On this date -- Henry Ward Beecher (born 1813)

source: Writer's Almanac (Minnesota Public Radio: Garrison Keillor) =

Today (June 14) is the birthday of clergyman, abolitionist, and orator Henry Ward Beecher (1813), a bashful kid who grew up to be one of America's most popular public speakers. He was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, the eighth of nine surviving children. He was especially close to his older sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe. He wasn't much of a scholar, but he went to Amherst College anyway, and then on to Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati. In 1837, he became a minister to a Presbyterian congregation in Indiana. And 10 years later, he went to Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, where his sermons drew crowds of up to 2,500 people a week. He became internationally famous; he opposed slavery and supported such causes as temperance, women's suffrage, evolutionary theory, and scientific criticism of the Bible. Mark Twain went to hear him preach, and in a letter he described Beecher's performance: "... 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."
In 1874, his former friend Theodore Tilton sued him, alleging that Beecher had had an affair with Tilton's wife, Elizabeth, and the subsequent trial was one of the big scandals of the 19th century. The jury was unable to reach a verdict after deliberating for six days. The Plymouth Church held a board of inquiry and excommunicated the Tiltons but exonerated Beecher. He remained popular despite the scandal.
He wrote, "Where is human nature so weak as in a book store?"; "Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made and forgot to put a soul into"; "Doctrine is but the skin of truth set up and stuffed"; and "Humor is the atmosphere in which grace most flourishes."