Daily Reading for July 1 • Harriet Beecher Stowe, Writer and Prophetic Witness, 1896
In fictitious writing, it is possible to find refuge from the hard and the terrible, by inventing scenes and characters of a more pleasing nature. No such resource is open in a work of fact; and the subject of this work is one in which the truth, if told at all, must needs be very dreadful. There is no bright side to slavery, as such. Those scenes which are made bright by the generosity and kindness of masters and mistresses, would be brighter still if the element of slavery were withdrawn. There is nothing picturesque or beautiful, in the family attachment of old servants, which is not to be found in countries where these servants are legally free. The tenants on an English estate are often more fond and faithful than if they were slaves. Slavery, therefore, is not the element which forms the picturesque and beautiful of Southern life. What is peculiar to slavery, and distinguishes it from free servitude, is evil, and only evil, and that continually. . . .
The writer has aimed, as far as possible, to say what is true, and only that, without regard to the effect which it may have upon any person or party. She hopes that what she has said will be examined without bitterness—in that serious and earnest spirit which is appropriate for the examination of so very serious a subject. . . . She can only say that she has used the most honest and earnest endeavors to learn the truth.
The book is commended to the candid attention and earnest prayers of all true Christians, throughout the world. May they unite their prayers that Christendom may be delivered from so great an evil as slavery.
From A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Presenting the Original Facts and Documents Upon Which the Story is Founded by Harriet Beecher Stowe (Cleveland, Ohio: John P. Jewett, 1853).