Thousands of worshipers flocked to Beecher's enormous Plymouth Church which still stands today in Brooklyn Heights. Abraham Lincoln, said of Beecher that no one in history had "so productive a mind". Mark Twain went to see Beecher in the pulpit and described the pastor sawing his arms in the air, howling sarcasms this way and that, discharging rockets of poetry and exploding mines of eloquence, halting now and then to stamp his foot three times in succession to emphasize a point."
Beecher himself had this to say of his preaching style: "From the beginning, I educated myself to speak along the line and in the current of my moral convictions; and though, in later days, it has carried me through places where there were some batterings and bruisings, yet I have been supremely grateful that I was led to adopt this course. I would rather speak the truth to ten men than blandishments and lying to a million.
Beecher obtained the chains with which John Brown had been bound, trampling them in the pulpit, and he also held mock 'auctions' at which the congregation purchased the freedom of real slaves," according to the Web site of the still-existing Plymouth Church. The most famous of these former slaves was a young girl named Pinky, auctioned during a regular Sunday worship service at Plymouth on February 5, 1860. A collection taken up that day raised $900 to buy Pinky from her owner. A gold ring was also placed in the collection plate, and Beecher presented it to the girl to commemorate her day of liberation. Pinky returned to Plymouth in 1927 at the time of the Church's 80th Anniversary to give the ring back to the Church with her thanks. Today, Pinky's ring and bill of sale can still be viewed at Plymouth."
His career took place during what one scholar has called the Protestant Century," according to Kazin, "when an eloquent preacher could be a celebrity, the leader of one or more reform movements and a popular philosopher — all at the same time."
Muscular and long-haired, the preacher was close to a series of attractive young women, but his wife, Eunice, the mother of his 10 children, was "unloved."
In the highly publicized scandal known as the Beecher-Tilton Affair he was tried on charges that he had committed adultery with a friend's wife, Elizabeth Tilton. On July 4, 1870, Elizabeth had confessed to her husband, Theodore Tilton, that she had had a relationship with Henry Ward Beecher. Tilton was then fired from his job at the Independent (a leading religious newspaper) because of his editor's fears of adverse publicity. Theodore and Henry both pressured Elizabeth to recant her story, which she did, in writing.
The charges became public when Theodore Tilton told Elizabeth Cady Stanton of his wife's confession. Stanton repeated the story to fellow women's rights leaders Victoria Woodhull and Isabella Beecher Hooker.
Henry Ward Beecher had publicly denounced Woodhull's advocacy of free love. She published a story in her paper the Revolution (Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly) on November 2, 1872, claiming that America's most renowned clergyman was secretly practicing the free-love doctrines which he denounced from the pulpit. The story created a national sensation. As a result, Woodhull was arrested in New York City and imprisoned for sending obscene material through the mail. The Plymouth Church held a board of inquiry and exonerated Beecher, but excommunicated Mr. Tilton in 1873.
Tilton then sued Beecher: the trial began in January 1875, and ended in July, after 112 days captivating the City of Brooklyn and the nation in the newspapers. When the jurors deliberated for six days they were unable to reach a verdict. Eunice loyally supported Beecher throughout the ordeal.
A second board of enquiry was held at Plymouth Church and this body also exonerated Beecher. Two years later, Elizabeth Tilton once again confessed to the affair and the church excommunicated her. Despite this Beecher continued to be a popular national figure. However, the debacle split his family. While most of his siblings supported him, Isabella Beecher Hooker openly supported one of his accusers.
Elizabeth Tilton was ostracized by everyone except her daughter and a group known as the Christian Friends. She died in daughters Brooklyn home in 1897 lonely and blind. She is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery - Brooklyn, on Battle Hill in a grave marked "grandmother" and nothing else. Henry Ward Beecher's stone on another hill in Green-Wood Cemetery simply says "He thinketh no evil".
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