The Black Gauntlet is an example of the pro-slavery plantation literature genre that was written in response to the anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Critics accused Stowe of exaggerating (or inaccurately depicting) Southern society, slaveholders, slaves and the institution of slavery in the South.

[1] The Black Gauntlet is unusual as a late example, as the majority were written and published soon after Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852.

The competing novels were part of the public, rhetorical arguments between North and South in the years of rising political and social tensions before the American Civil War.

[2] Schoolcraft's work used quotes which had also appeared in Aunt Phillis's Cabin (1852) by Mary Henderson Eastman, a native Virginian.