Читать книгу Twelve Years a Slave: A True Story - Solomon Northup - Страница 7

“It is a singular coincidence, that Solomon Northup was carried to a plantation in the red river country—that same region where the scene of Uncle Tom’s captivity was laid—and his account of the plantation, and the mode of life there, and some incidents which he describes, form a striking parallel to that history.”

—Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Such dupes are men to custom, and so prone

To reverence what is ancient, and can plead

A course of long observance for its use,

That even servitude, the worst of ills,

Because delivered down from sire to son

Is kept and guarded as a sacred thing!

But is it fit, or can it bear the shock

Of rational discussion, that a man

Compounded and made up like other men

Of elements tumultuous, in whom lust

And folly in as ample measure meet

As in the bosom of the slave he rules,

Should be a despot absolute, and boast

Himself the only freeman of his land?

—Cowper