Anti Tom Literature

Uncle Tom's Cabin is one of my all-time favorites. It's beautifully written, and the characters are so well developed that you really feel for them when something bad happen--and a lot of bad things happen to them. It is true that the book is somewhat melodramatic (it was published serially in the time, and those kinds of publications could be compared to the soap operas of our time), and the author's agenda is quite clear. She portraits the slave in a (maybe purposely?) naive way, and the stereotypes portrayed could make cringe any modern reader. But overall is an amazing book, and a must read for every breathing being!

This book was considered the cause of the civil war because of its secessionist views, and although is was highly respected in the North, I was surprised to find out that in the South there was a whole movement of so called anti-Tom literature. Some of the most popular ones were The Planter's Northern Bride, by Caroline Lee Hentz, and The Sword and the Distaff, by William Gilmore Simms. The Planter's Northern Bride is easily available and quite cheap, but the only copy of The Sword and the Distaff is priced at almost $300.00 on Amazon.


I found a couple of links to the complete texts (here and here), though, and they are a very curious read. It's interesting to see the perspective of the Southerners of the time regarding slavery. These authors argue that the slaves were very happy in the plantations, and that if there was any abuse against slaves, it was caused by those masters who were also abusive towards their children. Slaves then equaled children, and in the authors' minds, that was perfectly fine. They say that slaves would rather die than leave their masters, and that if a slave ever left the plantations to go to the North, it was because "they have most of them been made disaffected by the influence of others-- tempted by promises which are seldom fulfilled."

As any decently written book does, the anti-Tom books give us a very clear perspective of a section of the population's opinion at the time, and how hard they tried to justify an action as horrible as owning slaves.