Selected Quotations from Harriet Beecher Stowe, A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)

“The great object of the author in writing has been to bring this subject of moral and religious question, before the minds of all who profess to be followers of Christ in this country.”

pp. iii-iv

“The deadly sin of slavery is its denial of humanity to man. This has been the sin of oppression in every age…The fact is, that the whole system of slave-law, and the whole practice of the slave system, and the public sentiment that is formed by it, are alike based on the greatest of all heresies, a denial of equal human brotherhood.”

pp. 125-126

“If we say that every Christian in the South who does not use his utmost influence against these iniquitous slave-laws is guilty, as a republican citizen, of sustaining those laws, it is no less true that every Christian at the North who does not do what in him lies to procure the repeal of such laws in free states is so far, guilty for their existence.”

p. 251

“Every man in his place should remonstrate against [slavery]…Every mother should teach the evit of it to her children. Every clergyman should fully and continually warn his church against any complicity with such a sin.”

p. 255