Uncle Tom's Cabin-Submissive

In class we had a discussion about Uncle Tom, the character and when someone is called Uncle Tom, and whether or not  the character was too submissive. I think that Uncle Tom was doing as best as he could and he was actually being treated fairly, so why would he try to change things when his situation is way better than it could have actually been. Had he been at any other plantation in the South, he probably would have been whipped, beaten, and treated very poorly for even the littlest mistakes. I think people today should not say that Uncle Tom was too submissive because they have no idea what it was like to personally be a slave and what they would have done had they been in an Uncle Tom situation or one that had more dire of outcomes.