Mrs. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft's husband was one of 19th-century America's best-known interpreters of Native American culture (Longfellow relied on his accounts in Hiawatha). In her "Dedication," Mrs. Schoolcraft identifies herself mainly as a wife, writing to satisfy her husband's wish for her account of "plantation life" in her "native state of South Carolina." Stowe's name comes up often enough to make it clear that she's also writing to contest Uncle Tom's Cabin. Her novel has only the merest trickle of narrative; it's essentially a series of speeches -- made by characters, the narrator, and published writers from whom she quotes extensively -- that combine a racist "ethnology" of the "African" with a partial reading of the Bible to insist, repeatedly, that God approves slavery as the best way to bring the savage to civilization and to Him.

The Black Gauntlet: A Tale of Plantation Life in South Carolina By Mrs. Henry Rowe (Mary Howard) Schoolcraft (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1860) 202 pages. DEDICATION. . . [page] iii CHAPTER I. . . . . . 11 CHAPTER II. . . . . . 19 CHAPTER III. . . . . . 35 CHAPTER IV. . . . . . 57 CHAPTER V. . . . . . 104 CHAPTER VI. . . . . . 121 CHAPTER VII. . . . . . 133 CHAPTER VIII. . . . . 158 CHAPTER IX. . . . . . 176 CHAPTER X. . . . . . . 201 CHAPTER XI. . . . . . 244 CHAPTER XII. . . . . . 277 CHAPTER XIII. . . . . 310 CHAPTER XIV. . . . . 343 CHAPTER XV. . . . . . 364 CHAPTER XVI. . . . . . 392 CHAPTER XVII. . . . . 427 CHAPTER XVIII. . . . . 451 CHAPTER XIX. . . . . . 487 CHAPTER XX. . . . . . 536 CHAPTER XXI. . . . . 550 CHAPTER XXII. . . . . 560