Concluding Remarks.
I must be allowed to quote the words of Mrs. Harriet B. Stowe:
"The writer has often been (or will be) inquired of by correspondents from different parts of the country, whether this narrative is a true one; and to these inquiries she will give one general answer. The separate incidents that compose the narrative are to a very great extent authentic, occurring, many of them, either under her own observation, or that of her personal friends. She or her friends have observed characters the counterpart of almost all that are here introduced; and many of the sayings are word for word as heard herself, or reported to her."
Of the planter Legree, (and, with the exception of Prof. Webster, such a wretch never darkened humanity,) she says:
"Of him her brother wrote, he actually made me feel of his fist, which was like a blacksmith's hammer or a nodule of iron, telling me that it was calloused with knocking down niggers."
Now as a parallel to this, I will state a fact communicated to me by a clergyman, (a man of great talent, and goodness of character, and undoubted veracity,) that a superintendent of Irishmen, who were engaged on a Northern railroad, told him he did not hesitate to knock any man down that gave him the least trouble; and although the clergyman did not "examine his fist and pronounce it like a blacksmith's hammer," yet, I have not the slightest doubt it was "calloused with knocking down Irishmen." At any rate, I take the license of the writers of the day, and say it was.
