Page:The Under-Ground Railroad.djvu/120

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by misrepresentations: but it is the men and not the system—to justify the system of Slavery is to justify all I have said above; the latter is the necessary result of the former. I have been repeatedly asked "Is not Uncle Tom's Cabin over-stated? are the characters true? Are there any such characters as Uncle Tom, Topsy, &c.?" As respects the former, my answer has been invariably in the negative: as to the latter, in the affirmative. As respects the facts which lie at the foundation of that world-renowned book, the subject of Mrs. Stowe's brilliant stories, written as it were with a diamond pen, as perhaps no other can write, are strictly correct. Seventeen years in the Slave States enables me fully to understand what she says to be quite correct. The person who she, for convenience-sake, denominates Eliza is a living character. I lived on the Ohio River over which she crossed, and have been to the spot more than once, not however till after she became the subject of the story which Mrs. Stowe tells so well, perhaps in a manner that no one else can; she will be remembered by the coloured people for ages yet to come, both in the United States and Canada. After she passes from these mundane shores to a state of unsullied bliss "where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest," she will then live in their memories. Though the names of the characters in