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

With all due deference to whatever of just principles the Southern Press may have advanced in favor of the slave, I am a poor judge of human nature if I mistake in saying that Mrs. Stowe has done much to draw from him those concessions; and the putting forth of this “most invulnerable moral panoply,” that has just come into his head as a bulwark of safety for slavery, owes its impetus to her, and other like efforts. I hope the Southern Press will not imitate the spoiled child, who refused to eat his pie for spite.

The “White Slave” I have not seen. I guess its character, for I made a passage to New York, some fourteen or fifteen years since, in a packet-ship, with a young woman whose face was enveloped in a profusion of light brown curls, and who sat at the table with the passengers all the way as a white woman. When at the quarantine, Staten Island, the captain received a letter, sent by express mail, from a person in New Orleans, claiming her as his slave, and threatening the captain with the penalty of the existing law if she was not immediately returned. The streaming eyes of the poor, unfortunate girl told the truth, when the captain reluctantly broke it to her. She unhesitatingly confessed that she had run away, and that a friend had paid her passage. Proper measures were taken, and she was conveyed to a packet-ship that was at Sandy Hook, bound for New Orleans.

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” I think, is a just delineation of slavery. The incidents are colored, but the position that the slave is made to hold is just. I did not read every page of it, my object being to ascertain what position the slave occupied. I could state a case of whipping to death that would equal Uncle Tom’s; still, such cases are not very frequent.

The stirring up of strife between neighbors, that the Southern Press complains of, deserves notice. Who are neighbors? The most explicit answer to this question will be found in the reply Christ made to the lawyer, when he asked it of him. Another question will arise, Whether, in Christ’s judgment, Mrs. Stowe would be considered a neighbor or an incendiary? As the Almighty Ruler of the universe and the Maker of man has said that He has made all the nations of the earth of one blood, and man in His own image, the black man, irrespective of his color, would seem to be a neighbor who has fallen among his enemies, that have deprived him of the fruits of his labor, his liberty, his right to his wife and children, his right to obtain the knowledge to read, or to anything that earth holds dear, except such portions of food and raiment as will fit him for his despoiler’s purposes. Let not the apologists for slavery bring up the isolated cases of leniency, giving instruction, and affectionate attachment, that are found among some masters, as specimens of slavery! It is unfair! They form exceptions, and much do I respect them; but they are not the rules of slavery. The strife that is being stirred up is not to take away anything that belongs to another,—neither their silver or gold, their fine linen or purple, their houses or land, their horses or cattle, or anything that is their property; but to rescue a neighbor from their unmanly cupidity.

A Republican.

No introduction is necessary to explain the following correspondence, and no commendation will be required to secure for it a respectful attention from thinking readers:

{ Washington City, D. C.,

{ Dec. 6, 1852.

D. R. Goodloe, Esq.

Dear Sir: I understand that you are a North Carolinian, and have always resided in the South, you must, consequently, be acquainted with the workings of the institution of slavery. You have doubtless also read that world-renowned book, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” by Mrs. Stowe. The apologists for slavery deny that this book is a truthful picture of slavery. They say that its representations are exaggerated, its scenes and incidents unfounded, and, in a word, that the whole book is a caricature. They also deny that families are separated,—that children are sold from their parents, wives from their husbands, &c. Under these circumstances, I am induced to ask your opinion of Mrs. Stowe’s book, and whether or not, in your opinion, her statements are entitled to credit.