UTC
Frederick Douglass' Paper
Frederick Douglass
Rochester: 15 April 1853

Mrs. Stowe's Visit to England

  By this time, the authoress of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" has landed on the free shores of Albion, and is probably receiving emphatic demonstrations of grateful homage from the brightest and best of British men and women. Heaven's blessings attend her! She has brought up to the presence of mankind our people long buried out of sight by slavery and oppression. She has invested our despised and neglected cause with a new and powerful interest, and has added a bright ray to the almost gone out lamp of our hopes. Christianity, refused utterance through the American pulpit, dammed up by the "fear of man that bringeth a snare," has found expression through the feeble instrumentality of that good woman. And where has it not gone forth asserting its wonderous power. The glory which should have covered the ALTAR of the Lord, and illumined the brows of its vast procession of ministers, encircles the form of a woman—Truly, God is able of the weak to confound the mighty.

  We feel a deep interest in Mrs. Stowe's visit to England. It is an interest arising out of no sectarian or partizan unity, but the very opposite of this. Were Mrs. Stowe's visit to England on behalf of any Anti-Slavery Society, State or national, much of our interest in it would instantly subside; for in that case, we know that time and energy which should be given to the cause of the oppressed would be consumed in an almost useless debate, as to which anti-slavery society is doing much to promote the anti-slavery cause. There is the "American Anti-Slavery Society," and the "American and Foreign Anti-Slavery," both these Societies have antecedents, which the representative of either would be called upon to justify and defend. Too often has the cause of the slave been compelled to give place to the cause of a Society. Anti-slavery, as well as Christianity, has often seen the means apparently exalted above the end—the "ALTAR" above the "gift that sanctifieth the altar."—MRS.. STOWE goes to England untrammelled and free. She goes for the cause, and judging from what she has already accomplished, there never went from our shores one whose labors will compare with her's. She will do more than has ever yet been done to present and diffuse among Englishmen a correct understanding of the MEN and the MEASURES operating for the downfall of slavery. She will not exalt the non-voter up to heaven, and cast the anti-slavery voter down to hell, nor vice versa; but will recognize the virtue and value of both. She will not make LEWIS TAPPAN a Saint, and WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON a Satan, but will see in both these men honest, and devoted friends of emancipation. Nor have we any fear that she will be at the pains (like another American lady) of trying to convince English abolitionists that our paper is unworthy of support. But enough of this.

  The chief good which we anticipate from Mrs. Stowe's mission, is the founding of an INSTITUTION, in which our oppressed and proscribed youth, MALE and FEMALE, may obtain a plain English education, and a practical knowledge of various useful TRADES. Our's is a hard case in this country; but give us education and trades, and we shall live to attend the funeral of slavery, and to see the last colonisation ship rot at the wharf.—Heaven, according to Swedenborg, consists of "uses;" whether this be so or not, down here among men, things are valued according as they are useful, or discarded and thrown away as they are useless. The colored people in this country, will, in the end, stand or fall by this test. With education and a trade, the black man may easily be regarded a useful man, and a good citizen. To make the free colored people thus, intelligent and useful, is the end to which the thoughts and plans of Mrs. Stowe are nobly directed.