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.
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An ex post facto law is generally recognized as a law that renders an act punishable in a manner in which it was not punishable when it was committed, either by making illegal that which was legal when committed or by increasing the penalty for an act after that act had been committed. Congressional endorsement of actions taken by President Lincoln doesn't qualify even if those actions had exceeded his authority, which you haven't shown to be the case.
It's simply my reaction to the hysterical posts I have read from those who contemptuously refer to our nation's Pledge of Allegience as a "loyalty oath". I support the Pledge - if that is a loyalty oath so be it.
In his book "Lifeline of the Confederacy: Blockade Running During the Civil War", Stephen Wise gives the value of imports landed at southern ports as $24.5 million and not the $106 million you claim. Quite a bit of difference, wouldn't you agree?
While there were indeed opponents of secession in the so-called "backwoods" of the south, you severely overstate the unionist sympathies among southerners at the time. Every state that held a secession referendum saw it pass in a landslide. Even the allegedly unionist hotbed of West Virginia voted in a majority for secession. The unionists there were for all practical purposes a rump government of sore losers - almost half of the counties they claimed as their own had voted for secession or had pro-secession delegates in Richmond. The only other significant unionist hotbed in the undisputed CSA states was appalachian Tennessee. Middle Tennessee and western Tennessee were solidly secessionist though and offset the eastern minority in the referendum.
Prove it.
most of the tariff money was collected in the north in any case.
Red herring. The 1846 Warehousing Act created an economic incentive for the majority of imports to go not through the north but rather one single northern city: New York. From there they were distributed to the rest of the country by intercoastal and internal means.
To suggest that the point of import entry somehow means that northerners consumed all the imports is akin to suggesting that the state of Arkansas is the nation's largest consumer of retail products since Wal-Mart's main distribution center is located there.
Consumed all the imports?
Tariffs were paid at the point of entry. So far as that goes, it didn't matter if southern ports were collecting tariffs or not. President Lincoln never made the statement ascribed to him -- because southern ports didn't add much to the national revenue. Two southern customs houses actually lost money.
No one worth convincing could possibly buy off on your manure pile.
Walt
I believe the federal government (and notably President Jefferson) did not support the building of the Eire Canal. There were lots of other reasons New York remained larger and grew more quickly than Charleston or New Orleans. Climate, geography and free labor are some that come to mind immediately.
I'd also argue that the Erie Canal actually helped southern commerce generally and New Orleans in particular because its creation helped settle the Old Northwestern territories. These settlers then used the Mississippi river to conduct trade with the south.
That's not how taxes work, Walt. They are passed through onto the purchaser by way of an increased price. Without the southern states there would be no southerners to pay those higher prices regardless of where they entered the country. Without southern buyers imports decline and so do the revenues. As for your claim that Lincoln never made that thoroughly documented statement, you have yet to meet your burden of proof. You know the rule. Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.
In terms of climate New York is significantly disadvantaged in comparison to practically any southern port. Simply put, it's winters are longer and colder making for a smaller portion of the year in which productive work may occur. There are days every December when it is 20 degrees in New York and 70 degrees in New Orleans. Geography is similarly advantaged to New Orleans at the mouth of the Mississippi river. It was the nation's largest exporting port for a better part of the 19th century as a result of this simple geographical fact. New York, by contrast, is located in the northern extremity of the nation. Its only significant geographic advantage is one that it also shares with most other cities on the upper east coast, that being a proximity to transatlantic traffic.
The labor element seems to have been of little consequence in the area of shipping simply because slave labor, and free manufacturing labor for that matter, were at the time employed primarily in production rather than trade. The southern ports had no more difficulty shipping the cotton out than the northern ports did with bringing the manufactured goods in.
The real reason New York grew so much as a port was the 1846 Warehousing Act. It took advantage of the act's provisions to such a degree that it not only outgrew southern city imports - it also outgrew the imports to every other northern city.
That's not how taxes work, Walt. They are passed through onto the purchaser by way of an increased price. Without the southern states there would be no southerners to pay those higher prices regardless of where they entered the country.
Trade would have continued with the southern states, one way or the other.
Of all the lame Lincoln fabrications you people use, this is one of the lamest.
President Lincoln never said anything as ridiculous as "what will become of my tariff?" For one thing, it is totally out of character for the man.
This is more in keeping with Lincoln's character:
"Having thus chosen our course, without guile and with pure purpose, let us renew our trust in God, and go forward without fear and with manly hearts."
And this:
"This is essentially a people's contest. On the side of the Union, it is a struggle for maintaining in the world, that form, and substance of government, whose leading object is, to elevate the condition of men -- to lift artificial weights from all shoulders -- to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all -- to afford all, an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life. Yielding to partial, and temporary departures, from necessity, this is the leading object of the government for whose existance we contend."
7/4/61
Walt
What, exactly, compared to slavery, was it that Lincoln considered a greater evil, even to the cause of human liberty itself?
The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 2, page 130
Abraham Lincoln
July 6, 1852
HONORS TO HENRY CLAY
Having been led to allude to domestic slavery so frequently already, I am unwilling to close without referring more particularly to Mr. Clay's views and conduct in regard to it. He ever was, on principle and in feeling, opposed to slavery. The very earliest, and one of the latest public efforts of his life, separated by a period of more than fifty years, were both made in favor of gradual emancipation of the slaves in Kentucky. He did not perceive, that on a question of human right, the negroes were to be excepted from the human race. And yet Mr. Clay was the owner of slaves. Cast into life where slavery was already widely spread and deeply seated, he did not perceive, as I think no wise man has perceived, how it could be at once eradicated, without producing a greater evil, even to the cause of human liberty itself.
Lincoln said he was in favor of the new territories "being in such a condition that white men may find a home."
Lincoln, Alton, Illinois, 10/15/1862
"His democracy was a White mans democracy. It did not contain Negroes." Oscar Sherwin
Lincoln's dream did not contain Indians or even Mexicans who he referred to as "mongrels."
Lincoln, CW 3:234-5
"Resolved, That the elective franchise should be kept pure from contamination by the admission of colored votes."
That got Lincoln's vote, January 5, 1836.
"in our greedy chase to make profit of the Negro, let us beware, lest we 'cancel and tear to pieces' even the white man's charter of freedom"
Lincoln, CW 2:276
Translation for the intellectually challenged:
The White Man's Charter of Freedom = The Declaration of Independence
Lincoln wanted the territories to be "the happy home of teeming millions of free, white prosperous people, and no slave among them"
Lincoln, 1854, CW 2:249
The territories "should be kept open for the homes of free white people"
Lincoln, 1856, CW 2:363
"We want them [the territories] for the homes of free white people."
Lincoln, CW 3:311
If slavery was allowed to spread to the territories, he said "Negro equality will be abundant, as every White laborer will have occasion to regret when he is elbowed from his plow or his anvil by slave n-----s"
Lincoln, CW 3:78 [Lincoln uses the N-word without elision]
"Is it not rather our duty to make labor more respectable by preventing all black competition, especially in the territories?"
Lincoln, CW 3:79
Between 1854 and 1860, Lincoln said publicly at least two times that America was made for the White people and "not for the Negroes."
At least eight times, he said publicly that he was opposed to equal rights for Blacks.
He said it at Ottawa:
I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the fotting of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position. (CW 3:16)
He said it at Galesburg:
I have all the while maintained that inasmuch as there is a physical inequality between the white and black, that the blacks must remain inferior .... (Holzer 1993, 254)
He said it in Ohio. He said it in Wisconsin. He said it in Indiana. He said it everywhere:
We can not, then, make them equals. (CW 2:256)
Why couldn't "we" make "them" equals?
There was, Lincoln said, a strong feeling in White America against Black equality, and "MY OWN FEELINGS," he said, capitalizing the words, "WILL NOT ADMIT OF THIS..." (CW 3:79)
See Forced Into Glory, by Lerone Bennett, Jr., p. 211-212
When, in 1855, Lincoln's best friend, Joshua Speed, asked him to clarify his position on slavery, he said frankly, "I now do no more than oppose the extension of slavery, (CW 2:233, Lincoln's italics). Lincoln said this so often and so loud that it is astounding that some people, even some historians, claim to misunderstand him.
He said it in CAPITALS at Peoria, Illinois, on October 16, 1854:
I wish to MAKE and to KEEP the distinction between the EXISTING institution, and the EXTENSION of it, so broad, and so clear, that no honest man can misunderstand me, and no dishonest one, successfully misrepresent me. (CW 2:248)
That didn't deter honest and dishonest men -- then or now -- and he said it again at Bloomington, Illinois, on September 4, 1858:
We have no right to interfere with slavery in the States. We only want to restrict it to where it is." (CW 3:87)
He said it at Ottawa, Illinois, on August 21, 1858, at the first Lincoln-Douglas debate:
I will say here, while upon this subject, that I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it ixists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. (CW 3:16, italics added)
He said it at the second Lincoln-Douglas debate and the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth debate:
I expressly declared in my opening speech, that I had neither the inclination to exercise, nor the belief in the existence of the right to interfere with the States of Kentucky or Virginia in doing as they pleased with slavery or any other existing institution. (CW 3:277)
Challenged again at the seventh and final debate, he said it again:
Now I have upon all occasions declared as strongly as Judge [Stephen] Douglas against the disposition to interfere with the existing institution of slavery. (CW 3:300)
He said it in Illinois.
He said it in Michigan.
He said it in Wisconsin, Kansas, Michigan, Connecticut, Ohio, and New York.
He said it everywhere.
We must not disturb slavery in the states where it exists, because the constitution, and the pease of the country, both forbid us. (CW 3:435)
One has to feel sorry for Lincoln retrospectively and prospectively. For he declared it and, to use his word, "re-declared" it. He quoted himself and "re-quoted" himself. Yet honest and dishonest men -- then and now -- continued to misrepresent him, despite the fact that he said it a hundred times:
I have said a hundred times and I have no no inclination to take it back, that I believe there is no right, and ought to be no inclination in the people of the free States to enter into the slave States, and interfere with the question of slavery at all. I have said that always. (CW 2:492, italics added).
If he said it a hundred times, he said it a thousand times:
I have declared a thousand times, and now repeat that, in my opinion, neither the General government, no any other power outside of the slave states, can constitutionally or rightfully interfere with slaves or slavery where it already exists.. (CW 2:471)
Not only did he say it but he cited evidence to prove it.
He asserted positively, and proved conclusively by his former acts and speeches that he was not in favor of interfering with slavery in the States where it exists, nor ever had been. (CW 3:96)
See Forced Into Glory, by Lerone Bennett, Jr., p. 248-250.
This is a pivotal point, one that has been masked by rhetoric and imperfect analysis. For to say, as Lincoln said a thousand times, that one is only opposed to the extension of slavery is to say a thousand times that one is not opposed to slavery where it existed. Based on this record and the words of his own mouth, we can say that the "great emancipator" was one of the major supporters of slavery in the United States for at least fifty-four of his fifty six years.
See Forced Into Glory, by Lerone Bennett, Jr., p. 251.
CW = The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler, 11 vols. Rutgers, 1955
[nc 196] You must mean Emergency War Powers. Don't be bashful. Here is a link to, and a few quotes from, Senate Report No. 93-549.
[ns 198] Actually I was thinking of the Militia Acts, since the Emergency War Powers Acts were passed long after President Lincoln was dead.
In 1860, the units were State Militia, not National Guard. What militia act authorizes the activation of National Guard units at will today?
You have spent too much time reading Walt's mindless drivel about the Militia Acts which are irrelevant. Indeed, the Militia Act was so irrelevant that Lincoln-supporter Daniel Farber wrote a 240-page book called "Lincoln's Constitution" and the Militia Act does not get a mention for obvious reasons.
U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 15, establishes the Emergency Power relative to the Militia. It says, "Congress shall have the Power ... [15] To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions"
That is all the power that the Constitution gives to Congress. While you may choose to attempt to interpret an Act of Congress to change, modify or extend those powers, if you interpret any such Act to exceed the Constitutionally expressed powers of Congress, you concurrently interpret such Act to be Un-Constitutional. Therefore, it is the Emergency Power provided by the Constitution which must be discussed, rather than some irrelevant fantasy about the Militia Act.
According to the Constitution, Art I, Sect. 8, Cl 15, "Congress shall have the Power... To provide for calling forth the Militia:
[1] to execute the Laws of the Union
[2] to suppress insurrections
[3] to repel invasions
Attorney General Black stated that "to execute the laws of the Union" meant "to aid the federal officers in the performance of their regular duties." As there were no Federal officers in the seceded states, there were none to assist.
Further, there was no insurrection and no state had applied for assistance pursuant to Article IV, Section 4.
Lastly, there had been no invasion.
Lincoln lied and said he was calling up 75,000 militia troops for 90 days to defeat the South. The 75,000 militia troops were needed to control Maryland.
Maryland could not seceed without Virginia committing to secession, the position would have been militarily untenable.
Hordes escaped to Virginia, sometimes forming their own units (the First MD Volunteers was one), sometimes enlisting in existing units, but fighting for the South.
Yes, admittedly, some went for the Union, but they were the minority, and mostly from the northwestern part of the state (above the fall line).
I'm not ssure who made the contention, but one of the disagreements was over the height of Railroad bridges, (ca 1830) which would have effectively prevented steamboat traffic north of St Louis and other points south, giving railroads a virtual monoploy on bulk transport.
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