About the Author

Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) was a charismatic 19th-century American Congregationalist minister and reformer, brother of author Harriet Beecher Stowe. As pastor of Brooklyn’s Plymouth Church from 1847, his plainspoken, theatrical sermons rallied Northern opinion for abolition, temperance, women’s rights, and even arming anti‑slavery settlers with so‑called “Beecher’s Bibles.” He’s most remembered for his electrifying oratory and outsized influence on public morals and politics before and during the Civil War. Working constantly with repentant sinners, converts, and social reformers and later weathering personal controversy himself. Beecher prized moral progress and second chances, which explains his focus on how far people have come rather than their highest peak.