Antifanaticism

Antifanaticism: A Tale of the South is an 1853 plantation fiction novel by Martha Haines Butt.

[1] Antifanaticism is one of several examples of the plantation literature genre that appeared in reaction to the anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, which had been criticised as inaccurately depicting slaveholders and slavery in general.

[2] Authors from the Southern United States sought to rectify this through their own series of pro-slavery novels.

Butt explains in her novel that Antifanaticism is her first novel,[3] and invites Stowe herself to the south to see that the events of the book, though fictional, are based on reality rather than fiction, which she accuses Stowe of doing in the creation of Uncle Tom's Cabin.

The story takes place somewhere in Virginia, and depicts a group of white plantation owners who put charity towards their black slaves before the harvesting and selling of the cotton on their own plantations, as well as successfully converting several troublesome abolitionists into friendly socialites through a process referred to throughout the novel as "Southern hospitality".