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St. Claire and Simon Legree. Even their names are completely opposite; one sophisticated and rich, the other rugged and coarse.  Both slave traders, but their manner of dealing with those poor beings not similar in the least.  Yet, while they are completely different in character and attitude, they have great similarities.

St. Claire is a master any slave would want. He is lenient and does not discipline his slaves because “Whipping and abuse are like laudanum; you have to double the does as the sensibilities decline. I saw this very early when I became owner;  and I resolved never to begin…The consequence is, that my servants act like spoiled children,” All his servants are very blessed as slaves in his household. Adolph wore his master clothes at times. Diana’s kitchen is a mess, but she is allowed to be so long as she makes a good meal. His wife Marie tells Miss Ophelia that with just a certain look from St. Claire, the servants will obey, and that he never truly disciplines them. Several times he rebukes his cousin Miss Ophelia for the distain she and others seem to hold in the north.  It’s appalling to him how vulgar slave masters work, owning as many desperate, hopeless slaves as they can. He sees how wrong it is to work slaves to death all day and give them nothing reasonable to wear, eat, or live in. Even while breaking in slaves he treated them kindly, and the results were better. One of the main reasons he bought Topsy was because he was “tired of hearing her screaming, and them beating and swearing at her.”  which shows his compassion. He was kind in giving Tom his freedom, as well.  With all this evidence, it seems St. Claire is the perfect master.

In a very real way, Simon Legree is the exact opposite of St. Claire, other than owning slaves. He was the type of man, that, from your first sight of him, induced horror and disgust; such as Tom felt upon seeing him at the auctions.  Any black man or woman – slave or not – he treated as merchandise, like animals. The way he examined Tom and Emmeline shows that. He harshly ripped Toms possessions away from him, and, more important, his right to worship God. To make himself feel better he forces his slaves to look happy and sing. From his own admission he, “shows no mercy.” Previously, he had taken care of his slaves; but finding it was ” no sort ‘o use” he now just lets them die knowing he can buy new ones. He tries to harden his slaves, and makes a slave become one of his overseers  “woman.”  After a hard day’s work, women are made to grind their own wheat and make their dinners, while exhausted. When Tom helps the mulatto woman, he is punished – punished for showing compassion! Legree cheated his slaves, and abused them so much that even when the mulatto woman filled her basket enough, out of the cruelness of his heart he lied that it was not full enough. Then, when Tom refused to whip the mulatto woman, he had Tom beaten half to death, and left him laying moaning and in pain through the night until Cassy came. He is “the devil” according to Cassy; there are no laws against how to treat slaves;  they are ten miles away from any other plantation so Simon could get away with anything. Just a few examples of that beast s actions and one shudders to think of his poor slaves.

The fact is, although Simon was much more cruel than St. Claire, both men owned slaves, which made them more alike than either would care to admit. Although Simon was at one end of the scale, treating his slaves with extreme cruelty, St. Claire was at the exact opposite giving his servants all the luxuries he did, but, as Miss Ophelia said, “all your indulgence to them may prove a great cruelty, by and by.” Those luxuries did turn into a cruelty, because they were so spoiled they became accustomed to that. And yet he still didn’t make provisions for them for when he died! He was kind in giving Tom his freedom, but he never truly made it official while he was alive. In that way he was just as cruel as Simon Legree. Soon after he dies, his slaves, were sent to the slave warehouse. Neither men found the right balance between cruelty and generosity.  Simon has love for very few people in the world, maybe none, and the only “love” he has is not even true. St. Claire say that he himself has and had, ” the same love I have now for all kinds of human things.” But while Simon kills a man without thinking, St. Claire later calls Topsy a monkey; he treats her as an animal to whom he can command to do tricks. In the last paragraph of chapter ten is says, “St. Claire took the same kind of amusement in the child that a man might in the tricks of a parrot or a pointer.” If St. Claire has a love for all humans, but considers Topsy no more than a monkey or parrot, he does not consider those blacks to be human, which means he has only a little more love for them than Simon. While Simon was so callused and hard as not to care whether a slave died or not, St. Claire was thoughtless enough to keep slaves he didn’t need, that he could have set free; to some slaves simply being a slave was a death sentence.  Simon treats his slaves as animals in no way human,  but St. Claire doesn’t educate his slaves or treat them as normal beings either, but a lesser species – so both men have more similar beliefs than anyone would have seen.