Fred Douglass on Uncle Tom's Cabin

Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin was a book printed less than a decade before the Civil War (1852), but some beliecve this book caused more ireeputable harm to blacks in America than it has helped. One white critic, J.C. Furnas, pointed out what he thought Stowe did wrong in her penning of this novel and why it hurt the advancement of blacks in America both before and after the Civil War. He believed her book distorted the reality of race relations in the South and in turn ended up harming the relations even more, especially due to the characterization of particular characters (see: Tom and Chloe). Other scholars like Frederick Douglass supported Stowe's novel and met with her to help open up an interesting discourse regarding the immediate future of former slaves in America directly after emancipation. Even though these discussions did little to stop the implementation of Jim Crow laws across the South, they are interesting to look back on and analyze their actual effects on American society over the past 150 years.