Whittier offered up "thanks for the fugitive slave law; for it gave
occasion for 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.'" Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe had been
mistress of a station on the Underground Railroad at Cincinnati, the
storm-center of the West, and out of her experience she has transmitted
to the world a knowledge of the elemental and tragic human experiences
of the slaves which would otherwise have been restricted to a select
few. The mistress of a similar station in eastern Indiana, though she
held novel reading a deadly sin, said: "'Uncle Tom's Cabin' is not
a novel, it is a record of facts. I myself have listened to the same
stories." The reading public in all lands soon became sympathetic
participants in the labors of those who, in defiance of law, were
lending a hand to the aspirants for liberty. At the time of the
publication of the story in book form in March, 1852, America was being
profoundly stirred by the stories of fugitives who had escaped from
European despotism. Mrs. Stowe refers to these incidents in her
question: "When despairing Hungarian fugitives make their way, against
all the search-warrants and authorities of their lawful governments to
America, press and political cabinet ring with applause and welcome.
When despairing African fugitives do the same thing--it is--what IS it?"
Little did she think that when the eloquence of the Hungarian refugee
had been forgotten, the story of Eliza and Uncle Tom would ring
throughout the world.
The book did far more than vindicate the conduct of those who rendered
assistance to the fugitive from slavery; it let in daylight upon the
essential nature of slavery. Humane and just masters are shown to be
forced into participation in acts which result in intolerable cruelty.
Full justice is done to the noble and admirable character of Southern
slave-owners. The author had been a guest in the home of the "Shelbys,"
in Kentucky. She had taken great pains to understand the Southern point
of view on the subject of slavery; she had entered into the real trials
and difficulties involved in any plan of emancipation. St. Clair,
speaking to Miss Ophelia, his New England cousin, says:
"If we emancipate, are you willing to educate? How many families of your
town would take in a negro man or woman, teach them, bear with them, and
seek to make them Christians? How many merchants would take Adolph, if
I wanted to make him a clerk; or mechanics, if I wanted to teach him a
trade? If I wanted to put Jane and Rosa to a school, how many schools
are there in the Northern States that would take them in? How many
families that would board them? And yet they are as white as many a
woman north or south. You see, cousin, I want justice done us. We are in
a bad position. We are the more obvious oppressors of the negro; but
the unchristian prejudice of the north is an oppressor almost equally
severe."
Throughout the book the idea is elaborated in many ways. Miss Ophelia
is introduced for the purpose of contrasting Northern ignorance and New
England prejudice with the patience and forbearance of the better class
of slave-owners of the South. The genuine affection of an unspoiled
child for negro friends is made especially emphatic. Miss Ophelia
objected to Eva's expressions of devotion to Uncle Tom. Her father
insists that his daughter shall not be robbed of the free utterance of
her high regard, observing that "the child is the only true democrat."
There is only one Simon Legree in the book, and he is of New England
extraction. The story is as distinctly intended to inform Northern
ignorance and to remove Northern prejudice as it is to justify the
conduct of abolitionists.
What was the effect of the publication? In European countries far
removed from local partizan prejudice, it was immediately received as
a great revelation of the spirit of liberty. It was translated into
twenty-three different languages. So devoted were the Italians to the
reading of the story that there was earnest effort to suppress its
circulation. As a drama it proved a great success, not only in America
and England but in France and other countries as well. More than a
million copies of the story were sold in the British Empire. Lord
Palmerston avers that he had not read a novel for thirty years, yet
he read Uncle Tom's Cabin three times and commended the book for the
statesmanship displayed in it.
What is in the story to call forth such commendation from the
cold-blooded English statesman? The book revealed, in a way fitted to
carry conviction to every unprejudiced reader, the impossibility of
uniting slavery with freedom under the same Government. Either all must
be free or the mass subject to the few--or there is actual war. This
principle is finely brought out in the predicament of the Quaker
confronted by a fugitive with wife and child who had seen a sister sold
and conveyed to a life of shame on a Southern plantation. "Am I going to
stand by and see them take my wife and sell her?" exclaimed the negro.
"No, God help me! I'll fight to the last breath before they shall take
my wife and son. Can you blame me?" To which the Quaker replied: "Mortal
man cannot blame thee, George. Flesh and blood could not do otherwise.
'Woe unto the world because of offences but woe unto them through whom
the offence cometh.'" "Would not even you, sir, do the same, in my
place?" "I pray that I be not tried." And in the ensuing events the
Quaker played an important part.
Laws enacted for the protection of slave property are shown to be
destructive of the fundamental rights of freemen; they are inhuman. The
Ohio Senator, who in his lofty preserve at the capital of his country
could discourse eloquently of his readiness to keep faith with the
South in the matter of the faithful execution of the Fugitive Slave Law,
becomes, when at home with his family, a flagrant violator of the law.
Elemental human nature is pitted against the apparent interests of a few
individual slaveowners. The story of Uncle Tom placed all supporters
of the new law on the defensive. It was read by all classes North and
South. "Uncle Tom's Cabin as it is" was called forth from the South as a
reply to Mrs. Stowe's book, and there ensued a general discussion of the
subject which was on the whole enlightening. Yet the immediate political
effect of the publication was less than might have been expected from
a book so widely read and discussed. Its appearance early in the decade
did not prevent the apparent pro-slavery reaction already described. But
Mr. Rhodes calls attention to the different impression which the book
made upon adults and boys. Hardened sinners in partizan politics could
read the book, laugh and weep over the passing incidents, and then go
on as if nothing had happened. Not so with the thirteen-year-old boy.
He never could be the same again. The Republican party of 1860 was
especially successful in gaining the first vote of the youthful citizen
and undoubtedly owed much of its influence to "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
Two lines of attack were rapidly rendering impossible the continuance
of slavery in the United States. Mrs. Stowe gave effective expression to
the moral, religious, and humanitarian sentiment against slavery. In the
year in which her work was published, Frederick Law Olmsted began his
extended journeys throughout the South. He represents the impartial
scientific observer. His books were published during the years 1856,
1857, and 1861. They constitute in their own way an indictment against
slavery quite as forcible as that of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," but an
indictment that rests chiefly upon the blighting influence of the
institution of slavery upon agriculture, manufactures, and the general
industrial and social order. The crisis came too soon for these
publications to have any marked effect upon the issue. Their appeal
was to the deliberate and thoughtful reader, and political control had
already drifted into the hands of those who were not deliberate and
composed.
In 1857, however, there appeared a book which did exert a marked
influence upon immediate political issues. There is no evidence that
Hinton Rowan Helper, the author of "The Impending Crisis," had any
knowledge of the writings of Olmsted; but he was familiar with
Northern anti-slavery literature. "I have considered my subject more
particularly," he states in his preface, "with reference to its economic
aspects as regards the whites--not with reference, except in a very
slight degree, to its humanitarian or religious aspects. To the latter
side of the question, Northern writers have already done full and timely
justice.... Yankee wives have written the most popular anti-slavery
literature of the day. Against this I have nothing to say; it is all
well enough for women to give the fictions of slavery; men should give
the facts." He denies that it had been his purpose to cast unmerited
opprobium upon slaveholders; yet a sense of personal injury breathes
throughout the pages. If he had no intention of casting unmerited
opprobrium upon slaveholders, it is difficult to imagine what language
he could have used if he had undertaken to pass the limit of deserved
reprobation. In this regard the book is quite in line with the style of
Southern utterance against abolitionists.
Helper belonged to a slaveholding family, for a hundred years resident
in the Carolinas. The dedication is significant. It is to three personal
friends from three slave States who at the time were residing in
California, in Oregon, and in Washington Territory, "and to the
non-slaveholding whites of the South generally, whether at home or
abroad." Out of the South had come the inspiration for the religious and
humanitarian attack upon slavery. From the same source came the call for
relief of the poverty-stricken white victims of the institution.
Helper's book revived the controversy which had been forcibly terminated
a quarter of a century before. He resumes the argument of the members of
the Virginia legislature of 1832. He reprints extended selections from
that memorable debate and then, by extended references to later official
reports, points out how slavery is impoverishing the South. The South
is shown to have continuously declined, while the North has made immense
gains. In a few years the relation of the South to the North would
resemble that of Poland to Russia or of Ireland to England. The author
sees no call for any arguments against slavery as an economic system; he
would simply bring the earlier characterization of the situation down to
date.
Helper differs radically from all earlier speakers and writers in that
he outlines a program for definite action. He estimates that for the
entire South there are seven white non-slaveholders for every three
slaveholders. He would organize these non-slaveholding whites into
an independent political party and would hold a general convention of
non-slaveholders from every slave State to adopt measures to restrain
"the diabolical excesses of the oligarchy" and to annihilate slavery.
Slaveholders should be entirely excluded from any share in government.
They should be treated as criminals ostracized from respectable society.
He is careful to state, however, that by slaveholder he does not mean
such men as Benton of Missouri and many others throughout the slave
States who retain the sentiments on the slavery question of the
"immortal Fathers of the Republic." He has in mind only the new order of
owners, who have determined by criminal methods to inflict the crime of
slavery upon an overwhelming majority of their white fellow-citizens.
The publication of "The Impending Crisis" created a profound sensation
among Southern leaders. So long as the attack upon the peculiar
institution emanated from the North, the defenders had the full benefit
of local prejudice and resentment against outside intrusion. Helper was
himself a thorough-going believer in state rights. Slavery was to be
abolished, as he thought, by the action of the separate States. Here
he was in accord with Northern abolitionists. If such literature as
Helper's volume should find its way into the South, it would be no
longer possible to palm off upon the unthinking public the patent
falsehood that abolitionists of the North were attempting to impose by
force a change in Southern institutions. All that Southern abolitionists
ever asked was the privilege of remaining at home in their own South in
the full exercise of their constitutional rights.
Southern leaders were undoubtedly aware of the concurrent publications
of travelers and newspaper reporters, of which Olmsted's books were
conspicuous examples. Olmsted and Helper were both sources of proof that
slavery was bringing the South to financial ruin. The facts were getting
hold of the minds of the Southern people. The debate which had been
adjourned was on the eve of being resumed. Complete suppression of
the new scientific industrial argument against slavery seemed to
slave-owners to furnish their only defense.
The Appalachian ranges of mountains drove a wedge of liberty and freedom
from Pennsylvania almost to the Gulf. In the upland regions slavery
could not flourish. There was always enmity between the planters of the
coast and the dwellers on the upland. The slaveholding oligarchy had
always ruled, but the day of the uplanders was at hand. This is the
explanation of the veritable panic which Helper's publication created.
A debate which should follow the line of this old division between the
peoples of the Atlantic slave States would, under existing conditions,
be fatal to the institution of slavery. West Virginia did become a free
State at the first opportunity. Counties in western North Carolina claim
to have furnished a larger proportion of their men to the Union army
than any other counties in the country. Had the plan for peaceable
emancipation projected by abolitionists been permitted to take its
course, the uplands of South Carolina would have been pitted against
the lowlands, and Senator Tillman would have appeared as a rampant
abolitionist. There might have been violence, but it would have been
confined to limited areas in the separate States. Had the crisis been
postponed, there surely would have been a revival of abolitionism within
the Southern States. Slavery in Missouri was already approaching a
crisis. Southern leaders had long foreseen that the State would abolish
slavery if a free State should be established on the western boundary.
This was actually taking place. Kansas was filling up with free-state
settlers and, by the act of its own citizens, a few years later did
abolish slavery.
Republicans naturally made use of Helper's book for party purposes. A
cheap abridged edition was brought out. Several Republican leaders were
induced to sign their names to a paper commending the publication. Among
these was John Sherman of Ohio, who in the organization of the newly
elected House of Representatives in 1859 was the leading candidate of
the Republicans for the speakership. During the contest the fact that
his name was on this paper was made public, and Southern leaders were
furious. Extracts were read to prove that the book was incendiary.
Millson of Virginia said that "one who consciously, deliberately, and of
purpose lends his name and influence to the propagation of such writings
is not only not fit to be speaker, but he is not-fit to live." It is one
of the ironies of the situation that the passage selected to prove the
incendiary character of the book is almost a literal quotation from the
debate in the Virginia Legislature of 1832.