BEECHER, HENRY WARD (1813-1887), American preacher, was born in Litchfield (Conn.), on June 24, 1813, eighth child of the Calvinistic minister Lyman Beecher and his wife Roxana. His early education included six months at his sister Catherine's seminary in Hartford and a dreamy period at the Boston Latin school during which he said he "went to school in Boston harbour"; in 183o he entered Amherst college. Although achieving no special distinction as a student, he was active in college affairs and through careful training became a fluent extemporaneous speaker and a successful lecturer on temperance and phrenology in his undergraduate days. But he had always looked upon his career as foreordained, and it became a matter of course with him that he should enter the Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati (0. ), of which his father was president, and from which he graduated in 1837.
His home and surroundings at this time provided an unusually literary atmos phere; his elder sister Catherine at 3 5 years of age already had two books to her credit and one in the press, while Harriet, who was destined to become famous as an authoress later (see STowE, HARRIET BEECHER), had won a prize offered by the Western Literary Journal. Henry Ward himself read omnivorously, and when his father needed the Rev.
Thomas Brainerd's aid in his heresy trial his 23-year-old son was left in charge of what Harriet called "our family newspaper," the Cincinnati Journal.
Probably influenced in part by Calvin Stowe, the youth was already moving away from the stern theology of his father. To his betrothed, Eunice Bullard, he wrote, "I cannot assent. What then? Preach I will, licensed or not. On that point I am deter mined. If I can do no better, I will go far out into the West, build a log cabin among the lumbermen and trappers, or whoever may seek employment in the forests, and devote myself to trying to interest them in religious services, far from the busy haunts of men. What will you do if this is the only course left me? Will you go with me into the wilderness?" It was not necessary for the young preacher and his bride to go into the wilderness. Re ceiving a subsidy from the Home Missionary Society, he took up his pastorate at Lawrenceburgh, a little river town in Indiana, where he acted both as sexton and preacher. Two years later he accepted a call to a new church in Indianapolis. His Seven Lectures to Young Men, which appeared in 1844, in which he treated the commoner vices with realistic description and with youthful and exuberant rhetoric, won him not only a local but a national reputation. As a result of this literary success, added to his activity in the State Horticultural Society, he was made edi tor of the Western Farmer and Gardener, which further helped to make his name more widely known. In 1847 he accepted a call to the pastorate of Plymouth church (Congregational), then newly established in Brooklyn, New York. The situation of the church in such close proximity to New York, the stalwart charac ter of the man who had organized it, and the peculiar eloquence of Beecher combined to give it probably the largest membership of any congregation of the day. Beecher at once became a recognized leader. Although investigations have shown that he may have been rather more backward even than other members of his family and church in declaring against slavery, and although he was never technically an abolitionist, the dramatic scene of his mock public auction of the white slave girl has impressed itself in the popular mind as one of the outstanding episodes in the anti-slavery crusade. His attitude was that slavery was to be overthrown under the Constitution and in the Union by trusting to an awakened conscience, enforced by an enlightened self-in terest. Later he also identified himself with the woman suffrage movement.
Large as was Beecher's church and lecture audience, his sphere of influence was still further extended by his contributions to the Independent, to Robert Bonner's Ledger and to other period icals. He was editor-in-chief of the Independent from 1861 to 1863, and in 187o he founded and became editor-in-chief of a religious undenominational weekly, The Christian Union, after wards the Outlook, in which as in his pastorate of Plymouth church he was succeeded by Lyman Abbott (q.v.). Nevertheless, it was in the pulpit that Beecher was seen at his best. Because of his mastery of the English tongue, his dramatic power, his vivid imagination, the catholicity of his sympathies, his passionate enthusiasm which for the moment made his immediate theme seem to him the one theme of transcendent importance, his humour alternating with pathos, he was a preacher with an almost unrivalled following in his own time and country. John Hay called him "the greatest preacher the world has seen since St. Paul preached on Mars Hill." His favourite theme was love: love of man was to him the fulfilment of all law ; love of God was the essence of all Christianity; religion was a life of liberty in love. The later years of his life were darkened by the charge which was brought against him by Theodore Tilton of having had improper relations with Tilton's wife, and both before and during the law suit in which it involved him his reputation as a man of honour and as a clergyman suffered. During a part of this time he also was the first incumbent of the Lyman Beecher lectureship on preaching at Yale Divinity school. He died of apoplexy in Brooklyn on March 8, 1887.
Beecher's books, besides his published sermons, include : Ply mouth Collection of Hymns and Tunes (1855); Star Papers (1855) ; New Star Papers (1859) ; American Rebellion, Report of Speeches delivered in England at Public Meetings in Man chester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Liverpool, and London (1864) ; Norwood: A Tale of Village Life in New England (1867); The Life of Jesus the Christ (1871), completed by his sons (1891) ; and Yale Lectures on Preaching (18 7 Among the works on Beecher are: N. L. Thompson, The History of Plymouth Church (1847-72) ; monographs by Felix Adler (1887) ; F. S. Child (1887) ; T. W. Hanford (1887) ; T. W. Knox (1887) ; W. C. Beecher, Rev. Samuel Scoville and Mrs. H. W. Beecher (1888) ; J. R. Howard (1891) ; J. H. Barrows (1893) ; Lyman Abbott (19o3) ; Pax ton Hibben (1927), which contains further bibliography.