Henry Ward Beecher

Henry Ward Beecher (June 24, 1813 – March 8, 1887) was an American Congregationalist clergyman, social reformer, and speaker whose public life stretched across the years before, during, and after the Civil War. He became known for his support of the abolition of slavery, his emphasis on God’s love, and the widely reported adultery trial of 1875. After the death of his father in 1863, Beecher was described as “the most famous preacher in the nation,” and biographer Debby Applegate later titled her biography of him The Most Famous Man in America.

Beecher was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, the eighth of 13 children of Lyman Beecher, a Presbyterian preacher from Boston who became one of the best-known evangelists of his era. His siblings included Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose abolitionist novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin brought her worldwide fame, as well as educators Catharine Beecher and Thomas K. Beecher, and activists Charles Beecher and Isabella Beecher Hooker. His mother, Roxana, died when Henry was three. His father later married Harriet Porter, whom Henry described as “severe” and subject to bouts of depression.

The Beecher household mixed fun and seriousness in unusual ways. The family was poor, and Lyman Beecher set a heavy schedule of prayer meetings, lectures, and religious services, while banning the theater, dancing, most fiction, and the celebration of birthdays or Christmas. Storytelling and listening to their father play the fiddle were among the family pastimes. As a child, Henry had a stammer and was considered slow-witted by comparison with some of his siblings. At 14, he began oratorical training at Mount Pleasant Classical Institute in Amherst, Massachusetts. He later attended Amherst College, gave his first sermon or talk in 1831, and decided to enter the ministry instead of pursuing his early dream of going to sea.

Beecher graduated from Amherst College in 1834 and from Lane Theological Seminary in 1837. That same year he married Eunice Bullard and began serving as minister of the First Presbyterian Church in Lawrenceburg, Indiana. In 1839 he moved to Indianapolis to lead Second Presbyterian Church. His preaching there was a major success, helping build it into the largest church in the city. In 1847, he became the first pastor of Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, New York, where his fame grew quickly. On the lecture circuit and in the pulpit, he used humor, dialect, and slang in a way that was unusual for a speaker of his era.

Over the course of his ministry, Beecher developed a theology that placed God’s love above all else. He also became deeply involved in social reform. Before the Civil War, he raised money to purchase enslaved people from captivity and to send rifles, nicknamed “Beecher’s Bibles,” to abolitionists fighting in Kansas. During the war, he toured Europe speaking in support of the Union. After the war, he supported women’s suffrage and temperance, and he championed Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, saying it was not incompatible with Christian belief.

Beecher’s public life also included scandal. In 1872, Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly published a story about his affair with Elizabeth Richards Tilton, the wife of his friend and former co-worker Theodore Tilton. In 1874, Tilton filed charges for “criminal conversation” against Beecher. The trial ended in a hung jury and became one of the most widely reported trials of the century. Yet Beecher’s voice remained significant because it joined religion, public speech, and reform in a direct, human style. His focus on the love of Christ continued to influence mainstream Christianity into the 21st century.