When Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, met with Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, Lincoln allegedly said to her, "So you must be the woman who started this great war."
Lincoln was not being completely serious, of course, but many people do point to Uncle Tom's Cabin as the book that galvanized opposition to slavery. The novel was extremely successful—the bestselling novel in American history, up to that point—and gave people around the country an intimate and horrifying look at what slavery was like. There were many, many other reasons for the Civil War, but Uncle Tom's Cabin certain marks a major turning point in the abolitionism movement.
