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PART III - EQUAL BUT SEPARATE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2010

Kerry Larson
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
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Summary

I am myself; you are yourself; we are two distinct persons, equal persons. What you are, I am. You are a man, and so am I. I am not by nature bond to you, or you to me. Nature does not make your existence depend upon me, or mine upon yours. I cannot walk upon your legs, or you upon mine. I cannot breathe for you, or you for me; I must breathe for myself, and you for yourself.

Frederick Douglass, “Letter to His Old Master”

Old Tiff is the name Harriet Beecher Stowe gives to the loyal slave of a destitute and dying woman and her three children in Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1856). The name Old Tiff gives himself, on the other hand, is somewhat different. “I's Tiff Peyton, I is,” he explains, “raised on de great Peyton place.” “One of the most celebrated families in Virginia” (89), the Peytons, it is true, have fallen on hard times, the plantation now “worn-out and broken-down” and the daughter, Tiff's current mistress, disgraced and exiled for marrying a man below her station. Nevertheless, Old Tiff's devotion to the Peyton's “ancestral greatness” (89), which is forever on his mind, remains unshaken. So complete is his loyalty that Old Tiff, “though crooked and black, never seemed to cherish the slightest doubt that the whole force of Peyton blood coursed through his veins and that Peyton honor was intrusted to his keeping” (90).

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

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  • EQUAL BUT SEPARATE
  • Kerry Larson, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
  • Book: Imagining Equality in Nineteenth-Century American Literature
  • Online publication: 04 May 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511720079.008
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  • EQUAL BUT SEPARATE
  • Kerry Larson, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
  • Book: Imagining Equality in Nineteenth-Century American Literature
  • Online publication: 04 May 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511720079.008
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • EQUAL BUT SEPARATE
  • Kerry Larson, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
  • Book: Imagining Equality in Nineteenth-Century American Literature
  • Online publication: 04 May 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511720079.008
Available formats
×