NARRATOR : 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.
During the Fillmore and Buchanan years, sectional division was destroying the Whig Party and had weakened the Democrats. President Fillmore had been war hero Zachary Taylor’s running mate, a product of the Albany Regency political machine under Thurlow Weed. When Taylor died in office, Fillmore carried on. He was an able politician, but he had no program.
Henry Ward Beecher became nationally known overnight as an anti-slavery leader at a fund-raising event at the Broadway Tabernacle. Two black girls had fled Washington, had been caught, and were about to be shipped to New Orleans. When Beecher took the platform, he dramatized a slave auction to drive home the reality of the situation. He called for bids like an auctioneer, and before the meeting ended, the money had been raised. This auction for freedom was repeated in other cases, over the next ten years.
But though he dramatized the individual plight, and though he believed slavery to be a national sin, Beecher did not call for its immediate abolition. Many people shared Henry Ward Beecher’s opinion that slavery would die of its own accord, if it were simply contained.

HENRY : Let slavery alone. Let it go to seed. Hold it to its own natural fruit. Cut off every branch that hangs beyond the wall, every root that spreads. Shut it up to itself and let it alone. We do not ask to interfere with the internal policy of a single state by congressional enactments. We only ask that a line be drawn about it.
When slavery begins, under such treatment, to flag, we demand that she be denied political favoritism to regain her loss; we demand that no laws be enacted to give health to her paralysis and strength to her relaxing grasp. She boldly and honestly demanded a right to equality with the North, and prophetically spoke by Calhoun that the North would preponderate and crush her. It is true. Time is her enemy.

NARRATOR : The South also believed that the extension of slavery was necessary for its continued existence. Robert Toombs of Georgia wanted to annex South American countries as slave states. Pierre Soule of Louisiana, among others, spoke of annexing Cuba to expand the slave power.
The giants of the Congress from Jackson’s day had put their best efforts into the Compromise of 1850—and within a little more than a year of each other Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun all died. New leaders stepped forward—Stephen Douglas of Illinois, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Horace Greeley, Abraham Lincoln.
When the Compromise of 1850 was passed, the Fugitive Slave Law provision, though nominally harsh, was in fact little enforced. One Boston marshal would seek runaway slaves by going to see William Lloyd Garrison first. The fugitive he was sent after would soon be in Canada.
The main effect of the 1850 Compromise was the politicians’ relief from anti-slavery agitation. It appeared that the question of the future of slavery was settled. President Fillmore thought so.

FILLMORE : The agitation, which for a time threatened to disturb the fraternal relations which make us one people is fast subsiding. I congratulate the nation upon the general acquiescence in these measures of peace which has been accepted in all parts of the Republic.

NARRATOR : When statehood for Kansas came up, Southerners wanted to see Kansas brought in as a new slave state; Northerners opposed them. Stephen A. Douglas, the Little Giant from Illinois, sponsored a new idea: the notion of squatters’ sovereignty—in other words, the party to decide whether or not there would be slavery in Kansas should not be the government, but the new settlers. The whole delicate balance built over years of compromise in Congress would be thrown out the window under Douglas’s plan.
Two weeks after Douglas’s Kansas-Nebraska Bill came up, Henry Ward Beecher knew his mind.

HENRY : The Nebraska bill is the death-struggle of slavery for expansion, seeing that she must have more room to breathe or suffocate. All question as to whether slavery shall be agitated is now at an end. The South says it shall be agitated, and she cannot help it. The mask is off, and all disguises are thrown to the winds, and the slave power stands out in its true character, making its last and most infamous demands upon the North. All we have to do is to say No.

NARRATOR : Within four months the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was passed, incorporating the principle Douglas called squatter sovereignty—that each new state was to declare itself free or slave. Marauders from slave-state Missouri made forays into the new state of Kansas, killing and harassing settlers. The first legislature was invaded and overthrown by force of arms, and a pro-slavery constitution was written and sent to Washington. This Lecompte constitution was disputed by many, but President Fillmore favored accepting it.
When someone said they should send Bibles to the helpless settlers in Kansas, Henry Ward Beecher declared that Sharpes rifles would be a stronger moral influence than Bibles. These rifles came to be called ‘‘Beecher’s Bibles.’’
Meanwhile, it became clear to politicans that neither the Whig nor the Democratic Party would be willing to take an anti-slavery stand. Millard Fillmore the Whig, and Franklin Pierce the Democrat had both upheld the demands of the slave states. Could there be a third party? The Liberty Party, under James G. Birney, had been large enough to throw the 1844 election to James K. Polk, defeating Henry Clay’s last bid for the presidency. Yet the Liberty Party did not seek broad support.
Salmon P. Chase, Charles Sumner, and Wade thought the time had come to organize the many opponents of slavery into a national party. William H. Seward and Thurlow Weed at first stayed away. Cassius Clay of Kentucky was eager to join a new party.
Once the groups met together, settling on the candidacy of John C. Fremont, the Western adventurer and son-in-law of Thomas Hart Benton, Henry Beecher at once began to work for his election, taking a leave of absence from his church to campaign for Fremont. He gave three-hour speeches several times a week in the open air, to as many as ten thousand people until attacks of dizziness slowed him down. The Republicans lost that year, but made remarkably good showings throughout the North and East. In most Southern states, Republicans didn’t even have conventions.
The victor in the 1856 presidential campaign, James Buchanan, was an outstanding diplomat, but he knew no solution except compromise on the slavery issue. In his inaugural address he said that states had no right to secede—but on the other hand, the federal government had no right to stop them. He also tried to balance North and South in his Cabinet appointments—later on, that mistake would be costly to the Union. So much for diplomacy.
Isabella Beecher Hooker felt herself very much in the shadow of her more famous sisters and brothers. Edward was regarded as a leading theologian, Catharine as perhaps the foremost leader in women’s education, Harriet had skyrocketed to fame with her book, Henry had a national reputation as an orator. Even Charles received national attention with his bold anti-authoritarian pronouncements.
The furthest Isabella had gone by this time was to be one of the first women to wear Amelia Bloomer’s Turkish-style pantaloons with knee-length overskirt. In what field could she make her mark? She studied political economy, she considered a career as a water-cure gynecologist. And she read law with her husband John—an exercise that would come in handy later.
Charles Beecher had reorganized a failing church in Newark, New Jersey into a thriving one. He preached temperance and anti-slavery in his outspoken manner. When the Fugitive Slave Law was passed, Charles was expelled for his sermon, The Duty of Disobedience to Wicked Laws, by the ministerial association of Newark. But the sermon was printed as a pamphlet, and it had a wide circulation in the North.
When his sister Harriet’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, became a runaway bestseller, she chose Charles to accompany her to Europe as her secretary and companion. Her book of travel notes from that trip drew heavily on Charles’s diary as well as her own.
In 1855, it was Catharine who organized the last family reunion, soon after Lyman Beecher’s eightieth birthday. By now, the old patriarch had lost much of his intellectual acuity. He would remember scenes of long ago as if it were yesterday, but might not respond if addressed directly. Catharine was heard to remark that she felt closer to her father’s experience than to that of her brothers and sisters.

CATHARINE : The last two or three years I have felt more and more of that peace that passeth all understanding. As every year brings me nearer to departed friends, the veil that separates us seems to grow thinner so that I feel almost as near and present with those who are with the Lord as with those who are still prisoned in these earthly tabernacles.

NARRATOR : Catharine Beecher suffered nervous complaints throughout her life, and like her sisters Isabella and Harriet, often retreated to water cure spas. The water cure itself became the subject of another of Catharine’s books, Letters to the People on Health and Happiness. She praised its powers of restoring health.
Over two hundred water cure centers had sprung up, catering mainly to women. They provided a freedom of sensuality for women not available elsewhere—including massage, exercise, bathing and other attentions to the body. Bodily conditions could be discussed openly.

CATHARINE : The experience of each individual gradually becomes known to most of his or her fellow patients, thus providing assurances that certain problems are shared by others.

NARRATOR : Even abortions were available in some water cure spas. Abortion had been made illegal by state laws, yet every newspaper advertised abortive pills, in the form of pills to ‘‘begin the monthly cycle.’’ Russell Trall’s Hydropathic Encyclopedia of 1853 talked of the ‘‘safe period’’ and other methods of contraception. Trall held that a woman had an absolute right to determine when she should and when she should not conceive. Hydropathy, the water cure, took a holistic approach.
On the other hand, orthodox medicine denied women this right. One leading specialist in uterine diseases still taught students to insert leeches into the womb, even though he admitted that it could ‘‘induce a paroxysm of almost intolerable suffering.’’
Dr. Hugh Hodge also did not believe that women should make such decisions.

HODGE : The dread of suffering, fears respecting their own health and strength, the trouble and expense of large families, and, professedly, also, the responsibility incurred in the education of children, these and other reasons equally futile and trifling induce women to destroy the product of that conjugal union for which marriage was instituted.

NARRATOR : Besides the water cure, however, Catharine Beecher also taught the importance of knowledge of the human body, exercise, proper diet and clothing, cleanliness and fresh air. Corsets were condemned.
In 1857, Harriet’s eldest son, Henry, drowned in the Connecticut River by Dartmouth, where he had just entered as a freshman. Catharine had recently come out with her book Common Sense Applied to Religion, or the Bible and the People—which developed her ideas of morality, including the idea that God saved those who seemed to want to be saved, not just those who had been converted. Harriet’s great loss led her to the same conclusion.

HARRIET : If ever I was conscious of an attack of the Devil trying to separate me from the love of Christ, it was for some weeks after the terrible news came. I was in a state of great physical weakness, most agonizing, and unable to control my thoughts. Distressing doubts as to Henry’s spiritual state were rudely thrust upon my soul. It was as if a voice had said to me: ‘‘You had perfect confidence that s/he would never take your child till the work of grace was mature Now s/he has hurried him into eternity without a moment’s warning, without preparation, and where is he? No, it is our duty to assume that a thing which would be in its very nature unkind, ungenerous, and unfair has not been done; Henry surely must be in heaven.

NARRATOR : She also wrote more philosophically to the Duchess of Sutherland:

HARRIET : While I was visiting in Hanover, where Henry died, a poor, deaf, old slave woman, who has still five children in bondage, came to comfort me. ‘‘Bear up, dear soul,’’ she said, ‘‘you must bear it, for the Lord loves ye.’’ She said further, ‘‘Sunday is a heavy day to me, ’cause I can’t work and can’t hear preaching and can’t read so I can’t keep my mind off my poor children. Some of ’em the blessed Master’s god and they’s safe; but oh, there are five that I don’t know where they are.’’ What are our mother sorrows to this! I shall try to search out and redeem these children.

NARRATOR : But this was not enough for Harriet—she had but recently read Catharine’s letters of 1822 and in the unfinished autobiography that her father was trying to write, she saw the whole sweep of Lyman Beecher’s career in New England Calvinism. These ingredients, along with her personal sorrow, went into The Minister’s Wooing, a novel of eighteenth century New England. Especially revealing is her portrayal of Catharine as Mary Scudder, paying tribute to her strength of character and intellectual independence.

HARRIET : Mary was only a recast in feminine form of her father’s nature. The elixir of the spirit that sparkled within her was of that quality of which the souls of poets and artists are made; but the keen New England air crystallizes into ideas, and restricts many a poetic soul to the necessity of expressing itself only in practical living.
It was easy enough for Mary to believe in self-renunciation, for she was one with a born vocation for martyrdom; and so, when the idea was put to her of suffering eternal pains for the glory of God and the good of being in general, she responded to it with a sort of sublime thrill, such as it is given to some natures to feel in view of uttermost sacrifice.

NARRATOR : Another aspect of Catharine was seen in the mother of the drowned suitor, Mrs. Marvyn.

MRS. MARVYN : I have thought, in desperate moments, of giving up the Bible itself, but what do I gain? Do I not see the same difficulty in nature? I see everywhere a Being whose main ends seem to be beneficent, but whose good purposes are worked out at terrible expense of suffering, and apparently by the total sacrifice of myriads of sensitive creatures. I see unflinching order, general goodwill, but no sympathy, no mercy. Storms, earthquakes, volcanoes, sickness, death, go on without regarding us. Everywhere I see the most hopeless, unrelieved suffering—and for aught I see, it may be eternal. We see a Being who gives him/herself for us—and more than that, harder than that, a Being who consents to the suffering of a dearer than self.

HARRIET : Mrs. Marvyn’s mind is enchained by glacial reasonings, in regions where spiritual intuitions are as necessary as wings to birds. She could not transcend the logical system that entrapped her.

NARRATOR : Catharine Beecher in her life managed to rearrange the elements of the Calvinist culture she grew up in, and to redirect her energies with a missionary zeal—yet she, like Mrs. Marvyn, up to now had not questioned its structure. Harriet, in this novel, was able to handle human nature in its social setting, that is, human beings as they really are, rather than as religion or morality would have them be.
Catharine’s common sense applied, and the next book, An Appeal to the People on Behalf of Their Rights as Authorized Interpreters of the Bible marked a change—Catharine at last could deal with the social dynamics of Calvinism. Though written as an attack, these two books did much to rescue Calvinist morality from oblivion.

CATHARINE : As to this theological question, it is to me now not a theory alone, it is practical. The whole educational operation I have been carrying on the last seven years is stopping to have this question settled. After you have read my book you will understand this better.

NARRATOR : Thomas K. Beecher, in Elmira, New York, outlined his own independent conclusions about theology, as Isabella Beecher Hooker reports. When Thomas made up his mind, he was not shy about speaking out.

ISABELLA : Thomas proclaimed it to his congregation. Henry, it was a capital sermon—and the first I have ever heard on the state of the soul between death and judgment. He announced Hades explicitly and the gospel preached there to those who have never really heard it in this life—the argument was clear and logical—illustrations admirable—application so serious and discriminating as to make all abuse of the new doctrine improbable if not impossible.
It was one of a series of sermons—he has long been concocting—and the way has been admirably prepared by previous discourses—on physiology—law of physical death, etc., etc.

NARRATOR : Henry Ward Beecher once described himself as ‘‘a cordial Christian evolutionist’’—what need did he have for intricate theories? He preached that ‘‘Christ is only God made easy.’’ Henry’s gentle liberalism, his earnestness about social reform proved durable in the long run. Thomas Beecher had independently arrived at similar conclusions.
Charles Beecher briefly served, at brother Edward’s request, as professor of rhetoric at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. But he soon returned East to head the Congregational Church in Georgetown, Massachusetts, north of Boston. He would stay there thirty years.
When President Buchanan ordered a day of fasting for the sin of opposing slavery and provoking Southern rebellion, Charles wrote a resolution against Buchanan, signed by a majority of his congregation.

CHARLES : This is an act of treasonous conspiracy, and an act of hypocrisy in the highest degree insulting and detestable.

NARRATOR : Edward Beecher was disappointed that his book The Conflict of Ages had not started a great unification of Christian sects. As lecturer at Knox College, he volunteered his house as a station on the Underground Railway. He was also active in the women’s movement.
Finally, he brought together all the reviews and all the critiques, including the counter-books, that The Conflict of Ages had provoked, with the intention of rebutting them.

EDWARD : To answer them would require a wearisome amount of controversial detail. But, on reflection, I saw that almost all the objections to my views had their roots in false conceptions of God, and erroneous views of his/her system growing out of them. I determined, therefore, entirely to avoid controversial detail, and to concentrate my energies on the great organic law of the universe, as growing out of a true conception of God, and to apply it to that perfect organization of earthly society and of the universe which lie in the future.

NARRATOR : This consideration allowed Edward to produce his next work, a sequel to the last one, called The Concord of Ages, published in 1860. He tried to answer all criticisms, and to reaffirm a sympathetic god unable to prevent human compulsions to sin. Political events crowded in, overshadowing theology, and Edward’s book had no significant impact.
Meanwhile, William Beecher continued to serve quietly at a church in North Brookfield, Massachusetts, where he was also postmaster, with no salary disputes, and a small congregation.
It was 1860, however, when Abraham Lincoln gave his Cooper Union speech that would lead him on to the Republican Party nomination, that the anti-slavery movement had a real shot at the presidency. Lincoln took the opportunity while he was in New York to make the trip thousands had before him—across the Brooklyn Ferry to visit Henry Ward Beecher’s Plymouth Church on the Sunday after he spoke. He sat in the fifth row back from the platform.
Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech became the Republican platform for 1860.

LINCOLN : Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

NARRATOR : In the four months between Lincoln’s election and his inauguration, the nation was leaderless. James Buchanan had no backbone, and Abraham Lincoln had no authority until March 4, 1861. States’ rights were being tested as the Deep South states, led by South Carolina, voted money for war, declared secession, and met to form the Confederate States of America. Buchanan had no ground to stand on. Diplomatically, he had boxed himself into a corner. He denied the rights of states to secede, yet he denied any federal power of coercion if they did secede.
While Buchanan was still in office, seven states held conventions and proclaimed their withdrawal from the Union. The Secretary of War, a Southerner, used his power to equip seceding states. The U.S. brigadier general commanding the Department of Texas turned over his whole army to the Confederates. Before Mr. Lincoln was in the White House, the South possessed every Southern fort except for three: Fort Sumter, Key West, and Fort Pickens.
Southerners were not unanimous in the decision to secede—if there had been popular referendums, perhaps only South Carolina would have seceded. But once the fact was accomplished, loyalty for the Southern way of life became the central organizing fact of life in the Confederacy.
The North was just as divided. The Radical Abolitionists favored getting rid of the Southern states. Many simply feared the destruction that would follow a civil war. Even Horace Greeley in his New York Tribune, the most influential Republican journal, wrote:

GREELEY : If the cotton states decide that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we insist on letting them go in peace. We hope never to live in a republic whereof one section is pinned to the residue by bayonets.

NARRATOR : Abraham Lincoln recognized the danger in this opinion—it had been years before he himself arrived at the position that the Union came first.

LINCOLN : Prevent as far as possible any of our friends from demoralizing themselves and their cause by entertaining propositions for compromise of any sort on slavery extension. There is no possible compromise upon it but what puts us under again, and all our work to do over again.

NARRATOR : Even after the election of Lincoln, Henry Ward Beecher did not believe the Union was doomed.

HENRY : It is absurd to suppose that the South with all her interest in the Union will leave it, and therefore I say the South will never leave the Union. There is a man now at the helm of the ship of state who will guide her safely through the perils which encompass her, a man who knows not what it is to be scared.

NARRATOR : But the visionaries among the Confederate leaders were intent on establishing a semi-tropical republic based on slavery, including Mexico, Central America, and the West Indies. Secession was only the first step.
As events got worse, Beecher gave a sermon against compromise.

HENRY : The North loves liberty, and will have it. We will not aggress on you. Keep your institutions within your own bounds; we will not hinder you. You shall have the Constitution intact, and its full benefit.
But if you ask us to augment the area of slavery; to cooperate with you in cursing new territory; if you ask us to make the air of the North favorable for a slave’s breath, we will not do it! We love liberty as much as you love slavery, and we shall stand by our rights with all the vigor with which we mean to stand by justice toward you.

NARRATOR : Events were to overwhelm such sentiments. The choices that people had to make were much tougher—sometimes breaking families apart. In the border states, people had to vote with their feet, and in just a few weeks, they would vote with their guns.