No one predicted success for Henry Ward Beecher at his birth in 1813. The blithe, boisterous son of the last great Puritan minister, he seemed destined to be overshadowed by his brilliant siblings—especially his sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, who penned the century’s bestselling book Uncle Tom’s Cabin. But when pushed into the ministry, the charismatic Beecher found international fame by shedding his father’s Old Testament–style fire-and-brimstone theology and instead preaching a New Testament–based gospel of unconditional love and healing, becoming one of the founding fathers of modern American Christianity. By the 1850s, his spectacular sermons at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights had made him New York’s number one tourist attraction, so wildly popular that the ferries from Manhattan to Brooklyn were dubbed “Beecher Boats.” Beecher inserted himself into nearly every important drama of the era—among them the antislavery and women’s suffrage movements, the rise of the entertainment industry and tabloid press, and controversies ranging from Darwinian evolution to presidential politics. He was notorious for his irreverent humor and melodramatic gestures, such as auctioning slaves to freedom in his pulpit and shipping rifles—nicknamed “Beecher’s Bibles”—to the antislavery resistance fighters in Kansas. Thinkers such as Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, and Twain befriended—and sometimes parodied—him. And then it all fell apart. In 1872 Beecher was accused by feminist firebrand Victoria Woodhull of adultery with one of his most pious parishioners. Suddenly the “Gospel of Love” seemed to rationalize a life of lust. The cuckolded husband brought charges of “criminal conversation” in a salacious trial that became the most widely covered event of the century, garnering more newspaper headlines than the entire Civil War. Beecher survived, but his reputation and his causes—from women’s rights to progressive evangelicalism—suffered devastating setbacks that echo to this day. Featuring the page-turning suspense of a novel and dramatic new historical evidence, Debby Applegate has written the definitive biography of this captivating, mercurial, and sometimes infuriating figure. In our own time, when religion and politics are again colliding and adultery in high places still commands headlines, Beecher’s story sheds new light on the culture and conflicts of contemporary America.

The story of a scandal that shook American culture to the core in the 1870s when a famous writer sued his best friend--the nation's leading minister--for seducing his wife. 56 halftones.

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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1886 edition. Excerpt: ...that go down for horses there. Do not build cities on the lip of the sea and become commercial." Industries of the field were favored everywhere, and the nation was inclosed. It was a stay.at.home nation, thorough.bred in the things in which it did excel. But when the Saviour came, he said, " Let your light so shine that men shall see your good works. Let out! No man having a candle alight puts it under a bushel, but on a candlestick that it may give light to all in the house. Freely ye have received, freely give. Go ye out. Stay not at home any longer. Go out into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." Judaism dies when the command is to "go forth;" it would change the fundamental genius of the people. That is true in a certain degree yet, not only in judaism, but I might draw the line through other religions. It is sufficient for illustration to take those which, within the bounds of Christianity, have developed in the same way. There are the Quietists; men who are satisfied to be; who vyould leave other people to their own way. Take the two great communions, the Roman Church and the Protestant Church, and the discriminating differences between the one and the other are largely of this character. Though Rome educates its priesthood to the highest degree, and makes it cognizant of all principles of government, the great mass of her people are educated to receive; and so it is a Greek and modern hierarchy subtended under a Jewish tendency. The genius of the people is to take, and of the priesthood to give. This runs not only along great denominational lines, but through separate churches. We still have churches all round about us that gather in the material that they like. They consort together, ...

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