Beecher, Henry Ward (1813–1887), minister and social reformer.Few mid–nineteenth century preachers enjoyed greater popularity than Henry Ward Beecher. Actively involved in the temperance,
antislavery, and
women's right movements, Beecher was a charismatic preacher who helped shape the Evangelical Protestant position on the political issues of his day.
Son of Lyman Beecher, a leader of the Second Great Awakening, Henry was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, the eighth of thirteenth children. After graduating from Amherst College in 1834 and attending Lane Seminary in Cincinnati, he served as a minister in Indiana, and, from 1847 to 1887, as pastor to the Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn, New York. Stressing the regenerative power of God's love for man, Beecher promoted a romantic Christian gospel that stressed social activism and the restorative power of nature.
Although he wrote for the
Independent, a Congregational newspaper, and lectured on the lyceum circuit, Beecher was perhaps best known for his prominent role in the abolitionist movement in the 1850s. Conducting mock auctions of “slave girls” in his church and sending rifles (nicknamed “Beecher's Bibles”) to antislavery settlers in the contested Kansas territory, Beecher and his sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of
Uncle Tom's Cabin, mobilized northern opposition to slavery. During the
Civil War, he lectured in England and helped swing public opinion against the
South.
After the war, he published a successful novel,
Norwood (1867), and edited a new magazine, the
Christian Union. But accusations of adultery tarnished his career in 1874. The heavily publicized trial, involving Beecher's alleged relationship with his parishioner Elizabeth Tilton, resulted in a hung jury and his exoneration; historians remain divided over whether he was guilty. Henry Ward Beecher influenced a generation of preachers and served as a role model for Washington Gladden and other proponents of the
Social Gospel who sought a more political, socially activist role for the ministry.
See also
Beecher, Catharine;
Great Awakening, First and Second;
Kansas‐Nebraska Act;
Protestantism;
Romantic Movement;
Temperance and Prohibition.
Bibliography
William G. McLoughlin , The Meaning of Henry Ward Beecher: An Essay on the Shifting Values of Mid‐Victorian America, 1840–1870, 1970.
Clifford E. Clark Jr. , Henry Ward Beecher: Spokesman for a Middle‐Class America, 1978.
Altina L. Waller , Reverend Beecher and Mrs. Tilton: Sex and Class in Victorian America, 1982.
Clifford E. Clark Jr.
