Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly • Paragraph 124
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I believe slavery to be an individual and a national evil--a dire calamity--and would rejoice to see it extinguished by any means compatible with the safety, peace and prosperity of the nation, the best interests of master and slave; and in the fear of God Almighty, before whose bar I know that I must shortly appear, I sincerely, firmly and solemnly believe, that if the free states had stood aloof, and left the discussion and disposition of it entirely to the slave states, several states which are now slave states, and are likely to remain so, would have long since made provisions for the emancipation of their slaves. And I moreover believe, that if the North would now desist from all interference with it, the evil would be eradicated from the United States, some hundreds of years sooner than it will be, provided she persists in her present course. This is a legitimate conclusion from the foregoing historical facts. Abolitionists can do nothing, and men of intelligence well know it, that will mitigate the evils of slavery, or eradicate it from the South. It is entirely beyond their reach, they cannot control it; and if the object of intelligent men in the North was the abolition of slavery, they would cease to agitate the subject. But that is not their object. I allude to the leaders of that party--the politicians, and not the common people, for they are sincere. What then is their object? It is to produce a dissolution of the Union; a separation of the Northern and Southern sections of the United States, civil war, blood-shed, the sacking and burning of cities, devastations, brother imbruing his hands in the blood of brother, the father shedding the blood of his son, and the son that of the father! Yea, and ten thousand other evils and calamities, of which they, themselves, have never dreamed. Is this abolitionism? Great God! what a picture--and the half has not been told! From whence did it spring? "By whom begot?" It is an offspring of New England infidelity. It was born in fanaticism, and nurtured in violence and disorder. It opposes and violates the commands of God, and is full of strife and pride. Its course is unchristian, impolitic and hypocritical; it is alike hostile to religion and republicanism; it rejects the Bible and the constitution of our country, and under the pretense of higher law, it abrogates all law! This is abolitionism, but all is not yet told. Be patient, reader, and perhaps before I bring this essay to a close, I shall succeed in disclosing its anti-christian and anti-republican tendencies; its seditious spirit; its self will, pride and contumacy; its duplicity and hypocrisy; its cruelties, horrors and woes.