The Middle Passage
“Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil,
and canst not look upon iniquity: wherefore lookest
thou upon them that deal treacherously, and holdest
thy tongue when the wicked devoureth the man that is
more righteous than he?”—HAB. 1:
13.
On the lower part of a small, mean boat, on the Red
river, Tom sat,—chains on his wrists, chains
on his feet, and a weight heavier than chains lay
on his heart. All had faded from his sky,—moon
and star; all had passed by him, as the trees and
banks were now passing, to return no more. Kentucky
home, with wife and children, and indulgent owners;
St. Clare home, with all its refinements and splendors;
the golden head of Eva, with its saint-like eyes;
the proud, gay, handsome, seemingly careless, yet
ever-kind St. Clare; hours of ease and indulgent leisure,—all
gone! and in place thereof, what remains?
It is one of the bitterest apportionments of a lot
of slavery, that the negro, sympathetic and assimilative,
after acquiring, in a refined family, the tastes and
feelings which form the atmosphere of such a place,
is not the less liable to become the bond-slave of
the coarsest and most brutal,—just as a
chair or table, which once decorated the superb saloon,
comes, at last, battered and defaced, to the barroom
of some filthy tavern, or some low haunt of vulgar
debauchery. The great difference is, that the
table and chair cannot feel, and the man can;
for even a legal enactment that he shall be “taken,
reputed, adjudged in law, to be a chattel personal,”
cannot blot out his soul, with its own private little
world of memories, hopes, loves, fears, and desires.
Mr. Simon Legree, Tom’s master, had purchased
slaves at one place and another, in New Orleans, to
the number of eight, and driven them, handcuffed,
in couples of two and two, down to the good steamer
Pirate, which lay at the levee, ready for a trip up
the Red river.
Having got them fairly on board, and the boat being
off, he came round, with that air of efficiency which
ever characterized him, to take a review of them.
Stopping opposite to Tom, who had been attired for
sale in his best broadcloth suit, with well-starched
linen and shining boots, he briefly expressed himself
as follows:
“Stand up.”
Tom stood up.
“Take off that stock!” and, as Tom, encumbered
by his fetters, proceeded to do it, he assisted him,
by pulling it, with no gentle hand, from his neck,
and putting it in his pocket.
Legree now turned to Tom’s trunk, which, previous
to this, he had been ransacking, and, taking from
it a pair of old pantaloons and dilapidated coat,
which Tom had been wont to put on about his stable-work,
he said, liberating Tom’s hands from the handcuffs,
and pointing to a recess in among the boxes,
“You go there, and put these on.”
