irs seemed submerged or at least eclipsed.

It was during such a period of apathy that there was held an
anti-slavery meeting at which two negroes were present, Sojourner Truth,
an old woman whose shrewdness matched her fervor, and Frederick
Douglass. Douglass was the son of a white father and a slave mother; he
taught himself to read and write, made his escape into freedom, gained
an education, and became an effective speaker for the anti-slavery
cause. On this occasion he spoke with power and passion of the gloomy
prospects of their people; government, wealth, social advantage, all
were on the side of their oppressors; good people seemed indifferent to
their wrongs; was there indeed any help or hope? Then rose Sojourner
Truth, and looking at him said only, "Frederick! Is God dead?"

CHAPTER XII

SLAVERY AS IT WAS

And now, in the year 1852, there befell an event perhaps as momentous in
American history as any between the establishment of the Constitution
and the Civil War. A frail little woman, the wife of an obscure
theological professor in a Maine village, wrote a story, and that story
captured the heart of the world. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say
that _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ converted the North to the cause of the slave.
The typical Union volunteer of 1861 carried the book in his memory. It
brought home to the heart of the North, and of the world, that the slave
was a man,--one with mankind by that deepest tie, of human love and
aspiration and anguish,--but denied the rights of a man.

The book was a birth of genius and love. It is absolutely
sweet-spirited. Its intense and irresistible plea is not against a class
or a section, but against a system. It portrays among the Southern
slave-holders characters noble and attractive,--Mrs Shelby, the faithful
mistress, and the fascinating St. Clare. The worst villain in the story
is a renegade Northerner. Its typical Yankee, Miss Ophelia, provokes
kindly laughter. The book mixes humor with its tragedy; the sorrows of
Uncle Tom and the dark story of Cassy are relieved by the pranks of
Black Sam and the antics of Topsy. With all its woes, the story somehow
does not leave a depressing effect; it abounds in courage and action;
the fugitives win their way to freedom; the final impulse is to hopeful
effort against the wrong. Its basal motive was the same as that of the
Abolitionists, but its spirit and method were so different from
Garrison's that it won respons