Page:A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853).djvu/92

86 certain course, in the face of the whole power, temporal and spiritual, of the Romish church, in spite of fining, imprisoning, starving, whipping, beating, and other enlightening argumentative processes, not wholly peculiar, it seems, to that age. "You will never subdue that woman," said the ecclesiastic, who was a phrenologist before his age; "she's got a square head, and I have always noticed that people with square heads never can be turned out of their course." We think it very probable that Harry, with his "square head," is just one of this sort. He is probably one of those articles which would be extremely valuable, if the owner could only get the use of him. His head is well enough, but he will use it for himself. It is of no use to any one but the wearer; and the master seems to symbolize this state of things, by offering twenty-five dollars more for the head without the body, than he is willing to give for head, man and all. Poor Harry! We wonder whether they have caught him yet; or whether the impenetrable thickets, the poisonous miasma, the deadly snakes, and the unwieldy alligators of the swamps, more humane than the slave-hunter, have interposed their uncouth and loathsome forms to guard the only fastness in Carolina where a slave can live in freedom.

It is not, then, in mere poetic fiction that the humane and graceful pen of Longfellow has drawn the following picture:
 * In the dark fens of the Dismal Swamp
 * The hunted negro lay;

He saw the fire of the midnight camp, And heard at times the horse's tramp,
 * And a bloodhound's distant bay.


 * Where will-o'the-wisps and glow-worms shine,
 * In bulrush and in brake;

Where waving mosses shroud the pine, And the cedar grows, and the poisonous vine
 * Is spotted like the snake;


 * Where hardly a human foot could pass,
 * Or a human heart would dare,—

On the quaking turf of the green morass He crouched in the rank and tangled grass,
 * Like a wild beast in his lair.


 * A poor old slave! infirm and lame,
 * Great scars deformed his face;

On his forehead he bore the brand of shame, And the rags that hid his mangled frame
 * Were the livery of disgrace.


 * All things above were bright and fair,
 * All things were glad and free;

Lithe squirrels darted here and there, And wild birds filled the echoing air
 * With songs of liberty!


 * On him alone was the doom of pain,
 * From the morning of his birth;

On him alone the curse of Cain Fell like the flail on the garnered grain,
 * And struck him to the earth."

The civilized world may and will ask, in what state this law has been drawn, and passed, and revised, and allowed to appear at the present day on the revised statute-book, and to be executed in the year of our Lord 1850, as the above-cited extracts from its most respectable journals show. Is it some heathen, Kurdish tribe, some nest of pirates, some horde of barbarians, where destructive gods are worshipped, and libations to their honor poured from human skulls? The civilized world will not believe it,—but it is actually a fact, that this law has been made, and is still kept in force, by men in every other respect than what relates to their slave-code as high-minded, as enlightened, as humane, as any men in Christendom;—by citizens of a state which glories in the blood and hereditary Christian institutions of Scotland. Curiosity to know what sort of men the legislators of North Carolina might be, led the writer to examine with some attention the proceedings and debates of the convention of that state, called to amend its constitution, which assembled at Raleigh, June 4th, 1835. It is but justice to say that in these proceedings, in which all the different and perhaps conflicting interests of the various parts of the state were discussed, there was an exhibition of candor, fairness and moderation, of gentlemanly honor and courtesy in the treatment of opposing claims, and of an overruling sense of the obligations of law and religion, which certainly have not always been equally conspicuous in the proceedings of deliberative bodies in such cases. It simply goes to show that one can judge nothing of the religion or of the humanity of individuals from what seems to us objectionable practice, where they have been educated under a system entirely incompatible with both. Such is the very equivocal character of what we call virtue.

It could not be for a moment supposed that such men as Judge Ruffin, or many of the gentlemen who figure in the debates alluded to, would ever think of availing themselves of the savage permissions of such a law. But what then? It follows that the law is a direct permission, letting loose upon the defenceless slave that class of men who exist in every community, who have no conscience, no honor, no shame,—who are too far below public opinion to be restrained by that, and from whom accordingly this provision of the law takes away the only available restraint of their fiendish natures. Such men are not peculiar to the