The Beechers: America’s Most Influential Family by Obbie Tyler Todd. Louisiana State University Press, 2024. Cloth, ISBN:  978-0807182758. $39.95.

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The Beechers (2024)

A lively biography of an influential 19th century family

Everyone likely has their own opinion about the most influential family in U.S. history. Obbie Tyler Todd, currently pastor of the Third Baptist Church in Marion, Illinois and adjunct professor of church history at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, argues that this title belongs to the Beecher family.

Nearly everyone has heard the name Harriet Beecher Stowe. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was one of the first runaway bestsellers of the nineteenth century and played a seminal role in helping to develop many people’s antislavery sentiments. But Harriet was only one of eleven Beecher children. Her siblings included Henry Ward Beecher, the famous pastor of Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, and Catherine Beecher, the founder of home economics. Their father, Lyman Beecher, among the most famous clergymen of his day, was “a theological innovator in the tradition of Jonathan Edwards who stressed the value of human ability and the importance of spiritual aid and civic responsibility” (5). Lyman Beecher’s goal, Todd contends, was nothing less than the spiritual and moral reform of the United States. His children shared this goal and reform essentially became the Beecher family business. Indeed, “if the impulse to construct America into a theocratic republican society was the driving force behind Lyman Beecher’s entire ministry, this same desire to compel others toward a moral and theological vision manifested itself early on in almost all of his children” (7-8).

Lyman Beecher’s story is the story of evangelicalism in the early republic. But it is hard to tell the story of Lyman Beecher and not tell the story of the entire Beecher family, which Todd does in this lively biography. “In the golden age of oratory and print,” he argues, “the Beechers were, one could argue, the most recognizable family in nineteenth-century America” (10).

They were indeed recognizable. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s influence does not need much explanation. Uncle Tom’s Cabinwas one of the more important events that occurred during the Decade of Crisis and among the short-term causes of the U.S. Civil War. Henry Ward Beecher, renowned in his day as the most famous minister in the U.S. (as his father had been a generation earlier) became famous for sending arms to free soilers in Kansas: the so-called “Beecher’s Bibles.” In 1859, Henry Ward Beecher invited a rising political star from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, to speak at Plymouth Church. Lincoln eagerly accepted because he knew that Plymouth Church was an important venue in an important city. (The speech ended up being relocated to the Cooper Institute). Isabella Beecher, a friend and associate of Victoria Woodhull, became an important voice in the women’s suffrage movement. James C. Beecher led a regiment of United States Colored Troops (USCT) during the U.S. Civil War. Other Beecher sons became clergymen of varying degrees of reputation.

Their enemies hated them for the causes they championed and because they felt the Beechers were meddlesome moralizers who attempted to push their causes and beliefs onto people. Their friends loved them, although they often found the Beechers exasperating. Case in point, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, irritated with Isabella’s ego, commented “the Beecher conceit surpasses understanding” (242). The volume of praise and criticism the Beechers received testify to the impact they had on the United States.

The Beechers is both a biography of a family and of “Beecherism,” which was “more than mere theological eccentricity: it was the public swagger and social consciousness that came with it” (20). Lyman Beecher was the most famous New School clergyman of his day. Although most of his children moved away from Calvinism, they did not reject Lyman’s optimism and confidence in human ability, which, Todd asserts, “became nothing short of a family trait” (24). Beecherism embraced three different ideals: the power of the individual, the family unit as the building block of U.S. society, and that the fate of the U.S. rested on republican values. The Beechers adopted different positions on different causes. Some went much farther than others, for example, in embracing antislavery and abolitionist sentiment. Catherine opposed the women’s suffrage movement that Isabella helped to organize. The Beechers were also remarkably loyal and unified as a family. One rare public breach occurred during Henry Ward Beecher’s adultery trial, when Isabella broke publicly with her brother. However, for the most part, Beechers stuck together and rallied around each other. As the Rev. Dr. Leonard Bacon quipped at Lyman Beecher’s funeral, the “nation was inhabited by three types of people: saints, sinners, and Beechers” (10).

In Robert G. Ingersoll’s eulogy for Henry Ward Beecher, he claimed that Henry was “born in a Puritan penitentiary, of which his father was one of the wardens” (11). Many biographers have echoed this negative assessment of Lyman Beecher’s parenting. The Beechers, the first biography of the family in four decades, offers a different interpretation of the family. “A more fitting comparison of the Beecher home, at least in the Cincinnati years,” Todd comments “is one of a New School classroom and not of a prison” (65). That said, Todd does not ignore Lyman Beecher’s flaws, which included being, at times, authoritarian. Readers might find themselves wishing on occasion that Todd had included more context about the religious history of the nineteenth century U.S., specifically the disagreements between Old School and New School Calvinists. Finally, while the book is well-written, it does contain some errors. The Republican governments in the South during Reconstruction, for example, were not “redeemer” governments (227).

Lyman Beecher and his children—Harriet, Henry, Catherine, Isabella, James, William, Edward, Mary, George, Charles, and Thomas—made their mark on the nineteenth century U.S. Whether they were the most influential family in the U.S. is for the reader to decide, although Todd makes a compelling case. Anyone interested in religion, politics, culture, and society in the nineteenth century U.S. should read this book.


Evan C. Rothera teaches Civil War history at the University of Arkansas—Fort Smith
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