[In the following review, the anonymous critic discusses Dred as both a novel and an antislavery polemic.]

The bare statistics of slavery never caused so deep an impression on the world as Mrs. Stowe's first narrative—for we can scarcely call that a novel; which was supported by documents in its most thrilling statements. The cabin appears, however, to have been constructed in vain, so far as the population of the United States are concerned. It has made few converts if any, from the neutral party in the republic. The ecclesiastical bodies are still as busy as before with matters of minor importance, with missions to the heathen, and with dancing, and other symptoms of worldly-mindedness, at home; while they bear no testimony of any value against their crime of crimes.

A number of writers in this country have endorsed the stupid assertion of the friends of slavery in the States—that Britain is responsible for its excessive guilt, since our ancestors or our Government allowed slavery to descend as an inheritance of woe to the republic. The argument is extremely impudent; and we say so in no angry spirit, for we consider it altogether as a curiosity in effrontery. The people of this country, or their Government, at no period forced slavery upon the colonists of America. The Government permitted individuals to be drawn into this crime by their own greed or indolence; but they no more compelled the colonists to buy slaves than they obliged them to rear bullocks or horses, asses or oxen.

Even if the British Government had any share in the establishment of slavery in the United States, the Government of the republic should have imitated the example supplied to them, by liberating the slaves. They could afford this outlay better than a nation hampered by a debt unequalled now, or ever, in the world; and with the defence of constitutional principles in the face of the despotism of Europe.

The apologists here for abuses in the States, and the perpetrators of them there, have a consummate knack of shuffling their ancestry as they please. When anything good is to be drawn from ancient British history, they appropriate it as the work of their ancestors; and when anything objectionable appears, it belongs to us Britishers of the present hour and year. Even if the British Government of a century since had forced slavery upon the American colonies, the citizens of Britain are not more responsible thereupon than the citizens of the States; but, as the two streams have diverged, the elder branch have repented of and turned from, while the junior branch have clung to and magnified, the sin of their common ancestry, Jefferson attempted to cast the opprobrium of slavery upon the king of England; but George III never compelled any planter to buy and work negroes. The charge was absolutely false.

Slavery in our colonies was even a different sin from slavery as it exists now in the States. The negroes of the West India islands had their own churches and schools. A certain portion of their time was secured to them. At least the Sabbath was, in every place, their own. They could and did possess property, and in their circumstances the distant separation of families was impracticable. Even during the existence of slavery the negroes always could reckon upon the support and sympathy of the missionaries sent to them, and in extreme cases the latter kept their ground through their connexion with the mother country. The States have altered many features of slavery to the worse. They have left the negro nothing. They have made him nothing. Their internal slave trade has increased the evils of the system. The breeding of slaves has become a business. Indulgence in brutal vice is absolutely industry. Slaves, especially female slaves, bring prices in proportion to their shading. The fairest are the most valued, and the reason will be intelligible without any rent in the veil that does not conceal but covers filthy details. This internal traffic is not a craft of small bulk. One State alone bred and exported forty thousand slaves in a single year. The importations of three or four southern states amounted to two hundred and fifty thousand human chattels in one year. They all came from the northern states in the southern section of the confederacy, which are distinguished for the health, strength, skill, and symmetry of their negro productions. A very indifferent article is worth five hundred dollars. The average price must be considerably above that sum; but even at this low charge, the value of the annual importations from the north to the south must be twenty-five millions sterling, per annum. We are told that the number of slave-holders in the union is three hundred thousand. The breeding trade of the north is confined probably to one-third of the number, and its average value to each of them, therefore, is £250 annually—not a large trade, but a great help to a small business; and one that makes money circulate in a poor country.

Although the number of absolute slave-holders is comparatively small, yet the institution has extensive ramifications. The families of the slave-holders, added to their own number, embrace probably one and a half millions of persons. Their friends or relatives have an indirect, or perhaps a prospective interest, exactly as in this country many persons are concerned in the value of land who are not yet landholders. The southern states also contain a numerous white population misera plebs, so low, so poor, so wretched, that they find comfort in seeing beneath them a lower, although it should be a fatter, stratum of humanity. The reason is obvious. The poor pale face of Carolina, like the poor Magyar of Hungary, is a noble, for he is a privileged person, who can strike his neighbour's black in the company of a dozen of niggers, without any dread of punishment, because no witness is there against him. He may even seize his black neighbour's poultry, before his eyes, without incurring punishment for theft, because the evidence of an honest and industrious negro is unavailable against an idle and worthless white skin.

The feeling of superiority imparted to vulgar minds by these distinctions, has more influence than we can comprehend in this country, where the practice does not exist; and therefore nearly all the white population of the slave states, those of them who have, and those of them who have not, living property, are alike opposed to the emancipation of the negroes: while we should destroy the strongest argument against slavery by saying or supposing that it can exist without deteriorating the character of its victims.

The story of Dred consists of many plots, and several heroes and heroines. It is very difficult to name the leading character. Nina is a heroine, and probably as she begins the volume, and occupies the larger share in the work, may claim precedence. Mr. Clayton is the most patriotic and practical white man of the corps, and as Nina's lover, should be considered the hero, especially as he is an unexceptionable person. Two leading negroes appear in the book. Dred is one; dark, enthusiastic, gloomy, plotter, and prophet of destruction on the enemy—deeming himself set by Heaven in the dismal swamp to call down evil upon a sinful people. Tiff is the other—loving, patient, and toiling—the man of all, both men and women-work—the faithful guardian of his master's beggared grandchildren, who struggles by day and night for their upbringing; and over all things desires that an entrance may be ministered to them into the kingdom of heaven, although he cannot make out the way. Dred and Tiff are both types of their race—representative men of extreme sections. The Tiffs are rare among the negroes—the Dreds are rarer. If the Dreds were much more numerous than they have been hitherto, the slave system would be ended. Dred resembles an old “confessor” in the days of persecution. He quotes from the prophets denunciations against oppression and the oppressors; applying them of course to slave owners. He lives upon the prospect of coming woes, carrying his bible in one hand, and his rifle in the other—reading and shooting, as either duty becomes necessary.

The narrative in the volume is only a scaffolding for the politics of the author. The work, like its elder brother, is a plea for the abolition of slavery. It brings out, more clearly than any previous volume of this character, an evil in slavery that has been much overlooked. The sufferings of the poor population with white skins in consequence of slavery have not hitherto been quoted in argument against the system. Necessarily white labourers are unable to obtain employment in a slave state. They are brought not only into competition with slaves, but slaves do not work well with them; and as the servile interest is stronger than that of “the white trash,” the poverty of the latter increases with the lapse of time. The ignorance and misery of this white population are deplorable, yet they cling to slavery. They cannot read, yet they are privileged persons. They cannot educate their children, yet they belong to the governing race. They are often obliged to eat the crumbs from the slaves' table, yet they can knock down a slave, or even kill him, in the presence of any number of negroes, without the dread of penal consequences—for black evidence against white crimes is nil.

The moral evils of slavery are more coarsely displayed among the sinking class than even among the negroes on comfortable plantations The latter are often carefully fed and tended. They have medicines and physicians in sickness. They have a home at all seasons. They have no care respecting what they shall eat or drink, or wherewithal they shall be clothed. All these things are provided for them upon the principle that leads a prudent man to care for his horse. But for white trash no planter cares. They skulk in swamps. They are too proud to dig, but they are not ashamed to beg. They buy and sell, for the craft of the pedlar is not a menial employment; but their traffic is not always or often remunerative. The southern states must still contain abundance of unimproved land; but the whites who cannot keep blacks to work for them do not work well for themselves. They might establish small cotton and sugar plantations, but especially those of cotton; yet they prefer to be loafers and squatters, doing odd jobs which are not exactly within the pale of field labour. The upper classes of the south, according to Dred, think that the bondage of these brethren might be merciful to them; but they see no means of accomplishing even that piece of benevolence. We can almost understand how respectable men among the slave-holders encourage Cuban raids and filibustering schemes, not only to increase the slave lands and the relative value of slave property, but also to relieve their neighbourhood from the unprofitable presence of the wild fellows who support the domestic institution without deriving any profit from its possessions. In this way the Kansas war becomes more intelligible than it appears to be when considered solely as a political conflict. A new slave state in the west would increase the influence of the slave-holding territories in the union, while it would add a few more dollars to the value of every gentleman's human animals; but it would also give the poor white friends of slavery a new field whereon to seek fortune; because, although the present slave states include large tracts of waste land, yet they are probably unproductive under the present system, since only very fine soil can support slave tillage.

The free-soil, or northern labourers and speculators, know that if Kansas be inhabited by slaves the land is lost to them. The slave-holding population view the matter in precisely the same light. Thus the existing conflict, which has become serious, is not a war between two races, but between two political parties, not for political supremacy, but the exclusion of their opponents from a large region, out of which, in the interest of either, it is necessary that the other be excluded. The United States have arrived at that crisis in their history, when one half of their citizens cannot live on the same land with their fellow citizens. The Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans. How then can the Jews and the Samaritans be longer united in one republic?

Nina Gordon was the daughter of a planter in North Carolina who was descended from the Scotch Gordons—indeed, we know not whether there be any other Gordons. Her father was an autocrat, much as all the old planters were. He had a legitimate son and daughter, and however many more of illegitimate children he may have owned, we hear of two, also a son and daughter. The legitimates were, like all Scotch, either very good or very bad—for we ever run into extremes, a quality that may be assigned to that perfervidum ingenium whereby we are distinguished among the nations. The son was a perfect scapegrace. The daughter was a wild young thing. The son's inheritance was disentangled from that of the daughter, who possessed the paternal estate and all its living properties; placed by her father under the management of a clever quadroon, a slave, his eldest son, Nina's brother—although she knew not, and never knew, the relationship. This slave son and slave brother was known as Harry.

The book opens with Nina's return from New York. She had learned life in one of those fashionable boarding schools where young ladies acquire much knowledge which they go into the world to forget. She relates to Harry, who was a married slave—the most unfortunate position in the world for an educated man—the character of her lovers, and the nature of all her purchases. Of the former it was evident, from the usual symptoms, that Miss Nina preferred a Mr. Clayton, son of Judge Clayton, a young lawyer, moreover a young planter, and notwithstanding both obstacles, an honest man. The opening chapter is a pretty specimen of a difficult style. It details Nina's confessions to her elder brother, whom she only recognises as an attached and faithful guardian and slave. She thus describes her third and most dangerous wooer:—

“And the third?” said Harry.

“Well, you see, I don't like him a bit. I'm sure I don't. He's a hateful creature; he isn't handsome; he's proud as Lucifer; and I'm sure I don't know how he got me to be engaged. It was a kind of an accident. He's real good, though—too good for me; that's a fact. But then, I'm afraid of him a little.”

“And his name?”

“Well, his name is Clayton—Mr. Edward Clayton, at your service. He's one of your high and mighty people, with such deep set eyes!—eyes, that look as if they were in a cave,—and such black hair! and his eyes have a desperate sort of sad look, sometimes quite Byronic.”

We cannot quote the young lady's description of her lover at full length, for the details are interesting only to young ladies; but this is the way in which she got into the mesh:—

Well, you see, I wouldn't court him, and I plagued him, and laughed at him, and spited him, and got him gloriously wroth; and he said some spiteful things about me, and then I said some more about him, and we had a real up and down quarrel; and then I took a penitent turn, you know, and just went gracefully down into the valley of humiliation—as we witches can; and it took wonderfully—brought my lord to his knees before he knew what he was doing. Well, really I don't know what was the matter just then, but he spoke so earnest and strong that actually he got me to crying—hateful creature!—and I promised all sorts of things, you know—said altogether more than will bear thinking of.

Mr. Clayton had a sister, Anne, who did not approve clearly of Miss Nina's character, thinking her a flirt without a heart; and, although a very wise female, arrived at years of discretion, yet she was mistaken as to the heart. Miss Nina, on her side, had no person of this description to act as adviser and confidante. Her aunt resided on the estate, but—

Mrs. Nesbit, however, was simply one of those well-bred, well-dressed lay figures, whose only office in life seems to be to occupy a certain room in a house, to sit in certain chairs at proper hours, to make certain remarks at suitable intervals of conversation.

Mrs. Nesbit had, when young, been somewhat vain of her personalities, and had run the ordinary and usual round pursued by gay young ladies, making a short circle to an early marriage, and, having lost all her children and her husband, had gradually mellowed into a conventional religion, current in the world, but not sterling.

Miss Nina attempted to exhibit all her finery to this old lady, with the following result:—

The bed, arranged with extremest precision however, was covered with a melange of French finery, flounces, laces, among which Nina kept up a continual agitation, like that produced by a breeze in a flower-bed, as she unfolded, turned, and flattened them before the eyes of her relative.

“I have been through all this, Nina,” said the latter, with a melancholy shake of the head, “and I know the vanity of it.”

“Well, aunty, I havn't been through it; so I don't know.”

“Yes, my dear, when I was of your age I used to go to balls and parties, and could think of nothing but of dress and admiration. I have been through it all, and seen the vanity of it.”

“Well, aunt, I want to go through it, and see the vanity of it too. That's just what I'm after. I'm on the way to be as sombre and solemn as you are; but I'm bound to have a good time first. Now, look at this pink brocade.”

Had the brocade been a pall, it could scarcely have been regarded with a more lugubrious aspect.

“Ah, child! such a dying world as this, to spend to much time and thought on dress!”

“Why, Aunt Nesbit, yesterday you spent just two whole hours in thinking whether you should turn the breadths of your black silk dress upside down or downside up; and this was a dying world all the time.”

Aunt Nesbit was no match for this mocking bird, who reasoned in the most accurate, amusing, and lively manner, upon the virtue of artificial flowers, which her female relative regarded with horror, exclaiming, “Turn off my eyes from beholding vanity.”

Artificial flowers, she thought, were a sinful waste of time and money. So think numbers of old ladies with silver plate, gold rings, and silk apparel—all coming under the same condemnation, with their Brussels or Kidderminster carpets, their rosewood furniture, and a great many other things, belonging, for this matter, to the genus of artificial flowers. But Nina puts the business in a simple way, and one more satisfactory to the artificial flower makers.

Well, aunt, then why did the Lord make sweet peas, and roses, and orange blossoms for? I'm sure it's only doing as He does, to make flowers. He don't make everything grey or stone colour.

This is a reverent or an irreverent mode of stating the question, depending as it does upon the spirit of the pleader, and a short answer to the Aunt Nesbit class of cavillers.

The comparison instituted between Uncle Tom's Cabin and Dred only demonstrates both to be of one family. Tomtit is certainly a male counterpart of the girl.

Dred and Tiff are both required to make Uncle Tom, and together they make more than that respectable personage. Legree has a follower in Tom Gordon; but then Legree was an economical scoundrel, and Tom Gordon is an extravagant spendthrift. Harry has an almost literal predecessor in the cabin, although the class appears to have degenerated, and he wants the resolution of his type. Nina's sister is quite apparent all through Uncle Tom; and as the authoress brought Eva to an early death, even thus has she dealt with poor Nina.

The negro Tiff was a slave of the Peytons—an old family, one of whose daughters married a poor white and was never forgiven; but this negro absconded with his mistress, when she eloped with her future husband, and was probably deemed an adequate dowery. John Cripps, the husband, squatted on or near Nina's plantation, and began to barter goods like a Yankee, often losing by the exchanges. Tiff supported the family of three children, and was nurse to his sick mistress. They occupied a hovel within a pine forest; and Cripps was absent often upon those commercial journeys, which produced little or nothing better than interchanges of old lumber. On one of these nights, although her young daughter travelled through the pine forest for medicine, and Tiff kept the baby, and made tea for the mother, and killed one of his best chickens for supper, the heiress of the Peytons became very like a dying person, weak and weaker. Mr. Cripps returned from one of his journeys in time to eat the greater part of Tiff's chicken, and Mrs. Cripps divided the wing, saved by the slave, between her two elder children, because she said it did her good to see them eat. Mr. Cripps then made his tumbler of whiskey toddy, and invited his boy Teddy to partake of the saccharine and spirituous deposit at the bottom. But the boy caught the slave's glance and declined, while his mother begged permission for him to remain ignorant of the delusion, and for her children some means of learning a little; but the latter favour Cripps considered altogether unnecessary; and if there be any foundation for Mrs. Stowe's novel in this particular—and she promises to support all her statements by facts—the southern whites of the poorer class live in a condition of most deplorable ignorance.

Mr. Cripps went to sleep, and Mrs. Cripps to die. The night wore on, and the slave Tiff watched by the bed of the dying wife and the sleeping husband. The former felt that her time was coming quick. Her eldest child was the last to leave.

The mother held on to her long, and looked at her wistfully; and when she had turned to go, she drew her back, and kissed her again, and said, “Good night, dear child, good night.”

Tiff was her only visible comforter.

“Why preaching,” he said, “you know is 'mazin' unsartain round here; but I'll keep on de look out, and do de best I can. Why, Lord, Miss Sue, I's bound for the land of Canaan myself, the best way I can: and I'm sartain I sh'ant go without taking the chil'en along with me.”

“Tiff,” said the young woman, her large blue eyes looking at him. “I have heard of the Bible—have you ever seen one, Tiff?”

“O, yes, honey, dar was a big Bible that your ma' brought in the family when she married; but dat ar' was tore up to make wadding for de guns, one thing or another, and dey never got no more.”

This conversation conveys the probable condition of many southern families. The Bible being a banished book, or being torn up for wadding to the guns, we have no cause for astonishment with the existence of slavery—the natural consequence of infidelity practical or theoretical. The power of the world to come is necessary to keep this world fresh, and is true because it is necessary—for all things essential to life here exist, and that being essential exists also. The authoress describes five more death-bed scenes in this tale—a rather dangerous experiment, after that of Eva, in Uncle Tom's Cabin—but she has been successful in all. The style is consistent with her peculiar genius, and her special training in the families of Evangelical and strict Presbyterians. She represents the liberal Presbyterians of the United States, who hold Evangelical principles, in contrast with the disciples of the late Dr. Channing and his friends of Boston; and therefore perhaps in this novel, as in former productions, she condemns more pointedly and severely the balancing dealings of her own communion towards the slaves and the slave masters than that of any other section of the church universal; and she is right. The Episcopalians and the Methodists, or any other body, cannot complain of the censures administered to them when they find the critic more severe upon the body in which her husband and her father are office-bearers, and men of great influence. We are astonished that this body and other communions have been afraid to render slavery a matter of discipline. The time however is coming—or it has come—now that the quarrel between free and bond has been, as it were, consecrated, and if not consecrated, at least conserved in blood—when the churches of the north must separate from those of the south.

But Mrs. Stowe belongs to the rational class of Evangelical Presbyterians—and no class in our opinion can be “Evangelical” without also being “rational;” for we use the latter phrase in its correct meaning, which is entirely opposed to its common perversion; and to this portion of that and of every other body who prefer truth to cant, we look for the triumph and vindication of Christianity. The first of her death scenes in Dred, is described eloquently, and opens out a broad scheme of salvation; yet it is Scriptural, for it is difficult to suppose that the crucified thief knew more of the Saviour than the dying Mrs. Cripps in the pine forest, and we hear of faith, like a grain of mustard seed, removing mountains; and such scenes afford an explanation of the mountains and the mustard seed, while almost necessarily they may not occur where the opportunities have been larger than in the absolute occurrence in Palestine, or the imaginary scene in the States.

“Now, Tiff, can you say anything?” said she, fixing her large troubled eyes on him.

“Well, honey, dere's one thing the man said at de last camp meeting. He preached 'bout it, and I couldn't make out a word he said, cause I an't smart about preaching like I be about most things; but he said dis yer so often that I couldn't help 'member it. Says he, it was dish yer way, ‘Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’”

“Rest, rest, rest!” said the woman, thoughtfully, and drawing a long sigh. “O, how much I want it. Did he say that was in the Bible?”

“Yes, he said so; and I 'spects, by all he said, it's de good Lord above dat says it. It always makes me feel better to think on it. It 'peard like what it was just what I was wanting to hear.”

“And I too,” she said, turning her head wearily, and closing her eyes.

Tiff softly covered the fire, and sat down by the bed, watching the fleckering shadows as they danced upwards on the wall, listening to the heavy sighs of the pine trees, and the hard breathing of the sleeping man. Sometimes he nodded sleepily, and then, recovering, rose and took a turn to awaken himself. A shadowy sense of fear fell upon him, not that he apprehended anything, for he regarded the words of his mistress only as the forebodings of a wearied invalid. The idea that she could actually die, and go anywhere, without him to care for her, seemed never to have occurred to him. About midnight, as if a spirit had laid its hand upon him, his eyes flew wide open with a sudden start. Her thin cold hand was lying on his, her eyes, large and blue, shone with a singular and spiritual radiance.

“Tiff,” she gasped, speaking with difficulty, “I've seen the one that said that, and it's all true, too! and I've seen all why I've suffered so much. He—He—He is going to take me. Tell the children about Him.” There was a fluttering sigh, a slight shiver, and the lids fell over the eyes for ever.

Tiff's grief was bitter. He raised the “head upon his arm, and calling in a thousand tones of fond endearment, pouring out a perfect torrent of loving devotion on the cold, unheeding ear. But then, spite of all he could do, the face settled itself, and the hands would not be warmed.” The thought of death struck him suddenly. “Throw-himself on the floor by the bed, he wept with an exceeding loud and bitter cry.”

This was the mourning of the slave, and this the mourning of the husband:—

“Well, really,” said Cripps, “this is really—why, it a'int comfortable, darned if it is! Why, I'm sorry about the gal. I mean't to steam her up, or done something with her. What's we to do now?”

Tiff soon answered the question. He was off to Nina, of whom he had heard. The young wild thing, so fond of flowers and all prettinesses, stood his friend, came to the hut, saw to the funeral, helped the children, while that Levitess or priestess, Aunt Nesbit, passed by upon the other side, doubting much if that sort of people had feelings. Nina attended to the little ones, and she had her reward. She read the Bible to Tiff and the children, as the old slave begged of her to do, and learned more of its contents than she had ever known before. When she died, and Cripps married the daughter of a publican, and established a low spirit store, Tiff absconded with the two children, for baby died, and found shelter with Dred and other refugees in the dismal swamps. When Dred was killed, and the little camp in the morass was broken up, Tiff and his children escaped with Harry and his wife to the north. There Mr. Clayton discovered that the young children were heirs to a large fortune, and Tiff came to good times in the end, as he amply deserved. Fanny had a lover, who gave Tiff a pair of gold spectacles.

“See what he 'gin me de last time he's here. I puts dese here on of a Sundays when I sits down to read my Bible.”

“Indeed!” said Clayton, “have you learned then to read?”

“Why, no honey, I donno as I can rightly say dat I'se learn'd to read, 'caus I'se 'mazing slow at dat ar; but den I'se larn'd all de best words—like Christ, and Lord, and God, and dem ar—and when dey's pretty thick I makes out quite comfortable.”

It was a natural thing for Tiff, no longer an old slave, but an old servant, an old friend, and an old man—for that is the difference between north and south—to be interested in the marriage of Miss Fanny when that occurred, and to consult with Mr. Clayton respecting the character of the intended, and all his precedents. There's great humour and sarcasm in the following reflections:—

I'se found out he's a right likely man, besides being one of the very fustest old families in de state: and dese yere old families here is 'bout as good as dey was in ole Virginny; and, when all's said and done, its de man dats the thing arter all, ‘cause Miss Fanny can't marry all de ginerations back, if dey's ever so nice.

The last time, says the authoress, we saw him, “he was walking forth in magnificence, his gold spectacles set conspicuously astride of his nose, trundling a little wicker waggon;” so, although those perambulators, on which Punch threatens to levy a tax, were invented by an Englishman in the States, they don't seem to have come into use much there yet.

The embarrassments of Nina when two of her engaged lovers visited “Canema,” the name of her plantation, on the same day, and continued their visits for some time, are amusing; and the ultimate decision of the young lady when the time for action arrived, consists with her character. She rejected the rich and rather faded bachelor from New York, and accepted the Mr. Clayton whom Harry had suspected from the beginning, as the probable winner among the lady's wooers. A very singular character in the house and among the slaves, was Aunt Milly. The authoress says that this character is drawn from life, and it must be from a highly estimable and useful life. Aunt Milly had been married to a slave, and had many sons and daughters; but they were all sold from her to satisfy the debts of her master and mistress, as the sums came to maturity. She had been desperate once, but was resigned before she came into Nina's hands. At a subsequent period she escaped with Harry and his wife to the north. When in New York she established a little ragged school for black children, although she did not object to white, and she supported the scheme by her own labour. She was far away from North Carolina, and in a New York street, older and happier, for she was free; when Mr. Clayton called upon her, after she had become a British citizen—the only citizenship on the North American continent absolutely free. They had a conversation of which we only extract two sentences:—

“I see you have black and white here,” said Clayton, glancing around the circle.

“Laws, yes,” said Milly, looking complacently around, “I don't make no distinction of colour, I don't believe in them; white children, when dey 'haves themselves, is just as good as black, and I loves 'em just as well.”

Aunt Milly was, from her ability and character, an influential person in Canema, especially with its mistress, whose drunken and vicious brother, Tom Gordon, arrived on a visit, like a beast, while Mr. Clayton and his New York rival were at the place. Tom Gordon had a peculiar hatred to his brother Harry, although he was as ignorant of the relationship as his sister Nina, because the quadroon had been left in charge of Nina's estate. The laws of North Carolina allow the bad to trample down the good, if the latter have the slightest streak of black on their skin, and the smallest tinge of negroism in their blood. Tom Gordon, therefore, had ample opportunities of irritating Harry Gordon, and he did not fail to improve them. He happened to meet Harry's wife, and fancied the young person so much that he proposed to buy her, in order to vex his half-brother, who informed Nina of his threat; and one bad consequence of slavery is found in the acquaintance of young ladies with the purpose for which such purchases are made. It was an unfortunate circumstance that the husband and wife, both slaves, belonged to different proprietresses—for Harry's wife was the property of an old lady, who received a certain income from her work, and was satisfied therewith, although she would not have objected to sell the property at a high price for any use. Nina was compelled to counteract this scheme; but she had been an extravagant young person, who could not bear to examine bills, remarking that after money was spent no benefit could flow from examining the ways and means by which it had been parted with; and so she was obliged to ask Mr. Clayton's assistance, and he was fortunately able to render it efficiently. Aunt Milly founded an argument upon the loan:—

“O but, do you know, Milly,” said Nina, “I've something to tell you, which I had like to have forgotten! I have been out at the Bellevue plantation, and bought Harry's wife.”

“You has, Miss Nina! why de Lord bless you! why, Harry was dreadful worked, dis here morning, 'bout what Mas'r Tom said. 'Peared like he was most crazy.”

“Well,” said Nina, “I've done it. I've got the receipt here.”

“Why, but chile, where alive did you get all the money to pay down right sudden so?”

“Mr. Clayton lent it to me,” said Nina.

“Mr. Clayton! now, chile, did'nt I tell you so? Do you suppose, now, you'd a let him lend you dat ar money if you had'nt liked him.”

Mr. Jekyl was a lawyer, and he was an elder in the Presbyterian Church, of which Aunt Nesbit was a member. He called on business. The case was this. Harry Gordon's sister had been sold away from the estate. A planter in Missouri bought her, and, as she was an educated person, he married her. They had two children. The old planter determined to free his wife and children. For that purpose he executed deeds in Missouri. He next carried them into Ohio, a free State, and executed deeds there in their favour. He left his plantations for their use. The sharp eyes of Mr. Jekyl fancied, however, that the deeds contained flaws, and, if he could establish them, the estate in Missouri would fall to the legitimate brother and sister of the Gordon blood, Nina and Tom. The reasons of their heir-at-law-ship are of no consequence to the story. He came to consult the young persons chiefly interested, for whom he had acted as agent. It does not appear that they were acquainted with their relationship to the manumitted slave and her children. Nina, as might have been anticipated, at once rejected the proposal; Tom, as also might have been expected, grasped at the scheme. Mr. Jekyl thought it quite consistent with Christianity and a ruling Eldership to use a mistake in a deed to rob the widow and the fatherless. Persons of that calibre are to be found in churches nearer home than North Carolina, and of higher pretensions than those of a slave state. The case went on. He was successful. The widow and her children were sold. She killed both of them one night, while they were on their journey to a market. She denied not the deed, which she even justified upon the plea that death to them was better than life, and she slew them out of love. The supposition not being worse than realities, we pity the people who industriously hoard up for their children that heritage of blood which accumulates from one generation to another in these slave states.

After Mr. Jekyl's business conference, he was asked to dine, with Mr. Carson, the New York man, Mr. Clayton, the accepted lover, and Tom Gordon, the reprobate. After dinner guests must talk of something, and no subject more natural than investments occurred to Mr. Carson—for he was a monied man, and nobody was more likely to afford him accurate information than Mr. Jekyl, for he had experience, and he did not recommend land when a buyer could find negroes. Mr. Jekyl had a way of his own, altogether alien from Mr. Binney's way of making the best of both worlds. He found a certain degree of religion in slaves very profitable. To the masters and owners it was clearly good for the life that now is. For this purpose it certainly required to be a little diluted, and the Epistle to Philemon, with the greater part of the Epistle of James, and other passages, were necessarily suppressed. His experience was that of a leasing master. He held slaves, and let them out to work, as a livery stable keeper lets out his horses. By aid of religion he found that the slaves were made honest and accounted for all their earnings. That was a great point with the elder and lawyer. We can only quote a part of this conversation:—

“I tell them, ‘See there now—you see how godliness is profitable to the life that now is.’ You know the Scriptures, Mrs. Nesbit?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Nesbit; “I always believed in religious education.” “Confound it all,” said Tom, “I don't see the use of making a set of hypocritical sneaks of them. I'd make my nigger bring me my money; but, hang it all, if he came snuffling to me, pretending 'twas his duty, I'd choke him! They never think so—they don't, and they can't—and its all hypocrisy, this religious instruction, as you call it!”

“No, it is'nt,” said the undiscouraged Mr. Jekyl; not when you found it on right principles. Take them early enough and work them right, you'll get it ground into them. Now, when they began religious instruction, there was a great prejudice against it in our part of the country. You see that they were afraid that the niggers would get upperish. Ah, but you see the missionaries are pretty careful, they put it in strong in the catechisms about the rights of the master. You see the instruction is just grounded on this, that the master stands in God's place to them.”

“D——d bosh!” said Tom Gordon. Aunt Nesbit looked across the table as if she were going to faint. But Mr. Jekyl's composure was not in the slightest degree interrupted.

“I can tell you,” he said, “that in a business, practical view, for I am used to investments—that since the publishing of these catechisms, and the missionaries' work among niggers, the value of that kind of property has risen ten per cent. They are better contented. They don't run away as they used to. Just that simple idea, that their master stands in God's place to them. Why you see it cuts its way.”

“I have a radical objection to all that kind of instruction,” said Clayton.

The missionary operations of these teachers with their forged revelations, and their elevation of such men as Mr. Jekyl and Tom Gordon to the place of God, with any number of human beings, is a disgrace to Christianity. Slavery in its modified form is bad. Slavery supported by compulsory ignorance is worse. But slavery vindicated by the propagation of falsehood and fraud, regarding religious faith, is worst. It raises each dissolute owner of one or two negroes into an equality of wickedness with a Hapsburg or a Romanoff. These people condemn Romanism because it places the Pontiff in the place of God; and they do worse by putting any one of either Messrs. Cripps, Gordon, or Jekyl in that place, and in a higher; for as regards slaves they teach that any vicious vagabond may repeal God's laws. Refusing to do good themselves, they will not allow it to be done by others.

Nina visited Miss Clayton at her brother's plantation, as a natural prelude of her transformation into Mrs. Clayton. There she witnessed the operation of his schools for the young negroes, his property. Their progress was very astonishing, and, as happens often, we presume that Mrs. Stow exaggerates the docile habits and intellectual capabilities of the enslaved. We recollect the agitation of the question at home, and the labourers in this good cause fell into the same error. However, Mr. Clayton's neighbours burned his schools, and the end of all was his removal with all his people to security under the British flag in the Canadas. There he prospers; and they prosper there; and Mrs. Stowe quotes the case on which this part of her narrative is founded.

Nina returned to Canema, and then came the cholera. The shadows cast before it are drawn vividly in this work. The despair and the ignorance of its causes and cure that accompanied it, among a scattered population, are described in terms by no means exaggerated. Nina met the crisis bravely, although it swept down her uncle, a planter in the neighbourhood, and several of her own slaves. The crisis seemed past. The disease abated. Mr. Clayton arrived on what was to be his last visit to Canema and Nina. Suddenly the young girl drooped. Her illness was very brief. The disease had sure hold of her before any aid came. She opened her eyes, and all were in agony.

“I think I'm called,” she said, “Oh! I'm so sorry for you all. Don't grieve so. My Father loves me so well, He cannot spare me any longer. He wants me to come to Him—that's all. Don't grieve so. It's home I'm going to—home. 'Twill be only a little while, and you'll come too, all of you. You are satisfied are you not, Edward?”

“She does'nt suffer; thank God, at any rate, for that,” said Clayton, as he knelt down over her in anguish.

A beautiful smile passed over her face as she opened her eyes and looked on them all, and said, “No, my poor friends, I don't suffer. I'm come to the land where they never suffer. I'm only so sorry for you, Edward. My poor faithful, good Harry! Oh! I'm going so fast.” …

She moved her head a little—like one who is asleep—uneasily upon her pillow, opened her eyes once more, and said, “Good-bye; I will arise and go to my Father.” …

The gentle breath gradually became fainter and fainter. All hope was over! The night walked on with silent and solemn footsteps, and soft showers fell without, murmuring upon the leaves. Within, all was still as death.

One consequence of this death was to be expected. Tom Gordon was the heir-at-law. He quarrelled with Harry on their first meeting, was knocked down and stunned. The slave mounted his master's horse, picked up his wife and placed her before him, and reached in safety the covert of Dred in the dismal swamp.

Dred was a negro of enormous strength of body and of mind. He was an enthusiast—one of those men who become the means of liberating nations, although that was not to be his fate. Deep in the dismal swamp Dred had found an island which he had surrounded with a labyrinth of trees impregnable even to the bloodhounds employed to hunt runaways; especially as the water threw off the scent. There he kept a small colony of fugitives who contrived sometimes to escape in the boats of the northern woodcutters. He shot game and exchanged it for clothes, lead, and powder, with “the white trash,” who, like Cripps, lived by traffic. He maintained an intimate intercourse with the bolder slaves on the plantations. He attended camp-meetings, and terrified the people and the preachers by his denunciations against the blood, the crimes, and the tyranny of the land. The enthousiasmos of an ancient seer appeared to envelope Dred, and the language of the Bible and of the prophets was always employed to convey his threatenings and his warnings.

Unlike the leader of the slave insurrection in North Carolina, during 1851, Dred is not drawn as in actual warfare against the state. He is a grand character, writhing under oppression, hunted day by day and night after night, living a life of strife, honestly and humanely, like a son of the Covenant in persecuting times, making the Bible his pillow, and sleeping with his hand on the lock of his rifle—contemplating a rebellion, but biding not his time but the Lord's time, looking rather for the red bolts of heaven to smite a guilty land than the sword of men—fighting, but only to turn away the chase from some hard-pressed brother and fugitive. Dred is a great man, black though he was, in adversity.

Tom Gordon and his associates determined to clear the swamps, and one day a rumour came to the little colony that—

They have got on the trail of poor Jim, and are tracking him without mercy.

A dark light flashed from Dred's eye, as he sprang upon his feet.

“‘The voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness; yea, the wilderness of Kadish; I will go forth and deliver him.’”

He seized his rifle and shot bag, and in a few moments was gone.

He was to be baffled this time, although he had been often successful. The chase were too numerous and too well appointed for this single warrior of the south.

Towards sunset a rustling was heard in the branches of the oak, and Dred dropped down into the enclosure, wet, and soiled, and wearied. All gathered round him in a moment.

“Where is Jim?” said Harry.

“Slain!” said Dred. “The archers pressed him sore, and he hath fallen in the wilderness.”

There was a general exclamation of horror.

Dred made a movement to sit down on the earth. He lost his balance and fell; and they all saw now what at first they had not noticed, a wound in his breast, from which the blood was welling. His wife fell by his side with wild moans of sorrow. He lifted his hand and motioned her from him.

“Peace!” he said, “Peace! It is enough. Behold, I go unto the witnesses who cry day and night.”

He put his hand calmly to his side, and felt the gushing blood. He took some in his hand and threw it upward, crying out with wild energy, in the words of an ancient prophet—

“Oh, earth—earth—earth! Cover thou not my blood.”

Behind the dark barrier of the woods the sun was setting gloriously.

“Harry,” he said, “Lay me beneath the heap of witness. Let the God of their fathers judge between us?”

We cannot afford space to follow the narrative into those political and religious discussions with hypocritical, or grievously misled, lawyers and ministers, in which its sarcasm will be found. Some of these passages are powerfully written, and are ascribed to a stronger hand than that of the lady who offers them as her opinions. We see no reason for the supposition although it may be true; and still less for the statement, that Dred is inferior to Uncle Tom. We think not. The mechanism of the narrative is more complicated, and the style is not less eloquent than that of its precursor.

In passing from the most popular and recent protest of this American lady against the slavery of the Union, those apologies for the slaveocracy recently advanced by the Times almost require to be noticed, for they should be repudiated everywhere. Its leading argument is that we could easily emancipate our slaves, as they were in the colonies, but the negroes of the States are in the States. The planters of the colonies were in them precisely like the planters of the States, but in fewer numbers. The argument merely proceeds, therefore, upon a fiction or an omission. The whole difficulty is one of money, and the United States are better able to borrow one hundred and twenty millions of pounds, having no other debt, than Great Britain was to raise twenty millions for freedom.