According to the opinion of President Lincoln, which best-selling 1852 novel helped bring on the American Civil War?

Legend holds that upon meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1862, President Abraham Lincoln remarked, "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war." The book in question was her 1852 anti-slavery novel, which became an immediate international bestseller, second only to the Bible in sales during the 19th century. Stowe's work was revolutionary because it put a human face on the institution of slavery for a mass audience, depicting the suffering, faith, and dignity of enslaved characters like Uncle Tom and Eliza.

Written in direct response to the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, the novel moved the issue of slavery from a distant political debate to an urgent moral crisis in the homes of everyday readers. It galvanized abolitionist sentiment across the North and was credited with swaying British public opinion against supporting the Confederacy.

In the South, however, the book was met with fury. It was banned and denounced as slanderous propaganda, leading to a wave of pro-slavery literature written to counter its narrative. While many complex factors led to the Civil War, Stowe's powerful story is widely credited with crystallizing Northern opposition to slavery and deepening the cultural chasm between the two sides of the nation.