UTC
The Liberator
[Unsigned Reprint]
Boston: 8 October 1852

UNCLE TOM'S CABIN.

  There is now quite a strong current against the book called Uncle Tom's Cabin, particularly against its morals. The 'Thunderer' across the water has spoken so loud as to make even the New York Evangelist hear, and acknowledge it to be 'no uncertain sound.' The Transcript of this city has spoken through a correspondent, and through a republication of a portion of the English article. The New York Observer, of a recent issue, has fired a long, loud, and sharp gun at a row of errorists and errors, in which this book and its authoress comes in for a large share. Associations of ministers discuss its merits at dinner tables, and many of them condemn the general tone, and intention of the book. All this in a few weeks, without mentioning what your own journal, and still others have done. So much for the sober, second thought of American thinkers, and the same thought of the American people will be sane and right also. Many, long ago, said in private what is now said in public, but it must be confessed, there was a time when it required some moral courage to say, 'I have not read Uncle Tom's Cabin, and do not believe its teaching, which I am obliged to hear, and which if I did not, I should know to be false from the general false teaching of its abolitionist writer, and all of the school when on the peculiar subject.' As a mere literary production, portions of the book are quite clever, while other portions are hardly tolerable.—Boston correspondent of the Journal of Commerce.