Half plate studio daguerreotype of Lyman Beecher (1775-1863). Half leatherette case with floral motif.

An excellent daguerreotype portrait of minister Lyman Beecher, father to abolitionists Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) and Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887). A Presbyterian minister, he first gained attention with the publication of his sermon "The Remedy for Duelling" (1806) in response to the fatal duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr. He continued to publish frequently, mostly on the topics of temperance and advocation for women's education. After ministries in New York, Connecticut, and Boston, Beecher took a position at Lane Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio, intending to train ministers to "win the West" for Protestantism. Beecher himself was a notorious nativist and anti-Catholic.

The move to Cincinnati occured during rising tensions over slavery, and his new home was a nexus of the debate situated on the Mason-Dixon Line. Beecher himself was a colonizationist, supporting a program of assisting freedmen to emigrate to West Africa and establish a Black colony. In February 1834, students at Lane held a debate over colonization versus abolitionism for 18 consecutive nights. The students concluded in their debates that colonization was a hoax and should be replaced with abolitionism. The discourse gained national attention, and incited Kentucky slaveholders to cross the river and incite mob violence. After further discussion of slavery was banned, a group of 50 students left for the new Oberlin Collegiate Institute, now known as the Lane Rebels. The incident was an early key event in spreading abolitionism in the North.

Despite Lyman's preference for African American removal to Liberia, two of his children became strident abolitionists. Henry Ward Beecher was a Congregationalist minister who advocated tirelessly for the abolition of slavery and other civil rights causes. Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," revealed the realities of slavery and had a profound effect on the attitudes of Americans to slavery and African Americans.

Two other daguerreotype portraits of Beecher are known, a half plate portrait taken by Mathew Brady at the Library of Congress (DAG no. 149), and a whole plate profile portrait held at Harvard Art Museums, which appears to be from the same sitting as the Library of Congress image. The image offered here is from a different sitting, perhaps

A rare image of an important figure whose family played a significant role in shaping American history.

[Historic Photography, Early Photography, Daguerreotype, Ambrotype, Tintype, Cased Image, Union Cases, Slavery, Enslavement, Abolition, Emancipation, Uncle Tom's Cabin, African Americana, African Amerian History, Black History]