He was one of the most popular preachers in American in the middle 1800s. His name was Henry Ward Beecher.
He purchased the chains that held John Brown in prison, dragging them across the stage and stomping on them as he preached against slavery.
Beecher also supported women voting and Chinese immigration.
A graduate of Amherst College, Henry Ward Beecher had thousands attend his enormous Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, New York, including Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman and Mark Twain.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., wrote a limerick about Henry Ward Beecher.
“The Reverend Henry Ward Beecher,
Called a hen an elegant creature,
The hen, pleased with that,
Laid an egg in his hat,
And thus did the hen reward Beecher.”
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