A book that helped to change history- Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was published on this day in 1852. The anti-slave novel helped to lay the groundwork for the Civil War. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was the best selling novel of the 19th century and the second best selling book behind The Bible. In the first year after it was published it sold over 300,000 copies and this was in 1852 not today. It sold over 1 million in Great Britain. Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe during the Civil War and remarked “So, this is the little lady that started the war.’