Cudjo's Cave: A Story of the Civil War

308, [8] pp. "Cudjo’s Cave, by J. T. Trowbridge, an antislavery novel, first published in 1863, was, like its predecessor ‘Neighbor Jackwood,’ very widely read. The scene of the story is eastern Tennessee, at the outbreak of the rebellion. The State, though seceding, contained many Unionists; and their struggles against the persecution of their Confederate neighbors, slave-holders, and poor whites, form the plot of the book. The ostensible hero is Penn Hapgood, a young Quaker schoolteacher, whose abolitionist doctrines get him into constant trouble; but the really heroic figure of the book is a gigantic full-blooded negro. Pomp, a runaway slave, living in the woods in a great cave with another runaway, Cudjo. Cudjo is dwarfish and utterly ignorant, a mixture of stupidity and craft; but Pomp is one of nature’s noblemen. Cudjo’s cave becomes a refuge for the persecuted abolitionists of the neighborhood, a basis of operations for the Union sympathizers, and finally the seat of war in the region. The novel, though written with a strong ethical purpose, is interesting and effective simply as a story, containing much incident and some capital character-studies." "John Townsend Trowbridge (September 18, 1827 - February 12, 1916) was an American author. Trowbridge also wrote numerous works under the pseudonym of Paul Creyton."