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161 Notes Preface 1. In this book, I examine the form—I would argue heresy—of Christianity preached by slaveholders as distinct from classical Christian understandings of human freedom, worth, and dignity. 2. Because of the racial epithet, I hesitated to tell this story. I finally chose to do so because it testifies to the ongoing impact of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and because, as Toni Morrison points out in Playing in the Dark, racism must be addressed with regard to its perpetrators as well as its targets. 3. Although slavery existed in the North until the late eighteenth century and many Northerners continued to profit from slavery later than that, race-based slavery became not only entrenched in the antebellum South’s economy, but also a defining feature of the white South’s much-touted “way of life.” As some historians argue, the particular manifestation of slavery that evolved in the American South was unique among Western civilizations. Introduction 1. Classical understandings of Christianity have never posited God as inherently male or female but rather beyond gender. The “Father” terminology in Christian scripture, for example, is intended to convey relationship and intimacy, not maleness per se, and the Hebrew (original language of the Jewish scriptures/ Old Testament) word for Holy Spirit is feminine, while the Greek (original language of the New Testament) word is neuter. Later chapters of this book examine feminine imagery for God in Hebrew and Christian scripture. 2. In the case against Samuel Green, the governor of Maryland pardoned the convicted man after two years, but only on the condition that he would leave the South. For a detailed discussion of the reception of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the South, see Thomas Gossett, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture. 3. Though the coinage is mine, the concept that both pro- and antislavery proponents claimed scriptural and Constitutional authority has been explored by a number of prominent scholars. Eugene Genovese asserts that proslavery ad- 162 Whitewashing Uncle Tom’s Cabin vocates saw themselves as—Genovese would say they were—the more careful biblical exegetes, and they insisted their hostility toward Northern abolitionists stemmed in part from what they perceived as Yankee liberalization of Trinitarian Christianity (personal conversations and public lecture, 3–5 November 1998, Wingate University, Wingate, N.C.). In his recently published book The TheoPolitical Imagination, William Cavanaugh has coined the same term, although he seems to use it differently. 4. On toleration as a stated goal of such writers, see, for example, the prefaces of Eastman’s and Hentz’s novels and Hale’s Liberia. 5. By my count, there are thirty-one anti–Uncle Tom novels. The count varies widely from scholar to scholar. For example, I exclude Mary E. Herndon’s Louise Elton; or, Things Seen and Heard, which some include, because it seems to me not to fit into the anti–Uncle Tom category. I also exclude several anti–Uncle Tom poems, including “The Hireling and the Slave,” and a children’s story, Little Eva: The Flower of the South, because I focus on fiction targeted for adults. I include a novel by Caroline Gilman even though it was published before 1852 because it was republished as a direct rebuttal to Stowe, and it shares many characteristics with the other anti–Uncle Tom novels by women. For other lists of anti–Uncle Tom texts, see the Uncle Tom’s Cabin Web site created by Stephen Railton at the University of Virginia, and Gossett, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture. Gossett, for example, includes twenty-seven anti–Uncle Tom texts. 6. Given the abundance of abolitionist material in the form of sermons, pamphlets, poems, and various nonfiction appeals, Stowe’s use of the fictive form and its unprecedented social impact is intriguing in and of itself. 7. Nearly half these authors were Northerners. For more information on authors’ native regions, see Hayne and Gossett’s list in the latter’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture (430–31). Though they are not works of fiction and therefore not analyzed here, Slavery in the Southern States (1852) by “A Carolinian” and Notes on Uncle Tom’s Cabin being a Logical Answer to Its Allegations and Inferences against Slavery as an Institution (1853) by E. J. Stearns merit inspection as intriguing examples of anti–Uncle Tom literature. Stearns, for example, in addition to squabbling with Stowe over translations of the Bible from Hebrew and Greek, takes issue with the Declaration of...

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