On Martin Luther King Day, Excerpts From Uncle Tom's Cabin

UPDATE: MARTIN LUTHER KING AND GUN OWNERSHIP

BEST SELLING BOOK of the 19th Century, and story that helped ignite the Civil War and end slavery in America according to then President Abraham Lincoln when he met Harriet Beecher Stowe, its author, in 1860.

Today the politically correct often incorrectly take Uncle Tom to be a handkerchief head in his time, but nothing is further from the truth. Tom is beautifully portrayed in the book as the ultimate Christ-like suffering servant who refuses to turn from the truth of the Gospel as well as retaliate or betray his enslaved family and friends attempting to escape their terrible plight, no matter what the cost.

In the end, Tom pays the ultimate price---as did Martin Luther King---in a heart-breaking murder/beating at the wicked hands of Simon LeGree---the embodiment of unredeemed evil and depravity---his last owner and master.

On this, Martin Luther King Day 2011, I'd like to publish several quotes from this treasure of a book and encourage anyone who hasn't read, or wants to reread, it to run, not walk to their nearest library or bookstore to get it.

I will add more to the quotes later today:

----Liberty!--electric word! What is it? Is there anything more in it than a name---a rhetorical flourish? Why, men and women of America, does your heart's blood thrill at that word, for which your fathers bled, and your braver mothers were willing that their noblest and best (sons) should die?

Is there anything in it glorious and dear for a nation, that is not also glorious and dear for a man?

----My soul an't your, Mas'r! You haven't bought it,---ye can't buy it! It's been bought and paid for, by One that is able to keep it.

----I an't afeard to die. I'd soon as die as not. Ye may whip me, starve me, burn me---it'll only send me sooner to where I want to go.

----Tom looked up to his master and answered, 'Mas'r, if you was sick, or in trouble, or dying, and I could save ye, I'd give ye my heart's blood in this poor old body would it save your precious soul. I'd give 'em freely as the Lord gave his for me. O, Mas'r! don't bring this great sin on your soul! It will hurt you more than twill me! Do the worst you can, my troubles'll be over soon; but if you don't repent, yours won't never end!

----I don't know anything about politics, but I can read my Bible; and there I see that I must feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and confort the desolate; and that Bible I mean to follow.