That charming writer and whole-souled man, Colonel T. W. Higginson, somewhere tells us that all the things he ever heard or read about slavery did not fix in his soul such a hostility to it as a single scene in a Missouri slave market that he once saw. He says that as he sat here, a purchaser came in to buy a little girl to wait on his wife. Colonel Higginson saw three little sisters brought in who were from eight to twelve years old; they were mulattoes, with sweet, gentle manners; they had evidently been taken good care of, and their pink calico frocks were clean and whole. He saw the gentleman choose one of them and heard him ask her, good-naturedly enough, if she did not wish to go with him. She burst into tears and said, “I would rather stay with my mother.”13 But her tears were as powerless, of course, as so many salt drops from the ocean.
That was the story. All the horrors of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” he said, all the stories told him by fugitive slaves, the scarred backs he afterward saw by dozens among colored recruits, did not impress him as did that hour in the gaol. The whole probable career of that poor, wronged, motherless, shrinking child passed before his mind. It seemed to him that a man must be utterly lost to all manly instincts who would not give his life to overthrow such a system; and he thought that a woman who could tolerate, much less defend it, could not herself be true, could not be pure, or must be fearfully and grossly ignorant.
Of such ignorance as this no one can accuse Mrs. Stowe. The personal touch that should fire knowledge into passion and make her keenly feel what had been hitherto but a part of her theory she also was to receive.
From her earliest housekeeping she had had “help” from the colony of Cincinnati colored people. In the year 1839 a certain colored girl came to work for her who had been a slave, but who had been brought by her mistress into Ohio and left there, and thus by the laws of Ohio made free. But by this time a new national requirement was under discussion called the Fugitive Slave Law; by this law the people of such a state as Ohio were to be commanded to give back to their masters all colored persons found in their territory, unless they had been set free by special papers stating the fact and showing that payment had been made to the former owners. By this law the master of the girl that worked for Mrs. Stowe could come over the line and if he could find his former slave could reclaim her. And all people were to be required to aid the owners to gain possession of their runaway slaves. People who did not believe in the justice of such a law as this thought it right to evade it; and among these was the Beecher family. So when it was known that the former master of the girl was in the city looking for his property, Professor Stowe and Henry planned to conceal the girl from him. They put the fugitive in a carriage and together drove out into the country in the darkest hours of a dismal, stormy night. Following along Mill Creek to the first “station” in the underground railway, they put her in the care of the sturdy Quaker farmer, Mr. John Vanzandt, who protected her until she could be taken further on her way to Canada.
This is the law that is referred to in Chapter IX of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” by Mrs. Bird, that timid, blushing little woman who was about four feet in height, had mild blue eyes and a peach-blow complexion, and the gentlest, sweetest voice in the world; as for her courage, a moderate-sized cock turkey had been known to put her to rout at the very first gobble, and a stout house dog of moderate capacity would bring her into subjection merely by a show of his teeth. And yet when she heard of this new law she stood up before her husband (who was a Senator and had voted for it!) and cried out, “Now, John, I want to know if you think such a law as that is right and Christian?” Her husband, the Senator, tried to argue her out of her prejudice, but did not succeed; and then, as every one remembers, this same sound-hearted Senator was the first to let his heart have sway when one of the poor runaways came distressed and hunted to the door asking for rescue.
It was Eliza, who had made her way across the river, springing from ice-block to ice-block, in the way so often pictured, and, strange to say, so true also to the fact. Kind Mrs. Bird made her comfortable on a settle by the fire. After this Eliza told the pathetic story of her escape and gave the real deep reason why she desired to leave her home in Kentucky. It was not merely a passion for freedom, though that intensely American trait was no doubt the fundamental cause why many colored people were willing to leave owners that gave them good homes and had not been specially unkind to them to launch out upon a hazardous attempt to win support in commercial lines for which they had no training. Let us read this passage, and find in it the aspect that most appealed to the soul of Harriet Beecher Stowe.
“‘Were you a slave?’ said Mr. Bird.
“‘Yes, sir; I belonged to a man in Kentucky.’
“‘Was he unkind to you?’
“‘No, sir; he was a good master.’
“‘And was your mistress unkind to you?’
“‘No, sir—no! My mistress was always good to me.’
“‘What could induce you to leave a good home, then, and run away, and go through such dangers?’
“The woman looked up at Mrs. Bird with a keen, scrutinizing glance, and it did not escape her that she was dressed in deep mourning.
“‘Ma’am,’ she said suddenly, ‘have you ever lost a child?’
“The question was unexpected, and it was a thrust on a new wound; for it was only a month since a darling child of the family had been laid in the grave.
“Mr. Bird turned around and walked to the window, and Mrs. Bird burst into tears; but, recovering her voice, she said:
“‘Why do you ask that? I have lost a little one.’
“‘Then you will feel for me. I have lost two, one after another, ... and I had only this one left.... And, ma’am, they were going to take him away from me—to sell him—sell him down south, ma’am, to go all alone—a baby that had never been away from his mother in his life! I couldn’t stand it, ma’am.... And when I knew the papers were signed, and he was sold, I took him and came off in the night; and they chased me—the man that bought him and some of Mas’r’s folks—and they were coming down right behind me, and I heard ’em. I jumped right on to the ice; and how I got across I don’t know—but, first thing I knew, a man was helping me up the bank.’”
This picture, then, shows us what it was that seemed most terrible to the mother heart of Mrs. Stowe. When Mrs. Bird came to hunt for some clothing that she could give to Eliza and her child, she sought the drawer where the precious treasures of her own lost baby were sacredly stored. She “opened the little bedroom door adjoining her room, and, taking the candle, set it down on the top of the bureau there; then from a small recess she took a key, and put it thoughtfully in the lock of a drawer, and made a sudden pause, while two boys, who, boylike, had followed close on her heels, stood looking with silent, significant glances at their mother....
“Mrs. Bird slowly opened the drawer. There were little coats of many a form and pattern, piles of aprons, and rows of small stockings; and even a pair of little shoes, worn and rubbed at the toes, were peeping from the folds of a paper. There was a toy horse and wagon, a top, a ball—memorials gathered with many a tear and many a heartbreak. She sat down by the drawer, and, leaning her head on her hands over it wept till the tears fell through her fingers into the drawer; then suddenly raising her head she began with nervous haste selecting the plainest and most substantial articles and gathering them into a bundle.
“‘Mamma,’ said one of the boys, ‘are you going to give away those things?’
“‘My dear boys,’ she said softly and earnestly, ‘if our dear, loving little Henry looks down from Heaven he would be glad to have us do this. I could not find it in my heart to give them away to any common person—to anybody that was happy; but I give them to a mother more heart-broken and sorrowful than I am; and I hope God will send his blessings with them!’”
Mrs. Stowe herself had learned what it means to the mother to have her child taken from her. In the depths of her own sorrow, when her most beautiful and beloved boy was lying on his dying bed, she had prayed that her anguish might not be suffered in vain. Her prayer was being answered in the great comprehension coming to her that the separation of the family tie was the most poignant wrong in the system of slavery. This feeling she embodied supremely in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” the very epic of human compassion. At the time of writing this great book her mind was full, her hand was trained, her soul was aflame. When the great inspiration came she was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, but asking no question how or why, she wrote as she was moved to write. How this happened is now to be told.
In the year 1850 the Stowe family were having their first taste of a drizzling, inexorable, northeast storm in the State of Maine. It was while they were getting settled in this new home that the news came to them of the final passing of the Fugitive Slave Act—an event that sent sweeping across the north a furore of indignation. On her way to the new home in Brunswick, Maine, Mrs. Stowe stayed for ten days in Boston at the home of her brother Edward. Here she was in the very hotbed of the abolitionists; and as she heard of the sufferings of the slaves that were risking all to reach the Canada line beyond which they were safe, and of the cruelties inflicted upon those so hapless as to be taken back to their former owners, she cried, “It is incredible, amazing, mournful! I feel as if I should be willing to sink with it, were all this sin and misery to sink in the sea!” The cry of this great sorrow followed her after she was settled in her new home; she remembered all these things and pondered them in her heart; and when she bent over her own new child as he lay sleeping beside her at night, and thought of the slave mothers whose babies had been taken away from them, her tears fell thick upon his sleeping face.
Time went on and things did not get any better. Mrs. Stowe was writing to people everywhere north and south to gather unimpeachable testimony on all phases of the slave system, but nothing she heard in any way modified her opinion or her feeling. One day her sister-in-law, Mrs. Edward Beecher, in Boston, wrote her: “Now, Hattie, if I could use a pen as you can I would write something that would make this whole nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is.” This touched Mrs. Stowe to the quick. She determined that she would heed the call. “I will write something—I will if I live,” she said as she rose with a determined gesture. She wrote to thank her sister-in-law for the letter. She said: “As long as the baby sleeps with me nights I cannot do anything, but I will do it at last. I will do that thing if I live.”
About this time her brother, Henry Ward Beecher, came to visit her. They sat up all night talking over the thrilling question of the hour. She confided to him that she intended to write something. He told her to do this, and he would scatter the book as thick as leaves of Vallombrosa!
Soon after this, as she was sitting among the worshipers at the Sabbath morning communion service, a vision passed before her mind, showing in minutest detail one whole scene of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Even as Colonel Higginson, in the passage quoted a few pages back, saw in his imagination the inevitable life of that little girl in the slave market, so she realized with the vividness of a dream, the central climax of her book. It was the death scene of the wonderful old negro, Uncle Tom, who in the midst of his lowly state is always made to preserve a certain dignity and even charm. She has pictured him as a man for whose character only the highest reverence can be felt. His spirit was of a meekness so Christ-like that no outrage, no suffering, could ruffle its calm, nor could the steadfastness of his faith be shaken. Yet the effect is not of softness, but rather of a stern and commanding strength. After a life that illustrated nearly all of the ups and downs of slavery, a final misfortune came to him in the fact that he chanced to know about the plans for escape that some of his fellow-slaves had made. To compel him to yield up these secrets he was at the command of his master brutally whipped all one night long, and he died the next day as the result of this punishment. Yet toward this merciless master he cherished no ill feeling. Like his Lord and Master, he returned blessing for cursing; he was anxious only for the salvation of his enemies. “‘He ain’t done me no real harm—only opened the gate of the kingdom for me; that’s all!’ he said.” His last words were, “‘Who—who—who shall separate us from the love of Christ?’” And with a smile he fell asleep.
The description of this scene Mrs. Stowe wrote down at white heat, and when the first draft was made she called her children and had them stand about her while she read it to them. As she read the tears streamed down their faces, and one of them, a boy ten years old, clinched his fists and cried, “Oh, mamma, slavery is the most cruel thing in the world!” After a while their father came in and he read and cried, too. He said to her, “You must do something with this,” and she answered quietly, “I mean to.” From then on, as she had opportunity, amid extraordinary household duties, the care of six children and a new baby, with various guests, with unskilled help, and with myriad distractions, she wrote on until the great book was finished. Her mind was so full of the subject and her vision of the incidents for the story was so clear that the words came rushing to her brain faster than she could write them down. She had the feeling that the story was in possession of her and not she in possession of the story; or rather as if some divine power were urging her on and giving her the words to set down. This strange experience was remembered by her as a time when the Lord Himself used her as an instrument of His purpose.