Beecher-Tilton Affair

Henry Ward Beecher (1813-87)
liberal American Congregationalist (Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn) social reformer, abolitionist (held mock ‘auctions’ from his pulpit at which the congregation purchased the freedom of real slaves); advocate of women’s suffrage, temperance & Darwin’s theory of evolution. anti-Catholic.  son of Lyman Beecher, brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe

Where is human nature so weak as in a book store?  “Subtleties of Book Buyers,” Star Papers (1855)
….Ye that mourn, let gladness mingle with your tears. It was your son, but now he is the nation’s….  “The Honored Dead” (1863) memorialized the Union dead; a popular piece for declamation among school children, also published as “Our Heroes Shall Live”
Humor is the atmosphere in which grace most flourishes.  Unjust Judgments (1874)

 

1875 Beecher-Tilton Affair

newspaper editor, poet & abolitionist Theodore Tilton (1835–1907), in 1874 filed criminal charges against Beecher for “criminal intimacy” with his (Tilton’s) wife, Elizabeth “Libby” Richards Tilton. Both Tiltons were members of Beecher’s Plymouth Church. The trial in 1875 became a national sensation. At the end of a six month trial, the jury could not agree, and Beecher was acquitted.