Damned If You Do, and Damned If You Don't : Part 2

The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher
by Debby Applegate

(Page 2 of 2)

Eager to retake their former colony, the British invaded from all sides, from the Great Lakes in the north to the Gulf of New Orleans in the South. In the spring of 1813 eight British warships sailed into the waters of the Connecticut Sound, blockading the ports, burning wharves and trading ships, and forcing the city of New London to evacuate when the fleet tried to sail up the Connecticut River. By the summer of Henry's first birthday, the Redcoats were marching into Washington, D.C., where they burned the Capitol to the ground and pushed the Republic to the edge of bankruptcy.

If any state should have stood firm in the midst of this chaos, it ought to have been Connecticut, the Land of Steady Habits, where clocks, granite, and schoolteachers were its chief exports, and the specter of Puritanism still stalked every crevice of its rocky hills. Long after the new federal constitution of 1788 guaranteed the separation of church and state at the national level, Connecticut proudly remained a theocracy, in which every household was taxed for support of the state-sanctioned Congregationalist Church. For more than two hundred years the same aristocratic network of merchants and ministers-"the Standing Order," as it was known-controlled both politics and society. Federalist in their politics and Calvinist in their religion, the Standing Order considered themselves the last bulwark against the "forces of innovation and democracy," which had led the country once again to bloodshed. So great was their animosity toward "Mr. Madison's war" that Connecticut seriously considered seceding from the Union-an idea that the citizens of the South would revive forty years later.

But with the state's stony, overfarmed soil, burgeoning birthrate, and dependence on European trade, no place was hit harder than Connecticut by the anxiety and turmoil of the post- Revolutionary period. So many young people were fleeing the state for the rich bottomland of the Ohio frontier that the region was designated the "Western Reserve of Connecticut." A dangerous discontent was rising among those who remained at home. Out-of-wedlock births were skyrocketing, and drunkenness was a genuine epidemic, with the average citizen now drinking up to five gallons of cheap hard liquor a year. To top it off, a coalition of Jeffersonian Democrats, attorneys, atheists, workingmen, and "unofficial" religious sects was starting to agitate for an end to the old Standing Order. To many folks it seemed as if Lucifer was loose upon the land.

But Connecticut Yankees were a wily, peculiar breed, according to early American folklore, with a slippery shrewdness that could confound even Satan himself. They were filled with contradictions-in turn slyly funny and profoundly grave, aggressively innovative and doggedly conservative, "a rare combination of philosopher and fi ghter," as Frederick Law Olmsted once remarked. At the same time, they were absolutely, infuriatingly, convinced of their own superiority, and obsessed with converting the world to their way of thinking. In a contest of wit and will, the devil and the Connecticut Yankee were considered nearly an even match. If there was any truth in this stereotype, it was sure to be found in Litchfield, Connecticut, and in the Beecher clan.

Perched high up in the Berkshire hills, the village of Litchfield gloried in its paradoxical reputation as a bastion of both progressive intellectual culture and staunch religious orthodoxy-"half Hebrew theocracy, half ultra- democratic republic," as Lyman's daughter Harriet described it.(6) It possessed two claims to national fame: its outspoken minister, the Reverend Lyman Beecher, and its pioneering schools, Miss Sarah Pierce's Litchfi eld Female Academy, one of the nation's fi rst serious schools for girls, and Judge Tapping Reeve's Litchfield Law School, the country's first school devoted solely to the study of the law. Together the two institutions attracted students from as far away as Ohio, South Carolina, Canada, and the West Indies, graduating scores of future congressmen, ambassadors, cabinet secretaries, and political wives, who extended the town's reputation to London and Paris.

In June 1813 Litchfield looked much as it does today, laid out along four broad tree- lined streets that crossed to form a long, grassy town common. In its habits, however, it was more akin to an English colony than to contemporary America. Indeed, Litchfield clung more tightly to the old ways than most New England towns. Villagers still rose with the sun and shut their houses up tight with the tolling of the nine o'clock bell. Many of the clothes were still homespun and homemade, and children went barefoot all days but Sunday. The older "respectable" men of the town still strolled the streets in outdated colonial garb, clad in short breeches buckled at the knee, tricornered hats, cutaway coats, and the occasional powdered wig. Only Democrats and infidels, it was said, wore pantaloons, or trousers as they came to be called. With deliberate symbolism the Congregational meetinghouse stood in the dead center of the common at the very summit of a hill, and from its old- fashioned swallow's-nest pulpit the Reverend Beecher ruled over the manners and morals of the town.

Most folks here took religion seriously. From hardscrabble farmers to the town gentry, they lingered at Buell's general store or on the steps of the courthouse, debating Parson Beecher's Sunday sermon, or whether it was God's will to install a woodstove to warm the meetinghouse in winter. Surely, some argued (out of piety or stinginess it was hard to say), such an indulgence would send them down a slippery slope to decadence. After years of fruitless debate seven progressive young men finally purchased a stove on their own and, after more wrangling, were allowed to install it on a trial basis. It made its debut on an unusually warm November day. As they entered the meetinghouse, the townspeople stared suspiciously at the contraption, sitting smack dab in the broad middle aisle.

Old Deacon Trowbridge, a firm opponent of the stove, scornfully gathered up the tails of his long coat as he passed it, as if the devil himself would send out a spark to singe it. Uncle Noah Stone, a wealthy farmer, scowled and muttered about the uncomfortable heat. Mr. Bounce, editor of the village paper and a stove advocate, warmed his hands over the stove with a satisfied air, tucking the skirts of his coat safely between his knees.

The climax of the conflict came during the sermon, when the Reverend Beecher began warning of hell's "heaping coals of fire." Pious Mrs. Peck, wife of an antistove deacon, felt so overcome by the unfamiliar heat that she fainted dead away. Mrs. Peck quickly recovered her wits, if not her dignity, when the young men, barely containing their laughter, informed the congregation that because the day was so warm they had not lit a fire. The stove stayed, a small victory for progress.

The Reverend Lyman Beecher was an eccentric, contradictory character, the spitting image of the canny Connecticut Yankee. At Sunday services strangers to his church were often startled to see a short, wiry man clad in a shabby black tailcoat, his shoulder- length gray hair tied in a simple ponytail, bound down the aisle of the sanctuary, toss his dusty hat on a chair, and leap up the steps of the pulpit. With his tattered clothes, brusque manners, and thick country accent he was often mistaken for an uneducated farmer, but when he spoke listeners quailed before his aggressive arguments and maddening self- assurance.

Copyright © 2006 by Debby Applegate.

About the Author

Debby Applegate is a graduate summa cum laude of Amherst College and was a Sterling Fellow at Yale University, where she received her Ph.D. in American Studies. She has written for publications ranging from the Journal of American History to The New York Times, and has taught at Yale and Wesleyan Universities.