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
Litchfield, CT
Burial Place
Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, NY
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.
Date Event
Annual "renting of the pews" at Rev. Beecher's Plymouth Church in Brooklyn brings record return
"Slave auction" at Rev. Henry Ward Beecher's Brooklyn church frees nine-year old slave girl
Wife of Henry Ward Beecher has narrow escape in carriage accident
Large gathering of leading New Yorkers demonstrate their support of Italian liberty
Henry Ward Beecher's church members welcome him home from a lengthy trip to Europe
In Charleston Harbor, General Robert Anderson re-hoists the United States flag over Fort Sumter
- In Cleveland, Ohio, the Democratic-aligned Soldiers and Sailors Union, holds its first annual convention.
Bleeding Kansas
Fugitive Slave Law
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Date Title
Reverend Henry Ward Beecher's remarks at the ceremony restoring the flag to Fort Sumter, South Carolina, April 14, 1865
Date Title
Richmond (VA) Dispatch, "A Case in Point," January 3, 1857
Washington (DC) National Era, “Collapse of Abolitionists,” October 22, 1857
New York Times, “Bringing Men Together,” August 17, 1858
New York Times, “The Underground Railroad in Orange County,” July 1, 1859
Richmond (VA) Dispatch, "Northern Impertinences with Regard to the Late Affair at Harpers Ferry," October 24, 1859
Carlisle (PA) American Volunteer, "Tenderly Sensitive," November 3, 1859
New York Herald, “A Suggestion to Governor Wise About Old Brown,” November 27, 1859
New York Herald, “Helper and His Black Republican Endorsers,” October 28, 1860
New York Herald, “Greeley for Senator, Why Not?,” February 3, 1861
Boston (MA) Liberator, “An Ancient and A Modern Compromise,” April 19, 1861
Charleston (SC) Mercury, “Henry Ward Beecher on War,” April 19, 1861
Edwin Stanton, Orders for ceremonies at Fort Sumter, Charleston Harbor, South Carolina
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.