Louise's Reviews > The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher

In the first part of the book the reader gets not only a biography but a description of life in post-Revolutionary America up to the Civil War. Through the life of Henry Beecher we get a look at how Calvinism of the period infused a pious household and how the Great Awakening played out in that clerical family.

The author's presentation of the country's social and intellectual changes through the life of Henry Beecher is a fascinating read. We see how the times forced the severe Lyman's move to Boston. The anti-Catholicism he preaches comes back to haunt him when his church burns and liquor bottles burst in its basement. The incident graphically illustrates that a clerical collar no longer brings deference and why.

Applegate provides exceptional and very readable documentation of how Henry was schooled in his father's narrow mindedness and taught the opposite of self esteem. The author says Beecher had great parental love, but as one of 12 children, but how many minutes in a week could have been bestowed on this young and seemingly unexceptional child, particularly upon the arrival of a morose stepmother producing her own offspring? (Among Henry's siblings there are 2 suicides.) Childhoods such as Henry's provide the empathy common to many who advocate for those in trouble as well as produce untidy lives. Henry, longing to please his stern father, developed people skills, perhaps by observing his sermons, his opinion morphing and his control of others. You can extrapolate that Henry's talent for getting people to love/follow/support (politically and financially) him was an adaptation necessary to his psyche. The author credits it as essential to the anti-slavery movement.

We follow Henry's pathetic 7 year courtship of the even more emotionally deprived Eunice to a hardscrabble life in Indiana where the author documents the consequences of any anti-slavery whiff. Henry is discovered for promotions to Indianapolis, pop. 3,000 and then to NYC where SoHo is still a suburb. We see how pro-slavery fanaticism of the South and appeasement of the northern politicians outraged the general public in the North. It made anti-slavery more generally more acceptable in the North and in particular Henry's circles. Henry knew how to articulate it, and how far his audience was able to go with him on it. We see Henry as a man of this times and a product of them too.

There's a different tone when it gets to the consequences of Beecher's untidy life. This part is like a different book. It's mostly a report on the moves of the accusers and defenders and descriptions of hearings and trials. There is little analysis or historical context. Yes, we see Mark Twain, the woman's suffrage movement and hear of Grant's scandals, but they are the backdrop and not wound into the story.

The book is a great work of scholarship throughout. The pre-Civil War and War parts deserve 6 or 7 stars, for weaving Henry's saga into the times. The 100 or so pages at the end, which show thorough research, do not have the analysis equal to the previous standard. I would have liked to see the allegations and trial parts significantly cut and the resulting space devoted to the social and political context of the times. For this reason, I gave 4 stars and not 5.