Over "the oft-fabled poetic legend of a patriarchal institution" of the "good" slave master "there broods a portentous shadow—the shadow of law. So long as the law considers all these human beings, with beating hearts and living affections, only as so many things belonging to a master, . . . it is impossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best regulated administration of slavery."

Harriet Beecher Stowe - Uncle Tom's Cabin.