Edward Beecher and the Anti-Slavery Movement in Illinois

Abstract

The Rev. Dr. Edward Beecher was a preacher's preacher and a scholar's scholar. He was son of Rev. Lyman Beecher of whom Theodore Parker said was the father of more brains than any man in America.1 And indeed, Edward along with his twelve siblings who included Henry Ward Beecher, most famous preacher in America, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, most famous novelist of her day, were at firestorms of reform in religious thought and action, women's rights, and antislavery movement. Born in 1803 in New York, Edward, like so many of his generation, had been expected to lead a public life as a productive citizen and moral compass in a nation that needed guidance. Hard work was needed to set a course for successful development of wealth, territorial expansion, and a moral society. He was young, educated, strong, and had a faith in God matched by faith in his fellow Americans. He was always ready to take on challenges, and none of those were bigger than becoming a partner in antislavery movement in East and on frontier of West. When Yale President Jeremiah Day was asked whom recommended for presidency of newly established Illinois College, he told them Edward Beecher if they could get him. In fact, as Lyman Beecher Stowe points out, [n]obody but a Beecher would have given up a powerful eastern church, to assume responsibility for a feeble western college. But here was a chance to help his father save that great western country for education and Protestantism, and also a chance for pioneering - always an irresistible appeal to a Beecher.2 As young Beecher studied, tutored, taught, and preached, young men of Yale Band, an erstwhile group of soon-to-be graduates of Yale College, had fixed their eyes on Illinois as place where they thought they could make most difference through mission work and cultural formation. In 1828, John M. Ellis, an agent for American Home Missionary Society in Illinois, had published a call for help in developing a new college in West, and his article had been read just at time when these young men were casting about for a missionary venture that would be a meaningful and purposeful endeavor in their Christian call to duty. They were afraid that offer had expired since they had not come across call until 1829, but after corresponding with Ellis, they were assured that theirs was most promising response had received. Familiar names in Illinois history: J.M. Sturtevant, Theron Baldwin, Mason Grosvenor, William Kirby, John F. Brooks, Elisha Jenney, and Asa Turner pledged to relocate in West. They applied to American Home Missionary Society for support and asked faculty of Yale to endorse their venture to which they reservedly gave.3 The Yale Band were anti-slavery, and it was part of their understanding that a civil society did not include slavery. This was a radical position that faculty could not heartily endorse given that Yale had a healthy percentage of southerners in its student body and was largest supplier of southern clergy before Civil War.4 One cannot suppose that moving to Illinois was an easy decision professionally or personally for any of these young men. In a series of letters between John Brooks and his fiancee, Jane Bradley, asked Jane to consider going West with him on this venture. In his letter of February 28, 1829, wrote that plan proposed by Mason Grosvenor to go to Mississippi Valley proposes to affect its object by preaching of gospel, and establishment of a reputable literary institution in interior of state of Illinois. Jane was decidedly undecided and was slow to reply because she was confused and somewhat upset that wanted to go West instead of finding a suitable place in East. She lived in Oneida County, New York, in heart of Burned-Over District, and while she was all for missionary endeavors theoretically, it was quite a different matter when it came to leaving her family and home. …