The first half of a passage from the Book of Jeremiah (13:23) is included on the title page: "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?" While the full passage is about evildoers refusing to turn away from evil to good,[4][5] the title conveys the idea that, as leopards could not change their spots, people of African origin could not change what Dixon, as a racist and white supremacist,[1] viewed as inherently negative character traits.
A reply to Uncle Tom's Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe's landmark novel of 1852, Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly, had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the U.S. and is said to have "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War".[6] It was still widely read fifty years after its publication. According to Dixon, whose contact with the work was a dramatized version, Stowe "grossly misrepresent[ed]" the American South, and he felt her sympathetic portrayal of African Americans demanded revision. So as to make it clear he is answering Stowe, he presents his version of Stowe's characters, using Stowe's character names.[7]
Characters
Leading characters of the story (as listed in the book) [8]
Charles Gaston – A man who dreams of making it to the Governor's Mansion
Sallie Worth – A daughter of the old-fashioned South
Gen. Daniel Worth – Her father
Mrs. Worth – Sallie's mother
The Rev. John Durham – A preacher who threw his life away
Mrs. Durham – Of the Southern Army that never surrendered
Tom Camp – A one-legged Confederate soldier
Flora – Tom's little daughter
Simon Legree – Ex-slave driver and Reconstruction leader
Hon. Everett Lowell – Member of Congress from Boston
Helen Lowell – His daughter
Miss Susan Walker – A maiden of Boston
Major Stuart Dameron – Chief of the Ku Klux Klan
Hose Norman – A dare-devil poor white man
Nelse – A black hero of the old régime
Aunt Eve – His wife – "a respectable woman."
Hon. Tim Sheldby – Political boss of the new era
Hon. Pete Sawyer – Sold seven times, got the money once
George Harris Jr. – An Educated Negro, son of Eliza
Dick – An unsolved riddle
Using names of characters in Uncle Tom's Cabin
Simon Legree – In Uncle Tom's Cabin; a cruel master, hateful of religion, superstitious, and determined to “break” Tom
Tom Camp – In Stowe's novel Tom (no last name) is a humble African-American slave and "Mr. Shelby's best hand". Dixon's Tom is a former Confederate soldier, a poor white Christian whose family is victimized by black men.
Hon. Tim Shelby – Political boss. In Uncle Tom's Cabin Arthur Shelby was Tom's owner, who "sold him South". His son George Shelby is also a character.
George Harris Jr. – An educated negro
Dramatization
A dramatization by Dixon, with the same title, was produced in New York in 1913.[9]: 70
^Crowe, Karen (1984). "Preface". In Crowe, Karen (ed.). Southern horizons : the autobiography of Thomas Dixon. Alexandria, Virginia: IWV Publishing. pp. xvii–xviii. OCLC11398740.
