and its sources of consolation in the last years of his life, uses this language : —
"The reawakening of my religious feelings I owe to that holy book the Bible. Astonishing ! that after I have whirled about all my life over all the dance-floors of philosophy, and yielded myself to all th«
INTRODUCTION.
orgies of the intellect, and paid my addresses to all possible systems, without satisfaction, like Messalina after a licentious night, I now find myself on the same standpoint where poor Uncle Tom stands, — on. that of the Bible. I kneel down by my black brother in the same prayer ! What a humiliation ! With all my science I have come no farther than the poor ignorant negro who has scarce learned to spell. Poor Tom, indeed, seems to have seen deeper things in the
holy book than I Tom, perhaps, understands them better than
I, because more flogging occurs in them, — that is to say, those ceaseless blows of the whip which have a;sthetically disgusted me in reading the Gospels and Acts. But a poor negro slave reads with his back, and understands better than we do. But I, who used to make cita- tions from Homer, now begin to quote the Bible as Uncle Tom does." — Vermischte Schriften, p. 77.
The acute German in these words has touched the vital point in the catholic religious spirit of the book. " Uncle Tom's Cabin " shows that under circumstances of utter desolation and despair the religion of Christ can enable the poorest and most ignorant human being, not merely to submit, but to triumph, — that the soul of the lowest and weakest, by its aid, can become strong in superhuman virtue, and rise above every threat and terror and danger, in a sublime assurance of an ever-present love and an im- mortal life.
It is in this point of view that its wide circulation through all the languages of the earth may justly be a source of devout satisfaction.
Life has sorrows so hopeless, so dreadful, — so many drag through weary, joyless lives, — that a story which carries such a message as this can never cease to be a comforter.
The message is from Christ the Consoler, and too blessed is an* one allowed by Him to carry it to the sorrowful children of men.
BIBLIOGKAPHICAL ACCOUNT
OF
UNCLE TOM'S CABIN
BRITISH MUSEUM, September 14, 1878.
DEAR SIRS, — I well remember the interest which the late Mr. Thomas Watts took in the story of " Uncle Tom's Cabin," from the moment that he had read it. Mr. Watts, besides being an accom- plished philologist, and one of the greatest linguists that ever lived, never neglected the current literature of his time, including the novels and romances of his own country and America. Scott and Dickens, Washington Irving and Fenimore Cooper, charmed him more than the dull books which great scholars are commonly sup- posed to be always reading. In Mrs. Beecher Stowe's work he ad- mired not only the powerful descriptions of life in the Slave States, the strokes of character, the humor and the pathos ; but above all he was impressed with the deep earnestness of purpose in the writer, and used to express it as his opinion that it was a work destined to prove a most powerful agent in the uprooting of slavery in America. No one in this country was better acquainted than Mr. Watts with the politics of the United States, and in the war which eventually ensued on the subject of slavery, between the Northern and Southern States, he was always a consistent supporter of the policy of President Lincoln.
Of the reasons which induced him to prevail upon Mr. (now Sir Anthony) Panizzi to make a collection for the Library of the British Museum of the different translations of " Uncle Tom's Cabin," the extracts given from his letter to Professor Stowe are a sufficient ex- planation.
At your desire I have the pleasure to forward to you, as a sup- plement to Mr. Watts's letter, the accompanying list of editions and translations of" Uncle Tom's Cabin," contained in the Library of
xiV BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNT
the British Museum, as well as of others which have not yet beer obtained. Of the latter there is a Servian translation which has been ordered but not yet received.
When this shall have been added, the various languages into which " Uncle Tom's Cabin " has been translated will be exactly twenty in number, — a copy of each being in the British Museum, These several languages, in alphabetical order, are as follows : viz. Armenian, Bohemian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Flemish (only a modification of Dutch, but often treated as a distinct language), French, German, Hungarian or Magyar, Illyrian (by Mr. Watt called Wendish), Polish, Portuguese, Romaic or Modern Greek, Russian, Servian, Spanish, Swedish, Wallachian, Welsh.
There may still be translations in other languages, of which sure intelligence has not yet been obtained.
In some of the languages mentioned, as, for instance, in French and German, there are several distinct versions. A summary of these is given at the end of the general Bibliographical List here- with appended.
I remain, dear sirs,
Yours very truly,
GEORGE BULLEN. MESSRS. HOUGHTON, OSGOOD, & Co.
The letter of Mr. Watts to which Mr. Bullen refers was addressed to Professor Stowe about 1860, and is as follows : —
Extract from a Letter from the late THOMAS WATTS, ESQ., Librarian of the British Museum, to PROFESSOR STOWE.
DEAR SIR, — It is certainly one of the most striking features of the popularity of " Uncle Tom's Cabin " that it has been translated into so many languages, and among them into so many obscure ones, languages which it has been so hard for popularity to penetrate. Even the master- pieces of Scott and Dickens have never been translated into Welsh, while this American novel has forced its way, in various shapes, into the lan- guages of the ancient Britons.
There is a complete and excellent translation by Hugh Williams, there is an abridged one by W. Williams, and there is a strange incor- poration of it, almost entire, into the body of a tale by Rev. W. Ree, called " Aclyryd f Errytha " (" Robert or Uncle Robert's Hearth)."
In the east of Europe it has found as much acceptance as in the west. The " Edinburgh Review " mentioned some time ago that there was one
OF UNCLE TOM'S CABIN.
into Magyar. There are, in fact, three in that language, — one by Tringi, one by Tarbar, and one (probably an abridged one) for the use of chil dren. There are two translations into the Illyrian, and two into the Walla chian. There is one Polish translation, and an adaptation by Miss Arabella Palmer into Russian. A full translation into Russian appears to have been forbidden till lately, lest it might get into circulation among the serfs, among whom it might prove as hazardous to introduce it as the "Portuguese version published in Paris among the slaves of Brazil.
Of course the book exists also in Danish, Swedish and Dutch (one Dutch edition being published in the island of Batavia). In the great literary languages of the Continent the circulation has been immense. In the " Bibliographic de la France," at least four versions are mentioned which have run through various editions, and in the Leipsic Catalogue for 1852 and 1853 the distinct German versions enumerated amounted to no less than thirteen.
In the Asiatic languages the only version I have yet seen is the Armenian. Copies of all these versions have been procured or ordered for the British Museum.
It is customary in all great libraries to make a collection of versions of the Scriptures in various languages, and dialects, to serve, among other purposes, for those of philological study. I suggested to Mr. Panizzi, then at the head of the printed book department, that in this point of view it would be of considerable interest to collect the versions of " Unclt- Tom."
The translation of the same text by thirteen different translators at precisely the same epoch of a language is a circumstance perhaps altogether unprecedented, and it is one not likely to recur, as the tendency of modern alterations in the law of copyright is to place restriction son the liberty of translators. The possession, too, of such a book as "Uncle Tom's Cabin " is very different from that of such a book r,s " Thomas a Kempis," in the information it affords to the student of a language. There is every variety of style, from that of animated narration and passionate wailing to that of the most familiar dialogue, and dialogue not only in the lan- guage of the upper classes but of the lowest.
The student who has once mastered " Uncle Tom " in Welsh or Wal- lachian is not likely to meet any further difficulties in his progress through Welsh or Wallachian prose. These considerations, united to those of another character, which had previously led to the collection by the Museum of translations of the plays of Shakespeare, the Antiquary, the Pickwick Club, etc., led to the adoption of my views, and many of these versions have already found their way to the shelves of the Museum, while others are on the way. When all are assembled the notes and pref- aces of different translators would furnish ample material for an instruc- tive article in a review.
Ixvi BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNT
I regret that my account of these versions should be so much less extended than I had hoped to make it, hut the duties of an officer in tha British Museum, especially at this period of the year, render it almost impossible for him to make any use whatever of the treasures committed to his charge, which are as a rule as much closed to him as they are open to the public. You must excuse on this account all my shortcomings, and believe me, dear sir,
Yours very truly,
THOMAS WATTS.
The following is a list of the various editions and translations of " Uncle Tom's Cabin," contained in the Library of the British MU-" seum : —
I. Complete Texts and abridgments, extracts, and adaptations, ver- sified or dramatized, of the original English.
II. Translations, in alphabetical order, of the languages, nineteen in number : viz. Armenian, Bohemian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Flemish, French, German, Hungarian or Magyar, Illyrian, Ital- ian, Polish, Portuguese, Romaic or Modern Greek, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Wallachian, Welsh.
In these are also comprised abridgments, extracts, and adap- tations.
III. Appendix. Containing a list of the various works relating to " Uncle Tom's Cabin " ; also critical notices of the work, whether separately published, or contained in reviews, maga- zines, newspapers, etc.
I. ORIGINAL ENGLISH.
Uncle Tom's Cabin ; or, Life among the Lowly . . . One hundred and tenth thousand. 2 vols.
Boston, U. S. 1852. 12°
Uncle Tom's Cabin ; or, Life among the Lowly . . . With introductory .remarks by J. Sherman.
H. G. Bolin. London. 1852. 8°
Uncle Tom's Cabin ; or, Negro Life in the Slave; States of America.
T. Bosworth (Aug. 14th). London. 1852. 8°
Uncle Tom's Cabin ; or, Life among the Lowly. . . . With a Preface by the Author, written expressly for this edition.
T. Bosworth (Oct. 13th). London. 1852. 8°
STncle Tom's Cabin . . . With, twenty-seven Illustrations on wood by G. C ruik shaii k, Esq.
J. Cassell. London. 1852. 8°
OF UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. Ixvii
tlncle Tom's Cabin. With a new Preface by H. B. Stowe.
Clarke & (Jo. London. [1852.] 8°
The People's Illustrated Edition. Uncle Tom's Cabin ; or, Negro Life in the Slave States of America. With 50 Engravings.
Clarke & Co. London. 1852. 8°
Uncle Tom's Cabin ; or, Negro Life in the Slave States of America. [With a Preface signed U.J
Clarke & Co. Lmidon. 1852. 12°
Uncle Tom's Cabin ; or, Negro Life in the Slave States of America. Third edition. [With a Preface by G.]
Clarke & Co. London. 1852. 8°
Uncle Tom's Cabin ; or, Negro Life in the Slave States of America. (Th« seventh thousand of tins edition.)
C. H. Clarke & Co. London. 1852. 8°
Uncle Tom's Cabin ; or, Negro Life in the Slave States of America . . . reprinted . . . from the tenth American edition.
Clarke & Co. London. 1852. 8°
Uncle Tom's Cabin, " the Story of the Age."
J. Gilbert. London. 1852. 18°
Uncle Tom's Cabin : a Tale of Life among the Lowly ; or, Pictures of Slavery in the United States of America. Third edition. Embel- lished with eight spirited Engravings.
Ingram, Cooke & Co. London. 1852. 8°
Uncle Tom's Cabin ; or, the History of a Christian Slave. With an In- troduction by E. Burritt. With 16 Illustrations, etc.
Partridge & Oakey. London. 1852. 8°
Uncle Tom's Cabin ; or, the History of a Christian Slave . . . With [an Introduction and] twelve Illustrations on Wood, designed by Anelay.
Partridge & Oakey. Lmidon. 1852. 8°
Another edition. Uncle Tom's Cabin ; or, the History of a Christian Slave. With an Introduction [and Illustrations by H. Anelay].
Partridge and Oakey (Sept. 18th). London. [1852.]' 8°
Uncle Tom's Cabin ; or, Negro Life in the Slave States of America. With eight Engravings. [With a Preface signed G.]
Routledge & Co. London. 1852. 8°
Uncle Tom's Cabin ; or, Negro Life in the Slave States of America Third edition. With forty Illustrations.
Routledge <fc Co. & Clarke & Co. London, 1852. 8°
Uncle Tom's Cabin ; or, Life among the Lowly. With introductory re- marks by J. Sherman.
J. Snow. London. 1852. 8°
Second edition. Complete for seven pence. Uncle Tom's Cabin . . . Reprinted verbatim irom the American edition. Fiftieth thousand,
G. V ulcers. London. [1852.], 4° ,
Ixviii BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNT
Uncle Tom's Cabin. Tauchnilz, Leipzig. 1852. 16°. Being part ol the Collection of " British Authors." Vol. 243, 44.
Cassell's edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin [by H. E. B. S.].
London. 1852. 12°
Uncle Tom's Cabin. London. 1852. 8°. Forming Vol. 84 cf the " Parlour Library."
Uncle Tom's Cabin ; or, Negro Life in the Slave States of America. Lan~ don. 1852. 8°. Being No. 121 of the "Standard Novels."
Uncle Tom's Cabin ; or, Life among the Lowly. New illustrated edition. Adam & Charles Black. Edinburgh. 1853. 8°
Uncle Tom's Cabin : or, Negro Life in Slave States of America.
Clarke, Bcdon d; Co. London. [1853.] 16°
Uncle Tom's Cabin ; or, Life among the Lowly . . . With above one hun- dred and fifty Illustrations.
N. Cookc. London. 1853. 8°
Uncle Tom's Cabin ; or, Life among the Lowly. Illustrated edition. Designs by Billings, etc.
S. Low, Son <fc Co. London. 1853. 8°
Uncle Tom's Cabin ; or, Slave Life in America. [With a Biographical Sketch of Mrs. H. E. B. Stowe.]
T. Nelson & Sons. London, Edinburgh, printed 1853. 8°
Uncle Tom's Cabin : a Tale of Life among the Lowly. With a Preface by the . . . Earl of Carlisle.
G. Routledgc <L- Co. London. 1853. 8°
Uncle Tom's Cabin. Adapted for young persons by Mrs. Crowe. With 8 Illustrations.
G. Routledgc & Co. London. 1853. 8°
Uncle Tom's Cabin : a Tale of Slave Life, etc.
London. 1853. 8° forming part of the " Universal Library." Fiction, Vol. I.
Uncle Tom's Cabin . . . Standard illustrated edition.
London, Ipswich [printed 1857]. 12° One of a series called the " Run and Bead Library."
Uncle Tom's Cabin . . . With a Preface by ... the Earl of Carlisle. A new edition.
Routlcdgc and Sons. London. [1864.] 8°
Uncle Tom's Cabin . . . Standard illustrated edition. London. 187ft 8°. Forming part of the " Lily Series."
A.11 about little Eva, from Uncle Tom's Cabin.
London. 1853. 12°
All about little Topsy, from Uncle Tom's Cabin.
London 1853. 12°
OF UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. Ixix
A Peep into Uncle Tom's Cabin. By "Aunt Mary" [i. e. Miss Low]. With an Address from Mrs. H. B. Stowe to the Children of England and America.
S. Low and Son. London. (Jewett & Co., Boston, U. S.) A selection of passages from Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Pictures and Stories from Uncle Tom's Cabin (designed to adapt Mrs. Stowe's narrative to the understanding of the youngest readers).
Edinburgh. 1853. 4°
The Juvenile Uncle Tom's Cabin. Arranged for young readers. By Mrs. Crowe.
Routledge & Co. London. 1853. 12° An abridgment. With four Illustrations.
Uncle Tom's Cabin for Children. By Mrs. Crowe.
Routlcdyc <fc Sons. London. 1868. 12° This is another edition of the preceding abridgment. With two Illustrations.
Uncle Tom's Cabin. A drama of real life. In three Acts [and in prose]. Adapted from Mrs. Beecher Stowe's celebrated Novel.
London. 1854. 12° Contained in Vol. XII. of " Lacy's acting edition of Plays."
Uncle Tom's Cabin. A drama in six Acts, by G. L. Aiken.
New York. 1868. 12° Contained in " French's Standard Drama."
II TRANSLATIONS.
[Brother Thomas' Cabin. A story by H. B. Stowe, an American Lady.]
Armenian. 2 Vols. (Venice.) 1854. 12°
Stryc Toma's, aneb Obrazy ze zivota cernych otroku v Americe, z an- glickeho pane H. B. S. [much abridged].
Bohemian. V. Brone. 1854. 8°
Onkel Tomas, eller Negerlivet i Amerikas Slaverstater . . . Oversat fra den nordamerikanske original af Capt. Schadtler.
Danish. Kiobenhavn. 1853. 8°
Onkel Tom's Hytte, eller Negerliv i de amerikanske Slavestater . . . Oversat of P. V. Grove.
Danish. Kiobenhavn. 1856. 8°
De Negerhut. [Uncle Tom's Cabin] . . . Naar den 20en Amerikaanschen druk, uit het Engelsch vertaald door C. M. Mensing.
Dutch. 2 Deel. Haarlem. 1853. 8°
Beta Tumon Tupa, lyhykaisesti kerottu ja kanniilla kuvanksilla valaistu. [Abridged translation into Finnish of " Uncle Tom's Cabin " by Mrs, H. E. Beecher Stowe.] Finnish.
Turussa [Abo.]. 1856. obi. 4°
Ixx BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNT
De Hut van Onkel Tom, cene Slnven-Geschiedenis. Naer het Engelscb.
Flemish. 3 Deel. Gent. [1852.] S°
La Cabane de 1'Oncle Tom, ou les noirs en Amerique. Traduction neuve, corrigee et accompagnee de notes par L. de Wailly et E. Texier. Troisieme edition.
French. Paris. [1852.] 8°
La Cabane de 1'Oncle Tom . . . traduction complete par A. Michiels, avec une biographic de 1'auteur.
French. Paris. 1852. 12°
La Case de 1'Oncle Tom, ou Sort des Negres Esclaves. Traduction nou- velle par M. L. Casion, precedee d'une etude sur 1'ouvrage [by H. CasionJ.
French. 2 torn. Paris, Cambrai [printed], 1853. 12°
La Case de 1'Oncle Tom • cu Tableaux de 1'Esclavage dans les Etats-Unia d'Amerique . . . Traduction nouvelle par Old Nick [pseud, i. e. P. E. Dauran Forgues] et A. Joanne.
French. Paris. 1853. 8°
La Case de 1'Oncle Tom . . . Traduction faite a la demunde de 1'Auteur par Madame L. S. Belloc, avec une preface de Madame B. Stowe, ecrite par elle pour cette traduction, precedee d'une notice sur sa vie par Madame L. S. Belloc, et ornee de sou portrait grave par M. F. Girard.
French. Paris. 1853. 12°
Mme. H. B. S. La Case de 1'Oncle Tom, traduite et accompagnee de no^es
Sar M. L. Pilatte. Nouvelle edition, revue et corrigee, augmentee 'une preface de 1'Auteur ecrite specialement pour cette edition, et d'une introduction par George Sand. Traduction autorisee . . . par Mme. B. Stowe.
French. Paris. 1853. 12°
Le Pere Tom, ou vie des negres en Amerique. Traduction de la Bedol- liere.
French. Paris, 1853. 12°
La Case de 1'Oncle Tom, ou vie des negres en Amerique . . . Traduction de L. Enault.
French. Paris. 1853. 8° One of a series called " Bibliotheque des Chemins de Fer."
La Case du Pere Tom. Traduction de la Bedolliere. Nouvelle edition, augmentee d'une notice de G. Sand. Illustrations, etc.
French. Paris. [1859 ?] 4°
La Case de 1'Oncle Tom. Drame en huit actes. Par MM. Dumanoir et D'Ennery. Kepresente pour la premiere fois, a Paris, sur le Theatra de l'Ambigue-Comique le 10 Janvier, 1853.
Paris. 1859. 4° Contained in the '' The'ltre Contemporain IllustreV' 80e Se>ie.
l/Oncle Tom. Drame en cinq actes et neuf tableaux. Par M. E. Texier
OF UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. Ixxi
et L. de Wailly. Represente pour la premiere fois a Paris, sur le Theatre de la Gaite le 23 Janvier 1853.
Paris. 1853. 8° Contained in the Bibliotheque Dramatique of Michel Le>y. Tome 49.
Another Edition. Paris. 1859. 4° Contained in the " Theatre Contemporain."
Onkel Tom's Hiitte. Eiue Negergeschichte. 3 Bdchen. German.
Berlin, Dessau [printed], 1852. 8° Forms Bdch. 4-6 Jahrg. 5 of the " Alljjemeine Deutsche Volks-Bibliothek."
Oheim Tom's Hiitte, oder das Leben bei den Niedrigen . . . Uebersetzt von H. R. Hutten.
German. Boston, U. S. Cambridge, U. S. [printed], 1853. 8°
Qnkel Tom, oder Schilderungen aus dem Leben in den Sklavenstaaten Nordamerika's . . . Nach den 35steu englischen Auflage von J. S. Lowe. German, 2 Bdc.
Hamburg, Leipzig [printed], 1853. 8°
Onkel Tom's Hiitte. Ein Roman aus dem Leben der Sklaven in Amerika. (Mit sechs sauberen Holzschuitten geziert. ) German. 2 Bdc.
Albert Sasco. Berlin. [1853.] 8°
Onkel Tom's Hiitte oder das Negerleben in den Sklavenstaaten des freien Nordamerika ... In deutscher Auffassungsweise fiir deutsche Lescr bearbeitet von Dr. Ungewitter. Dritte Ausgabe, mit 6 Illustration en. German.
Wien [printed] und Leipzig. 1853. 8°
Onkel Tom's Hiitte, oder Negerleben in den Sklavenstaaten von Amerika . . . Mit der Biographic der Verfasserin, und einer Vorrede von E. Burritt. Vollstandige und wohlfeilste Stereotyp- Ausgabe. Neunte Auflage. Nebst Portrait.
German. Leipzig. 1853. 8° This forms Bd. I of the " Neue Volks-Bibliothek, herausgegeben von A. Schrader."
Onkel Tom's Hiitte. Aus dem Englischen. Mit 6 Holzschnitten.
German. Berlin. 1853. 8°
Onkel Tom's Hiitte, oder Negerleben in den Sklavenstaaten Amerika's. Aus dem Englischen. Mit funfzig Illustrationen. Vierte Auflage.
German. Leipzig. 1854. 8°
Onkel Tom's Hiitte, nach dem Englischen fur die reifere Jugend bear. beitet von M. Cans. Mit einer Abbildung in Farbendruick.
German. Pest.h. 1853. 8° Forming Bd. 1 of the " Neues Lesekabinet fur die reifere Jugend."
Onkel Tom's Hiitte, oder Leiden der Negersklaven in Amerika. [By Mrs. H. E. B. Stowe.] 1m Auszuge fur das Volk bearbeitet. Mit einem Titelbilde.
German. Berlin. 1853. 16°
Onkel Tom's Hiitte. Erzahlung fiir Kinder bearbeitet. [From Mrs. (Stowe's tale.] Neues Bilder . . . und Lesebuch, etc.
Nurnberg. [1854?] obi. 4°
BIBLIOGKAPHICAL ACCOUNT
Onkel Tom's Hutte, fur Kinder. Nach dem Englischen ['of Mrs. Stowel von A. Hartel.
German. Leipzig. [1854 ?] 16°
Tamas Batya Kunyhoja ; vagy, Neger elet a rabszolga — tarto Amerikai allamokban. B. S. H. utan Angolbol, Irinyi
J. Hungarian 4 Kotet. Pesten. 1853. 12°
Tamas Batya. Gyermekek szamara. Kidolgozta M . . . Rokus. [Brother Thomas. For Children. Elaborated by Rokus M . . .]
Hungarian. Pesten. 1856. 8°
Tamas Batya, vagy egy Szerecsen rabszolga tbrtenete. H. B. Stowe utan irta Tatar Peter. [Brother Thomas, or story of a Negro Slave. Writ- ten by P. Tatar after H. B. Stowe. A versified abridgment.]
Hungarian. Pest. 1857. 8°
Stric Tomaz ali zivlenje zamorcov v Ameriki . . . Svobodno za Slovence zdelal J. B.
Illyrian. VCelovcn. 1853. 8°
Stric Tomova Koca, ali zivljenje zamozcov v robnih derzavah svobodne severne Amerike . . . Iz memskega poslovenil [and abridwd] F. Malavasic. S sterimi podobsinami.
Illyrian. V. Ljubljani. 1853. 8°
la Capanna dello Zio Tommaso ; ossia la vita dei Negri in America. Di Enrichetta Beeclier Stowe.
Italian. Lugano. 1853. 8C
Chata Wuja Tomasza, czyli zycie niewolnikow . Przettumaczvt.
F. Dydacki.
Polish. 2 torn. Lwow. 1853. 8°
Chatka Ojca Toma, czyli zycie murzynow w stanach niewolniczych Ameryki Polnocny : romans . . . 'Przeklad Waclawa P. Tom. 1. (Przeklad I. Iwickiego. Tom. 2.)
Polish. 2 Tom. Warszawa. 1865. 8°
A Cabana do Pai Thomaz, ou a vida dos pretos na America, Romance moral escripta em Inglez por Mrs. H. B. S. e traduzido em Portuguez por F. L. Alvares d'Andrada, etc. (Jnizo da obra por Mine. George Sand [pseud, i. e. Amantine Lucile Aurore Dudevant. With plates]!)
Portuguese. 2 Tom. Paris. 1853. 12°
H icaXvpT] TOV QW/J.O., T) 6 /3ios TOJV Mai/pwi' (t> 'A/aepj/fa. Mi/^taropta 'Ep/)t« erras STO/ST/S, fj.era<f>paffdfiffa €K rou 'Ayy\iKov viro I. Kapaffovrcra. Romaic m Modern Greek. 2 Vols. AQrjvqvi [Athens]. 1860. 8°
Khizhina dyadi Toma : roman.
Russian. St. Petersburg. 1858. 8°
Khizhina dyadi Toma : povyest, etc.
Russian. St. Petersburg. 1865. 8°
La Cabana del Tio Tomas. Novela escrita en Ingles.
Spanish. 2 torn. Mexico. 1853. 12°
OF UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. Ixxiii
La Cabana dei tio Tom, novela . . . traducida al Castellano por A. A. Orihuela.
Spanish. Bogota. 1853. 8e
La Cabana del tio Tomas, i los Negros en Americk. Traducida por los Redactores del Clamor Publico, y ilustrada con cinco laminas finas grabadas en acero.
Spanish. Barcelona. 1853. 8°
La Choza del Negro Tomas, o vida de los Negros en el Sur de los Estados- Unidos. Novela escrita en Ingles . . . traducida al Castellano.
Spanish. 2 torn. Madrid. 1853. 8°
La Choza de Tomas Novela . . . traducida al Castellano. Edicion ilus- trada con 26 gi-abados aparte del testo.
Spanish. Madrid, Paris. 1853. 4°
La Cboza de Tom . . . traducida por W. Aygualsde Izco. Segunda edicion.
Spanish. Madrid. 1853. 4°
Onkel Tom's Stuga. Bearbetad for Barn. [An abridgment for chil- dren.]
Swedish. Stockholm. 1868. 16° Koliba lui Moshu Toma, etc.
IVallachian. 2 Tom. Jassy. 1853. 8° /
Bordeiulu Unkiului Tom, etc.
Wallachian. 2 torn. Jassy. 1853. 8°
Crynodeb o Gaban 'Newyrth Tom ; nan Frywyd Negroaidd yn America . . . Cyfiethiedig gau y Lefiad [with a prefatory notice by W. Wil* Hams].
Welsh. Abertawy. [1853.] 12°
Caban f'Ewyeth Twm . . . gyda . . . gerfluniau gan G. Cruikshank. Cyheithad H. Williams.
Welsh. Llundain, 1853. 12°
Caban f'Eurythr Tomu, nen hanes caethwas Cristnogol . . . Crynodeb o waith H. B.
Welsh. Caernarfon. [I860?] 12°
III. APPENDIX.
The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin ; presenting the original facts and docu- ments upon which the story is founded. Together with corroborative Statements, verifying the truth of the Work. By Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe. Clarke, Bceton & Co. ; and Thomas Bosworth. London. [1853.] 8°
A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin. Tauchnitz, Leipzig. 1853. 16°
Forming Vols. 266-67 of the " Collection of British Authors."
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNT
A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin. Second Edition.
Sampson Low, Son <k Co. London. 1853. 8°
La Clef de la Case de 1'Oncle Tom. Avec les pieces justificatives. Ou« vrage traduit par Old Nick [pseud, i. e. Paul Emile Dauran Forgues] & A. Joanne.
Paris. 1853. 8° La Clef de la Case de 1'Oncle Tom.
Paris. 1857. This is another copy of the preceding, with a new title-page and a different date.
Schliissel zu Onkel Tom's Hiitte. Enthaltend die urspriinglichen Thatsachen und Documente, die dieser Geschichte zu Grunde liegen. Zweite Auflage.
Leipzig. 1853. 8°
Forming End. 5 and 7 of the " Neue Volks-Bibliothek, herausgegeben von At Schroder."
La Llave de la Cabana del Tio Tom. Traducida de la ultima edicion por G. A. LaiTosa.
Madrid, Barcelona [printed], 1855. 8°
REVIEWS AND NOTICES OF " UNCLE TOM'S CABIN," SEPARATELY PUB- LISHED ; ALPABETICALLY ARRANGED UNDER THE AUTHORS* NAMES.
Adams (F. Colburn). Uncle Tom at Home. A review of the reviewers and repudiators of Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Mrs. Stowe.
Philadelphia. 1853. 12°
Another Edition. London. [1853]. 12°
Brimblecomb (Nicholas) pseud. ? Uncle Tom's Cabin in ruins. Trium- phant defence of Slavery : in a series of Letters to H. B. Stowe.
Boston, U. S. 1853. 8°
Clare (Edward). The Spirit and Philosophy of Uncle Tom's Cabin.
London, 1853. 12°
Criswell (R.). Uncle Tom's Cabin contrasted with " Buckingham Hall, the Planter's Home" ; or, a fair view of both sides of the Slavery Question.
New York. 1853. 12°
Denman (Thomas) Baron Denman. "Uncle Tom's Cabin," "Bleak House," Slavery and Slave Trade. Seven articles by Lord Denman, reprinted from the "Standard." With an article containing facts connected with Slavery, by Sir G. Stephen, reprinted from the " Northampton Mercury."
London, 1853. 12°
Second Edition. London, 1853. 12°
Helps (Sir Arthur). A letter on Uncle Tom's Cabin. By the author of " Friends in Council."
Cambridge, U. S. 1852. 8°
OF UNCLE TOM'S CABIN.
Henson (Josiah). " Uncle Tom's Story of his Life." An Autobiography of J. Henson, from 1789 to 1876. With a Preface by Mrs. H. B. Stowe, and an introductory note by G. Sturge and S. Morley. Edited by J. Lobb. [With a Portrait.] Fortieth thousand.
London, 1877. 8°
Senior (Nassau William). American Slavery : a reprint of an article on
• "Uncle Tom's Cabin," of which a portion was inserted in the 206th
number of the Edinburgh Review ; and of Mr. Sumner's Speech of
the 19th and 20th of May, 1856. With a notice of the events which
followed.
London, 1856. 8° Published without the author's name.
Another Edition. London. [1862.] 8°
Published with the author's name.
Thompson (George). American Slavery. A lecture delivered in the Music Hall, Store St., Deer. 13th, 1852. Proving by unquestionable evi- dence the correctness of Mrs. Stowe's portraiture of American Slavery, in her popular work, " Uncle Tom's Cabin."
London. 1853. 12°
REVIEWS AND NOTICES OF "UNCLE TOM'S CABIN," WHICH HAVE APPEARED IN VARIOUS PERIODICALS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM ; ALPHABETICALLY ARRANGED.
Note. — Those in the Welsh language are printed together at the end.
The "Athenaeum." London. 1852, p. 574. Notice. 1852, p. 1173. Contrast between "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and the
works by Hildreth and W. L. G. Smith. 1859, p. 549. Contrasts the literary merits of " Uncle Tom's Cabin"
and " The Minister's Wooing." 1863, p. 78. Notice of the Influence of " Uncle Tom's Cabin."
The "Baptist Magazine." London. 1852. Vol. 44, p. 206. Notice.
The "Baptist Reporter." London. 1852. N. S. Vol. IX. p. 206. No- tice.
" Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine." Edinburgh. 1853. Vol. 74, p. 393. Review of " Uncle Tom's Cabin " and " Key."
•'The Christian Reformer." London. 1852. 3d Series, Vol. 8, p. 472. Review.
The "Christian Witness." London. 1852. 8°. Vol. 9, p. 344. Review. "The Critic." London. 1852. fol. p. 293. Notice.
"Dublin University Magazine." Dublin. Vol. 40, Novr., 1852. 8°. Review.
l"¥h* Eclectic Review." London. 1852. 8° N. S. Vol. IV. Notice. Do. Vol. VII. 1854. Notice.
Ixxvi BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNT
"The Edinburgh Review." London. 1855. No. 206. The articls "American Slavery," written by N. W. Senior, and twice reprinted by the author with additions.
"Frasers Magazine. London. 1852. 8°. Vol.46. A critique by A. H.
"The Free Church Magazine." Edinburgh. 1852. 8°. N. S. Vol. 1. p. 359. Notice.
" The General Baptist Repository" London. 1852. 8°. Vol. 31, p. 339. Notice.
"The Inquirer." London. 1852. fol. Vol. II. p. 644. Review. 11 The Literary Gazette." London. 1852. fol. Notice.
" The Local Preacher's Magazine." London. 1853. 8°. N. S. Vol. 1. Notice.
" The Methodist New Connexion Magazine." London. 1852. 8°. 3d Se- ries, Vol. 20. Review.
"The Mother's Magazine." London. 1852. Review.
"The North British Review" Edinburgh. 1853. 8°. Vol.18. Re- view.
" The Quarterly Review." London. 1857. Vol.101. Review of "Dred" and " Uncle Tom's Cabin."
" SJiarpe's London Magazine," conducted by Mrs. S. C. Hall. London,
1852, 1853. 8°. N. S. Vol. 1. Review.
N. S. Vol. 2. Notice, with Miss Bremer's opinion of " Uncle Tom's Cabin."
"The Spectator." London. 1852. 8° Notice..
" Tail's Edinburgh Magazine." Edinburgh. 1852. 8°. 2d Series. Notice.
" The Westminster Review." London. 1853. 8°. N. S. Vol. 4. Re- view.
WELSH REVIEWS AND NOTICES.
«• Y Cylchgrawn " [The Circulator]. Abertawy. 1853. 8°. Vol.3. Re- view of Welsh translation.
»YDiwygiwr" [The Reformer]. Llandli. 1852. 8°. Vols. 17 & 18. Notices of Welsh translations.
" YDysgedydd" [The Instructor]. Dolgellan. 1853. 8°. Notices of Welsh translations.
" Yr Eurgrnwn Wcsleyaidd" [The "Wesleyan Golden Treasury]. Llan- idloes. 1853. 8°. Vol. 2. Review of Welsh translations.
M Y Oreal " [The Miscellany]. Llangoller*. 1853. 8°. VoL 2. Review.
OF UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. Ixxvii
•• Tr Haul " [The Sun]. Llanymddyfri. 18° . Vol. 4. Extracts and Reviews.
•« Y Traethodydd " [The Essayist]. Dinbych. 1853. 8°. Vol. 9. No- tice.
REVIEWS AND NOTICES IN UNITED STATES PERIODICALS.
"The Literary World." New York. 1852. fol. Vol.10. Review.
" Littell's Living Age." Boston. 1852. 8°. Reviews from American and English Periodicals.
" The New Englander." New Haven. 1852. 8°. Vol.10. Review.
"The New York Quarterly Review." New York. 1853. Vol.1. Re- view.
"The North American Review." Boston. 1853. 8°. Vol. 77. Review. "The United States Review." New York. 1853. 8° Vol.1.
A Critique in " Blackwood's Magazine." Article, " Slavery and Slave Power in tha United States." The writer speaks of " Uncle Tom's Cabin" as "A romance with* out the slightest pretension to truth, and the foundation of a wholesale attack oo the institutions and character of the people of the United States."
REVIEWS AND NOTICES IN FOREIGN PERIODICALS.
" Boekzaal der Geleerde Were Id. Dutch. Amsterdam. 1853. 12°. Re- view, by "J. J. V. T."
"De Tijd." Dutch. ' SGravenhage, 1853. 8°. Deel 17. Notice, with portrait of Mrs. Stowe.
" Vadcrlandsclie Letteroefcningen." Dutch. Amsterdam. 1853. 8°. Review.
" DcEcndragt." Flemish. Gent. 1853. Jaerzang 7. Review, by " R."
"fievuc Crif.lr/ne dcs Livres Nouveaux." French. Paris. 1852. 8°. Re- view, by " H. A. P."
"Revue Conlcmporaine." French. Paris. 1852. 8°. Tome 4. Article, ' ' Les Negres en Amerique," by Philarete Chasles.
"Revue dcs Deux Mondcs." French. Paris. 1852. 8°. 6th series. Tome 16. Article, " Le Roman Abolitioniste en Amerique," by Emile Montegnt.
" Ulatter fur literarische Untcrhaltun." German. Leipzig. 1853. 4*. Band 1. Review, by Rudolf Gottschall.
" Europa." German. Leipzig. 1853. fol. Review and Notices. 11 Das Pfennig-Magazin." German. Leipzig. 1852- fol. Notices.
" Unterhaltungen am hduslichen Herd. " German. Leipzig. 1853. 8°. Review.
"IlCimento," Italian. Torino. 1862. 6°. Review.
Ixxviif BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNT
THE following translations, abridgments, or adaptations in various languages have also been published in different editions, but are not contained in the Library of the British Museum.
De Hut van Oom Tom, of het Leven der Negerslaven in Noord-Amerika, Naar het Fransch van de la Bedolliere, door W. L. Ritter.
Dutch. Batavia. 1853. 8° A copy of this version is in the possession of Professor Stowe.
De Neger hut, of het Leven der Negerslaven in Amerika. Uit Engelsch vertaald door P. Munnich. Eerste Deel.
Dutch. Soerabaya [at the East End of Java]. 1853. 8° A copy of this version is also in the possession of Professor Stowe.
Strejcek Tom, cili : Otrootvi ve svobodne Americe. Povidka pro mlady a dospely vek, vzdelana die anglickeho romance od pani Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Bohemian. vPraze. 1853. 12°
La Cabane de 1'Oncle Tom. Traduction revue par L. de Wailly et E. Texier.
French. Paris. 1852. 8°.
La Cabane de 1'Oncle Tom. Traduction complete par A. Michiels. 2« Edition.
French. Paris. 1852. 12°.
La Case de 1'Oncle Tom. Traduite par L. Pilatte.
French. 2 torn. Paris. 1852. 12°
La Case de 1'Oncle Tom. Traduction de Labedolliere. Illustrations Anglaises.
French. Paris. 1852. 4°
Another Edition. Paris. 1852. large 8°
t)^
o
Another Edition. Paris. 1852. sra. 8'
La Cabane de 1'Oncle Tom. Traduction par A. Michiels. 3e Edition.
French. Paris. 1853. 12° 4e Edition. Paris. 1853. 12°
La Cabaue de 1'Oncle Tom. Traduction de MM. Wailly et Texier.
French. Paris. 1853. 4° 2e Edition. Paris. 1853. 12°
La Case du Pere Tom. Traduction de La Bedolliere. Nouvelle edition, augmentee d'une notice de G. Sand.
French. Paris. 1853. 12°
La Case de 1'Oncle Tom. Traduite par L. Enault.
French. Paris. 1853. foL
La Case de 1'Oncle Tom. Traduction par MM. C. Rowey et A. Rolet.
French. Paris. 1853. 12° Another Edition. Paris. 1853. 8°
OF UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. IxxiX
La Cabane de 1'Oncle Tom. Traduction par Texier et Wailly.
French. Paris. 1853. 4° Contained in the " Mus^e Litte'raire du Siecle."
La Case de 1'Oncle Tom. Traduction de L. Enault.
French. Paris. 1853. 16* Contained in the " Bibliotheque des Chemins de Fer."
Another Edition. Paris. 1853. 12° Contained in the " Bibliothfeque des meilleurs romans e'trangeres."
La. Case de 1'Oncle Torn. Traduite par Victor Ratier. Edition revue par 1'Abbe Jouhanneaud.
French. Limoges <k Paris. 1853. 8° " Edition modifiee 4 1'usage de la Jeunesse."
La Case de 1'Oncle Tom. Racontee aux enfants, par Mme' Arabella Pal- mer. Traduite de 1' anglais, par A. Viollet. [With Illustrations.]
French. Paris. 1853. 12°
La Case de 1'Oncle Tom. Traduction de La Bedolliere.
French. Paris. 1854. 4° Contained in the " Panthe'on Populaire."
La Case de 1'Oncle Tom. Traduction de V. Ratier. Revue par 1'Abbe Jouhanneaud.
French. Limoges & Paris. 1857. 12°
La Case de 1'Oncle Tom. Traduite par La Barre.
French. 3 Vols. Paris. 1861. 12°
La Case de 1'Oncle Tom. Traduction par M. L. S. Belloc. Avec une preface de Mme Beecher Stowe. Oruee de son Portrait.
French. Paris. 1862. 12° Contained in the " Bibliotheque Charpentier."
Reprinted. Paris. 1872. 12°
La Case de 1'Oncle Tom. Traduite par M. L. Pilatte. Nouvelle edition, augmentee d'une preface de 1'auteur et d'une introduction par G. Sand.
French. Paris. 1862. 12°
La Case du Pere Tom. Traduction de La Bedolliere. Notice de G. Sand. Illustrations Anglaises.
French. Paris. 1863. 4° Contained in the " Pantheon Populaire."
Reprinted. Paris. 1874. 4°
La Case de 1'Oncle Tom. Traduite par L. Enault.
French. Paris. 1864. 12* Contained in the " Bibliotheque des meilleurs romaus Strangers. "
Reprinted. Paris. 1865. 12°
Do. Paris. 1873. 12°
Do. Paris. 1875. 12°
Do. Paris. 1876. 12°
Ixxx BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNT
La Case de 1'Oncle Tom. Traduction de L. Barre.
French. Paris. 1865. 11°
La Case de 1'Oncle Tom. Traduction revue par E. au Chatenet.
French. Limoges. 1876. 8°
Abrege de 1'histoire de 1'Oncle Tom, a 1'usage de la jeunesse.
French. Leipzig. 1857. 16° Forming Vol. 24 of the " Petite Bibliotheque FrancjaUe."
La Case de 1'Oncle Tom. Drame en huit Actes : par MM. Dumanoir et d'Ennery. Musique de M. Artus. Theatre de I'Anibigu Comique.
Paris. 1853. 12°
La Case de 1'Oncle Tom. Romance tiree du roman de ce noin, jouee a 1'Ambigu, paroles de E. Lecart.
Paris. 1853. 4°
La Case de 1'Oncle Tom. Chanson nouvelle, d'apres le drame de ce nom. [By "L. C."]
Paris. 1853. 4°
Onkel Torn, oder Sklavenleben in der Republik Amerika.
German. Berlin. 1852. 8°
Onkel Tom's Hiitte, oder Negerleben in den Sklavenstaaten Amerikas. Aus dem Englischen. 2 Thle.
German. Berlin. 1852. 8°
Onkel Tom's Hiitte, oder Negerleben in den Sklavenstaaten Amerikas. Aus dem Englischen.
German. 30 Lieferungen. Leipzig. 1852. 8°
Onkel Tom's Hiitte. Uebersetzt von F. C. Nordestern.
German. 6 Hefte. Wien. 1852. 8°
Onkel Tom, oder Negerleben in den nordamerikanischen Sklavenstaaten. Uebersetzt von W. E. Dragulin.
German. 4 Bde. Leipzig. 1852. 8° Forming Bd. 9-12 of the " Amerikanische Bibliothek."
Oukel Tom's Hiitte, oder Negerleben in den Sclavenstaaten des freien Nordamerika. Frei bearbeitet von Ungewitter.
German. Leipzig. 1852. 8° Forming Bd. 317 of the " Belletristisches Lese-Cabinet."
Bclaverei in dem Lande der Freiheit, oder das Leben der Neger in den Sclavenstaaten Nordamerika' s. Nach der 15 Auflage von Onkel Tom's Cabin.
German. 4 Bde. Leipzig. 1852. 8°
Onkel Tom's Hiitte, oder die Geschichte eines christlichen Sclaven von H. B. Stowe.
German. 11 Bdchen. 1852-53. 4° Forming Bdchen 1871-1881 of "Das Belletristische Ausland."
OF UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. Ixxxi
Onkel Tom's Hiitte, oder Sklavenleben in den Freistaaten Amerika'a. Aus dem Englischen. Zweite Auflage.
German. 3 Thle. Berlin. 1853. 8°
Onkel Tom's Hiitte, oder die Geschichte eines christlichen Sklaven. Aus dem englischen iibertragen von L. Du Bois.
German. 3 Thle. Stuttgart. 1853. 16°
Onkel Tom's Hiitte, oder Negerleben in den Sklavenstaaten von Amerika. Aus dem Englischen .
German. Leipzig. 1853. 8° Forming Bd. 1 of the " Neue Volks-Bibliothek."
Onkel Tom's Hiitte, oder Negerleben in den Sklavenstaaten von Nord- amerika. Mit 50 Illustrationen. Zweite Auflage.
German. Leipzig. 1853. 8°
Dritte, mit Anmerkungen vermehrte Auflage.
Leipzig. 1853. 8° Vierte Auflage. Leipzig. 1854. 8°
Onkel Tom's Hiitte, oder Sclaverei im Lande der Freiheit. German. Dritte Auflage. German. 4 Bde.
Leipzig. 1853. 16°
Onkel Tom's Hiitte, oder Negerleben in Nordamerika. Im Auszuge be- arbeitet.
German. Berlin. 1853. 16°
Onkel Tom's Schicksale. Erzahlung fiir die Jugend, von Max Schasler.
German. 2 Bdchen. Berlin, 1853. 8°
Onkel Tom's Schicksale. Erzahlungen fur die Jugend. Fiir die deutscha Jugend bearbeitet von Max Schasler.
German. 2 Bdchen. Berlin. 1853. 8° Forming Bdchen 1 of the " Hausbibliothek der Jugend."
La Capanna di Papa Tom. Libera Versione dal Franchese, etc.
Napoli. 1853. 8° A copy of this version is in the possession of Professor Stowe.
Khizhina dyadi Toma, etc.
Russian. Moscow. 1858. 8° Khizhina dyadi Tom, etc.
Russian. St. Petersburg. 1858. 8°
Dyadya Tom, etc. [Uncle Tom ; or, Life of the Negro-Slaves in America. A tale adapted from the English by M. F. Butovich. Abridged.]
Russian. St. Petersburg. 1867. 8°
Chicha-Tomina Koliba.
Servian. Belgrade. 1854. 8°
Fyckeln till Onkel Toms Stuga. [Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin.] Werk- liga Tilldragelser pa hwilka Romanen af samma mamn hwilar. Uldrag «fter Mrs. H. Beecher Stowe. Ofwersatt efter Engelska Originalet.
Swedish. Stockholm. 1853. 16°
Ixxxii BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNT OF UNCLE TOM'S CABIN.
SUMMARY.
FROM the foregoing it will be seen that in the Library of the British Museum there are 35 editions of the original English, the complete text, and 8 of abridgments or adaptations.
Of translations in different languages there are 19 : viz. Arme- nian, 1 ; Bohemian, 1 ; Danish, 2 distinct versions ; Dutch, 1 ; Finnish, 1 ; Flemish, 1 ; French, 8 distinct versions and 2 dramas ; German, 5 distinct versions and 4 abridgments ; Hungarian, 1 complete version, 1 for children, and 1 versified abridgment ; II- lyrian, 2 distinct versions ; Italian, 1 ; Polish, 2 distinct versions ; Portuguese, 1 ; Romaic or Modern Greek, 1 ; Russian, 2 distinct ver- sions ; Spanish, 6 distinct versions ; Swedish, 1 ; Wallachian, 2 distinct versions ; Welsh, 3 distinct versions.
Of the " Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin," there are 3 editions in Eng- lish, 2 in French, 1 in German, and 1 in Spanish.
Of works on the subject of " Uncle Tom's Cabin," separately pub- lished, there are 9.
Of Reviews and Notices of it in Periodicals there are 49 : viz. 31 for the United Kingdom, of which 7 are Welsh ; 6 for the United States ; and 12 for other countries.
This list is, however, by no means complete.
Of Translations, etc., not in the British Museum there are, Bohe- mian 1, a distinct version from that mentioned above ; Dutch, 2 ; French, 5 distinct versions, 1 drama, and a chanson ; German, 4 distinct versions ; Italian, 1 ; Russian, 3 distinct versions and 1 abridgment ; Servian, 1 ; and Swedish, a translation of the " Key."
[In addition to the Swedish translation mentioned by Mr. Bullen, the following editions appear to have been produced : —
Onkel Tom's Stuga, eller negerlifvet i Amerikanska slafstaterna Ofversattning af S. J. Callerholm. Goteborg. 1873. 8°.
Onkel Tom's Stuga. Stockholm. 1882. 8°.
Three editions were also published between 1860 and 1865 by Mb, Bonnier, Stockholm.]
PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION.
scenes of this story, as its title i cates, lie among a race hitherto ignored by the associations of polite and re- fined society ; an exotic race, whose ancestors, born beneath a tropic sun, brought with them, and perpetuated to their descendants, a character so essentially unlike the hard and dominant An- glo-Saxon race, as for many years to have won from it only misunderstanding and con- tempt.
But, another and better day is dawning ; every influence of literature, of poetry and of art, in our times, is becoming more and more in unison with the great master chord of Christianity, " good-will to man."
The poet, the painter, and the artist now seek out and embellish the common and gentler humanities of life, and, under the allurements of fiction, breathe a humanizing and subduing influence, favorable to the development of the great principles of Christian brotherhood.
The hand of benevolence is everywhere stretched out. searching into abuses, righting wrongs, alleviating dis tresses, and bringing to the knowledge and sympathies of the world the lowly, the oppressed, and the forgotten.
PREFACE.
In this general movement, unhappy Africa at last ia remembered ; Africa, who began the race of civilization and human progress in the dim, gray dawn of early time, but who, for centuries, has lain bound and bleeding at the foot of civilized and Christianized humanity, imploring compassion in vain.
But the heart of the dominant race, who have been her conquerors, her hard masters, has at length been turned towards her in mercy; and it has been seen how far nobler it is in nations to protect the feeble than to op- press them. Thanks be to God, the world has at last out- lived the slave-trade !
The object of these sketches is to awaken sympathy and feeling for the African race, as they exist among us ; to show their wrongs and sorrows, under a system so necessarily cruel and unjust as to defeat and do away the good effects of all that can be attempted for them, by their best friends, under it.
In doing this, the author can sincerely disclaim any invidious feeling towards those individuals who, often without any fault of their own, are involved in the trials and embarrassments of the legal relations of slavery.
Experience has shown her that some of the noblest of minds and hearts are often thus involved ; and no one knows better than they do, that what may be gathered of the evils of slavery from sketches like these, is not the half that could be told, of the unspeakable whole.
In the Northern States, these representations may, per- haps, be thought caricatures ; in the Southern States are witnesses who know their fidelity. What personal knowl- edge the author has had, of the truth of incidents such as here are related, will appear in its time.
It is a comfort to hope, as so many of the world's sor- rows and wrongs have, from age to age, been lived down*
PREFACE. Ixxxv
so a time shall come when sketches similar to these shall be valuable only as memorials of what has long ceased to be.
When an enlightened and Christianized community shall have, on the shores of Africa, laws, language, and literature, drawn from among us, may then the scenes of the house of bondage be to them like the remembrance of Egypt to the Israelite, — a motive of thankfulness to Him who hath redeemed them !
For, while politicians contend, and men are swerved this way and that by conflicting tides of interest and passion, the great cause of human liberty is in the hands of One, of whom it is said : —
' ' He shall not fail nor be discouraged
Till lie have set judgment in the earth." "He shall deliver the needy when he crieth,
The poor, and him that hath no helper.'1 " He shall redeem their soul from deceit and violence,
And precious shall their blood be in his eight."
UNCLE TOM'S CABIN;
OR,
LIFE AMCOTG THE LOWLY. CHAPTER I.
IN WHICH THE READER IS INTRODUCED TO A MAN OF HUMANITY.
; ATE in the afternoon of a chilly day in February, two gentlemen were sitting alone over their wine, in a well-furnished dining parlor, in the town of
P , in Kentucky. There were no servants
present, and the gentlemen, with chairs closely ap- proaching, seemed to be discussing some subject with great earnestness.
For convenience' sake, we have said, hitherto, two gentlemen. One of the parties, however, when critically examined, did not seem, strictly speaking, to come under the species. He was a short thick-s-3t man, with coarse commonplace features, and that swaggering air of pretension which marks a low man who is trying to elbow his way upward in the world. He was much overdressed, in a gaudy vest of many colors, a blue neckerchief, bedropped gayly with yellow spots, and arranged with a flaunt- ing tie, quite in keeping with the general air of the man. His hands, large and coarse, were plentifully bedecked with rings ; arid he wore a heavy gold watch-chain, with a bundle of seals of portentous size, and a great variety of colors, attached to it, — which, in the ardor of conversation, he was in the habit of flour ishing and jingling with evident satisfaction. His conversation was in free and easy defiance of Murray's Grammar, and was garnished at convenient intervals with various profane expres- sions, which not even the desire to be graphic in our account shall induce us to transcribe.
2 UNCLE TOM'S CABIN; OR,
His companion, Mr. Shelby, had the appearance of a gen- tleman ; and the arrangements of the house, and the general air of the housekeeping, indicated easy, and even opulent cir- cumstances. As we before stated, the two were in the midst of an earnest conversation.
" That is the way I should arrange the matter," said Mr. Shelby.
" I can't make trade that way, — I positively can't, Mr. Shelby," said the other, holding up a glass of wine between his eye and the light.
" Why, the fact is, Haley, Tom is an uncommon fellow ; he is certainly worth that sum anywhere, — steady, honest, capa- ble, manages my whole farm like a clock."
" You mean honest, as niggers go," said Haley, helping him- self to a glass of brandy.
" No ; I mean, really, Tom is a good, steady, sensible, pious fellow. He got religion at a camp-meeting, four years ago; anu I believe he really did get it. I 've trusted him, since then,
LIFE AMONG THE LOWLY.
with everything I have, — money, house, horses, — and let him come and go round the country ; and I always found him true and square in everything."
" Some folks don't believe there is pious niggers, Shelby," said Haley, with a candid flourish of his hand, " but / do. I had a fellow, now, in this yer last lot I took to Orleans, - 't was as good as a meetin', now, really, to hear that critter pray ; and he was quite gentle and quiet like. He fetched me a good sum, too, for I bought him cheap of a man that was 'bilged to sell out ; so I realized six hundred on him. Yes, I consider religion a valeyable thing in a nigger, when it 's the genuine article, and no mistake."
" Well, Tom 's got the real article, if ever a fellow had," re- joined the other. "Why, last fall, I let him go to Cincinnati alone, to do business for me, and bring home five hundred dol lars. ; Tom,' says I to him, ' I trust you, because I thinV you 're a Christian, - - I know you would n't cheat.' Tom comes back, sure enough ; I knew he would. Some low fel- lows, they say, said to him, ' Tom, why don't you make tracks for Canada 1 ' ' Ah, master trusted me, and I could n't,' — they told me about it. I am sorry to part with Tom, I must say. You ought to let him cover the whole balance of the debt ; and yovi would, Haley, if you had any conscience."
" Well, I 've got just as much conscience as any man in busi- ness can afford to keep, — just a little, you know, to swear by, as 't were," said the trader, jocularly ; " and, then, I 'm ready to do anything in reason to 'blige friends ; but this yer, you see, is a leetle too hard on a fellow, — a leetle too hard." The trader sighed contemplatively, and poured out some more brandy.
"Well then, Haley, how will you trade?" said Mr. Shelby, after an uneasy interval of silence.
" Well, have n't you a boy or gal that you could throw in with Tom?"
" Hum ! — none that I could well spare ; to tell the truth, it 's only hard necessity makes me willing to sell at all. I don't like parting with any of my hands, that 's a fact."
Here the door opened, and a small quadroon boy, between four and five years of age, entered the room. There was some- thing in his appearance remarkably beautiful and engaging. His black hair, tine as floss silk, hung in glossy curls about his round dimpled face, while a pair of large dark eyes, full of fire and softness, looked out from beneath the rich, long lashes, as he
UNCLE TOM'S CABIN; OR,
peered curiously into the apartment. A gay robe of scarlet and yellow plaid, carefully made and neatly fitted, set off' to advan- tage the dark and rich style of his beauty ; and a certain comic air of assurance, blend- ed with bashfulness, showed that he had been not unused to being petted and noticed by his master.
" Hulloa, Jim Crow ! " said Mr. Shelby, whistling, and snapping a bunch of raisins towards him, " pick that up, now ! "
The child scampered, with all his little strength, after the prize, while his master laughed.
" Come here, Jim Crow," said he. The child came up, and the master patted the curly head, and chucked him under the chin.
" Now, Jim, show this gen- tleman how you can dance and sing." The boy com- menced one of those wild, grotesque songs common among the negroes, in a rich, clear voice, accompanying his singing with many comic evolutions of the hands, feet, and whole body, all in perfect time to the music.
" Bravo ! " said Haley, throwing him a quarter of an or-
ange.
Now, Jim, walk like old Uncle Cudjoe when he has the rheumatism," said his master.
Instantly the flexible limbs of the child assumed the appear ance of deformity and distortion, as, with his back humped up, and his master's stick in his hand, he hobbled about the room his childish face drawn into a doleful pucker, and spitting front right to left, in imitation of an old man.
Both gentlemen laughed uproariously.
" Now, Jim," said his master, " show us how old Elder Bob- bins leads the psalm." The boy drew his chubby face down
LIFE AMONG THE LOWLY. 5
to a formidable length, and commenced toning a psalm tunf through his nose with imperturbable gravity.
" Hurrah ! bravo ! what a young 'un ! " said Haley ; " that chap 's a case, I '11 promise. Tell you what," said he, suddenly clapping his hand on Mr. Shelby's shoulder, "fling in that chap and I '11 settle the business, — I will. Come, now, if that an't doing the thing up about the rightest ! "
At this moment, the door was pushed gently open, and a young quadroon woman, apparently about twenty-five, entered the room.
There needed only a glance from the child to her, to identify her as its mother. There was the same rich, full, dark eye, with its long lashes ; the same ripples of silky black hair. The brown of her complexion gave way on the cheek to a percep- tible flush, which deepened as she saw the gaze of the strange man fixed upon her in bold and undisguised admiration. Her dress was of the neatest possible fit, and set off to advantage her finely moulded shape ; a delicately formed hand and a trim foot and ankle were items of appearance that did not escape the quick eye of the trader, well used to run up at a glance the points of a fine female article.
"Well, Eliza1?" said her master, as she stopped and looked hesitatingly at him.
" I was looking for Harry, please, sir " ; and the boy bounded toward her, showing his spoils, which he had gathered in the skirt of his robe.
" Well, take him away, then," said Mr. Shelby ; and hastily she withdrew, carrying the child on her arm.
" By Jupiter," said the trader, turning to him in admiration, " there 's an article, now ! You might make your fortune on that ar gal in Orleans, any day. I Ve seen over a thousand, in my day, paid down for gals not a bit handsomer."
" I don't want to make my fortune on her," said Mr. Shelby, dryly ; and, seeking to turn the conversation, he uncorked a bottle of fresh wine, and asked his companion's opinion of it.
" Capital, sir, — first chop ! " said the trader ; then turning and slapping his hand familiarly on Shelby's shoulder, ht added, -
" Come, how will you trade about the gal ] — what shall I say for her, — what '11 you take ? "
" Mr. Haley, she is nut to be sold," said Shelby. " My wife would not part with her for her weight in gold."
o UNCLE TOM'S CABIN; OR,
"Ay, ay! women always say such things, cause they han't no sort of calculation. Just show 'em how many watches, feathers, and trinkets one's weight in gold would buy, and that alters the case, / reckon."
•; I tell you, Haley, this must not be spoken of ; I say no, and I mean no," said Shelby, decidedly.
"Well, you'll let me have the boy, though," said the trader; " you must own I Ye come down pretty handsomely for him."
" What on earth can you want with the child ] " said Shelby.
'' Why, I Ye got a friend that 's going into this yer branch of the business, — wants to buy up handsome boys to raise for the market. Fancy articles entirely, — sell for waiters, and so on, to rich 'uns, that can pay for handsome 'uns. It sets off one of yer great places, — a real handsome boy to open door, wait and tend. They fetch a good sum ; and this little devil is such a comical, musical concern, he's just the article."
" I would rather not sell him," said Mr. Shelby, thought- fuily ; " the fact is, sir, I 'in a humane man, and I hate to take the boy from his mother, sir."
" O, you do1? — La! yes, — something of that ar natur. I understand, perfectly. It is mighty onpleasant getting on with woiuen, sometimes. I al'ays hates these yer screechin', scream- in'' times. They are mighty onpleasant ; but, as I manages business, I generally avoids 'em, sir. Now, what if you get the girl off for a day, or a week, or so ; then the thing 's done quietly, — all over before she comes home. Your wife might get her some ear-rings, or a new gown, or some such truck, to make up with her."
" I 'm afraid not."
" Lor bless ye, yes ! These critters an't like white folks, you know ; they gets over things, only manage right. Now, they say," said Haley, assuming a candid and confidential air, " that this kind o' trade is hardening to the feelings ; but I never found it so. Fact is, I never could do things up the way some fellers manage the business. I Ye seen 'em as would pull a woman's child out of her arms, and set him up to sell, and she screechin' like mad all the time ;-- very bad policy, - damages the article, — makes 'em quite unfit for service sometimes. I knew a real handsome gal once, in Orleans, as was entirely ruined by this sort o' handling. The fellow that was trading for her did n't want her baby ; and she was one of your real high sort, when her blood was up. I tell you, she
LIFE AMONG THE LOWLY. 7
squeezed up her child in her arms, and talked, and went on real awful. It kinder makes my blood run cold to think on 't ; and when they carried off the child, and locked her up, she jest went ravin' mad, and died in a week. Clear waste, sir, of a thousand dollars, just for want of management, — there's where 't is. It 's always best to do the humane thing, sir ; that 's been my experience." And the trader leaned back in his chair, and folded his arm, with an air of virtuous decision, apparently considering himself a second Wilberforce.
The subject appeared to interest the gentleman deeply ; for while Mr. Shelby was thoughtfully peeling an orange, Haley broke out afresh, with becoming diffidence, but as if actually driven by the force of truth to say a few words more.
" It don't look well, now, for a feller to be praisin' himself ; but I say it jest because it 's the truth. I believe I 'm reck- oned to bring in about the finest droves of niggers that is brought in, — at least, I 've been told so ; if I have once, I reckon I have a hundred times, — all in good case,- — fat and likely, and I lose as few as any man in the business. And I lays it all to my management, sir ; and humanity, sir, I may say, is the great pillar of my management."
Mr. Shelby did not know what to say, and so he said, " In- deed ! "
" Now, I 've been laughed at for my notions, sir, and I 've been talked to. They an't pop'lar, and they an't common ; but I stuck to 'em, sir ; I 've stuck to 'em, and realized well on 'em ; yes, sir, they have paid their passage, I may say," and the trader laughed at his joke.
There was something so piquant and original in these elu- cidations of humanity, that Mr. Shelby could not help laugh- ing in company. Perhaps you laugh too, dear reader ; but you know humanity conies out in a variety of strange forms nowadays, and there is no end to the odd things that humane people will say and do.
Mr. Shelby's laugh encouraged the trader to proceed.
" It 's strange now, but I never could beat this into people's heads. Now, there was Tom Loker, my old partner, down in Natchez ; he was a clever fellow, Tom was, only the very devil with niggers, — on principle 't was, you see, for a better-hearted feller never broke bread ; 't was his system, sir. I used to talk to Tom. ' Why, Tom,' I used to say, ' when your gals takes on and cry, what 's the use o' crackin' on 'em over the head,
8 UNCLE TOM'S CABIN; OR,
and knockin' on 'em round 1 It 's ridiculous,' says I, < anc don't do no sort o' good. Why, I don't see no harm in theii cryin',' says I ; ' it 's natur,' says I, ' and if natur can't blo\>, off one way, it will another. Besides, Tom,' says I, ' it jes spiles your gals ; they get sickly, and down in the mouth ; and sometimes they gets ugly, — particular yallow gals do, — and it 's the devil and all gettin' on 'em broke in. Now,' says I, ' why can't you kinder coax 'em up, and speak 'em fair ? De- pend on it, Tom, a little humanity, thrown in along, goes a lieap further than all your jawin' and crackin' ; and it pays better,' says I, ' depend on 't.' But Tom could n't get the hang on 't ; and he spiled so many for me, that I had to break off with him, though he was a good-hearted fellow, and as fair a business hand as is goin'."
" And do you find your ways o' managing do the business better than Tom's 1 " said Mr. Shelby.
" Why, yes, sir, I may say so. You see, when I any ways can, I takes a leetle care about the onpleasaut parts, like selling young uns and that, — get the gals out of the way, — out of sight, out of mind, you know, — and when it 's clean done, and can't be helped, they naturally gets used to it. 'Tan't, you know, as if it was white folks, that 's brought up in the way of 'spectin' to keep their children and wives, and all that. Niggers, you know, that 's fetched up properly han't no kind of 'spectations of no kind ; so all these things conies easier."
" I 'm afraid mine are not properly brought up, then," said Mr. Shelby.
" S'pose not ; .you Kentucky folks spile your niggers. You mean well by 'em, but 'tan't no real kindness, arter all. Now, a nigger, you see, what 's got to be hacked and tumbled round the world, and sold to Tom, and Dick, and the Lord knows who, 'tan't no kindness to be givin' on him notions and ex- pectations, and bringin' on him up too well, for the rough and tumble comes all the harder on him arter. Now, I venture tc say, your niggers would be quite chop-fallen in a place where some of your plantation niggers would be singing and whoop- ing like all possessed. Every man, you know, Mr. Shelby, nat- urally thinks well of his own ways ; and I think I treat niggers just about as well as it 's ever worth while to treat 'em."
" It 's a happy thing to be satisfied," said Mr. Shelby, with a slight shrug, and some perceptible feelings of a disagreeable nature.
LIFE AMONG THE LOWLY. 9
" Well," said Haley, after they had both silently picked *"/heir nuts for a season, " what do you say 1 "
" I '11 think the matter over, and talk with my wife," said Mr. Shelby. " Meantime, Haley, if you want the matter car- •ied on in the quiet way you speak of, you 'd best not let your business in this neighborhood be known. It will get out among my boys, and it will not be a particularly quiet busi- ness getting away any of my fellows, if they know it, I '11 promise you."
" O, certainly, by all means, mum ! of course. But I '11 tell you, I 'in in a devil of a hurry, and shall want to know, as soon as possible, what I may depend on," said he, rising and putting on his overcoat.
" Well, call up this evening, between six and seven, and you shall have my answer," said Mr. (Shelby, and the trader bowed himself out of the apartment.
:' 1 'd like to have been able to kick the fellow down the steps," said he to himself, as he saw the door fairly closed, "with his impudent assurance; but he knows how much he has me at advantage. If anybody had ever said to me that I should sell Tom down south to one of those rascally traders, I should have said, ' Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing ] ' And now it must come, for aught I see. And Eliza's child, too ! I know tbat I shall have some fuss with wife about that ; and, for that matter, about Tom, too. So much for being in debt, — heigh-ho : The fellow sees his advan- tage, and means to push it."
Perhaps the mildest form of the system of slavery is to be seen in the State of Kentucky. The general prevalence of agricultural pursuits of a quiet and gradual nature, not requir- ing those periodic seasons of hurry and pressure that are called for in the business of more southern districts, makes the task of the negro a more healthful and reasonable one ; while the master, content with a more gradual style of acquisition, has not those temptations to hard-heartedness which always over- come frail human nature when the prospect of sudden and rapid gain is weighed in the balance, with no heavier counter- poise than the interests of the helpless and unprotected.
Whoever visits some estates there, and witnesses the good- humored indulgence of some masters and mistresses, and the affectionate loyalty of some slaves, might be tempted to dreaip the oft-fabled poetic legend of a patriarchal institution, and all
10 UNCLE TOM'S CABIN; OR,
that ; but over and above the scene there broods a portentous shadow, — the shadow of law. So long as the law considers all these human beings, with beating hearts and living affec- tions, only as so many things belonging to a master, — so long as the failure, or misfortune, or imprudence, or death of the kindest owner may cause them any day to exchange a life of kind protection and indulgence for one of hopeless misery and toil, — so long it is impossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best-regulated administration of slavery.
Mr. Shelby was a fair average kind of man, good-natured and kindly, and disposed to easy indulgence of those around him, and there had never been a lack of anything which might contribute to the physical comfort of the negroes on his estate. He had, however, speculated largely and quite loosely ; had involved himself deeply, and his notes to a large amount had come into the hands of Haley ; and this small piece of informa- tion is the key to the preceding conversation.
Now, it had so happened that, in approaching the door, Eliza had caught enough of the conversation to know that a trader was making offers to her master for somebody.
She would gladly have stopped at the door to listen, as she came out ; but her mistress just then calling, she was obliged to hasten away.
Still she thought she heard the trader make an offer for her boy ; — could she be mistaken ] Her heart swelled and throbbed, and she involuntarily strained him so tight that the little fellow looked up into her face in astonishment.
"Eliza, girl, what ails you to-day]" said her mistress, when Eliza had upset the wash-pitcher, knocked down the work- stand, and finally was abstractedly offering her mistress a long nifhtfown in place of the silk dress she had ordered her to
~ O i
bring from the wardrobe.
Eliza started. " 0, missis ! " she said, raising her eyes ; then, bursting into tears, she sat down in a chair, and began sobbing.
" Why, Eliza, child ! what ails you?" said her mistress.
"0, missis, missis," said Eliza, "there's been a trader talk- ing with master in the parlor ! I heard him."
" Well, silly child, suppose there has."
" 0, missis, do you suppose mas'r would sell my Harry ? " And the poor creature threw herself into a chair, and sobbed convulsively.
LIFE AMONG THE LOWLY.
11
'* Sell him ! No, you foolish girl ! You know your master never deals with those southern traders, and never muans to sell any of his servants, as long as they behave well. Why, you silly child, who do you think would want to buy your Harry ? Do you think all the world are set on him as you are, you goosie? Come, cheer up, and hook my dress. There now, put my back hair up in that pretty braid you learnt the other day, and don't go listening at doors any more."
" Well, but, missis, you never would give your consent — to— to — "
" Nonsense, child ! to be sure I should n't. What do you talk so for1? I would as soon have one of my own children sold. But really, Eliza, you are getting altogether too proud of that little fellow. A man can't put his nose into the door, but you think he must be coming to buy him."
Reassured by her mistress's confident tone, Eliza proceeded nimbly and adroitly with her toilet, laughing at her own fears, as she proceeded.
12 UNCLE TOM'S CABIN* ; OK,
Mrs. Shelby was a woman of a high class, both intellectually and morally. To that natural magnanimity and generosity of mind which one often marks as characteristic of the women of Kentucky, she added high moral and religious sensibility and principle, carried out with great energy and ability into prac- tical results. Her husband, who made no professions to any particular religious character, nevertheless reverenced and re- spected the consistency of hers, and stood, perhaps, a little in awe of her opinion. Certain it was that he gave her unlim- ited scope in all her benevolent efforts for the comfort, instruc- tion, and improvement of her servants, though he never took any decided part in them himself. In fact, if not exactly a believer in the doctrine of the efficacy of the extra good works of saints, he really seemed somehow or other to fancy that his wife had piety and benevolence enough for two, — to indulge a shadowy expectation of getting into heaven through her superabundance of qualities to which he made no particu- lar pretension.
The heaviest load on his mind, after his conversation with the trader, lay in the foreseen necessity of breaking to his wife the arrangement contemplated, — meeting the importuni- ties and opposition which he knew he should have reason to encounter.
Mrs. Shelby, being entirely ignorant of her husband's em- barrassments, and knowing only the general kindliness of his temper, had been quite sincere in the entire incredulity with which she had met Eliza's suspicions. In fact, she dismissed the matter from her mind, without a second thought ; and being occupied in preparations for an evening visit, it passed out of her thoughts entirely.
LIFE AMONG THE LOWLY.
13
CHAPTEE II.
THE MOTHER.
1 LIZA had been brought up by her mistress, from girlhood, as a petted and indulged favorite.
The traveller in the south must often have re- marked that peculiar air of refinement, that soft- ness of voice and manner, which seems in many cases to be a particular gift to the quadroon and mulatto women. These natural graces in the quadroon are often united with beauty of the most dazzling kind, and in almost every case with a personal appearance prepossessing and agreeable. Eliza, such as we have described her, is not a fancy sketch, but taken from remembrance, as we saw her, years ago, in Kentucky. Safe under the protecting care of her mistress, Eliza had reached maturity without those temptations which make beauty so fatal an inheritance to a slave. She had been married to a bright and talented young mulatto man, who was a slave on a neighboring estate, and bore the name of George Harris.
This young man had been hired out by his master to work in a bagging factory, where his adroitness and ingenuity caused him to be considered the first hand in the place. He had in- vented a machine for the cleaning of the hemp, which, consid- ering the education and circumstances of the inventor, displayed quite as much mechanical genius as Whitney's cotton-gin.*
He was possessed of a handsome person and pleasing man- ners, and was a general favorite in the factory. Nevertheless, as this young man was in the eye of the law not a man, but a thing, all these superior qualifications were subject to the con- trol of a vulgar, narrow-minded, tyrannical master. This same gentleman, having heard of the fame of George's invention, took a ride over to the factory, to see what this intelligent chattel
* A machine of this description was really the invention of a young colored man in Kentucky.
14 UNCLE TOM'S CABIN > OR,
had been about. He was received with great enthusiasm by the employer, who congratulated him on possessing so valuable a slave.
He was waited upon over the factory, shown the machinery by George, who, in high spirits, talked so fluently, held him- self so erect, looked so handsome and manly, that his master began to feel an uneasy consciousness of inferiority. What business had his slave to be marching round the country, in- venting machines, and holding up his head among gentlemen 1 He 'd soon put a stop to it. He 'd take him back, and put him to hoeing and digging, and " see if he 'd step about so smart." Accordingly, the manufacturer and all hands concerned were astounded when he suddenl}r demanded George's wages, and announced his intention of taking him home.
" But, Mr. Harris," remonstrated the manufacturer, " is n't this rather sudden 1 "
" What if it is 1 — is n't the man mine ? "
" We would be willing, sir, to increase the rate of conipen* sation."
" No object at all, sir. I don't need to hire any of my hands out, unless I 've a mind to."
" But, sir, he seems peculiarly adapted to this business."
" Dare say he may be ; never was much adapted to any- thing that I set him about, I '11 be bound."
" But only think of his inventing this machine," interposed one of the workmen, rather unluckily.
" 0 yes ! — a machine for saving work, is it1? He 'd invent that, I '11 be bound ; let a nigger alone for that, any time. They are all labor-saving machines themselves, every one of 'em. No, he shall tramp ! "
George had stood like one transfixed, at hearing his doom thus suddenly pronounced by a power that he knew was irre- sistible. He folded his arms, tightly pressed in his lips, but a whole volcano of bitter feelings burned in his bosom, and sent streams of fire through his veins. He breathed short, and his large dark eyes flashed like live coals ; and he might have broken out into some dangerous ebullition, had not the kindly manufacturer touched him on the arm, and said, in a low tone, —
" Give way, George ; go with him for the present. We '11 try to help you, yet."
The tyrant observed the whisper, and conjectured its import, though he could not hear what was said ; and he inwardly
LIFE AMONG THE LOWLY.
15
strengthened himself in his determination to keep the power he possessed over his victim.
George was taken home, and put to the meanest drudgery of the farm. He had been able to repress every disrespectful word ; but the flashing eye, the gloomy and troubled brow, were part of a natural language that could not be repressed, — indubitable signs, which showed too plainly that the man could •not become a thing.
It was during the happy period of his employment in the factory that George had seen and married his wife. During that period, — being much trusted and favored by his employer, • — he had free liberty to come and go at discretion. The mar- riage was highly approved of by Mrs. Shelby, who, with a little womanly complacency in match-making, felt pleased to unite
16 UNCLE TOM'S CABIN; OR,
her handsome favorite with one of her own class who seemed in every way suited to her ; and so they were married in her mis tress's great parlor, and her mistress herself adorned the bride's beautiful hair with orange-blossoms, and threw over it the bridal veil, which certainly could scarce have rested on a fairer head ; and there was no lack of white gloves, and cake and wine, — of admiring guests to praise the bride's beauty, and her mistress's indulgence and liberality. For a year or two Eliza saw her husband frequently, and there was nothing to interrupt their happiness, except the loss of two infant children, to whom she was passionately attached, and whom she mourned with a grief so intense as to call for gentle remonstrance from her mistress, who sought, with maternal anxiety, to direct her naturally pas- sionate feelings within the bounds of reason and religion.
After the birth of little Harry, however, she had gradually become tranquillized and settled ; and every bleeding tie and throbbing nerve, once more entwined with that little life, seemed to become sound and healthful, and Eliza was a happy woman up to the time that her husband was rudely torn from his kind employer, and brought under the iron sway of his legal owner.
The manufacturer, true to his word, visited Mr. Harris a week or two after George had been taken away, when, as he hoped, the heat of the occasion had passed away, and tried every possible inducement to lead him to restore him to his former employment.
"