Uncle Tom's Cabin
by Harriet Beecher Stow
(New York, Aladdin Classics, 2002)
Though flawed, this is an unbelievably powerful and important work of literature.
Page ix.
Against such a backdrop of racism Uncle Tom’s Cabin emphasizes the humanity of the slaves time after time.
Page x.
The power of Stowe’s masterpiece - its ability to transcend time, to remain vital to us even still.
Page xi.
It served as a wake-up call to many who either couldn’t or wouldn’t see the evil of slavery. To me the book’s great strength is its portrait of an age largely forgotten and unreported.
Page xi.
I consider religion a valeyable thing in a nigger, when it’s the genuine article.
Page 3.
Its always best to do the humane thing, sir; that’s my experience.
Page 8.
Humanity comes out in a variety of strange forms nowadays, and there is no end to the odd things that humane people will say and do.
Page 9.
I think I treat niggers just about as well as it’s ever worth while to treat ‘em.
Page 11.
Perhaps the mildest form of the system of slavery is to be seen in the State of Kentucky. The general prevalence of agricultural pursuits of a quiet and gradual nature, not requiring those periodic seasons of hurry and pressure that are called for in the business of more southern districts, makes the task of the Negro a more healthful and reasonable one.
Page 12.
Who made this man my master? That’s what I want to know!
Page 25.
I always thought that I must obey my master and mistress, or I couldn’t be a Christian.
Page 25.
Mas’r will find out that I’m one that whipping won’t tame. My day will come yet.
Page 26.
I you only trust in God, and try to do right, he’ll deliver you.
Page 26.
They stood silent; then there were last words, and sobs, and bitter weeping - such parting as those may make whose hope to meet again is as the spider’s web - and the husband and wife were parted.
Page 29.
The Negro mind, impassioned and imaginative, always attaches itself to hymns and expressions of a vivid and pictorial nature.
Page 44.
Tom is a noble-hearted, faithful fellow, if he is black.
Page 50.
I have tried - tied most faithfully, as a Christian woman should - to do my duty to these poor, simple, dependent creatures.
Page 51.
It is a sin to hold a slave under laws like ours - I always felt it was - I always thought so when I was a girl - I thought so still more after I joined the church; but I thought I could gild it over - I thought, by kindness, and care, and instruction, I could make the condition mine better than freedom.
Page 52.
“If we could get a breed of gals that didn’t care, now, for their young uns,” said Marks; “tell ye, I think ‘twould be ‘bout the greatest mod’rn improvement I knows on.”
Pages 98-99.
‘Look here, now, if you give me one word out of your head, I’ll smash yer face in. I won’t hear one word, - not the beginning of a word.’ I says to ‘em. ‘This yer young un’s mine, and not yourn, and you’ve no kind o’ business with it.’
Page 100.
The catching business … is rising to the dignity of a lawful and patriotic profession. If all the broad land between the Mississippi and the Pacific becomes one great market for bodies and souls, and human property retains the locomotive tendencies of this nineteenth century, the trader and catcher may yet be among our aristocracy.
Page 109.
Sam’s vein of piety was always uncommonly fervent in his mistress’s presence; and he made great capital of scriptural figures and images.
Page 110.
There is no more use in making believe to be angry with a Negro than with a child; both instinctively see the true state of the case, through all attempts to affect the contrary.
Page 112.
Sam considered oratory as his vocation and never let slip an opportunity of magnifying his office.
Page 114.
Sam, like some of our fashionable dilettanti, never allowed a story to lose any of its gilding by passing through his hands.
Page 115.
“There has been a law passed forbidding people to help off the slaves that come over from Kentucky, my dear; so much of that thing has been done by these reckless Abolitionists, that our brethren in Kentucky are very sternly excited, and it seems necessary, and no more than Christian and kind, that something should be done by our state to quiet the excitement.”
Page 121.
“Obeying God never brings on public evils.”
Page 123.
“Nobody knows how much the Lord can help ‘em, till they try.”
Page 128.
There are in this world blessed souls, whose sorrows all spring up into joys for others; whose earthly hopes, laid in the grave with many tears, are the seed from which spring healing flowers and balm for the desolate and the distressed.
Page 135.
“I’m in the Lord’s hands,” said Tom; “nothin’ can go no furder than he lets it.”
Page 145.
In order to appreciate the sufferings of the Negroes sold south it must be remembered that all the instinctive affections of that race are peculiarly strong. Their local attachments are very abiding. They are not naturally daring and, but home-loving and affectionate.
Page 147.
Selling to the south is set before the Negro from childhood s the lasts severity of punishment. The threat that terrifies more than whipping or torture of any kind is the threat of being sent down river.
Page 147.
Oh, ye who visit the distressed, do you know that everything your money can buy, given with a cold, averted face, is not worth one honest tear shed in real sympathy?
Page 150.
Tom had been looked up to, both as a head servant and a Christian teacher, buy all the place, and there was much honest sympathy and grief about him, particularly among the women.
Page 151.
Treat ‘em like dogs, and you’ll have dogs’ works and dogs’ actions. Treat ‘em like men, and you’ll have men’s works.
Page 164.
“I wonder, Mr. Wilson, if the Indians should come and take you a prisoner away from your wife and children, and want to keep you all your life hoeing corn for them, if you’d think it your duty to abide in the condition in which you were called. I rather think that you’d think the first stray horse you could find an indication of Providence - shouldn’t you?”
Pages 169-170.
I haven’t any country, any more than I have any father. But I’m going to have one. I don’t want anything of your country, except to be let alone, - to go peaceably out of it; and when I get to Canada, where the laws will own me and protect me, that shall be my country, and its laws I will obey. But if any man tries to stop me, let him take care, for I am desperate. I’ll fight for my liberty to the last breath I breathe. You say our fathers did it; if it was right for them, it is right for me!”
Pages 173-174.
“I’ve been south, and I must say I think the Negroes are better off than they would be to be free.”
Page 189.
“We can’t reason from our feelings to those of this class of persons.”
Page 189.
“It’s undoubtedly the intention of Providence that the African race should be servants, - kept in a low conition,” said a grave-looking gentleman in black, a clergyman, seated by the cabin door. “’Cursed be Canaan ; a servant of servants shall he be,’ the Scripture says.”
Page 190.
The trader only regarded the mortal anguish which he saw working in those dark features, those clenched hands, and suffocating breathings, as necessary incidents of the trade, and merely calculated whether she was going to scream, and get up a commotion on the boat; for, like other supporters of our peculiar institution, he decidedly disliked agitation.
Page 199.
Who, sir, makes the tr4ader? Who is most to blame? The enlightened, cultivated, intelligent man, who supports the system of which the trader is the inevitable result, or the poor trader himself? You make the public sentiment that calls for his trade, that debauches and depraves him, till he feels no shame in it; and in what are you better than he?
Page 204.
Trading Negroes from Africa, dear reader, is so horrid. It is not to be thought of! But trading them from Kentucky, - that’s quite another thing!
Page 205.
So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why don’t somebody wake up ao the beauty of old women?
Page 207.
“Thee mustn’t speak evil of thy rulers, Simeon,” said his father, gravely. “The Lord only gives us our worldly goods that we may do justice and mercy; if our rulers require a price of us for it, we must deliver it up.”
Page 218.
At first he had watched him narrowly through the day, and never allowed him to sleep at night unfettered; but the uncomplaining patience and apparent contentment of Tom’s manner led him gradually to discontinue these restraints, and for some time Tom had enjoyed a sort of parole of honor, being permitted to come and go freely where he pleased on the boat.
Page 221.
Tom could not write, - the mail for him had no existence, and the gulf of separation was unbridged by even a friendly word or signal.
Page 223.
His Bible seemed to him all of this life that remained, as well as the promise of a future one.
Page 224.
“I’m not sure, after all, about this religion,” said he, the old wicked expression returning to his eye; “the country is almost ruined with pious white people: such pious politicians as we have just before elections, - such pious going on in all departments of church and state, that a fellow does not know who’ll cheat him next.”
Page 232.
It is a great mistake to suppose that a woman with no heart will be an easy creditor in the exchange of affection. There is not on earth a more merciless exactor of love from others than a thoroughly selfish woman; and the more unlovely she grows, the more jealously and scrupulously she exacts love, to the uttermost farthing.
Page 239.
Nowhere is conscience so dominant and all-absorbing as with New England women.
Page 245.
The Negro, it must be remembered, is an exotic of the most gorgeous and superb countries of the world, and he has, deep in his heart, a passion for all that is splendid, rich, and fanciful; a passion which, rudely indulged by an untrained taste, draws on them the ridicule of the colder and more correct white race.
Page 252.
“If you encourage servants in giving way to every little disagreeable feeling, and complaining of every little ailment, you’ll have your hands full.”
Page 263.
“Men do get tired, naturally, of a complaining wife.”
Page 264.
“Now, there’s no way with servants,” said Marie, “but to put them down, and keep them down. … I hold to being kind to servants, - I always am; but you must make ‘em know their place.”
Page 265.
“I’m very particular in letting them have everything that comes convenient, - anything that doesn’t put one at all out of the way, you know.”
Page 266.
“This treating servants as if they were exotic flowers, or china vases, is really ridiculous.”
Page 266.
“Men are constitutionally selfish and inconsiderate to woman.”
Page 266.
“These servants are nothing but grown-up children.”
Page 268.
“You don’t know what a provoking, stupid, careless, unreasonable, childish, ungrateful set of wretches they are.”
Page 268.
“It’s no use to complain to St. Clare. He talks the strangest stuff. He says we have made them what they are, and ought to bear with them. He says their faults are all owing to us, and that it would be cruel to make the fault and punish it too. He says we shouldn’t do any better, in their place; just as if one could reason from them to us, you know.”
Page 268.
St. Clare really has talked to me as if keeping Mammy from her husband was like keeping me from mine. There’s no comparing in this way. Mammy couldn’t have the feelings that I should. It’s a different thing altogether, - of course, it is, - and yet St. Clare pretends not to see it.
Page 269.
“Men have a more commanding way, you know; it is easier for them.”
Page 270.
“There’s no getting along without severity, - they are so bad, so deceitful, so lazy.”
Page 270.
“I think you slave-holders have an awful responsibility upon you, said Miss Ophelia. “I wouldn’t have it, for a thousand worlds. You ought to educate your slaves, and treat them like reasonable creatures, - like immortal creatures, that you’ve got to stand before the bar of God with.”
Page 272.
“I’m sure they can go to church when they like, thought they don’t understand a word of the sermon, more than so many pigs, - so it isn’t of any great use for them to go, as I see; but they do go, and so they have every chance; but, as I said before, they are a degraded race, and always will be.”
Page 273.
“Your little child is your only true democrat. Tom, now, is a hero to Eva; his stories are wonders in her eyes, his songs and Methodist hymns are better than an opera, and the traps and little bits of trash in his pocket a mine of jewels, and he the most wonderful Tom that ever wore a black skin. This is one of the roses of Eden that the Lord has dropped down expressly for the poor and lowly, who get few enough of any other kind.”
Page 275.
Little Eva’s fancy for him - the distinctive gratitude and loveliness of a noble nature - had led her to petition her father that he might be her especial attendant, whenever she needed the escort of a servant, in her walks or rides; and Tom had general orders to let everything else go, and attend to Miss Eva whenever she wanted him, - orders which our readers may fancy were far from disagreeable to him.
Page 276.
Tom … therefore, in his well-brushed broadcloth suit, smooth beaver, glossy boots, faultless wrist-bands and collar, with his grave, good-natured, black face, looked respectable enough to be a Bishop of Carthage, as men of color were, in other ages.
Page 276.
If ever Africa shall show an elevated and cultivated race, - and come it must, some time, her turn to figure in the great drama of human improvement, - life will awake there with a gorgeousness and splendor of which our cold western tribes faintly have conceived. … And the Negro race, no longer despised and trodden down, will perhaps, show forth some of the latest and most magnificent revelations of human life.
Page 278.
“It’s always right and proper to be kind to servants but it isn’t proper to treat them just as we would our relations, or people in our own class of life.”
Pages 180-181.
“Is what you hear at church religion? Is that which can bend and turn, and descend and ascend, to fit every crooked phase of selfish, worldly society, religion? Is that religion which is less scrupulous, less generous, less just, less considerate for man, than even my own ungodly, worldly, blinded nature? No! When I look for a religion, I must look for something above me, and not something beneath.”
Page 283.
It really is a comfort, in this world, to have anything one can respect.
Page 284.
“Tom has a natural genius for religion.”
Page 286.
If these people only knew what a blessing it is for a man to feel that his wife and child belong to him!
Page 288.
It seems as if I smelt the free air, and it makes me strong.
Page 288.
“Woe unto the world because of offences, but woe unto them through whom the offence cometh.”
Page 292.
They tell us that the bible is on their side; certainly all the power is. They are rich, and healthy, and happy; they are members of churches, expecting to go to heaven; and they get along so easy in the world, and have it all their own way.
Page 295.
There is something in boldness and determination that for a time bushes even the rudest nature.
Page 305.
Killing is an ugly operation.
Page 311.
There is all the difference in the world in the servants of southern establishments, according to the character and capacity of the mistresses who have brought them up.
Page 317.
We masters are divided into two classes, oppressors and oppressed. We who are good natured and hate severity make up our minds to a good deal of inconvenience. If we will keep a shambling, loose, untaught set in the community, for our convenience, why, we must take the consequence.
Page 327.
You natives up by the North Pole set an extravagant value on time!
Page 327.
“From the mother’s breast the colored child feels and sees that there are none but underhand ways open to it. It can get along no other way with its parents, its mistress, its young master and missie playfellows. Cunning and deception become necessary, inevitable habits. It isn’t fair to expect anything else of him. He ought not to be punished for it. As to honesty, the slave is kept in that dependent, semi-childish state, that there is no making him realize the rights of property, or feel that his master’s goods are not his own, if he can get them. For my part, I don’t see how they can be honest. Such a fellow as Tom, here, is – is a moral miracle!”
Page 329.
Here is a whole class, - debased, uneducated, indolent, provoking, - put, without any sort of terms or conditions, entirely into the hands of such people as the majority in our world are; people who have neither consideration nor self-control, who haven’t even an enlightened regard to their own interest.
Page 340.
If we are to be prying and spying into all the dismals of life, we should have no heart to anything.
Page 341.
Planters, who have money to make by it, - clergymen, who have planters to please, - politicians, who want to rule by it, - may warp and bend language and ethics to a degree that shall astonish the world at their ingenuity; they can press nature and the Bible, and nobody knows what else, into the service; but, after all, neither they nor the world believe in it one particle the more.
Page 344.
Talk of the abuses of slavery! Humbug! The thing itself is the essence of all abuse!
Page 345.
“All government includes some necessary hardness. General rules will bear hard on particular cases.”
Page 351.
“The Negro is naturally more impressible to religious sentiment than the white.”
Page 357.
“It takes no spectacles to see that a great class of vicious, improvident, degraded people, among us, are an evil to us, as well as to themselves. The capitalist and aristocrat of England cannot feel that as we do, because they do not mingle with the class they degrade as we do.”
Page 359.
“People, you know, can get up just as much enthusiasm in hunting a man as a deer, if it is only customary.”
Page 362.
In this world, multitudes must live and die in a state that it would be too great a shock to the nerves if their fellow-mortals even to hear described.
Page 372.
“Children always have to be whipped,” said Miss Ophelia; “I never heard of bringing them up without.”
Page 382.
“In many cases, it is a gradual hardening process on both sides, - the owner growing more and more cruel, as the servant more and more callous. Whipping and abuse are like laudanum; you have to double the dose as the sensibilities decline.”
Page 383.
So well is the harp of human feeling strung, that nothing but a crash that breaks every string can wholly mar its harmony.
Page 399.
Marie always had a headache on hand for any conversation that did not exactly suit her.
Page 409.
“We can see plainly enough that all men are not born free, not born equal; they are born anything else. For my part, I think half this republican talk sheet humbug. It is the educated, the intelligent, the wealthy, the refined, who ought to have equal rights, and not the canaille.”
Page 414.
“If there is anything that is revealed with the strength of a divine law in our times, it is that the masses are to rise, and the under class become the upper one.”
Pages 415-416.
“The Anglo-Saxon is the dominant race of the world, and is to be so.”
Page 416.
“Since training children is the staple work of the human race,” said Augustine, “I should think it something of a consideration that our system does not work well there.”
Page 417.
“Education, to do anything, must be a state education; or there must be enough agreed in it to make a current.”
Page 418.
It was the first principle of Marie’s belief that nobody ever was or could be so great a sufferer as herself; and, therefore, she always repelled quite indignantly any suggestion that any one around her could be sick.
Page 422.
“Papa, these poor creatures love their children as much as you do me. Oh, do something for them! There’s poor Mammy loves her children.”
Page 430.
“Farewell, beloved child! the bright, eternal doors have closed after thee; we shall see they sweet face no more. Oh, woe for them who watched thy entrance into heaven, when they shall wake and find only the cold gray sky of daily life, and thou gone forever!”
Page 459.
“The heart knoweth its own business.”
Page 466.
Marie was on of those unfortunately constituted mortals, in whose eyes whatever is lost and gone assumes a value which it never had in possession. Whatever she had, she seemed to survey only to pick flaws in it; but, once fairly away, there was no end to her valuation of it.
Page 466.
The cold, mechanical habit of living remaining, after all vital interest in it has fled.
Page 471.
The gift to appreciate and the sense to feel the finer shades and relations of moral things often seems an attrigu5e of those whose whole life shows a careful disregard of them.
Page 472.
Marie St. Clare felt the loss of Eva as deeply as she could feel anything; and, as she was a woman that had a great faculty of making everybody unhappy when she was, her immediate attendants had still stronger reason to regret the loss of their young mistress, whose winning ways and gentle intercessions had so often been a shield to them from the tyrannical and selfish exaction of her mother.
Page 475.
“Any mind that is capable of a real sorrow is capable of good.”
Page 477.
“There is no use in my trying to make this child a Christian child, unless I save her from all the chances and reverses of slavery.”
Page 478.
“Now is the only time there ever is to do a thing in.”
Page 478.
“DEATH! Strange that there should be such a word,” he said, “and such a thing, and we ever forget it; that one should be living, warm, and beautiful, full of hoes, desires, and wants, one day, and the next be gone, utterly gone, and forever!”
Page 481.
“Now is all the time I have anything to do with.”
Page 485.
“I am braver than I was, because I have lost all; and he who has nothing to lose can afford all risks.”
Page 486.
“Suppose we should rise up to-morrow and emancipate, who would educate these millions, and teach them how to use their freedom? They never would rise to do much among us. The fact is, we are too lazy and unpractical, ourselves, ever to give them much of an idea of that industry and energy which is necessary to form them into men. They will have to go north, where labor is the fashion, - the universal custom; and tell me, now, is there enough Christian philanthopy, among your Northern States, to bear with the process of their education and elevation?.”
Pages 486-487.
“We are the more obvious oppressors of the Negro; but the unchristian prejudice of the north is an oppressor almost equally severe.”
Page 487.
We hear often of the distress of the Negro servants on the loss of a kind master; and with good reason, for no creature on God’s earth is left more utterly unprotected and desolate than the slave in these circumstances.
Page 493.
It was the universal custom to send women and young girls to whipping-houses, to the hands of the lowest men, - men vile enough to make this their profession, - there to be subjected to brutal exposure and shameful correction.
Page 496.
“I’m principled against emancipating, in any case. Keep a Negro under the care of a master, and he does well enough, and is respectable; but set them free, and they get lazy, and won’t work, and take to drinking, and go all down to be mean, worthless fellows. |I’ve seen it tried, hundreds of times. It’s no favor to se them free.”
Page 502.
Human property is high in the market; and is, therefore, well red, well cleaned, tended, and looked after, that it may come to sale sleek, and strong, and shining.
Page 505.
The dealers in the human article make scrupulous and systematic efforts to promote noisy mirth among them, as a means of drowning reflection, and rendering them insensible to their condition. The whole object of the training to which the Negro is put, from the time he is sold in the northern market till he arrives south, is systematically directed towards making him callous, unthinking, and brutal. The slave-dealer collects his gang in Virginia or Kentucky, and drives them to some convenient, healthy place, - often a watering-place, - to be fattened. Here they are fed full daily; and, because some incline to pine, a fiddle is kept commonly going among them, and they are made to dance daily; and he who refuses to me berry - in whose soul thoughts of wife, or child, or home, are too strong for him to be gay - is marked as sullen and dangerous, and subjected to all the evils which the ill-will of an utterly irresponsible and hardened man can inflict upon him. Briskness, alertness, and cheerfulness of appearance, especially before observers, are constantly enforced upon them, both by the hope of thereby getting a good master, and the fear of all that the driver may bring upon them, if they prove unsalable.
Pages 506-507.
“If you’re faithful to the Lord, he’ll be faithful to you.”
Page 512.
“It is your respectability and humanity that licenses and protects his brutality.”
Page 528.
It is a common remark, and one that is thought to militate strongly against the character of the race, that the Negro overseer is always more tyrannical and cruel than the white one. This is simply saying that the Negro mind has been more crushed and debased than the white. … The slave is always tyrant, if he can be a chance to be one.
Page 535.
He was an expert and efficient workman in whatever he undertook, and was, both from habit and principle, prompt and faithful. Quiet and peaceable in his disposition, he hoped, by unremitting diligence, to avert from himself at least a portion of the evils of his condition.
Page 543.
The opinion even of a slave may annoy a master.
Page 543.
Tom had a remarkably smooth, soft voice, and a habitually respectful manner.
Page 552.
“All goes against us, heaven and earth. Everything is pushing us into hell. Why shouldn’t wee go?”
Page 556.
“Nobody ever expects that a strong, healthy man is a going to die.”
Page 561.
You can do anything with a woman, when you’ve got her children.
Page 565.
Legree, like most godless and cruel men, was superstitious.
Page 573.
There is a dread, unhallowed necromancy of evil, that turn things sweetest and holiest to phantoms of horror and affright.
Page 576.
See ye not how, to the soul resolved in evil, perfect love is the most fearful torture, the seal and sentence of the direst despair?
Page 576.
“What us is it for mothers to say anything? You are all to be bought and paid for, and your soul belongs to whoever gets you. That’s the way it goes. I say, drink brandy; drink all you can, and it’ll make things come easier.”
Page 582.
Legree, like many other planters, had but one form of ambition, - to have in the heaviest crop of the season, - and he had several bets on this very present season pending in the next town.
Page 585.
“I did only what I thought was right. I shall do just so again, if ever the time comes. I never will do a cruel think, come what may.”
Pages 587-588.
What is freedom to a nation, but freedom to the individuals in it?
Pages 593-594.
To your fathers, freedom was the right of a nation to be a nation. To him, it is the right of a man to be a man, and not a brute; the right to call the wife of his bosom his wife, and to protect her from lawless violence; the right to protect and educate his child; the right to have a home of his own, a religion of his own, a character of his own, unsubjects to the will of another.
Page 594.
Who can speak the blessings of that rest which comes down on the free man’s pillow, under laws which insure to him the rights that God has given to man?
Page 600.
When a heavy weight presses the soul to the lowest level at which endurance is possible, there is an instant and desperate effort of every physical and moral nerve to throw off the weight; and hence the heaviest anguish often precedes a return tide of joy and courage. So was it now with Tom. The atheistic taunts of his cruel mast sunk his hand of faith still held to the eternal rock, it was with a numb, despairing grasp. Tom sat, like one stunned, at the fire. Suddenly everything around him seemed to fade, and a vision rose before him of one crowned with thorns, buffered and bleeding. Tom gazed, in awe and wonder, at the majestic patience of the face; the deep, pathetic eyes thrilled him to his inmost heart; his soul woke, as, with floods of emotion, he stretched out his hands and fell upon his knees, - when, gradually, the vision changed: the sharp thorns became rays of glory; and, in splendor inconceivable, he saw that same face bending compassionately towards him, and a voice said, “He that overcometh shall sit down with me on my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father on his throne.”
Pages 604-605.
If the poor forgotten slave believes that Jesus hath appeared and spoken to him, who shall contradict him?
Page 607.
Tom’s whole soul overflowed with compassion and sympathy for the poor wretches by whom he was surrounded.
Page 610.
It is the statement of missionaries, that, of all races of the earth, none have received the Gospel with such eager docility as the African. The principle of reliance and unquestioning faith, which is its foundation, is more a native element in this race than any other.
Page 611.
“The Lord hasn’t called us to wrath. We must suffer, and wait his time.”
Page 613.
The most brutal man cannot live in constant association with a strong female influence, and not be greatly controlled by it.
Page 621.
Cringing subservience … is one of the most baleful effects of slavery.
Page 628.
Scenes of blood and cruelty are shocking to our ear and heart. What man has nerve to do, man has not nerve to hear.
Page 639.
What a thing ‘t is to be a Christian.
Page 647.
Some men … are decidedly bettered by being knocked down. If a man lays them fairly flat in the dust, they seem immediately to conceive a respect for him.
Page 650.
There is no monument to mark the last resting-place of our friend. He needs none! His Lord knows where he lies, and will raise him up, immortal, to appear with him when he shall appear in his glory.
Page 651.
Let a man take what pains he may to hush it down, a human soul is an awful ghostly, unquiet possession for a bad man to have.
Page 654.
There are some feelings so agitated and tumultuous, that they can find rest only by being poured into the boom of Almighty love.
Page 665.
“A nation has a right to argue, remonstrate, implore, and present the cause of its race, - which an individual has not.”
Page 670.
“We have more than the rights of common men; - we have the claim of an injured race for reparation.”
Page 671.
“I think that the African race has peculiarities, yet to be unfolded in the light of civilization and Christianity, which, if not the same with those of the Anglo-Saxon, may prove to be, morally, of even a higher type.”
Page 671.
“I trust that the development of Africa is to be essentially a Christian one.”
Page 671.
Think of your freedom every time you see UNCLE TOM’S CABIN; and let it be a memorial to put you all in mind to follow in his steps, and be as honest and faithful and Christian s he was.
Page 680.
In all Southern States it is a principle of jurisprudence that no person of colored lineage can testify in a suit against a white.
Page 682.
There is, actually, nothing to protect the slave’s life, but the character of the master,
Page 682.
Northern men, northern mothers, northern Christians, have something more to do than denounce their brethren at the south; they have to look to the evil among themselves.
Page 688.
An atmosphere of sympathetic influence encircles every human being; and the man or woman who feels strongly, healthily, and justly on the great interests of humanity, is a constant benefactor to the human race. See, then, to your sympathies in this matter!
Page 689.
You pray for the heathen abroad; pray also for the heathen at home.
Page 689.
Does not every American Christian owe to the African race some effort at reparation for the wrongs that the American nation has brought upon them?
Page 690.
The first desire of the emancipated slave, generally, is for education. … They are remarkably intelligent and quick to learn.
Page 691.
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.
Page 695.