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)
Slaveholders are called murderers, because in a few rare instances, a
slave may have been worked to death; and they denounced as cruel and
oppressive task-masters, because probably one in five hundred, under
peculiar circumstances, may have been guilty of cruelty to his slaves.
The same thing occurs everywhere, the world over. And it occurs as
frequently in Yankeedom, the hot-bed of abolitionism, infidelity, and
wooden nutmegs, as anywhere else, There are more white men and white
women worked to death in the North, than there are slaves worked to
death in the South. Oh! but, says an objector, those white people are
free. Nobody forces them to work beyond their capabilities of
endurance. The objection is without foundation, for indigence and
liberty, never resided together in the same hovel or hut. Hunger and
cold are hard masters, far worse than Southern slaveholders; and the
penurious Yankee who inadequately pays the laborer, and thus suffers
him to starve or freeze to death, is morally as bad as the man who
whips his slave to death. If the latter is a murderer, so is the
former. The generality of slaves are better paid for their labor, than
the poorer classes of people North or South. They at least receive
more in return for their labor. They are better fed, better clothed,
and better housed. Most of them are happy and well provided for. Their
appearance, their health, cheerfulness and fondness for music, give
the lie to Northern representations. Masters are responsible for the
maintenance of their slaves under all circumstances; in infancy and
old age, in sickness as well as in health. But as soon, as Northern
white slaves become incapacitated for labor, they are suffered to lie
down in their filth and starve and die. Where then, are their lords
and masters, who have grown wealthy from the proceeds of their labor?
Mrs. Stowe may write about slavery to her heart's content; but has
she, or any one else, pointed out to us, any fair, open, practicable
system of emancipation? No, they have not, and until that is done,
they should be a little more modest in their denunciations of
slaveholders. Suppose the South should manumit their slaves, will the
North receive and educate them? No, by no means; and however ignorant
Mrs. Stowe may be in relation to Southern slavery, she must be well
aware of the universal prejudice in the North against free negroes. A
very large majority of the blacks in the North, are in an impoverished
and degraded condition; and there is no sympathy with them, or for
them, among Northern men. Northern prejudice is much stronger than
Southern prejudice, against these unfortunate creatures.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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