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When I first went to Mississippi, my friends at home asked me: Did you see Uncle Tom's cabin?
Yes, in our literary reading experience, there is a black old uncle who lives by the Mississippi River, loyal and kind, helpful, but is persecuted to death by a cruel and domineering plantation owner.

Illustration in Uncle Tom's Cabin, where a plantation owner hangs a black slave.
Recently, research interest fell into the pit of the American Civil War, and when I encountered "Uncle Tom's Cabin", I learned that Mississippi, including the entire South, has not tolerated this novel since then.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="106" > Have you ever been to a plantation? Do you know black slaves? </h1>
In 1852, at the height of the controversy over the existence and abolition of slavery, the Civil War was on the verge of breaking out. This novel that discredited the plantation owner was published at this time and became very popular, is this not a knife to the hostile forces?
No wonder, the South at the time angrily asked the author, Mrs. Stowe: Have you ever been to the plantation? Do you know plantations? Did you know that black slaves fed and clothed on the plantations, had a stable life, and did not live on the streets?
Mrs. Stowe really couldn't afford to interrogate. She lives in Connecticut, geographically to the north of the United States, and as far south as Ohio, a northern free state bordering north and south. She had never been to any of the dozen slave states in the South, nor had she ever been to a plantation.
Map of the Civil War situation. The green zone is the southern slave state, and Mrs. Stowe lives in the upper right red dot of the coffee-colored free state district. Ohio is in the middle of a brown color.
At that time, there was no internet, no vibrato, no WeChat, no Twitter, no such self-media channels that could get the details of the deep details of the plantation.
Mrs. Stowe was a teacher at a church school in the North, a devout Christian, and perhaps her original intention was to write only as a great propaganda of Christianity. The theme of the work is clear: both white and black are redeemed in the embrace of Christianity. At the end of the novel, when the male protagonist Tom dies, the author directly points out the question through the mouth of the story character: "What a great thing it is to be a Christian!" ”
However, she consciously or unconsciously rubbed the hot theme of slavery.
Mrs. Stowe, a Christian, has been accused of falsehood and slander, and the pressure is high. To prove herself and justify herself, she soon wrote a book, The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, which discusses the "real-life equivalents" of each of the novel's main characters, as well as sources of information and inspiration.
Although later researchers believe that most of the cited works mentioned by Mrs. Stowe were read after the novel was published. However, "The Key" still sold well and launched a more radical attack on Southern slavery than "Uncle Tom".
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="112" > a group of Uncle Tom to rub hot spots</h1>
A black uncle volunteered to stand up and say that he was the prototype of Uncle Tom. The man, he was enslaved on a plantation in Maryland and fled to Ontario, Canada, in 1830. In 1849, his autobiography The Life of Josiah Henson was published. The slave narrative in this book was identified by Mrs. Stowe as part of the inspiration for Uncle Tom's Cabin.
After Mrs. Stowe's novel became a hit, Henson republished the original autobiography as Memoirs of Uncle Tom and gave extensive lecture tours in the United States and Europe.
Henson's home in Ontario, Canada, was later named "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and was preserved as a historic site, with a museum built. It's just that it's far from the Mississippi River and it's the north of the north.
Henson's former home in Canada, now "Uncle Tom's Cottage".
Another book, The State of Slavery in America: Testimony from a Thousand Witnesses, has also been cited as part of The Source of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Mrs. Stowe said that when she lived in Ohio, she had encountered slaves who had fled from the South to the free states and had heard their stories.
Southern writers fought back with their pens, publishing twenty or thirty tit-for-tat novels in ten years, but without much splash.
Among them is the big name writer Simmons. Recently, the Charleston newspaper in the southern city was complaining about the old folk of more than a hundred years ago, saying that he was a writer who was grossly undervalued for political reasons. He was a highly regarded poet, novelist, and historian of his time, whose works were genre-likely detailed accounts of life in the South in the 19th century, and are now used as circumstantial evidence for historical research. But he was born in that era, like many of the leading figures in the South, a supporter of slavery, a writer on the defeated side.
What does the defeated side have to say?
Most Southern novels depict plantations that are large families, with a kind paternalistic white male master and a pure wife, two dedicated African-American slaves who manage childlike cognitive abilities.
Obviously, people don't think that writers who have had a plantation experience, the slave life in the book is closer to the original state of the truth.
Perhaps, for most readers, it is not so important whether it is true or not, the key is whether the novel has written their inner feelings and whether it has aroused strong resonance.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" Data-track="114" > novel ignites the north's anti-slavery rage</h1>
Uncle Tom's Cabin ignited northern anger over slavery and the hunt for fugitive slave law, and the novel was reprinted in one edition after the Bible.
Of course, I am skeptical of this analogy. To put it this way, we have to add time limits, the 19th century.
In this world, the language used by the largest number of people so far is Still Chinese, and the most widely printed and read should be the Mao Xuan Red Treasure Book.
Lincoln must have recognized the novel's role as a popular enlightenment. In 1863, he received Mrs. Stowe.
Lincoln's famous words can sometimes be seen in the text promoting Mrs. Stowe: "You are the little woman who started this great war." ”
However, historians have not confirmed this statement. In a letter to her husband a few hours after meeting Lincoln, Mrs. Stowe made no mention of this assessment that should not have been omitted.
Judging from common sense, Lincoln could not have said this. The Civil War was in a state of stalemate, unable to predict what would happen next, far from the time to discuss the rewards of merit. Even after two years of victory, which cost so many American lives, leaders would not dare to call themselves great. At that time, Lincoln was entangled in his heart and would not say anything like the military merit medal also had half of you.
Mrs. Stowe by Uncle Tom's Cabin.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="115" > Black Slave Wu Tianlu is a Chinese version of Uncle Tom</h1>
The novel was a worldwide hit and was translated into more than twenty languages and published in five years.
Britain, which has the same language, has some schadenfreude mentality. As a famous British writer of the time analyzed: "The evil feelings that Uncle Tom satisfied in England were not hatred of slavery, but jealousy and vanity." We have long lamented America's ego, and we are tired of hearing her brag about herself as the freest and most enlightened country in the world. ”
This national sentiment looks somewhat familiar.
Dickens, a well-known British writer who has published Orphans of the Mist and David Copperfield, replied to Mrs. Stowe with admiration or courtesy: "I have read your book with the deepest interest and sympathy, and I cannot express to you my admiration for this book." ”
Mark Twain, an American writer who grew up in the Mississippi River in the south, moved to Connecticut twenty years later to become a neighbor to the Stowe family, beginning the golden age of his creation. The two writers differ in age by 24 years and have been in contact, but each with a different style.
Decades later, the psychoanalytic master Freud reported that some of the sadistic and masochistic personality formations in his subjects could be traced back to the whipping of black slaves in Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Uncle Tom arrived in China half a century after his appearance, and was translated into Chinese and published by Lin Shu, a transliteration who did not know English, and changed the title of the book to "Black Slave Wu Tianlu", which is far from the original title, but the theme is more prominent.
(Since then, there have been a variety of vernacular translations that are easier to read, more faithful to the original, and more widely circulated.) When I was younger, I should have read one of them, called Uncle Tom's Cabin. )
Later, it was adapted into a stage play, and the picture was more visually impactful: the black slave wore heavy shackles to work in the farmland...
I saw a version of "Black Slave Heavenly Record" on the Internet.
Even a passerby like me, who has no interest, has to jump out and point out the logical irrationality. Leaving aside the character of the planter, the use of shackles is unnecessary and uneconomical. At that time in the Southern United States, black slaves were difficult to escape, the transportation facilities were backward, and the black skin could not get a means of transportation, and the distant roads and various beasts in the primeval forest were natural barriers. Iron shackles have no substantial effect other than hindering work. Moreover, in the agrarian society, iron is still relatively expensive.
The Chinese version of Uncle Tom is actually borrowing the shell of american black slavery to accuse the history of the blood and tears of certain classes and people in his own nation who were enslaved and oppressed.
At this time, there were no plantation owners to challenge the question of whether Uncle Tom was a southern slave or not. After the defeat of the war, they and their descendants had no heart to fight for these metaphysical and unsatisfied things except to make a living and repair their broken homes bit by bit.
Novels, in themselves, belong to the fictional category and are not suitable for the right number to sit in. Even documentary categories are selective and oriented.
Literary works never reflect the real world, but the world that people recognize, the kind of idea.
Moreover, the life of the characters in the works comes not only from the author's creation, but also from the reader's interpretation. After Uncle Tom came out, he had an independent life, went farther and farther away, lost control, and it was difficult for the author to recognize him.
If Mrs. Stowe had known about it, she would have been disappointed and saddened. Because the adapted screenplay completely removed the Christian content. Living in an era of lack of copyright protection, she did not get much money from the hot sales of this book.
Uncle Tom has come to this day of black life and has been criticized and accused again.
Because the image of black people it portrays cannot keep up with the needs of modern democratic liberal movements. Happy and lazy Sam, silly black kid Topsy. And Tom, Mrs. Stowe, who had intended to be made a Christ-like figure, as Jesus had done during his crucifixion, forgiving those responsible for his death, is now a pejorative term, "a lowly and condescending fool who bows to white men" and engages in "racial betrayal" that makes slaves worse than slave owners.
In other words, even now, the leaders of the black liberation movement are reluctant to admit that Uncle Tom is a slave to the South.