&ldquo\;So you&rsquo\;re the little lady w ho started this great war!&rdquo\; \;said President Abraham Lincoln in the fall of 1862 when he finally met Harriet Beecher Stowe. This &ldquo\; little lady&rdquo\; was the author of \;Uncle Tom&rsquo\;s Cabin \ ;a roller-coaster anti-slavery novel that had become a huge best-seller af ter its publication in 1852. Lincoln and many other people at the time bel ieved that Stowe&rsquo\;s novel had caused the Civil War by intensifying p ublic sentiment against slavery in the North and by spurring a reactionary surge of proslavery feeling in the states that would later secede from th e United States to form the Confederate States of America. But Lincoln mig ht just have well have been talking to and about Harriet Tubman. Like Stow e\, Tubman&rsquo\;s activism \;advanced the fight against slavery and edged this country closer to Civil War. As the most famous conductor on th e Underground Railroad\, Tubman and her \;allies built an antislavery escape network that stretched from the bowels of the slave South all the w ay into British Canada. \;Join us for a talk about both of these Ameri can icons with University of Maryland historian Dr. Richard Bell.
\nDr. Richard Bell \;is Professor of History at the University of Maryla nd. He holds a PhD from Harvard University and is author of the new book&n bsp\;Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and their Astonishing O dyssey \;Home \;which is shortlisted for the George Washington Pri ze and the Harriet Tubman Prize. \;He has \;won more than a dozen teaching awards\, including \;the University System of Maryland Board of Regents Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching\, the highest honor fo r teaching faculty in the Maryland state system. He has held \;major r esearch fellowships at Yale\, Cambridge\, and the Library of Congress and is the recipient of the National Endowment of the Humanities Public Schola r award. He serves as a Trustee of the Maryland Center for History and Cul ture\, as an elected member of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts\, and as a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. \;
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