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 's 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.