An early critic of the novel, Martin Delany (writing in 1853), suggested that a really heroic slave protagonist, unlike Tom, would have killed his master rather than have allowed him to accomplish his evil domination. This complaint is a traditional one against Tom and against the book itself; the phrase "Uncle Tom" has become a term of contempt, defined in Webster's New World College Dictionary as "a black whose behavior toward whites is regarded as fawning or servile."
Of course, had the fictional circumstances been slightly different — had George Harris been sold south, eventually to wind up on Legree's plantation — we know from George's response to his previous servitude and to Tom Loker's pursuit that he might have behaved in a way more acceptable to such critics as Delany; in fact, George's refusal to accept slavery and its laws is a response which Harriet Beecher Stowe imagined, approved, and rewarded (as shall be seen). But her central hero, Tom, is possessed of a strength that Stowe regarded as being of a higher order than George's strength: the strength of a true Christian (whereas George, originally unable to accept Christianity, originally in fact doubting the existence or at least the goodness of God, must be led by Eliza's faith and the help of the Quaker Simeon Halliday to believe at last in God's presence and eventual justice). Tom, while agreeing with his wife that forgiveness of one's persecutors is not natural, argued that God's grace enables one to overcome nature; this is exactly what Tom is able to do.
