A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin / Presenting the original facts and documents upon which the story is founded. Together with corroborative statements verifying the truth of the work.

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

answered,

That such a separation, among persons situated as our slaves are, is civilly a separation by death, and they believe that, in the sight of God, it would be so viewed. To forbid second marriages, in such cases, would be to expose the parties, not only to stronger hardships and strong temptation, but to church censure, for acting in obedience to their masters, who cannot be expected to acquiesce in a regulation at variance with justice to the slaves, and to the spirit of that command which regulates marriage among Christians. The slaves are not free agents, and a dissolution by death, is not more entirely without their consent, and beyond their control, than by such separation.

At the Shiloh Baptist Association, which met at Gourdvine, a few years since, the following query, says the Religious Herald, was presented from Hedgman church, viz:

Is a servant, whose husband or wife has been sold by his or her master into a distant country, to be permitted to marry again?

The query was referred to a committee, who made the following report; which, after discussion, was adopted:

That, in view of the circumstances in which servants in this country are placed, the committee are unanimous in the opinion that it is better to permit servants thus circumstanced to take another husband or wife.

The Reverend Charles C. Jones, who was an earnest and indefatigable laborer for the good of the slave, and one who, it would be supposed, would be likely to feel strongly on this subject, if any one would, simply remarks, in estimating the moral condition of the negroes, that, as husband and wife are subject to all the vicissitudes of property, and may be separated by division of estate, debts, sales or removals, &c. &c., the marriage relation naturally loses much of its sacredness, and says:

It is a contract of convenience, profit or pleasure, that may be entered into and dissolved at the will of the parties, and that without heinous sin, or injury to the property interests of any one.

In this sentence he is expressing, as we suppose, the common idea of slaves and masters of the nature of this institution, and not his own. We infer this from the fact that he endeavors in his catechism to impress on the slave the sacredness and perpetuity of the relation. But, when the most pious and devoted men that the South has, and those professing to spend their lives for the service of the slave, thus calmly, and without any reprobation, contemplate this state of things as a state with which Christianity does not call on them to interfere, what can be expected of the world in general?

It is to be remarked, with regard to the sentiments of Mr. Smylie’s pamphlet, that they are endorsed in the appendix by a document in the name of two presbyteries, which document, though with less minuteness of investigation, takes the same ground with Mr. Smylie. This Rev. James Smylie was one who, in company with the Rev. John L. Montgomery, was appointed by the synod of Mississippi, in 1839, to write or compile a catechism for the instruction of the negroes.