Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin is a novel by American abolitionist author Harriet Beecher Stowe which treats slavery as a central theme. The work was first published on March 20, 1852. The novel soon became the best-selling novel of the 19th century (and the second best-selling book of the century after the Bible)http://www.enotes.com/uncle-toms/ and is credited with helping to end slavery in the United States. Despite this, the book also helped create and spread common stereotypes about African Americans, many of which endure to this day.

Anti-Tom literature

In response to Uncle Tom's Cabin, writers in the Southern United States began producing a number of books to rebut Stowe's novel. This so-called Anti-Tom literature generally took a pro-slavery viewpoint, arguing that the evils of slavery as depicted in Stowe's book were overblown and incorrect. The novels in this genre tended to feature a benign white patriarchal master and a pure wife, both of whom presided over child-like slaves in a benevolent extended-family-style plantation. The novels either implied, or directly stated, the racist view that African Americans were a child-like people unable to live their lives without being directly overseen by white people.

Related Topics:
Southern United States - Racist

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The two most famous anti-Tom books are The Sword and the Distaff by William Gilmore Simms and The Planter's Northern Bride by Caroline Lee Hentz. Simms' book was published a few months after Stowe's novel and it contains a number of sections and discussions that are clearly disputing Stowe's book and her view of slavery. The Planter's Northern Bride by Caroline Lee Hentz offers a defense of slavery as seen through the eyes of a northern woman — the daughter of an abolitionist, no less — who marries a southern slave owner.

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In the decade between the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin and the start of the American Civil War, between twenty and thirty anti-Tom books would be published. Among these novels are two books titled Uncle Tom's Cabin As It Is (one by W.L. Smith and the other by C.H. Wiley) and a book by John Pendleton Kennedy.

Related Topics:
American Civil War - John Pendleton Kennedy

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Today this Anti-Tom literature is generally seen as lacking literary merit and as pro-slavery propaganda.

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