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The Kansas-Nebraska Act, The Minister & His Bibles.

With the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, the decision if the territory of Kansas would be admitted to the Union as a slave or free state was to be decided by a vote of the territorial residents. The tumult of these times can scarcely be imagined today. On the floor of the US Senate, one argument ended with a Southern senator Preston Brooks nearly beating a Northern senator Charles Sumner to death with his cane. The attach was in response to a virulent abolitionist speech by Sumner in which he mocked Brooks' relative, South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler, and likened Southern slaveholders to pimps. Brooks was not prosecuted or censured for the attack.

 In Kansas, too, violence erupted. Men from the South and North swarmed into Kansas in an attempt to influence the outcome of the slavery issue. One such group was from New Haven, CT. "Kansas Fever", as it was called, ran high in New England. The people were staunchly anti-slavery, and were not afraid of making sacrifices in behalf of their convictions. A group of 60 or so of these people decided to uproot themselves and their families and set out for the Kansas Territory to help insure Kansas would be a free state.

Before the group left on their journey a meeting was held at North Church in New Haven. A professor Skillman, of Yale, spoke up and offered $25 to purchase a Sharp's rifle for the group. It was at this time that the famous Henry Ward Beecher, a minister from Brooklyn and prominent abolitionist, announced that his congregation would purchase 25 such rifles if the audience would purchase another 25. This was met with much enthusiasm from the crowd. In a few days, the amount of $625 was provided for the purchase of the rifles, as well as a box of 25 Bibles. The rifles, too, were placed in crates marked "Bibles" so that they would not arouse suspicion on their journey west. This is where the term "Beecher's-Bibles" came into being. Below is the famous Brady image as mentioned.                                                       

The famous but scare image of Lyman, Harriet and Henry Ward Beecher was made around 1860, when Henry Ward Beecher, as editor of the national magazine "The Independent," began to call for ever more radical action from Lincoln to end slavery and bring the war to a close. Brady's photograph of two famous siblings and their renowned father record a distinguished American family, and three important intellectual leaders for the Union.

Sometime after 1860, Lyman Beecher (1775-1863) left Boston to live in Brooklyn with his son, Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), popular pastor of Plymouth Congregational Church. Though the younger Beecher's ministry of love and redemption contrasted strongly with his father's strict Calvinist philosophy, both he and his sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896), carried on their father's opposition to slavery. Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," rendered her tragic yet fictional subject in a style that combined heartfelt conviction with endless pseudo-documentary detail, the book soon made her the best-known author of her generation.

This image was made around 1861, when Henry Ward Beecher, as editor of the national magazine "The Independent," began to call for ever more radical action from Lincoln to end slavery and bring the war to a close.

Brady's photograph of two famous siblings and their renowned father record a distinguished American family, and three important intellectual leaders for the Union. Sometime after 1860, Lyman Beecher (1775-1863) left Boston to live in Brooklyn with his son, Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), popular pastor of Plymouth Congregational Church.

Though the younger Beecher's ministry of love and redemption contrasted strongly with his father's strict Calvinist philosophy, both he and his sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896), carried on their father's opposition to slavery.

Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," rendered her tragic subject in a style that combined heartfelt conviction with endless documentary detail, and the book made her the best-known author of her generation.

© Rick Mack quantrillsguerrillas.com"Permission should be requested and agreed to before using this copyrighted essay and/or image."                                                                                                                     

 

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