Continuation of the Outline of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Slave Life in New Orleans. Uncle Tom the Coachman and Steward of the St. Clare Establishment. His Guardianship of Little Eva. The Death of the Sainted Child. The Characters which are Famous. The Breaking Up of the Household. Tom is Placed upon the Block and Sold to Simon Legree. Scenes upon a Red River Plantation. The Death of Uncle Tom. His Experience an Epitomization of Every Possible Argument against "The Institution." "Uncle Tom's Cabin" as a Work or Literary Art. A Story without a Lover. Is It a Novel?

  WITH fine understanding of the limitations of the reader's sensibilities, the author perceived that too long a tension of outraged feeling would be wearisome. She therefore presented counter situations, which appeal all the more acutely to the feelings, by contrast with what is in the background. In the chapter descriptive of the excitement on the Shelby plantation when it is discovered that Eliza has fled, the wrath of the slave trader, the secret gladness of Mrs. Shelby, and the unproductive preparations for catching the runaway girl, are more entertainingly depicted.

  The clownish hatred of Sam for the trader, his irrelevant and confusing suggestions as to the means of Eliza's capture, his simulated wild anxiety to make ready the horses, which results in detention and confusion thrice confounded

  Eliza's refuge with the good Ohio people, and her safe arrival on the Canadian shores, is a satisfactory outcome of her terrific experience. The dilemma, and generous action of the good man, the Senator, who theorizes that the law should be obeyed, but acts upon the feeling that this woman needs help, is a reproduction of the triumph of the heart over the head, which had been the frequent experience of the Beecher family at Walnut Hill.

  In the meantime Aunt Chloe at home in the little cabin, irons Uncle Tom's shirts, moistening them with her fast falling tears. She packs his clothes neatly, after putting all in order, the sad farewell is taken, and Torn goes away with the trader towards the Mississippi River. The description of the dismal ride, which is pleasantly interrupted by the arrival of George Shelby, who has ridden after them to bid his dear old servant good-bye, and the attitude of Mr.

  Where had Harriet Beecher Stowe, the daughter of a New England divine, reared in the innocence of life upon the breezy Litchfield hills, shielded by gallant whole-souled fellows who would not that their sister should know of the low possibilities of men, united to a learned professor of theology, and associated with masculine friends of noble character, refinement and cultivation, learned how to depict the scene that follows? Where had she been that she could so graphically describe the aspect, actions and conversation of a company of coarse men in a bar-room? The scene in chapter eleven, where George Harris appears as a gentleman accompanied by his servant, is drawn as if from sight. Could it have been so accurately described from hearsay, the very spirit and flavor of the atmosphere permeating it? It was an inspiration, a psychological insight, which amounted to clairvoyance. And how the effects of "the system" stand forth as reflected upon these white men who were the administrators of it!

  Then comes the sale. The scene in the slave market aroused thousands to vehement indignation and doubtless did more to liberate the American slaves than any other effort put forth by the talented and eloquent band of abolitionists in this country. Read it, Americans! Read it again, and thank Heaven that this blot is removed from the face of our fair land.

  See again, the half blind, lame old woman, who is not salable, torn from her youngest son, a lad of fourteen, upon whom she hoped to lean in her decrepit old age. Hear her groans and piteous pleadings to be bought too!

  See "the article enumerated as John, aged thirty," whose face quivers an instant as he tells Uncle Tom he has a wife who knows nothing of his departure from her.

  See the black mother, who finds herself with her nursing child on the boat going "down river," when she hears that, instead of going to Louisville as a cook at hire, she has been sold, and forever separated from her husband. See her, when she awakes from a fitful sleep to find that her baby boy, a pretty fellow of ten months, has been taken from her arms and sold to a trader who chanced to fancy him! See her, as she hurries to the side of the boat when all is still at midnight, and leaps into the dark water and buries her troubles in death.

  Who can read it calmly, even to-day when it is all past? Think what it must have been at the time when society was torn by conflicting opinions and the government had just decided to uphold the system, upon constitutional grounds. When the law sanctioned the invading of free states to reclaim "property," and leases were written to run ninety-nine years, which transferred slaves into the holdings of proprietors over the lines, thus carrying slavery into free soil.

  We must not forget what a tremendous force and solidity of custom this slight woman battled with her delicate hands. There were strong arguments against interference with vested political rights. There were reasons of weight sufficient to deter our greatest statesmen from doing more than attempt to confine slavery within its old limits, social considerations which might well have had weight with one of a family who were superior to the fanaticism which clamored for a principle, without regard to the peril

  Harriet Beecher Stowe might well have hesitated, but the wrongs of the blacks were upon her heart. Her soul was burning with an overwhelming pity and righteous indignation which brooked no restraint and made her cry out in so piercing, thrilling, and persuasive a voice, that it reached the world around, and resounded even to Heaven.

  Yes, to Heaven, for this work was a prayer, and was doubtless one of the several providences which resulted in the emancipation of the slaves in America. For in spite of the augmenting power of the South in the government; in spite of the increasing value and usefulness of the slaves, which the invention of the Cotton Gin had brought about; in spite of the feeling among politicians, and conservative people everywhere, that constitutional rights must be protected until the framework of the government could be reconstructed—the cause of freedom advanced.

  Differences between the North and South widened, and the War which commenced upon other issues, and was fought to maintain the Union or disrupt it, brought about the Emancipation of the Slaves, because the hour had come.

  Before Lincoln's proclamation Mrs. Stowe's ideas had permeated all society and had done much to work public opinion up to the support of the measure.

  Without such support, no law can be other than a dead letter. The clear sight and courage with which she upheld her convictions, in that time when history was rolled in the scroll of the future, is a marvel. As we read it all now, it is with approval, with acquiescence, which yet is strengthened and augmented, with the flow of her highly charged, electrically eloquent, sentences. As we attempt to realize the state of feeling, which in the North permitted, even while it did not sympathize with, Slavery, and in the South rested upon it as the foundation the political and social system, it becomes plain how this great book, appearing at that epoch, wrestled with the custom of the western world, and turned the eyes of all nations to the "deep damnation" of our institution.

  But to return to the story. Uncle Tom was to see more bright days. He was purchased by a gentleman of New Orleans, to please his little daughter—an angelic child who had made acquaintance with Uncle Tom on the river steamer, and been rescued by him from a watery grave, when in her play she had fallen into the stream.

  Augustine St. Clare took him home for a coachman for his wife. In Augustine St. Clare we see another phase of the character of a southern gentleman. Of distinguished appearance, grace of manner and intellectual culture, indulgent and light in his moods, as was to be expected from the strain of French Huguenot blood in his veins, he presents in his fascinating personality, as he himself declares, a victim of the institution of slavery. He says that masters and slaves are generally divided into two classes—the Oppressors and the Oppressed. He half satirically poses as one of the Oppressed, and indeed his patience and indulgent for-

  Certain it is that he is the victim of the whims and caprices of a pettish, frivolous wife; but his own airy nature, and the love of his beautiful child, seem ample compensations. Into this luxurious southern home, decorated and beautified with all the elegances that wealth and culture can bring togther, with its richly dressed and aristocratic inmates, with its uselessly large retinue of servants and the wasteful extravagances and indifferent management which pertained to such an establishment, there comes Miss Ophelia, a mature maiden cousin from Vermont. She is the personification of New England thrift, common sense, orthodoxy and practical mindedness, a sort of composite photograph of the peculiarities and excellences of all the spinster dwellers east of the Hudson River. She is the strongest possible foil to the ideas and characters of her southern cousins, and finds a discouragingly uncultivated field for her works of reform. Miss Ophelia became at once the recognized and accepted type of a Yankee woman.

  Marie remains still a remembrance of what southern women naturally became when not upheld by any sense of duty, personal responsibility, or the innate right feeling which is born to those who happily have to bear their part in life and, by realizing their own privileges, appreciate the rights of others. In the experiences of this family, with its diverse characters, in the conversations between Miss Ophelia and her cousin St. Clare, as she sits fiercely knitting and he reposes smoking upon a sofa, we are most naturally

  But while the author's ideas are thus cleverly promulgated the story advances. Uncle Tom becomes the most trusted factotum and the steward of the St. Clare establishment. Tom regards his handsome, volatile, young master, with a strange mixture of fealty, reverence and fatherly solicitude. His insecure religious standing troubles the good black servant and he speaks respectful words of warning and remonstrance. St. Clare receives these admonitions with kind tolerance, which however, on occasions deepens into a momentary self-condemnation and tender appreciation of the impulses which prompt Tom to make them. He promises his faithful servant not to tamper further with the wine which several times has sent him home in an unsteady condition. Miss Ophelia having undertaken to superintend the running of the house, begins to suffer the tribulations and to endure the manifold vexations and vain attempts to adjust irreconcilable differences, which can only be realized and appreciated by a housekeeper's mind. Her awful review of the condition of the hidden recesses of the house, and particularly the kitchen, her overhauling and re-arrangement of the store rooms, linen presses and china closet, her conflicts with Dinah, the deposed regent of this realm; the righteous indignation with which she regards such careless opulence and the waste of the provisions, and the vivid realization of all the circumstances calculated to wring a good house-keeper's heart, are inexpressibly amusing, and perhaps to some minds quite as convincing of the discomforts of the system of

  When Miss Ophelia is tried past bearing, she goes to have it out with St. Clare, and their talks, begun in indignant remonstrance on her part, answered by light persiflage from him, proceed into earnest discussion of the entire subject, and end in his return to his cigar, while Miss Ophelia with a softened face, goes out to her duties. In these discussions there is concentrated the essence, the beginning and end of slavery as it had never before been presented to the world. In St. Clare, Mrs. Stowe develops her possibilities in the analysis of a character, quite distinct and diverse from the several clear cut types in the tale. Modern portrayals of the person, motives, actions and varied tastes, and capabilities of a gentleman, have in no way detracted from this excellently well-painted picture. St. Clare is a born aristocrat, who is yet so far able to extricate himself from his environment, as to see it with unprejudiced eyes. Some of his comments and subtle insights into the distinctive moving springs of his class, are delicious. As for instance when he says,—"An aristocrat has no human sympathies beyond a certain line in society." Again, in speaking of his father, he says, "religious sentiment, he had none beyond a veneration for God as decidedly the head of the upper classes." The passage where he describes his mother's blessed influence is a worthy description of Harriet Beecher Stowe's mother's influence as it was felt in her family.

  About this time Topsy comes upon the stage.—Topsy, the black imp, hardly to be known as a girl or boy, Topsy with the bare legs and arms, the pig-tails sticking up all

  Only sweet little Eva, the angelic child who gently faded from earth because she had not enough gross material to stay, overcame the black child's stolid indifference to kind, well-meant reproaches, and by the melting force of love, touched the calloused heart, pleading effectually with smiles and tenderness, by friendly hand-clasp and the breath of flowers, where stripes and bruising blows had failed. Gentle Eva, the immortal child of the author's brain, had found the answer to the question, "What is to be done with a human being that can be governed only by the lash, when that fails?" Whipping and abuse are like

  In this bringing together of the two children, representative of the extremes of society, what dramatic force and sense of telling situations did the author display! It was as a tableau which flashed in one comprehensive scene, the effects of heredity and environment. The Saxon, born of ages of cultivation, the African, born of ages of oppression. There was a world of argument in the combination. It speaks most strongly for itself. Comments are not necessary to show between the lines volumes of deep meaning. We can apply it to various situations in life.

  Two years go by, and Uncle Tom lives on comfortable and comparatively happy. By means of a letter from George Shelby a line of communication, given as well, to the reader of the story, we easily return to the Kentucky home, where Chloe works with the hope of sometime buying her husband back, and Mrs. Shelby keeps the place running with her enviable executive faculty. It is but a glimpse, and we take a seat upon the magician's carpet and are again in New Orleans where we see Eva making Uncle Tom her chief companion and confidential friend, riding with him, talking upon many interesting and improving themes, exchanging her knowledge of polite society for his religious perceptions, reading to him in her melodious voice from the Scriptures, while he explains and expounds passages in his own simple and clear-seeing manner. Great,

  Have we not sobbed in uncontrollable emotion over this story? Have we not seen it portrayed by living actors upon the stage, when no failure to rise to its possibilities, could mar the effect of the sentiment, when even slow music upon a melodeon, in provincial performances, could not destroy its inherent strength and beauty and pathos?

  Shall we discuss the literary merits of this tale? Shall we talk of art, when its intensity of sweetness and sadness make tears stream from our eyes, confounding the most unimpressionable, and, having knocked the stilts of conventionalism from under us, let us down to the true basis of feeling, sentiment and truth?

  The death of Eva, with the events clustering about the time, the giving of Topsy by St. Clare to Miss Ophelia, his intention of also freeing Uncle Tom which was unfortunately postponed too long, and his own death by accident,

  "A little before the sale commenced, a short, broad, muscular man, in a checked shirt considerably open at the bosom, and pantaloons much the worse for dirt and wear, elbowed his way through the crowd, like one who is going actively into a business; and coming up to the group, began to examine them systematically. From the moment that Tom saw him approaching, he felt an immediate and revolting horror at him, that increased as he came near. He was evidently, though short, of gigantic strength. His round, bullet head, large, light-gray eyes, with their shaggy, sandy eyebrows, and stiff, wiry, sun-burned hair, were rather unprepossessing items, it is to be confessed; his large, coarse mouth was distended with tobacco. the juice of which, from time to time, he ejected from him with great decision and explosive force; his hands were immensely large, hairy, sunburned, freckled, and very dirty, and garnished with long nails, in a very foul condition."

  Simon Legree with the slaves he had bought at several auctions, among whom were Tom and Emeline, departs for his plantation on a Red River boat. The transformation of Tom, as far as wearing apparel could go, from the sleek, respectable coachman in white linen and broadcloth, to the plantation hand in rough clothes and disreputable hat and shoes, here takes place. Uncle Tom manages to retain his Bible while his other belongings are emptied from his trunk upon the deck, and amid much hilarity, sold to the highest bidders. In the character of Legree, the passage to his neglected and broken-down plantation, the fate of his abused slaves and the regime of terror and crime which he maintained, there is exhibited the most fearful possibilities, the most shameful probabilities of the institution which permitted the absolute holding of human beings, by a so-called owner. In this new situation is plainly demonstrated the pernicious workings of a system in which there is absolutely nothing to protect the life of a slave, but the character of the master.

  It has been claimed that the character of Legree is a frightful imagination of diabolism in human form, an exaggeration of malignity which could never be realized. Legree has been declared as unreal as Caliban or an ogre in a nursery tale. But Bill Sikes and the Thenardiers furnish as distinct and successful literary types; and alas, have we not known in the flesh, of Wirz, another result of cruel conditions, the calloused keeper of the prison den at Andersonville! That personification of ingenuity in torture, who while utterly devoid of mercy or sensibility to suffering, yet showed a strange fertility in cruel expedient and an

  Charles Beecher wrote of a man like him upon the wharves of New Orleans who exhibited his fists, with knuckles enlarged and calloused in "knocking niggers down."

  The story grows more intense as we follow Tom through the new experiences of his life on Simon Legree's plantation. The picture deepens, grows darker and sadder, and the figures of the down-trodden slaves stand out distinctly against the gloom of the surroundings. The heavy labor of the field hands, the weary, soul-crushing round of work, work uninterrupted or relieved by one hour of pleasure or peaceful rest, the night grinding of the corn by tired men and women, who impatiently wait their turns at the hand mills, or in utter despair abandon the attempt to prepare food, preferring death to such a struggle for existence and only longing for the end; the character of the woman Cassy, once a petted favorite of a rich and indulgent master, later the mother of fair and lovely children, then the abandoned mistress, who came to the block and saw her children sold into slavery, at last the desperate creature whose apparent insanity had made her the dread of drivers and her companions in slavery, and the consort of the fiend Legree, who was yet an abject coward before her terrible temper, and unconquerable spirit; the shameful life in prospect for Emeline, unless some kind fate shall interpose in her behalf; the brutal orgies of the degraded master, with his two still more degraded slaves and drivers,—all are depicted with ever increasing strength and graphic power—for the

  Legree realizes, by some unseen but none the less palpable thought transference, that Tom despises him. Thus arouses all his vindictive passions, and he resolves to subdue the man. With a just appreciation of the fine feelings of the creature whom he legally owns, he perceives that more degrading than punishment inflicted upon his person, would be compelling him to flog another, and a woman! This Torn refuses to do, by his calm but decided refusal eliciting expressions of terror from the listening slaves, who know too well what the result will be. Legree, at first dumb-founded at the disobedience, then driven to fury by the evidence that he has no power over the indomitable courage and high spirit of the bondman, orders him to be whipped by the brutal fellows who have been often employed in this shameful office.

  Again, when Cassy and Emeline disappear, Legree demands of Tom their whereabouts. He declines to speak of them, and at his repeated refusals to disclose their retreat, the fiendish master orders him to be flogged and without mercy. He could indeed hold and torture the defenceless body of the poor slave but his spirit he could not degrade. A good Vermont Judge once ordered a slave hunter who demanded "his property" to "show a bill of sale from the Almighty." Legree had no such warrant and his baffled ferocity expended itself

  While from the first page, this story has been a startling revelation, a marvelous sight as through a glass, of the various aspects of life under the system of negro slavery, it is not until we stand over the dead body of Uncle Tom; not until we feel the sublime pity of it, the tender regret and rising indignation of it, the swelling sense of cruel wrong and the irrepressible rush of divine rage, aversion, and unquenchable denunciation for what made this possible—that the work reaches its highest power.

  In the scarred, swollen, bleeding form of the noble black man, now lying in the stillness of death, which is unlike any other stillness in nature; in the holy love and trust, which have been the consolation and dependence of this poor dead creature, there is summed up, the possibilities, the capacities for joy and suffering, the patience, faithfulness, docility, great hearted kindness, the noble simplicity, devotion to duty, self sacrifice and determination to do right, the deep religious faith and earnest Christian feeling of the whole African race.

  In his disfigured and excoriated body there is epitomized every possible argument against the institution, which for political reasons, for a mistaken sense of honor, on account

  The arrival, too late, of young George Shelby, who has come to buy back his old friend, adds an exquisite touch of pathos, and his burial of the remains of Uncle Tom in his own cloak, presents a ceremony in which the reader feels as a sympathetic mourner. The short interview of the impetuous young man, whose soul is filled with sorrow and regret, with Legree who makes invidious remarks as to the sense of making such "a fuss over a dead nigger," and the sudden accession of wrath which excites George to promptly knock him down—affords an immense satisfaction to the reader, who involuntarily finds himself in young Shelby's place. The story draws to a close, with the sad return of George Shelby to Kentucky, the breaking of the intelligence to Aunt Chloe and the family of Uncle Tom's good master. The account of the happy situation of George Harris, Eliza and their child in a Canadian town, and the exposition through a letter from George of the author's idea for the colonization of Liberia, complete the work.

  One commences to re-read this wonderful story with a view to its merits as literary art. But criticism, artistic standpoint, even the vehicle itself, is forgotten as one is swept away from all conventionalities and literary tenets upon the surging current of mighty feeling. Uncle Tom's Cabin has seldom been discussed as a mere work of art. Human interest and sympathy so transcend the machinery of the work, that one quite unburdened with susceptibility

  It must be a technical mind which can learnedly discuss the work as tested by the criteria of modern art criticism; a mind which can describe with a nicety, the laws of novel writing; which can assert that this book because the end is outside of itself, because it carries in parallel lines the lives of two heroes which have no essential relation each other. And while we bow and say "Yes," "Yes," to these learned and nice analyses, we still feel that it is a novel, that it is artistic, that it is a work of great originality, genius, and perception of actual possibilities, which are worked out with rare discrimination and dramatic power.

  It has been the verdict of some critics who place less value upon the matter than the manner of a literary work, that the characters in Uncle Tom's Cabin are all too extreme. That they resemble, in their respective antipodal manifestations, (if one may be pardoned the flippancy in thus digesting their wise conclusions,) the historic little girl, with the curl on her forehead. This may be true from a coldly artistic reasoning, which demands that the lesser values shall have their representation, and which in the attempt to round out and fill characters, often merely succeeds in leveling them to a dull, uninteresting plain, where heroes and cowards, villains and noble actors, are so alike, that it requires the minutest analysis to separate them from each other. It was not the fashion forty years ago to detract from the force of a representation, by an undue consideration of its drawbacks and limitations. Neither were

  One fact is quite remarkable, it is, that this story is entirely without a lover. No tale of youthful passion holds it together with delicate threads of sympathy, no hint of the old yet ever new spring time of virgin love, is presented. Of pure and holy affection there is a fullness; of marital, filial and brotherly love, most beautiful instances; but no sweet lady is introduced to be the reward and pride of young George Shelby, and no dark-skinned lover complicates the situation where pretty Emeline is concerned. In Uncle Tom's Cabin Mrs. Stowe regarded life, not in the light of hope or pleasant anticipation. She wrote of a terrible wrong as it existed, and with the earnest purpose, to make others see it as she did.

  It is indeed a nondescript work of fiction. No rules or canons which apply to average and mediocre creations, in any way fit it. Some works and actions are too low and common for conventional criticism, this is too high and

  It is true that this work had the advantage of a new field of exploration, and that it was an unfolding to the world, of a phase of political and social life, into which the novelist had not penetrated, nor leveled and mannerized the actions and characters. The broad poetic features of life upon which romance relies, were the same, but the situation was peculiar, and the treatment fresh, vigorous, and entirely free from conventionalism.

  The state of political feeling which prevailed at the time of the writing of " Uncle Tom's Cabin," can hardly be appreciated by the present generation. The lapse of years, and the anxiety then felt, being relieved by the adjustment of the difficulty, has (in a way) blunted the sensibilities of modern readers to the evil which its author dared to attack. But there is nothing ephemeral in her thoughts and methods. The sentiment of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" will be as true and moving one hundred years hence, as it was forty years ago. Mrs. Stowe's fun is intrinsically humorous. The comicality of her situations endures. It is not dependent upon style, time, or nationality.

  Her pathos touches the deepest springs of human sym-

  Her philosophy is based upon tenable ground, and withal, has a touch of indulgence for the error which she condemns, and a sense of the excusable mistakes of finite beings, emanating from her own generous spirit, which after all dominates her strongest conclusions. Her reasoning is masculine in its logic, a thing quite different from the woman's reason of "gentle Will Shakespeare" which "thinks him so, because, she thinks him so." Its sequence is convincing, building one proposition upon another, until a well constructed argument appears, which stands because well founded. Mrs. Stowe impressed the peculiarities of her personality upon her work. Honesty, directness, grasp of essential points, and good-humored toleration of human limitations, were remarkable, while yet she launched a thunderbolt against the system of negro slavery.

  "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is full of thought which is deeper than speech. It glows with feeling which is deeper than thought. This work, had she written no other, would in itself be a sufficient passport to literary immortality.

  While Mrs. Stowe was far from advocating disunion or a revolution— and hers was not a political effort but one put forth for moral suasion—it must be remembered, that common sense as well as the law, presumes that a person intends the natural consequences of his actions. Therefore in this soul stirring effort against slavery, Harriet Beecher Stowe proved herself an Abolitionist who looked earnestly to the end, let the means be what they might.

  It proved to be an agent more powerful than Garris[on's]

  Statesmen still think however, that neither the influence, of this work—well calculated as it was to awaken the right feeling of the people—nor the speeches and writings of all the other moralists of the age, would have wrought the emancipation of the American slaves, had not the madness of the South upon various political questions, precipitated a series of events, of which Lincoln's proclamation was the glorious culmination. This question must remain a matter of personal opinion, as plainly, no one can measure or weigh moral force. Mrs. Stowe never expected to see the slaves free. It seemed impossible in view of the situation, that emancipation could come so soon. But "God disposes."

  Men lived years in each day during that pregnant period, and the thing was accomplished, while yet it was supposed to halt in the dimness of future years.