Quote:
Originally Posted by WT Sharpe
Slavery is such an emotion-laden topic that I don't know if we'll ever get an unbiased picture of what life was like under the American system. Furthermore, if we are ever presented with such a picture, how would we recognize it?
The horrors spoken of in Uncle Tom's cabin were all real. There really were people who used whips, chains, and dogs on slaves. The only question is how widespread these horrors were. Even in Harriet Beecher Stowe's book many slaveholders were depicted as kind and caring.
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You may like to read Dickens' "American Notes", which is a record of a journey he made through America in 1842. He has a lot to say about slavery in that book, seeing it as an "outside observer".