Uncle Tom's Cabin

“ With all my sense I have come no farther than the poor ignorant negro who has just learned to spell. Poor Tom indeed seems to have seen deeper things in the holy book than I, but I, who used to make citations from Homer, now begin to quote the Bible as Uncle Tom does!" Praise can go no farther than this, that "Uncle Tom's Cabin" has shown how the love of God can support a slave, under the lash, in the hour when he is flogged to death, and fill his heart with pity while he cries, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!" ”

“ It was on his grave, my friends, that I resolved, before God, that I would never own another slave, while it was possible to free him; that nobody, through me, should ever run the risk of being parted from home and friends, and dying on a lonely plantation, as he died. So, when you rejoice in your freedom, think that you owe it to that good old soul, and pay it back in kindness to his wife and children. Think of your freedom, every time you see UNCLE TOM’S CABIN ”

“ In any story, narration and description meet at every turn, and not infrequently exposition is found freely intermingled; while novels have been written with the avowed sole purpose of changing the beliefs of a people. Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a story of intense dramatic activity, and abounds in vivid descriptions of places and persons. It is generally dealing with incidents relating to the characters of the story, yet it really makes an exposition of the evils of slavery, and certainly was no small factor in stirring the American people into vigorous action against the slave dealers. ”

“ They feel obliged by her accepting, with so much promptitude and cordiality, the invitation addressed to her—an invitation intended to express the favor they bore to her, and the honor in which they held her, as the eminently gifted authoress of Uncle Tom's Cabin—a work of humble name, but of high excellence and world-wide celebrity; a work the felicity of whose conception is more than equalled by the admirable tact of its execution, and the Christian benevolence of its design, by its exquisite adaptation to its accomplishment ”

“ We are not insensible to those extraordinary merits of Uncle Tom's Cabin, as a merely literary production, which have procured for its talented authoress such universal commendation and enthusiastic applause ”

“ That Uncle Tom's Cabin stands higher in the history of reform than in the history of the art of fiction no one needs to say again. Dickens, Kingsley, and Mrs. Gaskell had already set the novel to humanitarian tunes, and Mrs. Stowe did not have to invent a type. She had, however, no particular foreign master, not even Scott, all of whose historical romances she had been reading just before she began Uncle Tom's Cabin. ”

“ The message of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is so simple that he who runs may read. It was not written for literary critics, for scholars or for college graduates. George Eliot wrote her "Romola" with the historian and the philosopher and the editor of reviews ever in mind. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin" for farmers, factory men, merchants and clerks, the miscellaneous mass that make up the millions, to rouse them to the wrongs of slavery. ”

“ UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. STORY OF ELIZA. Return to Table of Contents
Uncle Tom's Cabin is the title of an American work, respecting which it is alleged that fifty thousand copies, weighing fifty-five tons, were disposed of in the short period of eight weeks. So high a degree of popularity could not rest on an insufficient foundation. [2] The book is a species of novel or story, designed to portray in vivid colours negro-life in the slave states of America ”

“ Shelby, the original owner of Uncie Tom, and who sells him to a trader, from the pressure of a sort of pecuniary necessity, is by no means a bad character; his wife and son are whatever honor and humanity could wish; and, in a word, the only white persons who make any considerable figure in the book to a disadvantage are the villain Legree, who is a Vermonter by birth, and the oily-tongued slave-trader Haley, who has the accent of a Northerner. It is, therefore, evident that Mrs. Stowe's object in writing "Uncle Tom's Cabin" has not been to disparage Southern character. ”

“ Tom rose, disconsolate, and stumbled into the cabin that had been allotted to him. The floor was already strewn with weary sleepers, and the foul air of the place almost repelled him; but the heavy night-dews were chill, and his limbs weary, and, wrapping about him a tattered blanket, which formed his only bed-clothing, he stretched himself in the straw and fell asleep.
In dreams, a gentle voice came over his ear; he was sitting on the mossy seat in the garden by Lake Pontchartrain, and Eva, with her serious eyes bent downward, was reading to him from the Bible ”

“ The extraordinary excitement produced by 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' will, we hope, prepare the public of Great Britain and America for this lively book of travels by a real fugitive slave. Though he never had a day*s schooling in his life, he has produced a literary work not unworthy of a highly-educated gentleman. ”

“ He gave some money to the good man too, and told him to use it for Eliza.
CHAPTER VI UNCLE TOM SAYS GOOD-BYE
The day after the hunt for Eliza was a very sad one in Uncle Tom's cabin. It was the day on which Haley was going to take Uncle Tom away.
Aunt Chloe had been up very early. She had washed and ironed all Tom's clothes, and packed his trunk neatly. Now she was cooking the breakfast,—the last breakfast she would ever cook for her dear husband. Her eyes were quite red and swollen with crying, and the tears kept running down her cheeks all the time. ”

“ The person who afforded this great pleasure, and who brought home this fundamental truth to so many minds, was Harriet Beecher Stowe, of Hartford, in the State of Connecticut, where she keeps [Pg 432] house, educates her children, has a book at the grocery, and invites her friends to tea. To that American woman every person on earth who read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" incurred a personal obligation. ”

“ The wonderful reception given Uncle Tom's Cabin was, he thought, an expression of the true public sentiment. "A woman, inspired by Christian genius, enters the lists, like another Joan of Arc, and with marvellous powers sweeps the chords of the popular heart. ”

“ Stung to madness and despair by the crushing agonies of a life, Cassy had often resolved in her soul an hour of retribution, when her hand should avenge on her oppressor all the injustice and cruelty to which she had been witness, or which she had in her own person suffered.
One night, after all in Tom's cabin were sunk in sleep, he was suddenly aroused by seeing her face at the hole between the logs, that served for a window. She made a silent gesture for him to come out. ”

“ But if any one will be at the trouble to spend a few months in the Yankee States, and take for granted all that is related to him by busy-bodies, idlers and others that have nothing else to do but to talk about their neighbors; they will find no difficulty in gathering up material, out of which, they could manufacture as dark a tale as Uncle Tom's Cabin. The free negroes in the North could furnish material for a shocking story! ”

“ An elaborate production, which is a great favourite in the United States, is “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” which lends itself admirably to film treatment. On the legitimate stage “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” has become to the touring American manager what “East Lynne” is to his English contemporary. It will fill a house; and it has established the same rank for itself in the cinematograph theatre. ”

“ Hence the work can result in no good, and may possibly, unless its baneful influence is counteracted, originate much evil.
If we take the institution of slavery in the United States, as a whole, and view it correctly, Uncle Tom's Cabin is a gross misrepresentation. The book has placed the people of this country in a false position; in a ridiculous attitude before the world. There may be some truth in her statements—barely enough to give them plausibility among the thoughtless, inconsiderate and uninformed; and those whose minds are warped by prejudice. ”

“ Uncle Tom's Cabin is alive with emotion, and the book that is alive with emotion after the lapse of fifty years is a great book. The critic of today cannot do better than to imitate George Sand when she reviewed the story on its first appearance—waive its faults and affirm its almost unrivaled emotional sincerity and strength. ”

“ At its artistic merits we may well marvel—to find in a small volume the descriptive power of a Scott, the humor of a Dickens, the keen, observing glance of a Thackeray, the pathos of a Richardson or Mackenzie, combined with qualities of earnestness, simplicity, humanity, and womanhood peculiar to the author herself. But there are three things which, strike me as peculiarly remarkable about Uncle Tom's Cabin: it is the work of an American—of a woman—and of an evangelical Christian. [Cheers.] We have long been accustomed to despise American literature—I mean as compared with our own. ”

“ Up till 1852 all she had written was a little vol. of stories which failed to attract attention. In that year, at the suggestion of a sister-in-law, she decided to write something against slavery, and produced Uncle Tom's Cabin, which originally appeared in serial form in a magazine, The National Era. ”

“ Uncle Tom's Cabin was now appearing in serial form. I was reading it with great amusement. But I dared not show it to Dorothy. I had heard Beecher and knew his sentimental attitude. This book had for me the same quality. Yet it helped me to pass many hours while watching by Dorothy's side. Somehow I felt that it would produce a storm akin to the religious psychology which was sweeping the country. Critics were already noting its moral effect. Mrs. Stowe was hailed by Sumner as a "Christian genius," a Joan of Arc. Garrison said that it would make two million abolitionists. ”

“ Stowe imparted a considerable narrative interest to her work, and gave to her characters a very life-like effect. Her pathetic and humorous scenes are natural and well arranged. The peculiarities of negro life and habits of thought are placed before the reader with genuine sympathy and truth. Uncle Tom and Topsy are fine and original creations. But taken simply as a novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is not more remarkable than a hundred others, and cannot compete with such works as "Tom Jones," "Adam Bede," or "David Copperfield." ”

“ Christian effort must do the work; and soon it would be done, if Christians would unite, not to destroy the Union states, but honestly to speak out, and speak freely, against that they know is wrong. They are not aware what countenance they give to slave-holders to hold on to their prey. Troubled consciences can be easily quieted by the sympathies of pious people, particularly when interest and inclination come in as aids.
"I am told there is to be a reply made to Uncle Tom's Cabin,' entitled 'Uncle Tom's Cabin as It Is.' I am glad of it. Investigation is what is wanted. ”

“ Stowe one evening that she passed at Villino Trollope. "È la Signora Stowe?"—"Davvero?"—"L'autrice di 'Uncle Tom'?"—"Possibile?"—were their oft-repeated exclamations; for "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is the one American book in which Italians are deeply read. To most of them, Byron and "Uncle Tom" comprehend the whole of English literature. However poorly informed an Italian may be as regards America in other respects, he has a very definite idea of slavery, thanks to Mrs. Stowe. To read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" aloud in Italian to an Italian audience is productive of queer sensations. ”

“ While I was sitting by the ingleside,—that is, a coal grate,—warming my feet, I fell into conversation with my host. He and his family, I noticed, spoke English more than Scotch; he was an intelligent young man, in appearance and style of mind precisely what you might expect to meet in a cottage in Maine. He and all the household, even the old grandmother, had read Uncle Tom's Cabin, and were perfectly familiar with all its details. ”

“ We oughtenter overlook nobody, Andy, cause the smartest on us gets tripped up sometimes. And so, Andy, let's go up to the house now. I'll be boun' Missis'll give us an uncommon good bite, dis yer time."
CHAPTER VII The Mother's Struggle
It is impossible to conceive of a human creature more wholly desolate and forlorn than Eliza, when she turned her footsteps from Uncle Tom's cabin. ”

“ In France the sale of the Bible was increased because the people wished to read the book Uncle Tom loved so much.
Uncle Tom's Cabin, like Les Miseràbles, and a few other novels, will live, because written with a purpose. No work of fiction is permanent without some great underlying principle or object.
Soon after the Civil War, Mrs. Stowe bought a home among the orange groves of Florida, and thither she goes each winter, with her family. She has done much there for the colored people whom she helped to make free. ”

“ I observe that American newspapers are sneering about his preface to Uncle Tom's Cabin; but they ought at least to remember that his sentiments with regard to slavery are no sudden freak. In the first place, he comes of a family that has always been on the side of liberal and progressive principles. He himself has been a leader of reforms on the popular side. It was a temporary defeat, when run as an anti-corn-law candidate, which gave him leisure to travel in America. ”

“ The appearance of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and its effect. "Of the literary forces that aided in bringing about the immense revolution in public sentiment between 1852 and 1860, we may affirm with confidence that by far the most weighty was the influence spread by this book. ”