Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v2.djvu/368

 352 Dialect Writers speak an anglicized form of Gullah (GuUa) dialect. Of the two, Hector is the better portrayed. His refusal (in Chapter 51) to accept freedom when it is offered to him by his owner is by no means surprising; it is an evidence rather of Simms's familiarity with negro character and a reminder of the anomalous position in which a freedman in those days found himself.' Neither Hector nor Jupiter, however, can be said to have any individuality of his own. They are mere types, not individuals. Apart from their masters they have no separate existence at all. The best-known negro character in fiction is, of course. Uncle Tom, the hero of Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). The dra- matic power shown in this book is undeniable. More than any other one book it hastened the Civil War and made necessary the emancipation of all slaves. But Uncle Tom is portrayed so plainly for a purpose, the scenes in the boot are so skilfully arranged to excite public indignation, that one can hardly caJl it a great work of art or even a work of art at all. Mrs. Stowe knew the negro chiefly as she had seen him on the right bank of the Ohio River. Ohio was a free state and the negroes that Mrs. Stowe talked with in Cincinnati were those that had fled from Kentucky. Uncle Tom is the type of a good man, a man of sterling piety, subjected to bitter servitude and maltreatment ; but there is little about him that is distinctively negro. There is no African background. The language that he speaks is a low grade of highly evangelized English but no more distinctive of the negro than of illiterate whites. Let one compare his language on any page with that of Uncle Remus and the differ- ence will be at once felt. For instance. Uncle Remus is telling what he is going to do to the negro that steals his hogs: "An' I boun', " continued Uncle Remus, driving the corncob stopper a little tighter in his deceitful jug and gathering up his bag, "an' I boun' dat my ole muskit'll go off 'tween me an' dat same nigger yit, an' he'll be at de bad een', an' dis seetful jug'U 'fuse ter go ter de funer'l." The quaint indirectness of that is more distinctive of the old- time negro speech than anything ever said by Uncle Tom. ' See in this connection the powerful story by Joel Chandler Harris, Free Joe and the Rest of the World (in Free Jot and Other Georgian Sketches).