is name was continued as president
in the seminary catalogue, until his death.

Soon after he assumed this position, the slavery question began to
assume the acute phase which ended in the Civil War. Mr. Beecher was, of
course, an Abolitionist, and for a time lived in a turmoil, for many of
the seminary students were from the south, while Cincinnati itself was
so near the borderline that there was a great pro-slavery sentiment
there. But during Mr. Beecher's absence, his trustees tried to allay
excitement and, in a way, carry water on both shoulders, by forbidding
all further discussion of slavery in the seminary, and succeeded in
nearly wrecking the institution, for the students withdrew in a body,
and while a few were persuaded to return, the great majority refused to
do so and laid the foundation of Oberlin College. For seventeen years,
Mr. Beecher labored to restore the seminary's prosperity, but finally
abandoned the task in despair. He resigned the presidency in 1852,
intending to devote his remaining years to the revision and publication
of his works, but a paralytic stroke put an end to his active career.

Mr. Beecher's vigor of mind and body were imparted in a remarkable
degree to his children, of whom he had thirteen. Of Harriet Beecher
Stowe we have already spoken, but by far the most famous of them was
Henry Ward Beecher. Born in 1813, and renouncing an early desire for a
sea-faring life in favor of the ministry, he secured his first charge in
1837, and ten years later entered upon the pastorate of Plymouth church,
in Brooklyn, where his chief fame was won. The church, one of the
largest in the country, soon became inadequate to hold the crowds which
flocked to hear his brilliant preaching. As a lecturer and platform
orator he soon came to be in such demand that he was at last compelled
to decline all such engagements. He took an active part in politics,
holding that Christianity was not a series of dogmas, but a rule of
everyday life, and did not hesitate to attack the abuses of the day from
the pulpit. He was as facile with the pen as with the tongue, and his
publications were many and important. All in all, he was one of the most
influential and picturesque figures that has ever occupied an American
pulpit.

Lyman Beecher was at all times a doughty antagonist, and in 1826 he had
been called to Boston to take up the cudgels against the so-called
Unitarian movement which had developed there, under the lea