Lyman Beecher


Lyman Beecher was a Presbyterian minister, American Temperance Society co-founder and leader, and the father of 13 children, many of whom became noted figures, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Ward Beecher, Charles Beecher, Edward Beecher, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Catharine Beecher, and Thomas K. Beecher.
According to his son Henry Ward Beecher, his father was "largely engaged during his life-time in controversy".

Early life

Beecher was born in New Haven, Connecticut, to David Beecher, a blacksmith, and Esther Hawley Lyman. His mother died shortly after his birth, and he was committed to the care of his uncle Lot Benton, by whom he was adopted as a son, and with whom his early life was spent, blacksmithing and farming. But it was soon found that he preferred study. He was fitted for college by the Rev. Thomas W. Bray, and at the age of eighteen entered Yale College, graduating in 1797. He spent 1798 in Yale Divinity School under the tutelage of his mentor Timothy Dwight.

Ministry

Ministry on Long Island in New York (1798–1810)

In September 1798, he was licensed to preach by the New Haven West Association, and entered upon his clerical duties by supplying the pulpit in the Presbyterian church at East Hampton, Long Island, and was ordained in 1799. Here he married his first wife, Roxana Foote. His salary was $300 a year, after five years increased to $400, with a dilapidated parsonage. To eke out his scanty income, his wife opened a private school, in which he was an instructor. Beecher gained popular recognition in 1806, when he gave a sermon before the Presbitery of Long Island, which promptly published it: The Remedy for Duelling. Aaron Burr had killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804.

Ministry in Litchfield, Connecticut (1810–1826)

Finding his salary wholly inadequate to support his growing family, he resigned the charge at East Hampton, and in 1810 moved to Litchfield, Connecticut, where he was minister for 16 years at First Congregational Church of Litchfield, the town's Congregational church. There he started to preach Calvinism. He purchased the home built by Elijah Wadsworth and reared a large family.

Temperance

or drunkenness, known as intemperance at the time, was a source of concern in New England as well as in other areas of the United States. Heavy drinking even occurred at some formal meetings of clergy, and Beecher resolved to take a stand against it. In 1826 he delivered and published six sermons on intemperance. They were sent throughout the United States, ran rapidly through many editions in England, and were translated into several languages in Europe, and had a large sale even after the lapse of 50 years.

Unitarian crisis and women's education

During Beecher's residence in Litchfield the Unitarian controversy arose, and he took a prominent part. Litchfield was at this time the seat of the famous Litchfield Law School and several other institutions of learning, and Beecher and his wife undertook to supervise the training of several young women, who were received into their family. But here, too, he found his annual salary of $800 inadequate.

Ministry in Boston (1826–1832)

The rapid and extensive defection of the Congregational churches in Boston and vicinity, under the lead of William Ellery Channing and others in sympathy with him, had excited much anxiety throughout New England. In 1826 Beecher was called to Boston's Hanover Church, where he began preaching against the Unitarianism which was then sweeping the area.

Leadership of Lane Seminary in Cincinnati (1832–1852)

The religious public had become impressed with the growing importance of the great West; a theological seminary had been founded at Walnut Hills, near Cincinnati, Ohio, and named Lane Theological Seminary, after one of its principal benefactors. Beecher's Hanover Street Church was severely damaged by fire in 1830, and the Board of Lane Seminary, hoping this might dispose him to a move, later that year offered him the presidency, with a salary of $20,000, but he turned it down. He accepted a second offer, in 1832. His mission there was to train ministers to win the West for Protestantism. Along with his presidency, he was also professor of sacred theology, and pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church of Cincinnati. He served as a pastor for the first ten years of his Lane presidency.
Beecher was also notorious for his anti-Catholicism and soon after his arrival in Cincinnati authored the nativist tract "A Plea for the West." His sermon on this subject at Boston in 1834 was followed shortly by the burning of the Catholic Ursuline Sisters' convent there.

Lane Debates

Beecher's term at Lane came at a time when slavery became an even larger issue, threatening to divide the Presbyterian Church, the state of Ohio, and the nation.
Like most important men of the 1820s, Beecher was a colonizationist, one who supported the American Colonization Society's program of helping free Blacks emigrate to West Africa and set up there a black colony. He is reported to have reacted positively to an announcement of the planned debates on that topic at Lane. However, a June 4, 1834, meeting of the Cincinnati Colonization Society "was addressed at length, by the Rev. Dr. Beecher, president of the Lane Seminary, who defended the society in an able manner, against some of the many charges brought against it, and endeavored to show the friends of abolition, that they might and ought to act in concert with the Colonization Society." He is quoted again as participating in a meeting of the same body on October 31, 1834.
But against a background of the Haitian Revolution, the French Revolution of 1830, the agitation in England for reform and against colonial slavery, and the punishment by American courts of citizens who had dared to attack the slave trade carried on under the American flag, news about the brutal treatment of American slaves began to be heard. John Rankin's Letters on Slavery had begun to direct the attention of Americans to the evils of slavery, and a new organization, the American Anti-Slavery Society, held its initial meeting in Philadelphia in 1833. Its president, Arthur Tappan, through whose liberal donations Beecher had been induced to head the new Lane Seminary, forwarded to the students a copy of the address issued by the convention, and the whole subject was soon under discussion.
In February of 1834, students at Lane, with national publicity, for 18 consecutive nights debated the colonization issue: whether the American Colonization Society, which sought to settle freed slaves in Africa, was worthy of support. The students did not have permission to do so, but they were not stopped ahead of time. Most of them abandoned colonization as a hoax, replacing it with abolitionism.
Many of the students were from the South, and an effort was made to stop the discussions and the meetings. Slaveholders from Kentucky came in and incited mob violence, and for several weeks Beecher lived in a turmoil, not knowing whether the rabble might destroy the Seminary and the houses of the professors. The Board of Trustees interfered during the absence of Beecher, and allayed the excitement of the mob by forbidding all further discussion of slavery in the Seminary, even at meals, whereupon the students withdrew en masse. The group of about 50 students who left the Seminary went to the new Oberlin Collegiate Institute, leaving Lane almost without students. Beecher believed himself blameless.
The well-reported events contributed significantly to the growth and spread of abolitionism in the northern United States. Beecher was neither aware of nor interested in Lane's key role in publicizing abolitionism.

Heresy trial over New School sympathies

Although earlier in his career he had opposed them, Beecher stoked controversy by advocating "new measures" of evangelism that ran counter to traditional Calvinist understanding. These new measures at the time of the Second Great Awakening brought turmoil to churches all across America. Joshua Lacy Wilson, pastor of First Presbyterian charged Beecher with heresy in 1835.
The trial took place in his own church, and Beecher defended himself, while burdened with the cares of his seminary, his church, and his wife at home on her deathbed. The trial resulted in acquittal, and, on an appeal to the general synod, he was again acquitted, but the controversy engendered by the action went on until the Presbyterian church was divided in two. Beecher took an active part in the theological controversies that led to the excision of a portion of the general assembly of the Presbyterian church in 1837/8, Beecher adhering to the New School Presbyterian branch of the schism.

Move from Cincinnati to New York City (1852–death in 1863)

After the slavery controversy, Beecher and his co-worker Stowe remained and tried to revive the prosperity of the Seminary, but at last abandoned it. The great project of their lives was defeated, and they returned to the East, where Beecher went to live with his son Henry in Brooklyn, New York, in 1852. He wished to devote himself mainly to the revision and publication of his works. But his intellectual powers began to decline, while his physical strength was unabated. About his 80th year he suffered a stroke of paralysis, and thenceforth his mental powers only gleamed out occasionally. After spending the last years of his life with his children, he died in Brooklyn in 1863 and was buried at Grove Street Cemetery, in New Haven, Connecticut.

Legacy

Beecher was proverbially absent-minded, and after having been wrought up by the excitement of preaching was accustomed to relax his mind by playing "Auld Lang Syne" on the violin, or dancing the "double shuffle" in his parlor.
The Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Cincinnati, Ohio, was the home of her father Lyman Beecher on the former campus of the Lane Theological Seminary. Harriet lived here until her marriage. It is the only building of Lane still standing. It is open to the public and operates as an historical and cultural site, focusing on Harriet Beecher Stowe, the Lane Theological Seminary, and the Underground Railroad. The site also documents African-American history. The Harriet Beecher Stowe House is located at 2950 Gilbert Avenue, in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Works

Beecher was the author of a great number of printed sermons and addresses. His published works are:
He made a collection of those of his works which he deemed the most valuable.

Personal life

In 1799, Beecher married Roxana Foote, the daughter of Eli and Roxana Foote. They had nine children: Catharine E., William, Edward, Mary, Harriet, George, Harriet Elizabeth, Henry Ward, and Charles. Roxana died on September 13, 1816. The following year, he married Harriet Porter and fathered four more children: Frederick C., Isabella Holmes, Thomas Kinnicut, and James Chaplin. "Nine of the Beechers were authors." After Harriet died on July 7, 1835, he married Samuel Beals' daughter Lydia Beals, who had previously been married to Joseph Jackson. Lydia and Beecher had no children.
See Beecher family for more information.