Harriet Beecher Stowe: Uncle Tom Defies Simon Legree (1852)

▪ Primary Source

      Few attacks upon slavery were as effective as Harriet Beecher Stowe s Uncle Tom s Cabin. First written as a serial for the abolitionist journal National Era beginning in 1851, it appeared in book form in 1852. It was an immediate and enduring success, selling 300,000 copies during the first year and nearly 3,000,000 since. The portrayal of Uncle Tom, the first African American fictional hero created by an American author, elicited much sympathy for the plight of the slave. Southerners, challenging the book s authenticity, wrote seething denunciations; it was a “criminal prostitution,” according to a critic in the Southern Literary Messenger, “of the high functions of the imagination.” Mrs. Stowe attempted to silence this criticism with a sequel, A Key to Uncle Tom s Cabin (1853), documenting the characters and events.

      Long after dusk, the whole weary train, with their baskets on their heads, defiled up to the building appropriated to the storing and weighing the cotton. Legree was there, busily conversing with the two drivers.

      “Dat ar Tom s gwine to make a powerful deal o trouble; kept a puttin into Lucy s basket. One o these yer dat will get all der niggers to feelin ‘bused if Mas r don t watch him!” said Sambo.

      “Hey-dey! The black cuss!” said Legree. “He ll have to get a breakin in, won t he, boys?” Both Negroes grinned a horrid grin at this intimation.

      “Ay, ay! let Mas r Legree alone, for breakin in! De debil heself couldn t beat Mas r at dat!” said Quimbo.

      “Wal, boys, the best way is to give him the flogging to do, till he gets over his notions. Break him in!”

      “Lord, Mas r ll have hard work to get dat out o him!”

      “It ll have to come out of him, though!” said Legree, as he rolled his tobacco in his mouth.

      “Now, dar s Lucy—de aggravatinest, ugliest wench on de place!” pursued Sambo.

      “Take care, Sam; I shall begin to think what s the reason for your spite agin Lucy.”

      “Well, Mas r knows she sot herself up agin Mas r, and wouldn t have me, when he telled her to.”

      “I d a flogged her into ‘t,” said Legree, spitting, “only there s such a press o work, it don t seem wuth a while to upset her jist now. She s slender; but these yer slender gals will bear half killin to get their own way!”

      “Wal, Lucy was real aggravatin and lazy, sulkin round; wouldn t do nothin —and Tom he tuck up for her.”

      “He did, eh! Wal, then, Tom shall have the pleasure of flogging her. It ll be a good practice for him, and he won t put it on to the gal like you devils, neither.”

      “Ho, ho! haw! haw! haw!” laughed both the sooty wretches; and the diabolical sounds seemed, in truth, a not unapt expression of the fiendish character which Legree gave them.

      “Wal, but, Mas r, Tom and Misse Cassy, and dey among ‘em, filled Lucy s basket. I ruther guess der weight s in it, Mas r!”

      “I do the weighing!” said Legree, emphatically.

      Both the drivers laughed again their diabolical laugh.

      “So!” he added, “Misse Cassy did her day s work.”

      “She picks like de debil and all his angels!”

      “She s got ‘em all in her, I believe!” said Legree; and growling a brutal oath, he proceeded to the weighing room. . . .

      Slowly, the weary, dispirited creatures wound their way into the room, and, with crouching reluctance, presented their baskets to be weighed.

      Legree noted on a slate, on the side of which was pasted a list of names, the amount.

      Tom s basket was weighed and approved; and he looked, with an anxious glance, for the success of the woman he had befriended.

      Tottering with weakness, she came forward and delivered her basket. It was of full weight, as Legree well perceived; but, affecting anger, he said,

      “What, you lazy beast! Short again! Stand aside, you ll catch it, pretty soon!”

      The woman gave a groan of utter despair and sat down on a board.

      The person who had been called Misse Cassy now came forward and, with a haughty, negligent air, delivered her basket. As she delivered it, Legree looked in her eyes with a sneering yet inquiring glance.

      She fixed her black eyes steadily on him, her lips moved slightly, and she said something in French. What it was, no one knew, but Legree s face became perfectly demoniacal in its expression as she spoke; he half raised his hand as if to strike—a gesture which she regarded with fierce disdain as she turned and walked away.

      “And now,” said Legree, “come here, you Tom. You see I telled ye I didn t buy ye jest for the common work; I mean to promote ye and make a driver of ye; and tonight ye may jest as well begin to get yer hand in. Now, ye jest take this yer gal and flog her; ye ve seen enough on t to know how.”

      “I beg Mas r s pardon,” said Tom, “hopes Mas r won t set me at that. It s what I an t used to—never did—and can t do, no way possible.”

      “Ye ll larn a pretty smart chance of things ye never did know before I ve done with ye!” said Legree, taking up a cowhide and striking Tom a heavy blow across the cheek, and following up the infliction by a shower of blows.

      “There!” he said, as he stopped to rest, “now will ye tell me ye can t do it?”

      “Yes, Mas r,” said Tom, putting up his hand to wipe the blood that trickled down his face. “I m willin to work night and day, and work while there s life and breath in me; but this yer thing I can t feel it right to do; and, Mas r, I never shall do it—never!”

      Tom had a remarkably smooth, soft voice, and a habitually respectful manner that had given Legree an idea that he would be cowardly and easily subdued. When he spoke these last words, a thrill of amazement went through everyone; the poor woman clasped her hands and said, “O Lord!” and everyone involuntarily looked at each other and drew in their breath, as if to prepare for the storm that was about to burst.

      Legree looked stupefied and confounded; but at last burst forth—

      “What! ye blasted black beast! tell me ye don t think it right to do what I tell ye! What have any of you cussed cattle to do with thinking what s right? I ll put a stop to it! Why, what do ye think ye are? May be ye think ye re a gentleman, master Tom, to be a telling your master what s right and what an t! So you pretend it s wrong to flog the gal!”

      “I think so, Mas r,” said Tom, “the poor crittur s sick and feeble; ‘t would be downright cruel, and it s what I never will do, not begin to. Mas r, if you mean to kill me, kill me; but as to my raising my hand agin anyone here, I never shall—I ll die first!”

      Tom spoke in a mild voice but with a decision that could not be mistaken. Legree shook with anger; his greenish eyes glared fiercely and his very whiskers seemed to curl with passion; but, like some ferocious beast that plays with its victim before he devours it, he kept back his strong impulse to proceed to immediate violence and broke out into bitter raillery.

      “Well, here s a pious dog, at last, let down among us sinners!—a saint, a gentleman, and no less, to talk to us sinners about our sins! Powerful, holy crittur, he must be! Here, you rascal, you make believe to be so pious—didn t you never hear out of yer Bible, ‘Servants, obey yer masters ? An t I yer master? Didn t I pay down $1,200 cash for all there is inside yer old cussed black shell? An t yer mine, now, body and soul?” he said, giving Tom a violent kick with his heavy boot. “Tell me!”

      In the very depth of physical suffering, bowed by brutal oppression, this question shot a gleam of joy and triumph through Tom s soul. He suddenly stretched himself up, and, looking earnestly to heaven, while the tears and blood that flowed down his face mingled, he exclaimed—

      “No! no! no! my soul an t yours, Mas r! You haven t bought it—ye can t buy it! It s been bought and paid for by one that is able to keep it—no matter, no matter, you can t harm me!”

      “I can t!” said Legree, with a sneer, “we ll see—we ll see! Here, Sambo, Quimbo, give this dog such a breakin in as he won t get over this month!”

      The two gigantic Negroes that now laid hold of Tom, with fiendish exultation in their faces, might have formed no unapt personification of the powers of darkness. The poor woman screamed with apprehension and all arose as by a general impulse while they dragged him unresisting from the place.

Source: Uncle Tom s Cabin, Boston, 1883, pp. 419–423.

* * *