Two Reviews of Uncle Tom

1
Two Reviews of Uncle Toms Cabin

• The National Era (April 1852)

• Southern Quarterly Review
• (January 1853)

• We have not here the space in which to say all
  we think and feel regarding this wonderful work.
  It was a noble effortit is a splendid success.
  The God of Freedom inspired the thoughtthe
  spirit of his love and wisdom guided the pen of
  the writer, so her words shall sink into the
  softened and repentant heart of the wrong-doer,
  and spring up into a harvest of good, for the
  poor and the oppressed.
• This beautiful new evangel of freedomfor so
  the book seems to usdoes not suddenly flash the
  intolerable light of God's truth upon souls
  benighted in error, but softly drops veil after
  veil till they stand in mid-day brightness,
  wondering and remorseful.
• So great and good a thing has Mrs. Stowe here
  accomplished for humanity, for freedom, for God,
  that we cannot refrain from applying to her
  sacred words, and exclaiming, "Blessed art thou
  among women!"

• The negro, left to himself, does not dream of
  liberty. He cannot indeed grasp a conception
  which belongs so naturally to the brain of the
  white man. In his natural condition, he is, by
  turns, tyrant and slave, but never the free man.
  You may talk to the blind man of light, until he
  fancies that he understands you, and begins to
  wish for that bright thing which you tell him he
  has not but vainly he rolls his sightless orbs,
  unhappy that he cannot see the brightness of that
  beam, whose warmth before sufficed to make him
  happy. Thus it is with the moral sunbeam of the
  poor negro. He cannot see nor conceive the
  "liberty" which you would thrust upon him, and it
  is a cruel task to disturb him in the enjoyment
  of that life to which God has destined him. He
  basks in his sunshine, and is happy. Christian
  slavery, in its full development, free from the
  fretting annoyance and galling bitterness of
  abolition interference, is the brightest sunbeam
  which Omniscience has destined for his existence.