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56 Youth's Golden Gleam |
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"amiable, generous, and just."17 She had visited these people.
The incident of the slave gang on the river boat, pictured in Chapter xn of her novel, "had passed under her own eyes while passenger on a steamboat on the Ohio River." Her setting of this incident in Uncle "Tom's Cabin is pertinent here: Stephen Foster must have looked upon just such scenes:18
The LaBelle Riviere', as brave and beautiful a boat as ever walked the waters of her namesake river, was floating gaily down the stream, under a brilliant sky, the stripes and stars of free America waving and fluttering overhead; the guards crowded with well dressed ladies and gentlemen, walking and enjoying the delightful day. All was full of life, buoyant and rejoicing! all but Haley's gang, who were stored, with other freight, on the lower deck, and who, somehow, did not seem to appreciate their various privileges, as they sat in a knot, talking to each other in low tones.
The character of Uncle Tom himself is traceable to Mrs. Stowe's years in Ohio. He was suggested to her by "the faithful slave husband in Kentucky of a servant" in her own Cincinnati household who, "trusted with unlimited liberty, free to come and go on business between Kentucky and Ohio, still refused to |
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