Henry Ward Beecher’s Birthday – Anniversary

June 24, 1813. Famous clergyman and orator, brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, born at Litchfield, CT. From the pulpit at Plymouth Church, Beecher advocated for many controversial issues of his era, includingtemperance, womens suffrage, Darwinian evolution, and most notably abolition. Beechers tactics in support of abolition were often sensational and contentious, as was the case when he raised money to provide rifles widely dubbed Beechers Bibles to antislavery settlers in Kansas in 1856.In the 1870s Beecher was the subject of one of the biggest scandals of thecentury the Beecher-Tilton Affair when he was accused of adultery by a parishioner and sued in civil court. The trial resulted in a hung jury, andalthough Beecher was exonerated by two ecclesiastical courts, public opinion about his innocence was divided. Died Mar 8, 1887, at Brooklyn, NY.