“So, this is the little lady who started this great war.” Apocryphal or not, the statement is ascribed to Abraham Lincoln on meeting the “little lady,” Harriet Beecher Stowe, the woman who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the most popular and best-selling novel of the 19th Century. There are those moments in history when an artist gives voice to the deep-seated issues and powerful forces underlying the times. When Stowe’s novel was published In 1852, the issue of slavery that had been sleeping like a coiled serpent round the best intentions of the new republic. The North and the South stood at loggerheads and, despite the many efforts put forth in Congress to reach some compromise, the institution of slavery remained an abstract trigger that impelled extreme reactions on both sides. Uncle Tom’s Cabin made the abstract concept very real for millions of readers. As readers delved into the lives of Uncle Tom, Eliza and Eva, who were sold and moved from slave owner to slave owner, their well-being wholly dependent on the character and intentions of their master (personified by the cruel Simon Legree), the grave sin of slavery ceased to be an abstract concept. The characters, the crime, the suffering and the call to action became more than a story for millions. The novel sparked a cause fueled by emotions and sympathy then based in the readers’ vicarious experience. In the minds of millions, slaves ceased to be property and became people, fully human, created and loved by God. They became a people to be freed, and slavery became an institution to be abhorred and banned. Uncle Tom’s Cabin might not have started the Civil War, but it certainly gave many a reason and the courage to fight.  (Summary by Michael Hogan)

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