UNCLE TOM'S CABIN

Isham
two
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KEY TO UNCLE TOMS CABIN.
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lanes and alleys of London,and will they
was missing. About two years after,we learned
not there see many Legrees1 Nay, take that he had gone down to Natchez,and had married
the purest districtof New a
England, and let lady of some refinement and piety. I saw
people cast about in their her lettersto his sisters, who were
worthy
memory and see of the church of which I was pastor.
if there have not been men there,hard,
last lettertold of his death. He was in Jackson's""
coarse, unfeeling, brutal, who, if they had army, and fell in the famous battle of New Orleans.
possessed power of I
Legree,
am, sir, your friend,
Wm. Dickey.
would have used it in the same way ; and
that there should be Legreesin the Southern
But the reader will have too much reason
States, is onlysayingthathuman nature to know of the possibility of the existence
is the same therethat itiseverywhere. The of such men as Legree, when he comes to
only differenceis this, that in free states read the recordsof the trialsand judicial
Legree is chained and restrained by law ;
decisionsin Part II.
in the slave states,the law makes him an Let not the Southern countrybe taunted
absolute, irresponsible despot.
as the onlycountry in the world which produces
It is a shocking task to confirm by fact such men ; let us in sorrow and in
this part of the writer's story. One may humilityconcede that such men are found
well approachit in fear and trembling Ịt everywhere ; but letnot the Southern country
is so mournful to think that man, made in denythe awful chargethat she invests
the image of God, and by his human birth such men with absolute, irresponsible power
a brother of Jesus Christ,can sink so low,
over both the bodyand the soul.
can do such thingsas the very soul shudders
With regard to that atrocious system of
to contemplate, and to think that the working up the human being in a given
very man who thus sinksisour brother, is time,on which Legreeisrepresented as conducting
capable, like us, of the renewal by the Spirit hisplantation, there isunfortunately
be created in
of grace, by which he might
the image of Christ and be made equal unto
the angels. They who uphold
the laws
which grant this awful power have another under the head of Labor, p. 39,are given
heavy responsibility, of which they little several extracts from various documents țo
dream. How many soulsof masters have show that this system has been pursued on
been ruined throughit ! How has this absolute
some plantations to such an extent as to shorten
authorityprovoked and developed life,and to preventthe increase of the
wickedness which otherwise mighthave been slave population, so that,unless annually
suppressed ! How many have stumbled into renewed,itwould of itselfdie out. Of these
everlasting perdition over
goodold father visited him in the prison" two or
three times talked and prayedwith him ; I visited
him once invself. We fondlyhoped that he was
a sincere penitent. Before the day of execution
came, by some means, I never knew what, Isham
too much reason to know that it has been
practised and is stillpractised.
In Mr. Weld's book, ': Slavery as It Is,"
this stumbling-
documents we cpiote the following :
stone of IRRESPONSIBLE POWER !
The
What facts do the judicial trialsof slaveholdingstates
occasionally develop ! What
in its report,published in 1829, furnishes a
Agricultural Societyof Baton
Rouge,La.,
labored estimate of the amount of expenditure
horriblerecords defilethe pages of the lawbook,
necessarily incurred in conducting
" a well-regulated
describing unheard-of scenes of torture sugar estate." In this estimate țhe annual
net loss of
and agony, perpetrated in this nineteenth
slaves, over and above the supplyby
centuryof the Christian era, by the irresponsible
propagation, is set down at two and a half pek
cent. ! The late Hon. Josiah S. Johnson, a member
despot who owns the bodyand soul ! of Congress from Louisiana, addressed a letter
Let any
one read,if theycan, the to the
ninetythird
page of Weld's Slavery as It 1830,containing
Secretary of the United States' Treasury, in
Zs,where
a similar estimate,apparently
made with great care, and goinginto minute
the Rev. Mr. Dickeygivesan account of a
details.
trial in Kentucky for a deed Many items in this estimate differfrom
of butcherythe
preceding ; but the estimate of the annual
and blood too repulsive to humanityto be decrease of the slaves on a plantationwas the
here described. The culprit was convicted,
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same, and a half per cent. !
In September,1834,the writer of this had an
and sentenced to death. Mr. Dickey'sinterview with James G. Birney,Esq., who then
account of the finaleis thus :
resided in Kentucky,havingremoved, with his
family,from Alabama, the year before. A few
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The Court sat was judged to be guiltyhours before that interview,and on the morning
of a capital crime in the affairof George. He was of the same day, Mr. B. had spent a coupleof
to be hanged at Salem. The day was set. My hours with Hon. Henry Clay,at his residence,
near Lexington Ṃr. Birney remarked that Mr.
Clay had justtold him he had latelybeen led to
mistrust certain estimates as to the increase of
the slave population in the far estimates
South-west,"
which he had presented, I think,in a