Product details
- ISBN 9780313298622
- Publication Date: 30 Dec 1996
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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This is the first full-length biography of the Reverend Thomas K. Beecher, a member of the most famous family of reformers in 19th-century America. Unlike his famous siblings, Thomas Beecher defended slavery on the eve of the Civil War and condemned the abolitionist, temperance, and women's rights movements. This account of his anti-reform views examines important, but relatively unexplored, questions in the historiography of antebellum reform: Why did some Northern evangelical Protestants oppose these movements? To what extent did their opposition represent a backlash against the legacy of American Revolutionary ideals? Glenn emphasizes how Thomas Beecher's life and work illustrate important changes in the Protestant ministry during the latter half of the 19th century. This is an insightful and thorough biography that will appeal to readers interested in American cultural and religious history.
MYRA C. GLENN is Associate Professor of American History at Elmira College in New York. She is the author of Campaigns Against Corporal Punishment: Prisoners, Sailors, Women and Children in Antebellum America (1984).
