Skip to main content

Letter to Mrs. Stowe

By
I found this letter from Frederick Douglass to Harriet Beecher Stowe, which he read to the Colored National Convention in 1853. There is only this passage specifically addressing the novel,

Dear Madam, my deep sense of the value of the services which you have already rendered my afflicted and persecuted people, by the publication of your inimitable book on the subject of slavery. That contribution to our bleeding cause, alone, involves us in a debt of gratitude which cannot be measured; and your resolution to make other exertions on our behalf excites in me emotions and sentiments, which I scarcely need try to give forth in words. Suffice it to say, that I believe you have the blessings of your enslaved countrymen and countrywomen; and the still higher reward which comes to the soul in the smiles of our merciful Heavenly father, whose ear is ever open to the cries of the oppressed.

I wonder if that made Frederick Douglass an "Uncle Tom?"

Comments

  1. RickJuly 29, 2009 at 3:27 PM

    It is difficult to imagine at this late date what kind of impact Stowe's book had on someone like Douglass. Must have been huge. But that is difficult for many people to appreciate now. These days "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is discussed (and often dismissed) in light of Stowe's racism.

    ReplyDelete
  2. avrdsJuly 29, 2009 at 5:14 PM

    I'm still reading a little at a time while waiting on TR -- now there's a racist for you! -- so can't respond fully but it seems like what Stowe did was bring some specificity to slavery which some people would rather have not known. I'm assuming that's why they challenged her on it -- and why she published the defense or whatever it was called.

    ReplyDelete
  3. RickJuly 29, 2009 at 6:31 PM

    There were always those, both before and after the book's publication, who were quick to claim that not all slaveholders treated their slaves badly. There are still people who make that point. But as "Uncle Tom's Cabin" shows, and as Douglass makes clear in his "Autobiography," slavery is dehumanizing.

    ReplyDelete
  4. James FergusonJuly 30, 2009 at 10:46 AM

    Have you read Race and Reunion, rick? I think you would enjoy it because David Blight talks alot about how the Lost Cause and slavery were interpreted after the war, particularly in the South. He covers the 50 years up to Wilson. I'm finding all the book references fascinating.

    ReplyDelete
  5. RickJuly 30, 2009 at 3:00 PM

    I have not.

    ReplyDelete
  6. avrdsJuly 30, 2009 at 5:37 PM

    Let me second that recommendation. I suspect that it was this book that really made me look at the Civil War/Reconstruction -- and the writing of history -- in new ways.

    ReplyDelete
  7. RickJuly 30, 2009 at 7:14 PM

    I notice it's published by Belknap Press which is a recommendation in and of itself. I have it on order at my local library.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
230 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more

The Age of Roosevelt: The Crisis of the Old Order

By
A quarter of a century, however, is time enough to dispel some of the myths that have accumulated around the crisis of the early Thirties and the emergence of the New Deal. There is, for example, the myth that world conditions rather than domestic errors and extravagances were entirely responsible for the depression. There is the myth that the depression was already over, as a consequence of the ministrations of the Hoover Administration, and that it was the loss of confidence resulting from the election of Roosevelt that gave it new life. There is the myth that the roots of what was good in the New Deal were in the Hoover Administration - that Hoover had actually inaugurated the era of government responsibility for the health of the economy and the society. There is the contrasting myth (for myths do not require inner consistency) that the New Deal was alien in origins and in philosophy; that - as Mr. Hoover put it - its philosophy was "the same philosophy of government which...
170 comments
Read more