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Uncle
Tom And His Grandchild |
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| "UNCLE TOM" AND GRANDCHILD |
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| The scene represented in the engraving on our
first page was one upon which our artist, Mr. Waud,
looked a few months since while on the road from
Columbus to Macon. It is by the road-side, on the
outskirts of a Georgia plantation. A little child,
almost white, and very beautiful, is teaching her
grandfather -- a pure negro -- to read. The little
girl is just from school, as appears from the satchel
hanging on the chair. We did not know or ask the
names of either the old man or the child; but from
an affection for "Uncle Tom" and its gifted authoress
we have adopted the title subjoined to our engraving. The picture, as we saw it, seemed to tell at the same
time a very sad and a very hopeful story. The contrast of color, almost violent in those so near of kin,
told the history of a great wrong. This little girl,
with far more of "Southern chivalry" in her veins
than of negro blood, was, or had been for all that, a
slave -- a thing to be bought and sold, to be insolently loved or insolently hated; to whose children
she must become a curse, as they would be a curse
to her. But this sad fate had in her case been
averted. She was now free; and her present occupation spoke of a new era for the negro race. So
that, on the whole, the picture was a hopeful one. In it seemed to us to be concentrated the great
moral of our civil war. |
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Note:
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Notice how the text indicates that the girl’s
lighter skin color—closer to that of white
slaveowners than to her dark-skinned grandfather—makes
her previous enslavement all the more horrible to
the author.
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