A Living Character of "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
Oberlin: c1881. Presumed First Edition, First printing thus. Newspaper clipping. Clipping in in two pieces, each in a format is approximately 2.75 inches by 5.5 inches. This article was based on Correspondence of The Cleveland Herald. Minor loss of text between the two pieces. This article reports that the character of George Harris was based on Mr. Lewis Clark who at the time this article was published lived on East college St., which was bout a half mile from the public square. [Other references identify him as Lewis G. Clarke] The text has a reference to his coming to Oberlin six years perviously. He was in need and had given a public lecture to support himself and his family. At the time of this article he was reportedly of 66 years of age. The article described him as a light Octoroon, which is a light skinned Negro. There is reference of fellow-slaves, which it understood to mean that Mr. Clark had in his youth been an enslaved person. He is reported to have been born in 1814 or 1815, which would mean that this newspaper clipping is from about 1880. He reports that he was a slave of his grandfather Samuel Campbell who lived near Berea College. His father was Daniel Clark, a weaver and Revolutionary War soldier and his mother was Letitia Campbell, a mulatto slave. He was sold for $1,250. This article states that the original Uncle Tom was a man named Sam Pete, who at the time was reportedly to still be alive, very aged, living in Dawn Township, Canada (Dresden O.). He escaped and arrived in Cleveland in 1841. He was interviewed by Mrs. Stowe who reportedly did not tell him what her purpose of eliciting his information was for. The book, The Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, told of Clarke’s experiences as a slave and verified that the character “George Harris” of her book was based upon Clarke’s early life. Stowe published The Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin one year after the major book's publication, to explain and defend how she came to write the now widely popular novel. The lines from The Key that I remember most vividly were “Lewis Clarke is an acquaintance of the writer. Soon after his escape from slavery he was received into the family of a sister- in-law of the author and there educated. He traveled across the country “making speeches.” His travels were the result of his being a famous man. His fame resulted, however, not only by being depicted as “George Harris,” the husband of Eliza, the runaway slave who is one of the central characters in the Stowe novel. He was also a prominent leader in the abolitionist movement in the 1840s and 1850s as well as a spokesman for freed people after the Civil War. By the time of his death in Lexington, Kentucky in 1897, Clarke had developed an international reputation. His passing was noted in newspapers throughout the world, with full page eulogies printed in major newspapers across the United States. William O’Connell Bradley, the Governor of Kentucky, ordered Clarke’s body to lie in state at the Lexington City Auditorium, the first time in the history of the Commonwealth that such an honor was accorded a black man. Yet after his death Clarke disappeared from newspapers and other major print media. His retreat into obscurity came because of a variety of reasons. The 2012 release of his autobiography, Narrative of the Sufferings of Lewis Clarke: During Captivity of More than Twenty-Five Years Among the Algerines of Kentucky, One of the So Called Christian States of North America, Dictated by Himself, by the University of Washington Press, is an effort to introduce him to a new generation of historians and readers of history. Lewis Clarke’s early life is reflected in his Narrative which was originally published in 1845, the same year as Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Clarke’s autobiography begins with his birth in 1815 in Kentucky and continues through the early 1840s when he was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Narrative described what he endured as the child of a Scottish father and a quadroon mother who was a slave on his Madison County, Kentucky plantation. He tells of particularly horrendous experiences after having been sold to cruel plantation owners at an early age. After a second sale to a more compassionate owner, he soon feared a rumor indicating that he was to be sold to a plantation in Louisiana. It was at this point that Clarke decided to escape from bondage and seek refuge in Canada where he assumed his brother Milton had escaped months earlier. He returned to the United States after learning that his brother settled instead in Oberlin, Ohio. Lewis connected with Milton in Oberlin, but soon decided to bring his youngest brother, Cyrus, out of slavery in Lexington, Kentucky. His Narrative also describes how he and his brother Milton were nearly captured by slave hunters in Oberlin before they escaped to Massachusetts. Clarke’s exploits as an escaped slave were also described in newspaper articles in Ohio as well as word of mouth by anti-slavery abolitionists throughout the state. Abolitionist leaders in the Northeast became aware of him and as a result he was enticed to come to Cambridge, Massachusetts with plans to bolster the abolitionist movement in that state. While in Cambridge he lived several years in the home of Mary Jackson Safford, the sister-in-law of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Stowe met Clarke, interviewed him on many occasions, and took detailed notes regarding his experiences as a slave. Condition: Fair.
Keywords: Uncle Tom's Cabin, George Harris, Lewis Clark, African-American, Negro, Octoroon, Slave, Ex-Slave, Slavery, Enslaved, Lewis G. Clarke, Abolition, Anti-Slavery, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mary Jackson Safford, Sam Pete
[Book #85425]
Price: $50.00