page_title: The Most Famous Man in America
section_title: Contents
hierarchical_section_title: The Most Famous Man in America / Contents
caption_attribution_description: Henry Ward Beecher. Library of Congress description: "Henry Ward Beecher"
context_page_description: The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher is a 2008 biography of the 19th-century American minister Henry Ward Beecher, written by Debby Applegate and published by Doubleday. The book describes Beecher's childhood, ministry, support for the abolition of slavery and other social causes, and widely publicized 1875 trial for adultery.
  Before publishing the book, Applegate researched and wrote about Beecher for twenty years, starting when she was an undergraduate student at Beecher's alma mater, Amherst College. The book was generally well received by critics. In 2007, it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.
context_section_description: The Most Famous Man in America follows the life of 19th-century American minister Henry Ward Beecher. Its introduction describes Beecher's speech at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, at the close of the American Civil War; Beecher was personally invited to speak by President Abraham Lincoln, who commented, "We had better send Beecher down to deliver the address on the occasion of the raising of the flag because if it had not been for Beecher there would have been no flag to raise". Applegate then retells Beecher's sometimes difficult childhood as the son of Lyman Beecher, himself a famous evangelist. Henry was initially overshadowed by his accomplished siblings, who included Harriet Beecher Stowe, later the author of the antislavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. Henry discovered a gift for public speaking and went into the ministry, attending Amherst College and Lane Theological Seminary. He then served as a minister in Lawrenceburg, Indiana and Indianapolis before moving on to the richer post of the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, New York.
  In New York, Beecher soon acquired fame on the lecture circuit for his novel oratorical style, in which he employed humor, dialect, and slang. Over the course of his ministry, he developed a theology emphasizing God's love above all else, in contrast to his father's stern Calvinism. He also grew interested in social reform, particularly the abolitionist movement. In the years leading up to the Civil War, he raised money to purchase slaves from captivity and to send rifles—nicknamed "Beecher's Bibles"—to abolitionists fighting in Kansas and Nebraska. He toured Europe during the Civil War speaking in support of the Union. After the war, Beecher supported social reform causes such as women's suffrage and temperance.
  In the book's closing chapters, Applegate details Beecher's relationship with Elizabeth Richards Tilton, wife of his friend and associate Theodore Tilton, and its consequences. Elizabeth Tilton both confessed to and retracted her confession of an affair with Beecher; her husband later filed adultery charges against Beecher, resulting in one of the most widely reported American trials of the century.  The jurors could not decide whom to believe, resulting in a hung jury.
  
  In assessing Beecher's legacy, Applegate states that 
  His reputation has been eclipsed by his own success. Mainstream Christianity is so deeply infused with the rhetoric of Christ's love that most Americans can imagine nothing else, and have no appreciation or memory of the revolution wrought by Beecher and his peers.
  Applegate adds that it is hard not to consider Beecher's various affairs or near-affairs hypocritical, but compares him to other great leaders whose need for love and approval led them into sex scandals. Ultimately, Applegate concludes, Beecher was able "to transform his flaws into a powerful force of empathy and ambition" that "brought a new emotional candor to public life".
caption: Henry Ward Beecher, the book's subject
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