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A KEY TO UNCLE TOM’S CABIN; PRESENTING THE ORIGINAL FACTS AND DOCUMENTS UPON WHICH THE STORY IS FOUNDED. TOGETHER WITH Corroborative Statements VERIFYING THE TRUTH OF THE WORK.
BOSTON: PUBLISHED BY JOHN P. JEWETT & CO. CLEVELAND, OHIO: JEWETT, PROCTOR & WORTHINGTON. LONDON: LOW AND COMPANY. 1853.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
STEREOTYPED BY HOBART & ROBBINS, NEW ENGLAND TYPE AND STEREOTYPE FOUNDERY, BOSTON.
Damrell & Moore, Printers, 16 Devonshire St., Boston.
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The work which the writer here presents to the public is one which has been written with no pleasure, and with much pain.
In fictitious writing, it is possible to find refuge from the hard and the terrible, by inventing scenes and characters of a more pleasing nature. No such resource is open in a work of fact; and the subject of this work is one on which the truth, if told at all, must needs be very dreadful. There is no bright side to slavery, as such. Those scenes which are made bright by the generosity and kindness of masters and mistresses, would be brighter still if the element of slavery were withdrawn. There is nothing picturesque or beautiful, in the family attachment of old servants, which is not to be found in countries where these servants are legally free. The tenants on an English estate are often more fond and faithful than if they were slaves. Slavery, therefore, is not the element which forms the picturesque and beautiful of Southern life. What is peculiar to slavery, and distinguishes it from free servitude, is evil, and only evil, and that continually.
In preparing this work, it has grown much beyond the author’s original design. It has so far overrun its limits that she has been obliged to omit one whole department;—that of the characteristics and developments of the colored race in various countries and circumstances. This is more properly the subject for a volume; and she hopes that such an one will soon be prepared by a friend to whom she has transferred her materials.