A voice from the past
A particular situation has placed me in circumstances that have allowed me to devote a large amount of time reading during the past couple of weeks, and one of the books I’ve read was Uncle Tom’s Cabin. As I expected, it is atrociously sentimental and the characters are one-dimensional; but the book serves its purpose in being viciously abolitionist. Thank heavens it was written. It occasionally yields nuggets of commentary on American life that are relevant through to today. This one made me giggle:
["]Well, now, but I’m not sure, after all, about this religion,” said he, the old wicked expression returning to his eye; “the country is almost ruined with pious white people; such pious politicians as we have just before elections,–such pious goings on in all departments of church and state, that a fellow does not know who’ll cheat him next. I don’t know, either, about a religion’s being up in the market, just now.["]
-Augustine St. Clare, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Chapter XIV, by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852).
For one example of pious goings-on in all departments of state, read a piece by Dahlia Lithwick, a columnist for The Washington Post, published earlier this month, here.
