[Mark in the Old South]

Re: "The booklet apparently is used as a counterbalance to the works of Harriet Beecher Stowe and others that are also part of the curiculum."

I've read Stowe, I really don't think it is possible to counterbalance her work. Most of the point of Uncle Tom's Cabin was to show how even good and well meaning slave owners could not make the institution okay. In fact there is only one truly bad actor (Simon Legree) two of Uncle Tom's owners were almost saintly and most of the others somewhere in-between (selfish would be the best word to describe them) but far from evil.

I still can not figure how Uncle Tome became a pejorative term considering Uncle Tom was the only slave that stood up to the evil Simon Legree, and paid for it with his life. You really have to read the book. I fear most only think they know what it is about. It is really a morality tale. Very powerful, very moving.

[mac_truck]

I've read Stowe, I really don't think it is possible to counterbalance her work.

I agree that Uncle Tom's Cabin has been and continues to be greatly misinterpreted by all sides of the slavery issue. Stowe wrote the book after traveling in the south and being greatly moved by what she saw of that peculiar institution. The villian of the story, Simon Legree, was a yankee.

Yet when Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in 1851 it enraged southern society and was quickly banned in the south. Her book also galvinized support in the north for ending (or at least not extending) slavery in the United States.

[steve-b]

The booklet apparently is used as a counterbalance to the works of Harriet Beecher Stowe and others that are also part of the curiculum.

For an encore, they can have the students read Nazi propaganda as a "counterbalance" to the Federalist Papers, and follow it up by a study of DU rantings as a "counterbalance" to the news reports.

Where do these people come from?