The daily gazette., 1875-05-15
Beecher's Cruelty to Mrs. IlItOn.
[Fiom the Chicago Tribune

iOm INC OuiCdBo 1llDuuc
In the progress of the great trial,
when her husband and Mr.. Beecher
had both told their versions of her con-
duct, weakness, and, perhaps, crille,
she waited with patient, ,agonizing suf-
fering for the moment when she could
tell the court and jury, and that world
which had SO long been busy with her
name, the sad story of her life-waited
until she could tell them what she Knew
and knew better than all others of her
self, and how she had suffered, and
football between the two great egotists
her husband and her pastor. Day
after day she waited. Witness after
witness, including her two servants
and her brother, were put upon the
stand, not to testify to her innocence
or guilt, but to the innocence or guilt
of Mr.. Beecher. She, the great centre
figure of the whole case, upon whose
innocence or guilt all other things de-
pended, was entirely ignored-treated
as outside and foreign to the case.
Men and women, and Mr., Beecher him.
self, swore to Mr.. Beecher's innocence,
ignoring the fact that if the despised
little wohan living upon aims was
guilty, no amount of swearing could
acquit the man to whose defence un-
limited money and unlimited friends
had been con .ributed. The attempt to
acquit Mr.. Beecher and leave the world
to believe what it chose of Mrs. Tilt0n's 8
guilt is one of those anomalies which
are not explainable. That, however,
haQ hnan thu fhnnrxr Of lnfa
Mr.. Beecher, at the last moment, even
if he had ever intended to do so, re.
fused to let Mrs. Tilten tell her side of
the story. He had called her as wit
ness before the church committee.
He had paraded her in the court room
with his friends. But the agonized
woman, who is of necessity as inno-
cent as he is, was refused permission
to tell her story, to explain why she
confessed, and recanted and confessed
again; to tell her version of her &C.
quaintance with Mr.. Beecher; of her
visits, of his letters, of their rides and
OF their various meetings. She was
again repelled, rebuled, turned out of
court, and refused hearing in q case
where the sole question of fact is
whether she committed adultery. Her
exclusion, it must be borne in mind,
was by the person charged with being
her paramour; he had related his ver-
sion, but refused to permit her to give
hers.
The reason for this exclusion is too
patent to be misunderstood, and it did
not need the explanation that the de-
fence would call her as witness if the
~ l,nr - 4 ~
1t will be remembered that in his ex-
animation Mr.. Beecher's memory OF
various incidents and events of which
he and Mrs. Tilton alone were cogni-
zant was very defective-too defective
to enable him to state them in deiail,
or even substantially. 1t is possible
that the unfortunate woman, into
whose memory all these things have
been branded as with q heated iron,
would have filled up the gaps in tue
story, and given particulars of which
Mr.. Beecher had no recollection. She,
of all other witnesses, could tell wheth-
er the accusation of adultery was made
in 1870 or in 1874, and on this point
she could sustain the defence, or over
throw it.
Driven from the witness stand; re-
fused hearing in case where the
sole issue is, was she an adulteress;
without home; separated forever from
husband and children; living upon the
contributions of persons interested, not
!; in her, but in Mr.. Beecher; her name
spread over thewideworld and destined
to live forever in the chronicle of the
greatest scandal of the age; forced into
sile-ce and submission to every impu-
tatlon upon her morals, and especially
of her intelligence she is an object of
commiselation, of sympathy and of
pity.