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)
The whites cannot, and will not make equals of them any where. They
are at the bottom of the social ladder, and there they must and will
remain, so long as they are among the whites. They can never enjoy the
blessings of freedom in the United States. The liberty of the free
blacks is but nominal; they have no more rights and fewer comforts, as
free men, (so called), than they have as slaves in the South. White
freedom is one thing, and colored freedom is another. Most of the
Northern states treat the African worse now, than they did a half
century ago! They are in the North virtually slaves, without masters.
The half starved, ill-clad free negro will soon have no foot hold in
the North; for Irish and German laborers will supersede them; or
otherwise Northern men will legislate them out of the free states.
Pennsylvania has already taken from them the privilege of voting, and
Indiana and Illinois will not suffer them to enter their borders; and
I judge from present indications, that Ohio will soon follow the
example of her younger sisters; and moreover, I venture to predict,
that in less than twenty years from the present time; a free negro
will not be suffered to enter a free state in this Union. This
prejudice never can be removed. "Can the Ethiopian change his skin?"
If he could, then might we have hope; till then, there is none for the
poor African while he remains in the midst of the Anglo-Saxon race.
Behold the negro quarters about the larger cities in the North; think
of the riots and burning of African churches, &c., that have occurred
within the last dozen years, and tell me, where is the hope of the
African! Not in the United States. The African race in the United
States, are not yet prepared for emancipation; they must first be
educated; otherwise there is danger that they will sink into their
original barbarism. England emancipated the West India slaves, and
Lord Brougham tells us, that they are rapidly declining into
barbarism.
CHAPTER II.
It is no part of my design to offer apologies for, or by any means to
conceal the faults of Southern slaveholders. But the reading of Uncle
Tom's Cabin, has indelibly fixed the impression on my mind that Mrs.
Stowe's narrative is false. The question is, whether such, or similar
occurrences, are _common_ among Southern slaveholders. If they had
been _rare_, she had no right to make the impression on the whole
civilized world, that they are every-day occurrences. Nor had she any
right unless she had been an eye witness of the leading facts detailed
in her story, to publish a book which presents her country in such an
ignoble attitude before the world; she had no right to base such
calumnious charges on heresay, rumor, or common report. I shall
proceed to show that her tale is improbable, and that it is likely
that no such transactions as are detailed in her story, ever have
transpired among Southern slaveholders.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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