Uncle Tom's Cabin or, Life Among the Lowly

Harriet Beecher Stowe

[1] English Grammar (1795), by Lindley Murray (1745-1826), the most authoritative American grammarian of his day.

[2] A machine of this description was really the invention of a young colored man in Kentucky. [Mrs. Stowe's note.]

[3] A slightly inaccurate quotation from Hamlet, Act III, scene I, lines 369-370.

[4] Gen. 16. The angel bade the pregnant Hagar return to her mistress Sarai, even though Sarai had dealt harshly with her.

[5] Phil. 1:10. Onesimus went back to his master to become no longer a servant but a "brother beloved."

[6] Jer. 31:15.

[7] Gen. 9:25. This is what Noah says when he wakes out of drunkenness and realizes that his youngest son, Ham, father of Canaan, has seen him naked.

[8] Dr. Joel Parker of Philadelphia. [Mrs. Stowe's note.] Presbyterian clergyman (1799-1873), a friend of the Beecher family. Mrs. Stowe attempted unsuccessfully to have this identifying note removed from the stereotype-plate of the first edition.

[9] Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846) and William Wilberforce (1759-1833), English philanthropists and anti-slavery agitators who helped to secure passage of the Emancipation Bill by Parliament in 1833.

[10]In Atala; or the Love and Constantcy of Two Savages in the Desert (1801) by Francois Auguste Rene, Vicomte de Chateaubriand (1768-1848).

[11]The Ancient History, ten volumes (1730-1738), by the French historian Charles Rollin (1661-1741).

[12]Scott's Family Bible (1788-1792), edited with notes by the English Biblical commentator, Thomas Scott (1747-1821).

[13]The Cerographic Atlas of the United States (1842-1845), by Sidney Edwards Morse (1794-1871), son of the geographer, Jedidiah Morse, and brother of the painter-inventor, Samuel F. B. Morse.

[14]Recollections of the Last Ten Years (1826) by Timothy Flint (1780-1840), missionary of Presbyterianism to the trans-Allegheny West.

[15]The Merchant of Venice, Act 1, scene 2, lines 17-18.

[16] Ps. 73, "The End of the Wicked contrasted with that of the Righteous."

[17] Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-1882), champion of the orthodoxy of revealed religion, defender of the Oxford movement, and Regius professor of Hebrew and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford.

[18] In August 1791, as a consequence of the French Revolution, the black slaves and mulattoes on Haiti rose in revolt against the whites, and in the period of turmoil that followed enormous cruelties were practised by both sides.

The "Emperor" Dessalines, come to power in 1804, massacred all the whites on the island. Haitian bloodshed became an argument to show the barbarous nature of the Negro, a doctrine Wendell Phillips sought to combat in his celebrated lecture on Toussaint L'Ouverture.

[19] "Weep Not for Those," a poem by Thomas Moore (1779-1852).

[20] "This is the last of Earth! I am content," last words of John Quincy Adams, uttered February 21, 1848.

[21] These lines have been thus rather inadequately translated:

"Think, O Jesus, for what reason

Thou endured'st earth's spite and treason,

Nor me lose, in that dread season;

Seeking me, thy worn feet hasted,

On the cross thy soul death tasted,

Let not all these toils be wasted."

[Mrs. Stowe's note.]

[22] Ps. 74:20.

[23] "Jerusalem, my happy home," anonymous hymn dating from the latter part of the sixteenth century, sung to the tune of "St. Stephen." Words derive from St. Augustine's Meditations.

[24] John Philpot Curran (1750-1817), Irish orator and judge who worked for Catholic emancipation.

[25] I Cor. 15:57.

[26] "On My Journey Home," hymn by Isaac Watts, found in many of the southern country songbooks of the ante bellum period.

[27] Prov. 4:19.

[28] This poem does not appear in the collected works of William Cullen Bryant, nor in the collected poems of his brother, John Howard Bryant. It was probably copied from a newspaper or magazine.

[29]Hamlet, Act I, scene 1, lines 115-116