Aunt Phillis's Cabin - in Other Works

In Other Works

• Another 1852 anti-Tom novel, Life at the South; or, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" As It Is by W. L. G. Smith, features a title similar to the full title of Eastman's novel. Both novels likely based their titles on American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses, an 1839 volume co-authored by abolitionists Theodore Dwight Weld and the Grimké sisters, which was a source for some of the content in Uncle Tom's Cabin.
• In the preface of Aunt Phillis's Cabin, Eastman quoted a variety of sources from the Bible which she claimed supported slavery as an institution. These same quotes, typical of those used by Southern ministers, were used in another anti-Tom novel, The Black Gauntlet: A Tale of Plantation Life in South Carolina by Mary Howard Schoolcraft, which was published four years later in 1860.
• The scene of the death of Aunt Phillis as a Christianized slave became a frequent cliche among the later anti-Tom novels. Other novels that feature slaves' passing away as converted Christians include: Frank Freeman's Barber Shop by Baynard Rush Hall (1852), and Uncle Robin, in His Cabin in Virginia, and Tom Without One in Boston by J. W. Page (1853). Whether this cliche is solely derived from Eastman's novel or from the pious death of Uncle Tom in Uncle Tom's Cabin is open to debate.