Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 January 1913 — DECRIES UNCLE TOM’S CABIN [ARTICLE]

DECRIES UNCLE TOM’S CABIN

Man Declares Work Is Caricature and Has Done More Harm Than Any Other Volume.

Camden, N. J.—ln an address at the Camden high school, F. Hopkinson Smith, writer and artist, said that “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” had done more harm than any other book ever written. He added that the general condition of the negro had not improved since the Civil war, and that ihe negroes of the south were happier, better cared for and more content in the days of slavery than they were now. Mr. Smith’s criticism of Uncle Tom's Cabin” was based on his belief that the book gave the world an erroneous conception of the negroes’ life and condition before the war. He said the chief incidents in Mrs. Stowe’s work were such as never Could have happened in the south. He attributed much of the bP’erness that prevailed in the south years before the, war to "misinformation conveyed broadcast” by “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Mrs. Stowe, he said, was to be blamed only for making such use of Incidents that came to her knowledge at second hand. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” as a whole, he Insisted, was a highly colored caricature that did not reflect real life In the Bouth.