A Key to Chapter 27 and 28

Stowe provides further details about her story based on actual events in A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Chapter 27:

Stowe asserts the distinction between the Aristocrat-by-nature’s and the Democrat-by-nature’s view of people considered property and beneath them (e.g. the twin brothers Alfred and Augustine St. Clare, characters in UTC, diametrically opposed equality views).  Stowe further cites Patrick Henry’s 1773 letter, whose content reflects St. Clare’s sentiments against the cruelty of slavery: in it [the letter] he invokes making an advancement in justice and the act of emancipating the slaves as “a debt we owe to the purity of our religion to show that it is at variance with that law that warrants slavery.”

Some of the issues Stowe addresses here are duty, justice and Christian values.

  The full story of this connection can be read in Chapter IX, “St. Clare”  of A  Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Chapter 28:

Stowe confronts the fact that the American slave law is the most severe among all those of the civilized world. It even beats the Romans with laws defining what rights its government cannot allow its slaves to possess.

The picture which Mrs. Stowe has drawn of slavery as an institution is anything but favourable. She has illustrated the frightful cruelty and oppression that must result from a law which gives to one class of society almost absolute and irresponsible power over another (from page 120 of Chapter 14, A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin).

 

As regards the question or even statements of duty, Stowe juxtaposes the duty of a slave to be submissive and obedient if he is well taken care of by his master with the duty of the master to treat his slaves well by feeding, clothing and ministering to them when they are sick (from Chapter 3, A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin).

The full story of this connection can be read in Chapter XII, “A Comparison of the Roman Law of Slavery with the American”  of A  Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Chapter and Commentary Table of Contents


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