Pa as a Symbol for Southerners, Ex-confederates, and Plantation Owners after the Emancipation Proclamation

In his novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain uses Huck’s father, Pa, to represent some southerner’s sentiments towards reconstruction after the civil war.
In chapter six of the novel, Pa purports southern sentiments when he rants about the government taking Huck away from him: “Call this a govment! Why, just look at it and see what it’s like. Here’s the law a-standing ready to take a man’s son away from him-a man’s own son, which he has had all the trouble and all the anxiety and all the expense of raising. Yes, just as that man has got that son raised at last, and ready to go to work and begin to do suthin’ for him and give him a rest, the law up and goes for him. And they call that govment! In this passage, Twain compares Pa to an angry slave master who has lost his slave (Huck) to emancipation. All the trouble and anxiety which Pa has had raising Huck, is much like the price that the plantation owner has paid for the services of the slave. Pa also represents the southern sentiment when he complains about Judge Thatcher taking his six thousand dollars and putting him up in a cabin. This is the same kind of argument which plantation owners made to the United States government. The southerners would have been void of their slaves, their source of free labor, and After the emancipation proclamation plantation owners probably felt like the government was leaving them high and dry, which is just like Pa without his son Huck. Twain conveys the southern attitude again when Pa complains about blacks voting during the Election Day. After the 15th amendment gave African-Americans the right to vote, there was a large amount of dissention towards the government from southerners and ex-confederates.
Viewing Pa as a symbol for southerners and ex-confederates also portrays Mark Twain’s attitude towards these ex-confederates. In the novel, Pa is an antagonistic character, the town drunk. Since Pa is a drunk who beats Huck, one could make the argument that Mark Twain did not think very highly of southerners and ex-slave owners.