Beecher, Henry Ward

Life Span
to
Dickinson Connection
Friend and associate of Horatio Collins King - edited the Christian Associate when King was publisher
    Full name
    Henry Ward Beecher
    Place of Birth
    Birth Date Certainty
    Exact
    Death Date Certainty
    Exact
    Gender
    Male
    Race
    White
    Sectional choice
    North
    Origins
    Free State
    No. of Children
    10
    Family
    Lyman Beecher (father), Roxana Foote Beecher (mother), Harriet Beecher Stowe (sister), Isabella Beecher Hooker (half-sister), Eunice Bullard (wife)
    Education
    Other
    Other Education
    Boston Latis School; Amherst College, MA; Lane Theological Seminary, OH
    Occupation
    Clergy
    Relation to Slavery
    White non-slaveholder
    Church or Religious Denomination
    Presbyterian
    Other
    Other Religion
    Congregationalist
    Political Parties
    Free Soil
    Republican
    Other Affiliations
    Abolitionists (Anti-Slavery Society)

    Henry Ward Beecher (American National Biography)

    Scholarship
    As his fame as a dramatic preacher spread, Beecher in the 1850s also gained a reputation as an abolitionist. An early critic of the expansion of slavery into the western territories, he protested the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law (1850), supported his sister Harriet Beecher Stowe in her publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852, and became an early campaigner for the Republican party. Guns sent to Kansas in 1855 during the dispute over the new territory became known as "Beecher's Bibles," an ironic reference to them as a force for moral suasion. By 1861 he had become a power within the Republican party. As editor of The Independent between 1861 and 1864, he campaigned for the party, supported the war effort, urged Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, and undertook a popular speaking tour of England that helped keep that country from joining the side of the Confederates. Beecher's political speeches, published as Freedom and War (1863) and Patriotic Addresses (1887), identified the northern war effort with God's mission: moral duty would support national destiny.
    Clifford E. Clark, "Beecher, Henry Ward," American National Biography Online, February 2000, http://www.anb.org/articles/08/08-00112.html.
    Chicago Style Entry Link
    Rugoff, Milton Allan. The Beechers: An American Family in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Harper & Row, 1981. view record
    Williams, William R., Henry Ward Beecher, Henry W. Bellows, Stephen H. Tyng, Charles S. Robinson, William Ives Budington, and John McClintock. Our Martyr President, Abraham Lincoln: Voices from the Pulpit of New York and Brooklyn. New York: Tibbals & Whiting, 1865. view record
    How to Cite This Page: "Beecher, Henry Ward," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/5076.