Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/639

Rh taken up subjects of intense popular interest, and has treated them with such boldness and power as to command universal attention. His attitude, moreover, has been such as to provoke partisanship, and arouse antagonism. Independent in theology, free and easy in the pulpit, and often rough upon the churches, he has raised a great deal of religious animosity. A vehement reformer, he has amazed and irritated conservative people. Foremost and often fierce in politics, during a long period of intense political excitement, he has stirred up an enormous amount of political detestation. This disturbing influence has been felt to the remotest corners of the land, but of course it has been more palpable around home. To the general causes of repugnance have been added local causes in his own city that have operated with virulent intensity. He had many and ardent friends whose indiscriminate praises produced revulsion and disgust in many minds. Brother clergymen were gangrened with jealousy at his overshadowing influence, while their congregations were charged with sympathetic spite.

Now, this is a dangerous position for a man to hold in a community, as in any untoward circumstances it could be turned against him with fatal effect. If anybody had a motive or design to unroof Plymouth church, smash the pastor, and drive him out of Brooklyn, the facilities of assault were at hand. It was only necessary to fix upon Mr. Beecher a scandalous charge, and it was sure to spread like fire in straw. It was not at all necessary for purposes of public effect to establish the charge by valid evidence; it was only necessary to link certain ideas together to make a circumstantial picture of scandalous details, with Mr. Beecher as the central figure, and public feeling, consisting largely of dislike, hatred, prejudice, and jealousy, would cement the ideas together and give them all the force and effect of proof. And such is notoriously the way the case was carried. The picture was made by the Woodhulls; and, backed by no better evidence than the Woodhull character, it was at once believed by multitudes in the way they believe most other things. Of course, all those whose estimate of Mr. Beecher was indicated by such terms as "blatherskite," "nigger-worshiper," and "priestly hypocrite," accepted the charge on sight; but with thousands upon thousands of others there was from the first an unavowed half-belief palpably originating in unfavorable feeling. With the great mass of the community, indeed, the case was absolutely prejudged, the "statements" following the Woodhull presentation clinching and closing it, so that the six-months' trial was a mere superfluous appendage. As has been often and truly said, with any other man the case could probably never have got a foothold in a court of justice; but with Beecher the whole country was on fire with excitement, and was determined to have it out; and so, with the cooperation of the newspapers, and an accommodating court, the people have regaled themselves on putrescent gossip for half a year. The possibility of such a social experiment would not have been previously believed; but if it could occur it is better that it should occur, as thereby we become wholesomely, if painfully, instructed in the ways of that curious thing we call public opinion.

another part of this magazine, under the title of "A Popular Verdict," will be found the painful story of one of the remarkable characters of the past generation. The sketch is far too meagre to do justice either to the traits of the man or to the causes that conspired to darken the later portions of his life.