OBITUARY.

Otago Witness, Issue 1645, 2 June 1883, Page 13

OBITUARY.

UNCLE TOM.

(Speddlty written for the Otago Witness.) By the telegraphic summary of oversea new which has been sanl from Auckland to Otago we find that the hero of Mrs Harriet Beecher Stowe's celebrated work, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," has at last joined the great majority to ti'bich the authoress consigned b'na many years ago. H© lived to the patriarchal age of 94 years.

Josiah Hawson, whoso life was the base upo» which Mrs Stowe builtup lief " Uncle Tom," led a strange and eventful life, thoogb not in many respects the life that is so well known to nearly every person who is able to read the English language, and so well known also to many for- ■ eigners as that of the noble-hearted slave ©f the famous novel. He himself has told the story of his life in an interesting little book. He was bom a slave, and having gained hia free' dom, he took a prominent part in procuring freedom for others, and in endeavouring to find employment for them when they had obtained it. He, with the aid of friends of both colours, procured land in Canada, and at one time had a mill. He tried with great persistency to make his fellow escapees use their liberty in a right way, and support them- • selves, and his book tells, in a touching -aaoner,, how frequently his efforts failed '"^d bow numbers of the negroes most dL_ '.Tfxgingly mistook the purpose of and abased their new estate. Disasters of different kinds befell him, and be was compelled on different occasions to call in the aid of his friends and sympathisers. Ho even journeyed to England, where he was extremely well treated, and there created a very favourable impression as a man who, having enjoyed but few advantages, strove with greatneßS of heart and with creditable discretion and temperance to live a good life, and to help others of his own colour who had passed through the same fire and suffered under similar disabilities to do the same. There are doubtless many in the Colony who were present at some of the meetings in England in which this quondam slave took part, and who will remember him as a simple, earnest, and unpretentious man — as an interesting and respect-inspiring example of one who indeed knew what it was "to suffer and be strong." Though Hawson did not go through all that Mrs Stowe makes " Uncle Tom " go through, the novelist's creation was fairly and unexaggeratedly a typical one, and Hawson's own experiences show this. He either hinv self saw similar scenes to the most shocking of those which Mrs Stowe narrates, or he had personal knowledge of them. The advertising of auction sales of men and women as if they were cattle ; the taking away of children and selling them to different owners before their parents' eyes ; the killing of runaway slaves, for whose return a reward would be paid whether the runaways were returned dead or alive ; the brutal and public whipping o£ naked women and girls ; the universal sacrifice of females to the lust of their owners ; tha herding together of men, women, and children with no regard— absolutely no regard— to cleanliness or morals ; the whipping to death and hunting with bloodhounds of refractory and absconding negroes; the defence and justification of slavery by hundreds of ministers of religion, and* thou- . sands of politicians ;— all these things came -■ under Josiah Hawson's eye, and tilled his mind with a keen and bitter sense of the perfidy of the then majority of the whole population. Happily he lived to see better times, ' and to find that the dominant race, when fully roused to a recognition of its duties, and to the demands of its religion, could give effect to the true and honest instincts of its heart.

" Uncle Tom's Cabin," and the later work, the "Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin," are remarkable instances of the power of the modern author. For it cannot be denied that these works did a great deal to establish the principle that slavery was a wrong and a sin. The printed story of Hawson's life was an important addition to the literature of the subject, and his public narration of what he himself had experienced, and what he had seen, must have had a great effect upon the public mind. The announcement of his death calls up memo* lies which "look far back into other years," and remind us of a state of things the like of which has not existed since the decay of the Roman power, and which can never again exist in the history of the world. W. H. A.