The earnest seeker and hopeful discoverer of this new world always haunts the outskirts of his or her time. Our history is written in the lives of such individuals. The serial we're about to begin relates the story of one of American's most dynamic families, the Beechers. How a father and his eleven children wrote their destinies into our history in the years before and during the Civil War.
When Lyman Beecher's wife Roxana died at 41 of tuberculosis in Litchfield, Connecticut, Catharine, the oldest of eight Beecher children, was sixteen. With Aunt Esther’s help, she took charge of arranging family matters. For a year, she learned much and quickly about running a household—an experience that in later years would shape her career.  
  In 1817, Lyman Beecher married Harriet Porter, who came from a prominent Maine family that had produced two congressmen and a governor. The second Mrs. Beecher was somewhat resistant to Lyman’s Calvinist vision. Once, while Dr. Beecher was reading aloud a Jonathan Edwards sermon, ‘‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,’’ she ran out of the room, crying out—

HARRIET PORTER : Dr. Beecher, I shall not listen to another word of that slander on my Heavenly Father

NARRATOR : His wife’s response, among other things, led Dr. Beecher to lean toward New School Calvinism—less hell-fire and more compassion. The driving force of his life was simply to save souls, beginning with his children.

LYMAN : February 6, 1819. My dear William—While I am successful as most ministers in bringing the sons and daughters of others to Christ, my heart sinks within me at the thought that every one of my own dear children are without God in the world, and without Christ, and without hope. I have no child prepared to die; and however cheering their prospects for time may be, how can I but weep in secret places when I realize that their whole eternal existence is every moment liable to become an existence of unchangeable sinfulness and woe.  
  A family so numerous as ours is a broad mark for the arrows of Death. I feel afraid that one or more of you may die suddenly, and I be called to mourn over you without hope. I do not know how I can bear it.

LYMAN : May 4, 1819. Dear Catharine—I perceive, on writing your name, that I have never written a letter to you. This, then, is the beginning of a long correspondence.
   My soul is moved within me that so many of the temples in Boston and around should be only splendid sepulchers, where the spiritually dead sleep, never to awake till they meet at the judgment seat that Savior whose divinity and atonement they deny.   
 We shall soon attempt a journey, though whether young Frederick can come is doubtful. If possible, I would bring him, that they may see down East what children they have in Old Connecticut.  
  Edward has just returned to college, with every prospect of making a first-rate scholar.  
  Charles fell against the bedstead the other day, and cut a gash over one eye, which is healed. But before it was well he fell and cut a gash over the other eye, in precisely the same relative position, which had been well ere there had he not a few days ago fallen again, and renewed the cut in the same place.  
  In the meantime he stood before the vent of a gun, from which the flash and powder flew into his face and burned it, and blew it full of powder.

LYMAN : April 17, 1819. Edward—We are not gone to Salem yet, and still your letters have gone unanswered for about forty reasons. I had no money to send you. Could not find time to go to the collector and get some. Could not get any when I did go.  
  George and I have weeded the parsnips and beets, which have come up badly, and kept the north and south garden clean. Then I helped Mr. Taylor plant potatoes up in the orchard. Then two days plowing yard, and carrying out the stones which paved the bottom.  
  And now the yard waves with corn, cabbage, canteloupes, and pumpkins. Was there ever such a yard You would not know where you were if you could not see the house. Then next I attacked the barn, the east end, which included the horse-stable, and in about two hours sawed it in two, and let it down on old Culver’s head. He was taking up the stable-floor, and would not get out of the way, from the persuasion that it would fall over into the garden. I asked him if he had lived long enough. He said yes, unless she behaved better.   
 After which, half a dozen strokes of the saw cut off the plate, and down roof and all fell instantly, and buried him beneath the ruins. We lifted up the roof, and he crept out bleeding, with his head cut to the bone about three inches. He is, however, now recovered. But the greatest thing is yet to come. Yesterday the barn itself, having acquired an unusual understanding, moved off obliquely to Mr. Wolcott’s corner, cracking and racking as it went with the noise of twenty teams and their drivers.  
  It commenced its movement precisely at eight o’clock in the morning, and in two hours went six rods, and stopped to move no more till it tumbles down with age, it being, as I learn, about eighty years old now.

NARRATOR : At nineteen, Catharine Beecher began preparing herself to be a teacher, concentrating on piano, painting, and poetry. Some poems in the Christian Spectator had already attracted the attention of Alexander Metcalf Fisher, a mathematical genius, and at twenty-five a full professor at Yale. A relationship between Catharine and Fisher blossomed. Even Horace Mann, at the time a law student in Litchfield, noticed the romance.  
  Frederick Beecher, young Fred, was Harriet Porter Beecher’s first child, Lyman’s ninth.

CATHARINE : June 20, 1820. —We are all anxious and troubled at home. Frederick has had the canker, or scarlet fever, very badly. For two or three days we have despaired of his life. Last night he nearly suffocated with the phlegm; but this morning he is much better, and we hope his greatest danger is over.
   Last night Harriet was seized violently with the same disease, and we know not how it will terminate.

CATHARINE : June 23. —Disease and death have visited our house. The scarlet fever has prevailed here, and little Freddy was seized, and this morning, without much struggling, breathed his last.
    
     
We laid him in his infant grave,         
       The fairest form of earthly mould;         
 Death ne’er could choose a sweeter flower           
     To deck his bosom cold.

NARRATOR : About this time, Edward was graduating valedictorian at Yale. He reports on the changes in the family:

EDWARD : Aunt Esther discharges the duties of her station with her usual fidelity and discretion. Mary is qualifying herself to take Catharine’s place in the school at New London, in music and drawing. George is qualifying himself to take my place in college, which he will never do unless he studies more than he does now. Harriet reads everything she can lay hands on, and sews and knits diligently. Henry and Charles go to school—Henry as sprightly and active, and Charles as honest and clumsy as ever.

NARRATOR : Catharine was twenty-two, and was engaged to Alexander Fisher. Fisher and Catharine had developed a deep mutual respect for each other, and their friendship had deepened into a love affair. They became engaged, and a summer wedding was planned, but first Fisher was to go to England to give a paper. On his return, they would be married. Fisher had religious doubts, and Catharine shared some of them, as she confesses to her brother Edward.

CATHARINE : March 7, 1822. Edward—Last Sunday was sacrament day, and thirty-six were admitted to the Church, and ten or twelve baptized. It was very solemn. The revival is going on still, though not powerful. I fear it will pass over like others, and none of our family feel its influence.  
  I know it is what our dear father and mother most earnestly desire and pray for, but as yet their prayers remain unanswered. I feel as much as anyone can the necessity of a change, and still cannot feel sorrow for sin, and it sometimes seems to me I never shall. LYMAN : April 1, 1822  
  —Catharine has been sick three days, the first in acute distress. I had been addressing her conscience not twenty minutes before. She was seized with most agonizing pain. I hope it will be sanctified.

NARRATOR : And then came a shock. Lyman Beecher’s letter to Catharine two months later held bitter news.

LYMAN : New Haven, May 30, 1822. My dear child—On entering the city last evening, the first intelligence I met filled my heart with pain. It is all but certain that Professor Fisher is no more.  
  On that which will force itself on your pained heart with respect to the condition of his present existence in the eternal state, I can only say that many did and will indulge the hope that he was pious, though without such evidence as caused him to indulge hope.   
 And now, my dear child, what will you do? Will you turn at length to God, and set your affections on things above, or cling to the shipwrecked hopes of earthly good? Will you send your thoughts to heaven and find peace, or to the cliffs, and winds, and waves of Ireland, to be afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted?

NARRATOR : Alexander Fisher’s ship had crashed on the Irish coast. Catharine was grief-stricken, and in need of comfort. Lyman Beecher offered little. He saw it as a warning that, unlike Fisher, she could still save her soul. He spent most of the next year trying to convert her. Catharine’s retreat and spiritual crisis affected all the Beecher children, who saw their father’s theology fail to comfort and fail to convert Catharine, who could not achieve a religious experience. Eventually, every one of Lyman’s children would find Calvinism unsatisfactory, and each found a personal solution.

HENRY : The tragedy has broken up and destroyed all the religious teachings of her life. The doctrines she had learned did not sustain her.

CATHARINE : It was as though I were surrounded by the motion and constant noise of the ever whirling machinery and wheels of a great manufactory, and all at once every sound and motion ceased and all was still as the grave—not a thread, not a circle or circumstance, for the eye or heart to rest upon.

CATHARINE : June 4, 1822. —Oh, Edward, where is he now? Are the noble faculties of such a mind doomed to everlasting woe, or is he now with our dear mother in the mansions of the blessed?
   When I think of the scene of her death-bed there is a mournful pleasure. She died in peace, and the eyes that were closing on earth were to open in heaven. But when I think of the last sad moments of his short life—the horrors of darkness, the winds, the waves, and tempest, of his sufferings of mind when called to give up life and all its bright prospects, and be hurried alone, a disembodied spirit, into unknown, eternal scenes, oh, how dreadful, how agonizing  
  My dear brother, I am greatly afflicted. I know not where to look for comfort. The bright prospects that turned my thoughts away from heaven are all destroyed, and now that I have nowhere to go but to God, the heavens are closed against me, and my prayer is shut out.  
  The help of man faileth. The dearest friends can only stand and look on; it is God alone that can help.

CATHARINE : Litchfield, July, 1822. —Dear Brother—when I began to write to you on the subject which now occupies my thoughts, it was with a secret feeling that you could do something to remove my difficulties. But this feeling is all gone now.   
 It is the feeling of entire guilt, willful and inexcusable, which gives all the consistency and excellency to the Gospel. Without this the justice of God is impaired, His mercy is destroyed, the grace and condescension of Jesus Christ is veiled, and the aid of the Blessed Spirit made void.   
 This feeling I can not awaken in my heart, nor is my understanding entirely convinced that it ought to exist. I give the assent which a shortsighted, fallible creature ought to give to Omniscience, but it is an assent to authority, not to conviction.  
  If all was consistent and right in the apprehension of my understanding, there would be no such temptation to skepticism as I feel growing within me. I feel all the time as if there was something wrong—something that is unreasonable. There have been moments when I have been so perplexed and darkened as to feel that no one could tell what was truth from the Bible.

LYMAN : August 2, 1822. —Edward, Catharine’s letter will disclose the awfully interesting state of her mind. There is more movement than there ever existed before, more feeling, more interest, more anxiety, and she is now, you perceive, handling edge-tools with powerful grasp.  
  I have at times been at my wit’s end to know what to do. But I conclude nothing safe can be done but to assert ability, and obligation, and guilt upon divine authority, throwing in, at the same time, as much collateral light from reason as the case admits of, and taking down the indefensible positions which depravity, and fear, and selfishness, and reason set up. In other words, I answer objections and defend the ways of God.

LYMAN : September 25, 1822. —Dear Catharine—That your mind has found a kind of composure which prevents your repining at what is past, or wishing to change the present, and leaves alive only the desire to find happiness in God, though not religion, is a state of mind more propitious, I should hope, than that which has preceded it.
   The cessation of restless impatience, of that desperate importunity to be delivered soon, or to cast away the irksome thoughts of religion, is also a favorable change. And yet I am startled at the tranquillity produced by your reading of John Newton. I fear only because it is precisely the effect always produced by such directions as Dr. Dwight used to give to awakened sinners, and as the English divines still give. Now, who are right, the Old or New England divines?  
  Which mode of exhibition is, on the whole, most evangelical and most successful, is as manifest from the facts as facts can make manifest. Look at the revivals which are filling our land with salvation; they do not prevail in England. In this country they are confined almost exclusively to the New England manner of exhibiting the truth. Mr. John Newton himself said, ‘‘I know not how it is, but we are obliged to be content with catching now and then a fish with a hook, while you in New England, like the apostles of old, drag to shore your seines full.’’   
 This is the difference which God makes between telling sinners to pray and wait, and telling them, in God’s name, to repent and believe.

LYMAN : October 27, 1822. —My dear Catharine—I shall follow you, step by step, in your comfortless way. You apprehend that your mind is differently constituted from others, and that no one was ever troubled with a heart so inconsistent and ungovernable.  
  This, my dear child, is the complaint which I hear from the lip of every sinner who is awakened, and so much enlightened by the Spirit as to see and feel what God requires of the heart. This is conviction of sin. The commandment coming, and sin reviving, and the sinner dying.   
 The Bible had told you that your heart is deceitful, is desperately wicked, but you felt it not while it wandered and was allowed to wander; but now that you hold it bound to be conformed to the law, or even to the Gospel, and begin to draw the reins, and bring it and bind it to its duty, you find it, like the bullock unaccustomed to the yoke, impatient of restraint, violent, wayward, and ungovernable.   
 All who are convinced of sin make the same discoveries and utter the same complaints.  
  It is not improbable that some portion of capricious feeling may be the vibration of nervous excitement produced by conversation, with care, anxiety, and sorrow; on this account you must attend to your bodily healthy, especially to daily exercise, and regular habits of body and hours of rest.

NARRATOR : In grief, Catharine visited Fisher’s family in Franklin, and discovered that before his trip, he too had been unable to achieve conversion, and had turned to science. Catharine’s crisis was to be resolved—she would accept neither Lyman’s nor her brother Edward’s arguments. Alexander Fisher wrote in one of his last journals: ‘‘The heart must have something to rest upon, and if it is not God, it will be the world.’’ Fisher also left two thousand dollars and his books to Catharine in his will, which he had made out just before he left on his last voyage.

LYMAN : November 5, 1822. —My dear afflicted Child—Until your last sad letter, I had thought you strangely exempted from the temptation to murmur and repine; but the renewal of your sorrows by so many touching associations as you find at Franklin has brought a flood of temptation.  
  You, I fear, are now more than tempted, and while I behold you imparting the darkness and desolation of your pained heart to all around you, and veiling even ‘‘the mercy, and justice, and goodness of God,’’ my heart bleeds, and my eyes are full.

CATHARINE : Franklin, New Year, 1823. —I had all along looked forward to the time of my arrival in Franklin as the period when (if I was to be brought into the kingdom by suffering and sorrow) my heart would find in God that comfort and peace which was nowhere else to be found; and if I did not then obtain religion, I felt that my heart would, almost from necessity, return to the world to receive its drgs of happiness for a portion, an unsatisfying portion, indeed; but the heart must have something to rest upon, and if it is not God it will be the world.  
  When I arrived here it was all as I had anticipated. Every sorrowful remembrance was recalled, every pang renewed, and it seemed as if my heart could endure no more, and as if my sorrow was as great as I could bear.  
  In addition to this were the mournful contemplations awakened when I learned more of the mental exercises of him I mourned; whose destiny is forever fixed, alas I knew not where. I learned from his letters, and in other ways, probably as much as I should have learned from his diary. I found that, even from early childhood, he had ever been uncommonly correct and conscientious, so that his parents and family could scarcely remember of his ever doing anything wrong, so far as it relates to outward conduct.   
 It was about the time I wrote to Edward that the commotion in my mind seemed to be at its crisis. I then felt that I was created a miserable, helpless creature; that I and all my fellow-men were placed under a severe law which we were naturally unable to obey, and threatened with everlasting despair for violating one of its precepts. It seemed to me that my lost friend has done all that unassisted human strength could do; and often the dreadful thought came over me that all was in vain, and that he was wailing that he had ever been born, in the dark world where hope never comes, and that I was following his steps to that dreadful scene.   
 It was under the influence of such feelings as these that, when retired to the same room, and in the same place where I fancied his tears and supplications were offered in vain, I have felt that I could not bend the knee, nor open my lips to pray to a Being whose character, to my blinded eyes, was so veiled in darkness and gloom.   
 But such dreadful feelings did not continue long. Soon the conviction that God was just and merciful, and would ever do right, which I scarcely ever before questioned, returned, and I resolved that I would not believe anything that obscured these perfections, and gradually my feelings were brought to be something of this kind.  
  If I cannot be a Christian, I will try to be as near like one as I can. I must believe that there is something in the Bible to encourage us to hope for that aid of the Blessed Spirit which can help our infirmities, and that in due time we shall find that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.  
  It is impossible that I should ever again take the course I have the past summer, unless the judgments of God should again make me desolate, and cut off every interest and employment in this world.  
  It was by withdrawing my thoughts and attention from everything else, and by a continued exertion to continue that vacuity and emptiness of soul which is felt when there is nothing to stimulate or interest, that I succeeded in confining my attention exclusively to the subject of religion; and I knew that whenever I did allow my feelings again to become interested in other things, unless some other stimulus was applied, all would be lost; and it seems to me now, if there is nothing in the Bible to encourage me to seek religion, there is nothing anywhere.  
  I hope you will answer this speedily, and in all its particulars, just as you would in conversation.

EDWARD : I think you are in danger of speculating too much. I do not expect to throw light on this dark spot, so as to make all things clear; nor ought you to expect to be entirely unembarrassed, where none within the range of my knowledge are free from perplexity.

CATHARINE : February 15, 1823. —My dear Father—The question of my entire ability to keep the law of God can never be settled, even to the conviction of my understanding, unless by supernatural interference. Should arguments equally powerful with those advanced by you and Edward, and ten thousand times more so, be advanced to prove that I had physical strength to move the everlasting hills, it would be to no purpose. Consciousness would be that brow of iron that would resist them all. Now, which is easier to abandon, confidence in my own consciousness or in your interpretation of the Bible?  
  I shall return next week to Boston, where God is now granting his Spirit. Once more I will agonize to enter in at the strait gate, and while I remain there will take no rest day nor night.
   But if I leave there with this wayward, hard, and sinful heart, I have no hope that I shall persevere in seeking religion. My own experience these last nine months forbids all such expectation; and if I do not then obtain religion, the world will soon engross my thoughts, and I shall receive its pittance as my portion.  
  As to my future employment, I wish to consult you. Generally speaking, there seems to be no very extensive sphere of usefulness for a single woman but that which can be found in the limits of a school-room; but there have been instances in which women of superior mind and acquirements have rised to a more enlarged and comprehensive boundary of exertion, and by their talents and influence have accomplished what, in a more circumscribed sphere of action, would have been impossible.  
  My employments this winter have led to the inquiry whether there is not a course that might be pursued leading to a more extended usefulness.   
 I have always supposed that the distinguishing characteristics of my own mind were an active and inventive imagination, and quick perceptions in matters of taste and literature; yet I think there is reason to believe that in more solid pursuits there is no deficiency. My memory is quick and retentive, and all the reason my mind is not stored with knowledge is the neglect of the past. All the knowledge I have has, as it were, walked into my head.  
  When I was in Hartford, Mr. Hawes lamented the want of a good female school. This and your advice have led me to wish to commence one there.

LYMAN : Litchfield, March 2, 1823. —My dear Child—It is time, now, that you open your eye upon a phenomenon of the human heart which has evidently escaped your notice. It is the existence in the heart of what some have called disposition, but which may be more properly denominated generic volition—a stated, habitual, and all-powerful choice, opposed often, indeed, by specific volitions, regrets, resolutions, and efforts of a subordinate character.  
  In other words, a man may, all things considered, choose to hold on in a course which he fears to tread, and regets to tread, and resolves and strives to turn from, but with resolutions and choice inferior to the generic volition which bears him on.  
  Do you ask, If this generic aversion is so powerful, why should I be so unconscious of its existence?   
 This calls you to regard another fact in the history of the mind. Nothing is more common than the unperceived influence of a generic volition. Should I resolve today to come to Boston, that volition, unrepeated and perhaps not perceived again, would bring me thither. It is a common thing for men to be actuated by motives they do not suspect, and by evil passions and affections of whose existence they are unconscious.  
  And what is confessedly true in the intercourse of life, the Scriptures declare to be true in our intercourse with God. The heart is desperately wicked, yet so deceitful that who can know it  
  Were I to depart from my implicit confidence in God, I could find as many difficulties and ask as many unanswerable questions as you do.  
  But I know that what God says is true, and what he does is right; and here I rest my faith, and desire you to rest yours, and if I have plunged into deep waters in this letter, it is not because I prefer to wade in them, but to rescue from drowning my own dear child, who is attempting to lay among the billows the foundations of her hope and confidence toward God.

LYMAN : Hartford, March 21, 1823. —I came here Tuesday evening, and began my inquiries next day about opening a school, and, having been pushing them as fast as such matters can be pushed until now, the point is, I think, well settled that such a school is greatly needed, and that scholars enough can be obtained to justify opening.  
  It will not, however, answer for you to engage in it listlessly, expecting yourself to superintend and do a little, and have the weight of the school come on others. I should be ashamed to have you open, and keep only a commonplace, middling sort of school. It is expected to be of a higher order; and, unless you are willing to put your talents and strength into it, it would be best not to begin.