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

The ladies of England, in their letter to the ladies of America, spoke in particular of the denial of the gospel to the slave. This has been indignantly resented in this country, and it has been claimed that the slaves do have the gospel communicated to them very extensively.

Whoever reads Mr. Charles C. Jones’ book on the religious instruction of the negroes will have no doubt of the following facts:

1. That from year to year, since the introduction of the negroes into this country, various pious and benevolent individuals have made efforts for their spiritual welfare.

2. That these efforts have increased, from year to year.

3. That the most extensive and important one came into being about the time that Mr. Jones’ book was written, in the year 1842, and extended to some degree through the United States. The fairest development of it was probably in the State of Georgia, the sphere of Mr. Jones’ immediate labor, where the most gratifying results were witnessed, and much very amiable and commendable Christian feeling elicited on the part of masters.

4. From time to time, there have been prepared, for the use of the slave, catechisms, hymns, short sermons, &c. &c., designed to be read to them by their masters, or taught them orally.

5. It will appear to any one who reads Mr. Jones’ book that, though written by a man who believed the system of slavery sanctioned by God, it manifests a spirit of sincere and earnest benevolence, and of devotedness to the cause he has undertaken, which cannot be too highly appreciated.

It is a very painful and unpleasant task to express any qualification or dissent with regard to efforts which have been undertaken in a good spirit, and which have produced, in many respects, good results; but, in the reading of Mr. Jones’ book, in the study of his catechism, and of various other catechisms and sermons which give an idea of the religious instruction of the slaves, the writer has often been painfully impressed with the idea that, however imbued and mingled with good, it is not the true and pure gospel system which is given to the slave. As far as the writer has been able to trace out what is communicated to him, it amounts in substance to this; that his master’s authority over him, and property in him, to the full extent of the enactment of slave-law, is recognized and sustained by the tremendous authority of God himself. He is told that his master is God’s overseer; that he owes him a blind, unconditional, unlimited submission; that he must not allow himself to grumble, or fret, or murmur, at anything in his conduct; and, in case he does so, that his murmuring is not against his master, but against God. He is taught that it is God’s will that he should have nothing but labor and poverty in this world; and that, if he frets and grumbles at this, he will get nothing by it in this life, and be sent to hell forever in the next. Most vivid descriptions of hell, with its torments, its worms ever feeding and never dying, are held up before him; and he is told that this eternity of torture will be the result of insubordination here. It is no wonder that a slave-holder once said to Dr. Brisbane, of Cincinnati, that religion had been worth more to him, on his plantation, than a wagon-load of cowskins.

Furthermore, the slave is taught that to endeavor to evade his master by running away, or to shelter or harbor a slave who has run away, are sins which will expose him to the wrath of that omniscient Being, whose eyes are in every place.

As the slave is a movable and merchantable being, liable, as Mr. Jones calmly remarks, to “all the vicissitudes of property,” this system of instruction, one would think, would be in something of a dilemma, when it comes to inculcate the Christian duties of the family state.