American · 1811–1896
Harriet Beecher Stowe was an American author and abolitionist whose novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) galvanized Northern opposition to slavery and became the best-selling novel of the nineteenth century. Born into the prominent Beecher family of preachers and reformers, she drew on her observations of slavery during years living in Cincinnati, across the river from slaveholding Kentucky. Lincoln reportedly greeted her with the words, "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war." She wrote over thirty books, including novels, travel memoirs, and religious works, but none approached the cultural impact of her antislavery masterpiece.