[2] I had read but a few pages of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, when the following sentences were written.  Before I had passed through the work, my opinions underwent a change as to the merit of the work and the designs of the writer in bringing it before the public.  The present chapter contains my first reflections on the subject of slavery, after I determined to write on the subject.

It is a dire calamity that this class of writers have taken hold of the subject of slavery.  It is a misfortune that slavery should be presented in a fictitious garb.  I fear the consequences.  It portends no good to the nation.  Slavery is among us, it is a solemn reality, and if we expect to get rid of it, we must look it full in the face; see it as it is, and treat it as a matter of fact business.  We know that it is an evil—­a deplorable evil; but what shall we do with it?  The plague is on us—­about us—­in our midst.  Where?  Oh! where, shall we find a remedy?  The great work is before us; who is competent to the task?  Statesmen as wise and patriotic as any the world ever produced, have shrunk from the task, confounded and abashed.  Where is Clay!  Where is Webster?  All that was earthly of them, is no more.  Long did they grapple with the monster slavery, and by their wise councils, through many a dark and stormy period, did they safely conduct the ship of State.  But they are gone, and shall we now confide the interests of this great nation, to the keeping of a few sickly sentimentalists?  No, heaven forbid that we should be led blindfold to ruin!  I entreat you, my fellow countrymen, to open your eyes and look around you, and be not deceived.  Your all is at stake.  Arise in your strength and crush the monster abolitionism, that threatens your blood-bought liberties.

Mrs. Stowe tells us that the object of her book is to awaken sympathy for the African race.  If that, and that alone was her object, she probably had better not have written on the subject.  Sympathy for the African race is right and proper, provided that it is properly directed; but blindfold sympathy in the North, is not likely to result in any good to the slaves of the South.  The kindest and best feelings of the human heart, unless they are directed and controlled by prudence and discretion, frequently result in no good to the possessor, and too often in positive injury to the object of his solicitude.  An excess of sympathy some times dethrones the judgment.  Sympathy for the slave may prompt us to act in the right direction; but unless judgment and justice illumine our paths, and direct our steps, all our efforts to ameliorate his condition, will prove worse than useless.  The slaves of the South are proper objects of our sympathy, and so are their masters, and so is every living and sensitive being in God’s creation.  Everything that lives and breathes upon the face of the earth, has demands upon our sympathies; and it would be well for us to provide ourselves with a large stock of it; but we should be careful in meting it out, to give every one his due.  It is a gross error in the dispensation of our sympathies, to direct our attention solely to some one object, regardless of the wants and rights of others.