She Said – He Said – She Said

Unable to ignore the public scandal surrounding allegations of an affair between himself and Mrs. Elizabeth Tilton, Reverend Henry Ward Beecher requested Plymouth Church to appoint a committee to investigate the charges. With reporters in attendance, committee members began gathering evidence on June 27, 1874. On July 23, Elizabeth Tilton wrote letters to several local newspapers to declare that she and Rev. Beecher never committed adultery. A week later, Mrs. Tilton testified to the committee and affirmed she had not committed adultery and that her husband’s testimony was “heartless.” She also said her husband was dissatisfied with her as a wife and that he had a jealous nature.

Beecher testified that in his capacity as her pastor, he had visited an unhappy woman whose husband left her alone for months, and he counseled her while her husband questioned the divinity of Christ and befriended radical women like Victoria Woodhull. Beecher went so far as to charge Tilton was the one who had an affair. This allegation was not investigated further.

On August 2, the committee issued its report. Members found that in 1863, Theodore Tilton invited Beecher to visit his home. Over time, Beecher also became a friend of Mrs. Tilton, a situation that met with Tilton’s approval. The committee concluded that when Tilton began to support the concept of free love, the change deeply upset his wife who was very religious. In her grief, she naturally appealed to her pastor for advice and support. It appeared that she became strongly attached to Beecher, and in July 1870 confessed to her husband that she held Beecher in affection. Under the circumstances, the committee held Beecher innocent of any inappropriate behavior.

Criminal Conversations & Alienated Affections

Theodore Tilton did not accept the verdict and on January 11, 1875 he filed a civil suit in Brooklyn City Court charging Henry Ward Beecher with “criminal conversation” and “alienation of affection,” and demanded damages of $100,000. The trial lasted six months – it took two months for just the opening and closing statements, including 16 full days for final arguments. Tilton had five lawyers and twelve witnesses. Beecher hired 67 lawyers who called 95 witnesses. It was a sensational trial. People lined up the night before to gain a ticket into the courtroom, and sometimes 3,000 people were turned away at the courthouse door. Tickets sold for $5.00 apiece on the black market. Jurors and spectators gasped and fainted in the summer heat, sometimes being carried out of the courtroom.
Supporters expressed their commitment with flowers as each side’s supporters competed to send ever more showy floral displays. No doubt, the heady scents contributed to conditions that led to fainting.

Alleged adultery was scandalous enough, but the trial was about more than that. Theodore Tilton alleged the most respectable person in New York City lured his wife into an affair. Tilton’s lawyers urged the jury not to be taken in by Beecher’s reputation. “You must dig beneath the surface of appearances,” they argued. “You must induce the truth from the clues presented, and follow them wherever they may lead.” The truth, Tilton’s lawyers insisted, must be followed even into the most intimate areas of the home.

Beecher’s defense argued that the jury must decide to acquit their client in order to preserve social civility. In his closing argument, one defense lawyer argued that Tilton’s suit attacked everything that held sociey together. “It is that the favored, approved, tried, best results of this social scheme of ours, which includes marriage, and of this religious fatih of ours, which adopts Christianity, is false to the core.” Even if these activities may be going on in families and no one knows anyhing about it, “shall we then discard all this, shall we believe . . . That there is not necessary connection between character and conduct?”

Elizabeth Tilton, as the plaintiff’s spouse, was not allowed to testify, though she appeared in court every day. One reporter described Elizabeth as “a small, fragile woman, dark complexion, low in stature, girlish in look, her hair parted in the center and falling in ringlets behind — looking . . . Like a schoolgirl of eighteen.”

Acquittal

The jury deliberated for eight days, casting 52 ballots. Nine jurors thought Beecher was innocent; three thought he was guilty. Thus was Henry Ward Beecher acquitted of the charges.

The Aftermath

To solidify his position, Beecher requested Plymouth Church to conduct a second investigation into events. Once again, he was exonorated. In fact, due to his legal expensives, Plymouth Church voted to give Beecher a raise of $100,000.

In 1878, Elizabeth Tilton, now separated from her husband, publicly admitted to having an affair with Henry Ward Beecher. Plymouth Church immediately dismissed her from their congregation. Theodore Tilton, unable to find work, moved to Paris.

Questions Remain

Was Beecher maliciously accused, or was he a hypocrite?

Was Tilton an innocent husband devasted by his wife’s betrayal, or simply out to destroy Beecher?

And what of Elizabeth Tilton?

Was she a pious, pure wife or a weak woman who capitulated to Beecher and then lied about it? Who was she anyway? Some researchers suggest that, to a certain extent, she may have been an abused wife – a woman whose husband intimidated her and subjected her to verbal abuse.

In the public letter Elizabeth wrote to the New York Times in April 1878, she admitted her part in the scandal:
“I now solemnly affirm that the charge brought by my husband of adultery between myself and the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, was true and that the life I had lived so well the last four years has become intolerable to me.”*

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*Elizabeth’s letter quoted in Carol Kolmerten. “Learning and Research with Students: The Example of the Tilton/Beecher Scandal.” Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council. Spring 2000.

Illustrations

Elizabeth Tilton, 1875.

Henry Ward Beecher

Theodore Tilton, 1875.

Testimony in Beecher-Tilton Scandal Case by James E. Cook. 1875.

“The Only Thing He Won’t Kiss” 1875.

Elizabeth Tilton

Laura Hanft Korobkin. “The Maintenance of Mutual Confidence: Sentimental Strategies at the Adultery Trial of Henry Ward Beecher. Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, Vol 7, Issue 1, 1995.

Robert Shaplen. “The Beecher-Tilton Affair. New Yorker. June 4, 1954.

The post Beecher-Tilton Scandal: Part 2 first appeared on Sandra Wagner-Wright.

Illustration at left stresses Henry Ward Beecher’s hypocrisy in his relationship with Elizabeth Tilton. Center drawing of Mrs. Tilton seated in Beecher’s lap; a reference in the bottom left to Beecher and a Mrs. Moulton, and other negative references to Beecher.

On May 22, 1871 the New York World printed a letter written by Victoria Woodhull. Without naming names, Victoria referred to the hyporcisy of a man who spoke out against her doctrine of free love while also privately engaging in the practice. Most readers did not know the subject of her attack, but more than a few did.

The morning her letter appeared, Victoria invited Theodore Tilton to her office and informed him that the man she accused of hyprocsy was Henry Ward Beecher, the famous pastor of Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights and one of Tilton’s long time associates. Victoria informed Tilton she knew of the affair between Beecher and Tilton’s wife Elizabeth. Tilton was not in a position to deny Victoria’s allegations, because he himself had pressured his wife’s confession to the affair in July 1870. In December, Elizabeth made a written confession in which she declared that Beecher had made ‘improper advances’ and tried to seduce her. After Beecher saw Elizabeth’s written confession, he pressured her to write a retraction, and then her husband forced Elizabeth to retract her retraction.

Initially, Beecher and the Tiltons were close friends. In fact, Beecher had married the couple in 1855. Beecher edited a religious newspaper called the New York Independent. In 1861, he stepped back as editor and gave the job to Tilton. All was well until the late 1860s when Tilton’s editorials became more radical, including support for the concept of free love. As Tilton’s career took off with lecture tours that took him away from home, Beecher continued to call, and Elizabeth Tilton received him without a chaperone. Beecher later said he came to support Elizabeth at a time when she needed religious guidance in the face of her husband’s increasingly unorthodox beliefs. She said she formed an emotional attachment.

Besides the three people most directly affected, others were aware of the situation. One was Martha Bradshaw, a deaconess at Plymouth Church and a friend of Tilton’s. Others included Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Laura Curtis Bullard. All were friends of the Tilton’s as well as campaigners for women’s right to vote. It appears that when Henry Ward Beecher wavered in his support of women’s rights, Stanton shared information about Beecher’s affair at the 1871 National Women’s Suffrage Association in Washington, which may have been where Victoria heard the rumor.

When Theodore Tilton realized Victoria knew about the affair, he wrote about her in a journal he edited, calling Victoria a “gentle but fiery genius.”* Victoria enjoyed the accolade but was interested in more tangible benefits. With Tilton’s support, Victoria suggested that Beecher introduce her lecture at the Steinway Hall in Manhattan. As Victoria reported the conversation, Beecher “got up on the sofa on his knees beside me, and taking my face between his hands, while the tears streamed down his cheeks, he begged me to let him off.”* In the end, Tilton made the introduction.

Victoria’s animosity increasd when Beecher’s sisters attacked her. Catherine Beecher, the well-known author of the Treatise on Domestic Economy and other publications stressing the central role women played as mothers and educators, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, impugned Victoria’s character, as did other members of the women’s rights movement. Victoria also fell out with Tilton. At that point, Victoria made the scandal public on November 2, 1872 by exposing details on the front page of Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly.

On the one hand, Victoria wrote, she believed “in the right of privacy and in the perfect right of Mr. Beecher, socially, morally and divinely, to have sought the embraces of Mrs. Tilton”* Victoria went on to say that she “conceive[d] that Mrs. Tilton’s love for Mr. Beecher was her true marriage . . . and that her marriage to Mr. Tilton is prostitution.”

The scandal’s effect electrified the country. Victoria Woodhull and her sister were notorious for their views on free love, women’s rights, spiritualism, vegetarianism, and all manner of radical social causes. Henry Ward Beecher was a renowned abolitinist, preacher, and pillar of society. Legal reaction was swift. On November 2, 1872, Anthony Comstock arranged for Woodhull, her husband Col. Blood, and her sister Tennessee Clafllin to be arrested and charged with publishing an obscene newspaper that they distributed through the mails. That was the end of Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly. The sisters were held in the Ludlow Street Jail for a month, denying Victoria the chance to vote for her own candidacy as president. Six months after their arrest, the three were acquitted.

To the dismay of some and delight of others, the Tilton-Beecher scandal continued to escalate. Details in next week’s blog.

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*Quotations taken from Robert Shaplen. The Beecher-Tilton Affair. New Yorker. June 4, 1954.

Illustrations

Testimony in Beecher-Tilton Scandal Case by James E. Cook. 1875.

Victoria Woodhull.

Elizabeth Tilton.

Henry Ward Beecher.

Theodore Tilton.

Henry Ward Beecher & His Sister Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Laura Hanft Korobkin. “The Maintenance of Mutual Confidence.” Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities. Vol 7. No. 1. 1995.

The post Beecher-Tilton Scandal: Part 1 first appeared on Sandra Wagner-Wright.