[KEY TO] UNCLE TOM'S CABIN
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| Above: a Magic Lantern slide of the story from Britain. Click here for the remainder |
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| Above: a Magic Lantern slide of the story from Britain. Click here for the remainder |
scenes and characters pourtrayed in "Uncle Tom's Cabin" con-
vey a fair representation of slavery as it at present exists. This
work, more, perhaps, than any other work of fiction that ever
was written, has been a collection and arrangement of real
incidents, of actions really performed, of words and expressions
really uttered, grouped together with reference to a general result,
in the same manner that the mosaic artist groups his frag-
ments of various stones into one general picture. His is a
mosaic of gems -- this is a mosaic of facts.
Artistically considered, it
might not be best to point out
in which quarry and from which region each fragment of the
mosaic picture had its origin; and it is equally unartistic to
disentangle the glittering web of fiction, and show out of what
real warp and woof it is woven, and with what real colouring
dyed. But the book had a purpose entirely transcending the
artistic one, and accordingly encounters at the hands of the
public demands not usually made on fictitious works. It is
treated as a reality -- sifted, tried, and tested, as a reality; and
therefore as a reality it may be proper that it should be
defended.
The writer acknowledges that
the book is a very inadequate
representation of slavery; and it is so, necessarily, for this
reason -- that slavery, in some of its workings, is too dreadful
for the purposes of art. A work which should represent it
strictly as it is would be a work which could not be read; and
all works which ever mean to give pleasure must draw a veil
somewhere, or they cannot succeed.
The author will now proceed
along the course of the story,
from the first page, and developed, as far as possible, the incidents
by which different parts were suggested.
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| Lyman Beecher (Click
here)
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Lyman Beecher and The Second Great Awakening
Note: Harriet was one member of the Beecher family (click here), evangelists and both strong and effective abolitionists. Lyman was greatly active in the Second Great Awakening (click here) which sent the first missionaries into the Corvallis area, as well as spurring the birth of the Shakers (click here), the Aurora (Oregon, click here) and Greeley colonies (click here), the Whitmans (click here), many of the evangelical churches (click here), the Mormon (click here), Christian Scientist (click here), Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventist churches (click here), providing the workhorses of the abolitionist movement (click here) and the urban reformers who put an end, in time, to the cruel treatment of the mentally handicapped (click here) and the poor (click here). Harriet Beecher (Click here) and Henry Ward Beecher (click here) were active participants in the Underground Railroad in Ohio (Click here). Henry raised money to help Kansas antislavery farmers defend themselves from raids by slavers in nearby Missouri. The weapons of these Kansas farmers were known as Beecher Bibles (click here).
Unfortunately, the Second Great Awakening also led to the Know-Nothings (click here), to the anti-Catholic legislation (click here), as well as to characteriztion of native Americans as savages worthy of extermination (click here) when the Protestant missionaries met with indifference.