“As I shall not die because of evil deeds, that is a small matter. My death will keep it ever in remembrance that I delivered my master from slavery and the enemy, restored him to his country and father, and chose that I myself should perish rather than he.”
That is exalted. But Tyndarus has not the complete goodness of Uncle Tom. As soon as he is at last rescued from the horrible mines, to find Philocrates true and himself a free man, he threatens woe to a slave who had injured him, and looks approvingly upon the execution of his threat.
Compare Uncle Tom with the good men of the bible, such as Moses, Peter, and Paul, to mention no more. Not one of these was able always to keep his feelings and tongue in that complete subjection that never fail Uncle Tom.
Uncle Tom, in whom love alone prompts all thoughts and deeds, surpasses every saint in Dante’s Paradise—he surpasses even the incomparably sweet Beatrice, who now and then chides unpleasantly.
The climax of my comparison is reached when I suggest that Uncle Tom is made from first to last a more perfect Christ than the Jesus of the gospels. The latter, as Matthew Arnold and other reverent christians remark, was sometimes unamiable. Remember his expulsion of the money changers and traders from the temple, and the many opprobrious words he used of and to the Pharisees. Growing recognition of the all-human Jesus is benignly replacing a religion of superstition, intolerance, and dogma with one of universal love and brotherhood. I cannot fully express my appreciation of the liberal divines, from Charming to Savage, who are preparing us so well for the millennium. But I am sure a new study of Uncle Tom would give each one of them firmer grasp of christlikeness and far more power to present it. Think over such instances in that holiest and most altruistic of lives as these: He has just learned that he has been sold; that he is to be carried down the river. His wife suggests that as he has a pass from his master permitting him to go and return as he pleases, he take advantage of it and run away to the free States. As firmly as Socrates, unjustly condemned to death, refused to escape from prison when his friends had provided full opportunity, Tom declared he would stay, that he would keep faith with his master. He said that, according to Eliza’s report of the conversation she had overheard, his master was forced to sell him, or sell all the other slaves, and it was better for himself to suffer in their place. And as he goes away he has nothing but prayers and blessings for the man who sends him into dread exile from his wife and children. He falls to a new master, whom, and his family, he watches over with the fidelity and love of a most kind father, doing every duty, but above all things trying to save that master’s soul. Then his cruel fortune delivers him to the monster Legree. For the first time in his life he is treated with disrespect, distrust, and harshness. Yet he forgets his own misery, and finds pleasure in helping and comforting his fellow sufferers, striving his utmost to bring them into eternal life. He will not do wrong even at the command of his cruel master, who has him in a dungeon, as it were, into which no ray of justice can ever shine. And here he dies from the cruel lash—almost under it. He falters some, it is true; but there was no sweat of blood as in Gethsemane, nor exclamation upon the cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!” He went more triumphantly through his more fell crucifixion.
I believe that the character of Uncle Tom is the only part of the book which future generations will cherish; not for the lesson against slavery it was intended to teach, but because it excels in ideal and realization all imitation of Christ in actual life or the loftiest religious fiction. Consider its marvellous effect upon Heine, as told by a quotation from the latter in The Author’s Introduction to the book.[94]
The detailed comparison which I have just made puts Uncle Tom upon a pinnacle, where he is above all the saints in lofty, self-abnegating, and lovingly religious manhood; and the reader notes how fruitlessly I have tried to find another like him. But Mrs. Stowe was confident that she had not exaggerated or overdrawn him, and further that such were common among the southern slaves. Here is what she deliberately says in her Key:
“The character of Uncle Tom has been objected to as improbable; and yet the writer has received more confirmations of that character, and from a greater variety of sources, than of any other in the book.
Many people have said to her, ‘I knew an Uncle Tom in such and such a southern State.’ All the histories of this kind which have thus been related to her would of themselves, if collected, make a small volume.”[95]
Toombs once said to me, “It would have been a matchless eulogy of slavery if it had produced an Uncle Tom.” But, as we see from the last quotation, she claims far more. She really claims that it was fruitful of Uncle Toms in every southern State.