The Most Famous Man in AmericaThe Most Famous Man in America

Henry Ward Beecher was, for much of the nineteenth century, America's most widely known public figure. In place of his own preacher father's fire-and-brimstone theology, Beecher preached a gospel of unconditional love and forgiveness, giving us the Christianity we have today. His sermons at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights were so galvanizingly popular that the ferries from Manhattan to Brooklyn became known as "Beecher Boats." When he became involved in the abolition movement-- his sister was Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin-- rifles shipped to the resistance fighters in Kansas became known as "Beecher Bibles." Men such as Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, and Twain befriended--and sometimes parodied--him. And then it fell apart. The wildly charismatic Beecher was accused by feminist firebrand Victoria Woodhull of adultery with his best friend's wife, and the cuckolded Theodore Tilton brought charges of "criminal conversation," leading to a salacious trial that was the most widely covered event of the nineteenth century, garnering, by some counts, more headlines than the entire Civil War. It ended in a hung jury, but by his death in 1886, Beecher's star was considerably dimmed.