The time period between 1861 and 1865 was the most turbulent time in our nations history; it was the period when our country fought itself in a civil war. The book "Uncle Tom’s Cabin" contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War by showing the evils of slavery. Harriet Beecher Stowe witnessed slavery and heard first hand stories from enslaved people. The speech “The Gettysburg Address,” by Abraham Lincoln, was a way to inspire the nation’s spirit into a rebirth of freedom and a dedication to the soldiers that lost their lives at the turning point of the war. Lincoln was the President at this time, always encouraging America while preserving the Union and putting a stop to slavery. Walt Whitman’s poem, “O Captain! My Captain!” was published in honor of Abraham Lincoln, the man who took steps to end slavery. Whitman, a member of the Free Soil Party, opposed slavery and wrote about the Civil War’s horror in notebooks and poems. The Civil War was the period where Americans fought each other over slavery, best understood through the eyes and intimate knowledge of the people who lived through it, as seen in the literature of the era. A well known activist, Harriet Beecher Stowe, published the novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which provoked the South and influenced a multifarious amount of people living in the United States and the United Kingdom. Harriet’s parents, Lyman Beecher, a Presbyterian minister and Roxana Foote, a devoted well educated woman raised their children where reading, religion, and writing were an essential part of life. As children Harriet and her siblings grew up in Litchfield, Connecticut, a free state. As a result of Harriet’s upbringing, she began to take an interest in writing. Winning her first award at the age of nine, she began writing essays, poems, and books. Lyman moved to Cincinnati to take up a minister job and Harriet followed where she met her future husband, Calvin Stowe. Calvin was a criti