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The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher (2006)

por Debby Applegate

Otros autores: Ver la sección otros autores.

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Presents the life of the nineteenth century orator, noted for his support of the abolition of slavery and the suffrage of women, as well as his friendships with some of the century's most famous writers such as Henry Thoreau, Mark Twain, and Walt Whitman.
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Mostrando 1-5 de 10 (siguiente | mostrar todos)
Henry Ward Beecher’s great contribution to the American style of religion seems to be that faith could be a matter of joy, not the fear and self-loathing Beecher learned from his famous Puritanical father Lyman Beecher.

His impact on the American psyche seems to have gone even deeper than his father.

One big reason was that he reached the summit of his powers at yet another turning point in transportation, communications, and the new business of celebrity.

While struggling to make it as a minister on America’s frontier, Beecher’s early tract on what a preacher could be found its way into the hands of easterners who had money to invest and a keen sense of what people were willing to pay for.

We’re talking mid-19th century America when the penny press was giving ordinary men outsized reputations. Beecher became a charismatic speaker, a persuasive writer, and eventually great political tool for the then radical new Republican Party.

He wrote or had ghost-written enormously popular and financially rewarding books and articles. And he used the new trains to hopscotch between audiences.

Northerners and Southerners weren’t all that far apart on their opinion of the inferiority of blacks toiling in America’s slave system. But one could argue that the rising abolitionist presses inflamed the differences, much as FOX News inflates differences between Republicans and Democrats today.

There were the clear unreconcilable facts of the US Constitution and societal norms. Americans could see the evidence around them that all men were not born equal. But the country averted its eyes from slavery, and not just the slaveowners.

Then came the political compromises in Washington, most particularly the Fugitive Slave laws and the infamous Dred Scott Supreme Court decision which really stoked radical opinion and drove the country closer to civil war.

The role of the charismatic speaker in public discourse is what makes this biography of Beecher published in 2006 so relevant today.

The many parallels between Beecher and Donald Trump are startling. Both had domineering successful fathers, both were raised with self-loathing and a punishing obsession with making it on their own.

Both took excessive liberties with their celebrity, ran up mountains of debt, and both channelled the political discourse of the nation. ( )
  MylesKesten | Jan 23, 2024 |
Summary: The Pulitzer prize-winning biography of the most famous preacher in nineteenth century America, and the scandals around his sexual life.

The story of the writing of this biography strikes me as nearly as interesting as the book itself. It began when Debby Applegate was an undergraduate student at Amherst researching famous Amherst alumni. She selected Henry Ward Beecher and then went on to write her senior thesis about him. She then went on to Yale, making him the subject of her doctoral thesis. And like any good writer of theses in history, she sought a book contract to turn it into a book. This was in the Clinton era and the sex scandals surrounding his administration. However, due to the time needed for research, it finally published in 2006 (in paper in 2007). The culmination of this twenty year project was that the book was a National Book Critics Award Finalist and winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.

Her biography traces the life of Henry Ward Beecher, who, if not the most famous man in America, was certainly the most famous preacher of America. He was asked by President Lincoln to speak at Fort Sumter at the end of the Civil War, an event overshadowed by Lincoln’s assassination. He filled the pulpit of Brooklyn’s Plymouth Church, a nineteenth century megachurch. At one point he drew a $100,000 salary–in the nineteenth century. He pioneered a more informal style of preaching using humor and pathos and emphasizing the love of God as well as social reform.

He was a mover in the abolitionist movement, although Applegate emphasizes his ambivalent record. One one hand, he raised money to emancipate slaves and sent rifles to Nebraska and Kansas to aid abolitionists–“Beecher Bibles.” On the other hand, he counselled caution and moderation, offending more radical proponents like Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison. He also campaigned for women’s suffrage and for temperance.

The book portrays his distinguished family. His father Lyman was a New England Calvinist, later transplanted to Cincinnati as president of Lane Theological Seminary. Harriet Beecher Stowe, was his sister. One of the striking facts is that all of his children departed from this stern Calvinism, although a number were ministers. Nine were writers. Applegate traces Henry’s career from his early struggles with his charge in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, where he first begins to shift from the more Calvinist form of preaching to the more informal and engaging style he observed among the Methodists. His success was great enough to attract the notice of church leaders in Indianapolis, who offered him a salary that finally allowed him and Eunice to live more comfortably. Increasingly his preaching focused on the love of God rather than human sinfulness. This, in turn, caught the attention of Henry Bowen, who lured the Beechers to Brooklyn, and the shared ambitions of building up Plymouth Church.

Applegate chronicles the influence of money and power that became increasingly alluring to Beecher. Bowen helped Beecher with his debts and Beecher contributed to his publishing enterprises. Beecher’s fame led to political influence within the newly born Republican party. As he became ever busier on social campaigns, he and Bowen relied more on Theodore Tilton for his writing enterprises.

This powerful alliance unraveled when Beecher became emotionally, and, it seems likely, sexually involved with several women, culminating in an affair with Tilton’s wife Elizabeth. Applegate records a tawdry set of confrontations, confessions, retractions and denial, and ultimately a civil trial that ended with a hung jury and a church trial that exonerated Beecher and shamed his accusers.

Reading the biography brought to mind the Apostle Paul’s counsel to a young pastor, Timothy: “Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers” (1 Timothy 4:16, NIV). As he pursued pastoral success, he jettisoned unpopular doctrines for public acclaim. Having struggled with desperate circumstances, he gave way to the allures of money, power, and sex. At one point he defends and propounds free love and the rightness of intimacy with a woman not his wife. And sadly, because of his success, the leaders of his church cast a blind eye to these abuses, and the relational wreckage that resulted with Bowen, the Tiltons, and others.

If the biography came after the scandals of the Clinton administration, it came before the sex scandals, #MeToo, and #ChurchToo of the last decade. It seems to me that Applegate’s biography ought be recommended reading for aspiring ministers as well as the church boards who oversee their efforts, especially where such efforts result in significant growth and acclaim for minister and church. The biography explores not only the personal temptations but the systemic dynamics that contribute to pastoral unfaithfulness and the covering up of moral failures. The biography also traces the rise of the personality cults around pastors, which may arguably have begun with Beecher. A study of the circle around Beecher reveals a web of dysfunctionality. Even if none of this interests you, read this simply for Applegate’s fascinating chronicle of one of the most influential figures of the nineteenth century. ( )
  BobonBooks | Jan 10, 2023 |
A hefty undertaking. I enjoyed reading more about the family. I felt like it could have used a few more revisions and a few more clarifications-- some intriguing bits were glossed over and others were just confusing. That exposition bit there was almost relieving after the long, drawn out silence. I almost wished that the surviving letters had been reprinted.

I get the feeling that it was rushed in order to make a splash after Woodhull's bio came out. One thing is for sure, American Politics have never been clean.* And accusations (many with plenty of good cause) did not start with Kennedy/Clinton/Kavanagh.

*Gives me much more admiration for Lincoln, though. And her treatment of him is done well. ( )
  OutOfTheBestBooks | Sep 24, 2021 |
A book about a 19th century preacher sounds as if it could be boring and not pertinent to today's world. This fascinating account of the life of Henry Ward Beecher proves that wrong. Henry was indeed the most famous man in America in the 1880's. People hung onto every word of this highly charismatic, brilliant, and complex minister. Henry's father was also a preacher who was a strong follower of Calvin believing in a wrathful God; his children grew up with rules and fear but with love.

After a somewhat slow beginning, Henry also joined the ministry and married young to a woman he hardly knew. He first tried evangelizing the West in Ohio and Illinois and became well known for his interesting and forceful sermons. Success eventually brings him to Brooklyn, New York where there was a church on almost every block. Henry's view of God has been turning away from that vengeful Authority to a God Henry believed was the source of love and forgiveness for all. The teachings of Jesus became his focus and his sermons reflected that inspiring people from all walks of life. Henry seemed the epitome of all that was good.

However (and this is what makes this book so fascinating), Henry was a highly complex individual. Trapped in a very unhappy marriage, surrounded by many attractive and adoring female members of the congregation, increasingly disdainful of his Calvinistic upbringing, Henry's ego grew to the point that he himself believed he could do no wrong. As Henry became more popular, Eunice, his wife, became more bitter and more disliked.
Eventually, accusations of adultery came from the husbands of close friends. Henry's personality was such that he could wave off these rumors with ease even to the wronged husbands. What was to become the biggest scandal of the 19th Century, these accusations soon became public and were intimately discussed in the newspapers as church trials and public court trials drug out all the sordid details. Although deeply troubled, Henry managed to come through all even gaining back his congregation and getting a raise. The women around him including Eunice, his sister (Harriet Beecher Stowe), and his adoring lovers all suffered greatly.

Today, emails or texts might be considered evidence. In the 1900's people wrote letters often revealing highly personal information and in what today would be considered suggestive language. Those letters were always kept unlike today where emails are deleted. The author has done years of research into those letters and public documents recreating a time and life that is totally fascinating. This is a very readable book which makes some of today's notorious public figures seem pretty bland. Every famous person of the time plays a role: Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Andrew Johnson, Grant, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Henry's sister, Harriet. Beecher's teachings and life set down a new road of religion in America, one that still affects religious thought today. ( )
  maryreinert | Sep 23, 2014 |
Because there are so many surviving letters, Applegate's work is very richly detailed with accurate info. The narrative flows like a dream. I loved it... ( )
  brentcnall | Jan 22, 2010 |
Mostrando 1-5 de 10 (siguiente | mostrar todos)
Applegate tells this grand story with aplomb, intelligence and a sure feel for historical context.
 

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Nombre del autorRolTipo de autor¿Obra?Estado
Debby Applegateautor principaltodas las edicionescalculado
Karydes, TerryDiseñadorautor secundarioalgunas edicionesconfirmado
Kenyon, UmiDiseñador de cubiertaautor secundarioalgunas edicionesconfirmado
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This book is dedicated to Bruce Tulgan.
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For the first few days of the trip to Fort Sumter, the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher was in excellent spirits.
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"Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby your worst may be inferred." - Nathanial Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
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Presents the life of the nineteenth century orator, noted for his support of the abolition of slavery and the suffrage of women, as well as his friendships with some of the century's most famous writers such as Henry Thoreau, Mark Twain, and Walt Whitman.

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