That's because it's time to go fishing. 
Posted on 12/16/2003 1:15:09 PM PST by PeaRidge
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Gail Jarvis by Gail Jarvis
People who disagree with me often claim that my historical views do not conform with "modern" interpretations. For my enlightenment, they recommend "modern" history books, books written after the 1960s. However, one correspondent took the opposite approach insisting that I needed to read a book from the past, Uncle Tom's Cabin. Of course, like most of you, I read the book years ago when I was younger. And, although I thought I remembered it, I decided to read it again; this time slowly and analytically.
Its author, Harriet Beecher Stowe was the daughter, sister, and wife of ministers and fervent Abolitionists who used New England pulpits to passionately proselytize against slavery. So it is not surprising that she became an Abolitionist and wrote her influential novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Although the book is the most famous of all anti-slavery polemics, I suspect most people are not aware of many of the opinions held by its author.
In rereading her book, I was first struck by Mrs. Stowe insistence that slavery in the South was no worse than slavery in the North had been. Furthermore, Stowe did not condemn Southern plantation owners but rather placed the onus of slavery on the slave system itself; especially New England slave traders, New York bankers, and other Northern entrepreneurs who profited from slave commerce.
Writer and Civil Rights activist James Baldwin was incensed by her position, stating: "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." To Baldwin this opinion was racist and abdicated slave owners of personal responsibility.
Civil rights activists were also irritated by Mrs. Stowe’s support of the American Colonization Society’s belief that slaves should be returned to Africa, support she shared with Abraham Lincoln.
Although an Abolitionist, Stowe belonged to the "gradual emancipation" school. She believed that slaves must receive at least a basic education before being freed. And she insisted that they be converted to Christianity. After these two conditions were met, they should be recolonized to Africa.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published two years after the Compromises of 1850. During a hectic two-month period, Congress enacted several laws designed to placate both pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions. The law that especially rankled Mrs. Stowe was the Fugitive Slave Act, which required that all run-away slaves be returned to their owners. She thought it was hypocrisy for Northern congressmen, who publicly condemned slavery, to enact the Compromises of 1850.
Harriet Beecher Stowe decided that she could make her point more dramatically by using a fiction format. Her goal was not to write the great American novel, but, like Charles Dickens, create sympathy for members of an underclass of society, slaves.
The character "Uncle Tom" grew up on the plantation of his first master, Mr. Shelby, a Southerner who was kindly disposed toward his slaves. In the course of events, Mr. Shelby incurs such large debts that he must either sell Tom, his most valuable slave, or sell all the others. This dilemma allows Mrs. Stowe to demonstrate how the economic realities of the slave system itself often precluded humanitarian considerations.
Uncle Tom’s second master, Mr. St. Clare, was also a Southerner and a compassionate slave owner. Mrs. Stowe uses St. Clare’s Vermont cousin, Miss Ophelia, to illustrate the Northern view of slavery. Miss Ophelia chastises St. Clare: "It’s a perfect abomination for you to defend such a system – you all do – all you southerners." But, annoyed by the slipshod manner in which the house servants conduct themselves; she calls them "shiftless." Miss Ophelia is also offended by the close companionship of St. Clare’s daughter, Little Eva, with Tom and the other slaves, which she deems inappropriate.
Uncle Tom’s third and final master is perhaps the most famous villain in American literature – Simon Legree: a New England Yankee. Legree amasses enough money pirating to purchase a plantation in Louisiana. As a plantation owner, he regularly beats, curses and abuses his slaves. In one of his beatings of Tom, Legree's rage boils over and he accidentally kills the noble slave.
Toward the end of the book, an escaped slave, George Harris, realizes he can now achieve his dream of joining the colony in Liberia: "Let me go to form part of a nation, which shall have a voice in the councils of nations, and then we can speak. We have the claim of an injured race for reparation. But, then, I do not want it. I want a country, a nation, of my own."
In a postscript to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe catalogues the evils of the slavery system and then addresses Southerners:
"The author hopes she has done justice to that nobility, generosity, and humanity which in many cases characterizes individuals at the South. Such instances save us from utter despair of our kind. To you, generous, noble-minded men and women of the South – you, whose virtue, and magnanimity, and purity of character are the greater for the severer trial it has encountered – to you is her appeal."
Next she turns her attention to Northerners:
"Do you say that the people of the free states have nothing to do with it? The people of the free states have defended, encouraged, and participated; and are more guilty for it, before God, than the South. There are multitudes of slaves temporarily owned, and sold again, by merchants in Northern cities; and shall the whole guilt or obloquy of slavery fall only on the South? Northern men, Northern mothers, Northern Christians, have something more to do than denounce their brethren at the South; they have to look to the evil among themselves."
Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published almost ten years before the War Between the States. Harriet Beecher Stowe did as much as anyone to encourage "gradual emancipation" of the New England sort..
December 16, 2003
Gail Jarvis [send him mail], a CPA living in Beaufort, SC, is an advocate of the voluntary union of states established by the founders.
Copyright © 2003 LewRockwell.com
Gail Jarvis Archives
Back to LewRockwell.com Home Page
I don't suppose you have a breakdown on what those imports consisted of, do you? Or a reason why 75% of the southern imports didn't go directly to the consumers?
There was insurrection in 7 southern states, soon to be 11 states. And the section 2 of the Militia Acts provided that the President could call out the militia to supress insurrection and that he didn't need for the state to call for assistance first.
In CRIMINAL law. The Constitution is not criminal law. Ex post facto laws change the legal status of an action after the fact. If it were legal Lincoln would not need retroactive legislative approval.
In any law.
If it were legal Lincoln would not need retroactive legislative approval.
It was...and he didn't.
So why did Grier write the following?:
'And finally, in 1861, we find Congress "ex majore cautela" and in anticipation of such astute objections, passing an act approving, legalizing, and making valid all the acts, proclamations, and orders of the President, &c., as if they had been issued and done under the previous express authority and direction of the Congress of the United States.'
New York Harbor is divided between the Upper Harbor and the Lower Harbor. The Upper Harbor is where the majority of piers are, along the shorelines of New Jersey, Manhattan and Brooklyn. The Lower Harbor is lined with parks, beaches and natural areas. The dividing line is at the Narrows, between Staten Island and Brooklyn. The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, finished in 1964, crosses the Narrows and marks the division clearly.
The Upper Harbor has several offshoots, like the Newark, Bayonne and Elizabeth, New Jersey waterfronts where most commercial port activity in New York Harbor now takes place.
The entire harbor is an ice-free arm of the Atlantic Ocean and thus tidal. It is formed by the confluence of the Hudson River and the estuary called the East River. Through the Meadowlands and Raritan Bay it is also the mouths of many small streams and rivers flowing through New Jersey, such as the Hackensack, Newark and Raritan Rivers.
New York Harbor is referred to by some as the worlds largest natural harbor. It has the distinction of not requiring dredging of silt, nor does it flood along its shores. New York Harbor is still one of the largest venues for shipping of goods in the world.
There are several islands in the harbor: Ellis Island, Governors' Island and Bedloe, or Liberty Island. Whether the East River north of the Brooklyn Bridge is part of the harbor proper has always been subject to debate.
The Harbor was found by Europeans beginning in the early 1500s. Verrazzano probably found it, Hudson found it, and numerous other explorers claimed to have found a large body of water in a protected harbor. Due to the lack of knoweledge of the time it's not exactly clear which European found it first. They may have been in Long Island Sound, or Delaware Bay, too. But the Native Americans knew of it, and used it as a major trading route.
Besides having an almost two hundred year head start, New York also had the historical advantage of being defendable from the sea, and not being situated near other potentially hostile foreign powers. (Or in the case of New Orleans, belonging to one). While New Orleans was ideally situated for commerce, the Mississippi delta on which it was built was a swampy geologic region with no high ground, prone to excessive heat, annual floods, hurricanes, heavy rains, mosquitoes, and disease.
[GOPcap] The real reason New York grew so much as a port was the 1846 Warehousing Act.
I suppose someone who thinks, when its 20 degrees out, its too cold to work, would also believe something like that (lol).
So are you trying to shift the topic to my holiday schedule, or your dishonesty? It's hard to tell sometimes where you'd like to (mis)lead the conversation.
20 degrees is too cold for you to work? Come on now.
BTW there are days in July when it is 70 deg in New York, and 100 in New Orleans or Houston with 100% humidity. Does that high temp keep people from working?
That's because it's time to go fishing.
As always, to support your unconstitutional argument, you must depart from the Constitution and cite something else as being superior to the Constitution.
Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution says, "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence."
Amendment X of the Constitution says, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Cite one legal scholar (other than Walt) who supports your position that your interpretation of the Militia Act trumps the Constitution.
An "insurrection" is "a violent uprising on part or all of the people against the government or other authority." Voting to secede is not a "violent" uprising.
Precisely which state do you claim was being protected "against invasion?"
SEC. 2. That whenever the laws of the United States shall be opposed, or the execution thereof obstructed, in any state, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested in the marshals by this act, it shall be lawful for the President of the United States to call forth the militia of such state, or of any other state or states, as may be necessary to suppress such combinations, and to cause the laws to be duly executed; and the use of militia so to be called forth may be continued, if necessary, until the expiration of thirty days after the commencement of the then next session of Congress.
Could you please point out that part of Section 2 the Militia Act of 1795 which you purport provides that the President "didn't need for the state to call for assistance"?
Or do you mean that the Act did not explicitly restate the Constitutional requirement of Article 4, Sect 4, so you therefore consider the Constitutional requirement to have been waived or amended or something.
Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution says, "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence."
Further, Section I of the Militia Act of 1795 pertains to insurrection:
And in case of an insurrection in any state, against the government thereof, it shall be lawful for the President of the United States, on application of the legislature of such state, or of the Executive, (when the legislature cannot be convened,) to call forth such number of the militia of any other state or states, as may be applied for, as he may judge sufficient to suppress such insurrection.
Yeah, I know. I thought of that right after I posted my comments. So why didn't you post the next line?
"Without admitting that such an act was necessary under the circumstances, it is plain that if the President had in any manner assumed powers which it was necessary should have the authority or sanction of Congress, that on the well known principle of law, 'omnis ratihabitio retrotrahitur et mandato equiparatur,' this ratification has operated to perfectly cure the defect."
Two things jump right out with that one. First, Justice Grier at no time implied that the president broke the law. Second, even if he did believe that then since those actions were not the issues involved in the case then he could not rule on their constitutionality.
I was not aware that the Supreme Court had ruled that the powers granted to the President under the Militia Acts were unconstitutional. Or are we once again proceeding on the well-worn arguement that something is unconstitutional because you say it is?
Section 2. Don't you read your onw cut-n-paste posts?
"That whenever the laws of the United States shall be opposed, or the execution thereof obstructed, in any state, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested in the marshals by this act, it shall be lawful for the President of the United States to call forth the militia of such state, or of any other state or states, as may be necessary to suppress such combinations, and to cause the laws to be duly executed; and the use of militia so to be called forth may be continued, if necessary, until the expiration of thirty days after the commencement of the then next session of Congress."
Nowhere does it say that the presidence can act only with the approval of the legislature of the state in question. And since the legislatures in question were the leaders of the insurrection then it is not surprising that they didn't request federal assistance. Does the mugger call the police to come and apprehend him?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.