Ohio History Journal

J. F. MACLEAR

 

Lyman Beecher in Britain

 

 

The triumphant British tours of Harriet Beecher Stowe in the 1850s

and Henry Ward Beecher in the 1860s have long claimed the attention

of students of American literature and Civil War diplomacy. Yet

despite the interest of intellectual and church historians in Lyman

Beecher, the patriarch of the family, no attention has been paid to his

earlier stay in Britain in the summer of 1846.1 It is true that Beecher

was then seventy-one years old, his impact on American religion was

already largely made, and he could no longer attempt that broad

ecclesiastical influence to which he had always aspired. Even his own

distinctions were now eclipsed by those who were carrying them

further-by Charles Grandison Finney in revivals, Horace Bushnell in

liberal theology, and his own son Henry in speaking to national

issues. But Lyman did not journey to Britain on any retired gentle-

man's pleasure tour. He went as an Ohio delegate to both the World

Temperance Convention and the great organizing meetings of the

Evangelical Alliance, and his contributions to both causes were of

some importance. Moreover, in this summer's work he played his last

significant role as American ecclesiastical statesman and in it showed

that same balance of revivalism, nationalism, and discreet reform

which he had absorbed from Timothy Dwight at Yale and then

perfected in his early pastorates at Litchfield and Boston.

"President Beecher" in 1846 was nearing the end of his career as

head of Lane Seminary, having come to Cincinnati fourteen years

earlier as part of the great campaign to imprint New England values

on the "barbarous West." His reputation had subsequently suffered

 

 

 

 

Dr. James F. Maclear, Professor of History at the University of Minnesota, Duluth,

is a specialist in British and American religious history.

 

1. The only scholarly biography, Stuart C. Henry, Unvanquished Puritan: A Portrait

of Lyman Beecher (Grand Rapids, 1973), slights the summer in England. The

discussion by Barbara M. Cross in her introduction to The Autobiography of Lyman

Beecher, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1961) is very brief. The treatment by Constance

Mayfield Rourke, Trumpets of Jubilee (New York, 1927), 3-86, is similarly inadequate.

Neither sketch deals with the British visit of 1846. The Beechers' own recollection of

their sojourn in Britain in Autobiography, II, 390-93 is highly subjective reminiscence

and contains minor inaccuracies, e.g., "Patten" for "Patton," "Crown Chapel" for

"Craven Chapel," etc.

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294                                           OHIO HISTORY

from the students' famous antislavery revolt and from Old School attacks on his New Haven theology, but he was still regarded as a venerable leader in the Congregational and Presbyterian churches. The two causes which led him to abandon a lifetime's indifference to foreign travel had long been fundamental to his strategy for revitalizing Christian civilization. As a young minister he had inaugurated the temperance crusade in Connecticut. His famous Six Sermons (1825) remained among the movement's most effective tracts, and through British republication and foreign translation they gave Beecher a temperance reputation abroad. Thus the World Conference, originally planned for 1843 but rescheduled to coincide with the Evangelical Alliance, could not fail to excite his interest. The

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Lyman Beecher                                              295

 

Alliance itself touched an even deeper emotion-Beecher's dream of

evangelical Protestant unity. Throughout his life he had labored to

build a Christian America consistent with older (though modernized)

Puritan ideals, and in this vision "the American church"-for

Beecher cooperating denominations of the Reformed tradition-had

been expected to supply vital leadership. It is true that Beecher's

concern was more American than international, but he had always set

the Republic in a grand providential design as the nation divinely

created to lead the moral renovation of the earth. Consequently, he

was not really the provincial New England churchman he sometimes

seemed to be, and, like his mentor Dwight, he assigned an important

though secondary role to Britain in working out God's purposes.²

Hence the prospect of establishing a "Protestant International" under

Anglo-American auspices inevitably captured his imagination. "I will

go!" he exclaimed on reading newspaper accounts of the planned

London meetings, "I will go! I thank God for such a movement."³

Though Beecher dated this impulsive decision "early in the spring

of '46," he must have considered the idea earlier. Since 1842

proposals for a transatlantic Protestant confederation had been raised

in both Britain and the United States, fellow Presbyterians had

welcomed the actual invitation in 1845, and American religious

journals had carried news of the preparations through the winter of

1845-1846. When the decision was made, Beecher apparently found

difficulty in getting the seven hundred dollars considered necessary

for the journey. His third wife, Lydia Jackson Beecher, wrote to the

Reverend William Patton of New York, the chief American promoter

of Anglo-American evangelical cooperation, to inquire if the

American organizing committee had collected any funds which might

be applied to this end. Patton answered that no such monies were

available. Later in life Beecher liked to recall that his major

undertakings had been begun in faith and that financial support had

later been providentially supplied. So it was, he alleged, in this

instance. A long-delayed subscription for his Lane professorship of

three hundred dollars miraculously appeared, and with its help the

Beechers were able to leave Cincinnati for New England and Britain

 

 

 

 

2. The British perception of Beecher's role in the American temperance movement is

described in P. T. Winskill, The Temperance Movement and Its Workers. A Record of

Social, Moral, Religious, and Political Progress, 4 vols. (London, 1891), I, 34-38. By

1828 Beecher's Six Sermons was circulating in Ulster, giving rise to the Irish

temperance movement. In 1830 the Scottish Temperance Society published the same

work. Dissemination of the Six Sermons in Bradford in 1829-1830 by manufacturer

Henry Forbes helped launch the movement in England. Ibid., 49, 59, 63.

3. Autobiography of Lyman Beecher, II, 390.

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in June. Actually, since Beecher signed receipts for eleven hundred

dollars in overdue salary on June 1 and 2, his needs may have been

less dramatically supplied.⁴

After a brief visit to New York, Beecher and his wife hurried on to

Boston in order to embark on the British steamer Caledonia on

Wednesday, July 1. At the last moment his son, Edward Beecher,

minister of the Salem Street Church, visited the vessel with a

welcome gift of an additional seventy-five dollars for expenses.⁵ The

voyage of the Caledonia was swift and uneventful. On Friday, July 3,

the ship called at Halifax; eleven days later (July 14) it docked at

Liverpool. Beecher had improved the Sabbath in mid-ocean by

preaching to the assembled passengers in the saloon, speaking "in a

free, untrammeled, earnest, affectionate, extempore, and applicatory

manner for thirty or forty minutes."⁶

Liverpool did not seem greatly to have impressed Beecher. His

sole recollection in later years was a parochial one: its streets were

like those of Boston, "of all widths and angles, and wedges." After a

two-day visit, the Beechers travelled north to spend a fortnight in

Scotland. Here the veteran reformer had his first genuine taste of the

British evangelical society in which he was to live and work for the

next eight busy weeks. At Glasgow and Edinburgh he called on

distinguished clergymen. He preached a Sabbath service at the Free

Kirk in the Edinburgh suburb of Canonmills. He visited schools and

benevolent societies and addressed the Scottish Temperance

League.⁷ He also had his first abrasive encounter with British

evangelical brethren.

 

 

 

 

4. Ibid., 390-91. Beecher reports the unexpected donor as "Mr. Wilcox, of Ohio."

Beecher had apparently solicited funds in 1843 since Wilcox is represented as providing

the money with the remark, "Some three years since you called on me, stating that in

consequence of the failure of your professorship you had to act as agent for the

seminary. At that time I did not feel prepared to do any thing of that kind, but must say

it was a matter of regret to me that I refused you such aid, and have now called on you

to relieve myself of that regret." On Patton's role in Anglo-American discussions

before 1846, see R. W. Dale, ed., The Life and Letters of John Angell James (London,

1861), 411, 418-23, 538. Patton estimated the passage from Boston to cost $120 in the

New York Observer, March 14, 28, 1846. Beecher's receipt for arrears in salary, dated

June 2, 1846, is in the Lane Papers, McCormick Theological Seminary, Chicago:

"Received of the Society for Promoting Education in the West four hundred dollars on

my salary for the year ending Sept. 25th 1845 and six hundred dollars on my salary for

the year ending Sept. 25th 1846. Lyman Beecher." Beecher's salary at the time was

$1200 per year.

5. New York Evangelist, July 2, 1846, reported the arrival of the Beechers in New

York on Monday, June 29. Autobiography of Lyman Beecher, II, 391.

6. Ibid.; The [London] Times, July 15, 1846, 8.

7. Autobiography of Lyman Beecher, II, 391.

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Lyman Beecher                                                     297

 

The underlying theme in the encounter was American revivalism,

and Beecher gained attention for the issue by involving the most

revered figure in Scottish religious life. Thomas Chalmers was then at

the height of his career, having three years earlier led the secession

which produced the Scottish Free Church. For three decades

Chalmers' reputation as a leading intellectual, evangelical, and

ecclesiastical statesman had made him the British churchman most

respected by American Protestants, and Beecher, like countless

predecessors, paid his respects to the Scottish leader when he arrived

in Edinburgh. Chalmers invited Beecher to hear him preach.

Accordingly, on Sunday, July 26, the American visitor was one of a

vast assemblage at Burke's Close-"a mission station," as Beecher's

wife later described it, "in the midst of a destitute population." The

sensation came at the conclusion of Chalmers' sermon. According to

the Reverend Samuel Hanson Cox, Beecher intervened and called on

the people to stay while he added edifying exhortations. The throng

heard him in surprised silence as he urged them to act at once to

obtain salvation, to "resolve here, now, on the spot" to be reconciled

to God.⁸

The incident had significance beyond Beecher's embarrassing

tactlessness, which Cox conceded "was quite singular, if not

censurable." Beecher's address was prompted by the conviction,

shared by most American churchmen, that British preaching lacked

true ardor and neglected personal appeals. It was not "home-

thrusting." Beecher apparently trusted that his age gave him

latitude to correct the defect with American-style "encouragements."

If so, he failed to allow for Scottish apprehensions about American

religion. Since the 1830s British evangelicals, friendly to earlier New

World awakenings, had become more wary of revivals as destructive

 

 

 

8. For Chalmers' career, see William Hanna, Memoir of the Life and Writings of

Thomas Chalmers, 4 vols. (Edinburgh, 1850-1852). Chalmers' eminence for American

Protestants is transparent in the religious newspapers and periodicals of the 1830s and

1840s. For typical eulogies from American ministers, see William B. Sprague, A

Discourse commemorative of the Rev. Thomas Chalmers (Albany, 1847); Francis

Wayland, A Memoir of the Christian Labors ... of Thomas Chalmers (Boston, 1864);

Thomas Smyth, "The Character of the Late Thomas Chalmers," in J. W. Flinn, ed.,

Complete Works of Rev. Thomas Smyth. D.D., 10 vols. (Columbia, S.C., 1908-1912),

111, 553-81. For indications of the Scottish-American religious connection in the 1840s,

see G. Lewis. Impressions of America and the American Churches (Edinburgh, 1845).

The connection has been studied by George Shepparson in "The Free Church and

American Slavery," The Scottish Historical Review, XXX, no. 110 (October 1951),

126-43, and "Thomas Chalmers, the Free Church of Scotland, and the South," Journal

of Southern History, XVII (November 1951), 517-37. Beecher's relation to Chalmers is

narrated in Autobiography of Lyman Beecher, II, 391-92 and Samuel Hanson Cox,

Interviews; Memorable and Useful (London. 1853), 80 ff., 128 ff.

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298                                           OHIO HISTORY

to doctrine. Americans, they charged, tended to regard "the revival system as the proper and natural and constant condition in which they should be." The emergence of Charles G. Finney and the prevalence of "new measures" strengthened these misgivings-a distrust which Beecher's old friend, Asahel Nettleton, had been one of the first to inspire during his visit to Glasgow in 1831. When in 1839 Finney's Lectures on Revivals appeared in Britain, warnings were sounded even by sympathetic churchmen against the book's "self- conversionism." Scottish anxieties were particularly acute in the 1840s because James Morison of Kilmarnock, himself influenced by Finney, was then leading a successful but controversial revival ac- companied by pamphlet warfare, schism, and disruption of theologi- cal academies.9     9. Cox, Interviews, 80 ff., 128 ff. For Scottish criticism of American revivalism, see letter of Ralph Wardlaw to Leonard Woods of Andover, July 16, 1834 in W. L. Alexander, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Ralph Wardlaw (Edinburgh, 1856),

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Lyman Beecher                                                      299

 

Beecher's interruption annoyed Chalmers, who complained to Cox

that now orthodox preachers of America were sure to be accused of

"Morisonianism." After long discussion Chalmers was mollified,

agreeing that the American's message was "sound and good," though

his basic complaint against Beecher persisted: "But he exhorted them

to do so much, and said not a word, from first to last, about the Spirit

helping them-that was the great omission." Chalmers may also have

shown vexation by departing from his usual hospitable custom of ask-

ing the visitor to pray when Beecher called at his home in Burntis-

land.10

Leaving these tensions behind them, the Beechers journeyed by

train from Scotland to London on July 30, "putting up" at Fitzroy

Square where a number of Americans were already staying. During

the next month Beecher's chief business was the two great

conventions, but he also found time for sightseeing and preaching.

Visiting St. Paul's he not only climbed to the tower, but "then crept

into the ball on the summit, much to the astonishment of the guide."

His preaching was apparently well received. He spoke from George

Whitefield's old pulpit at The Tabernacle to "a vast audience," and

after his sermon at Craven Chapel a prominent Nonconformist

pleased Lydia Beecher by urging, "My dear Madam, go home and

take care of that blessed man, for his like is not to be found." For

twenty years Beecher's career had been reported in British religious

magazines and travel diaries, and a fellow-American testified that the

old reformer was "the object of much curiosity and veneration."11

Five days after his arrival in the capital Beecher began the week of

deliberations at the World Temperance Convention at the London

Literary Institution. British temperance reform was closely linked to

 

 

 

 

347. A later and more spirited attack by the venerable Congregationalist, William Jay,

is in The Congregational Magazine (1840), 888-89. For British doubts concerning

Finney, see James' letter to Patton, June 27, 1843, in Dale, Life of James, 420.

Nettleton's warnings against "the new measures" in Scotland are reported in Bennet

Tyler, Memoir of the Life and Character of Rev. A. Nettleton, D.D. (Hartford, 1845),

190-92. The Morison revival is narrated in Harry Escott, A History of Scottish

Congregationalism (Glasgow, 1960), 116-34, and Fergus Ferguson, A History of the

Evangelical Union, from its Origin to the Present Time (Glasgow, 1876), 7 ff.

10. Cox, Interviews, 80 ff., 128 ff.

11. Autobiography of Lyman Beecher, II, 392. The Nonconformist admirer was a

brother of the prominent Congregational minister of Craven Chapel, John Leifchild.

The Scottish Congregationalist, James Massie, reported casual impressions: Beecher

was much respected, had a harsh voice, held strong views of prophecy, expected "an

approaching season of ecclesiastical change." J. W. Massie, The Evangelical Alliance;

its Origin and Development (London, 1847), 401. E. N. Kirk wrote home that "Dr.

Beecher does not appear as he used to; and yet he retains some of the old fire." David

O.Mears, Life of Edward Norris Kirk. DD (Boston, 1878) 200

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300                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

the American crusade, and Beecher was honored as one of the fathers

of the movement. He was introduced as such when presented before

the convention to speak on the history of American temperance, and

thereby basis was laid for Beecher's first brush with the anti-slavery

agitation then raging in England. Seated in the convention hall was

William Lloyd Garrison, not a delegate to the convention but in his

own mind the true pioneer of American temperance. That evening in

a letter to his wife Garrison expressed his irritation at the honor

bestowed on Beecher. Indeed, in the afternoon Garrison, further

outraged by references to Southern Christians and to Sabbath

observance, had risen to denounce the speaker, the Reverend Edward

Norris Kirk of Boston, and when not permitted to continue had

indignantly left the meeting.¹² The convention was not thereby freed

of further debate on slavery, however. Three days later on August 7

transatlantic temperance held its great public meeting at the Covent

Garden Theatre where Beecher shared the platform with other

teetotal notables and delivered a speech "full of emotion and power."

On this occasion the euphoria was shattered by the eloquent ex-slave,

Frederick Douglass, who seized the opportunity to speak for

"three millions of the American population by slavery and prejudice

placed entirely beyond the pale of American temperance societies."¹³

It is likely that these abolitionist eruptions significantly influenced

Beecher's role in the single controversy which split the convention,

the debate on the "Long Pledge" which occupied the final meeting on

August 8. In contrast to the "Short Pledge," the more radical "Long

Pledge" required all teetotalers to abstain from giving as well as

taking spiritous liquors. It had long been accepted in the American

temperance movement, but in England its advocacy in the 1830s had

led to controversy, division, and loss of some aristocratic and

middle-class support. Ironically, in the debate Beecher opposed

 

 

 

12. Proceedings of the World's Temperance Convention Held in London, August

4th, and Four Following Days, with the Papers Laid before the Convention, Letters

and Statistics and General Information Presented, &c., &c. (London, 1846), 10-11.

[Wendell Phillips Garrison and Francis Jackson Garrison,] William Lloyd Garrison

1805-1879. The Story of His Life, 4 vols. (New York, 1889), 111, 156-58. The Liberator,

September 11, 18, 1846.

13. [Frederick Douglass,] Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (Hartford, 1881),

250-54. Philip S. Foner, ed., The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, 4 vols. (New

York, 1950), I, 189-99. John Marsh, Temperance Recollections, Labors, Defeats,

Triumphs (New York, 1866), 152, 157-58. John A. Krout, The Origins of Prohibition

(New York, 1925,) 217. New York Evangelist, September 10, 1846. New York

Observer, September 12, 1846. The Liberator, November 20, 27, 1846. Documents of

the Cox-Douglass controversy were published as Correspondence between the Rev.

Samuel H. Cox, D.D., of Brooklyn, L.I. and Frederick Douglass, a Fugitive Slave

(New York. 1846).

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Lyman Beecher                                                301

 

adoption of the "Long Pledge," even though he did not deal with the

substantive issue in the controversy at all. Instead he argued that the

world convention had no competence to legislate policy for the

several national societies in the world. While personally devoted to

the "Long Pledge," Beecher warned that "the American delegates

could not hold themselves bound by any decision which might be

arrived at on this point." Britain and America "should do all that was

practicable in their several circumstances." It is difficult to avoid the

conclusion that Beecher was already anticipating anti-slavery action

in the forthcoming Evangelical Alliance and was seeking to establish

the principle and precedent of separate national policies. If so,

Beecher's speech may have been the first public declaration of an

American strategy already being shaped in confidential sessions

among the leading American divines in London.14

Beecher had only a Sabbath rest after the conclusion of the

Temperance Convention before throwing himself into preparations for

the Evangelical Alliance on Monday. Lydia Beecher recorded that he

"met a committee to confer upon arrangements for the 'Alliance' "

and then consulted with friends about abolitionism.¹⁵ The two

subjects were certainly related. American delegates were fearful that

the Alliance, dominated by British evangelicals, would exclude

slaveholders from membership, thus affronting American Christianity

and destroying the prospects of the Alliance in the American

churches. There were sound reasons for their anxiety. British

churches had long been deeply committed to the world anti-slavery

crusade. They had promoted abolition in the British colonies,

successful in 1833, and then turned to remonstrate with American

brethren for their national sin. Among the British delegates were

many churchmen who had assumed prominent roles in the

anti-slavery struggle, including such influential preachers as Baptist

Noel in the Established Church; John Angell James, John Morison,

and Ralph Wardlaw among the Congregationalists; and John Howard

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

14. Proceedings of World's Temperance Convention, 52-55. American influence had

generally supported extremist tendencies in the British temperance movement. For the

history of the British movement, see Brian Harrison, Drink and the Victorians: The

Temperance Question in England 1815-1872 (London, 1971). The Long Pledge issue

had begun in Britain about 1837. Account of the controversy is provided in Winskill.

Temperance Movement, II, 140ff.. and Harrison, Drink and the Victorians, 140-45.

15. Autobiography of Lyman Beecher, II, 392. See letter of Robert Baird mentioning

these preparatory meetings in New York Evangelist, September 10, 1846; see also Ibid.,

November 12, 1846.

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Hinton among the Baptists.¹⁶ With only few exceptions (of whom the

most notable was the Boston Adventist Joshua V. Himes), the

American delegates determined to resist the expected attack on

America's "Christian slaveholders." According to South Carolinians

Thomas Smyth and John B. Adger, the Americans were generalled by

the New York Presbyterians, Samuel Hanson Cox of Brooklyn and

Sidney Morse, editor of the Old School New York Observer, but

Beecher was also praised for placing "patriotism" above all

sectionalism. Even before the official convening of the Alliance on

August 19, the Americans were holding morning strategy sessions to

coordinate their defense.¹⁷

In the first week of the sessions at Freemasons' Hall Beecher made

modest but characteristic contributions. When controversy erupted

over the American attempt to add an article on eternal punishment of

the wicked to the basis of union, Beecher warned British opponents

that Universalism, a blight on American religion, would soon trouble

their peace as well. When a resolution recommended restraint and

charity in the religious press, the old polemicist expressed misgivings:

"Let controversy, for man's sake, and for God's sake, go on as long

as it is needful." Then on Friday, August 28, the slavery question,

long expected and long dreaded, was dropped into the deliberations.

John Howard Hinton, the Baptist editor of the Anti-Slavery Reporter

in the early 1840s, moved an amendment to the plan of organization

whereby only "those persons not being Slaveholders" were to be-

come eligible for membership in the Alliance.¹⁸ Beecher's role in the

ensuing struggle should not be exaggerated. He did not argue the

American case effectively on the floor of the convention, nor did he

orchestrate the American opposition as he might have done in

younger days. Yet he played a part in each new development of the

 

 

 

 

 

16. British evangelicals' crusade against American slavery in the 1830s has been

studied by Thomas F. Harwood, "British Evangelical Abolitionism and American

Churches in the 1830's," Journal of Southern History, XXVIII (August 1962), 287-306.

Scottish connection with the slavery issue is analyzed in Shepparson, Scottish

Historical Review, XXX, no. 110 (October 1951), 126-43. For Noel, Morison, and

Hinton, see Dictionary of National Biography. Anti-slavery activities of James and

Wardlaw are related in the standard biographies, Dale, Life of James, and Alexander,

Memoirs of Wardlaw. Both men are frequently mentioned in The Liberator.

17. On Himes, Cox, and Morse, see Dictionary of American Biography. Louisa

Cheves Stoney, ed., Autobiographical Notes, Letters, and Reflections, by Thomas

Smyth, D.D. (Charleston, 1914), 359 ff. John Bailey Adger, My Life and Times

(Richmond, 1899), 134.

18. Evangelical Alliance. Report of the Proceedings of the Conference Held at

Freemasons' Hall, London, from August 19th to September 2nd Inclusive, 1846

(London, 1847), 109-10, 219, 290.

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Lyman Beecher                                            303

 

crisis, and in the end his favored "solution" to the impasse was unen-

thusiastically adopted by the Alliance.

For four days Freemasons' Hall was racked by the debate, and the

Alliance nearly collapsed. At the end of the first day the delegates

abandoned the effort to reach agreement in session and appointed a

committee, of which Beecher was one, to seek a solution. On the

committee the Americans were under great pressure to agree to a

compromise which would save the alliance, but Beecher by his own

account was one of the intransigents. Earlier in the convention he had

suggested to some members "that we should have, not a General

Alliance, but an Independent Alliance in each country whose

representatives might meet from time to time." The same plan he

promoted again in committee. When at length a compromise formula

was accepted by most of the Americans on the committee, Beecher

voted against it. The agreement, joyfully reported to the convention,

made the delegates deplore slavery and "express their confidence,

that no Branch will admit to Membership slaveholders, who, by their

own fault, continue in that position." Despite the agreement, Beecher

and other Americans also signed a protest, written by Sidney Morse,

against the introduction of the slavery question into the Alliance.

Over the Sabbath recess the Americans concluded that they had

yielded too much, re-established their solidarity, and on Monday

morning threw the convention into turmoil by renouncing the recent

compromise. In his speech to the convention Beecher was frank in

enlisting political argument. "If you go on upon this basis," he told

the brethren, "the result . . . will simply be, that you make it

altogether an Abolition movement in America.... I assert, without

hesitation, that, in the present state of things, three-fourths of our

Churches cannot go with it." Then Beecher presented his favorite

suggestion: "Better for us to attempt forming independent Alliances,

in England and in other Countries, and to have a Union once in three

or seven years. In this way you would avoid all these difficulties." In

the end Beecher's alternative did prevail. The controversy, sent back

to committee, was ended by a new recommendation that members of

the Alliance "adopt such organization in their several Countries, as,

in their judgement, may be most in accordance with their peculiar

circumstances." In contrast to many delegates who spoke sadly of

the "dissevering" of the Alliance, Beecher was elated and indulged in

characteristic rhetoric:

 

 

We have got our independence-as independent as the air; and we have got

our union-as strong as the arm of Omnipotence. The Lord Jesus Christ has

got us marshalled for this simple business; there is one brigade here under

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orders, another there; and now let us go, under His guidance and providence,

against the universal enemy.19

The great contention was over, but in the closing session of the

Alliance a curious scene took place which allowed members to relieve

their pent-up emotions. The Reverend Mollison Madison Clark, a

black minister from Washington, tardily arrived in London and

presented himself at Freemasons' Hall. Clark had set out from

America to attend the Alliance but his ship had turned back to New

York after an accident at sea. The warm welcome which British

evangelicals gave to this symbol of American slavery was exceeded

only by the emotional determination of the Americans to demonstrate

their charity toward a black brother. Beecher joined with the rest,

crying out, "I invite him to my house, to my table, to my pulpit."²⁰

The Alliance closed on August 29, and the Beechers prepared to

take ship for New York after a final fortnight in England. The

preceding weeks had been filled with the excitement of meeting

famous men, addressing great rallies, and manipulating ecclesiastical

politics. Beecher had loved it all, but one final drama was still

reserved for him on his homeward journey.

On September 12 Lyman and Lydia Beecher sailed from Liverpool

on the Great Western. The steamship was considered one of the most

splendid in transatlantic service, and the passenger list included

several who had been active in the late conventions-the temperance

reformer John Marsh, Professor Samuel Schmucker of Gettysburg,

and the Charleston Presbyterian minister Thomas Smyth. For eight

days the voyage proceeded peacefully, but on the evening of

Saturday, September 19, the vessel sailed into a hurricane. Within a

few hours the masts were carried away, and many of the lifeboats

broke free of securings and were lost. While waves washed over the

bow, sending terrible shocks through the steamer, weeping

passengers gathered below and awaited the end. On Sunday, at the

height of the storm, an emotional religious service was held in the

main saloon. Marsh read scripture, Schmucker prayed, and Beecher

delivered "solemn remarks." At the conclusion of worship he

became prophetic. "I have seen Christ," he told the distressed

passengers, "and have the assurance that not one of us will be lost."

"It is worthy of record," Lydia Beecher reported, that after this

service "the 'wrecking' ceased, though the wind increased." On the

 

 

19. Ibid., 395-97, 429-30, 450-51. The slavery issue prevented the establishment of an

effective Evangelical Alliance in the United States until 1867.

20. Ibid., 485-91. Clark subsequently undertook a lecture tour in Britain and was

attacked by Garrisonians as "an apologist for American slaveholders." The Liberator,

October 30, November 20, 1846.

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Lyman Beecher                                              305

 

following Tuesday, when the storm had slackened, Beecher again led

an assembly of passengers in a thanksgiving service for their deliver-

ance. But on this occasion, in true reformist style, a committee was

appointed, of which Beecher was one, to prepare two appropriate

resolutions which were adopted three days later. The first resolve

commended the captain, officers, and crew for their valiant seaman-

ship during the tempest. The second accompanied a purse of six

hundred dollars, the nucleus of a "Great Western Fund" established

to assist widows and orphans of those lost at sea.²¹ Beecher had

helped found his last benevolent society.

The Great Western docked in New York on the following Sabbath,

September 27, and Beecher, after a brief stay in the east, returned to

Ohio to resume his duties at Lane.²² For four more years the old man

remained at the post, but in 1850, forgetful and exhausted, he

resigned and removed to the Brooklyn home of his son, Henry Ward

Beecher. The British summer had been the last significant

contribution of Beecher's career, and while observers noted that he

seemed a mere shadow of his former self, that shadow was a true one.

Throughout his overseas visit Beecher had sought to advance his

characteristic brand of Protestant activism in personal reform,

benevolent crusades, and denominational coordination, yet without

sacrificing national interests or social stability. The autumnal quality

of this effort in 1846 marked more than Beecher's personal career. An

American reform era was passing. The earlier evangelical confidence

in a progressive advance, through revivals, benevolence, and foreign

missions, to a Protestant world and the ultimate "renovation of the

earth," was flagging. Already the great question of slavery had

divided the major churches of America into sectional denominations,

and although Northern and Southern churchmen had stood together

in London, they had done so at the expense of the Anglo-American

unity deemed essential to the triumph of liberty and religion

throughout the world. Indeed, other themes were ascendant. The

moderation and prudence which had marked Beecher's career were

giving way to the "ultraism" and passion he deplored. The year after

his retirement his daughter, Harriet, would sweep both America and

Britain with her narrative indictment of slavery, and in five years

more his son, Henry Ward, would be preaching up arms for Kansas.

 

 

21. Autobiography of Lyman Beecher, II, 393. A detailed account of the voyage

appeared in God in the Storm: A Narrative by the Rev. L. P. Balch, An Address by

Rev. Lyman Beecher, D.D. and a Sermon by the Rev. Thomas Smyth, D.D. Prepared

on Board the Great Western, after the Storm Encountered on Her Recent Voyage

(New York, 1846), reprinted in Complete Works of Rev. Thomas Smyth, V. 495-527.

22. Beecher lectured on his English experiences at the Salem Street Church. Boston,

on October 7, 1846. New York Evangelist, October 15. 1846.

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