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
...tu quoque boy strikes again.
Really? I opened that link and the very first thing I found at the top of the page was this:
Material contained herein is made available for the purpose of peer review and discussion and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of the Navy or the Department of Defense.
So evidently that link is NOT my source (meaning the US Navy) nor does it reflect the views of my source. Rather, it is an article by some other source that they agreed to print for the purpose of peer review. As such, I also have no doubt that the peer reviewers at the navy have long since caught two major problems in that article: (1) its quoted stats on the tons displaced by the Kearsarge are in conflict with the official records of the Navy itself (that is, the article incorrectly uses your book's numbers instead of the navy's found at their own link, which I previously posted) and (2) it gives two different and conflicting stats for the Alabama (that is, it first states 1,438 tons and later states the standard 1,050 ton figure within the same text).
So all this time when you were squacking about the Warehousing Act you really didn't know what you were talking about? Gee, what a surprise. Well, when was this 3 year provision added? 1847? 1855? For all you know it could have been 1859.
Feb 17, 1834 debate on Warehousing System (H of R)
Pages 2713-2714
Mr. CAMBRELENG:By the act of 1832, all wool and woolens, and all goods of which wool was a component part, if the duties on them were not paid within three months after their arrival, must be sold at auction, at whatever sacrifice. On the first day of this month there had been six hundred and thirty packages of goods in this situation, which must be sacrificed, because the importing merchants had not the means to pay the duty.
Mr. C. said that he had voted for the act of 1832, not because he approved of the law, but with a view to prevent the shedding of blood.
* * *
Mr. HUNTINGTON, of Connecticut:
* * *
But now he asked for a warehousing system, under which the duties might remain unpaid for three years.
The Warehouse Bill -- Mr. Dix
June 19, 1846
Senate 39C, 1S
At page 791, Mr. Dix states:
1. As to the extension of time. -- The Senate will perceive that the number of years during which the bill proposes to allow goods to remain in store is left in blank. I will, at a proper time, move to fill the blank with three years, though I am not authorized to say that I shall be sustained in this motion by the judgment of the committee.
Committee: Committee on Commerce
Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union
January 6, 1854 ~ February 16, 1854
Reported from the committee with amendments, viz: Strike out the parts in [brackets] and insert those in italics, and committed to the Committee of the whole House on the state of the Union.
At Page 4-5, Section 4 of this Act states:
[Page 4]Sec. 4. And be it further enacted, That all goods, wares, and merchandise, which may be hereafter duly entered for warehousing under bond, and likewise all merchandise [not] now remaining in warehouse under bond, may continue in warehouse, without payment of duties thereupon, for a period of three years from the date of original importation, and my be withdrawn for consumption on due entry and payment of duties and charges, or upon entry for exportation, withoutt the payment of duties, at any time within the period aforesaid; in the latter case, the goods to be subject only to the payment
[Page 5]
of such storage and charges as may be due thereon: Provided, however, that where the duties shall have been paid upon any goods, wares, or merchandies entered for consumption, said duties shall not be refunded on exportation of any such goods, wares, or merchandies, without the limites of the United States: and provided further, That there shall be no abatement of the duties, or allowance made for any injury, damage, deterioration, loss or leakage sustained by any goods, wares, or merchandise, whilst deposited in any public or private bonded warehouse established or recognized by this act.
The Warehousing Act of 1854 was signed into law on February 28, 1854
March 31, 1854 CG Page 585
"And that he [the President] did, on the 28th instant, approve and sign bills of the following titles, viz:S. 39. An act to extend the warehousing system by establishing private bonded warehouses, and for other purposes;
Committee: Committee on Commerce
Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union
January 6, 1854 ~ February 16, 1854
Reported from the committee with amendments, viz: Strike out the parts in [brackets] and insert those in italics, and committed to the Committee of the whole House on the state of the Union.
At Page 4-5, Section 4 of this Act states:
[Page 4]Sec. 4. And be it further enacted, That all goods, wares, and merchandise, which may be hereafter duly entered for warehousing under bond, and likewise all merchandise [not] now remaining in warehouse under bond, may continue in warehouse, without payment of duties thereupon, for a period of three years from the date of original importation, and my be withdrawn for consumption on due entry and payment of duties and charges, or upon entry for exportation, withoutt the payment of duties, at any time within the period aforesaid; in the latter case, the goods to be subject only to the payment
[Page 5]
of such storage and charges as may be due thereon: Provided, however, that where the duties shall have been paid upon any goods, wares, or merchandies entered for consumption, said duties shall not be refunded on exportation of any such goods, wares, or merchandies, without the limites of the United States: and provided further, That there shall be no abatement of the duties, or allowance made for any injury, damage, deterioration, loss or leakage sustained by any goods, wares, or merchandise, whilst deposited in any public or private bonded warehouse established or recognized by this act.
Not at all. For the first eight years of it they could still warehouse for a year, which is plenty of time to sell one's merchandise. The extension of the system to three years, aside from being testiment to its success, only further encouraged the warehousing mechanism.
From the looks of things, 1854. Before that it was one year, which is still more than enough time to sell your goods out of warehouse and make the system a positive economic benefit.
Only those deserving of the title. When you don your tu quoque hat and peruse the forum under such guise (an event that happens almost daily around here) you make yourself deserving of it. If you desire that a different reference be made, abstain from your childish tu quoque behavior.
And when y'all called my grandfather 'boy' then I suppose he deserved the title to? Same with my father?
Unless your grandfather and father are freepers who have habitually posted tu quoque rationalizations on this forum in debate with myself or others who I side with in these debates, then no. I have neither called them "boy" nor suggested that either deserves to be called as such. You, however, have engaged in habitual and childish tu quoque nonsense to an extreme degree. Thus your title of "Tu Quoque Boy" is an earned one.
At long last your true Buchananite colors are revealed!
Ah, then you must be of the Harry Jaffa persuasion that Lincoln's support of protection was really in support of freedom, since it was a new birth of freedom against the south's free trade in support of slavery, which is what Hitler wanted. And to ensure that his protectionism shall not perish from the earth, Lincoln, without doubt, enacted the Morrill tariff as the last, best hope for mankind in light of which no nation divided against itself, half agrarian and half manufactures, could stand. That, of course, would also make you of the old Whig persuasion, in which case free trade, since it is not really free and since protection is in support of freedom, is the judgment of the heavens, true and firm, from which malice towards none may be derived so long as what becomes of the tariff is good for the toilers of the machine. So in other words, you must be a Hamiltonian.
After all, isn't that how it works? Dress it up in a little fluffy Lincolnian language and nothing else matters, consistency included?
If I remember correctly, it was Rev. Lacy that performed the marriage ceremony of Jackson and his second wife. Lacy was in Richmond.
But again, Jackson did not take over any existing Sunday school:
Indeed, it was a joint effort of Preston and Jackson that got a famous black Sunday school class underway. Whites had taught the tenets of Christianity to slaves and freedmen as early as 1843, when Colonel Smith organized a Sunday school for slaves in Lexington. Two years later, St. John's Episcopal Church in Redmond began such a Sunday school. Lexington Presbyterians undertook a similar project at the same time. Local opposition and lack of participation doomed all three of these initial experiments.
James I. Robertson, Jr., Stonewall Jackson: The Man, The Soldier, The Legend, New York: Simon & Schuster Macmillan, 1997, p. 167
It was Thomas Jefferson in a letter to John Adams 7 Jul 1785 that wrote, 'I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty.'
George Washington, in his farewell address stated,
'Harmony, liberal intercourse with all Nations, are recommended by policy, humanity and interest. But even our Commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand: neither seeking nor granting exclusive favours or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of Commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing with Powers so disposed; in order to give trade a stable course.'
In your 507, please note that in 1845 they established 'a Presbyterian Sabath School'. The quote does not indicate how long the school lasted. Robertson notes that '[l]ocal opposition and lack of participation doomed all three of these initial experiments', of which the third listed was that of the Lexington Presbyterians. The school that Jackson and Preston stated began in 1855.
A point reiterated by Dabney:
'He next proposed to gather the African slaves of the village in the afternoon of the Sabbath, and speedily he had a flourishing school of eighty or a hundred pupils, with twelve teachers; the latter of whom were recruited from among the educated ladies and gentlemen of the place. This he continued to teach successfully from 1855 until the spring of 1861; when he reluctantly left it to enter the army. And to the end of his life, he inquired of every visitor at the camp from his church at home. How his black Sabbath-school was progressing.'
Robert L. Dabney, Life and campaigns of Lieut. Gen. Thomas J. Jackson, (Stonewall Jackson), New York: Blelock & Co., 1866, p. 92
While thus exacting in his discipline of the school, he was rendered extremely popular among all the more serious servants by these labors for their good. He was indeed the black man's friend. His prayers were so attractive to them, that a number of them living in his quarter of the town, petitioned to be admitted on Sabbath nights.
Ibid, p. 94
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.