Editing Uncle Tom's Cabin (section)

==Anti-Tom literature==
{{Main|Anti-Tom literature}}
[[File:Auntphillis.jpg|thumb|Title page for ''[[Aunt Phillis's Cabin]]'' by Mary Eastman, one of many examples of anti-Tom literature]]
In response to ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'', writers in the Southern United States produced a number of books to rebut Stowe's novel.{{sfn|Glowacki|2015|p=14}} ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' was published in 1862, and very quickly seven Anti-Tom novels were published in 1852 and six more in 1853. This so-called [[Anti-Tom literature]] generally took a pro-slavery viewpoint, arguing that the issues of slavery as depicted in Stowe's book were overblown and incorrect.{{sfn|Cordell|2008|p=9}} The novels in this genre tended to feature a benign white patriarchal master and a pure wife, both of whom presided over childlike slaves in a benevolent extended family style plantation. The novels either implied or directly stated that African Americans were a childlike people{{sfn|Williams|2001|p=113}} unable to live their lives without being directly overseen by white people.{{sfn|Jordan-Lake|2005|p= 120}}

Among the most famous anti-Tom books are ''[[The Sword and the Distaff]]'' by [[William Gilmore Simms]], ''[[Aunt Phillis's Cabin]]'' by [[Mary Henderson Eastman]], and ''[[The Planter's Northern Bride]]'' by [[Caroline Lee Hentz]],{{sfn|Beidler|2005|p=29}} with the last author having been a close personal friend of Stowe's when the two lived in Cincinnati. Simms' book was published a few months after Stowe's novel, and it contains a number of sections and discussions disputing Stowe's book and her view of slavery. Hentz's 1854 novel, widely read at the time but now largely forgotten, offers a defense of slavery as seen through the eyes of a Northern woman—the daughter of an abolitionist, no less—who marries a Southern slave owner.{{sfn|Cuenca|1997–1998|p= 90}}

In the decade between the publication of ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' and the start of the [[American Civil War]], between twenty and thirty anti-Tom books were published (although others continued to be published after the war, including ''[[The Leopard's Spots]]'' in 1902 by "professional racist" [[Thomas Dixon Jr.]]).{{sfn|Benbow|2010|p=510}} More than half of these anti-Tom books were written by white women, Simms commenting at one point about the "Seemingly poetic justice of having the Northern woman (Stowe) answered by a Southern woman."{{sfn|Gates|1987|p=134}}