A Critique of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin by William Gilmore Simms

William Gilmore Simms did a review of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the Southern Literary Messenger of October 1852 in which he made three main attacks on Stowe’s novel. One, that the novel contained many literary faultst First he denoted that she used her great skill on an unworthy topic, then, he pointed out the fact that the stories of Uncle Tom and the Harris family are completely unrelated and the characters never meet or interact at all. Also, he believed that Stowe portrayed the blacks in a better light than all the whites, and in an unjust way.

On the subject of the treatment of slaves, he provides evidence that Northerners are more severe with blacks than most Southerners.  Two, there were many factual errors Simms claims that slave owners never want a runaway slave dead, and would never order them dead or alive.

Furthermore, killing a runaway slave is notjustifiable by law. As for taking children away from their mothers and selling them as slaves, he quoted the Louisiana Code Noir and says “children who shall not have attained he full age of ten years” (Simms) cannot be separated from their mother.

Three, that Stowe exaggerated many of the events in the book. The cruelty was not as bad as Stowe made it seem, as the depiction of life on the Shelby plantation was accurate for most of the south. Religion was allowed and actually supported by the owners in the south, not abhorredt Simms admits that separations did occur, but not in the cruel way that Stowe depicted it.

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In the end, Simms said the novel filled people who know nothing of slavery with false ideas, and put in an unjust light.