Uncle Tom's Cabin or, Life Among the Lowly

For what is this mighty influence thus rousing in all nations and languages those groanings that cannot be uttered, for man's freedom and equality?

O, Church of Christ, read the signs of the times! Is not this power the spirit of Him whose kingdom is yet to come, and whose will to be done on earth as it is in heaven?

But who may abide the day of his appearing? 'for that day shall burn as an oven: and he shall appear as a swift witness against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger in his right: and he shall break in pieces the oppressor.'

Are not these dread words for a nation bearing in her bosom so mighty an injustice? Christians! every time that you pray that the kingdom of Christ may come, can you forget that prophecy associates, in dread fellowship, the day of vengeance with the year of his redeemed?

A day of grace is yet held out to us. Both North and South have been guilty before God; and the Christian church has a heavy account to answer. Not by combining together, to protect injustice and cruelty, and making a common capital of sin, is this Union to be saved,-but by repentance, justice and mercy; for, not surer is the eternal law by which the millstone sinks in the ocean, than that stronger law, by which injustice and cruelty shall bring on nations the wrath of Almighty God!

Harriet Beecher Stowe

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[1] English Grammar (1795), by Lindley Murray (1745-1826), the most authoritative American grammarian of his day.

[2] A machine of this description was really the invention of a young colored man in Kentucky. [Mrs. Stowe's note.]

[3] A slightly inaccurate quotation from Hamlet, Act III, scene I, lines 369-370.

[4] Gen. 16. The angel bade the pregnant Hagar return to her mistress Sarai, even though Sarai had dealt harshly with her.

[5] Phil. 1:10. Onesimus went back to his master to become no longer a servant but a 'brother beloved.'

[6] Jer. 31:15.

[7] Gen. 9:25. This is what Noah says when he wakes out of drunkenness and realizes that his youngest son, Ham, father of Canaan, has seen him naked.

[8] Dr. Joel Parker of Philadelphia. [Mrs. Stowe's note.] Presbyterian clergyman (1799-1873), a friend of the Beecher family. Mrs. Stowe attempted unsuccessfully to have this identifying note removed from the stereotype-plate of the first edition.

[9] Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846) and William Wilberforce (1759-1833), English philanthropists and anti-slavery agitators who helped to secure passage of the Emancipation Bill by Parliament in 1833.

[10]In Atala; or the Love and Constantcy of Two Savages in the Desert (1801) by Francois Auguste Rene, Vicomte de Chateaubriand (1768-1848).

[11]The Ancient History, ten volumes (1730-1738), by the French historian Charles Rollin (1661-1741).

[12]Scott's Family Bible (1788-1792), edited with notes by the English Biblical commentator, Thomas Scott (1747- 1821).

[13]The Cerographic Atlas of the United States (1842-1845), by Sidney Edwards Morse (1794-1871), son of the geographer, Jedidiah Morse, and brother of the painter-inventor, Samuel F. B. Morse.

[14]Recollections of the Last Ten Years (1826) by Timothy Flint (1780-1840), missionary of Presbyterianism to the trans- Allegheny West.

[15]The Merchant of Venice, Act 1, scene 2, lines 17-18.

[16] Ps. 73, 'The End of the Wicked contrasted with that of the Righteous.'

[17] Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-1882), champion of the orthodoxy of revealed religion, defender of the Oxford movement, and Regius professor of Hebrew and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford.

[18] In August 1791, as a consequence of the French Revolution, the black slaves and mulattoes on Haiti rose in revolt against the whites, and in the period of turmoil that followed enormous cruelties were practised by both sides.

The 'Emperor' Dessalines, come to power in 1804, massacred all the whites on the island. Haitian bloodshed became an argument to show the barbarous nature of the Negro, a doctrine Wendell Phillips sought to combat in his celebrated lecture on Toussaint L'Ouverture.

[19] 'Weep Not for Those,' a poem by Thomas Moore (1779-1852).

[20] 'This is the last of Earth! I am content,' last words of John Quincy Adams, uttered February 21, 1848.