**The Vile Wretch in Pet­ti­coats, The Demon of Unrest**

In Wash­ing­ton, South Carolina’s con­gress rep­re­sen­ta­tives found a new source of anger beyond abo­li­tion­ist peti­tions when the *Nation­al Era*, an anti­slav­ery news­pa­per, pub­lished the seri­al­ized nov­el *Uncle Tom’s Cab­in* by Har­ri­et Beech­er Stowe on June 5, 1851. The por­tray­al of slav­ery in this nov­el incit­ed out­rage. The nar­ra­tive begins in a Ken­tucky din­ing par­lor, where two men, includ­ing one named Haley, a slave trad­er, plot to pur­chase a slave named Tom. The novel’s por­tray­al of the bru­tal real­i­ties of slav­ery, includ­ing the vio­lent behav­ior of Simon Legree, who beats and ulti­mate­ly kills Tom, struck a nerve with many read­ers.

The book’s com­ple­tion on April 1, 1852, gained over fifty thou­sand eager read­ers, estab­lish­ing Stowe as a lit­er­ary sen­sa­tion in the North. How­ev­er, the South­ern response was imme­di­ate and severe. Louisa McCord and oth­er South­ern essay­ists con­demned it as mis­con­strued and fanat­i­cal. The prospect of own­ing or read­ing the book quick­ly became dan­ger­ous in the South, as it affront­ed the region’s hon­or by attack­ing slav­ery’s per­ceived virtues. The reac­tion was par­tic­u­lar­ly intense because Stowe was a woman, inten­si­fy­ing misog­y­nis­tic atti­tudes among her crit­ics.

In retal­i­a­tion, South­ern writ­ers launched numer­ous proslav­ery nov­els, con­tort­ing themes from Stowe’s work. Authors like Charles Jacobs Peter­son and the writer of *Aunt Phillis’s Cab­in* craft­ed nar­ra­tives that blamed the effects of slav­ery on North­ern abo­li­tion­ists, rather than the insti­tu­tion itself. Despite the orga­nized respons­es, *Uncle Tom’s Cab­in* sold an astound­ing three hun­dred thou­sand copies with­in three months, affirm­ing North­ern per­cep­tions of slav­ery as cru­el.

Ulti­mate­ly, the South­ern per­spec­tive, entrenched in the belief that slav­ery fos­tered a benev­o­lent soci­ety, clashed vio­lent­ly with Stowe’s por­tray­al. They had no effec­tive means to address the col­lec­tive insult that *Uncle Tom’s Cab­in* posed to the South’s hon­or. Resent­ment grew, sig­nal­ing a deep­er conflict—one that fore­shad­owed the mount­ing pres­sures lead­ing to the Civ­il War. It was not yet full-blown hatred, but the seeds of con­flict were being sown.