Harriet Beecher Stowe was appalled by slavery, and she took one of the few options open to nineteenth-century women who wanted to affect public opinion: she wrote a novel, a huge, enthralling narrative that claimed the heart, soul, and politics of pre-Civil War Americans. An overtly moralistic work of unabashed propaganda, it is an attempt to make whites-North and South-see slaves as mothers, fathers, and children-as human beings. Her basic question remains penetrating even today: "Is man ever a creature to be trusted with wholly irresponsible power?".