Uncle Tom’s Cabin

“To-night! How is it possible?—where to?”

“Well, I know pretty well where to,” said the senator, beginning to put on his boots, with a reflective air; and, stopping when his leg was half in, he embraced his knee with both hands, and seemed to go off in deep meditation.

“It’s a confounded awkward, ugly business,” said he, at last, beginning to tug at his boot-straps again, “and that’s a fact!” After one boot was fairly on, the senator sat with the other in his hand, profoundly studying the figure of the carpet. “It will have to be done, though, for ought I see—hang it all!” and he drew the other boot anxiously on, and looked out of the window.

Now, little Mrs. Bird was a discreet woman—a woman who never in her life said, “I told you so!” and, on the present occasion, though pretty well aware of the shape her husband’s meditations were taking, she very prudently forebore to meddle with them, only sat very quietly in her chair, and looked quite ready to hear her liege lord’s intentions, when he should think proper to utter them.

“You see,” he said, “there’s my old client, Van Trompe, has come over from Kentucky, and set all his slaves free; and he has bought a place seven miles up the creek, here, back in the woods, where nobody goes, unless they go on purpose; and it’s a place that isn’t found in a hurry. There she’d be safe enough; but the plague of the thing is, nobody could drive a carriage there to-night, but me.”

“Why not? Cudjoe is an excellent driver.”

“Ay, ay, but here it is. The creek has to be crossed twice; and the second crossing is quite dangerous, unless one knows it as I do. I have crossed it a hundred times on horseback, and know exactly the turns to take. And so, you see, there’s no help for it. Cudjoe must put in the horses, as quietly as may be, about twelve o’clock, and I’ll take her over; and then, to give colour to the matter, he must carry me on to the next tavern, to take the stage for Columbus, that comes by about three or four, and so it will look as if I had had the carriage only for that. I shall get into business bright and early in the morning. But I’m thinking I shall feel rather cheap there, after all that’s been said and done; but, hang it, I can’t help it!”

“Your heart is better than your head, in this case, John,” said the wife, laying her little white hand on his. “Could I ever have loved you had I not known you better than you know yourself?” And the little woman looked so handsome, with the tears sparkling in her eyes, that the senator thought he must be a decidedly clever fellow, to get such a pretty creature into such a passionate admiration of him; and so, what could he do but walk off soberly to see about the carriage. At the door, however, he stopped a moment, and then, coming back, he said, with some hesitation:

“Mary, I don’t know how you’d feel about it, but there’s that drawer full of things—of—of—poor little Henry’s.” So saying, he turned quickly on his heel, and shut the door after him.

His wife opened the little bedroom door adjoining her room, and taking the candle, set it down on the top of a bureau there; then from a small recess she took a key and put it thoughtfully in the lock of a drawer, and made a sudden pause, while two boys, who, boy-like, had followed close on her heels, stood looking with silent, significant glances at their mother. And oh, mother that reads this, has there never been in your house a drawer or a closet, the opening of which has been to you like the opening again of a little grave? Ah! happy mother that you are, if it has not been so.

Mrs. Bird slowly opened the drawer. There were little coats of many a form and pattern, piles of aprons, and rows of small stockings; and even a pair of little shoes, worn and rubbed at the toes, were peeping from the folds of a paper. There was a toy horse and wagon, a top, a ball—memorials gathered with many a tear and many a heart-break. She sat down by the drawer, and, leaning her head on her hands over it, wept till the tears fell through her fingers into the drawer; then, suddenly raising her head, she began, with nervous haste, selecting the plainest and most substantial articles and gathering them into a bundle.

“Mamma,” said one of the boys, gently touching her arm, “are you going to give away those things?”

“My dear boys,” she said softly and earnestly, “if our dear, loving little Henry looks down from heaven, he would be glad to have us do this. I could not find it in my heart to give them away to any common person—to anybody that was happy; but I give to a mother more heart-broken and sorrowful than I am; and I hope God will send his blessings with them!”

There are in this world blessed souls, whose sorrows all spring up into joys for others; whose earthly hopes, laid in the grave with many tears, are the seed from which spring healing flowers and balm for the desolate and the distressed. Among such was the delicate woman who sits there by the lamp, dropping slow tears, while she prepares the memorials of her own lost one for the outcast wanderer.

After a while Mrs. Bird opened a wardrobe, and, taking from thence a plain, serviceable dress or two, she sat down busily to her work-table, and, with needle, scissors, and thimble at hand, quietly commenced the “letting down” process which her husband had recommended, and continued busily at it till the old clock in the corner struck twelve, and she heard the low rattling of wheels at the door.

“Mary,” said her husband, coming in with his overcoat in his hand, “you must wake her up now; we must be off.”

Mrs. Bird hastily deposited the various articles she had collected in a small, plain trunk, and locking it, desired her husband to see it in the carriage, and then proceeded to call the woman. Soon, arrayed in a cloak, bonnet, and shawl that had belonged to her benefactress, she appeared at the door with her child in her arms. Mr. Bird hurried her into the carriage, and Mrs. Bird pressed on after her to the carriage steps. Eliza leaned out of the carriage and put out her hand—a hand as soft and beautiful as was given in return. She fixed her large, dark eyes, full of earnest meaning, on Mrs. Bird’s face, and seemed going to speak. Her lips moved—she tried once or twice, but there was no sound—and, pointing upward, with a look never to be forgotten, she fell back in the seat and covered her face. The door was shut, and the carriage drove on.

What a situation, now, for a patriotic senator that had been all the week before spurring up the legislature of his native State to pass more stringent resolutions against escaping fugitives, their harbourers and abettors!

Our good senator in his native State had not been exceeded by any of his brethren at Washington, in the sort of eloquence which has won for them immortal renown! How sublimely he had sat with his hands in his pockets and scouted all sentimental weakness of those who would put the welfare of a few miserable fugitives before great State interests!

He was as bold as a lion about it, and “mightily convinced” not only himself, but everybody that heard him; but then his idea of a fugitive was only an idea of the letters that spell the word—or, at the most, the image of a little newspaper picture of a man with a stick and bundle, with “Ran away from the subscriber” under it. The magic of the real presence of distress—the imploring human eye, the frail, trembling human hand, the despairing appeal of helpless agony—these he had never tried. He had never thought that a fugitive might be a hapless mother of a defenceless child—like that one which was now wearing his lost boy’s little well-known cap; and so, as our poor senator was not stone or steel—as he was a man, and a downright noble-hearted one, too—he was, as everybody must see, in a sad case for his patriotism. And you need not exult over him, good brother of the Southern States; for we have some inklings that many of you, under similar circumstances, would not do much better. We have reason to know, in Kentucky, as in Mississippi, are noble and generous hearts, to whom never was tale of suffering told in vain. Ah, good brother! is it fair for you to expect of us services which your own brave, honourable heart would not allow you to render, were you in our place?

Be that as it may, if our good senator was a political sinner, he was in a fair way to expiate it by his night’s penance. There had been a long, continuous period of rainy weather, and the soft, rich earth of Ohio, as every one knows, is admirably suited to the manufacture of mud—and the road was an Ohio railroad of the good old times.

“And pray what sort of a road may that be?” says some Eastern traveller, who has been accustomed to connect no ideas with a railroad but those of smoothness or speed.

Know, then, innocent Eastern friend, that in benighted regions of the West, where the mud is of unfathomable and sublime depth, roads are made of round rough logs, arranged transversely side by side, and coated over in their pristine freshness with earth, turf, and whatsoever may come to hand, and then the rejoicing native calleth it a road, and straightway essayeth to ride thereupon. In process of time the rains wash off all the turf and grass aforesaid, move the logs hither and thither in picturesque positions up, down, and crosswise, with divers chasms and ruts of black mud intervening.

Over such a road as this our senator went stumbling along, making moral reflections as continuously as under the circumstances could be expected—the carriage proceeding along much as follows—bump! bump! bump! slush! down in the mud!—the senator, woman, and child reversing their positions so suddenly as to come, without any very accurate adjustment, against the windows of the down-hill side. Carriage sticks fast, while Cudjoe, on the outside, is heard making a great muster among the horses. After various ineffectual pullings and twitchings, just as the senator is losing all patience, the carriage suddenly rights itself with a bounce—two front wheels go down into another abyss, and senator, woman, and child all tumble promiscuously on to the front seat—senator’s hat is jammed over his eyes and nose quite unceremoniously, and he considers himself fairly extinguished; child cries, and Cudjoe, on the outside, delivers animated addresses to the horses, who are kicking, and floundering, and straining, under repeated cracks of the whip. Carriage springs up, with another bounce—down go the hind wheels—senator, woman, and child fly over on to the back seat, his elbows encountering her bonnet, and both her feet being jammed into his hat, which flies off in the concussion. After a few moments the “slough” is passed, and the horses stop panting; the senator finds his hat, the woman straightens her bonnet and hushes her child, and they brace themselves firmly for what is yet to come.

For a while only the continuous bump! bump! intermingled, just by way of variety, with divers side plunges and compound shakes; and they begin to flatter themselves that they are not so badly off, after all. At last, with a square plunge, which puts all on to their feet and then down into their seats with incredible quickness, the carriage stops—and, after much outside commotion, Cudjoe appears at the door.

“Please, sir, it’s powerful bad spot, this yer. I don’t know how we’s to get clar out. I’m a thinkin’ we’ll have to be a gettin’ rails.”

The senator despairingly steps out, picking gingerly for some firm foothold; down goes one foot an immeasurable depth—he tries to pull it up, loses his balance, and tumbles over into the mud, and is fished out, in a very despairing condition, by Cudjoe.

But we forbear, out of sympathy to our readers’ bones. Western travellers, who have beguiled the midnight hour in the interesting process of pulling down rail fences, to pry their carriages out of mud holes, will have a respectful and mournful sympathy with our unfortunate hero. We beg them to drop a silent tear, and pass on.

It was full late in the night when the carriage emerged, dripping and bespattered, out of the creek, and stood at the door of a large farm-house.

It took no inconsiderable perseverance to arouse the inmates: but at last the respectable proprietor appeared, and undid the door. He was a great, tall, bristling Orson of a fellow, full six feet and some inches in his stockings, and arrayed in a red flannel hunting-shirt. A very heavy mat of sandy hair, in a decidedly tousled condition, and a beard of some days’ growth, gave the worthy man an appearance, to say the least, not particularly prepossessing. He stood for a few minutes holding the candle aloft, and blinking on our travellers with a dismal and mystified expression that was truly ludicrous. It cost some effort of our senator to induce him to comprehend the case fully; and while he is doing his best at that, we shall give him a little introduction to our readers.

Honest old John Van Trompe was once quite a considerable land-holder and slave-owner in the State of Kentucky. Having “nothing of the bear about him but the skin,” and being gifted by nature with a great, honest, just heart, quite equal to his gigantic frame, he had been for some years witnessing with repressed uneasiness the workings of a system equally bad for oppressor and oppressed. At last, one day John’s great heart had swelled altogether too big to wear his bonds any longer; so he just took his pocket-book out of his desk, and went over into Ohio, and bought a quarter of a township of good, rich land, made out free papers for all his people—men, women, and children—packed them up in wagons, and sent them off to settle down; and then honest John turned his face up the creek, and sat quietly down on a snug, retired farm, to enjoy his conscience and his reflections.

“Are you the man that will shelter a poor woman and child from slave-catchers?” said the senator explicitly.

“I rather think I am,” said honest John, with some considerable emphasis.

“I thought so,” said the senator.

“If there’s anybody comes,” said the good man, stretching his tall, muscular form upward, “why, here I’m ready for him: and I’ve got seven sons, each six foot high, and they’ll be ready for ’em. Give our respects to ’em,” said John; “tell ’em it’s no matter how soon they call—make no kinder difference to us,” said John, running his fingers through the shock of hair that thatched his head, and bursting out into a great laugh.

Weary, jaded, and spiritless, Eliza dragged herself up to the door, with her child lying in a heavy sleep on her arm. The rough man held the candle to her face, and uttering a kind of compassionate grunt, opened the door of a small bedroom adjoining to the large kitchen where they were standing, and motioned her to go in. He took down a candle, and, lighting it, set it upon the table, and then addressed himself to Eliza.

“Now, I say, gal, you needn’t be a bit afeard, let who will come here. I’m up to all that sort o’ thing,” said he, pointing to two or three goodly rifles over the mantelpiece; “and most people that know me know that ’twouldn’t be healthy to try to get anybody out o’ my house when I’m agin it. So now you jist go to sleep now, as quiet as if yer mother was a rockin’ ye,” said he, as he shut the door.

“Why, this is an uncommon handsome un,” he said to the senator. “Ah, well; handsome uns has the greatest cause to run, sometimes, if they has any kind o’ feelin’, such as decent women should. I know all about that.”

The senator, in a few words, briefly explained Eliza’s history.

“Oh! ou! aw! now, I want to know?” said the good man, pitifully; “sho! now sho! That’s natur now, poor crittur! hunted down now like a deer—hunted down, jest for havin’ natural feelin’s, and doin’ what no kind o’ mother could help a doin’! I tell ye what, these yer things make me come the nighest to swearin’, now, o’ most anything,” said honest John, as he wiped his eyes with the back of a great, freckled, yellow hand. “I tell yer what, stranger, it was years and years before I’d jine the church, ’cause the ministers round in our parts used to preach that the Bible went in for these ’ere cuttings up—and I couldn’t be up to ’em with their Greek and Hebrew, and so I took up agin ’em, Bible and all. I never jined the church till I found a minister that was up to ’em all in Greek and all that, and he said right the contrary; and then I took right hold, and jined the church—I did now, fact,” said John, who had been all this time uncorking some very frisky bottled cider, which at this juncture he presented.

“Ye’d better jest put up here, now, till daylight,” said he heartily, “and I’ll call up the old woman, and have a bed got ready for you in no time.”

“Thank you, my good friend,” said the senator; “I must be along, to take the night stage for Columbus.”

“Ah! well, then, if you must, I’ll go a piece with you, and show you a cross-road that will take you there better than the road you came on. That road’s mighty bad.”

John equipped himself, and, with a lantern in hand, was soon seen guiding the senator’s carriage towards a road that ran down in a hollow, back of his dwelling. When they parted, the senator put into his hand a ten-dollar bill.

“It’s for her,” he said briefly.

“Ay, ay,” said John, with equal conciseness.

They shook hands and parted.

CHAPTER 10 The Property is Carried Off

The February morning looked gray and drizzling through the window of Uncle Tom’s cabin. It looked on downcast faces, the images of mournful hearts. The little table stood out before the fire, covered with an ironing-cloth; a coarse but clean shirt or two, fresh from the iron, hung on the back of a chair by the fire, and Aunt Chloe had another spread out before her on the table. Carefully she rubbed and ironed every fold and every hem, with the most scrupulous exactness, every now and then raising her hand to her face to wipe off the tears that were coursing down her cheeks.

Tom sat by, with his Testament open on his knee, and his head leaning upon his hand; but neither spoke. It was yet early, and the children lay all asleep together in their little rude trundle-bed.

Tom, who had to the full the gentle, domestic heart, which, woe for them! has been a peculiar characteristic of his unhappy race, got up and walked silently to look at his children.

“It’s the last time,” he said.

Aunt Chloe did not answer, only rubbed away over and over on the coarse shirt, already as smooth as hands could make it; and, finally setting her iron suddenly down with a despairing plunge she sat down to the table, and “lifted up her voice and wept.”

“S’pose we must be resigned; but, O Lord! how ken I? If I know’d anything whar you’s goin’, or how they’d sarve you! Missis says she’ll try and ‘deem ye, in a year or two; but Lor! nobody never comes up that goes down thar! They kills ’em! I’ve hearn ’em tell how dey works ’em up on dem ar plantations.”

“There’ll be the same God there, Chloe, that there is here.”

“Well,” said Aunt Chloe, “s’pose dere will; but de Lord lets dre’ful things happen, sometimes. I don’t seem to get no comfort dat way.”

“I’m in the Lord’s hands,” said Tom; “nothin’ can go no furder than He lets it; and thar’s one thing I can thank Him for. It’s me that’s sold and going down, and not you nur the chil’en. Here you’re safe—what comes will come only on me; and the Lord, He’ll help me—I know He will.”

Ah, brave, manly heart—smothering thine own sorrow, to comfort thy beloved ones! Tom spoke with a thick utterance and with a bitter choking in his throat—but he spoke brave and strong.

“Let’s think on our marcies!” he added, tremulously, as if he was quite sure he needed to think on them very hard indeed.

“Marcies!” said Aunt Chloe; “don’t see no marcy in’t! ’tan’t right! ’tan’t right it should be so! Mas’r never ought ter left it so that ye could be took for his debts. Ye’ve arnt him all he gets for ye, twice over. He owed ye yer freedom, and ought ter gin’t to yer years ago. Mebbe he can’t help himself now, but I feel it’s wrong. Nothing can’t beat that ar out o’ me. Sich a faithful crittur as ye’ve been—and allers sot his business ’fore yer own every way—and reckoned on him more than yer own wife and chil’en! Them as sells heart’s love and heart’s blood, to get out thar scrapes, de Lord’ll be up to ’em!”

“Chloe! now, if ye love me, ye won’t talk so, when perhaps jest the last time we’ll ever have together! And I’ll tell ye, Chloe, it goes agin me to hear one word agin mas’r. Warn’t he put in my arms a baby?—it’s natur I should think a heap of him. And he couldn’t be spected to think so much of poor Tom. Mas’rs is used to havin’ all these yer things done for ’em, and nat’lly they don’t think so much on’t. They can’t be spected to, no way. Set him ’longside of other mas’rs—who’s had the treatment and the livin’ I’ve had? And he never would have let this yer come on me, if he could have seed it aforehand. I know he wouldn’t.”

“Wal, any way, thar’s wrong about it somewhar,” said Aunt Chloe, in whom a stubborn sense of justice was a predominant trait: “I can’t jest make out whar ’tis, but thar’s wrong somewhar, I’m clar o’ that.”

“Yer ought ter look up to the Lord above—he’s above all—thar don’t a sparrow fall without him.”

“It don’t seem to comfort me, but I spect it orter,” said Aunt Chloe. “But dar’s no use talkin’; I’ll jest wet up de corn-cake, and get ye one good breakfast, ’cause nobody knows when you’ll get another.”

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. We have ourselves heard this feeling expressed by them, and seen the unaffected horror with which they will sit in their gossiping hours, and tell frightful stories of that “down river,” which to them is

“That undiscove r’d country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns.”

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.

The simple morning meal now smoked on the table, for Mrs. Shelby had excused Aunt Chloe’s attendance at the great house that morning. The poor soul had expended all her little energies on this farewell feast—had killed and dressed her choicest chicken, and prepared her corn-cake with scrupulous exactness, just to her husband’s taste, and brought out certain mysterious jars on the mantel-piece, some preserves that were never produced except on extreme occasions.

“Lor, Pete,” said Mose triumphantly, “han’t we got a buster of a breakfast!” at the same time catching at a fragment of the chicken.

Aunt Chloe gave him a sudden box on the ear. “Thar now! crowing over the last breakfast yer poor daddy’s gwine to have at home!”

“Oh, Chloe!” said Tom gently.

“Wal, I can’t help it,” said Aunt Chloe, hiding her face in her apron; “I’s so tossed about, it makes me act ugly.”

The boys stood quite still, looking first at their father and then at their mother, while the baby, climbing up her clothes, began an imperious, commanding cry.

“Thar!” said Aunt Chloe, wiping her eyes and taking up the baby; “now I’s done, I hope—now do eat something. This yer’s my nicest chicken. Thar, boys, ye shall have some, poor critturs! Yer mammy’s been cross to yer.”