Chapter XI…

Chapter XI

Invitation to come East—Call to Plymouth Church—Friendly Misgivings—Plainly Outlining his Views—Early Success—Plymouth Burned—Preaching in the Tabernacle.

Mr. Beecher had confidently expected to have remained permanently in the West, and to have grown up with the new but rising country; but it was destined to be otherwise.

His fame had spread Eastward, and in the early winter of 1846 a tentative effort was made to call him thither. Mr. W. T. Cutler, returning from a visit at the West, wrote in December, 1846, to Mr. Beecher that Dr. Storrs had been called to the Church of the Pilgrims; that one of Dr. Cheever’s principal men, J. Hunt, had “observed to me that Dr. Cheever named you as the man for the Pilgrims, and he thinks that there will be new churches formed on the Congregational plan here and in Brooklyn, and that you are the man to build up one of them.” While in Cincinnati Mr. Cutler called on Dr. Lyman Beecher relative to his son’s going East, but “he set his face like flint against it.” He then had a long and urgent talk with the son again, in answer to which he received the following letter:

“INDIANAPOLIS, December 15, 1846.

”DEAR SIR: Your letter has just come to hand, and thanks for it. I am glad you saw father, for your sake, for his, and for mine. Touching the question of our former conversations, this is my position: My pride tells me that if the only question in life were personal advantage, he is on the right road who is developing truth within himself, and the road to truth lies in one’s own self, and not in the place where he lives. But my conscience tells me, and, I thank God, my whole heart goes with my conscience, that the grand question in human life is the work of benevolence—the doing good on our scale, just as God does on His. I am sure that the shortest road to one’s own happiness is by making others happy. Now, in this work, the labor of usefulness, if there be one thing which, above all others, I especially abhor, it is this cant talk about ‘taking care of one’s influence’; going where one can ‘use his influence to best advantage’; refraining from this or that for fear ‘of ignoring influence,’ and all suchlike trash. A man’s influence is simply the shadow which usefulness casts. Let him look out that he is doing enough, and doing the right things, and then he may spare all time usually employed in looking after his shadow lest it should give him the slip.

“As to where a man shall live and labor I have no plan, no theory except this: That God has a very sufficient ability to make Himself understood when He wants a man. A man should work just where he is until he is clearly called somewhere else. This keeping one’s ear open to hear if God is not calling, this looking out every little while to see if one is not wished for somewhere else, is rather of the nature of self-seeking. A minister, like a maiden, ought not to make the first overtures, nor to be over-eager to have them made to him.

“Now, I set forth this long preamble because it has occurred to me that my situation and my conversations with you were a little queer, and that it was worth while to state explicitly where I stand.

“Whenever it clearly seems to me that God has work for me to perform, I shall, I hope, perform it, wherever it lies and whatever the work may be. Moreover, when God has work for me in another sphere, I do not doubt that He will make it so plainly His voice that calls me that I shall be in no more doubt about it than Abraham was when called to leave his native land or when called to offer up his son. I have no plan for staying here, or for going to the West, or for going to the East. I leave it entirely with Him who called me to the ministry where I shall live, where and when I shall die; and in all fields, actual or contemplated, I do desire above every other thing to have a heart prepared to receive that welcome call, joyous to every one who has tasted of the powers of the world to come, to go up and labor in a higher field, with ennobled faculties and results, every one of which shall be both perfect and illustrious.

“I believe that Christ will surely lead you wisely, if you will be led; and that He will point out to you what enterprises it will be wise for you to undertake, and to what one of all His multitudinous servants you should apply for help. And should I never labor in such service with you or near you, in New York, what then? I feel, in that respect, as if we were like the two portions of our army before Monterey. What matters it on which side of the city we are, since on either side we are bravely pushing our arms toward a common centre, and when we meet it will assuredly be in the hour of victory?

“But if ever I come to you or go to any other place, although I have no plan as to situations, I have, I hope, an immovable plan in respect to the objects which I shall pursue. So help me God, I do not mean to be a party man, nor to head or follow any partisan effort. I desire to aid in a development of truth and in the production of goodness by it. I do not care in whose hands truth may be found, or in what communion; I will thankfully take it of any. Nor do I feel bound in any sort to look upon untruth or mistake with favor because it lies within the sphere of any church to which I may be attached.

“I do not have that mawkish charity which seems to arise from regarding all tenets as pretty much alike—the charity, in fact, of indifference—but another sort: a hunger for what is true, an exultation in the sight of it, and such an estimate and glory in the truth as it is in Christ that no distinction of sect or form shall be for one moment worthy to be compared with it. I will overleap anything that stands between me and truth. Whoever loves the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity and in truth is my brother. He that doeth God’s will was, in Christ’s judgment, His mother, His sister, His brother, His friend, His disciple.

“Your visit has certainly been of collateral advantage to me. Some who did not seem to care whether I had anything to live on or not have been stirred up, at least to attempt to discharge the pledges to me for a support: $800 does not seem to me to be an extravagant salary, but I would gladly take $600 in lieu of it, if I could have it paid regularly.

“Give my love to Mr. Day and family, if you know them; if not, just take this letter in your hand, go to his store, show him this paragraph: ‘Mr. Day, allow me to present to you my friend, Mr. Cutler. Mr. Cutler, I am happy in introducing you to an old and valued friend, Mr. Day.’

“And now, as you are at the fountain of news, why will you not drop me a line from time to time, and keep me apprised of things in the great world? You hold the pen of a ready writer as well as the tongue of a ready speaker. And though I may have little news to send in return, such as I have will I give unto thee.

Truly yours, “H. W. BEECHER.“

Again in February Mr. Cutler wrote, this time asking pointedly if Mr. Beecher would accept a call to Brooklyn, stating that the property formerly owned by the First Presbyterian Church—Rev. Dr. Cox—had been purchased by Henry C. Bowen, Seth B. Hunt, and David Hale; that it would be vacant in May, and that they proposed to organize in it a new church on the Congregational plan; that if he would come they would give him a salary of $1,500 per annum, and, if necessary, make it $2,000. Mr. Cutler held out many alluring inducements, but without apparent effect. Mr. Beecher would not even entertain the proposition. In the meantime Mr. Cutler shrewdly reasoned that if he would come East, even for a short time, it might be possible to make him change his mind. It was so arranged that Mr. Beecher received an invitation from the American Home Missionary Society to deliver an address, under its auspices, at what was then called the “May Anniversaries” held in New York. He accepted this invitation, intending, as he said since, “to urge young men to go West, to show what a good field the West was, and to cast some fiery arrows at men that had worked there and got tired, and slunk away, and come back. I remember that I was particularly glowing on this subject; but I came East not knowing what I did. It was a trap. Brother Cutler (who has gone to heaven), it seems, had a little plan at that very time, and I was running into a noose, though I did not suspect it. The result of that visit was the formation of this church [Plymouth]. Mr. David Hale, of the Journal of Commerce—whose son Richard is still one of our members, though he is not with us—with two or three others, desired at once to extend me an invitation to become the pastor of this church. But the church did not exist. It was like asking a young man to become the husband of an unborn girl. There was no church to be my bride. I refused to receive a call to an empty house. They therefore made haste to form a church; and I think it was early in June of the same year that some twenty-five persons covenanted together over this very ground for the church as it then stood. The main building fronted on one street, and the lecture-room on the other. Here they agreed to become a church of Christ; and then they extended to me a call to be its pastor. The call was not publicly known until the October following; but still the mischief was done.”

On Sunday evening, June 13, 1847, Plymouth Church was formally organized with a membership of twenty-one, Rev. R. S. Storrs, of the Church of the Pilgrims, preaching the sermon.

On the Monday evening following business meetings were held by both the church and society, in each of which it was unanimously voted to invite Mr. Beecher to be their pastor, with a salary of fifteen hundred dollars the first year, seventeen hundred and fifty the second year, and two thousand the third year and thereafter.

A formal call was at once sent.

For the first time the question was taken into serious consideration, and for the next two months every argument was presented that might lead to an acceptance of the call, great stress being laid on the fact that in the larger field could be accomplished a more important work and an influence might be exerted that would be felt throughout the entire country; that the West could easily be reached from New York, when it might be difficult to reach New York from the West.

Long and most urgent letters were sent to Dr. Lyman Beecher, begging him to withhold any adverse influence. It is very doubtful if any of the inducements or the flattering representations so strongly presented had succeeded in winning him from the field where he was then working, were it not that another influence was silently and powerfully at work. The health of his wife, who literally was giving her very life to aid and sustain him in his work, was rapidly failing under the malarial influences of the West. It became very evident that she must have rest and a change of climate. A few years in the East might restore her health, then he could return and resume his work. In August he came to a decision, and on the 12th wrote his letter of resignation, in which he set out his reasons and plans:

“INDIANAPOLIS, August 12, 1847.

”To the Elders of the Second Presbyterian Church, Indianapolis:

“DEAR BRETHREN: I have the very painful necessity laid upon me of relinquishing the pastoral charge of the church over which for eight years I have presided. I need not assure you that I do it with extreme grief. If I could have had the control of my own affairs I should certainly have supposed it wisest and best that, for the present at least, I should remain in the West and with you. It is only the firm belief that in removing temporarily to the sea-coast I should save the life and restore the health of my wife that has induced me to sever the connection which has so long and so pleasantly existed between us. I am peremptorily warned, not only by those in whose medical skill I place implicit reliance, but by a continual confirmation of their judgment in actual experience, to leave this climate if I would save her life. You will perceive in this state of facts that against which neither I nor any one can form any argument or persuasion. I cannot express the feelings which have warred in my breast in the anticipation of this necessity, nor can I without the deepest regret recall the deficiencies of my ministry among you. But I shall never forget the kindness with which my failings have been borne, the sympathy which I have experienced from you in the vicissitudes of the past eight years, and that co-operation without which I am sure I could but in a small part have accomplished the work which has been done. There are some details of arrangements which I desire to make, but which can be better treated in conversation.

“I am, with Christian and personal affection, very truly yours,

H. W. BEECHER.”

Having decided, he wrote at once to the committee of Plymouth Church from whom he had received the call:

“INDIANAPOLIS, August 19, 1847.

”DEAR BROTHERS: I desire to convey through you to the Plymouth Church and congregation my acceptance of the call to the pastoral office tendered by them to me.

“I cannot regard the responsibilities of this important field without the most serious diffidence, and I wholly put my trust in that Saviour whom I am to preach in your midst. I can heartily adopt the language of Paul: ‘Brethren, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may have free course and be glorified.’ It will be necessary for me to remain yet for some time in this place, but I hope to arrive in Brooklyn in the middle of October, or at farthest by the first of November.

“I am, in Christian love, most truly yours, “H. W. BEECHER.

“JOS. T. HOWARD, “H. C. BOWEN, “CHAS. ROWLAND, and others.”

While in the East, after having received the call from Plymouth Church and while the question of acceptance was still in doubt, Mr. Beecher also received a call from the Park Street Church of Boston—the same church where he had preached nine years before, when on his way back to Lawrenceburg with his young wife.

On June 10, 1847, he received a letter from the Rev. Silas Aikens, the pastor of Park Street Church, stating that they very much desired Mr. Beecher to accept a call to the position of associate pastor.

Early in July a formal call was sent by the church and society to the same effect, but was shortly afterwards declined.

The call to Brooklyn having been definitely accepted, Mr. Beecher began at once to arrange for the removal of his family. His salary was in arrears. To meet the necessities of his family he had been obliged to borrow five hundred dollars. This, with other and smaller debts, must be paid, and money must be raised wherewith to transport his family East. But how? Fortunately this difficulty had been foreseen, and as soon as it seemed probable that the call would be accepted the friends at Plymouth Church, in prophecy of that generosity which characterized them in all after-years, promptly raised by subscription one thousand dollars, and notified Mr. Beecher to draw thereupon as he might need.

About the first of October, 1847, he started Eastward, leaving Indianapolis on the first passenger-train run on the new road just built. Modern luxuries had not then been introduced, if we may rely upon his account of the ride:

“The car was no car at all, a mere extempore wood-box, used sometimes without seats for hogs, but with seats for men, of which class I (ah me miserable!) happened to be one. And so at eleven at night I arrived in Madison, not overproud in the glory of riding on the first train that ever went from Indianapolis to Madison.”

October, 1847, marked a new era in Mr. Beecher’s experience. By successive steps he had advanced from field to field with steadily increasing responsibility, from the collegian tramping twenty miles to deliver an occasional address in some adjoining town on topics affecting public morals, to the young theologian still in the seminary, trying his powers in some little hamlet—a knight-errant breaking a lance with the adversary; to the young, unknown missionary entering the lists for his first real, earnest battle against “the world, the flesh, and the devil”; to the acknowledged preacher called to the State capital, dealing stalwart blows at those evils which sap the public conscience and allure the youth into evil ways, a recognized leader not only within the limits of his Presbytery but even throughout his State.

And at last, called to the metropolitan centre, he enters a field whose limits of influence were to be bounded only by the limits of the civilized globe. With each increase of influence came corresponding responsibilities. So far he had developed resources sufficient for each increase in his burdens; but would he be sufficient for this new experience? He had fully sustained himself as a missionary and a preacher in a pioneer State, in a comparatively rude and uncultured society. He had earned a reputation that had preceded him East; could he maintain it? Could he meet the requirements of the refined, critical, and highly-cultured metropolis (for New York and Brooklyn were, to all intents, one great centre)? Many feared, and kindly volunteered the information that neither the new church nor its new pastor would last many months.

He was altogether too outspoken for his own good, said they. It was all very well for a minister to combat evil, but he must do it in the good old-fashioned, orthodox way: he should confine himself to generalities and not be too specific. There were some things he ought not to meddle with: the pulpit was no place for politics, and slavery was purely a political question. He would find that in New York the public would not tolerate those things which had been permitted to him in Indiana.

If he persisted he would soon have empty pews to preach to, even if he did not have a personal demonstration of the folly of attacking those popular sins—sins which most of his clerical brothers had had the good sense to leave alone. Endless were the similes and metaphors indulged in, of which the well-worn rocket was perhaps the most suggestive.

Some amiable critics even went so far as to intimate that his success in the West was due more to the surreptitious use of the father’s old sermons than any inherent ability in the son, and he was generously given just one year to run through the barrelful of such sermons supposed to have been brought on with him. The barrel, like the widow’s oil-cruse, seems to have had a miraculous power of refilling.

Many friends advised him against the change: the risk was too great, his experience too little. He said of this time:

“In coming to Brooklyn I had but one single thought—that of zeal for Christ. I came under all manner of warnings and cautions. Many good brethren told me how men got puffed up in the city, what temptations I would encounter, and how I would very likely be conservative, and forget my zeal, and so on; and I was obliged at last to say even to my father: ‘Father, do you understand, then, that God’s grace only extends to the country, and that He cannot protect anybody in the city?’”

On the other hand, some counselled self-interest: “It is not necessary that you should settle in Brooklyn; with your talent you will make more show in New York.” “I didn’t come to make a show,” he replied. “I came to preach what I understand to be the Gospel of Jesus Christ to men, and this is the first opening, and I take it.”

He did not propose to have any misunderstanding on the part of his new church as to the course he should pursue. He intended to make that very plain and at the outset. If they wanted him they would have to take him with their eyes open—wide open.

October 10, the first Sunday after his arrival, he preached in the new church, both morning and evening.

“My first sermon, I think, was directed to the Source of all true religion—the Lord Jesus Christ and His power. In my second sermon—on the evening of the first Sunday—I recollect that I lifted up the banner and blew the trumpet in the application of Christianity to intemperance, to slavery, and to all other great national sins. I said to those who were present: ‘If you come into this church and congregation I want you to understand distinctly that I will wear no fetters; that I will be bound by no precedent; that I will preach the Gospel as I apprehend it, whether men will hear or whether they will forbear, and that I will apply it without stint, and sharply and strongly, to the overthrow of every evil and to the upbuilding of all that is good.’”

Well-meaning but timid friends took alarm at this bold declaration. It was not customary; it was not what they were used to; they came to him to “counsel him for his own good,” they said. “Save yourself, anyway; don’t ally yourself to unpopular men nor unpopular causes. There is no need of it. You can have your own notions about abolition; what is the use of preaching anti-slavery sermons?” To their great distress their counsels had just the opposite effect intended: “I despised them all, and preached like thunder on those subjects, especially before pew-renting. For a period of more than ten years I never let a month elapse before pew-renting that I did not come out with the whole strength of my nature on the abominations of American slavery. I remember saying, with some discourtesy and with language that I should not use now: ‘If you don’t want to hear such doctrines, don’t take a pew here next time.’ It had something of youthful eagerness in it, but I am proud that it pleased God to ally me to causes that were weak but right. It has ever been a cause of great gratification to me that I have not lost that spirit, and that I ally myself to that which I think to be right; and I do not care what man says to me, provided only I can believe that God likes it, and that I have the testimony of His approval in myself.”

To have remained silent in the presence of such great evils was to have shared the responsibility of their existence.

We quote here his views on this subject, uttered from his pulpit many years later:

“In every reform from intemperance, from vice, from crime, each individual citizen is responsible to the degree of influence which he has, and if he does not exert it he is responsible for a neglect of duty—a binding duty. He is bound to create a public sentiment that shall work for virtue. He is bound to drain the community of all those evils that run together and form a channel for vice and crime. It is not a matter of election, it is a matter of obligation; and because there are the most respectable classes in the community that don’t do it, you are not set free. Because the men of riches and the men of power and the men of standing in society don’t do it, the poorest laboring man in the community, if he does not, under the direction of his reason and conscience, labor for the purification of the commonwealth, is responsible to God. He is bound to do it. If his individuality on the one side has shielded him against aggression, it brings with it also certain obligations, and he is bound to meet them. All parties hold their members only subject to the corrected judgment and moral sense of the individual. If they go with their party on the general ground that it is going right and is doing right, as far as the limitations of human ignorance and human power are concerned, travelling in the right direction also with many imperfect steps and many imperfect elements, he may justly go on with it; but if he is committed, as were the parties of slavery, to so atrocious a wrong as that which violated the fundamental rights of the whole human family, a man is bound to fight the party, in and out of it: in it by correction, out of it by protest and opposition. And merely because he can say, ‘The party did it, I did not,’ he is not relieved of responsibility. Inasmuch as you knew what was right and did not do it, so much you are involved in the guilt; and there was a great deal of guilt. The Church itself was involved in the same—dumb pulpits, uncirculated Bibles, a corrupt and vicious public sentiment.

“When I came into Plymouth Church as its pastor there was probably hardly a single church in the bounds of New York or Brooklyn of any note that dared to say a word for the liberty of the abject slave. Was I wrong in protesting against it, with the knowledge that I had? With the conscience that I had, had I been silent I should have been doomed justly to the stroke of God’s righteous judgment; and the want of moral courage under such circumstances is a very great sin everywhere. You are not right to stand still in any great party, moving in any direction, doing wrong, without deliberately taking account with yourself. Am I striving to correct the evil by all the influence I can wield? On finding that to be impossible, do I free myself from all imputation of partnership in any such guilt, one way or the other?”

Now it is easy enough to express such sentiments: it is popular; it is in the line of public sentiment. Then it was a very different matter, and the living up to them still more difficult.

Recalling the early history of Plymouth Church, he said:

“It was formed in the midst of the development of the greatest work of the modern century—the emancipation of the slaves in America, by which the industry of the Continent was also emancipated, and by which the Church and religion itself were saved from a worse than Babylonian captivity.

“When I came here you could get no great Missionary Society, Bible Society, or Tract Society to say one solitary word for the slave. Such were the interests of the mercantile classes of the South that it was extremely difficult to exert there any anti-slavery influence. As the merchants largely held the funds, as the great societies needed support, and as churches were built by respectable men whose prosperity depended mainly upon the peace and order of the South, the position that this church took was a bold and unpopular one. Those who did not live then can have no conception of what it was to form a church that should stand right out in the intense light of the time, and declare for universal liberty and for the right of the slave to the Bible, and to full religious freedom. This church grew up right against a flinty way of bitterness and opposition.”

Such was the beginning, and such the times!

Although he began preaching in Plymouth Church, October 10, 1847, Mr. Beecher was not formally installed until the 11th of November following. On that day an ecclesiastical council was convened “by letters from the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, in the State of New York, at their lecture-room, ... for the purpose of installing (if the way should be found clear) the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher as their pastor,” etc.

“After an extended and thorough examination of the pastor-elect respecting his views of the doctrine of natural and revealed religion, his experience of renewing and sanctifying grace, and his object in entering on the work of the Christian ministry, the council unanimously pronounced the examination sustained and voted to proceed to installation.”

The invocation and reading of the Scriptures was by the Rev. Dr. Humphrey, of Pittsfield, Mass.; the sermon by Rev. Dr. Edward Beecher, of the Salem Church of Boston, an older brother of the new pastor; the installing prayer by Rev. Dr. Hewitt, of the Second Congregational Church of Bridgeport; the charge to the pastor by Rev. Dr. Lansing, of the Second Congregational Church of New York; the fellowship of the churches by Rev. R. S. Storrs, Jr., of the Church of the Pilgrims, Brooklyn; address to the people by Rev. J. P. Thompson, of the Broadway Tabernacle, New York, and the concluding prayer by Rev. Dr. Bushnell, of the North Church of Hartford.

As soon as he was fairly installed the pastor set himself vigorously to work to build up the young church, and to fill it with new converts.

The audience-room of the church began to fill rapidly, in the morning being generally three-fourths full, and in the evening entirely full. Early in 1848 difficulty was found in accommodating those who wished to attend, the building being crowded from that time on, both night and morning.

In the spring, daily morning prayer-meetings were held, under the conduct of the pastor. Soon revivals broke out in the church, which, though singularly free from undue excitement, produced a deep and wide-spread influence. More than seventy persons were converted, most of them joining Plymouth Church, the rest uniting with other evangelical churches.

Notwithstanding the many doleful prophecies that greeted its early beginnings, and the “dangerous stand” taken by its pastor which alarmed so many conservative minds, the church was just perverse enough to prosper and grow rapidly—a perversity which characterized it for the next forty years. In a little over two years from its birth it had an enrolled membership of four hundred and four, of whom fifty-six joined in 1847; one hundred and fifty-two in 1848; one hundred and thirty-six in 1849 (the year of the fire), and sixty in the first part of 1850.

On the 13th of January, 1849, occurred one of those fortunate mishaps which proved to be a blessing in disguise. For some time previous, the congregation had been greatly disproportioned to the capacity of the church; the necessity of rebuilding began to be seriously discussed, when occurred a fire that abruptly terminated the discussion. The building was so badly damaged that it was unanimously determined to rebuild rather than repair.

The kindly sympathy of neighboring churches, in volunteering the use of their buildings for the houseless congregation, was gratefully accepted for a short time.

It soon became apparent that this unsettled and migratory condition was harmful to the church. It was therefore determined to erect a temporary structure upon ground in Pierrepont Street, kindly offered by Mr. Lewis Tappan. In thirty days a building, one hundred by eighty feet, was put up, and in this the church made its home until the first Sunday in January, 1850.

The whole expense of this “Tabernacle,” as it was called, was twenty-eight hundred dollars. The subsequent sale of the building, together with the weekly collections, more than repaid this outlay, while the pew-rents were amply sufficient to meet the current expenses.

As soon as possible after the fire, steps were taken to put up the new building, which was to be constructed on a much larger scale than the old one.

On May 29, 1849, the corner-stone was laid, and on the first Sunday in January, 1850, the congregation worshipped in their new church.

The new structure was built on Orange Street, and ran through to Pineapple. It was really two buildings under one roof, the church proper being one hundred and five feet long by eighty broad. Adjoining and opening into this, from the rear, was a lecture-room of two stories, eighty by fifty feet, the second story being the Sunday-school.

The entire cost of the new church was about $36,000, of which $31,127 was raised upon scrip, bearing interest, payable in pew-rents. To provide for the balance, and a mortgage of $10,500 on the old property, the new building was mortgaged for $16,000. The entire indebtedness and all encumbrances were paid off by 1867, at which time the church was entirely free from debt.

The cost of the lecture-room and Sabbath-school was about $13,000, of which $10,800 were donated, the rest being paid partly by festivals and fairs held for the purpose, and partly from the general fund of the church.

The Sabbath-school at this time consisted of two hundred and fifty scholars and thirty teachers.

The seating capacity of the pews and choir-gallery of the church was about twenty-one hundred persons. This was thought at first, by some, to be a very extravagant allowance. But in 1857 the seating capacity could not supply the demand, and folding-seats were placed in the aisles, fixed to the end of each pew, and so constructed as to fold up against the pew-side when not in use; while benches were set along the walls all around the galleries, and in the vacant space in front of the pulpit. These accommodated about eight hundred more, while the standing space, almost always occupied during the last twenty-five years, permitted about three hundred more to be present.

As his last year at Indianapolis had been consecrated by the loss of his little boy, so in like manner were the first in his new pastorate. Scarce had a month passed when the death of his little girl “Caty” became the means of closer communion between pastor and people through the bonds of sympathy and kind service. He wrote to his sister:

“When Caty sickened and began her quiet march toward the once opened gate, to rejoin the brother (cherub pair), we found our house full of friends. Many of the truest, deepest hearts asked no bidding, but, with instinctive heart taught right, lived with us almost literally; and when her form was to go forth from us, they embowered her in flowers, winter though it seemed, and every thought and remembrance of her is sweet in itself and sweet in its suggestions.

“What had I to bear up against? I was held up by increasing love and sympathy on every side. Of this world I had more than heart could wish; of friends, never so many or so worth having; and the effect, as might be supposed, has answered to the cause. I find now that it is with me as with mountains in spring-time—every fissure is growing to a rill, every patch of soil is starting its flowers, every shrub has its insect and every tree its bird.”

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Chapter XII

Plymouth Church—The New Building—Sabbath Service—Prayer-Meeting—Weekly Lecture—Socials—Church Polity—The Pastor’s Policy.

As we have stated, Plymouth Church took possession of its new building on the first Sabbath in January, 1850. Then, as on the Sabbaths of the nearly forty succeeding years in which Mr. Beecher ministered here, the crowd came and filled every available seat. Then began that sound, once heard never forgotten, and heard nowhere else so continuously, of the incoming multitude, the tread of hurrying feet like the sound of many waters, as the crowds, held back for a time until pew-holders have been in part accommodated, press in and take their places. Here, on this first Sabbath, arose that song of thanksgiving whose fulness and power were for so many years a marked feature of the religious service of this great congregation. Here began that long succession of sermons which opened to so many thousands, at first by the voice and then by the printing-press; the nearness, the righteousness, and the boundless love of God revealed in Jesus Christ. And here began on that day to ascend those prayers which drew hearts into the very presence of the Most High and left them gladdened, refreshed, and filled as with the fulness of God. Blessed old Plymouth Church! Its every memory, its very walls are dear unto multitudes.

It was plain even to bareness—unnecessarily so in the opinion of many—both without and within, with not the slightest effort at show or even ornament. None of those harmonies of color nor graces of form, such as are now shown or attempted in almost every church edifice, were here found. It was builded with the simple conscientious purpose of enabling as many as possible to hear the Gospel, of affording every advantage to such as wished to meet together in the prayer-meeting and sociable, and of instructing the young in the Sunday-school. Herein lay the beauty of the Plymouth Church building: its excellent adaptation to the great end in view. More than any church of that day, and, with all the progress of later times, excelled by but few, if any, at the present time, Plymouth Church building afforded superior accommodations for Gospel hearing and spiritual, educational, and social training. By placing the seats in a partial curve, by the admirable arrangement of the commodious galleries, and by pushing the pulpit well forward toward the centre of the circle, the vast audience of nearly three thousand people were brought near together and near to the speaker. While this enabled him to address them with great ease, it also afforded an opportunity for the cultivation of that feeling of homeness and fraternity that always characterized the gatherings of this church with its pastor.

The pulpit was then, as now, a plain platform, with no railing in front, and no other furniture than a set of chairs, a stand for notices, and an open table for the Bible; as far removed as possible from those boxes where the man must stand, cramped and stiff, while he delivers his message. An offering of flowers was also found there, the beginning of a custom which has been continued, we believe, without the failure of a single Sabbath, from that day to this.

Behind the pulpit was the organ and seats for a choir of fifty or more who should lead the great congregation in their songs of praise.

In the rear of the audience-room, opening back into another street, was the lecture and prayer-meeting room, and above this were the parlors and the Sunday-school rooms.

Such was the equipment that the pastor and Plymouth Church began to use on that first Sabbath in 1850. It seemed to many more than ample. The audience-room was more commodious than any in the land. Would the young minister be able to fill it? Would he hold out? The “six months” that one of Brooklyn’s most oracular of D.D.’s had given “that young man to run out in” had long since passed, and he gave, as yet, no signs of waning popularity; but perhaps he will, and a few possibly hoped, and some, it may be, feared, that it would be so; but by far the larger part of that great congregation praised God that day in joyful confidence without any fears or misgivings. They had faith in their pastor as well as in God; and he, conscious that he had builded sincerely, without sham or pretence, had no question but that He who had begun this good work would carry it prosperously forward to the end. All these appliances had been demanded by the thousands in attendance. Their necessity was of God, hence they could trust Him to vindicate His own plans. The young pastor neither feared nor was anxious. He was the Lord’s; let Him do with him as He pleased.

Of this feeling in connection with his preaching he himself says: “I had at that time almost a species of indifference as to means and measures. I cared little, and perhaps too little, whether I had or had not a church building. I thought of one thing—the love of Christ to men. This, to me, was a burning reality. Less clearly than now, perhaps, did I discern the whole circuit and orb of the nature of Christ; but with a burning intensity I realized the love of God in Jesus Christ. I believed it to be the one transcendent influence in this world by which men should be roused to a higher manhood and should be translated into another and better kingdom. My purpose was to preach Christ to men for the sake of bringing them to a higher life; and though I preferred the polity and economy of the Congregational churches, yet I also felt that God was in all the other churches, and that it was no part of my ministry to build up sectarian walls; that it was no part of my ministry to bombard and pull down sectarian structures; but that the work of my ministry was to find the way to the hearts of men, and to labor with them for their awakening and conversion and sanctification.

“I have said that I had no theory; but I had a very strong impression on my mind that the first five years in the life of a church would determine the history of that church and give to it its position and genius; that if the earliest years of a church were controversial or barren it would take scores of years to right it; but that if a church were consecrated, active, and energetic during the first five years of its life, it would probably go on through generations developing the same features. My supreme anxiety, therefore, in gathering a church, was to have all of its members united in a fervent, loving disposition; to have them all in sympathy with men; and to have all of them desirous of bringing to bear the glorious truths of the Gospel upon the hearts and consciences of those about them.

“Consequently I went into this work with all my soul, preaching night and day, visiting incessantly, and developing as fast and as far as might be that social, contagious spirit which we call a revival of religion.”

The services in the church were then, as ever since, in harmony with the building—simple and without ostentation, differing from those of other Congregational churches only in the spirit of unusual heartiness and the impression of unusual power.

When the bell ceased tolling the organ began its work of preparing the hearts of the great multitude for worship. Then followed the invocation by the pastor, always devout, always joyful and trustful, uniformly sincere, and always varied. No set phrase ever took possession and held in its formal grasp the expression of his praise and expectant prayer:

“Thou that dost hold the sun, and pour forth therefrom the light and glory of the day, from Thine own self let there come, streaming as the daylight, those influences that shall awake in us all hope and all gladness of love. For we sleep except when Thy beams are upon us. Only when we are in God are we alive. Let us in, O our Father! and may all that is within us rise up to worship Thee. Accept our service according to what we would do and according to what Thou wouldst have us do. Bless the word and the reading thereof. Bless our songs of praise and our fellowship therein. Bless our communion one with another and with Thee. Bless us in our meditation, in the services of the day, at home, and everywhere. Make this a golden day to our souls, through Jesus Christ our Redeemer. Amen.”

Then followed, in those early days—in later years he often omitted it—the reading of the hymn, simply, with no straining after effect, but so as to give the full meaning of the words to be sung, and in a measure to interpret their spirit. The singing which followed, so full and appreciative, was something to remember. It was the voices of the multitude joining and blending in one great, full song of adoration and thanksgiving.

The reading of the Scripture was usually without comment, but so vivid to his thought were the great truths uttered, and so flexible was his voice in giving them expression, and so natural the adaptation of his whole manner to their import, that his simple reading gave a better understanding of Scripture than the explanations of most other men.

The prayer that followed the hymn was very marked in its general characteristics, comprehensive, and adapted to the occasion and the needs of the people before him. It invariably gave expression to a thankful spirit, lamented sins and failures, was permeated with a yearning desire for communion with God and with great sympathy with men, class after class of whom he brought before the Heavenly Father for deliverance, comfort, and blessing.

The sermon was long, consuming from three-quarters of an hour to an hour, and sometimes more, in delivery, and usually combined in a very marked degree the three elements, the exegetical, the philosophic, and the hortatory. He delighted in giving a full and broad opening of Scripture, that all might be quickened and fed; in showing the relation and harmony of the truths thus presented to other truths already admitted, making their bearings clear by frequent illustrations, and pressing them in the progress of the sermon, and especially at the close, upon the acceptance of his hearers. His preaching informed, convinced, inspired, and moved men to decisive action Godward, or it was, in his view, a failure.

The benediction with which the services closed was as if he saw the hands of the living Saviour stretched out over His beloved people, and he became but a mouthpiece for the solemn and tender expression of His beneficence.

Then followed the informal after-meeting, unadvertised and unarranged—the pressing forward to the pulpit, or the waiting in the aisles until he should pass out, of some who perhaps had a word of thanks for help received in the sermon, of others asking questions or bearing messages, of strangers who wished to press his hand, or of troubled ones who wanted a word of cheer. The meeting continued down the aisle, out into the porch, out on to the street, as friends still walked along with him, talking as they went.

The weekly meetings of the church, besides Sabbath services and the Sunday-school, at this early period, were three: a “Lecture,” Tuesday evening; a “Sociable,” Thursday evening; and a Prayer-meeting, Friday evening.

The weekly lecture was a familiar meeting of the church family and their friends, where, in simple and colloquial speech, the pastor instructed them in the things that pertain to the spiritual life. It was always spoken of, not as a sermon, but as a “Lecture-Room Talk.” The subjects chosen were practical, like these, given in the order in which he delivered them: “Groping after God,” “Praying for Others,” “Fervency of Religious Feeling,” “Conversing with the Impenitent,” picked up in his intercourse with his people, selected with direct reference to solving doubts, removing difficulties, and securing spiritual growth and activity. In these, perhaps more than anywhere else, he displayed the resources of his great common sense, revealed the depth of his spiritual life, and drew most largely on the wealth of his own Christian experience.

The prayer-meetings did not differ in form from those that are common in Congregational churches. A moment before the hour for the meeting Mr. Beecher came upon the platform, threw his hat upon the floor by the side of his chair, sat down, and, throwing back his cloak, took up the “Plymouth Collection,” and, the instant the bell ceased tolling, without rising, gave out in a clear, firm voice the number of some familiar hymn, usually of thanksgiving. The pianist wasted no time in playing the tune through, but struck the opening note firmly, the audience joined without delay and sang without dragging, and the meeting gained that most important advantage—a good send-off. No sooner had the hymn ceased than the pastor arose and read a passage from a Bible which he held in his hand. He then led in a prayer, simple, confiding, hopeful, tender, that helped all weary and waiting souls to realize that they were in the presence of their very best Friend, and gave them needed help. Another hymn, given out in the same manner and sung with the same spirit, followed. Then, that there might be no break in the movement of the service, looking at the individual addressed, usually some one of the old warriors upon the front seats, he would say, “Will Brother ——— lead us in prayer?” When this prayer was finished his eye seemed to take a broader range and search out some of the younger and less experienced to bring them into the work. Woe be to you then if you have come in late, taken a back seat, and tried to keep out of sight! He seemed to know instinctively where you were, and how you felt, and how essential, if you would enjoy the meeting, that this ice should be broken; and on this second call for leaders you would be very likely to hear your name pronounced with that same kind but authoritative intonation that you could neither pretend not to hear nor refuse to obey. Another hymn increases the kindly warmth of Christian feeling that has begun to pervade the audience like an atmosphere, and under its inspiration other prayers are offered, at this stage by volunteers; experiences are related, often by the pastor; questions are asked upon some practical difficulty, and answers are given; failures and sins are confessed and lamented, and prayers are requested and offered, until the hour was passed all too quickly. Another hymn, and then the benediction closes the meeting.

The social meetings, for the accommodation of which Mr. Beecher added the parlors—at that time an unusual feature of a church—were a very earnest attempt made by him in the meridian of his social power and enthusiasm, and in a church more than ordinarily inspired by his loving spirit, to overcome the separations which different conditions and dissimilar social training and surroundings bring about in the Church of Christ, and to realize as nearly as possible the family ideal. A sewing-meeting was held in the afternoon for some benevolent enterprise, followed by a plain tea to which all were invited. Friends dropped in, pleasant conversation ensued, and perhaps a few selections of reading or song, prepared for the occasion, were given. “Mr. Beecher then took his stand in the centre of the large room, rapped with his pencil and called his flock around him, and gave them ten minutes of appreciative, kindly, witty, helpful talk. ‘Plymouth Collection of Hymns’ was then handed round, and everybody sang, or tried to. After this, prayer and ‘good-night.’” This was about the outline, and for several years it was moderately successful; but busy times crowded in upon it, unregulated elements worked into it, getting and doing more harm than good, and at length it was given up, and the members of Plymouth Church chose their companions according to social affinities, similarity of position, and circumstances, like other people.

Such preaching and labors, with such appliances, under the blessing of God were sure to bring abundant results, and revivals followed each other in quick succession all through those early years; in fact, Plymouth Church thus far during its whole history may be called a revival church.

Its polity was Congregational, as we find in its manual of 1850:

“This church is an independent ecclesiastical body, and in matters of doctrine, order, and discipline is amenable to no other organization. This church will extend to other evangelical churches and receive from them that fellowship, advice, and assistance which the laws of Christ require.”

His own policy toward the church is given in these words:

“I have never managed. I have never employed management. I have tried to inspire kind feelings and thus lead men to take up their crosses. I have never sought to exert my authority, but to promote the utmost freedom of thought and action.... I have maintained from the beginning the most profound desire that there should be a church-life among you quite independent of me, and that as the pulpit was independent, so should the pews be also. I have scrupulously avoided meddling with the liberties of this church, except to enforce them. My simple aim from the beginning has been to develop among you as high a standard of manhood, and of Christian manhood, as the infirmity of human nature would permit; and for that—the exaltation of manhood in Christ Jesus—I have labored in season and out of season: not without flaw, not without fault, not without sin, but, as God is my witness, with every power of my soul and body and understanding, from year to year.”

Such was Plymouth Church as she stood a score and a half and more years ago, and as she still remains.

“Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth is this our Mount Zion” well expresses the feelings of multitudes as they recall these years and remember these places. Her streets of Sabbath service and work-day conference and prayer were continually trodden by eager crowds, and were made beautiful and attractive by the Christian fellowship that grew up and blossomed here on every side under the inspiration and culture of one who himself so trustfully, hopefully, and exultingly walked with God.

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Chapter XIII

Beginning of the Great Battle—Five Great Eras—Compromise Measures of 1850—“Shall We Compromise”—The Fugitive Slave Law Denounced—Right of Free Speech Defended—Commercial Liberty—Fighting Caste—Liberty of the Pulpit Defended—Quickness of Retort—Sentiment of the Times—Reaction—Visit of Kossuth—Election of 1852—The Parker Controversy—Degraded into Liberty—John Mitchel—Garrison—Close of this Era.

Other things than opening the church building contributed to make 1850 an eventful year to Henry Ward Beecher.

In that year slavery came to the place of supreme interest in our national affairs which it never afterwards lost until it was swept away in the battle-storm of 1861-65.

The very month that Plymouth Church took possession of its new house, the first month of the last half of the nineteenth century, Henry Clay submitted a series of resolutions in the Senate of the United States as “compromise measures for a final and complete adjustment of the slavery question.” In the debate, passage, and enforcement of these measures, the utterly antagonistic nature of the two contending elements, liberty and slavery, which had been brought together under our Constitution, became so evident; slavery, from the very necessity of self-preservation, became so aggressive, advanced claims so comprehensive and so forced the fighting, that the very measures intended to compromise the whole difficulty made it clear that there could be no compromise. There could be no amicable adjustment of interests so diametrically opposed; one or the other, liberty or slavery, must take undivided and undisputed possession of the government. From debate of words the conflict passed rapidly to the argument of arms, first on the plains of Kansas and eventually over the whole southern half of our country, developing into the greatest civil war ever known in the world’s history—a war in comparison with which, in the numbers engaged on either side, in the breadth of the battle-field, in the agents of destruction employed and the important interests at stake, England’s Wars of the Roses, and even the strife of the rival claimants for the imperial purple of Rome, were insignificant and secondary contests.

The part of this great slavery conflict in which Mr. Beecher was actively engaged had five distinct eras, clearly marked by well-defined boundaries, each presenting peculiar difficulties of its own to be overcome, and each bringing forward peculiar and important questions for solution. The first began with the agitation of the Compromise measures of 1850, and ended in the passage of those measures and their enforcement, more or less complete, during the uneasy years of 1850 and 1853.

The second began with the proposition to repeal the Missouri Compromise measures and continued through what was known as “The Kansas Struggle,” until April 1, 1858, when the first substantial victory ever won by the free States was gained in Congress in the permission to give the actual residents of Kansas a fair vote upon the question of the acceptance or rejection of the infamous Lecompton Constitution.

The third began with the abandonment by the slave-power of its dependence upon legislative enactments, which its defeat in Kansas had proved to be futile, and the inauguration of an era of secession and violence, and ended with the Proclamation of Emancipation, which took effect January 1, 1863, and which legally destroyed slavery in all the States in rebellion, and substantially within the whole domain of the United States.

The fourth era began with the issuing the Proclamation of Emancipation; extended through two years and more of battle by which the proclamation was carried into effect, and slavery was destroyed de facto as it had already been de jure, and foreign intervention was prevented; and ended with raising the flag over Sumter, the sign of the restoration of our national authority over a free and undivided national domain.

The fifth includes the period of reconstruction, in which the difficult task of bringing the States, once in rebellion but now submissive, back into the Union was successfully accomplished. It covers the ground from the close of the war to the present time, or, more properly, from the death of President Lincoln, when the South lay prostrate at the feet of the victorious North, to the election of President Cleveland, when, as Mr. Beecher hoped and believed, sectional lines were obliterated and the South once more saw the candidate she favored raised to be the chief magistrate of our common country.

The Compromise measures of 1850 were conceived for the purpose of removing the serious and dangerous complications that had arisen, between the North and the South, in the attempt to organize the territory recently acquired from Mexico, and in admitting California as a free State with a constitution for ever prohibiting slavery within her borders. The South felt that such an addition to the free States would so disturb the balance of power between the sections that something must be given her as a compensation. Hence these Compromise measures, which provided for the admission of California as a free State, but gave the South, as an offset, a more stringent Fugitive Slave Law and paid Texas ten millions of dollars for the adjustment of her State boundaries. Honestly intended, no doubt, and urged by the mover, Henry Clay, and accepted by many who disliked it, from patriotic motives, this Compromise was, nevertheless, wrong in principle and proved only mischievous in results. It rested on the false theory that the development of both liberty and slavery was equally the duty of the Republic, and that whatever gain was made by the former must be equalized to the latter by some new concession, and led to constantly increasing disturbance in both sections. While failing to satisfy the more radical men of the South, it was utterly abhorrent to a much larger body at the North. It seemed to the latter to be but another great step taken by the slave-power in its attempt to gain possession of the whole land. The first had been the Missouri Compromise, in which slavery, surrendering what it never owned—viz., the territory north of 36° 30′, called Mason and Dixon’s line—gained Missouri and a quasi right to all territory south of that line. In this second great step now proposed they did not fail to note that the provision to prohibit slavery in the newly-acquired territories, called the “Wilmot Proviso,” had been defeated in Congress, nor fail to see that in these Compromise measures, should they be carried, the slave-power would secure the right to hunt and capture its fugitives in every city, town, and home of the free States, and to compel every Northern citizen to aid in the work, thus making, so far as fugitives were concerned, slave territory of the whole North. They saw in this measure a great advance towards nationalizing this institution and securing for it the right, aimed at by its advocates from the first, to go unquestioned and protected wherever the authority of the Constitution of the United States was recognized. If this were passed they felt it to be not at all improbable that the threat of Senator Toombs, of Georgia, to call the roll of his slaves from the steps of Bunker Hill Monument, would be executed, and they opposed it with an energy born both of conviction and abhorrence. In this opposition none were more strenuous than Mr. Beecher. Speaking of this period, he says:

“In 1850, when the controversy came up about Clay’s Omnibus Bill, including the Fugitive Slave Laws, I was thoroughly roused, and in the pulpit and with my pen I attacked with the utmost earnestness the infamous Fugitive Slave Bill. It was then that I wrote that article, ‘Shall we Compromise?’ It was read to John C. Calhoun on his sick-bed by his clerk, and he raised himself up and said: ‘Read that article again.’ The article was read. ‘The man who says that is right. There is no alternative. It is liberty or slavery.’ And then, when Webster made his fatal apostasy on March 7, 1850, I joined with all Northern men of any freedom-loving spirit in denouncing it and in denouncing him. Forthwith, after a paralysis of a few weeks, his friends determined to save him by getting all the old clergymen—such men as Dr. Spring, Dr. Lord of Dartmouth, and the Andover professors—to take his part. The effort was to get every great and influential man in the North to stand up for Webster; and then it was that I flamed. They failed utterly. Professor Woolsey of New Haven, Dr. Bacon, Dr. Hopkins, President of Williams College in Massachusetts, and various other most influential men, absolutely refused to sustain Webster.”

In the issue of the Independent of February 21, 1850, filling three columns, we have the famous article referred to above. We quote only enough to indicate its spirit and line of argument:[5]

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Footnote 5:

This article entire can be found in Mr. Beecher’s “Patriotic Addresses,” published by Fords, Howard & Hulbert, New York City.

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“SHALL WE COMPROMISE?

“Mr. Clay’s Compromise has been violently resisted by the South and but coldly looked upon by the North.

“It is not that both sides are infatuated and refuse a reasonable settlement; but the skill of Mr. Clay has evidently not touched the seat of the disease. He either has not perceived or else has not thought it expedient to meet the real issue now before the people of the United States. The struggle now going on is a struggle whose depths lie in the organization of society in the North and South respectively; whose causes are planted in the Constitution. There are two incompatible and mutually destructive principles wrought together in the government of this land.... These elements are slavery and liberty.... One or the other must die.

”... The South now demands room and right for extension. She asks the North to be a partner. For every free State she demands one State for slavery. One dark orb must be swung into its orbit, to groan and travail in pain, for every new orb of liberty over which the morning stars shall sing for joy.

“... It is time for good men and true to gird up their loins and stand forth for God and humanity. No compromises can help us which dodge the question, certainly none which settle it for slavery....

“There never was a plainer question for the North. It is her duty openly, firmly, and for ever to refuse to slavery another inch of territory, and to see to it that it never gets it by fraud. It is her duty to refuse her hand or countenance to slavery where it now exists. It is her duty to declare that she will under no consideration be a party to any farther inhumanity and injustice....

“Mr. Clay’s Compromise resolutions demand better provision for the recovery of fugitive slaves, and a bill is now pending in the United States Senate for that purpose. On this matter our feelings are so strong that we confess a liability to intemperance of expression.

“If the compromises of the Constitution include requisitions which violate humanity, I will not be bound by them. Not even the Constitution shall make me unjust. If my patriotic sires confederated in my behalf that I should maintain that instrument, so I will to the utmost bound of right. But who, with power which even God denies to Himself, shall by compact fore-ordain me to the commission of inhumanity and injustice? I disown the act. I repudiate the obligation. Never while I have breath will I help any official miscreant in his base errand of recapturing a fellow-man for bondage; and may my foot palsy and my right hand forget her cunning if I ever become so untrue to mercy and to religion as not by all the means in my power to give aid and succor to every man whose courageous flight tells me he is worthy of liberty!

”... From those compromises, like Mr. Clay’s, which seek for peace rather than for humanity—from such compromises, guileless though they seem, and gilded till they shine like heaven, evermore may we be delivered.”

This battle in Congress resulted, like every battle since the adoption of the Constitution, in a victory for the slave party. In September of this year, 1850, the Compromise measures, which had passed both Houses of Congress, were signed by President Fillmore and became by a very decided majority the law of the land. Many things had contributed to this result. On the one hand, there was a strong party in the South, representing largely the sentiment of that whole section, who felt themselves aggrieved and deprived of their rights under the Constitution, since they could not carry their property with them into the common territory of the Union, and who saw in these Compromise measures a step in the direction of nationalizing their peculiar institution; on the other the commercial and manufacturing interests of the North demanded a cessation of strife, that they might enter into the prosperity opened to them by the discovery of the gold upon our Western coast; again, the fear of disruption, if the bitter discussion in Congress should continue, reconciled many to such measures as promised peace; also, the habit of compromise, which had been early formed, and stood apparently justified by years of prosperity and growth, made it easier to again adopt this course; and, perhaps more influential than any other, the leaders most beloved and trusted at the North were in favor of the measure. Henry Clay was its originator, and Daniel Webster, the great expounder of the Constitution, in his fatal speech of March 7, 1850, had justified the Compromise measures, spoke not a word in condemnation of the legal or moral crudities and enormities of the Fugitive Slave Law, and had reserved the lightning of his sarcasm and the thunder of his condemnation for the Abolitionists:

“Nothing can be plainer than that all parties in the state were drifting in the dark, without any comprehension of the elemental causes at work. Without prescience or sagacity, like ignorant physicians, they prescribed at random; they sewed on patches, new compromises on old garments, sought to conceal the real depth of the danger of the gathering torrent by crying peace! peace! to each other. In short, they were seeking to medicate volcanoes and stop earthquakes by administering political quinine. The wise statesmen were bewildered and politicians were juggling fools.”

If the anti-slavery men of the North hated the Compromise, and especially the Fugitive Slave clause in it, while it was being debated in Congress, their abhorrence was increased a thousand-fold now that all it had cost and all it threatened was in a measure comprehended. Looking at it calmly, they saw that safe-guards which from time immemorial had gathered around the individual to protect him in person and liberty had, for a very large class in the community, been suddenly destroyed.

Trial by jury was denied. Opportunity for the accused to summon witnesses in his own defence was not given, and “in no trial or hearing under this act shall the testimony of such alleged fugitives be admitted to evidence.” He had no hearing before any competent judge, but before a commissioner appointed to take depositions, who, whatever his ability or lack of ability, was clothed by this infamous act with plenary power in the premises.

On the simple certificate of this man the unhappy victim was hurried off at once into slavery, and no stay of proceedings or liberty of appeal was granted. Dumb, undefended, his destiny at the mercy of any accuser, and of a commissioner possibly ignorant and possibly vicious, the accused was consigned to a state worse to many than death.

Aimed at a particular class, its injustice was seen to be indiscriminate enough to make an attack possible upon individuals of any class; and its provisions for the deprivation of a single right made necessary such a stringency in the exercise of other rights as could not be tolerated in a free community.

Atrocious in itself, it became still more offensive and dangerous by reason of the ease with which its provisions could be employed by villains for kidnapping negroes, or even white men, who had never been slaves. It was stated and believed that along the whole line between the slave and free States arresting fugitives at once became a regular business, with very little care in many instances as to the previous liberty or slavery of those arrested. Instances were continually being recorded of colored boys and girls being unexpectedly spirited away and hurried off into bondage. Great activity in this work of securing fugitives who had lived in the North for years prevailed, and fear and apprehension took possession of the whole negro population of that section, and a corresponding indignation grew hot in the hearts of multitudes of freemen.

Scenes and incidents were continually transpiring and published in the newspapers that stirred the one party to greater hatred of the institution of slavery, and the other party to greater hatred to the means, regular or irregular, that were employed to prevent the carrying out of its purpose.

As may well be supposed, Mr. Beecher speaks with no greater affection for this measure, now that it has become a law, than when it was being debated in Congress.

In a Star paper that appeared October 3, upon “The Fugitive Slave Bill at its Work,” he meets it with undisguised and open defiance. “With such solemn convictions no law impious to God and humanity shall have respect or observance at our hands. If in God’s providence fugitives ask bread or shelter, raiment or conveyance, from us, my own children shall lack bread before they; my own flesh shall sting with cold ere they shall lack raiment; I will both shelter them, conceal them, or speed their flight, and while under my shelter or my convoy they shall be to me as my own flesh and blood; and whatsoever defence I would put forth for my own children, that shall these poor, despised, and persecuted creatures have in my house or upon the road.”

He follows with another very thoughtful and able article upon “Law and Conscience” in defence of his position, and for the instruction of those who were in doubt what course to take in the conflicting claims of the law of the land on one side and their feelings of humanity upon the other.

In the first place, he makes the duty of obedience to law very strong:

“Nothing could be more mischievous than the prevalence of the doctrine that a citizen may disobey an unjust or burdensome law. Should that liberty be granted, the bad, the selfish, the cruel and grasping, might disregard wholesome laws as easily as just men unjust laws. It would constitute every man a court in his own case; and a court, too, in which selfishness would preside. Society could not exist for a day.

“It is a question seriously asked by thousands: How can we as good citizens subscribe to such wholesome doctrine and yet openly resist the Fugitive Slave Law? Many reasons make it important that this question should be thoroughly answered. There are thousands who say that this law must be obeyed, and who, with the next breath, bravely and generously declare that nevertheless, should a distressed fugitive ask succor, shelter, and guidance at their hand, he should have them. But this is breaking the law. To keep this law you must not shelter a slave mother fleeing to her free husband in the North, nor a slave girl whose foot bounds at the sound of a pursuer, as if it were the knell of virtue. You must not give direction to a fugitive, though his head be white and his old limbs reveal half a century of unrequited toil; though a man say to you, in the awful agony of his soul, ‘Kill me, but for the love of God do not betray me!’ the law enjoins you to go with the officer, if he summon you, and help in his arrest! The minister of the Gospel, the humane philanthropist, peacefully walking to the Sabbath-sounding bell, must turn aside and help some scoundrel hireling to run down his slave, if the marshal command him, or break the law!”

He then lays down this general principle:

“Every citizen must obey a law which inflicts injury upon his person, estate, and civil privilege, until legally redressed; but no citizen is bound to obey a law which commands him to inflict injury upon another. We must endure but never commit wrong. We must be patient when sinned against, but must never sin against others. The law may heap injustice upon me, but no law can authorize me to pour injustice upon another. When the law commanded Daniel not to pray he disobeyed it; when it commanded him to be cast into the lions’ den he submitted.

“A law which enjoins upon a citizen the commission of a crime, and still more of an open, disgraceful, and flagitious crime, has violated the confidence of the citizen, and is dissolved in the court of God the moment it is enacted.

“Let no man stand uncommitted, dodging between daylight and dark, on this vital principle. Let every man firmly and openly take sides. This vibrating between humanity for the fugitive and conscience for the law, this clandestine humanity in spite of law, to which the lips only give a sullen and pouting obedience, is not consistent with sincerity and open-hearted integrity. We adjure every Christian man, every man to whom conscience is more than meat, and honor better than thrift, to stand forth and enunciate the invincible truth of the Christian’s creed: Obedience to laws, even though they sin against me: disobedience to every law that commands me to sin.”

His conviction of the origin of this whole trouble, his policy concerning it, and his confidence in the working out of natural causes are well set forth in an article at this period upon “The Cause and Cure of Agitation”:

“It ought primarily to be understood that our Constitution has invited this whole conflict which has raged about it. Had the framers been gifted with prescience they would, we cannot but think, have regarded the inevitable future mischief of that compromise by which slavery had its rights embedded in a constitution of liberty, as too great to be risked. They acted with the light which they had. They swaddled and laid in one cradle two infant forms. These were rocked together and grew up together; but one was a wolf’s cub and the other a lamb. Both were alike peaceful at birth—for a lion’s whelp when first dropped is as gentle as a doe. Growth brought forth separate natures. Then appeared hostility. Each acted to its nature.

“Our policy for the future is plain. All the natural laws of God are warring upon slavery. We have only to let the process go on. Let slavery alone. Let it go to seed. Hold it to its own natural fruit. Cause it to abide by itself. Cut off every branch that hangs beyond the wall, every root that spreads. Shut it up to itself and let it alone. We do not ask to interfere with the internal policy of a single State by Congressional enactments: we will not ask to take one guarantee from the institution. We only ask that a line be drawn about it; that an insuperable bank be cast up; that it be fixed and for ever settled that slavery must find no new sources, new fields, new prerogatives, but that it must abide in its place, subject to all the legitimate changes which will be brought upon it by the spirit of a nation essentially democratic, by schools taught by enlightened men, by colleges sending annually into every profession thousands bred to justice and hating its reverse, by churches preaching a gospel that has always heralded civil liberty, by manufactories which always thrive best when the masses are free and refined and therefore have their wants multiplied, by free agriculture and free commerce.

“When slavery begins, under such a treatment, to flag, we demand that she be denied political favoritism to regain her loss; we demand that no laws be enacted to give health to her paralysis and strength to her relaxing grasp. She boldly and honestly demanded a right to equality with the North, and prophetically spoke by Calhoun, that the North would preponderate and crush her. It is true. Time is her enemy. Liberty will, if let alone, always be a match for oppression. Now, it is because statesmen propose stepping in between slavery and the appointed bourne to which she goes, scourged by God and nature, that we resent these statesmen and refuse to follow them. If her wounds can be stanched, if she may have adventitious aid in new privileges, slavery will renew her strength and stave off the final day. But if it be forbidden one additional favor and be obliged to stand up by the side of free labor, free schools, free churches, free institutions; if it be obliged to live in a land of free books, free papers, and free Bibles, it will either die or else it ought to live.”

He ridicules those measures that had been adopted North and South to enforce the peace, and compares those who keep agitating against agitation to poor old “crazy Dinah” who used to sit on the pulpit stairs in Litchfield. “Once she began talking, but, startled at her want of manners, she said out loud: ‘Why I’m talking! I’m talking in meetin’! There, I spoke again. I ought not to speak. There, I spoke once more. Tut, tut! why, I keep a-speaking.’”

While advocating at this time, as ever afterwards, the utmost liberty of discussion, he stated his creed in these words: “There is nothing so safe in a free country as free discussion, nothing so dangerous as the suppression of it; peace and liberty of speech, violence and intolerance, respectively go together.”

He argued and advised in a lengthy paper against “the usual unfortunate concomitants of controversy, bitterness, railing, unfairness, and exaggerated prejudices.

“We have not the least objection to the most unbounded ardor of expression, to the most enthusiastic convictions, expressed in the most positive manner, so long as they relate to truths or principles. But when the propagandist comes to regard those who do not receive his views as devoid of all principle and necessarily dishonest, and becomes offensively personal, then controversy is morbid and mischievous. And as nothing gives such vigor to like or dislike as conscience, so they who profess to be conscientious are often conscientiously bitter. There is no revulsion against men or measures so violent as that of pure and honorable men. A man consciously right should watch against severe judgments of others. It is sad and curious to observe the progress of exaggerated impressions of personal character. Those who do not follow our conscience on the slavery question are often, nevertheless, on the whole, more conscientious men than we. Those whose reasonings we pronounce cold and inhuman are not cold or inhuman men. Those whose commercial interests reduce them, as it seems to us, to a policy on this particular question which outrages justice and rectitude, are in their private character most estimable for truth, and even for tender sympathy. Indeed, this is often shown in strange contrast; for the very men who give their counsel and zeal and money against the unseen slave of the South irresistibly pity the particular fugitive whom they may see running through the North. They give the Union Committee money to catch the slave, and give the slave money to escape from the Committee.”

All who were acquainted with Mr. Beecher know that the course he advised for others he persistently and conscientiously pursued himself. We doubt if any man ever lived who was engaged in so many severe battles and carried into them or brought from them so little bitterness.

Such a vigorous treatment of large and vital questions commanded a following; and it was not long before this young minister from the West was recognized as one of the great anti-slavery leaders and had a national reputation. Men at the South began to hate him; men at the North, conservatives whose business interests were wrapped up in the present state of things, whose goods and principles were equally for sale in Southern markets, were horrified and alarmed at his unwise sayings, his blasphemous use of the pulpit for political ends, and his fiery denunciations of the nation’s pet institution. But over against these there was another class, daily growing larger, whose consciences were set free by his clear discrimination of a citizen’s and a Christian’s duty, whose intelligence was broadened and enlarged by his lofty views, and whose hearts were set on fire by his mighty enthusiasm and abounding love. This body daily increased in numbers and came more and more to share the spirit of their leader. Whatever he wrote they read. Whenever he spoke the size of church or hall alone decided the number of hearers. Without ambition, without self-seeking, with a simple, earnest desire to do his work as God revealed it to him, unrasped by hatreds, he had come to a place and leadership as broad and high as there was in the land. With cheek still ruddy with youth, with eyes from which the laughter never died out except when the tears of sympathy filled them or the deep things of God veiled them, with a heart that was in sympathy with all nature round him, and which nature and He who is above nature fed with perennial freshness, with a voice that could interpret every emotion, with that excellent health that makes the body a perfect channel of expression for the mind and a complete instrument for its service, he stands like a David just come from his sheepfolds, free, unencumbered, and singing as he strikes.

In the progress of this discussion upon the Compromise measures, which had its centre in Congress, but in which every hamlet, almost every household, in the North had a share, other questions came to the front as parts of the great controversy.

Among the earliest of these was the right of free speech—a right utterly unknown where slavery was in power, and always bitterly attacked where it had influence. As may well be expected, it found in Mr. Beecher one of its most strenuous champions. Early in his career he urged all the claims of friendship, risked the safety of his new church building, and defied the New York and Brooklyn mob, then under the control of the notorious Captain Rynders, in its defence.

In a sermon preached in 1884 upon the death of Wendell Phillips he gives an account of his experience in this matter:

“It is a part of the sweet and pleasant memories of my comparative youth here that when the mob refused to let him speak in the Broadway Tabernacle before it was moved up-town, William A. Hall, now dead—a fervent friend and Abolitionist—had secured the Graham Institute, on Washington Street, in Brooklyn, wherein to hold a meeting where Mr. Phillips should be heard. I had agreed to pray at the opening of the meeting. On the morning of the day on which it was to have taken place I was visited by the committee of that Institute (excellent gentlemen, whose feelings will not be hurt, because they are all now ashamed of it: they are in heaven), who said that, in consequence of the great peril that attended a meeting at the Institute, they had withdrawn the liberty to use it and paid back the money, and that they called simply to say that it was out of no disrespect to me, but from fidelity to their supposed trust. Well, it was a bitter thing. If there is anything on earth that I am sensitive to it is the withdrawing of the liberty of speech and thought. Henry C. Bowen said to me: ‘You can have Plymouth Church, if you want it.’ ‘How?’ ‘It is a rule of the church trustees that the church may be let by a majority vote when we are convened; but if we are not convened, then every trustee must give his consent in writing. If you choose to make it a personal matter and go to every trustee, you can have it.’ He meanwhile undertook, with Mr. Hall, to put new placards over the old ones, notifying men quietly that the meeting was to be held here, and distributing thousands and tens of thousands of hand-bills at the ferries. No task was ever more welcome. I went to the trustees man by man. The majority of them very cheerfully accorded the permission. One or two of them were disposed to decline and withhold it. I made it a matter of personal friendship: ‘You and I will break if you don’t give me this permission,’ and they signed. So the meeting glided from Graham Institute to this house. A great audience assembled. We had detectives in disguise, and every arrangement made to handle the subject in a practical form if the crowd should undertake to molest us.”

Neither at this nor any other time was an attack actually made upon Plymouth Church, although many times in its history have angry men gathered in the immediate neighborhood, evidently bent on mischief, but were restrained from violence by the bold bearing of many in the audience who were known not to be Quakers, and by the presence of the police, who were kept well informed of their intentions.

Another of the secondary battles that were fought early in this year was one for commercial liberty.

The South, by the help, and perhaps by the instigation, of Northern co-operators, attempted nothing less than to boycott every commercial or manufacturing company that was opposed to them upon the great political questions of the day. A great “Union Saving Committee” was formed in New York, and met in Castle Garden and made out a black-list of the merchants that were anti-slavery, from whom the South were to withdraw their patronage. Mr. Beecher not only preached against the outrage, but visited from store to store to uphold the courage of the merchants.

He says: “Mr. Bowen was, of course, included in that blacklist, and threatened with the loss of all his Southern custom. He came to me and asked me if I would not write a card for him, and I undertook to do it; but, my head not running very clear, the only thing I got at, after making three or four attempts, was, ‘My goods are for sale, but not my principles,’ but I could not lick it into shape, and I gave the paper to him and said, ‘You must fix it yourself.’ He took it to Hiram Barney, and he drew up the card in the shape in which it appeared, including that sentence, which was the snap of the whole thing.”

“My goods are for sale, but not my principles” became a war-cry for the independent business men of the day, and had immense influence upon commercial action.

He fought the petty ostracism of the North, and apparently with success:

“I never preached on that subject. I never said to the people in this congregation, from the beginning to this day, ‘You ought to let colored folks sit in your pew.’ I preached the dignity of man as a child of God, and lifted up the sanctity of human life and nature before the people. They made the application, and they made it wisely and well.

“When I came here there was no place for colored men and women in the theatre except the negro pen; no place in the opera; no place in the church except the negro pew; no place in any lecture-hall; no place in the first-class car on the railways. The white omnibus of Fulton Ferry would not allow colored persons to ride in it. They were never allowed to sit even in the gentlemen’s cabin on the boats.

“I invited Fred Douglass, one day in those times, to come to church here. ‘I should be glad to, sir,’ said he; ‘but it would be so offensive to your congregation.’ ‘Mr. Douglass, will you come? And if any man objects to it, come up and sit on my platform by me. You will always be welcome there.”

“At the Fulton Ferry there are two lines of omnibuses, one white and the other blue. I had been accustomed to go in them indifferently; but one day I saw a little paper stuck upon one of them, saying: ‘Colored people not allowed to ride in this omnibus.’ I instantly got out. There are men who stand at the door of these omnibus lines, urging passengers into one or the other. I am very well known to all of them; and the next day, when I came to the place, the gentleman serving asked: ‘Won’t you ride, sir?’ ‘No,’ I said; ‘I am too much of a negro to ride in that omnibus.’ I called the attention of every one I met to that fact, and said to them: ‘Don’t ride in that omnibus, which violates your principles, and my principles, and common decency at the same time.’ I do not know whether this had any influence, but I do know that after a fortnight’s time I had occasion to look in and the placard was gone.”

But perhaps the most important, at all events the hardest-fought, battle of this era was in behalf of the liberty of ministers of the Gospel to preach in their pulpits for the slave and against the atrocities of slavery.

It sprang from the publication, by an influential New York daily paper, of an article in which it was threatened that clergymen who spoke in their pulpits upon slavery “would have their coats rolled in the dirt.” Mr. Beecher at once took up the glove in his own defence and that of his brethren who thought it their duty to preach on this subject. He entered into an examination of the whole status of the slave with great thoroughness, and gathered his materials for defence and attack from Southern sources. A report made to the Synod of South Carolina and Georgia in 1833 says: “They have no Bible to read by their own firesides; they have no family altars; and when in affliction, sickness, or death, they have no minister to address to them the consolations of the Gospel.

“They are destitute of the privileges of the Gospel, and ever will be, under the present state of things. They may justly be considered the heathen of this country, and will bear a comparison with heathen in any country in the world.”

“Says Judge Ruffin, of North Carolina, in a case brought against defendant for shooting and wounding a woman who endeavored to run away from a whipping: ‘With slavery it is far otherwise. The end is the profit of the master, his security, and the public peace. The subject is one doomed in his own person and in his posterity to live without knowledge, and without capacity to make anything his own, and to toil that others may reap the fruits.’”

Aroused by such testimony from reports of religious bodies and the decisions of the courts, he exclaims, with hot indignation:

“Yet the pulpit, whose echoes roll over the heathenism of the globe, must be dumb!

“It is vain to tell us that hundreds of thousands of slaves are church-members; does that save women from the lust of their owners? does it save their children from being sold? does it save parents from separation? In the shameless processions every week made from the Atlantic to the Gulf are to be found slaves ordained to preach the Gospel, members of churches, baptized children, Sunday-school scholars carefully catechised, full of Gospel texts, fat and plump for market. What is religion worth to a slave, except as a consolation from despair when the hand that breaks to him the bread of communion on Sunday takes the price of his blood and bones on Monday, and bids him God-speed on his pilgrimage from old Virginia tobacco-fields to the cotton-plantations of Alabama?

“What is church fellowship, and church privilege, and church instruction worth if the recipient is still as much a beast, just as little loved, just as ruthlessly desolated of his family, just as coolly sold, as if he were without God and without hope? What motive is there to the slave to strive for Christian graces, when, if they make him a real man, they are threshed out of him; or, if they make him a more obedient and faithful man, raise his market price and only make him a more merchantable disciple of Christ? It is the religious phase of slave-life that reveals the darkest features of that all-perverting system.”

Ridiculing the idea that it takes distance to make a topic fit for the pulpit, and upbraiding the ministry, who are engaged in snatching here and there a child from the Ganges, and have no words for those children that, here at home, every year are snatched from the parents’ bosom and sold everywhither, he says:

“It requires distance, it seems, to make a topic right for the pulpit. Send it to Greenland or to Nootka Sound, and you may then practise at the far-away target. And the reason of such discrimination seems to be that preaching against foreign sins does not hurt the feelings nor disturb the quiet of your congregation; whereas, if the identical evils at home which we deplore upon the Indus or along the Burampootra are preached about, the Journal says that it will risk the minister’s place and bread and butter; and it plainly tells all Northern ministers that if they meddle with such politics they will have their coats rolled in the dirt. Will the Journal tell us how many leagues off a sin must be before it is prudent and safe for courageous ministers to preach against it?

“Every year thousands of women are lashed for obstinate virtue, and tens of thousands robbed of what they have never been taught to prize, and the Journal stands poised to cast its javelin at that meddlesome pulpit that dares speak of such boundless licentiousness, and send it to its more appropriate work of evangelizing the courtesans of Paris or the loose virtue of Italy! And it assures us that multitudes of clergymen are thanking it for such a noble stand. Some of those clergymen we know. The platforms of our benevolent societies resound with their voices, urging Christianity to go abroad, stimulating the Church not to leave a corner of the globe unsearched nor an evil unredressed. But when the speech is ended they steal in behind the Journal to give it thanks for its noble stand against the right of the pulpit to say a word about home-heathen—about their horrible ignorance, bottomless licentiousness, and about the mercenary inhumanity which every week is selling their own Christian brethren, baptized as much as they, often preachers of the Gospel like themselves, eating from the same table of the Lord, praying to the same Saviour, listening to snatches of that same Bible (whose letters they have never been permitted to learn), out of which these reverend endorsers of the Journal preach!”

He shows that the slavery of New England never was the slavery of the South: “The slavery of the South in our day adopts the Roman civil law as the basis of its code.... Now, New England never held a slave on the basis of the Roman civil law, but under a law which was expressly enacted for the benefit of the slave and for the ultimate destruction of slavery—viz., the Hebrew law of slavery. No system of slavery, in this land, can be profitable which does not put the slave under a regimen which denies him the rights of manhood. The North, on the basis of the Hebrew slavery law, found it out; she refused to go further and sacrifice her religious scruples. The South, on the basis of the Roman civil law, imbibed its inhuman spirit, put on the screws, and forced the system into its present legal attitude, with a written code more infamous than the unwritten law of any pirate’s deck.”

He proves that the North never sold out her slaves, with a profit, to “her partners in the South, and so closed up the business,” by showing that in most of the Northern States the slaves were set free by the decisions of the courts upon the adoption of the State constitutions, and that in the meantime their masters were forbidden, under heavy penalties, to sell them South.

In New York gradual emancipation was enacted, and not only was the sale of slaves out of the borders forbidden, but masters travelling with their slaves in the South were required to give heavy bonds for the safe return of the same.

These words reveal his own spirit in the discussion:

“In exploring this wilderness of inhumanity, filled with the shapes and motley sights of degradation, I live in a perpetual struggle how to calm the natural expressions of an honest soul into that measured phrase that may best suit the sated public ear. If one overhang this abyss until his spirit do drink in its very import, his soul must be full of thunder and his words glance like fire. Neither are these feelings the foul engenderings of fanaticism. They are the true feelings of a heart taught to hate injustice and degrading wrong, by that nature which God gave it; by the Bible which educated it; by the law under which it was made, and by the public sentiment in which it has been bred. It is with a sense of shame that we see strong words for oppression granted an unapologized liberty to walk up and down as they will; while he who speaks for freedom must rake up his ardor under the ashes of a tame propriety, and stand to answer for want of a Gospel spirit if indignation at double and treble wrongs do sometimes give forth a bolt! Nevertheless, we hope; we trust; we pray; and hoping, trusting, and praying, we soothe ourselves in such thoughts as these: ‘From this shame, too, thou shalt go forth, O world! God, who, unwearied sitting on the circle of the earth, hath beheld and heard the groanings and travailings of pain until now, and caused Time to destroy them one by one, shall ere long destroy thee, thou abhorred and thrice damnable oppression cancerously eating the breasts of liberty.’”

He concludes by giving his views upon the position of the pulpit, and utters this solemn protest:

“Therefore, against every line of the Coward’s Ethics of the Journal we solemnly protest, and declare a minister made to its pattern fitter to be sent to the pyramids and tombs of Egypt to preach to old-world mummies than to be a living man of God among living men, loving them but never fearing them! God be thanked that in every age hitherto pulpits have been found, the allies of suffering virtue, the champions of the oppressed! And if in this day, after the notable examples of heroic men in heroic ages, when life itself often paid for fidelity, the pulpit is to be mined and sapped by insincere friends and insidious enemies, and learn to mix the sordid prudence of business with the sonorous and thrice heroic counsels of Christ, then, O my soul, be not thou found conspiring with this league of iniquity; that so, when in that august day of retribution God shall deal punishment in flaming measures to all hireling and coward ministers, thou shalt not go down, under double-bolted thunders, lower than miscreant Sodom or thrice-polluted Gomorrah!”

Some idea of his mode of address and quickness in retort at that day will appear from extracts from his speech at the annual meeting of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, and two incidents that occurred at this meeting. Mr. Beecher answered the Scriptural argument for the return of fugitives, based on the return of Onesimus, in this manner: “There are two ways of sending fugitives back into slavery. One is the way Paul sent back the slave Onesimus. Now, if people will adopt that way I will not object. In the first place, he instructed him in Christianity and led him to become a Christian; then he wrote a letter and sent it by Onesimus himself. Now, I should like to see Marshal ——— or Marshal somebody else, of this city, send back a slave in this way. In the first place, the marshal would take him and teach him the catechism, and pray with him, and convert him, and then write a letter to his master telling him to receive him as a brother beloved; and then the slave goes of his own free will to his master, and walks into the house, and, with his broad, black, beaming face, says: ‘How d’ye do, my brother? and how d’ye do, my sister?’” The broad, beaming face which he himself wore as he described this scene and personated this character was irresistibly comical, and nothing more was heard in that quarter of Paul’s return of fugitives.

It was in this speech that, in describing the situation of the slave, he says:

“They are married and separated in the South until perhaps they have twenty wives.” [A voice: “There are men in New York City who have twenty wives.”] “I am sorry for them,” he answered at once. “I go for their immediate emancipation!”

He read extracts from the law as laid down by some of the able members of the Southern bench in South Carolina and Louisiana, to show that slaves are mere goods and chattels.

“The slave,” he exclaimed, “is made just good enough to be a good slave and no more. It is a penitentiary offence to teach him more.”

Here a person among a group in one corner of the gallery exclaimed: “It’s a lie!”

“Well, whether it’s a penitentiary offence or not, I shall not argue with the gentleman in the corner, as doubtless he has been there and ought to know.”

Such was the voice that began to attract attention throughout the whole land. It was as truthful and earnest as that of the old Abolitionists, but took in a broader range of subjects and was inspired by a higher spirit than theirs; it was as politic in its utterances as that of the prince of politicians, Martin Van Buren, but it was the policy of right and justice; it had in it the strength of Webster’s, but argued from truer premises than he; it was as popular as Henry Clay’s, but its sympathy was broader than his; it was the voice of Henry Ward Beecher as he stood in the early maturity of his powers, aflame with Christian love and patriotism, preaching the Gospel of the Son of God, the Deliverer and Saviour for slave and master, for North and South, for commerce and manufactures, for our whole land from shame and thraldom.

The need of such a voice will appear if we consider the state of things at this time, as he himself described it:

“‘An Abolitionist’ was enough to put the mark of Cain upon any young man that arose in my early day, and until I was forty years of age it was punishable to preach on the subject of liberty. It was enough to expel a man from church communion if he insisted on praying in the prayer-meeting for the liberation of the slaves. I am speaking the words of truth and soberness. The Church was dumb in the North, but not in the West. A marked distinction exists between the history of the New School of Presbyterian churches in the West and the Congregational churches, the Episcopal churches, the Methodist and Baptist churches in the North and East. The great publishing societies that were sustained by the contributions of the churches were absolutely dumb. Great controversies raged round about the doors of the Bible Society, of the Tract Society, and of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. The managers of these societies resorted to every shift except that of sending the Gospel to the slaves. They would not send the Bible to the South; for, they said, ‘it is a punishable offence in most of the Southern States to teach a slave to read; and are we to go in the face of this State legislation and send the Bible South?’ The Tract Society said: ‘We are set up to preach the Gospel, not to meddle with political and industrial institutions.’ And so they went on printing tracts against tobacco and its uses, tracts against dancing and its abuses, and refusing to print a tract that had a shadow of criticism on slavery!

“One of the most disgraceful things took place under the jurisdiction of Bishop Doane, of New Jersey—I take it for granted, without his knowledge. I have the book. It was an edition of the Episcopal prayer-book. They had put into the front of it a steel engraving of Ary Scheffer’s ‘Christus Consolator’—Christ the Consoler. There was a semi-circle around about the beneficent and aerial figure of our Saviour—the poor, the old, the sick, the mother with her dead babe, bowed in grief; every known form of human sorrow belonged to the original design and picture, and among others a fettered slave, with his hands lifted to heaven, praying for liberty. But this was too much; and so they cut out the slave, and left the rest of the picture, and bound it into the Episcopal prayer-book of New Jersey. I have a copy of it, which I mean to leave to the Historical Society of Brooklyn when I am done using it.

“These things are important as showing the incredible condition of public sentiment at that time. If a man came to be known as an anti-slavery man it almost preluded bankruptcy in business.”

After the intense excitement, within and without Congress, upon the discussion and the passage of the Compromise measures of 1850, a reaction followed, and the year 1851 is, in many respects, a marked contrast to that immediately preceding. The people, in the main, tired of the discussion and the consequent turmoil, thankful for their escape, as they thought, from the threatened danger of the dissolution of the Union, were determined to preserve the peace that had been won, and frowned upon everything that endangered its continuance. Public meetings and conventions, held for the expression of free-State sentiments, were regarded with great disfavor and often broken up by mob violence.

Four millions of people in a Christian land were denied every right belonging to them, not only on the ground of Christianity but of humanity, and yet they must be dumb. The pulpit, which represented Him who came to set the captive free and preach the Gospel to the poor, on this great matter must utter no voice. Statesmanship must see consummated an utter perversion of the fundamental principles and policy of the nation, and yet offer no protest. A common humanity, outraged by the atrocities committed against a fellow human being, must be silent or join in the hue and cry for the capture of the unhappy victim.

This was the programme that conservatism, through the press, in the pulpit, by the ballot-box, through business patronage, social frowns or favors, and not unfrequently through mob violence, attempted to execute. It was as vain as to try to still the voice of Niagara or the noise of the breakers upon the coast.

One thing more powerful than any other contributed to prevent a complete reaction and consequent stagnation upon this subject—the activity of the South in availing itself of the advantages offered by the Fugitive Slave Bill for obtaining possession of the property that had escaped and was living on Northern soil. The year 1851 was emphatically a year of slave-hunting. And since these refugees from labor had, many of them, lived for years at the North, had become respectable citizens and reared families, their violent capture invariably occasioned, if not forceful resistance, at least deep and bitter indignation.

The quiet of 1851 was not perfect and it could not be made permanent. It was only the lull which weariness compels in every hard-fought battle.

In December of this year Kossuth visited this country at the invitation of the Senate, coming in a government steamer sent to Asia especially for his conveyance. Many things contributed to awaken immense enthusiasm for him. He had represented Hungary in the Austrian Diet; had championed the liberty of free press and free speech so fearlessly as to gain the honor of an Austrian dungeon; had been elected governor of Hungary, and for two years had waged successful war with Austria. Overcome by the immense military power of that great empire in alliance with Russia, he had been forced into exile with a price set upon his head. He represented, in that year of European revolutions, the struggles of the common people for liberty. These experiences, united with his personal appearance and marvellous eloquence, combined to secure for him a most enthusiastic reception by the people of this country. The Senate, on the other hand, were far more chary of their welcome. The Hungarian exile stood for universal liberty, and that was just what at that time the Senate of the United States were most interested in suppressing. However, though granted no reception, a banquet was given in his honor, at which most of our public men were present, and Daniel Webster, Secretary of State, delivered the principal address.

Quick to perceive the dilemma in which Congress found itself, and eager that the nation at large should appreciate it, Mr. Beecher writes a Star Paper in which, in his usual happy and effective style, he describes the incongruity in the action of our government in welcoming this fugitive from the oppression of the Old World while we are engaged in remanding to their oppressors fugitives in the New.

Invited by Mr. Beecher, Kossuth delivered an address in Plymouth Church in behalf of the cause of Hungarian liberty. So great was the eagerness of the people to hear him that some ten thousand dollars were realized from the sale of tickets.

So did the pastor of this church link himself with the cause of freedom all over the earth.

Fifty-two, being “election year,” saw efforts more persistent, if possible, than ever before to regard the Compromise measures as a finality and discourage all agitation of the subject of slavery. A public pledge was signed by more than fifty senators, among them the most influential from both the great parties, including Henry Clay, agreeing that they would thereafter support no candidate who did not approve and promise to abide by the provisions of that compact. Both the great parties of the day—the Whig and Democratic—put into their platforms resolutions declaring that the above Compromise was accepted as a final settlement of the questions at issue, and agreed to resist all attempts at renewing the agitation of the slavery question under any pretext whatsoever. In the election Franklin Pierce, who had but two qualifications for the office of chief magistrate—he was a gentleman and a radical pro-slavery man—was chosen by an overwhelming majority for President, for the reason that his party affiliations gave the best assurance that the pledges which all had alike made would in his case be fulfilled.

General Scott and the Whig party made just as profound an obeisance to the slave-power, and offered just as heavy a bid for its favors; but there was not the same confidence in their ability to perform the service demanded as in that of their Democratic rivals, and they were in consequence disastrously defeated. So did the popular vote upon its first opportunity endorse the action of Congress and declare that discussion on this great matter was closed. Yet, in spite of the verdict of the ballot-box, in spite of resolutions, compacts, and threats, agitation still went on. Mr. Beecher explains the phenomenon:

“Politicians inquire whence is the tenacity of life of the anti-slavery movement. It is not fanaticism that animates or controls it, it is the religious principle that is the secret of the strength of this cause; it is because Jesus Christ is alive, and there are Jesus Christ men who count this cause dearer than their lives.”

In the summer and autumn of 1852 Mr. Beecher was engaged in what was called “The Parker Controversy.”

We have no desire to open anew the bitterness of those old matters which have passed so long ago into history, and almost into forgetfulness, but no biography of the man would be complete without a reference to this trial, the severest which he had thus far endured, and which prepared him for other and greater ones to come. In our study of the character and disposition of Henry Ward Beecher we find him, as we believe, to have been pre-eminently a man of peace. In his history we see him almost continuously engaged in war. This anomaly is easily explained. It was not from desire or disposition, but a necessary consequence of the progress which he was making and the position which he occupied. The age was moving forward: wrongs must be overcome, new positions of advantage must be gained. By the habit of his mind, the intuitions of his genius, and the earnestness and simplicity of his purpose he found himself a leader in this progress.

While others stopped to discover the truth by laborious study in their libraries, he found it among the results of former researches, derived it intuitively from well-admitted principles, or gathered it from the people with whom he associated by the way. While others were carefully weighing the consequences of their actions, he, trusting in God, in the righteousness of his cause, in the forces of nature and in himself, stepped forward to the front. While others were laboriously forging their speeches his sprang like the fabled Minerva from the brain of Jupiter, alive, armed, and beautiful. He came into battle for the same reason that the head of a column advancing to seize a favorable position within the enemy’s lines is early brought under fire, or that a heavy field-battery, which is sending its shot with deadly effect into the ranks of the enemy, is attacked.

In his discussion with a New York daily, of which we have already spoken, he had come in conflict with the commercial spirit of the day which held its principles and its goods both for sale, and against it had defended the right of the pulpit to discuss the live topics of the hour. This had drawn fire. Men who had been scored as he scored them in a Star Paper of January 24, 1850, entitled “A Man in the Market”— “... They hang themselves up in the shambles of every Southern market; they trust the pliant good nature of the North, and are only fearful lest they should fail to be mean enough to please the South”—and who deserved the scoring, would not be likely to forget it soon or forgive it readily. The conflict in which he now became engaged was more painful than the former, for it was waged with Christian brethren. Beginning as a skirmish, it became a general battle, in which the conservatism of the Church, which had expurgated its religious tracts, curbed the religious press, and toned down the utterances of the pulpit, so as not to hurt the feelings of slave-holders, was engaged and brought to judgment.

It came about in this way: In “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” Mrs. Stowe had described the sale of a child taken from the arms of the mother, and of Tom’s feeling on the subject. “To him it looked like something unutterably horrible and cruel, because, poor, ignorant black soul! he had not learned to generalize and take in large views. If he had only been instructed by certain ministers of Christianity he might have thought better of it, and seen in it an every-day incident of a lawful trade—a trade which is the vital support of an institution which some American divines tell us has no evils but such as are inseparable from any other relations in social and domestic life.”

In a note she refers to Dr. Joel Parker by name as the man who had given utterance to these sentiments, and as representing the class which entertained them. The words, “No evils but such as are inseparable from any other relations in social and domestic life,” had been printed as his in a discussion which he had held in Philadelphia, had gone the rounds of the papers as his and had been printed and commented upon in England, and he had never denied that they rightfully belonged to him. But the quickened moral feeling which followed the publication of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” made the authorship of such sentiments less pleasant than formerly, and Dr. Parker suddenly discovered that he had been wronged in having these words ascribed to him, and threatened Mrs. Stowe with a suit for libel. A friend of his lawyer visited her brother Henry, and suggested that this matter could be arranged without a law-suit. With a confidence that was born of sincerity and inexperience, the brother attempts that most difficult rôle—that of peace-maker. He visits Dr. Parker, becomes satisfied that his language is capable of a less violent construction than had been put upon it, confers with Mrs. Stowe and finds her ready to take the most favorable view of the case possible, bears a letter from her to the doctor, writes and discusses with him the answer which he shall make, forwards Mrs. Stowe’s letter, which had been somewhat changed in the discussion, to her for approval—which being gained, he publishes both letters over the united signatures of the two parties, and goes off to Indiana on a lecturing trip, with the happy consciousness that he has done a good thing. Never was a man waked from a sweeter dream to a more bitter disappointment. Instead of making peace between them, he found, as a result of his labors, their differences increased and embittered, and himself charged with forgery both of letter and signature. Offended professional pride, newspaper rivalry, the hatred of men who had been lashed by his tongue and pen, the fears of conservatives and the bitter hatred of pro-slavery men, suddenly united their forces for his destruction. This young radical had left himself open to attack, and they all rushed to the onset or stood back and cheered others on, and were already beginning to rejoice in his downfall. The lead in the attack soon passed out of the doctor’s hands into those of more able and less scrupulous men, and aimed at nothing less than his annihilation. “The arrow was well shot,” he said; “had I been unshielded it would have done its work, for the point was poisoned.” But he was not unshielded! the overthrow was not accomplished, and he stood, at the end, fully vindicated from all the aspersions of his enemies.

In a long, carefully written article over his own name he gives the whole beginning, continuance, and end of this unhappy matter:

“For myself I profess that no event of my life, not the loss of my own children nor bereavements of friends most dear, have ever filled me with so deep a sorrow as that which I have in being made a party to a public dispute when three of the parties concerned are ministers of the Gospel, and when the fourth is a woman and the wife of a clergyman. At the very best it is a shame and a disgrace. To avert it I labored most honestly and with all my might.”

He closes with these words:

“I commit this narrative to the sober judgment of all good men, and myself I commit to the charge of Almighty God.”

“HENRY WARD BEECHER.”

Two letters selected from the voluminous correspondence of that time, one to a friend who approved, and the other to one who condemned, his course, are given, that the spirit which he cherished may be more thoroughly understood:

“BROOKLYN, Oct. 12, 1852.

”BARNABAS BATES, ESQ.:

“DEAR SIR: Your kind letter gave me much pleasure, not as adding anything to that quiet which belongs to a conscience void of offence, but as showing that I have been able to manifest to others that which was undoubted truth to me. It is very painful to be placed before the public as I have been, even when the verdict is ultimately favorable; for there is something repugnant to one’s feelings even to feel it possible that a suspicion of his honor could be for a moment entertained.

“But I am sure that I should be the most ungrateful of men if I failed to recognize the presence and abundant blessing of my God in all the passages of this painful experience.

“Not a promise made to me has been left unfulfilled, and I know that it has been a better sermon to me than was ever preached by human lips.

“Toward the parties of this wrong much must be allowed to wounded vanity, much to partisanship, something perhaps to forgetfulness. After all this, however, the rest will be a burden to their conscience whenever they shall hereafter look back upon it. And while I do most heartily forgive them, and could with earnest good-will do either of them a kindness, I cannot refrain from thanksgiving that I was the accused, not the accuser. Your kindness I have felt the more because personally (although not otherwise) a stranger to me, and because, coming among the first letters of sympathy, it has been the harbinger of great kindnesses, similar in kind, from many.

“I am, with sincere esteem,

“Gratefully yours, “H. W. BEECHER.“

”BROOKLYN, Oct. 12, 1852.

“RICHARD HALE, ESQ.:

”DEAR SIR: I was for a moment pained by the reading of your note this morning, and but for a moment; for it has pleased God to grant Himself to me in such measure that neither the wrath of enemies, nor the strife of tongues, nor the unadvised blows of friends have power to do me harm or unsettle my peace. Had I ever doubted the promises of God I should now find every shadow swept away; and I surely count the little annoyance which this perversion of honor and truth in these unprincipled men has caused me not worthy to be mentioned in the joy which I have had in being folded into the very bosom of my Saviour.

“All that I can ask in your behalf is that when the day of trouble shall come to you (with as little fault on your part as this on mine) God may sustain you by that certainty of integrity and that consciousness of honor which have given me unspeakable comfort, and would were I this day standing before God’s judgment-seat.

“I do not blame you; I believe that you meant me no unkindness; but it is manifest that with your present views it would be as painful for you to associate with me as it would be impossible for me to permit it.

“Whenever the evil impressions which have tempted you into misjudgments shall have passed away (and they assuredly will), and when my righteousness shall shine forth as the light (and God will bring it forth), then you will find me unchanged in my affections for you; nor shall I then remember anything but that you were once my friend.

“I am, with God’s unwavering support, and with the patience and peace which Christ only can give,

“Truly your brother, “HENRY WARD BEECHER.“

Also we give extracts from a third:

”BROOKLYN, October 12, 1852.

“R. W. LANDIS:

”DEAR SIR: Your welcome letter I received this morning. It gave me great pleasure, though I did not need it for my happiness. For it has pleased God so graciously to stand by me in this fiercest attack of my life that if every friend in the world had abandoned me I should not have been alone. I need not tell you, who have both known and taught to others, that Christ has a peace which, surpassing all other experience of earthly joy, requires for its possession an unusual earthly trial. In that peace I have rested as in God’s pavilion....

“I never expected to stand up in the publicity which God has been pleased to draw me into, and faithfully to declare His truth against the interests of commercial and political circles, and not be visited with this wrath.

“But they shall neither destroy me nor daunt me nor silence me, for my God is greater than their devil. I will work yet harder and speak more plainly for every blow they deal. May God repay your kindness to me a thousand-fold!

”H. W. BEECHER.”

We find no word from Mr. Beecher concerning the election of this year, but an article immediately following shows that he kept his eye upon the main issue, and that none of its humorous any more than its sorrowful features escaped him. It was entitled “Degraded into Liberty”:

“A Southern gentleman en route for Texas brought to New York eight slaves, to be shipped hence by one of our ocean-going steamers. The birds of the air informed the Abolitionists of the facts, and it was not long before a writ was served upon the whole chattel-gang, and they were hauled up before Judge Paine to show cause why they should not be doomed to freedom. The cruel inhospitality of New York was never more manifest. These innocent fellow-beings, blessed by being born slaves, and not painfully educated for it, as Northern Southerners are; having had all the manifold mercies which make a Virginia slave so much better off than a free factory-girl in Massachusetts; having grown up in the indulgence of those hilarious dances and in the practice of those songs which make plantation life perfectly paradisaical, they were on their way to that land waving with sugar-cane and cotton-plants, where, hoe in hand, they were to while away the brilliant hours with gentle dalliances with loam and clay—when lo! they were suddenly arrested.

“From these bright anticipations they have been ruthlessly snatched, and plunged into freedom utterly unprepared! Are there no tears in Castle Garden? Ought not the Union Committee to spend something for a trifle of crape? Eight innocent fellow-chattels changed into fellow-beings! No kind master have they now. The tender relation is sundered. Our bereaved master and mistress must depart slaveless and alone. Having been worked for so long, and tended and taken care of, it is doubtful whether they will be able to take care of themselves now. Much as we sympathize with them, we do not consider their affliction at all comparable to that of the late happy slaves. These poor creatures are free, and we are assured in the highest quarter that no greater evil than that can well befall the slave population. They have degraded themselves. They have refused to be ‘content rather.’ In all the world they cannot find a man who owns them. They are now to sneak through life, like white men, owning themselves! They must have had some awful moments of compunction when the conviction first flashed upon them that they owned their own hands, trod upon their own feet, put their clothes upon their own shoulders, and felt that thing throbbing under their ribs to be their own heart. Some natural feelings must have shot through the maternal heart as she pressed her own babe to her own breast, and dropped her own tears upon its dusky cheek....

“Only one woman can be found faithful in this emergency. Their former mistress alone has appealed to their conscience and adjured them to return to her! Where were the teachers, the chaplains, the casuists, the lawyers, that a little time ago choked the press with beatitudes of slavery? ‘His watchmen are blind; they are all ignorant; they are all dumb dogs; they cannot bark; sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber.’

“In reply to Mrs. Lemmon’s appeal the deluded slave-woman drew herself up, and, pressing her child to her breast, said, ‘I had rather be free!’ What! not value the radiant mercies of slavery more than that? The creature is crazy! Slaves in their senses are always contented. They are mere pets. The Uncle Toms of Virginia do nothing but look after the children, or sit in sunny nooks and smoke their stubbed pipes. The Aunt Phillises are always fat, rollicking cooks, bursting with laughter. Nobody is happy but slaves. The poor masters have all the care and burden, slaves all the glee and leisure....

“It is a dreadful state of things here in New York, where we feed upon Cotton, and have our very living in the smiles and favor of the South, to be hurting their feelings by talking so much about liberty and all that. A few more slaves set free, and the South will get angry again; and then New York will be in a world of trouble, and another call will call together another Castle Garden full of anxious merchants, all full of love to the South; and we shall have more sermons and more newspaper articles; and nobody can tell what will happen the next time.

“In part, the South is at fault. It has sent North the wrong kind of negroes. Those who have run away, or been judicially sentenced to freedom, or been bought—all these have loved liberty. Now, won’t the South send us some of another sort—some of those model slaves that love bondage and wouldn’t take liberty if they could get it? With a few specimen copies of such, we believe that we could do Southern institutions great good in the North. *”

Fifty-three follows in much the same line as that of the two years immediately preceding. Franklin Pierce, who had been elected in November last, takes the oath of office on the 4th of March. His inaugural gives expression to what was undoubtedly the general feeling of the country—a determination that the Compromise measures shall be enforced, and a fervent trust that the question of slavery has been settled; and in his annual message, upon the assembling of Congress in that year, promises that the peace which now so happily existed through the land should not be disturbed during his term of office, if he could prevent it. A large majority of the people, both North and South, were undoubtedly in perfect accord with this desire, greatly pleased with this assurance, and tried to share his confidence.

Those were days in which a great deal of sympathy was felt in this country for the Irish, and by many, too, who were stanch opposers of liberty for the negro. Mr. Beecher had no patience with men, on either side of the Atlantic, whose sympathy was limited by the bounds of race or color; and when John Mitchel, who had posed as the “Great Irish Patriot” of that day, having escaped from an English penal colony and been received here with great enthusiasm, took occasion to state in an editorial in the Citizen, “We deny that it is a crime or a wrong, or even a peccadillo, to hold slaves, to buy slaves, to sell slaves, to keep slaves to their work by flogging or other needful coercion; we only wish we had a good plantation well stocked with healthy negroes in Alabama,” he (Mr. Beecher) enters into public correspondence with him, in which he denies the claims of the refugee to be an “apostle of liberty,” sorrows over his downfall, and dismisses him to the test of history in these words:

“Once you stood like some great oak whose wide circumference was lifted up above all the pastures, the glory of all beholders, and a covert for a thousand timid singing-birds! Now you lie at full length along the ground, with mighty ruptured roots ragged and upturned to heaven, with broken boughs and despoiled leaves! Never again shall husbandman predict spring from your swelling buds! Never again shall God’s singing-birds of liberty come down through all the heavenly air to rest themselves on your waving top! Fallen! Uprooted! Doomed to the axe and the hearth!

“But there is a future beyond this, even on earth! There is a time promised, and already dawning, in which the human family shall be one great brotherhood, and Love shall be the law of man! In that golden age there shall be research made for all the names that, since the world began, have wrought and suffered for the good of their kind. There will be a memorable resurrection of forgotten names. From the obscurity into which despotism has flung all who dared to defy it, from the shades and darkness of oblivion by which oppressors would cover down the memory of all who proclaimed human right and human liberty, they will come forth shining like the sun, and none be forgotten that labored to bring to pass the world’s freedom! In that day, when ten thousand names shall be heard, in all their number not one shall utter that gone and forgotten name—John Mitchel!”

We do not wish it to be inferred from our words that Mr. Beecher was the only anti-slavery leader who was doing good service in those days. There were many others, and some, perhaps, were doing as effective work in a single line as he. But we believe that, when the whole sphere of his activity was considered, he went far beyond any man of his time.

In any one of the three channels of largest influence, of that or of any time—the pulpit, the press, and the platform—he was the peer, if not the superior, of any leader; and while the most of his co-laborers used but one, or at the most two, of these instrumentalities, he was constantly employing the three, and each with unequalled efficiency.

His beliefs, as his labors, were broader than the most who were at that day prominently identified with the anti-slavery cause. He believed in the Constitution of the United States, and claimed that, if the government should be administered according to the original intent of this document, slavery must speedily cease. In this he differed from Garrison and his school, who held that “the (Federal) Constitution is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell.” He believed in the ballot-box, and in using its power to the utmost. In this he differed from Wendell Phillips and others of his school, who had disfranchised themselves for years, lest by voting they should seem to countenance an institution that was being used for the perpetuity of so great an injustice. He believed in the Church and the moral forces which she could bring to the work. He believed in love rather than hate, and most of all, with a triumphant, joyful faith, he believed in the person, presence, and leadership of the Redeemer and Reformer of the world. In all this he separated from the great body, individuals here and there excepted, of the Garrison and Pillsbury school of Abolitionists.

His judgment of the spirit of the leaders in this great movement may be inferred from the following extracts:

“Events made Garrison a leader. We never thought, and we do not now think, that Garrison deserved the one-half of the bitter reproaches that have been heaped upon him. His worst faults have been the reaction, in him, of the opposite faults of men favoring slavery or indifferent to it. But we regard him as one of the most unfortunate of all leaders for the best development of anti-slavery feeling. He is a man of no mean ability, of indefatigable industry, of the most unbounded enterprise and eagerness, of perseverance which pushes him like a law of nature, and of courage which amounts to recklessness. These are the qualifications which make a man powerful for stimulation. Had he possessed, as a balance to these, conciliation, good-natured benevolence, or even a certain popular mirthfulness; had he possessed the moderation and urbanity of Clarkson, or the deep piety of Wilberforce, he had been the one man of our age. These all he lacked. Had the disease of America needed only counter-irritation, no better blister could have been applied.

“Garrison did not create the anti-slavery spirit of the North. He was the offspring of it. It existed before he was born. But he at one time more powerfully developed and organized it than any other one mind; and developed it in modes and spirit, as we think, most unfortunate. Anti-slavery under his influence was all teeth and claw. It fought. It never conciliated. It gained not one step by kindness. It won not a single fort by surrender. It bombarded everything it met, and stormed every place which it won. We do not deny that Garrison and his early followers did a great work. Another generation will divide praise and blame, as no one is fitted to do in the heats of the present day. But when bare justice shall be done we believe that it will be found that a noble soul, deeply and truly benevolent, who sought the truest interests of his age, yet sought them with such a fierceness and such a hard and relentless courage as constantly roused up in his path the worst feelings of man, and heaped obstacles before him to such a degree that at length, in combating them, his sympathies for good seemed swallowed up in a bitter hatred of evil. The result of the agitation, inspired largely with this feeling, was that almost every interest in the nation rose up against the movement with which he was identified. Churches dreaded abolitionism, parties hated abolitionism, commerce abhorred abolitionism. Mobs rioted around the meetings, and threatened the dwellings, the stores, and the very persons of Abolitionists.

“There was odium and influence enough arrayed against the anti-slavery movement, under the form of early abolitionism, to have sunk ten enterprises which depended on men for existence. But there was a spirit in this cause, there was a secret strength, which nerved it, and it lived right on, and grew, and trampled down opposition, and came forth victorious! There was an irresistibility in it which made it superior to the faults of its friends and the deadly hatred of its enemies.”

It will be seen from the above how thoroughly he differed from what may be called the right wing of the Abolition party.

This difference is emphasized and the spirit which impelled him is indicated in an address which he delivered before the annual meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society, and in a letter which he wrote to the New York Tribune in answer to a criticism that appeared in that paper:

“I believe there is to be found Christianity enough in the world, in the Church and out of it, in the Bible and out of it, i.e., in the record and in the living heart, and, I had almost said, breathed through the very air, as a Divine Providence, inspiring the great organic laws of society, controlling the moral sense of the Church, yea, beating in the veins of political economy, subtly guiding the common generosities of men into a public sentiment which, in God’s own time, in spite of recreant clergymen, apostate statesmen, venal politicians, and trafficking shopmen, shall fall upon this vast and unmitigated abomination and utterly crush it. But my earnest desire is that slavery may be destroyed by the manifest power of Christianity. If it were given me to choose whether it should be destroyed in fifty years by selfish commercial influences, or, standing for seventy-five years, be then the spirit and trophy of Christ, I had rather let it linger twenty-five years more, that God may be honored, and not mammon, in the destruction of it. So do I hate it that I should rejoice in its extinction, even did the devil tread it out, as he first kindled it; but how much rather would I see God Almighty come down to shake the earth with His tread, to tread all tyrannies and oppressions small as the dust of the highway, and to take unto Himself the glory!”

This having been severely criticised, especially his willingness to have slavery linger, if by so doing its destruction could become a trophy to the prevailing power of Christ, he replies in a letter addressed to the same journal:

“Our highest and strongest reason for seeking justice among men is not the benefit to men themselves, exceedingly strong as that motive is and ought to be. We do not join the movement party of our times simply because we are inspired by an inward and constitutional benevolence. We are conscious of both these motives and of many other collateral ones; but we are earnestly conscious of another feeling stronger than either, that lives unimpaired when these faint, yea, that gives vigor and persistence to these feelings when they are discouraged; and that is a strong personal, enthusiastic love for Christ Jesus. I regard the movement of the world toward justice and rectitude to be of His inspirations. I believe my own aspirations, having a base in my natural faculties, to be influenced and directed by Christ’s Spirit. The mingled affection and adoration which I feel for Him is the strongest feeling that I know. Whether I will or not, whether it be a phantasy or a sober sentiment, the fact is the same nevertheless, that that which will give pleasure to Christ’s heart and bring to my consciousness a smile of gladness on His face in behalf of my endeavor, is incalculably more to me than any other motive. I would work for the slave for his own sake, but I am sure that I would work ten times as earnestly for the slave for Christ’s sake.

“I am not ashamed to own that I bear about with me an ineffaceable consciousness that I am what I am from Christ’s influence upon me. I accept the power to do good as His inspiration. Life is sacred to me only by my belief that I am walking in the scenes of a personal Divine Providence. When I drop from these beliefs life becomes void, the events of human society mere bubbles, and strifes of hope and fear, of good and bad, are useless as the turmoil of the rapids above Niagara. Nay, there is more than this: there is a heart-swell which no words can express; there is a sense of the sweet freedom of love, a sense of gracious pity, of patient condescension, of entire and transcendent excellence in Christ, which makes me feel how utterly true was the impassionate language of David: ‘Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire besides Thee. My heart and my flesh cry out for God!’...

“This sentiment does not spring from any indifference to the slave, but from a yet greater sympathy with Christ Jesus—the slave’s only hope, my only hope, the Saviour of the world!”

With this letter we close our consideration of Mr. Beecher’s work in this era of slavery agitation. Great as were his labors—and we think they were unsurpassed and unequalled by those of any other man—we still believe that his best contribution to the great cause was the spirit which he manifested and the motives that influenced him. It was like the walking of the Hebrew youths in the fiery furnace and coming forth unscathed from the flames.

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Chapter XIV

The Battle Renewed—Repeal of the Missouri Compromise Proposed—The Struggle in Congress—Mr. Beecher’s Appeals—The Battle lost in Congress is Transferred to the Territories—Forces Engaged—Kansas War—Dred Scott Decision—Mr. Beecher’s Defence of Kansas—“Beecher’s Bibles”—Charles Sumner Attacked in the Senate—The Fremont Campaign—The Dog Noble.

“Henry, the battle is coming on. When it will end I know not. I only hope that every one feels as alert as I do” (extract from a letter of Mrs. Stowe to Henry Ward Beecher). It was dated November 1, 1852, but expresses the feeling of some of the more sagacious ones during the whole of this era of apparent peace. They were not deceived by the surface calm. They felt that, beneath all party platforms, and the compromises of party politics, and the make-shifts of a commercial spirit, the great conscience of the North was being stirred. Deep was calling unto deep, and the moanings of the sea that presaged the coming tempest had reached their ears. The storm, not a new one but the violent rising of the same old elements, began in Congress in the early part of 1854, upon the question of the organization of the territory of “The Platte,” afterwards divided into two Territories called “Kansas and Nebraska.” The star of empire was moving Westward, but of what kind should this empire be, of liberty or slavery? If matters continued as they then were it must be the former. California, stretching along the Pacific coast for two hundred and fifty miles below Mason and Dixon’s line, had declared for freedom through all her borders. The Territories of New Mexico and Utah were not favorable to any great growth of slavery nor capable of rendering it much assistance. Texas, although intensely pro-slavery, yet, by reason of State pride, would not divide her imperial domain into quarters for the benefit of that institution. Only in one direction was expansion and growth possible, and that was in this broad domain which was now asking to be organized into Territories and would soon demand admission as States. Why should not this magnificent country be opened to the slave-owner and his property as well as to the settler from the North? Was not this his right? Other factors than property interests have entered into the question. Conscience has been enlisted upon the one side as on the other. The South has come to look upon slavery as having equal rights, under the Constitution, with liberty, and she feels aggrieved that she is not given all the privileges of her fellow-citizens of the North. The only thing that apparently prevented this natural and, as it seemed to her, just expansion, was the Missouri Compromise, which had solemnly guaranteed this whole territory to freedom. Why not repeal this obnoxious measure? The proposition to do this sprang from Kentucky. The same State which, through its senator. Henry Clay, had been foremost in originally securing the act, now through its senator, Mr. Dixon, his successor, was the first to ask for its repeal. Unlike as the movement seems, and disowned as it undoubtedly would have been by Mr. Clay, the great projector of the Missouri Compromise, yet in reality the substance of each is the same. In both there is but one design—to placate the slave-power and save the country by attempting to compromise, not diverse interests, but antagonistic principles. They were but separate steps in one path, and that a road towards national perversion, disgrace, and ruin. The guiding star which once shone in the heavens had been lost, and our statesmen were taking up with a will-o’-the-wisp, born of swamp and miasma, in its place.

Although the project was conceived by the South, it could not have been brought to the birth, much less nourished into baneful strength, had it not been adopted by the North in the person of Stephen A. Douglas, one of the ablest leaders of the Democratic party, a member of the United States Senate, and chairman of the Committee upon Territories. Into the bill for organizing the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska, which he reported to the Senate in January of 1854, he introduced the proposition to repeal the old Missouri Compromise. The mere proposal was regarded as little less than sacrilege. For thirty years that compromise had been looked upon as a sacred pledge, to be held in the same reverence as the Constitution itself. Scarcely four years before, the mover of the proposition for its repeal had described it as “canonized in the hearts of the American people as a sacred thing which no ruthless hand would ever be reckless enough to disturb.” An attempt to set it aside roused the most intense excitement throughout the whole land, the South in favor, the North opposed. The readiness with which the flame sprang up proved that through these past years of apparent quiet the fire had been covered but not put out. Now that fresh fuel was added and the draught opened, it blazed up more fiercely than ever. It was not confined to any class or condition.

All of anti-slavery tendencies saw in it an evidence of the settled purpose of the South to nationalize the institution of slavery, and a testimony that it would not scruple to use any means to attain its end.

Moralists saw in it a disregard of most sacred promises, and felt the ground of constitutional fidelity shaking under their feet. More than three thousand clergymen in New England signed a protest against the action proposed.

“We protest against the repeal of the Missouri Compromise as a great moral wrong; as a breach of faith, eminently unjust to the moral principles of the community and subversive of all confidence in national engagements; as a measure full of danger to the peace and even the existence of our beloved Union, and exposing us to the righteous judgments of the Almighty.”

Even the mere politician was angry that an issue so repugnant to a majority of the people had been so unwisely precipitated. Nor were his anger and apprehension unwarranted. The storm of popular indignation swept down like a tempest upon the forests, scattering dead leaves, breaking off dead branches, and throwing down trees that had become rotten in trunk or root. Before the end of the year the Democratic party had lost its magnificent majority in Congress, and the Whig party had practically ceased to exist, dishevelled, torn up by the roots, buried by the storm.

During this preliminary contest Mr. Beecher is neither indifferent nor silent. In lectures, in special sermons, and in numerous Star Papers he makes his influence felt. In one of the latter upon “The Crisis” his appeals and reproaches go out to all classes:

“The virtue, the morals, the prosperity of a domain large enough to be an empire has no safeguard about it. Those future States, silent and unpopulous, are like so many lambs huddled in a thicket by crowds of wolves, that only wait for some single taste of blood to plunge in and tear the whole! Unless there is a storm from the people that shall roll like thunder in the mountains; unless the recreant and graceless herd in Congress shall hear the coming down of many waters, like roaring freshets from mountains on whose tops clouds have burst, there will soon be no more ground to fight for. If anything is to be done it must be done by the North. It must be quickly, loudly, and impetuously done! There must be an outcry coming up from the bosom of the people, like that which rent the midnight of Egypt when all its first-born were stricken. Let no man wait for his fellow. Let children and women lead and teach sluggish manhood with what energy and soul a voice should be heard for liberty, upon half a continent, like the voice of God when He speaks in storms!

“Let every single man write, ‘I solemnly protest against the perfidy and the outrage of abolishing the Missouri Compromise’; and as he bears it to the post-office, if he find a fellow to sign it, let him sign; but if not, let it go as his single protest.

“Let families send solemn protests—the father and mother, the children and hired laborers. Let there be ten thousand petitions from single families within a week at Washington.

“Let churches and congregations unite and send instant petitions.

“In this solemn hour of peril, when all men’s hearts sink within them, we have an appeal to those citizens who rebuked us for our fears in 1850.

“Did you not declare that that should be a finality? Did you not say that, by a concession of conscience, we should thereafter have peace?

“Is this the peace? Is this the fulfilment of your promise? Is not this the very sequence which we told you would come? That compromise was a ball of frozen rattlesnakes. You turned them in your hands then with impunity. We warned and besought. We protested and adjured. You persisted in bringing them into the dwelling. You laid them down before the fire. Now where are they? They are crawling all around. Their fangs are striking death into every precious interest of liberty! It is your work!

“In this emergency where are those ministers of the Gospel who have always refused to infuse into the public mind a sound and instructed moral sentiment upon the subject of slavery? Hitherto you have been silent, because it did not concern the North. We earnestly protested that so deep and dreadful a disease could not prey upon any limb of this nation and not strike its taint and danger through and through the whole body politic. We implored men not to let the first principles of human rights die out of the popular mind; not to let a gigantic engine of despotism, through its selfish remunerations of commerce, deaden every quick sensibility to justice and bribe to sleep the vigilance of humanity, though every palm should have thrice as many pieces of silver as did he of old.

“The North is both bound and asleep. It is bound with bonds of unlawful compromise! You, ministers of Christ, held her limbs, while the gaunt and worthy minions of oppression moved about, twisting inextricable cords about her hands and feet; or, like Saul, stood by, holding the garments of those that slew the martyr! The poor Northern conscience has been like a fly upon a spider’s web. Her statesmen, and not a few of her ministers, have rolled up the struggling insect, singing fainter and fainter, with webs of sophistry, till it now lies a miserable, helpless victim, and Slavery is crawling up to suck its vital blood!

“What, then, do you owe to God, to heaven, and to your country, in an effort to regain conscience, liberty, and duty? God, who searches the heart, knows that it is not in our heart to say these things for the sake of aspersion. We would lie down before you, and let your steps tread our very neck, if you were only marching toward the high ends of our country’s good. But we cannot endure to see noble and venerable ministers of the Gospel first duped and deceived, and made to serve the ends of oppression, and then, when the mighty juggle is detected, stand silent and aghast, as unwilling now to repair as before to prevent the utter misery and evil.

“But let us not be deceived. Let every man be prepared for a future! If this bill shall be defeated the North will be like a man just dragged out of the rapids above Niagara! If this bill pass, the North will be like a man whirled in the very wildest rage of the infuriate rapids and making headlong haste toward the awful plunge.

“Does any man believe that there can be peace if this iniquity goes forward? Will the South, with such advantage gained, easily relinquish her grip? Will the North, betrayed, wounded, and religiously aroused from the very bottom, let slave States come to the door of the Union, from the very territory of which she has been cheated, and bid them enter? Such struggles are before us as we have never seen. The next time the masses, the religious-minded men of the then undivided North, are aroused, standing on no flimsy base of compromise but on the solid foundations of humanity, of natural feeling, of a Northern national feeling springing from a love of liberty, they will not be put to sleep again by any mere pretences of peace. The finality which the South gave was a hollow truce but to give them time to forge their arms and grind their swords. They bribed the North with a lie. The next time the North reaches forth her hand it will scarcely be for gold or silver. There is more danger now of wild collisions than of lying finalities. It will come to that if the foolish counsels of timid men prevail. If civil wars are to be prevented, now is the time; courage to-day or carnage to-morrow. Firmness will give peace; trembling will bring war. *”

Another one follows upon “The Christian’s Duty to Liberty”:

“Mar. 23, 1854.—At length God seems to have caught the wicked in their own craft. It was not in the power of all the men of the North to develop so earnest a feeling against slavery and for liberty as is now finding tongue and giving itself forth all over the North. All that for which we have been counted uncharitable by men anxious to be honorable toward the South has come to pass.

“Let the conscience of the North settle this question, not her fears. God calls us to a religious duty. Long has our talent lain in a napkin. Our testimony for liberty has been waived; our assertion of freedom has been timid and without enthusiasm. We have refused to accept at God’s hands the true mission of the North, to preach liberty to the captives and elevation to the whole human family. At length let the banner flow out to the wind, let the battle begin. There will never be another day of grace if this goes past. Retreat now and the North will never retreat again. We beseech Christian men and ministers to put this question where it belongs, upon a religious basis. Let them feel their duty in their own land as they feel their duty of preaching the truth of Christ, whether men will hear or whether they will forbear.

“Oh! that God, by breathing a spirit of prayer upon His people and of unflinching fidelity, would give us token that He has appeared at length for our salvation!”

In spite of all efforts to the contrary, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was effected in September of 1854, and the battle which had been fought in Congress and lost by the free States was at once transferred to the newly-admitted Territory, and was there waged with a fierceness and persistence that cannot be understood or appreciated, unless it be remembered that Kansas had become the strategic point of the whole great conflict. Given Kansas, slavery would have not only additional territory, but, what was even more important to its purposes, a majority in the United States Senate that should for ever, as it hoped, prevent the admission of more free than slave States, or the following of any course which should be prejudicial to its interests. In this new field the North at first labored under great disadvantage. The peculiar institution had already been planted and had taken root. The eastern border of Kansas was upon Missouri, a slave State which was fully aware of the advantage that broader fields would furnish the labor of her increasing slave population, and containing enough of a rough and wild frontier element to carry through any plan that desperation or villany might devise. The President of the United States Senate and acting Vice-President of the United States, David R. Atchison, was on the ground, and for months had been organizing Blue Lodges and other secret bodies, with the intent to take possession of the Territory, or at least of its polling-places, and secure it for slavery. The officers appointed by the President—a governor, three judges, a secretary, a marshal, and an attorney—were, of course, all favorable to the policy of the Administration, a policy which was all that the most radical pro-slavery advocate could desire.

The party thus happily situated did not hesitate to avail itself of its advantages. Its members swarmed across the borders at the election of a delegate to Congress, took possession of the ballot-boxes, appointed judges of election from their own number, elected their man by an overwhelming majority, and then for the most part returned to their homes in Missouri.

This was in October, 1854. In the following spring a Legislature was elected by the same illegal process, and proceeded at once to form a constitution most rabidly pro-slavery. It prescribed the death-penalty for any who should entice or decoy away a slave or assist him to escape, and ten years’ imprisonment for harboring or concealing a fugitive slave. To deny the right of holding slaves in the Territory, either by speaking, writing, printing or circulating books or papers, was declared to be felony, punishable with two years’ imprisonment. Having formed an elaborate constitution of the above character, and made ample provision for enforcing its requirements, they selected a site for the new State capital, called it Lecompton—after the attorney of the State, whose legal acquirements had assisted them greatly in their villany—and adjourned.

Looking upon affairs as they then appeared, and seeing that the Legislature, however elected, had been officially recognized, and that its enactments were in form legal, that the whole machinery of courts, marshals, and militia were in its hands and could be used to enforce its statutes, that it was favored by the Administration and the dominant faction at Washington, which could employ the United States army for its support, it would seem as if the battle had already been lost to the Free-State men, and that Kansas could be counted upon to give that majority in the United States Senate which the slave-power so greatly coveted. But other forces were at work. In the first place, the very enormity of these slave-laws compelled all the decent residents of Kansas, whether Free-Soil, Whig, or Democrat, to combine for their own defence against the possible outrages to which they were exposed by these enactments. In the second place, the party which had brought about the repeal of the Missouri Compromise had, by this very act, lost the control of the Lower House in Congress, and could not be relied upon to admit the Territory with its present infamous code. Besides these near and more immediate advantages, there were forces enlisted on this side that were working slowly but with great certainty toward the result aimed at by the Free-State men. The old migratory instinct which had throbbed in the veins of this race from the first, which had brought them from the steppes of Asia to the shores of the Atlantic, pushed the stronger and abler ones across the seas, moved them from the sea-coast to the foot of the Alleghanies, then drove them across this barrier to take possession of the great valley of the Ohio and the Mississippi, was still as active as ever and readily responded to the enticements of the new and fertile lands just opened in Kansas for settlement. No sooner was it known that the broad plains of this Territory could be occupied than the tide began to flow in this direction. Principle also came in to strengthen and ennoble this instinct.

“Then arose a majesty of self-sacrifice that had no parallel before. Instead of merely protesting, young men and maidens, laboring men, farmers, mechanics, sped with a sacred desire to rescue free territory from the toils of slavery, and emigrated in thousands, not to better their own condition, but in order that when this Territory should vote it should vote for freedom.”

Lest both instinct and principle should move too slowly or with insufficient equipment, emigrant societies were formed at the North to assist those who would offer themselves for the redemption of Kansas. One of the earliest of these to be on the ground was the “Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company,” headed by the Hon. Eli Thayer. This organization sent out a body of some thirty persons, who, in July of this year, had founded the town of Lawrence. With this company, organized, mutually acquainted, and trained in the orderly methods of New England, for a centre, there rapidly gathered a strong body, and one that well represented the bona-fide settlers of Kansas. They proceeded at once to call a mass convention and elect delegates. In due time a Constitutional Convention was called at Topeka, October 23, 1855, which formed a constitution, submitted it to the people, from whom it met with a hearty endorsement. It was then transmitted to Congress for approval.

These, Lecompton and Topeka, were the storm-centres around which surged the principal events of those turbulent times in Kansas which have been designated as “The Kansas War.” It was a wild, irregular, barbarous, and bloody strife, made up of night-attacks, house-burnings, secret murders, skirmishes between armed bodies sometimes rising to the proportions of a battle, Lawrence twice burned, Leavenworth sacked, and acts of that description, filling up four years or more of most eventful history.

Kansas at that time was the skirmish-line of two great hosts that were already settling down to a life-and-death struggle. On the one side a Legislature, as we have seen, elected largely by the votes of marauders from an adjoining State; a reckless population just over the line, whose historic name, Border Ruffians, seems to have been fully deserved, organized into secret bands ready to march at a moment’s warning, equipped either to vote or fight as should be required; a regiment of United States troops placed at their disposal; the whole South awake to the work they have undertaken, and forwarding supplies of men and money for the support of those already on the field; and the Administration at Washington, through portions of two presidential terms, alternately scheming and commanding for its success.

On the other hand was a Legislature, illegally convened, but elected by a large majority of the resident population of the Territory, with a constituency, some of them doubtless adventurers, some fanatics, and others possibly villains, but for the most part honest homesteaders, living, it may be, in sod huts or dug-outs, but living upon land which they had pre-empted and could call their own; the great North behind them, slowly but surely moving down to their rescue; the throb of the world’s progress beating towards them; the consciousness that they are fulfilling the purposes of God in saving this land to liberty animating them; and the great natural elements of soil, air, and sunshine, that are always on the side of liberty, working for them. These were the forces on the other side.

Each section came to the support of its skirmish-line in characteristic fashion: the South by military companies and the incursions of armed bands of raiders aiming to conquer the country, if necessary, by force of arms and overawe it into accepting its bogus State constitution. The North came in emigrant-wagons, with family, stock, house-furniture, and farm utensils, prepared to remain and occupy the land.

The general trend of the government at an early period in the strife, as seen in various acts at home and abroad, must also be taken into the account. The Ostend Manifesto, issued under the inspiration of President Pierce by our three ministers, Buchanan, Mason, and Soulé, at the courts respectively of London, Paris, and Madrid, recommended the purchase of Cuba, if possible; if not that we obtain it by force. “If Spain,” they said, “should refuse to sell Cuba to the United States, then by every law, human and divine, we shall be justified in wresting it from her, if we possess the power.” Slavery at this period had a foreign as well as a home policy. It was that of the old buccaneer, a policy of unscrupulous aggression, that would not hesitate to embroil the nation in war, if necessary for the carrying out of its designs. Filibustering expeditions, which were continually being planned and attempted at this time against Cuba and Central America, were rightly looked upon not only as additional proof of the purpose but as the initial steps in the proposed plan of foreign conquest.

As if the forces arrayed against liberty were not enough, as the conflict advanced the Supreme Court of the United States added its influence to the side of the antagonist. In the historic Dred Scott decision, given in the spring of 1857, the ground is taken that the negro slave is so completely and exclusively property, under the Constitution, that the owner can take him, as any other property, into any and all territory belonging to the United States government. In effect “the negro has no rights which the white man is bound to respect.”

After the lapse of many years, upon a calm review of that decision it is difficult to say whether the historical errors, the feeble reasoning, or the immoral sentiments most awaken our surprise and contempt. It is sufficient for our purpose at this time to know that this decision threw a vast influence against the Free-State men. If it were final, then their struggle was all in vain. Strive as much as they would, and suffer as much as they might, they could never make Kansas a free State. And yet, in spite of the Dred Scott decision, the hostility of the Administration, and all other adverse forces and circumstances, they held on. To this result had our country come through the compromises and surrenders of three-quarters of a century: slavery in possession of the machinery of government, nationalized by the highest tribunal in the land, declared to have equal rights with freedom in all the public domain, and, in logical sequence, not to be shut out from even the free States. Every institution of thirty millions of freemen was to be judged and graded, encouraged or restrained, with supreme reference to the interests of this institution. Dominant at home, it was already taking steps preparatory to foreign conquest, and the only effective obstacle in the way of the consummation of its plans was the life-and-death tenacity with which the free settlers of Kansas held to their determination that theirs should be a free State.

The contest continued for four years before any substantial advantage was gained for the Free State party. Four governors, three appointed by President Pierce and one by President Buchanan, had successively been sent, and then deposed and disgraced because they could not, or would not, carry out the unjust measures proposed by the Administration. The victory in Congress in 1858 was simply a resubmission of the Lecompton constitution to the people of the State to be voted upon, whether they would accept it or frame one for themselves. They of course buried it amid universal execrations. Slight and unmistakably just as was this concession of Congress, it was nevertheless secured but by a small majority. The change of five votes would have passed the notorious Lecompton Bill, admitted the State with slavery into the Union, added two senators to the slave-power, restored the supremacy of that power in the Senate of the United States, to be followed by the carrying out the Dred Scott decision to its logical consequences, slavery supremacy at home, slavery aggression, annexation, and expansion over Cuba and Central America, abroad. A vast slave-empire stretching from the lakes to the southern shores of the Caribbean Sea seemed not an improbable dream, if there had not been wisdom enough or will enough to fight the battle out in Kansas. All honor to those brave men and women who in those days saved this Territory to the North! All honor to those who stood by them and helped them to win! A more important battle was never fought in our history, and a more heroic spirit was never shown. What the château of Hougoumont, held by the British right centre, was to the battle of Waterloo; what the “Bloody Angle” held by Hancock was to the battle of Spottsylvania Court-House, such was the Kansas war in the early and determining era of the great American conflict.

Call this four years of struggle one battle, and it will take rank with the “fifteen great battles” of the world’s history, second in importance to none.

We have thus given an outline of this great preliminary struggle of the war, that Mr. Beecher’s position and labors, which were much criticised at the time, may be seen in their true light. As is well known, he threw himself into this work with all the enthusiasm which such an emergency might be supposed to awaken. He felt the importance of the struggle and the need of instant action. Since, under the doctrine of “squatter sovereignty,” which had taken the place of the former restriction, the question of freedom or slavery in Kansas must be decided by the vote of the actual settlers, these must be aided to emigrate to that Territory from the North, and at once. Since they were to be the foundation elements of a Christian State, they should be supplied with Bibles; and since they would doubtless be called upon to defend themselves against attack, they must be supplied with firearms. He lectured and took up collections in Plymouth Church and from the lecture platform for Sharp’s rifles, an arm then but just come into notice. He preached, lectured, and bought rifles with the same object in view—to redeem men to liberty; and with the same spirit—love to God and man. Some of the rifles, it is said, were sent in boxes marked Bibles, but without his knowledge, and so passed in safety through Missouri and the enemy’s lines. Hence the term Beecher’s Bibles came to be applied to these effective weapons.

At this time he published his famous “Defence of Kansas,” that showed not more clearly the warmth of his spirit than his clear understanding of the issues at stake and the dangers that were impending:

“A battle is to be fought. If we are wise it will be bloodless. If we listen to the pusillanimous counsels of men who have never shown one throb of sympathy for liberty, we shall have blood to the horses’ bridles. If we are firm and prompt to obvious duty, if we stand by the men of Kansas and give them all the help they need, the flames of war will be quenched before it bursts forth, and both they of the West and we of the East shall, after some angry mutterings, rest down in peace. But if our ears are poisoned by the advice of men who never rebuke violence on the side of power, and never fail to inveigh against the self-defence of wronged liberty, we shall invite aggression and civil war. And let us know assuredly that civil war will not burst forth in Kansas without spreading. Now, if bold wisdom prevails, the conflict will be settled afar off in Kansas, and without blows or blood. But timidity and indifference will bring down blows there, which will not only echo in our houses hitherward, but will by and by lay the foundation for an armed struggle between the whole North and the South. Shall we let the spark kindle, or shall we quench it now? But, that intelligent citizens may the better judge, let the facts of this case be reviewed....

“There was never so strong an appeal to public sympathy as that which is presented in the case of Kansas free settlers. Their emigration was a mission of mercy, full of the ripest fruits of Christianity. Their conduct has been noble. They have borne hardships without faltering, they have borne outrage and persecution with patience, returning good for evil. They have suffered wrongs manifold and infinitely provoking, without retaliation. When aggression on one occasion was pushed so sorely that their patience failed, some of the men said: ‘We cannot bear such wrongs.’ The reply made by Pomeroy will become a maxim of Christian men: ‘Be patient! your wrongs are your very strength.’

“When the armed day came, and their adversaries came out to consume them, then, and only then, they took up arms and surrounded their homes with living men, determined not to attack, but never to surrender.... Once when England only asserted the right to tax the colonies without representation, the colonies rebelled and went to war. But now a foreign Legislature has been imposed upon Kansas. That Legislature has legalized slavery against the known wishes of nine-tenths of the actual settlers. It has decreed that no man shall enter the Territory who will not take an oath of allegiance to this spurious Legislature. It has made it death to give liberty to the man escaping from oppression. It has muzzled the press. It has forbidden discussion. It has made free speech a penitentiary offence. The rights for which the old colonists fought were superficial compared with these. These are the rights which lie at the very heart of personal liberty.

“Indeed, there can be no personal freedom where free speech, a free press, a free canvass and discussion are penitentiary offences! These are the laws which the President is determined to enforce! Congress is to be asked for money to sustain this government in Kansas, or to pay for an army to cut the throats of every free citizen who will not yield to this infamy!...

“Peace in Kansas means peace everywhere; war there will be war all over the land. Now it can be stopped. But fear will not do it. A truculent peace will not do it. Indolence and presumptuous prayer will but hasten the mischief. When tyrants are in arms they who cry peace become their confederates. Manliness, action, courage, and ample preparation for defence will stop the danger. The Providence that will help us is the Providence that we help. God works for those who work for Him. When He answers prayer for harvests He inspires men to work, and petitions for crops and harvests are answered through ploughs and spades. And God will answer prayers for peace by inspiring men with justice, with abhorrence of oppression; by making good men bold and active, and bad men feeble and cowardly; by stopping the ears of the community to the counsel of cowards and hypocrites. Let every man in this awful crisis not fail to pray, and, that they may pray without hypocrisy, let them watch and work! How shall we dare ask God to save us from bloodshed when we will not use the means He has put into our hands? Faith without works and prayer without works are dead—stone-dead. Let the emigrants go hither and thither by hundreds, and pray as they go! Let them that have money now pour it out, and pray as they give! Let them that have sons in Kansas send them arms, and pray that they may have no occasion to use them; but that, if they must be used, that the son may so wield them that the mother be not ashamed of the son whom she bore! Let them that have influence speak out! Let ministers and Christian free men now, if ever, speak against barbarism and uphold the whole retinue of Christian institutions! Let those whose tongue has been hitherto palsied by evil advisers now loose their tongue and speak! Of whom will the land take counsel? There have been two sorts of counsellors hitherto. One has pointed out for twenty years the nature of slavery, its tendencies, the dangers which it threatened; and all the prophecies have come true. The other kind of counsellors have predicted peace, dissuaded from action, urged compromise, and at each reluctant step have promised the country peace. In not a single instance have they been right. Events have overthrown every one of their promises. They have led us down deeper into trouble at every step. We have been betrayed by kisses. Excitements have deepened, lessons have multiplied, compromises have bred cockatrices. We are spun over with webs. We are tangled with sophistries. We have everything but manliness, straightforwardness, courage, and decisive wisdom....

“But what is done must be done quickly. Funds must be freely given; arms must be had, even if bought at the price mentioned by our Saviour: ‘He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one.’ Young men who would do aught for liberty should take no counsel of fear. Now is the time when a man may do for his country in an hour more than in a whole life besides. Time flies. Events hasten. Fear and treacherous peace, that betray duty with ignorant words of religion, will ruin all; but energy, courage, action will save all. Woe to us if war comes from our fault! If it comes, on the skirts of false peace will its blood be found!”

Of the result of this sending armed colonists into Kansas he speaks a few weeks later:

“Of all the revolutions on record, we remember none so remarkable as that which has been wrought by Sharp’s rifles. We do not know that a single man has ever been injured by them. They are guiltless of blood. But the principle which they involve has brought the whole South to a protest against violence, even in the extremest necessity of self-defence! These aforetime heroes of the knife and revolver are now deep in the Scriptures. They are quoting all the peaceable texts; they hang with irrepressible delight over all those passages which teach forbearance.”

Being attacked in a religious paper for his aggressive attitude, he answers: “We have acted consistently with our settled belief. We have NOTHING to retract.”

An event that took place at this time added still more fuel to the hot indignation that was glowing through the North—the attack by Preston S. Brooks, of South Carolina, upon Charles Sumner, May 22, 1856, in the Senate Chamber. It was an act so cowardly and atrocious that it cannot be recalled after these many years without a tingling of the blood. If a blow had been given at the moment of the debate, if the man seeking redress had approached his adversary face to face and given him opportunity to defend himself, if it had been but a single blow, possibly some extenuation could be offered; but to strike a man a stunning blow without warning, when he is sitting at his desk and so hampered that he is unable to rise until he has torn the desk up from its fastenings; to follow with more than a score of blows until the instrument of attack, a heavy cane, is broken to pieces and his victim is left senseless—is an act that, search where it may, can find nothing to add to its infamy. Among the meetings called all over the North to give voice to the anger of the people at this dastardly act, one was in New York City. The advertised speakers were William M. Evarts, John Van Buren, Daniel Lord, Jr., and others of eminence. The speeches were able but tame and conservative. They did not meet the demand of the popular heart over that tremendous outrage. Just as the meeting was being adjourned Mr. Beecher was discovered in the back part of the room, having come in to listen to men whose reputation was so great but whom he had never heard. At once the cry from the unsatisfied audience was “Beecher, Beecher!”

So unexpected was the call, and so annoyed was he at being called out, that it required almost physical force to get him to take the platform; but when once there his soul kindled with the occasion. A simple recital of facts led the audience step by step over the ground which had been traversed for the last ten years. The grand principles of our polity were uncovered to their view. Scene after scene was depicted by his marvellous dramatic power, culminating in that outrage in the Senate Chamber on account of which they had gathered; and the audience, alternately moved by his pathos, fired by his passion, or swept by his humor, became one with the speaker. They saw as he saw, they felt as he felt; and he stamped them that night with the impress of his hatred of slavery and his burning enthusiasm for liberty. The next day the press carried this impression to the multitude of its readers, and, dismissing the other speeches of the evening with a formal notice, gave his as nearly as possible verbatim. It was his meeting for the first time upon the platform with the leading men of the country, and from that hour he took his place with them and held it to the end.

Many leading men in Massachusetts having been invited to a similar meeting held in Boston, and sending regrets, he analyzes their excuses in a Star Paper upon “Hearts and no Hearts”:

“Admirable! The man is sacrificed to the position. No tear, no indignation, no heart-felt throb, no voice or gesture which befits an open and free heart. All instincts and spontaneity must be judged by supposed interests of a professorship. In such cases as this the man is a mere Jonah in the whale’s belly. His professorship has swallowed his manhood! Alas for the whale!”

Of this attack on Sumner he said in the Star article of June 12, “Silence must be Nationalized”:

“This deed stands absolutely alone in our history. It has not a single fellow! There have been brutal things, and cruel things, and mean things, and cowardly things, and wicked and inhuman wrongs, but nothing before that epitomized them all. With the exception of one or two papers, the whole South has accepted the act and made it representative! It is no longer Brooks that struck Sumner! He was the arm, but the whole South was the body! And with one consent it is declared that for the crime of free speech it was done and deserved!”

In the meantime a new party, born of this conflict, was rapidly coming into power. Made up of elements apparently most diverse, it was brought together by a common purpose and fused into one by a grand enthusiasm. There was, for a nucleus, the larger part of the old Free-Soil party, that had been in existence since 1842; then came Abolitionists, of which there had been for years a sprinkling in all the Northern States; seceders from the Whig party, called in New York State “Silver Grays,” and from the Democratic party, called “Barnburners;” and a multitude of others, a daily increasing host, vital in every member with the spirit of the hour. Combining some of the best elements of all the parties, it had a breadth of power that no one party could have given it alone. While it had enough men of experience in affairs to secure wisdom of action, its recruits were for the most part young men, who brought the inspiration of their youth, their numbers, their hope, and their indignation. After a preliminary mass convention in Pittsburgh on Washington’s birthday, February 22, 1856, they met in Philadelphia and adopted a platform of principles and nominated candidates for President and Vice-President.

In this platform they gave their attention mostly to the great issue of supreme importance—that between liberty and slavery. Their action here was positive and unequivocal: no more slave territory; no more coddling of slave institutions. Upon this platform it nominated John C. Fremont for its standard-bearer, and organized its hosts for the great presidential contest of that year.

The party thus brought before the country had some great advantages over all rivals. The Whig party was already dead, although not yet fully conscious of the fact, and awaiting burial; the Democratic party was inextricably associated, for weal or for woe, with the slave-power; while the Know-Nothing party was but a mushroom, and a poisonous variety at that. On the other hand, this new organization was intensely alive. It had a definite object in view and was not afraid to avow it. It had the strength of intense moral conviction. Its cause gave opportunity for inspiration and awakened the grandest enthusiasm. It was in harmony with the fundamental principles of our nation and the early struggles of our people. It was in sympathy with the great movement of the age in all lands. Its lengthening lines and the rising hosts of the Old World were parts of the same army. Its standard-bearer, by reason of his youth, adventurous career, and brilliant service, was well adapted to awaken a loyal and spirited following. It had nothing to conceal; it had nothing to fear; it carried with it the hopes of the nation and the world. Adopting the “Marseillaise,” the greatest liberty song that was ever written, it adapted its own chorus to the music and sang at its meetings with boundless enthusiasm:

“Arise, arise, ye braves! And let your war-cry be, ‘Free speech, free press, Free soil, free men, Fremont, and victory!’”

Mr. Beecher gave himself unreservedly to this contest:

“Well, of course we felt all aflame. My church voted me all the time that I thought to be required to go out into the community and speak and canvass the State of New York. I went into that canvass, spoke twice and often three times a week, having the whole day to myself—that is, making all the speeches that were made. I was sent principally to what we called the Silver-Gray districts or counties—the old-time Whigs that were attempting to run a candidate between Fremont and Buchanan. I generally made a three hours’ speech a day in the open air to audiences of from eight to ten thousand people. I felt at that time that it was very likely that I should sacrifice my life, or my voice at any rate, but I was willing to lay down either or both of them for that cause.”

Of Mr. Beecher’s contributions to the literature of the campaign we can, for lack of space, give but few quotations, and these only as they afford an idea of the humorous and enthusiastic manner in which he stood up for his candidate. In the close scrutiny of private life, which is so marked a feature of presidential campaigns, it had been learned that John C. Fremont and Jessie Benton had fallen in love with each other, and, her father not approving of his daughter’s selection, the two lovers had made a runaway match of it, and in their haste had been married by a Roman Catholic priest. This escapade was being used against the candidate by the opposite party, not because he ran away with the fair Jessie—the ballot of the average American voter would as likely be won as lost by such an exhibition of youthful enterprise—but because it helped to prove, what was persistently claimed, that he was a Roman Catholic. In answer Mr. Beecher wrote a vigorous article disproving the charge, and justifying the groom in securing the services of any one competent to perform the marriage ceremony, closing with these words: “Like a true lover and gallant man, Fremont said that he did not care who married him, so that it was done quick and strong. If we had been in Colonel Fremont’s place we would have been married if it had required us to walk through a row of priests and bishops as long as from Washington to Rome, ending up with the Pope himself!”

He ridicules the persistency with which certain newspapers returned to the attack upon Fremont on the assumed ground of his being a Roman Catholic, with the story of “The Dog Noble and the Empty Hole,” that probably did as good campaign service as any story that was ever written:

“The first summer which we spent in Lenox we had along a very intelligent dog named Noble. He was learned in many things, and by his dog-lore excited the undying admiration of all the children. But there were some things which Noble could never learn. Having on one occasion seen a red squirrel run into a hole in a stone wall, he could not be persuaded that he was not there for evermore!...

“The intense enthusiasm of the dog at that hole can hardly be described. He filled it full of barking. He pawed and scratched as if undermining a bastion. Standing off at a little distance, he would pierce the hole with a gaze as intense and fixed as if he were trying magnetism on it. Then, with tail extended and every hair thereon electrified, he would rush at the empty hole with a prodigious onslaught.

“This imaginary squirrel haunted Noble night and day. The very squirrel himself would run up before his face into the tree, and, crouched in a crotch, would sit silently watching the whole process of bombarding the empty hole with great sobriety and relish. But Noble would allow of no doubts. His conviction that that hole had a squirrel in it continued unshaken for six weeks. When all other occupations failed this hole remained to him. When there were no more chickens to harry, no pigs to bite, no cattle to chase, no children to romp with, no expeditions to make with the grown folks, and when he had slept all that his dog-skin would hold, he would walk out of the yard, yawn and stretch himself, and then look wistfully at the hole, as if thinking to himself: ‘Well, as there is nothing else to do, I may as well try that hole again!’

“We had almost forgotten this little trait until the conduct of the New York Express in respect to Colonel Fremont’s religion brought it ludicrously to mind again. Colonel Fremont is, and always has been, as sound a Protestant as John Knox ever was. He was bred in the Protestant faith and has never changed....

“But the Express, like Noble, has opened on this hole in the wall, and can never be done barking at it. Day after day it resorts to this empty hole. When everything else fails this resource remains. There they are indefatigably—the Express and Noble—a church without a Fremont, and a hole without a squirrel in it!...

“We never read the Express nowadays without thinking involuntarily, ‘Goodness! the dog is letting off at that hole again.’”

The election of 1856 resulted, as is well known, in the choice of James Buchanan for President. Since his policy was dictated by the same power behind the throne as that of Mr. Pierce, it was, of course, not unlike that of his predecessor; and this era in the great conflict which opened with the repeal of the Missouri Compromise closes with the Administration at Washington more than ever submissive to the demands of the South. But it also closes with the right wing of the great army of liberty, whose lines reached from the Atlantic to the roots of the Rocky Mountains, securely entrenched and holding its position, and with continually increasing numbers, barring farther aggressions of slavery for ever.

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Chapter XV

Remarkable experiences—The Edmonson Sisters—Pinky and her Freedom-Ring—Slave Auction in Plymouth Church—John Brown—The Wrong and Right Way—Election of Abraham Lincoln—Secession—Buchanan’s Fast.

While these larger public matters were engaging his attention there was an equally engrossing field of private activity in which he was constantly engaged, and which developed into some very peculiar and remarkable experiences. As early as 1848 we find him conducting an auction sale, in New York City, of the two Edmonson sisters.

This case at the time attracted wide attention. Two respectable young women of light complexion, living in Washington City, had the misfortune to be born while the mother was a slave. After they had grown to womanhood they found that the former owner of their parent was about to sell them to a slave-dealer for exportation to New Orleans and the market. Despairing of being able to raise the exorbitant sum at which they were valued, and not knowing how to escape from a doom far more dreadful than death, they risked everything by going on board the Pearl schooner with seventy-seven others, in the hope of escaping to a land of liberty and purity. The ship was captured and they were hurried off to Slater’s Den, Baltimore, and thence to New Orleans. By some most extraordinary providences they were brought back from New Orleans to Washington, and their sad case at length reached the ears of those who had hearts to feel and means to save. A meeting was held in the Tabernacle October 23, at which Dr. Dowling and Mr. Beecher spoke with so much effect that $2,200 were raised and the captives were free. Mr. Beecher’s speech is described by an eye-witness, himself a minister, as beyond anything he has ever heard before or since. He extemporized there on the stage an auction of a Christian slave. The enumeration of his qualities by the auctioneer, and the bids that followed, were given by the speaker in perfect character. He made the scene as realistic as one of Hogarth’s pictures and as lurid as a Rembrandt. Physical excellences, mental, moral, and spiritual qualities, are each dwelt on with an emphasis and moving effect that proved that he would have made a capital auctioneer if he had chosen that business.

“And more than all that, gentlemen, they say he is one of those praying Methodist niggers; who bids? A thousand—fifteen hundred—two thousand—twenty-five hundred! Going, going! last call! Gone!”

The audience were wrought up to a perfect frenzy of excitement while that picture was being drawn, and when real contributions instead of imaginary bids were called for, the sum was easily raised and the girls were free. He says of it: “I think that of all the meetings that I have attended in my life, for a panic of sympathy I never saw one that surpassed that. I have seen a great many in my day. An amount of money was subscribed, and they were bought and set free. The mother was a very old woman. She had been a nurse of a great Richmond lawyer whose name has died out of my memory. He owed his conversion to her. He was famous in the days of Webster.”

We have lying before us as we write a little leather-covered account-book, soiled and worn by use, which has upon its first pages letters from various humanitarians—William Lloyd Garrison being among the number—recommending to the Christian public one Pomona Brice, who “is engaged in collecting money to secure the ransom of her daughter and two grandchildren who are scattered somewhere in North Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, and Missouri.” The names of subscribers follow, with the sums subscribed—ranging from twenty-five cents to ten dollars—among which stands the familiar autograph “H. W. Beecher, if the whole is made up, five dollars.” Receipts from the different savings-banks where she had deposited the money; a letter from her lawyer to Mr. Beecher telling him that at her request he had examined the laws of the above-mentioned States, and found them all against her; a bill for his services and a judgment of the court against her for $100, all either directed or entrusted to Mr. Beecher, give us an inkling of another kind of work that wore upon his time, sympathy, and purse.

Not only did he help by his subscriptions some poor mother or grandmother to buy the liberty of her children or grandchildren, but sometimes brought the slave upon Plymouth pulpit and raised the money for its redemption on the spot. A handful of letters in our possession gives the preliminaries to such a transaction.

One is from a Mr. Blake, who has called on the “nigger trader” and obtained the refusal of the child for $900, and has also “obtained four or five good names to a bond for the payment of the money or return of the child. When I told the grandmother what I had done the poor old soul cried for joy. ‘God bless you!’ she said. ‘I will sit up all night to get you some breakfast. You have saved my child.’” Then comes a hitch in the proceedings. A partner to the trader before spoken of appeared. He hated “the d——— Abolitionists, and would not let the child go among them.” “Do you not think something could be done without the child? She has light flaxen hair. Her owner said I would easily get her on the cars, for no one would know her from a white child. The grandmother has purchased herself. She has also saved up about $200 to support her in her old age. She is willing to give this. If we take it we shall want $700 more. If you can do anything, in God’s name do it and save the child.

“G. FAULKNER BLAKE.”

In some way, the letters do not tell us how, the difficulties were overcome. The permission of the joint owners of this flaxen-haired girl was obtained, bonds were given to the railroads as well as the owners to secure them from loss in case this property should not be returned, and the child was brought to the auction-block of Plymouth pulpit and was bought for liberty.

The following is Mr. Beecher’s farther account of this matter:

“Before the passage of the Red Sea, before the escape of the Israelites (in this country, not in Egypt), I was accustomed, from time to time, to buy slaves here; and it was thrown up that this was one of the best slave-auction places anywhere to be found—that better prices were obtained for slaves that were put up for sale here than for any others. Some thought there was an inconsistency in it. I did not. I was always glad, at suitable times, as often as was proper, to bring before you living men and women, and let them stand and look you in the face, that you might see what sort of creatures slaves were made of. I was glad by every means in my power to arouse men’s feelings against the abomination of slavery, which I hated with an unutterable hatred, and which I hate still in memory as much as then I hated it in substance and in fact.

“Well, at one time there was a girl named ‘Pink,’ or ‘Pinky,’ brought here. She came through the agency of G. Faulkner Blake, a brother of one of our own members. He was studying in the Episcopal Seminary at Alexandria, I believe. He learned from her old grandmother that ‘Pinky,’ who was too fair and beautiful a child for her own good, was to be taken away from the grandmother and sent South.

“To make a long story short, those interested in the girl wrote me to see if I could purchase her. I replied, ‘I cannot unless you send her North’; and there was trouble in bringing her here. I wrote that I would be responsible for her, and that she would be lawfully purchased or sent back.

“I remember that the pen-keeper paid me a compliment which I shall never forget, by saying that if Henry Ward Beecher had given his word he considered it better than a bond. So she was brought here and placed upon this platform; and the rain never fell faster than the tears fell from many of you that were here. The scene was one of intense enthusiasm. The child was bought, and overbought. The collection that was taken on the spot was enough, and more than enough, to purchase her. It so happened (it is not wrong to mention now) that a lady known to literary fame as Miss Rose Terry was present; and as, like many others, she had not with her as much money as she wanted to give, she took a ring off from her hand and threw it into the contribution-box. That ring I took and put on the child’s hand, and said to her, ‘Now remember that this is your freedom-ring.’ Her expression, as she stood and looked at it for a moment, was pleasing to behold; and Eastman Johnson, the artist, was so much interested in the occurrence that he determined to represent it on canvas, and he painted her looking at her freedom-ring; and I have a transcript of the picture now at my house in the parlor, and any of you can see it by asking.

“So the girl was redeemed. She went back South after her redemption; but she was in the North for a time and received some rudiments of education. At length I lost sight of her until 1864, I think, when she was at Chief-Justice Chase’s, and I received word that she wished to see me.

“It seems that ‘Pinky’ was not a good enough name for her when she was free, though it was when she was a slave; so they mixed things and called her ‘Ward,’ after my name, and ‘Rose,’ after the name of this lady; and ever since her name has been Rose Ward—a very nice name indeed. She then had grown to be a young woman, and was very fair. I supposed she would probably live and die in labor to support herself and her grandmother, who was becoming infirm; but it seems that she has shown uncommon intelligence, and has manifested a very earnest desire to become a laborer for her people, and she is to be educated and to become a teacher and missionary among them.

“Now, it suits me exactly to have this child brought out of slavery, redeemed on this platform, and grow up and develop a Christian disposition, and go back and labor for her people. She does not know anything about it, but if we can raise $150 she shall have a year’s schooling in the Lincoln University at Washington. It seems to me as though there was poetic justice and fitness in it. As you redeemed her in the first instance from slavery, in the second instance you must redeem her from ignorance by contributing the amount necessary to send her a year to that university.“ And it was done.

An account of another is found in the weekly press:

”SLAVE MADE FREE IN PLYMOUTH CHURCH, JUNE 1, 1856.—

“There was never a more thrilling exemplification of Gospel principles than last Sabbath morning, June 1, in Rev. H. W. Beecher’s church, Brooklyn. Mr. Beecher preached from Luke x. 27.

“Just after announcing the last hymn he stepped to the platform and said: ‘I am about to do a thing which I am not wont to do, which I have never done before upon this day; and, in order that you may have no scruples about it, I will preface it by reading what the Lord Jesus Christ says of the Sabbath and its duties: “And it came to pass also on another Sabbath that He entered into the synagogue and taught: and there was a man whose right hand was withered.... And He said to the man which had the withered hand, Rise up, and stand forth in the midst. And he arose and stood forth. Then said Jesus unto them, I will ask you one thing: Is it lawful on the Sabbath days to do good, or to do evil? to save life, or to destroy it? And looking around about upon them all, He said unto the man, Stretch forth thy hand. And he did so; and his hand was restored whole as the other.”

“‘Some two weeks since I had a letter from Washington informing me that a young woman had been sold by her own father to go South—for what purpose you can imagine when you see her. She was purchased by a slave-trader for $1,200; and he, knowing her previous character and the circumstances of the case, was so moved with compassion that he offered to give her an opportunity to purchase her freedom. He himself gave towards it $100, and persuaded a friend and another slave-trader to give each $100 more. So much of good is there in the lowest of men! He allowed her to go to Washington to solicit aid from the Free-State men there, and she succeeded in obtaining $400 more. I was then applied to, to know if we would do anything to raise the remaining $500. I answered we would do nothing unless the woman could come here. After much hesitation on the part of her master she was allowed to visit New York, giving her word of honor that she would return to Richmond if the money were not raised’; and, going to the platform stairs, ‘Come up here, Sarah, and let us all see you,’ said he.

“A young woman rose from an adjacent seat, and, ascending the steps, sank down, embarrassed and apparently overcome by her feelings, in the nearest chair. She was of medium size and neatly dressed. The white blood of her father might be traced in her regular features and high, thoughtful brow, while her complexion and wavy hair betrayed her slave mother. ‘And this,’ said Mr. Beecher, ‘is a marketable commodity. Such as she are put into one balance and silver into the other. She is now legally free, but she is bound by a moral obligation which is stronger than any law. I reverence woman. For the sake of the love I bore my mother I hold her sacred, even in the lowest position, and will use every means in my power for her uplifting. What will you do now? May she read her liberty in your eyes? Shall she go out free? Christ stretched forth His hand and the sick were restored to health; will you stretch forth your hands and give her that without which life is of little worth? Let the plates be passed and we will see!’ There was hardly a dry eye in the church; and amidst tears and earnest lookings at the poor woman, who sat with downcast eyes, the plates went around. Every purse was in requisition, and as the bills were thrown down Mr. Beecher said: ‘I see the plates are heaping up. Remember every dollar you give is the step of a weary pilgrim toward liberty, and that Christ has said: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these ye have done it unto Me!”’ At this Mr. Lewis Tappan rose and said, ‘There need be no anxiety about the matter; some gentlemen had just now pledged themselves to make up the deficiency, whatever it might be.’

“Then she was free! And when Mr. Beecher told her so and announced it to the great congregation, there was an involuntary burst of applause. It was in the church, upon the Sabbath day, but it was no desecration—rather it was echoed by richer acclamation in heaven! As it subsided Mr. Beecher said: ‘When the old Jews went up to their solemn feasts they made the mountains round about Jerusalem ring with their shouts. I do not approve of an unholy clapping in the house of God, but when a good deed is well done it is not wrong to give an outward expression of our joy....’

“He then read the closing hymn, saying, as he handed her the book, ‘We shall sing this hymn as we never have sung a hymn before, and she will sing it too.’ This was the hymn:

“‘Do not I love Thee, O my Lord? Behold my heart and see; And turn the dearest idol out That dares to rival Thee.’

. . . . . .

“‘Hast Thou a lamb in all Thy flock I would disdain to feed? Hast Thou a foe before whose face I fear Thy cause to plead?’

. . . . . .

“The blessing was pronounced and the meeting was over; but many lingered to know the amount of the contribution, and when it was found that $783 had been raised, so that not only she but her child of two years old could be redeemed, the applause burst forth anew.

“In the plates were several articles of jewelry, thrown in by those who had no money with them or were unable to give anything else.

“Thus may Plymouth Church be consecrated. Verily ‘it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath day.’”

A handful of photographs of children, white and beautiful, who had been set free, have come to my hand with the above letters. Having to do with white-faced, flaxen-haired children born under the curse of slavery; with mothers carrying their little account-books from house to house, gathering funds wherewith to accomplish the apparently hopeless task of first finding their children who had been swept away from them in the black maelstrom of slavery, and then of purchasing them; of grandmothers who wept for joy at the prospect of saving their grandchildren, and willingly surrendered all the money which they had laid aside for their old age if it could be accomplished, would make a man tender toward the victims and hard against the system which caused their trouble.

Through this course of training he walked in these years, his heart now dissolved in tears and now hot with righteous indignation. No compromise, no surrender, no betrayal, no yielding, but the destruction of slavery and the salvation of the Union.

The Kansas and Nebraska troubles had resulted in more than establishing certain theories or in deciding the status of portions of our territory. It had intensified the feeling in both sections of our country, and men were being irreconcilably divided upon the subject of slavery. Out of these troublous times sprang John Brown, originally a farmer, born in the northern part of Connecticut, and emigrating to Ohio when a child. In 1854 his four elder sons migrated to Kansas, joining with the thousands from the North to make that a free State and to secure homes for themselves and their families. Plundered and harassed, they wrote to their father to procure arms. To make sure that they should get these he went with them. This was his introduction into Kansas. We have no design of following out his history in detail, but only claim that his fanatical zeal and his unreasonable expectations were the product of the times in which he lived and the experiences which he suffered, acting upon a temperament peculiarly unselfish, heroic, and religious. Enough for us is it to know that his course led him, with an army of sixteen men, to the capture of Harper’s Ferry and to a conflict with the whole State of Virginia, in fact with the power of the whole United States government, and ultimately to the scaffold. His courage, his calmness, his undoubting faith in the future deliverance of the slaves, crowned by his heroic death, made his name the war-cry of the future legions of the loyal States, who sang as they marched:

“John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave, John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave, But his soul is marching on.”

The attack on Harper’s Ferry was made October 17. On Sunday evening, October 30, Henry Ward Beecher preached upon “The Harper’s Ferry Tragedy,” and gives his judgment of the principal actor in the following language:

“An old man, kind at heart, industrious, peaceful, went forth with a large family of children, to seek a new home in Kansas. That infant colony held thousands of souls as noble as liberty ever inspired or religion enriched. A great scowling slave State, its nearest neighbor, sought to tread down this liberty-loving colony and to dragoon slavery into it by force of arms. The armed citizens of another State crossed the State lines, destroyed the freedom of the ballot-box, prevented a fair expression of public sentiment, corruptly usurped law-making power and ordained by fraud laws as infamous as the sun ever saw, assaulted its infant settlements with armed hordes, ravaged the fields, destroyed harvests and herds, and carried death to a multitude of cabins. The United States government had no marines for this occasion! No Federal troops were posted by cars night and day for the poor, the weak, the grossly-wronged men in Kansas. There was an army there that unfurled the banner of the Union, but it was on the side of the wrong-doers, not on the side of the injured.

“It was in this field that Brown received his impulse. A tender father, whose life was in his sons’ life, he saw his first-born seized like a felon, chained, driven across the country, crazed by suffering and heat, beaten by the officer in charge like a dog, and long lying at death’s door! Another noble boy, without warning, without offence, unarmed, in open day, in the midst of the city, was shot dead! No justice sought out the murderers. No United States attorney was despatched in hot haste. No marines or soldiers aided the wronged and weak!

“The shot that struck the child’s heart crazed the father’s brain. Revolving his wrongs and nursing his hatred of that deadly system that breeds such contempt of justice and humanity, at length his phantoms assume a slender form and organize such an enterprise as one might expect from a man whom grief had bereft of good judgment. He goes to the heart of a slave State: one man—and sixteen followers! He seizes two thousand brave Virginians and holds them in duress.

“When a great State attacked a handful of weak colonies the government and nation were torpid; but when seventeen men attacked a sovereign State, then Maryland arms, and Virginia arms, and the United States government arms, and they three rush against seventeen men!

“Travellers tell us that the Geysers of Iceland—those singular boiling springs of the North—may be transported with fury by plucking up a handful of grass or turf and throwing them into the springs. The hot springs of Virginia are of the same kind! A handful of men was thrown into them, and what a boiling there has been!

“But meanwhile no one can fail to see that this poor, child-bereft old man is the manliest of them all. Bold, unflinching, honest, without deceit or dodge, refusing to take technical advantages of any sort, but openly avowing his principles and motives, glorying in them in danger and death as much as when in security—that wounded old father is the most remarkable figure in this whole drama. The governor, the officers of the State, and all the attorneys are pigmies compared to him.

“I deplore his misfortunes. I sympathize with his sorrows. I mourn the hiding or obscuration of his reason. I disapprove of his mad and feeble schemes. I shrink from the folly of the bloody foray, and I shrink, likewise, from all the anticipations of that judicial bloodshed which, doubtless, ere long will follow—for when was cowardice ever magnanimous? They will kill the man, not for treason, but for proving them cowards!

“By and by, when men look back and see without prejudice that whole scene, they will not be able to avoid saying: ‘What must be the measure of manhood in a scene where a crazed old man stood head and shoulders above those who had their whole reason? What is average citizenship when a lunatic is a hero?’”

He also availed himself of this opportunity to show the wrong way and the right way in our treatment of this whole question of slavery. I can only mention the heads, but they so far outline his whole principle of action during the war that I give them that his position may be understood:

“1st. We have no right to treat the citizens of the South with acrimony and bitterness because they are involved in a system of wrong-doing.”

“2d. The breeding of discontent among the bondmen of our land is not the way to help them.”

“3d. No relief will be carried to the slaves or to the South as a body by any individual or organized plans to carry them off or to incite them to abscond.”

As to the right way:

“1st. If we would benefit the African at the South we must begin at home. No one can fail to see the inconsistency between our treatment of those amongst us who are in the lower walks of life and our professions of sympathy for the Southern slaves. How are the free colored people treated at the North? They are almost without education, with but little sympathy for ignorance. They are refused the common rights of citizenship which the whites enjoy. They cannot even ride in the cars of our city railroads. They are snuffed at in the house of God, or tolerated with ill-disguised disgust. Can the black man be a mason in New York? Let him be employed as a journeyman, and every Irish lover of liberty that carries the hod or trowel would leave at once or compel him to leave! Can the black man be a carpenter? There is scarcely a carpenter’s shop in New York in which a journeyman would continue to work if a black man were employed in it. Can the black man compete in the common industries of life? There is scarcely one in which he can engage. He is crowded down, down, down, through the most menial callings, to the bottom of society. We tax them, and then refuse to allow their children to go to our public schools. We tax them, and then refuse to sit by them in God’s house. We heap upon them moral obloquy more atrocious than that which the master heaps upon the slave.”

“2d. We must quicken all the springs of feeling in the free States in behalf of human liberty, and create a public sentiment based upon truth and true manhood.”

“3d. By all the ways consistent with a fearless assertion of truth, we must maintain sympathy and kindness toward the South. If, in view of the wrongs of slavery, you say that you do not care for the master but only the slave, I reply that you should care for both master and slave! If you do not care for the fate of the wrong-doing white man, I do care for the fate of the wrong-doing white man! But even though your sympathy were only for the slave, then for his sake you ought to set your face against, and discountenance anything like, an insurrectionary spirit.”

“4th. We are to leave no pains untaken, through the Christian conscience of the South, to give to the slave himself a higher moral status.”

“5th. The few virtues which shall lead inevitably to emancipation are to be established and insisted upon—the right of chastity in the woman, unblemished household love, and the right of parents to their children. The moment these three stand secure, that moment slavery will have its death-blow struck.”

“6th. And, lastly, among the means to be employed for promoting the liberty of the slave we must not fail to include the power of true Christian prayer. When slavery shall cease it will be by such instruments and influences that shall exhibit God’s hand and heart in the work. May He, in His own way and time, speed the day!”

With such radical yet conservative and kindly speech, bringing home to his audience their own deficiencies and pointing out the way that must be taken, did he temper and direct the hot passion of those fiery days.

The heat occasioned by the John Brown raid in the fall of 1859 was not cooled by the after-events that occurred both in and out of Congress during the following winter; and the country came to nominating its candidates in 1860 in a state of the most intense feeling. Four parties were in the field, each representing as its essential characteristic some phase of feeling towards slavery. Among them stood the Republican party, with a well-defined purpose, clearly understood and openly declared—no interference with and no extension of slavery. Abraham Lincoln was its nominee for President. Mr. Beecher had met him in 1859 when he came to New York to deliver his speech at Cooper Institute, and, with his quick perception of the ability of men, and already well acquainted with his record, had placed confidence in this tall, gaunt Westerner from the first. He had doubted the policy of nominating Mr. Seward, and one of his first interviews with a member of the New York delegation, who had labored earnestly but vainly for his nomination, is thus described: “With a laugh that was almost a roar he burst into the editorial room where Mr. Raymond sat, his chair tilted upon its two fore legs, and, grasping him cordially, heartily, vigorously, said: ‘Young man, I know the people of this country at heart better than you do. Your friend Seward has too much head and too little heart to succeed in any such crisis as this.’

“‘And yours,’ replied Mr. Raymond, ‘I fear, has too much heart and too little head for such a crisis as will assuredly be precipitated.’

“‘Trust, then,’ replied Mr. Beecher, ‘in God, and keep your powder dry.’”

For the election of their nominee Mr. Beecher labored with pen and voice to the utmost of his ability. His sermons Sunday evenings often had reference to the great questions of the day. His lectures of this period were little more than political addresses, and by his Star Papers in the Independent, which were largely copied in other papers, he made his views known to the reading public throughout the land. Believing that the election of Abraham Lincoln was of the utmost importance, he gave himself unreservedly to make it an accomplished fact, and made himself as obnoxious to the timid and time-serving as he was admirable to the opposite party. Of this period he says: “We next had to flounder through the quicksands of four infamous years under President Buchanan, in which senators sworn to the Constitution were plotting to destroy that Constitution; in which the members of the Cabinet, who drew their pay month by month, used their official position, by breach of public trust and oath of allegiance, to steal arms, to prepare fortifications, and make ready disruption and war. The most astounding spectacle the world ever saw was then witnessed—a great people paying men to sit in the places of power and offices of trust to betray them.”

Most portentous events followed the election. State after State in the South called their conventions and passed decrees of secession, in every case, except in South Carolina, by the jugglery of political leaders, in spite of the popular vote. Representatives withdrew from the House, senators from the Senate, and members from the Cabinet, and flocked to Montgomery, Ga., where a rebel government was being organized. The most specious arguments were urged in justification of secession, were substantially admitted even by so excellent an authority as the New York Tribune, and the right to coerce a sovereign State, as well as the expediency of the attempt, was denied by a large portion of the Northern press. Preparations to make secession successful, if resisted, were made openly, while the denial of the right to prevent the same tied the hands of the government and left it powerless in the toils of its enemies. In the meantime different schemes of conciliation, all amounting to some species of concession or compromise, were advanced both in and out of Congress, and urged to the very utmost possible limit of forbearance and kindness. Against “peace at any price” and all patched-up compromises Mr. Beecher, together with a multitude of others of like feeling at the North, threw his influence.

His Thanksgiving sermon this year was upon this topic: “Against a Compromise of Principle.” He recounts the common but abundant blessings of the year, and gathers assurance that they are from God on the following testimony.

“All the sons of God rejoice and all good men rejoice. It needs but one element to complete the satisfaction. If we could be sure that this is God’s mercy, meant for good and tending thereto, we should have a full cup to-day. That satisfaction is not denied us. The Mayor of New York, in a public proclamation, in view of this prodigal year that has heaped the poor man’s house with abundance, is pleased to say that there is no occasion apparent to him for thanksgiving. We can ask no more. When bad men grieve at the state of public affairs, good men should rejoice. When infamous men keep fast, righteous men should have thanksgiving. God reigns and the devil trembles. Amen. Let us rejoice!”

He then describes the true nature of the compromise that is asked, and shows the impossibility of making any that shall be satisfactory to either side:

“We are told that Satan appears under two forms—that when he has a good, fair field he is out like a lion, roaring and seeking whom he may devour; but that when he can do nothing more in that way he is a serpent and sneaks in the grass. And so it is slavery open, bold, roaring, aggressive, or it is slavery sneaking in the grass and calling itself compromise. It is the same devil under either name. If by compromise is only meant forbearance, kindness, well-wishing, conciliation, fidelity to agreements, a concession in things, not principles, why then we believe in compromise, only that is not compromise, interpreted by the facts of our past history.

“We honestly wish no harm to the South or its people; we honestly wish them all benefit. We will defend her coast; we will guard her inland border from all vexations from without; and in good faith, in earnest friendship, in fealty to the Constitution, and in fellowship with the States, we will, and with growing earnestness to the end, fulfil every just duty, every honorable agreement, and every generous act within the limits of truth and honor; all that and no more—no more though the heavens fall; no more if States unclasp their hands; no more if they raise up violence against us—NO MORE! We have gone to the end.”

He did not agree with Mr. Lincoln in his hope that the South would be satisfied by the careful explanations given in his inaugural, nor with Mr. Seward in his expectation that the difficulty would be settled in ninety days; but he did believe with all his heart that God was in the work, and that the trouble would be settled some day, and that it would be settled right. In the turmoil of that turbulent time his mind was kept in perfect peace, because it was stayed on God.

The Republican party was charged with having brought about this unhappy state of the country. This charge he answers in a sermon preached January 4, 1861, the day appointed by President Buchanan for Fasting and Prayer:

“What is the errand of this day? Why are we observing a sad Sabbath? a day of humiliation? a day of supplication? It is for the strangest reason the world ever heard. It is because the spirit of liberty has so increased and strengthened among us that the government is in danger of being overthrown! There never before was such an occasion for fasting, humiliation, and prayer! Other nations have gone through revolutions for their liberties; we are on the eve of a revolution to put down liberty! Other people have thrown off their governments because too oppressive; ours is to be destroyed, if at all, because it is too full of liberty, too full of freedom. There never was such an event before in history.... Meanwhile we have had no one to stand up for order. Those who should have spoken in decisive authority have been—afraid! Severer words have been used; it is enough for me to say only that in a time when God, and providence, and patriotism, and humanity demanded courage, they had no response but fear. The heart has almost ceased to beat, and this government is like to die for want of pulsations at the centre. While the most humiliating fear paralyzes one part of the government, the most wicked treachery is found in other parts of it.”

So closes in shame and fear the second era of the great conflict.

“Buchanan’s Fast” marks the lowest point of degradation the government of the United States ever reached—a point of abject fear of the consequences of its own sins, of feeble persistence in them, and of cowardice in applying the remedy for its trouble.

Instead of abandoning its policy of falsehood and injustice, and making a manly use of the means still at hand to avert the threatening dangers, it held to its course, declared that it could do nothing more under the Constitution than to advise and remonstrate with treason, and made a frantic appeal to the Christians of the land to plead with Jehovah to save it from the inevitable consequences of its folly and wickedness.

It was a failure. The Call of the President to his kind of Fast awakened little response from the people. Another Proclamation was ringing in their ears. It was that of the old prophet uttered centuries before. “Is not this the Fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?”

This Fast of the Lord was rapidly approaching, and for it the people were getting ready.

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