Frederick Douglass was also wary of Stowe’s embrace of colonization, though he did not criticize her portrait of the “soulful” Uncle Tom. He sent off an assimilationist, anti-Indian letter to Stowe explaining why Blacks would never accept colonization. “This black man (unlike the Indian) loves civilization,” Douglass wrote. “He does not make very great progress in civilization himself, but he likes to be in the midst of it.” In not totally rebuking Stowe and her novel, the most influential Black man in America hardly slowed the consumption of the novel’s racist ideas.9
