Harriet Beecher Stowe Meets Lincoln

Tuesday, November 25, 1862

Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Harriet Beecher Stowe meets with President Lincoln in Washington, D.C., and later describes the visit as "funny." Stowe's 1852 book, Uncle Tom's Cabin, became the second best-selling book of the 19th century, behind only the Holy Bible, and it helped galvanize the abolitionist movement and provided a continuing moral impetus for the North during the Civil War. According to legend, Lincoln tells her, "so you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war."