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Chapter XVIII.—Continued.[1]
“I used sometimes to hear my mother reasoning cases with him—endeavoring to excite his sympathies. He would listen to the most pathetic appeals with the most discouraging politeness and equanimity. ‘It all resolves itself into this,’ he would say; ‘must I part with Stubbs, or keep him? Stubbs is the soul of punctuality, honesty, and efficiency—a thorough business hand, and as humane as the general run. We can’t have perfection; and if I keep him, I must sustain his administration as a whole, even if there are now and then things that are exceptionable. All government includes some necessary hardness. General rules will bear hard on particular cases.’ This last maxim, my father seemed to consider a settler in most alleged cases of cruelty. After he had said that, he commonly drew up his feet on the sofa, like a man that has disposed of a business, and betook himself to a nap, or the newspaper, as the case might be.
“The fact is, my father showed the exact sort of talent for a statesman. He could have divided Poland as easy as an orange, or trod on Ireland as quietly and systematically as any man living. At last my mother gave up in despair. It never will be known, till the last accounts, what noble and sensitive natures like hers have felt—cast utterly helpless into what seems to them an abyss of injustice and cruelty, and which seems so to nobody about them. It has been an age of long sorrow of such natures, in such a hell-begotten sort of world as ours. What remained for her, but to train her children in her own views and sentiments.[2] Well, after all you say about training, children will grow up substantially what they are by nature, and only that. From the cradle, Alfred was an aristocrat; and as he grew up, instinctively, all his sympathies and all his reasonings were in that line, and all mother’s exhortations went to the winds. As to me, they sunk deep into me. She never contradicted, in form, anything that my father said, or seemed directly to differ from him; but she impressed, burnt into my very soul, with all the force of her deep, earnest nature, an idea of the dignity and worth of the meanest human soul. I have looked in her face with solemn awe, when she would point up to the stars in the evening, and say to me, ‘See there, Auguste! the poorest, meanest, soul on our place will be living when all these stars are gone forever—will live as long as God lives!’
“She had some fine old paintings; one in particular, of Jesus healing a blind man. They were very fine, and used to impress me strongly. ‘See there, Auguste,’ she would say, ‘the blind man was a beggar, poor and loathsome; therefore he would not heal him afar off! He called him to him, and put his hands on him! Remember this, my boy.’ If I had lived to grow up under her care, she might have stimulated me to I know not what of enthusiasm. I might have been a saint, reformer, martyr—but alas! alas! I went from her when I was only thirteen, and I never saw her again!”
St. Clare rested his head on his hands, and did not speak for some minutes. After a while he looked up, and went on.
“What poor mean trash this whole business of human virtue is! A mere matter for the most part of latitude and longitude, and geographical position, acting with natural temperament! The greater part is nothing but an accident! Your father, for example, settles in Vermont, in a town where all are in fact free and equal; becomes a regular church member and deacon, and in due time joins an Abolition society, and thinks us all little better than heathens. Yet he is, for all the world, in constitution and habit, a duplicate of my father. I can see it looking[3] out in fifty different ways, just that same strong, overbearing, dominant spirit. You know very well how impossible it is to persuade some of the folks in your village that Squire Sinclair does not feel above them. The fact is, though he has fallen on democratic times, and embraced a democratic theory, he is to the heart an aristocrat, as much as my father, who ruled over five or six hundred slaves.”
Miss Ophelia felt rather disposed to cavil at this picture, and was laying down her knitting to begin, but St. Clare stopped her.
“Now, I know every word you are going to say. I do not say they were alike, in fact. One fell into a condition where everything acted against the natural tendency, and the other where everything acted for it; and so one turned out a pretty wilful, stout, overbearing old democrat, and the other a wilful, stout, old despot. If both had owned plantations in Louisiana, they would have been as like as two old bullets cast in the same mould.”
“What an undutiful boy you are!” said Miss Ophelia.
“I don’t mean them any disrespect,” said St. Clare. “You know reverence is not my forte. But to go back to my history.
“When father died, he left the whole property to us twin boys, to be divided as we should agree. There does not breathe on God’s earth a nobler-souled, more generous fellow than Alfred, in all that concerns his equals; and we got on admirably with this property question, without a single unbrotherly word or feeling. We undertook to work the plantation together, and Alfred, whose outward life and capabilities had double the strength of mine, became an enthusiastic planter, and a wonderfully successful one.
“But two years’ trial satisfied me that I could not be a partner in that matter. To have a great gang of seven hundred, whom I could not know personally, or feel any individual interest in, bought and driven, housed, fed, worked like so many horned eattle, strained up to military precision—the question of how little of life’s commonest enjoyments would keep them in working order being a constantly recurring problem—the necessity of drivers and overseers—the ever necessary whip, first, last, and only argument—the whole thing was insufferably disgusting and loathsome to me; and when I thought of my mother’s estimate of one poor human soul, it became even frightful!
“It’s all nonsense to talk to me about slaves enjoying all this! To this day I have no patience with the unutterable trash that some of your patronizing Northerners have made up, as in their zeal to apologize for our sins. We all know better. Tell me that any man living wants to work all his days, from day dawn till dark, under the constant eye of a master, without the power of putting forth one irresponsible volition, on the same dreary, monotonous, unchanging toil, and all for two pairs of pantaloons and a pair of shoes a year, with enough food and shelter to keep him in working order. Any man who thinks that human beings can, as a general thing, be made about as comfortable that way as any other, I wish he might try it. I’d buy the dog, and work him with a clear conscience!”
“I always have supposed,” said Miss Ophelia, “that you, all of you, approved of these things, and thought them right—according to Scripture.”
“Humbug! We are not quite reduced to that yet. Alfred, who is as determined a despot as ever walked, does not pretend to this kind of defence—no, he stands high and haughty on that good old respectable ground, the right of the strongest; and he says, and I think quite sensibly, that the American planter is “only doing in another form what the English aristocracy and capitalists are doing by the lower classes; that is, I take it, appropriating them, body and bone, soul and spirit, to their use and convenience. He defends both—and I think, at least, consistently. He says that there can be no high civilization without enslavement of the masses, either nominal or real. There must, he says, be a lower class, given up to physical toil and confined to an animal nature, and a higher one thereby acquires leisure and wealth for a more expanded intelligence and improvement, and becomes the directing soul of the lower. So he reasons, because, as I said, he is born an aristocrat—so I don’t believe, because I was born a democrat.”
“How in the world can the two things be compared?” said Miss Ophelia. “The English laborer is not sold, traded, parted from his family, whipped.”
“He is as much at the will of his employer as if he were sold to him. The slave owner can whip his refractory slave to death—the capitalist can starve him to death. As to family security, it is hard to say which is the worst—to have one’s children sold or see them starve to death at home.”
“But it’s no kind of apology for slavery, to prove that it isn’t worse than some other bad thing.”
“I didn’t give it for one—nay, I’ll say, besides, that ours is the more bold and palpable infringement of human rights, actually buying a man up like a horse—looking at his teeth, cracking his joints and trying his paces, and then paying down for him—having speculators, breeders, traders, and brokers in human bodies and souls, sets the thing before the eyes of the civilized world in a more tangible form, though the thing done be, after all, in its nature, the same; that is, appropriating one set of human beings to the use and improvement of another, without any regard to their own.”
“I never thought of the matter in this light,” said Miss Ophelia.
“Well, I’ve travelled in England some, and I’ve looked over a good many documents as to the state of their lower classes, and I really think there is no denying Alfred, when he says that his slaves are better off than a large class of the population of England. You see you must not infer from what I have told you that Alfred is what is called a hard master, for he isn’t. He is despotic, and unmerciful to insubordination; he would shoot a fellow down with as little remorse as he would shoot a buck, if he opposed him. But, in general, he takes a sort of pride in having his slaves comfortably fed and accommodated.
“When I was with him, I insisted that he should do something for their instruction; and to please me, he did get a chaplain, and used to have them catechised Sunday; tho’ I believe, in his heart, that he thought it would do about as much good as[4] to set a chaplain over his dogs and horses. And the fact is, that a mind stupefied and animalized by every bad influence from the hour of birth, spending the whole of every week day in unreflecting toil, cannot be done much with by a few hours on Sunday. The teachers of Sunday schools among the manufacturing population of England, and among plantation hands in our country, could perhaps testify to the same result, there and here. Yet some striking exceptions there are among us, from the fact that the negro is naturally more impressible to religious sentiment than the white.”
“Well,” said Miss Ophelia, “how came you to give up your plantation life?”
“Well, we jogged on together some time, till Alfred saw plainly that I was no planter. He thought it absurd, after he had reformed and altered and improved everywhere to suit my notions, that I still remained unsatisfied. The fact was, it was, after all, the thing that I hated—the using these men and women, the perpetuation of all this ignorance, brutality, and vice, just to make money for me!
Besides, I was always interfering in the details. Being myself one of the laziest of mortals, I had altogether too much fellow feeling for the lazy; and when poor shiftless dogs put stones at the bottom of their cotton baskets to make them weigh heavier, or filled their sacks with dirt, with cotton at the top, it seemed so exactly like what I should do if I were they, I couldn’t and wouldn’t have them flogged for it. Well, of course there was an end of plantation discipline, and Alf and I came to about the same point that I and my respected father did years before. So he told me that I was a womanish sentimentalist, and would never do for business life, and advised me to take the bank stock and the New Orleans family mansion, and go to writing poetry, and let him manage the plantation. So we parted, and I came here.”
“But why didn’t you free your slaves?”
“Well, I wasn’t up to that. To hold them as tools for money making, I could not—have them to help spend money, you know didn’t look quite so ugly to me. Some of them were old house servants, to whom I was much attached—and the younger ones were children to the old. All were well satisfied to be as they were.” He paused, and walked reflectively up and down the room!
“There was,” said St. Clare, “a time in my life when I had plans and hopes of doing something in this world, more than to float and drift. I had vague, indistinct yearnings to be a sort of emancipator—to free my native land from this spot and stain. All young men have had such fever fits, I suppose, some time—but then”——
“Why didn’t you?” said Miss Ophelia—“you ought not to put your hand to the plough, and look back.”
“Oh, well, things didn’t go with me as I expected, and I got the despair of living that Solomon did. I suppose it was a necessary incident to wisdom in us both—but somehow or other, instead of being actor and regenerator in society, I became a piece of drift wood, and have been floating and eddying about ever since. Alfred scolds me every time we meet, and he has the better of me I grant—for he really does something—his life is a logical result of his opinions, and mine is a contemptible non sequitur.
“My dear cousin, can you be satisfied with such a way of spending your probation?”
“Satisfied! Was I not just telling you I despised it? But, then, to come back to this point, we were on this liberation business. I don’t think my feelings about slavery are peculiar. I find many men who, in their hearts, think of it just as I do. The land groans under it; and bad as it is for the slave, it is worse, if anything, for the master. It takes no spectacles to see that a great class of vicious, improvident, degraded people among us are an evil to us as well as to themselves. The capitalist and aristocrat of England cannot feel that as we do, because they do not mingle with the class they degrade as we do. They are in our houses; they are the associates of our children, and they form their minds faster than we can, for they are a race that children always will cling to and assimilate with. If Eva, now, was not more angel than ordinary, she would be ruined. We might as well allow the small-pox to run among them, and think our children would not take it, as to let them be uninstructed and vicious, and think our children will not be af-fected by that. Yet our laws positively and utterly forbid any efficient, general educational system, and they do it wisely, too; for just begin and thoroughly educate one generation, and the whole thing would be blown sky high. If we did not give them liberty, they would take it.”
“And what do you think will be the end of this?” said Miss Ophelia.
“I don’t know. One thing is certain, that there is a mustering among the masses, the world over; and there is a dies iræ coming on, sooner or later. The same thing is working in Europe, in England, and in this country. My mother used to tell me of a millennium that was coming, when Christ should reign, and all men should be free and happy. And she taught me, when I was a boy, to pray, ‘Thy kingdom come.’ Sometimes I think all this sighing and groaning and stirring among the dry bones foretells what she used to tell me was coming. But who may abide the day of His appearing?”
“Augustine, sometimes I think you are not far from the kingdom,” said Miss Ophelia, laying down her knitting, and looking anxiously at her cousin.
“Thank you for your good opinion; but it’s up and down with me—up to heaven’s gate in theory, down in earth’s dust in practice. But there’s the tea bell—do let’s go—and don’t say, now, I haven’t had one downright serious talk, for once in my life.”
At table, Marie alluded to the incident of Prue. “I suppose you’ll think, cousin,” she said, “that we are all barbarians.”
“I think that’s a barbarous thing,” said Miss Ophelia, “but I don’t think you are all barbarians.”
“Well, now,” said Marie, “I know it’s impossible to get along with some of these creatures. They are so bad they ought not to live. I don’t feel a particle of sympathy for such cases. If they’d only behave themselves, it would not happen.”
“But, mamma,” said Eva, “the poor creature was unhappy; that’s what made her drink.”
“Oh, fiddlestick! as if that were any excuse! I’m unhappy very often. I presume,” she said, pensively, “that I’ve had greater trials than ever she had. It’s just because they are so bad. There’s some of them that you cannot break in by any kind of severity. I remember father had a man that was so lazy he would run away just to get rid of work, and lie round in the swamps, stealing and doing all sorts of horrid things. That man was caught and whipped time and again, and it never did him any good; and the last time he crawled off, though, he couldn’t but just go, and died in the swamp. There was no sort of reason for it, for father’s hands were always treated kindly.”
“I broke a fellow in once,” said St. Clare, “that all the overseers and masters had tried their hands on in vain.”
“You!” said Marie; “well, I’d be glad to know when you ever did anything of the sort.”
“Well, he was a powerful, gigantic fellow—a native-born African; and he appeared to have the rude instinct of freedom in him to an uncommon degree. He was a regular African lion. They called him Scipio. Nobody could do anything with him; and he was sold round from overseer to overseer, till at last Alfred bought him, because he thought he could manage him. Well, one day he knocked down the overseer, and was fairly off into the swamps. I was on a visit to Alf’s plantation, for it was after we had dissolved partnership. Alfred was greatly exasperated; but I told him that it was his own fault, and laid him any wager that I could break the man; and finally it was agreed that if I caught him I should have him to experiment on. So they mustered out a party of some six or seven, with guns and dogs, for the hunt. People, you know, can get up just as much enthusiasm in hunting a man as a deer, if it is only customary; in fact, I got a little excited myself, though I had only put in as a sort of mediator in case he was caught.
“Well, the dogs bayed and howled, and we rode and scampered, and finally we started him. He ran and bounded like a buck, and kept us well in the rear for some time; but at last he got caught in an impenetrable thicket of cane; then he turned to bay, and I tell you he fought the dogs right gallantly; he dashed them to right and left, and actually killed three of them with only his naked fists, when a shot from a gun brought him down, and he fell, wounded and bleeding, almost at my feet. The poor fellow looked up at me with manhood and despair both in his eye. I kept back the dogs and the party, as they came pressing up, and claimed him as my prisoner. It was all I could do to keep them from shooting him, in the flush of success; but I persisted in my bargain, and Alfred sold him to me. Well, I took him in hand, and in one fortnight I had him tamed down as submissive and tractable as heart could desire.”
“What in the world did you do to him?” said Marie.
“Well, it was quite a simple process. I took him to my own room, had a good bed made for him, dressed his wonnds, and tended him myself, until he got fairly on his feet again. And, in process of time, I had free papers made out for him, and told him he might go where he liked.”
“And did he go?” said Miss Ophelia.
“No. The foolish fellow tore the paper in two, and absolutely refused to leave me. I never had a braver, better fellow—trusty and true as steel. He embraced Christianity afterwards, and became as gentle as a child. He used to oversee my place on the lake, and did it capitally, too. I lost him the first cholera season. In fact, he laid down his life for me. For I was sick, almost to death; and when, through the panic, everybody else fled, Scipio worked for me like a giant, and actually brought me back into life again. But, poor fellow! he was taken right after, and there was no saving him. I never felt anybody’s loss more.”
Eva had come gradually nearer and nearer to her father, as he told the story—her small lips apart, her eyes wide and earnest with absorbing interest.
As he finished, she suddenly threw her arms round his neck, burst into tears, and sobbed convulsively.
“Eva, dear child! what is the matter?” said St. Clare, as the child’s small frame trembled and shook with the violence of her feelings. “This child,” he added, “ought not to hear any of this kind of thing—she’s nervous.”
“No, papa, I ain’t nervous,” said Eva, controlling herself, suddenly, with a strength of resolution singular in such a child. “I’m not nervous, but these things sink into my heart.”
“What do you mean, Eva?”
“I can’t tell you, papa. I think a great many thoughts. Perhaps some day I shall tell you.”
“Well, think away, dear—only don’t cry and worry your papa,” said St. Clare. “Look here—see what a beautiful peach I have got for you.”
Eva took it, and smiled, though there was still a nervous twitching about the corners of her mouth.
“Come, look at the gold-fish,” said St. Clare, taking her hand and stepping on to the verandah. A few moments, and merry laughs were heard through the silken curtains, as Eva and St. Clare were pelting each other with roses, and chasing each other among the alleys of the court.
——
There is danger that our humble friend Tom be neglected amid the adventures of the higher born; but, if our readers will accompany us up to a little loft over the stable, they may, perhaps, learn a little of his affairs. It was a decent room, containing a bed, a chair, and a small, rough stand, where lay Tom’s Bible and hymn-book, and where he sits at present with his slate before him, intent on something that seems to cost him a great deal of anxious thought.
The fact was, that Tom’s home-yearnings had become so strong that he had begged a sheet of writing paper of Eva, and, mustering up all his small stock of literary attainment acquired by mass’r George’s instructions, he conceived the bold idea of writing a letter; and he was busy now, on his slate, getting out his first draft. Tom was in a good deal of trouble, for the forms of some of the letters he had forgotten entirely, and of what he did remember, he did not know exactly which to use. And while he was working, and breathing very hard, in his earnestness, Eva alighted, like a bird, on the round of his chair behind him, and peeped over his shoulder.
“Oh, Uncle Tom! what funny things you are making there!”
“I’m trying to write to my poor, old woman, Miss Eva, and my little chilen,” said Tom, drawing the back of his hand over his eyes; “but, somehow, I’m feard I shan’t make it out.”
“I wish I could help you, Tom. I’ve learnt to write some. Last year I could make all the letters, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten.”
So Eva put her little, golden head close to his, and the two commenced a grave and anxious discussion, each one equally earnest, and about equally ignorant—and, with a deal of consulting and advising over every word, the composition began, as they both felt very sanguine, to look quite like writing.
“Yes, Uncle Tom, it really begins to look beautiful,” said Eva, gazing delightedly on it; “how pleased your wife’ll be, and the poor, little children. Oh, it’s a shame you ever had to go away from them. I mean to ask papa to let you go back sometimes.”[5]
“Missis said that she would send down money for me, as soon as they could get it together,” said Tom. I’m spectin she will. Young mass’r George, he said he’d come for me; and he gave me this yer dollar as a sign;” and Tom drew from under his clothes the precious dollar.
“Oh, he’ll certainly come, then!” said Eva. “I’m so glad.”
“And I wanted to send a letter, you know, to let em know whar I was, and tell poor Chloe that I was well off—cause she felt so drefful, poor soul!”
“I say, Tom,” said St. Clare’s voice, coming in the door at this moment.
Tom and Eva both started.
“What’s here?” said St. Clare, coming up and looking at the slate.
“Oh, it’s Tom’s letter. I’m helping him to write it,” said Eva; “isn’t it nice!”
“I wouldn’t discourage either of you,” said St. Clare, “but I rather think, Tom, you’d better get me to write your letter for you. I’ll do it when I come home from my ride.”
“It’s very important he should write,” said Eva, “because his mistress is going to send down money to redeem him, you know, papa; he told me they told him so.”
St. Clare thought, in his heart, that this was probably only one of those things which good-natured owners say to their servants, to alleviate their horror of being sold, without any intention of fulfilling the expectation thus excited. But he did not make any audible comment upon it—only ordered Tom to get the horses out for a ride.
Tom’s letter was written in due form for him that evening, and safely lodged in the post of-fice.
Miss Ophelia still persevered in her labors in the housekeeping line. It was universally agreed among all the household, from Dinah down to the youngest urchin, that Miss Ophelia was decidedly “curis”—a term by which a Southern servant implies that his or her betters don’t exactly suit them.
The higher circle in the family—to wit, Adolph, Jane, and Rosa—agreed that she was no lady; ladies never kept working about as she did; that she had no air at all; and they were surprised that she should be any relation of the St. Clares. Even Marie declared that it was absolutely fatiguing to see cousin Ophelia always so busy. And, in fact, Miss Ophelia’s industry was so incessant as to lay some foundation for the complaint. She sewed and stitched away from daylight till dark, with the energy of one who is pressed on by some immediate urgency; and then, when the light faded, and the work was folded away, with one turn out came the ever-ready knitting-work, and there she was again, going on as briskly as ever. It really was a labor to see her.
[to be continued.]
Notes
This Stowe Center edition reproduces the National Era serial text of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The wording of the newspaper in many cases differs from publisher John P. Jewett’s first edition. At the conclusion of each installment, notes are provided on a small selection of textual variants, those which have the greatest interpretive significance. The model for these notes is editor John Bryant’s concept of fluid-text editing, which foregrounds the interpretation of textual variants as an act of critical reading. Readers who hold alternate interpretations are encouraged to submit comments to the blog. For general comments on the text and the bibliography, see the Note on the Text.
Note 1
his system. ¶ [to be continued.] Chapter XVIII.—Continued. ¶ “I used | Era pg. 166
his system. ¶ [omit] “I used | Jewett (1852) vol. 2, pg. 16
In the Era text, the chapter number “XVIII” is labeled as a continuation of the 16 October installment, which had begun with the continuation of chapter “XVIII,” the chapter that had begun on 9 October with the title “Miss Ophelia’s Experiences and Opinions.” The serial compositor erred: chapter XVIII ended on 16 October, and the chapter numbered XIX and entitled “St. Clare’s History and Opinions” had begun on 16 October, at the top of column f. As a consequence of the compositor’s failure to notice that chapter XIX had already begun, all subsequent chapters of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the Era follow this incorrect numbering sequence.
When the Jewett edition was set into type, this number sequence error was corrected by eliminating the serial chapter entitled St. Clare’s History and Opinions and by folding its content into two companion chapters named for Miss Ophelia, XVIII and XIX: the former closes volume 1 of the Jewett edition, and the latter opens volume 2. Chapter XVIII in the Jewett edition is entitled miss ophelia’s experiences and opinions. Chapter XIX in the Jewett edition is entitled miss ophelia’s experiences and opinions, continued. The word continued in the Jewett edition recalls the frequent use of that convention in the Era text, such as to close an installment or to reopen the continuation of a chapter. Chapter XIX has a typographical error that remains uncorrected in all of John P. Jewett’s printings of the edition. The name “ophelia” is spelled “ohpelia” The division mark between chapters is also altered. See 16 October installment, note 4, for location of chapter break that is introduced in the two-volume Jewett edition. [Back]
Note 2
views and sentiments. Well, after | Era pg. 169
views and sentiments? Well, after | Jewett (1852) vol. 2, pg. 17
In the Era, the punctuation of this sentence is incorrect: “What remained for her, but to train her children in her own views and sentiments.” Though incorrect, a reader will likely infer that the phrase “What remained for her, but…” is an interrogative form in which the choice that remains for Augustine’s St. Clare’s mother is the one that she takes up, training her children. The Jewett edition’s question mark makes explicit the interrogatory form which is only implied in the serial text. In this Stowe Center text, this obvious error is marked, but the other obvious errors, which are recorded here, are corrected silently to accord with the Jewett edition form: the word “eattle” in the phrase “horned eattle” becomes “horned cattle”; the missing opening quote for the paragraph which begins “Besides, I was…” is added; and the word “wonnds” in the phrase “dressed his wonnds” is corrected to “wounds.” [Back]
Note 3
see it looking out in | Era pg. 169
see it leaking out in | Jewett (1852) vol. 2, pg. 18
In the Era, the aristocratic qualities of Augustine St. Clare’s father are identified as “looking out” of his democratic Vermont brother Squire Sinclair, Ophelia’s father. In the Jewett edition, the aristocratic qualities are “leaking out” of the northern brother despite the fact that in Vermont he has “fallen on democratic times.” Augustine St. Clare claims that Squire Sinclair’s aristocratic tendencies are perceived by his village neighbors, who sense that the Vermont democrat somehow “feels above them.” In the Era, the neighbors see the aristocratic qualities inside the Vermont brother despite his efforts to suppress them. In the Jewett edition, Squire Sinclair’s acts are witnessed, and the acts reveal his aristocratic tendencies. [Back]
do about as much good as to set a chaplain over his dogs and horses | Era pg. 169
do about as much good [omit] to set a chaplain over his dogs and horses | Jewett (1852) vol. 2, pg. 22
In the Era serial, Augustine St. Clare asserts that in his brother Alfred’s mind to offer religious catechism to his slaves does “about as much good as to set a chaplain over his dogs and horses.” In the Jewett edition, the word “as,” which normally introduces the second item in a parallel for comparison, is not present. Either form is reasonable idiomatically, so this is not an obvious error. St. Clare offers a pair of his brother’s acts for comparison: against them he contrasts his suspicions about what his brother thought, and he offers both his brother’s act and his own suspicion in parallel grammatical forms. In one case the brother Alfred’s acts are described in both active and passive form: the active form, “he did get a chaplain,” and the passive form, “used to have them catechised.” Note that the word is spelled “catechized” with a “z” in Jewett edition. In the other suppositious case the brother’s act is active only: “to set a chaplain over his dogs and horses.” This revision’s similarity to another act of revision during the correction of the Jewett edition printing suggests that Stowe made the correction and that she judged it significant.
Based on the corrected printing of the first Jewett edition, Stowe was sensitive to the presence or omission of “as” in comparison constructions. In chapter 4, Aunt Chloe in both serial and the initial printing of the Jewett edition credits the Virginia general with knowing the points of pies, “knows what they is, or as orter be” (June 19, 1851; vol. 1:46). For the second printing of the Jewett edition, the word “as” was removed, so Chloe says the Virginia general “knows what they is, or [omit] orter be.” (vol. 1:46). Chloe is proud that her pies have the points that pies ought, so the extended dialect phrase “as orter be” could be rendered in a stilted formal English as “knows as to what they ought to be.” The form in the corrected Jewett edition has approximately the same meaning, but the parallel is between “what they is” and “[what they] orter be,” a more crisply rendered parallel.
Since in this case the revision of St. Clare’s phrase follows the same pattern, we can surmise that Stowe removed the word “as” deliberately to unsettle and deny Alfred St. Clare’s offensive parallel between religious instruction for slaves and religious instruction for animals, that “to catechize slaves” is the same as “to catechize dogs and horses.” When the chaplain catechized Alfred St. Clare’s slaves, the form in which Augustine St. Clare recounts the act may insinuate that the chaplain’s effectiveness began to disturb the slaveowner. Even if the brother Alfred St. Clare presumes to “set a chaplain,” he cannot presume that the chaplain will “catechize,” because to catechize is an act reserved for those Christian leaders who speak on behalf of God, not those religious leaders who are willing to put on a religious show to serve the slaveowner. The removal of the word “as” intimates that Alfred St. Clare sensed the danger of genuine catechism for his slaves, which would acknowledge that slaves are humans and not animals. Stowe by removing the word “as” may point to a hidden reason that Alfred St. Clare ceased the chaplain’s catechism of his slaves, that to do so acknowledged their humanity, which is incompatible with slavery as an economic system. [Back]
you go back sometimes.” ¶ “Missis said | Era pg. 169
you go back, some time.” ¶ “Missis said | Jewett (1852) vol. 2, pg. 30
In the Era serial, it is unclear whether Eva plans to address her father about Uncle Tom’s return home on some future occasion or if she will request that Tom be allowed periodic visits home. The latter is the apparent literal meaning, but Eva may by the serial’s plural form “sometimes” indicate nonetheless some uncertain future moment to address her father Augustine St. Clare. In the Jewett edition, the prospect of Eva’s intersession on Uncle Tom’s behalf, or the prospect of Tom’s return to his home and the Shelby farm, seems as vaguely distant as the child’s uncertain sense of time. [Back]
Copyright 2011. For introduction and annotation, all rights reserved. The text is distributed under a Creative Commons License. 
Uncle Tom’s Cabin: National Era by Harriet Beecher Stowe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at Copyright Commons License.
Uncle Tom's Cabin in the National Era 
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