They look back and think nothing but Simon Legree, who was a made up figure created solely for the purpose of pushing Hariet Beecher Stowe's abolitionist propaganda. It was a deliberate distortion of the norm, it was outrage drama for the calculated purpose of rousing anger and hatred.
It was as accurate as all the Hollywood movies that portray the EVIL CORPORATIONS as the most wicked entities on Earth.
It is the same ole same ole from Northeastern Liberals and their current moral fad trying to impose "Change" on the rest of the society so as to coincide with their newly enlightened condition.
Yesterday it was Slavery, today it is "Gay Marriage", "Global Warming", and "Transgender Equality."
What it is, is troublemakers telling lies to induce sweeping social movements, and they simply do not care that what they say is untrue or distorted.
The "Cause" is greater than the need for truth.
Men like Simon Legree existed. More to the point, there was nothing in the legal system to prevent him from doing what he did.
Stowe portrayed a wide variety of slave owners. Many of them decent, just or even kind.
She nowhere made any claim that Legree was typical, in fact quite the opposite. But southerners latched onto what they claimed was a distortion in an attempt to discredit the entire book.
Unlike most who opine about Uncle Tom’s Cabin, I’ve actually read the book.
I was using “Simon Legree” figuratively. The majority of slaves were held by the big planters, who were a tiny minority of the slaveholders, who were themselves a minority of white southerners. From the black perspective, slavery was typified by large slave gangs, extensive slave quarters, overseers, a divergent slave culture, and generally impersonal relations with their owners. The arrangement may not have been brutal, though it sometimes was, but it was NOT the small scale, often paternalistic “domestic servitude” that typified the institution for the great majority of white slave owners. 150 years later, white people and black people both look back and see slavery, but they tend to see very different impressions of it. And both are correct.