Henry Ward Beecher
(1813–87) Protestant
clergyman and reformer, born in Litchfield, Connecticut, USA. One of 13 children
of clergyman Lyman Beecher and brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, he studied at
Amherst (1834) and under his father at Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati,
OH. In 1839 he became pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis,
IN where he developed a forceful, emotional preaching style.
Named the first pastor of Plymouth Congregational
Church in Brooklyn, New York (1847), he crusaded from the pulpit for temperance
and against slavery, and became one of the most influential public figures of
his time. He supported Free Soil political candidates and later Republicans. On
the outbreak of the Civil War his church raised and equipped a volunteer
regiment.
He edited the religious publications The
Independent and The Christian Union (later Outlook) during the 1860s and 1870s,
and among his many books is Evolution and Religion (1885). In 1874 he was
acquitted on an adultery charge after a sensational trial.