Political
Clergyman Henry W. Beecher Carte de Visite Photograph
c. 1860's, Carte de Visite Photograph, of Civil War Clergyman Henry W. Beecher, Backstamp of E. Anthony, New York , from Photographic Negative from Brady's National Portrait Gallery, Crisp Near Mint.
Beecher pressed Lincoln to Emancipate the Slaves through a proclamation. This CDV measures 2.25" x 3.75" has exceptional rich contrast and is in overall excellent quality. Blue print imprint of Anthony upon the reverse with choice eye appeal for display.
Henry Ward Beecher (1813 " 1887), was a prominent Congregationalist clergyman, social reformer, abolitionist, and speaker in the mid to late 19th century. An 1875 adultery trial in which he was accused of having an affair with a married woman was one of the most notorious American trials of the 19th century.
During the American Civil War, his church raised and equipped a volunteer infantry regiment. Early in the war, Beecher pressed Lincoln to Emancipate the Slaves through a proclamation. The preacher later went on a speaking tour in England to undermine support for the South by explaining the North's war aims. Near the end of the war, when the Stars and Stripes were again raised at Fort Sumter in South Carolina, Beecher was the main speaker. Thousands of worshipers flocked to Beecher's enormous Plymouth Church in Brooklyn. Abraham Lincoln (who said of Beecher that no one in history had "so productive a mind") was in the audience at one point, and Walt Whitman visited him. Mark Twain went to see Beecher in the pulpit and described the pastor "sawing his arms in the air, howling sarcasms this way and that, discharging rockets of poetry and exploding mines of eloquence, halting now and then to stamp his foot three times in succession to emphasize a point."