A former paper on Mrs Stowe's remarkable book, presented a little episode, the heroine of which was Eliza, a female slave on the estate of a Mr Shelby in Kentucky. We now turn to the story of Tom himself, whose transfers from hand to hand afford the authoress an opportunity of describing the private life and feelings of slave-owners, and the unwholesome and dangerous condition of society in the south.
Tom, we have hinted, was jet black in colour, trustworthy and valued by his master, who was compelled by necessity to part with him to Haley, a slave-trader. The separation of this honest fellow from his wife Chloe, and his children, was a sad affair; but as Tom was of a hopeful temperament, and under strong religious impressions, he did not repine at the fate he was about to encounter, dreaded as that usually is by persons in his situation. 'In order to appreciate the sufferings of the negroes sold south, it must be remembered that all the instinctive affections of that race are peculiarly strong. Their local attachments are very abiding. They are not naturally daring and enterprising, but home-loving and affectionate. Add to this all the terrors with which ignorance invests the unknown, and add to this, again, that selling to the south is set before the negro from childhood as the last severity of punishment. The threat that terrifies more than whipping or torture of any kind, is the threat of being sent down river.
'A missionary among the fugitives in Canada told us, that many of the fugitives confessed themselves to have escaped from comparatively kind masters, and that they were induced to brave the perils of escape, in almost every case, by the desperate horror with which they regarded being sold south—a doom which was hanging either over themselves or their husbands, their wives or children. This nerves the African, naturally patient, timid, and unenterprising, with heroic courage, and leads him to suffer hunger, cold, pain, the perils of the wilderness, and the more dread penalties of recapture.'
After a simple repast in his rude cabin, Tom prepared to start. Chloe shut and corded his trunk, and getting up, looked gruffly on the trader who was robbing her of her husband; her tears seemingly turned to sparks of fire. Tom rose up meekly to follow his new master, and raised the box on his shoulder. His wife took the baby in her arms, to go with him as far as the wagon, and the children, crying, trailed on behind. 'A crowd of all the old and young hands in the place stood gathered around it, to bid farewell to their old associate. Tom had been looked up to, both as a head-servant and a Christian teacher, by all the place, and there was much honest sympathy and grief about him, particularly among the women. Haley whipped up the horse, and with a steady, mournful look, fixed to the last on the old place, Tom was whirled away. Mr Shelby at this time was not at home. He had sold Tom under the spur of a driving necessity, to get out of the power of a man he dreaded; and his first feeling, after the consummation of the bargain, had been that of relief. But his wife's expostulations awoke his half-slumbering regrets; and Tom's disinterestedness increased the unpleasantness of his feelings. It was in vain that he said to himself, that he had a right to do it, that everybody did it, and that some did it without even the excuse of necessity: he could not satisfy his own feelings; and that he might not witness the unpleasant scenes of the consummation, he had gone on a short business tour up the country, hoping that all would be over before he returned.'
Haley, with his property, reaches the Mississippi; and on that magnificent river, a steam-boat, piled high with bales of cotton from many a plantation, receives the party. 'Partly from confidence inspired by Mr Shelby's representations, and partly from the remarkably inoffensive and quiet character of the man, Tom had insensibly won his way far into the confidence even of such a man as Haley. At first, he had watched him narrowly through the day, and never allowed him to sleep at night unfettered; but the uncomplaining patience and apparent contentment of Tom's manner, led him gradually to discontinue these restraints; and for some time Tom had enjoyed a sort of parole of honour, being permitted to come and go freely where he pleased on the boat. Ever quiet and obliging, and more than ready to lend a hand in every emergency which occurred among the workmen below, he had won the good opinion of all the hands, and spent many hours in helping them with as hearty a good-will as ever he worked on a Kentucky farm. When there seemed to be nothing for him to do, he would climb to a nook among the cotton-bales of the upper deck, and busy himself in studying over his Bible—and it is there we see him now. For a hundred or more miles above New Orleans, the river is higher than the surrounding country, and rolls its tremendous volume between massive levees twenty feet in height. The traveller from the deck of the steamer, as from some floating castle-top, overlooks the whole country for miles and miles around. Tom, therefore, had spread out full before him, in plantation after plantation, a map of the life to which he was approaching. He saw the distant slaves at their toil; he saw afar their villages of huts gleaming out in long rows on many a plantation, distant from the stately mansions and pleasure-grounds of the master; and as the moving picture passed on, his poor foolish heart would be turning backward to the Kentucky farm, with its old shadowy beeches, to the master's house, with its wide, cool halls, and near by the little cabin, overgrown with the multiflora and bignonia. There he seemed to see familiar faces of comrades who had grown up with him from infancy: he saw his busy wife, bustling in her preparations for his evening meals; he heard the merry laugh of his boys at their play, and the chirrup of the baby at his knee, and then, with a start, all faded; and he saw again the cane-brakes and cypresses of gliding plantations, and heard again the creaking and groaning of the machinery, all telling him too plainly that all that phase of life had gone by for ever.'
An unlooked-for incident raises up a friend. 'Among the passengers on the boat was a young gentleman of fortune and family, resident in New Orleans, who bore the name of St Clare. He had with him a daughter between five and six years of age, together with a lady who seemed to claim relationship to both, and to have the little one especially under her charge. Tom had often caught glimpses of this little girl, for she was one of those busy, tripping creatures, that can be no more contained in one place than a sunbeam or a summer breeze; nor was she one that, once seen, could be easily forgotten. Her form was the perfection of childish beauty, without its usual chubbiness and squareness of outline.'
This angelic little creature was attracted by Tom's appearance; and speaking kindly to him, expressed a hope of serving him, by inducing her papa to become his purchaser. Tom had just thanked the little lady for her intentions, when the boat stopped at a landing-place. At its moving on again, Eva, who leaned imprudently on the railings, fell overboard. Tom was fortunately standing under her as she fell. 'He saw her strike the water and sink, and was after her in a moment. A broad-chested, strong-armed fellow, it was nothing for him to keep afloat in the water till, in a moment or two, the child rose to the surface, and he caught her in his arms, and, swimming with her to the boat-side, handed her up, all dripping, to the grasp of hundreds of hands, which, as if they had all belonged to one man, were stretched eagerly out to receive her. A few moments more, and her father bore her, dripping and senseless, to the ladies' cabin, where, as is usual in cases of the kind, there ensued a very well-meaning and kind-hearted strife among the female occupants generally as to who should do the most things to make a disturbance, and to hinder her recovery in every way possible.'
Next day, as the vessel approached New Orleans, Tom sat on the lower deck, with his arms folded, anxiously from time to time turning his eyes towards a group on the other side of the boat. 'There stood the fair Evangeline, a little paler than the day before, but otherwise exhibiting no traces of the accident which had befallen her. A graceful, elegantly-formed young man stood by her, carelessly leaning one elbow on a bale of cotton, while a large pocket-book lay open before him. It was quite evident, at a glance, that the gentleman was Eva's father. There was the same noble cast of head, the same large blue eyes, the same golden-brown hair; yet the expression was wholly different. In the large, clear blue eyes, though in form and colour exactly similar, there was wanting that misty, dreamy depth of expression; all was clear, bold, and bright, but with a light wholly of this world: the beautifully cut mouth had a proud and somewhat sarcastic expression, while an air of free-and-easy superiority sat not ungracefully in every turn and movement of his fine form. He was listening with a good-humoured, negligent air, half comic, half contemptuous, to Haley, who was very volubly expatiating on the quality of the article for which they were bargaining.
"All the moral and Christian virtues bound in black morocco, complete!" he said, when Haley had finished. "Well, now, my good fellow, what's the damage, as they say in Kentucky; in short, what's to be paid out for this business? How much are you going to cheat me, now? Out with it!"