Uncle Tom's Cabin is a deeply moving novel centered around the lives of Uncle Tom and others and which very effectively portrays the suffering caused by the practice of slavery in the American South, prior to and during the time of the Civil War. The novel is written by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe who was a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Academy and an active abolitionist. The novel is believed to have had such a profound effect that President Lincoln even told Stowe “So you’re the little lady whose book started the Civil War.” The novel depicts the harsh reality of slavery while also showing that Christian love and faith can overcome even something as evil as enslavement of fellow human beings. This was the best-selling novel of the 19th Century and is said to have helped fuel the cause of the abolitionists.