When Harriet Beecher Stowe was introduced to Abraham Lincoln in 1862, the president reportedly said, "So this is the little woman who made this great war." Apocryphal or not, the words were apt.  Uncle Tom's Cabin  portrayal of the evils of institutionalized slavery galvanized the American public to new abolitionist heights and today remains a crucial literary artifact in a country still wrestling with the legacies of its past. Harriet Beecher Stowe  (1811–1896) was a writer and abolitionist whose debut novel,  Uncle Tom's Cabin , became a worldwide phenomenon and catapulted her to fame. Unlike many of her female contemporaries, Stowe published under her own name, no matter how contentious or divisive the subject.