October 6th, 1855.—School once more—Aunt Robinson “at the helm” as Captain West says. Mrs. Woods, who taught my older sisters when they were too small to be sent off to boarding school, is here on a visit. Something funny has happened. Mrs. Woods came in one morning and handed father a book, she said she bought it to read on the journey down and she was going to give it to him. He thanked her and took the book, his face ?ushed, he said “This is Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” “Yes,” she answered, “it is now in its hundredth edition, but I read in the newspapers that it was not allowed to be sold in the South so I brought this copy for you to read.”
He read it carefully and then he read parts of it over. When he had ?nished the book Mrs. Woods came in and she asked, “Well, Doctor, What do you think of aunt Harriet Stowe’s production?”
Father looked her in the face and then he laid the volume on the library ?re and watched it burn.
“There, Mrs. Woods,” he said, “that is the best place for it.
I wanted to read that book myself but it must have been a bad book for Father, who loves books, to have treated it that way.
Susan Bradford was 9 years old when this entry was made. Her father was Dr. Edward Bradford, owner of Pine Hill Plantation, a large cotton plantation of 3,270 acres established by Bradford between 1829 and 1832 in northern Leon County, Florida.
Diary entries from before 1860 are included when the content is relevant to the issues that led to or framed the American Civil War. — MpG 5/21/2020