Writing to her brother Henry Ward Beecher in 1851, shortly after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, Harriet Beecher Stowe seethed with frustration. "Why I have felt almost choked sometimes with pent up wrath that does no good," she confessed. Stowe then urged her brother to intensify his attack on the wicked law. "Strive, pray, labor, Henry," she wrote. "Be the champion of the oppressed and my God defend and bless you." Although the fame that Stowe gained in the following year from the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) has somewhat eclipsed the visibility of her brother's stand on controversial social issues, the American public from the 1850s to the 1880s recognized Henry Ward Beecher as one of the leading preachers, essayists, newspaper editors, and popular orators of the day.

During his forty-year career at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, New York, Beecher regularly held his 3,200 listeners spellbound. On...