UNCLE TOM'S CABIN

"
men
KEY TO UNCLE TOM S CABIN. 47
CHAPTER XI.
ever
there is occasion for it;and
SELECT INCIDENTS OF LAWFUL TRADE.
In this chapterof Uncle Tom's Cabin
were recorded some of the most highlywroughtand
touching incidentsof the slave-
or provision of a Southern plantation.
raising
They
trade. It will be well to authenticate a
few of them.
One of the firstsketchespresented to view
is an account of the separation of a
decrepit negro
woman from her young son,
very old,
by a sheriff'sale. The writer is sorry
to
say that not the credit for invention
slightest
is due to her in this incident. She
found it,almost exactlyas it stands,in the
published journalof a
young Southerner,
ago than last summer, the writer was conversing
with Thomas Strother,a slave
minister of the gospel in St. Louis,for
whose emancipation she was
makingsome
effort. He incidentally mentioned to her a
relatedas a scene to which he was eye-wit-
scene which he had witnessed but a short
time before,
woman of his
ness.
The onlycircumstancewhich she has
omitted in the narrative was one of additional
and induces her to go
with him by the deceitfulassertion that she
is to be taken down the river a short distance,
to work at the same hotelwith her
husband. This was an instancewhich occurred
which showed that she had been carefully
and respectably brought up. It will be
seen, in perusingthe account, that the
incidentis somewhat alteredto suit the purpose
of the story,the woman beingthere
represented as
carryingAvithher a younoinfant.
The custom
of
unceremoniously separating
the infantfrom itsmother,when the latter
isabout to be taken from a Northern to a
Southern market,is a matter of
every-day
notoriety in the trade.- It is not
and sometimes, but always,
done oc-
when-
casionally
the mother's
than those
agoniesare no more regarded
of a cow when her calf is separatedfrom
her.
The reason of thisis țhat the care and
of childrenis no partof the intention
are a trouble ; theydetract from the value
of the mother as a field-hand,
it is more
expensiveto raise them than to buy them
readyraised ; theyare thereforeleftbehind
in the making up of a cofiie. Not longer
in which a
young
acquaintance came to him almost in a
inhumanity and
state
painfulness which he of distraction, telling him that she had been
had delineated. He represents the boy as sold
beingboughtby to a planter, who fetteredhis
go South with a trader,and leave
behind her a nursinginfant.
hands,and tied a
rope round his neck which In Lewis Clark's narrative he mentions
he attached to the neck of his horsețhus that a master in his neighborhood sold a
compelling the child to trot by his side. woman and childto a trader, with the charge
This incidentalone was suppressedby the that he should not sell the child from its
author.
mother. The man, howeverțraded off the
Another scene of fraud and cruelty, in child in the very next town,
the same chapter,
in payment
is described of
as perpetrated his tavern-bill.
by a Kentuckyslave-master, who sellsa The following testimony is from a gentleman
woman to a trader,
who writesfrom New Orleans to the
National Era.
This writer says
:
"While at Robinson,or TyrcoSprings,twenty
miles from
under the writer's
Nashville, on the borders of own observation,
Kentucky
and Tennessee,
some
years since, when my hostess said to me, one
she
day,
was goingdown "Yonder comes a
gang
the Ohio of slaves,chained." I
river. The woman was very
respectable
went to the road-side and viewed them. For the
both in appearance and dress. better
The answering my purpose of observation, I
writer recallsher imagenow with stoppedthe white man in
distinctness,
front,who was at his
attiredwith
ease in a one-horse
great neatness in wagon, and asked him if those
a white slaveswere for sale. I counted them and
wrapper, her clothing and hah- all observed
arrangedtheir position.They were divided by three onehorse
a wagons, each containing a man-merchant,
with evident care, and havingwith her
so arrangedas to command the whole
prettily-dressed boyabout seven years of
gang. Some
were unchained
age. She had also a hair ;
trunk
sixtywere chained in two companies,
of clothing, thirtyin each,the righthand of one to
"
the left hand of the other oppositeone, making
fifteeneach side of a largeox-chain țo which
every hand was fastened, and necessarily compelled
to hold up,
and women promiscuously, and
about in equalproportions, all young people.
No children here,except a few in a wagon behind,
which were the only children in the four gan^-s.
I said to a respectablemulatto woman in the
house, " Is it true that the negro-traders take
mothers from their babies?" "
Massa, it is
true ; for here, last week, such a girl[naming
her],who livesabout a mile off,was taken after
"
dinner, knew nothing of it in the "
morning,
sold,put into the gang, and her baby given away
to a neighbor.She was a stout young woman,
and brought a good price."