Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly • Paragraph 101
Stage 1 of 6

Read it through once

It is no part of my design to offer apologies for, or by any means to conceal the faults of Southern slaveholders. But the reading of Uncle Tom's Cabin, has indelibly fixed the impression on my mind that Mrs. Stowe's narrative is false. The question is, whether such, or similar occurrences, are _common_ among Southern slaveholders. If they had been _rare_, she had no right to make the impression on the whole civilized world, that they are every-day occurrences. Nor had she any right unless she had been an eye witness of the leading facts detailed in her story, to publish a book which presents her country in such an ignoble attitude before the world; she had no right to base such calumnious charges on heresay, rumor, or common report. I shall proceed to show that her tale is improbable, and that it is likely that no such transactions as are detailed in her story, ever have transpired among Southern slaveholders.