A Very Victorian Scandal

was in the courthouse to find a notary public. The day before, his lawyers had drafted a civil complaint on his behalf against his former boss. Now Tilton needed to swear to the truth of his complaint in order for his suit to move forward. It wouldn't be easy for him. The contents of the complaint were humiliating. To put it mildly. In the complaint, Tilton alleged that his former boss had

engaged in an affair with his wife. The affair had ruined Tilton's marriage, his family, his reputation, and his career. He had suffered so greatly. The complaint claimed that he now asked for one hundred thousand dollars in compensation more than two and a half million in today's money. It was an enormous sum, yes, but the wrongs that Tilton alleged were certainly grievous. After all, he and his wife Elizabeth had once shared a happy home, filled with laughter

and bolstered by their shared faith than God. But now every day at home for Tilton was torture and he was losing his faith. Rumors of his wife's affair were already circulating, with competing narratives popping up, and Tilton wanted the chance to tell his story. The legal system was

his last resort. What Theodore Tilton started that day, as he swore to the truth of his complaint, would snowball into one of the nineteenth century's most shocking trials, one with implications for not just Tilton, but for all of New York City, the United States, and even the Christian Church. Because the man that Tilton had just publicly accused of quote wrongfully and wickedly seducing his wife was a man

of God. He was none other than the most famous preacher and perhaps the most famous man in all of America, Henry Ward Beecher. Welcome to History on Trial. I'm your host Mira Hayward. This week Theodore Tilton v. Henry Ward Beecher, the man who allegedly had had an affair with Theodore Tilton's wife. Henry Ward Beecher was born in eighteen thirteen in Connecticut. His father, Lyman Beecher, was one of the

pre eminent clergymen of the day. Few who knew young Henry thought that he was destined to follow in his father's footsteps. Lyman Beecher was a Protestant of the old kind, steeped in the puritanical Calvinist tradition. He raised his ten children on a steady diet of fire and brimstone, impressing upon them the idea that they were inherently sinful and likely destined for damnation. Despite his rigid religious beliefs, Lyman was also a deeply loving father who encouraged his children

to develop empathy and compassion for others. All the Beacher siblings were well educated, including the girls, and the dinner table hosted lively debates over politics and theology. Henry Ward Beecher chafed against this moralistic, competitive environment. He was a rambunctious child who struggled with both a stutter and an incurable impulse to break the rules. He knew that his father wanted him to enter the clergy, but Beecher felt

deeply unsure of his own faith. Despite his doubts, he followed the path to preaching, attending college and then seminary. Along the way, he fell in love with one of his classmate's sisters, a young woman named Eunice. And then one day he had a revelation. What if God, instead of being the angry, vindictive figure of his father's theology, was actually more like his father at home, a loving, benevolent parent. What if being good in a religious sense

and being happy were not incompatible. As Debbie Applegate writes in her fabulous biography of Beecher, titled The Most Famous Man in America, this idea might not sound so revelatory to many of us today. She writes, mainstream Christianity is so deeply infused with the rhetoric of Christ's love that most Americans can imagine nothing else but trust me. For the eighteen thirties, Beecher's thinking was revolutionary, and Beecher was

just the man to spread this new gospel. He was an enormously skilled orator who could bring his audience to tears or laughter with equal ease. His sermons were not based solely on the Bible. He drew from his own experiences, from the stories of those he met, and from the

world around him. These sermons were emotional, exhilarating, empathetic, and provocative. Somehow, Beecher reflected, I have always had a certain sympathy for human nature, which has led me to see instinctively how to touch the right chord in people, how to reach the living principle in them. This sympathy and his ability to translate it into words were gifts that would serve him well all his life, both as a preacher and

eventually in the courtroom. After seminary, beacher honed his speaking skills in rural Indiana for more than a decade, building a reputation as a new kind of preacher, one who could win over even the most hardened cynics, and soon enough, the big time came calling. In eighteen forty seven, Beecher was recruited to serve as the head pastor of Plymouth Church, a new congregation in Brooklyn Heights founded by some of New York City's most prominent businessmen. It was a Plymouth

Church that Beecher truly made a name for himself. With the backing of the church board, he began to radically change the nature of worship. Most Christians of the era had grown up like Beecher had, in austere churches, but at Plymouth Church they experienced services overflowing with music and joy. Beacher literally redesigned the church, creating a space that looked more like a theater and filled it with flowers every Sunday.

Drawn in by the warmth of this atmosphere, the congregation grew rapidly, eventually boasting nearly two thousand members, making it the largest church in America. Soon, Beecher took his talents on the road, joining the lecture circuit. Lectures were one of the most popular social activities of the day, and Beecher's speaking skills made him ideal for the job. By the mid eighteen fifties, he was lecturing up to four

times a week at venues across the country. His fame grew even greater once he began writing a newspaper column where he wrote boldly about current events and religion. It didn't take long for people all over America to know

his name Henry wasn't the only famous Beacher. Many of his siblings had become well known public figures, including his sister Harriet, who married a man named Calvin Stowe and made quite a name for herself with the eighteen fifty one publication of a little novel she wrote called Uncle Tom's Cabin. Uncle Tom's Cabin became the second best selling book of the nineteenth century, beaten only by the Bible, and had a profound impact on the anti slavery cause.

Henry had also gotten involved in anti slavery work. Plymouth Church became a stop on the underground railroad, and congregants raised money to help enslaved people by their freedom. Many people did not like Beecher's politics, but his bold progressive stances raised his public profile even higher. There was something very modern about Beecher's fame. Many people didn't just see him as a public figure, they saw him as a friend. Today,

we might call this dynamic a parasocial relationship. Donald Horton and Richard Woll, who coined the term parasocial relationship in nineteen fifty six, wrote one of the striking characteristics of the new mass media radio, television and the movies is that they give the illusion of a face to face relationship with the performer. The most remote and illustrious men are met as if they were in the circle of one's peers. Mass media in the nineteenth century, including newspapers

in photographs, served a similar purpose. People all over America, wanting a small piece of their idol, begged Beecher for a copy of his photographic portrait, and Beecher sent out hundreds. Beecher's particular brand of vulnerability and generosity made him especially relatable. Unlike preachers of the previous generation, he never mocked people

for their doubts. Instead, he boldly proclaimed his own, as biographer Thomas Knox put it end quote painted in vivid colors, the unhappiness of his thoughts, the terror of his fear, and produced in their minds the impression that Beecher and they were one and the same. Debbie Applegate describes his fans as having a quote soul affinity for him, and their obsession made even the most mundane details of Beecher's

life precious information. In an eighteen fifty nine column, Beecher wrote with annoyed amazement about the life of a public figure noting that quote. What you do or say, or do not do or say, what you wear, where you go, with whom you walk, when you get up, and when you lie down, all are diligently observed and reported. In other words, he was a nineteenth century influencer. Henry Ward Beecher felt like America's friend, and America was always eager

to see what their friend would do next. Even those who knew Beecher personally engaged in a kind of hero worship. He cultivated an inner circle at Plymouth Church, filled with ambitious, intelligent, and successful young men and women who hung on his every word. The unofficial president of this fan club was Theodore Tilton. Tilton, an ambitious young man twenty years Beacher's junior, had been hired to help the preacher with his newspaper column.

He spent his days immersed in Beecher's sermons, culling quotes that could be refashioned into articles in case Beecher midst a deadline, which he regularly did, and growing ever more in thrall of his charismatic hero mister Beecher, Tilton remembered, was my man of all men. The two men became extremely close referring to one another as father and son. In eighteen fifty five, Beacher officiated Tilton's marriage to Elizabeth Richards,

a bright, deeply pious woman. By this point, Tilton had even started dressing like Beecher, growing his hair out to his shoulders and adopting a beecher esque cloak and slouchy wide brim hat. But there's a downside to this kind of hero worship too. Even Henry Ward Beecher wasn't perfect, and the higher the pedestal, the greater the fall. By the mid eighteen sixties, the relationship between Theodore Tilton and Henry Ward Beecher had started to fray. Some of the

tension was political. After the Civil War, the Republican Party, which had led the charge to end slavery, split over how to approach reconstruction. Some Republicans, including Theodore Tilton, advocated for temporary federal control of Southern States, complete equality for black people, and punishment for former Confederates. Others, like Henry Ward Beecher and President Andrew Johnson, preached forgiveness and reconciliation

with former Confederates. Beecher was an enthusiastic supporter of President Johnson, which struck friends as strange. Beecher had spent years preaching and slavery, while Johnson, a former slave owner, regularly vetoed civil rights legislation. Beecher's changing politics rubbed many colleagues the wrong way, but few more so than Tilton. In the winter of eighteen sixty six, a visitor to the Tilton house noticed that their plaster bust of Beecher had been

turned to face the wall. When asked why, Elizabeth Tilton replied, quote Theodore says that our pastor has proved himself a traitor to the Republican party. There were also professional tensions between the two men. In January of eighteen sixty two, Beecher had been made editor in chief of The Independent,

a popular newspaper run by a Plymouth church founder. Beecher agreed to take the position on the condition that Tilton became assistant editor, which may seem like a compliment to Tilton, but in reality meant that Tilton would do all of the work while Beecher got the credit. Tilton was gaining a reputation for himself in other arenas. He was a passionate lecturer, a courageous thinker, and an outspoken advocate for political reform, but he always seemed to play second fiddle

to Beecher. As I grew older and mingled with the world and saw other men, Tilton later said, the fine gold of my idol gradually became dim and there was something else simmering too, something more personal. In November of eighteen sixty six, Tilton had gone on a four month lecture tour, leaving his family behind. Despite the growing distance between himself and Beecher, Tilton had asked the preacher to

check in on his family in his absence. Beecher took to visiting Elizabeth Tilton, regularly consulting with her on his novel in progress and bringing small gifts for the couple's young children. Elizabeth wrote Tilton glowing letters about Beecher's friendship. Tilton bristled. I think she regarded mister Beecher. Tilton would later say, almost as though Jesus Christ himself had walked in. Plymouth.

Church was aware of the strained relationship between Beecher and Tilton, but it seemed like a private matter, at least for now. In eighteen seventy two, this private drama exploded into the public eye thanks to the infamous suffragist, spiritualist, and first

female candidate for president, Victoria Woodhull. Woodhull was a good friend of one of Beecher's sisters, the prominent suffragist Isabella Beecher Hooker, but most others in the women's suffrage movement kept their distance from Woodhull because of her radical positions, including her advocacy of free love. Here's Woodhull herself summarizing the political philosophy of free love. I am a free lover.

I have an inalienable, constitutional, and natural right to love whom I may to love as long or as short a period as I can, to change that love every day if I please, And with that right, neither you nor any law you can frame have any right to interfere. This support for sexual freedom and non monogamy might not sound particularly wild now, but for the eighteen seventies, it

was deeply shocking. When Woodhull announced her revolutionary presidential candidacy in eighteen seventy, she hoped that her friendship with Isabella Beecher Hooker would draw Henry Ward Beecher into her camp, but he kept away. Even for a progressive like Beecher, who believed that joy and pleasure were gifts from God, free love was a step too far. Woodhull was furious at his lack of support, especially because she saw it

as hypocritical. Hypocritical how in a September eighteen seventy two speech, she hinted at her meaning, alleging that Beecher was a free lover himself. The speech coincided with Beecher's twenty fifth anniversary celebration at Plymouth Church, which got considerably more attention than Woodhole's speech. Annoyed, she doubled down, saying, I will make it hotter on Earth for Henry Ward Beecher than

hell is below. She began writing an article set to be published in her her own weekly magazine, an article that she claimed would quote burst like a bombshell into the ranks of the moralistic social camp, and boy did it. Ever. Within days of its October eighteen seventy two publication, one hundred and fifty thousand copies of the magazine were sold.

New Yorkers could not believe what they were reading. In the article, titled the Beecher Tilton Scandal Case, Woodhull alleged that Henry Ward Beecher had had an extramarital affair with Elizabeth Tilton. Her sources, she claimed, were Beecher and the Tiltons themselves, as well as some of the most prominent political figures of the day, including the suffragist Elizabeth Katie Stanton. Her motivation in revealing the affair, Woodhull claimed was not

personal spite, but rather political passion. By revealing that the most famous preacher in America was in fact a practitioner of free love, she hoped she could get Beecher to preach what he practiced. Sure, but most of the people who read the article could not have cared less about the politics. All they cared about were the dirty details. Henry Ward Beecher had had an affair with the wife

of his protege. And what's more, the article claimed that Theodore Tilton had learned of the affair from his wife five years earlier, and that the Tiltons and Beascher, aided by a mutual friend of theirs named Frank Moulden, had engaged in a cover up so that they could preserve their public reputations. It was nearly unbelievable, but more facts kept emerging in December, Tilton really, at least his own version of the story. Papers across the country posted breathless updates. Suspiciously,

Beecher did not immediately deny the story. It wasn't until nearly seven months later that Beacher finally spoke out, writing in the Brooklyn Eagle, that the story was entirely false. The country went wild, and Plymouth Church decided that they needed to get control of the story, commissioning an in

house investigative committee to look into the case. To Theodore Tilton, the investigative committee seemed to be more interested in silencing him than finding the truth, and his suspicions were confirmed when the church voted to excommunicate him in October of eighteen seventy three. Tilton called for an independent investigation of his excommunication, but this investigation, conducted by local churches, also seem inclined to protect their star preacher and only lightly

censored Plymouth's practices. Tilton fumed then, to add insult to injury, Beecher's friends went on the attack. Another Brooklyn preacher, Leonard Bacon, gave a public speech where he called Tilton a knave and a dog. Tilton's fury boiled over, and he published several seemingly incriminating letters between himself, Beecher, and Elizabeth in the paper, in which Beecher begged for Theodore Tilton's forgiveness for an unspecified crime. Elizabeth Tilton, too had reached a

breaking point. She was sick of having her private life splashed across the newspapers. She wanted to tell her story, not just be a quote nonentity, a placing to be used or let alone at will, As she told her brother, She had her chance that summer, when Plymouth Church convened yet another investigative committee. Testifying in a friend's home, Elizabeth vehemently denied the affair. She had only confessed to it, she said, because of her husband's constant harassment and abuse.

Theodore had been so convinced of the affair that Elizabeth eventually felt it was just easier to give in and tell him what he wanted to hear. She described her husband as a vindictive pettyman who was so jealous of Beecher's success that quote the determination to ruin mister Beecher has been the one aim of his life. Less than a week after this testimony, she told Tilton that their marriage was over. Now a whole new side of the

story was inferling. Elizabeth wasn't the only one questioning Tilton's credibility. Many wondered if Tilton's sudden willingness to discuss the alleged affair after nearly five years of helping cover up the story, stemmed from his jealousy of Beecher. Though Beecher had squandered some popular goodwill with his controversial positions after the war, his star had again been on the rise in the eighteen seventies. He was raking in money from appearances and

publishing contracts. The greatest men in the country consulted him on personal and political matters. People stopped him in the street to express their admiration. Theodore Tilton, on the other hand, had been in a year's long downward spiral. His poetry was panned by critics, his lecture fees barely covered his expenses, and his reputation was in tatters. He would do anything for attention, Some said, could his accusations be just another ploy?

All across America, people clamored to know the truth. They were tired of the story trickling out in newspapers of living off the scraps of a scandal. They were unsatisfied by the private investigations and behind the scenes verdicts. They will insist upind the Albany Evening Journal for hearing to take place in quote the full eye of the public,

and they were about to get their wish. On August nineteenth, eighteen seventy four, Theodore Tilton commissioned the firm of Morris and Pearsall to draft a civil complaint against Beecher, alleging that Beecher had quote alienated the affection of his wife, causing personal and professional damages to the tune of one hundred thousand dollars. On us August twentieth, Tilton swore to the truth of the complaint at the Brooklyn City Court.

A trial date was set five months. Hence Theodore Tilton and Henry Ward Beecher would face off in court in the bloodiest battle of their combative careers. January eleventh, eighteen seventy five, donned cold and glittering, but the weather seemed to have no effect on the throngs of people gathered outside Brooklyn City Court. They rubbed their hands for warmth, puffed out steaming breaths and haggled over tickets to the

season's hottest event, the Beecher Tilton trial. Only those with tickets would be admitted to the courtroom, and the price reflected the demand. Tickets went for as much as ten dollars, four times the average daily wage of an American worker by a quarter to eleven. Those lucky enough to secure a spot had filed into the courtroom alongside a bevy of reporters. The plaintiffts table was just as packed as the courtroom filled to bursting with Theodore Tilton, his friend

Frank Moulton, and three of Tilton's five lawyers. Beecher's legal team was even bigger, consisting of seven men, but on this the first day, only one lawyer was seated at the defense table. As the eleven o'clock hour approached, the courtroom door swung open and the crowd turned to see Henry Ward Beecher walk in, accompanied to their surprise by his wife. Like many wives past and present, Eunice Beecher

had made the choice to stand by her man. She would attend nearly every day of the trial, keeping her face impassive as witnesses discussed intimate details of her marriage. At first, many observers found her presence disturbing. Surely, they said, her place was at home, sheltered in the bosom of her family and friends. But eventually they came to admire her dignity and strength, which only lent credibility to her husband's case, just as more cynical commentators would say, as

the defense team had planned it. Before the trial could start, the lawyers had one concern. The courtroom was so crowded that they barely had enough room to make their arguments. They especially objected to the allocation of space to the press, who had been given more space than the lawyers themselves. In a symbolic illustration of the public's obsession with the case, the judge agreed to a rearrangement of the courtroom. Once

this was done, the real business could begin. Samuel D. Morris, attorney for Theodore Tilton, approached the jury box and started his opening argument. Because so many facts of the scandal were already known to the public, neither side planned to introduce much in the way of new evidence. And I'll take a moment to note here that because so much of the trial testimony was repetitive exhausting and ambiguous. I'm not going to go too much into the details of

each witness. Instead, I'm going to focus on the competing stories of the plaintiff and the defense. As Debbie Applegate puts it, more than with most trials, the verdict here would depend largely on which side spun the evidence into the most believable story. Morris's opening was the first chance for Tilton's side to spin their story, and spin he did. What Morris hoped to establish in his argument were the stakes of the trial, stakes that went far beyond a

simple love affair. This is no ordinary case that now engages the attention of this court and the attention of the entire community, he said. It is a trial the consequences of which reached to the very foundations of society, the home, the marriage, relation with all that is dear in that relation is upon trial in this case. Upon the result of your verdict, to a very large extent,

also will depend the integrity of the Christian religion. Hyperbolic, absolutely, but Morris's description wasn't far off from the feelings of the public. America in the years after the Civil War was a lost country, ravaged by violence, Devastated by death and reeling in the face of radical social and political change, Americans were desperate for something to cling on to. Henry Ward Beecher, with his warm and welcoming ways, his gospel of love, his preaching of acceptance, was just such a

port in the storm. This trial forced Americans to ask if this man, their hero, was just as corrupt as the rest of the country, And if he was, what did that mean if you fall? Wrote a man named Jo Smith in a letter to Beecher during the trial, no more humanity for me if you should prove guilty of the charges made against you, I should never place confidence in any mortal being. Tilton's lawyers knew that much of America, just like that letter writer, did not want

Beecher to be guilty. By laying out the stakes in the way he did, Morris hoped he could convince the jurors that finding against Beecher would only strengthen their political and religious institutions. He was appealing to those who saw Beecher's Gospel of Love as a slippery slope towards heathenism and hedonism. To make his case, Morris used Beecher's own words against him beginning with a particularly damning letter that Beecher had sent to Tilton in January of eighteen seventy one.

This letter had come to be known in the press as the Letter of Contrition. In it, Beecher begged for Tilton's forgiveness for an unspecified transgression, writing I humble myself before him as I do before my God. Morris hammered in on Beecher's language with a level of sass that I absolutely love, saying, a man comes to you and accuses you falsely of an infamous crime, and the next communication you have with him, you say, I humble myself

before you as I do before my God. Gentlemen, it is a nonsense to argue that point, and I shall not pursue it further. This certainly didn't bode well for Beecher, but as Morris himself acknowledged, the plaintiff's case was almost entirely based on vague letters like this. That is to say, it was circumstantial. There was a natural reason for this, of course, adultery, as Morris put it, is a crime of darkness and of secrecy. It was a crime committed

out of sight. So unless one got very lucky or unlucky, depending on your point of view, and happened to catch their cheating spouse in the act, all while accompanied by say, fifteen unimpeachable nuns who could testify to what they'd seen. Any trial would have to depend on more sketchy evidence. A judgment would have to rely on individuals subjective and often highly differing interpretation of words and actions. And indeed,

that's exactly how the Beecher trial played out. Though the defense and plaintiff teams would each question dozens of witnesses one hundred and eleven in total over the course of the next six months, the verdict would ultimately come down to who the jurors believed more. Beecher's lawyers hoped that the question of credibility would be decided in his favor, a theme that lawyer Benjamin Tracy hit on in his

defense opening. Tracy began by laying out just why the jurors should trust Beacher's account, saying that he would have no trouble getting quote, thousands upon thousands of witnesses to testify to Beacher's character. While he rejected Morris's idea that the fate of American Christianity rested on the verdict. Tracy wasn't shy about comparing his client to Christ himself, describing Beecher's suffering at Tilton's hands as a being like a

crown of thorns. Once he was finished building up Beecher, Tracy set about destroying Tilton. An all dominating selfish egotism is the basis of Tilton's character, Tracy began, and because of this egotism, he continued, Tilton became both enormously ambitious and enormously jealous. It was just as Elizabeth Tilton had told Plymouth Church Theodore Tilton had been jealous and resentful

of his mentor. In Tracy's words, Tilton saw Beecher as quote, the one man who had prevented him from reaching the topmost summit of fame. If Tilton could not be famous, Tracy said, quote, he could at least be infamous, and he preferred infamy to oblivion. Desperate for attention, running out of money and rejected by the social and intellectual elite, Tilton made his play capitalizing on his history with Beecher.

Mister Beecher had long been his friend and the intimate friend of his wife, Tracy explained, that friendship, Tilton could pervert and make himself the author and at the same time the central figure of the most famous scandal of modern times. If Tilton could not supplant Beecher in the affection of the people, Tracy continued, he could scandalize him.

If Tilton had made it impossible for the honorable pen to write his own biography, then was it worth any cost to have a line devoted to him in the biography of Henry Ward Beecher. This kind of argument that those who bring suit or charges against celebrities are simply

doing it for attention has uncomfortable modern parallels. We've seen the same claim made against countless people who told their stories of sexual assault during the Me Too movement, and for the most part, it's an easy claim to Rebut few people would welcome the painful and invasive scrutiny that comes with a high profile case. But Theodore Tilton may

just have been one of those people. As Tracy brutally put it, Tilton was the kind of man who, quote, if he could realize the sad truth that he was morally dead, would still rejoice in this post mortem investigation of his character. Tilton had always welcomed controversy thriving on backlash and scandal. To many observers, it seemed entirely plausible that Tilton had invented, or at least exaggerated, the entire thing, and Tracy acknowledged that Beacher may have unwittingly helped Tilton

do just that due to his own naivete. The defense's theory of the case ran like this. Beacher, a close friend of both the Tilton's, had become a confidant and spiritual guide to Elizabeth as she struggled in her marriage. In the process, unbeknownst to Beecher, Elizabeth had developed feelings for him. Eventually, concerned for her mental and physical well being,

Beecher had counseled Elizabeth to leave Theodore. It was for these sins, for not realizing what Elizabeth felt for him, for not consulting his old protege Theodore to get his side of the story, for counseling Elizabeth to lie leave. It was for these sins, and not the sin of adultery that Beecher had apologized for in his letter of contrition. He had aired as a pastor, but not as a man.

As Richard Whiteman Fox notes in his book Trials of Intimacy quote the supreme irony of the trial is that, while it was convened to determine whether Beecher had alienated the affections of Missus Tilton from her husband, Beecher, in order to exculpate himself conceded he had unintentionally done just that. He admitted his moral fault to establish his legal innocence. It was an argument that was not very flattering to Beecher.

It made him look clumsy and obtuse, but it fit the facts, and it fit with what the public knew of Beecher. He was enthusiastic, emotional, impulsive. Such a man could easily get carried away by the vulnerability of a woman and trapped by the machinations of her husband. There's a beautifully illustrative story about Beecher from some years before the trial that might help put the public's attitude into context.

On one chilly January night back in eighteen fifty seven, Beecher had attempted to cross the ice of the frozen East River from Manhattan to Brooklyn. The ice broke, stranding him on a floe, from which he was eventually rescued by a boat. As The New York Times observed, quote Henry Ward Beecher never did a more thoroughly characteristic thing in his life. He acted then precisely as he does, always impulsively, courageously, rashly and successfully. He is always crossing

the ice somewhere or other. And though he has had some narrow escapes, he has never yet fallen in. Now Beecher had finally fallen in. But would he be punished for it? That would be for the jury to decide, And with the conclusion of arguments on June twenty third, eighteen seventy five, more than one hundred and sixty days after the trial began, they would have their chance to do just that. For seven days, nothing was heard from

the jury. Then on July first, they sent a note to the judge, May it please the court, we think there is no possibility of our agreeing on a verdict, and we respectfully asked to be discharged. Judge Nielsen, who The New York Times had once described as quote a man not to be trifled with, was not pleased. He summoned the jury into the courtroom and lectured them on

their responsibilities. After a six month trial. The judge said it would be quote humiliating for no verdict to be rendered, especially in a case that had so much public attention. It would be difficult to find any case, Judge Nielsen said, where an agreement by a jury would be so desirable, so imperative. Jury Foreman Chester Carpenter responded that it wasn't that they didn't want to find a verdict, but that

they couldn't. It is a question of fact, a question of the veracity of witnesses, on which we do not agree, your honor, he explained, And I would say that I think there is not a possibility of an agreement in this jury. The judge asked them to try once more, and they did, but returned the next day still stumped. Finally, Judge Nielsen agreed to discharge the jury and the result was announced. In the case of Tilton v. Beecher, the jury was hung. It wasn't the verdict anyone particularly wanted,

but it was one that was somewhat expected. After all, the jury foreman had put it well, it was difficult to judge just who was telling the truth. On the one hand, Theodore Tilton's explanation of the facts seemed to make more sense. But on the other Henry Ward Beecher

was well Henry Ward Beecher America's best friend. As his defense lawyer William Everts had put it during the trial, I prefer to find in character the refutation of false evidence, and the jury seemed to agree, though they had failed to reach a verdict. A poll of the jurors found

that they leaned nine to three in Beecher's favor. In his closing argument, Tilton's lawyer, William Beach had implored jurors to quote judge Beecher as we would judge ourselves or our fellow men generally, But in the end they simply could not. For three decades, Beecher had been internationally celebrated for his integrity, his courage, and his compassion. No courtroom

is a vacuum. What the jurors and the public had learned in the course of the trial had been damaging to his reputation, but in the end it didn't seem to be enough to find Beecher guilty. However, there are many things that were never brought up in the courtroom, including a few facts that, had they been known, might have made the world see Henry Ward Beecher in a very different light. Henry Ward Beacher had always been a

ladies man. If we want to be armchair analysts, we could trace this trait back to his childhood, when, in Debbie Applegate's words, the potent triangle of an idealized absent mother, a distant, critical stepmother, and a bevy of smart, strong, rongwilled sisters and aunts who doted on the boy but had little time to spoil him bred in him a

lifelong craving for the affection of attractive, intelligent women. He liked women, and as he grew older and shed his childhood awkwardness, he was delighted to find that they liked him too. He might not have been the most handsome man in the room. Mark Twain described him as quote as homely as a singed cat, but he had it. As Twain also said, mister Beecher is a remarkably handsome man when he is in the full tide of sermonizing

and his face is lit up with animation. He could turn on this energy in one on one settings, too, to great effect. When he fell for his college roommate's sister, Eunice Bullard in the early eighteen thirties. It hadn't taken him long to convince Eunice and her family to accept his proposal, even though it meant that she would have to endure a seven year engagement while he finished college and seminary. The engagement seemed for a moment to Saint

Beecher's desire for female affection. If you wish true, unalloyed, genuine delight, fall in love with some amiable girl, he wrote a friend. But this feeling didn't last long. When the couple eventually married, the newlywed glow wore off quickly. Beecher was an inattentive husband, constantly forgetting his new wife at train stations and events, and Eunice was not temperamentally suited to the life of a traveling preacher's wife. She

was jealous and critical, prone to martyrdom and hypochondria. By the time the couple made it to New York, a decade into their marriage, they were both deeply unhappy. Friends and family knew about the couple's troubles, which they mostly blamed on Unice. Unfortunately, as Debbie Applegate points out to outsiders, hen pecking is more obvious than stealthy emotional neglect, but few knew to what lengths Henry Ward Beecher would go

to once again find the genuine delight of love. In the late eighteen fifties, Beecher had grown close to two of his congregants, Chloe and Moses Beach. Yes Beach, not Beecher. The names are annoyingly similar. Moses was an unassuming, clever man who edited the New York Sun. Beecher liked Moses a great deal, but he seemed even more drawn to Moses's wife, Chloe, a self possessed, graceful woman. Soon the two were spending quite a bit of time together alone.

Chloe and Beecher's relationship became so intense that Moses moved his family out of Brooklyn several times throughout the eighteen sixties in order, he wrote, to cut off the associations which were constantly dragging me into a mire of unhappy thought and depriving me of an affection which it had been the one aim of my life to cherish and nourish. Every time they left, though Chloe would become so miserable that Moses would eventually relent. They would return to the

city and to Beecher. In January of eighteen sixty seven, Chloe gave birth to a daughter named Violet. There is compelling, circumstantial evidence that Violet was Beecher's daughter. At the time of Violet's conception, Moses was stricken with typhoid fever. The stomach problems and rashes associated with that disease make it unlikely that the Beaches would have been intimate during this time, and that's on top of the marital problems caused by

cl Loe's relationship with Beecher. When Moses learned of Chloe's pregnancy, he literally fled the country and then spent most of the first year of his daughter's life away from his family. Beacher, by contrast, doted on Violet. He spoiled her with gifts, played with her constantly, and wrote to her often. Debbie Applegate managed to uncover pictures of Violet and Beacher together, and the resemblance, at least in my opinion, is pretty striking.

And Chloe was not Beecher's only alleged mistress. His relationships with a number of female congregants had been so concerning. Plymouth Church founder Henry Bowen would later recall that a group of the church's leading men had once sent a representative to the preacher's house to confront him about his behavior. According to Bowen, Beecher reacted to these accusations quote like a guilty man, was grit lately embarrassed, and promise that

there should be no further occasion for such scandal. Beecher's flirtatious behavior was not aknown to the public at the

time of the trial. Newspapers had dug up stories of his close relationships with female students and congregants from throughout his clerical career, but explicit discussions of his pattern of adultery of the type that we have access to today weren't around in eighteen seventy five, so the public could only judge on what they knew, all of which inclined them to give Henry Ward Beecher the benefit of the

doubt when it came to Theodore Tilton's allegations. Yes, not everyone believed Beecher, but it's hard to ignore the way his celebrities skewed both public opinion and the trial itself. We've seen the same thing occur in modern celebrity trials, from oj Simpson to Johnny Depp. When we feel like we know a celebrity, it becomes that much harder to believe that they could be guilty of a crime that

feels out of line with their perceived character. But every public figure has a private life, and no matter how strong our parasocial relationship with the celebrity is, we don't actually know them. Celebrities in the courtroom make for an uneasy mix. It's just as true now as it was

in the eighteen seventies. Though we often like to think of a trial as a form of objective investigation into a claim, how objective can that investigation be when the court of law is, despite best intentions, inevitably influenced by the court of public opinion. The Beecher Tilton case was a scandal in the truest sense, too messy and complex

to be neatly captured or resolved by a court. When the historian Richard Whiteman Fox began investigating the trial for his book Trials of Intimacy, he initially wanted to determine the truth of the case which side had it right, But as he discovered quote the whole idea of two sides was flawed. It was not a choice between guilt and innocence, but an interpretation of multiple competing stories, each of them much too complex to be encompassed by the

side metaphor. Our adversarial trial system, which requires two such distinct sides in every case, is not always the best fit for the irrational, chaotic reality of human life. Few trials illustrate this failing better than the Beacher Tilton case. That's the story of Theodore Tilton v. Henry Ward Beecher. Stick around after the break to learn how the main players from the trial fared in its aftermath, and to

hear one final revelation on the affair. After the trial, Henry Ward Beecher was welcomed back by Plymouth Church with open arms and a generous salary raise to cover his legal costs. For his first sermon after his return, he preached about compassion and forgiveness. Don't believe that all men are bad because you have seen some of their weaknesses or even their sins, he admonished the crowd. Despite his

projection of confidence, the trial had shaken him. Friends recalled that he was colder and more distant after eighteen seventy five. He was also broke in early eighteen seventy seven, he went on a lecture tour to try to make money. Fortunately for Beecher, the trial had only increased people's desire to see him speak. Over the course of forty lectures in seven weeks, he spoke to nearly seventy thousand people.

Using the proceeds of this tour, he built a mansion in Upstate New York, telling his brother I have pride in building the house and earning every penny that pays for it, and that after the world, the flesh and the devil conspired to put me down guests who supervised the construction from her own house next door his alleged mistress, Chloe Beach. Over the next decade, Henry Ward Beecher continued

to be outspoken on both political and religious issues. Though the scandal had burned him, he had not lost his taste for attention nor his ideological fearlessness. He continued to publish, preach and lecture across America until he suffered a sudden stroke on March second, eighteen eighty seven, dying six days later at age seventy three. Fifty thousand people gathered in the streets to mourn Henry Ward Beecher, and city Hall

was draped in black bunting. Theodore Tilton's reputation never recovered. He also tried to capitalize off the scandal with a lecture tour, but his audience was the world had lost interest in him when the novelty of the scandal wore off. He eventually moved to Paris, where he wrote poetry and lived a quiet life before dying in May nineteen oh seven. Unlike her husband and Beecher, Elizabeth Tilton had not gotten

to tell her side of the story at trial. The lawyers all agreed that she was too unreliable of a witness. She had tried to speak out, giving the judge a prepared statement that she asked him to read aloud. The judge had declined, but the statement, of course, made its way to the papers. In it, Elizabeth once again denied the affair and implied that she had been forced by her husband to make a false confession. After the trial, she lived with her mother and children in Brooklyn and

shunned public attention up until eighteen seventy eight. That is, on April state sixteenth, the Morning Papers carried a shocking letter written by Elizabeth Tilton to her lawyer. In the letters, she swore that the charge brought by my husband of adultery between myself and the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher was true.

Two months later, she told a Plymouth church committee, I now repeat and affirm that the acknowledgment of adultery was the truth and nothing but the truth, and that having previously published a false statement denying the charges, I desired to make the truth as worldwide as the lie had been. But she did not have the same platform as Beecher or her husband, and most people dismissed her statements. Though she was a central player in the scandal, Elizabeth Tilton

was never taken seriously. She had become just as she feared she would, only a plaything, the rope and a vicious tug of war between two powers, poorful, egotistical men. After eighteen seventy eight, she never spoke out publicly again, and, according to one obituary, banned all newspapers from her home. She died on April thirteenth, eighteen ninety seven, five weeks after Unice Beacher. Both women are buried in Greenwood Cemetery

in Brooklyn. Elizabeth Tilton's headstone simply says, grandmother Eunice Beacher shares a headstone with her husband. Her section of the stone bears only her birth and death dates. Henry got an epitaph quote he thinketh no evil, from his favorite Bible chapter, First Corinthians, chapter thirteen. But after meddling through the murky waters of the Tilton Beacher scandal, the next verse might be a more appropriate conclusion to this episode.

Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth. Thank you for listening to History on Trial. The main sources for this episode were the trial transcript, Debbie Applegate's book The Most Famous Man in America, Biography of Henry Ward Beecher, and Richard Whitman Fox's book Trials of Intimacy, Love and Loss in the Beecher's Hilton Scandal. For a full bibliography, as well as a transcript of this episode with citations, please visit our website History on Trial podcast dot com.

History on Trial is written and hosted by me Mira Hayward. The show is edited and produced by Jesse Funk, with supervising producer Trevor Young and executive producers Dana Schwartz. Alexander Williams, Matt Frederick, and Mira Hayward. Learn more about the show at History on Trial podcast dot com and follow us on Instagram at History on Trial and on Twitter at Underscore.

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