A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, An Essay on SlaveryWoodward, A.
History
A Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, An Essay on Slavery
Woodward, A.
Slavery -- United States; Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 1811-1896. Uncle Tom's cabin; Uncle Tom (Fictitious character)
It is a dire calamity that this class of writers have taken hold of
the subject of slavery. It is a misfortune that slavery should be
presented in a fictitious garb. I fear the consequences. It portends
no good to the nation. Slavery is among us, it is a solemn reality,
and if we expect to get rid of it, we must look it full in the face;
see it as it is, and treat it as a matter of fact business. We know
that it is an evil--a deplorable evil; but what shall we do with it?
The plague is on us--about us--in our midst. Where? Oh! where, shall
we find a remedy? The great work is before us; who is competent to the
task? Statesmen as wise and patriotic as any the world ever produced,
have shrunk from the task, confounded and abashed. Where is Clay!
Where is Webster? All that was earthly of them, is no more. Long did
they grapple with the monster slavery, and by their wise councils,
through many a dark and stormy period, did they safely conduct the
ship of State. But they are gone, and shall we now confide the
interests of this great nation, to the keeping of a few sickly
sentimentalists? No, heaven forbid that we should be led blindfold to
ruin! I entreat you, my fellow countrymen, to open your eyes and look
around you, and be not deceived. Your all is at stake. Arise in your
strength and crush the monster abolitionism, that threatens your
blood-bought liberties.
Mrs. Stowe tells us that the object of her book is to awaken sympathy
for the African race. If that, and that alone was her object, she
probably had better not have written on the subject. Sympathy for the
African race is right and proper, provided that it is properly
directed; but blindfold sympathy in the North, is not likely to result
in any good to the slaves of the South. The kindest and best feelings
of the human heart, unless they are directed and controlled by
prudence and discretion, frequently result in no good to the
possessor, and too often in positive injury to the object of his
solicitude. An excess of sympathy some times dethrones the judgment.
Sympathy for the slave may prompt us to act in the right direction;
but unless judgment and justice illumine our paths, and direct our
steps, all our efforts to ameliorate his condition, will prove worse
than useless. The slaves of the South are proper objects of our
sympathy, and so are their masters, and so is every living and
sensitive being in God's creation. Everything that lives and breathes
upon the face of the earth, has demands upon our sympathies; and it
would be well for us to provide ourselves with a large stock of it;
but we should be careful in meting it out, to give every one his due.
It is a gross error in the dispensation of our sympathies, to direct
our attention solely to some one object, regardless of the wants and
rights of others.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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