Judging “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” by these principles, I have no hesitation in saying that it is a faithful portraiture of Southern life and institutions. There is nothing in the book inconsistent with the laws and usages of the slave-holding states; the virtues, vices, and peculiar hues of character and manners, are all Southern, and must be recognized at once by every one who reads the book. I may never have seen such depravity in one man as that exhibited in the character of Legree, though I have ten thousand times witnessed the various shades of it in different individuals. On the other hand, I have never seen so many perfections concentrated in one human being as Mrs. Stowe has conferred upon the daughter of a slave-holder. Evangeline is an image of beauty and goodness which can never be effaced from the mind, whatever may be its prejudices. Yet her whole character is fragrant of the South; her generous sympathy, her beauty and delicacy, her sensibility are all Southern. They are “to the manor born,” and embodying as they do the Southern ideal of beauty and loveliness, cannot be ostracized from Southern hearts, even by the power of the vigilance committees.
The character of St. Clare cannot fail to inspire love and admiration. He is the _beau idéal_ of a Southern gentleman,—honorable, generous and humane, of accomplished manners, liberal education, and easy fortune. In his treatment of his slaves, he errs on the side of lenity, rather than vigor; and is always their kind protector, from a natural impulse of goodness, without much reflection upon what may befall them when death or misfortune shall deprive them of his friendship.
Mr. Shelby, the original owner of Uncle Tom, and who sells him to a trader, from the pressure of a sort of pecuniary necessity, is by no means a bad character; his wife and son are whatever honor and humanity could wish; and, in a word, the only white persons who make any considerable figure in the book to a disadvantage are the villain Legree, who is a Vermonter by birth, and the oily-tongued slave-trader Haley, who has the accent of a Northerner. It is, therefore, evident that Mrs. Stowe’s object in writing “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” has not been to disparage Southern character. A careful analysis of the book would authorize the opposite inference,—that she has studied to shield the Southern people from opprobrium, and even to convey an elevated idea of Southern society, at the moment of exposing the evils of the system of slavery. She directs her batteries against the institution, not against individuals; and generously makes a renegade Vermonter stand for her most hideous picture of a brutal tyrant.