"Nobody does much more than circumstances drive them to."

When Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote her first and most famous novel, Uncle Tomís Cabin, she had never lived in the South. But she had raised her family in Cincinnati, across the river from Kentucky, a slave state. Her knowledge came from newspapers, magazines articles and fugitive slaves, including one of her servants. In response to the Fugitive Slave Act, which made it illegal to help run-away slaves, she wrote the first Amrican protest novel.

Uncle Tomís Cabin sold 10,000 copies itís first day in print and broke sales records for the next five years. Passions ran high around the book, and it is considered a contributing factor to the Civil War. When Stowe met Abraham Lincoln in 1862, he joked, ìSo youíre the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.î

Later in life, Stowe did experience life in the South, by maintaining a winter home in Florida. There she helped establish schools for African- American children. Though she wrote nearly a book a year for the rest of her life, none came close to the popularity of her first.