Mr. Beecher was so devoted to the West, and so identified with it, that he never would have left what he was wont to call his bishopric of Indiana, for the older and more set and conventional circles of New York, had not the health of his family made a removal indispensable.
He was invited to Brooklyn to take charge of a new enterprise. Plymouth Church was founded by some fifteen or twenty gentlemen as a new Congregational Church.
Mr. Beecher was to be installed there and had to pass an examination before Eastern theologians. He had been, as has been shown, not a bit of a controversialist, and he had been so busy preaching Christ, and trying to save sinners, that he was rather rusty in all the little ins and outs of New England theology. On many points he was forced to answer "I do not know," and sometimes his answer had a whimsical turn that drew a smile.
"Do you believe in the Perseverance of the Saints?" said good Dr. Humphrey, his college father, who thought his son was not doing himself much credit in the theological line, and hoped to put a question where he could not fail to answer right.
"I was brought up to believe that doctrine," said Mr. Beecher, "and I did believe it till I went out West and saw how Eastern Christians lived when they went out there. I confess since then I have had my doubts."
On the whole, as Mr. Beecher's record was clear from the testimony of Western brothers, with whom he had been in labors more abundant, it was thought not on the whole dangerous to let him into the eastern sheep-fold.
Mr. Beecher immediately announced in Plymouth Pulpit the same principles that he had in Indianapolis; namely, his determination to preach Christ among them not as an absolute system of doctrines, not as a by-gone historical personage, but as the living Lord and God, and to bring all the ways and usages of society to the test of his standards. He announced to all whom it might concern, that he considered temperance and anti-slavery a part of the gospel of Christ, and should preach them accordingly.
During the battle inaugurated by Mr. Webster's speech of the 7th of March, and the fugitive slave law, Mr. Beecher labored with his whole soul.
There was, as people will remember, a great Union Saving Committee at Castle Garden, New York, and black lists were made out of merchants, who, if they did not give up their principles, were to be crushed financially, and many were afraid. Mr. Beecher preached, and visited from store to store, holding up the courage of his people to resistance. The advertisement of Bowen & McNamee that they would "sell their silks but not their principles," went all through the country, and as every heroic sentiment does, brought back an instant response.
At this time Mr. Beecher carried this subject through New England and New York, in Lyceum lectures, and began a course of articles in the Independent, under the star signature, which were widely read. It is said that when Calhoun was in his last illness, his secretary was reading him extracts from Northern papers, and among others, one of Mr. Beecher's, entitled "Shall we compromise?" in which he fully set forth the utter impossibility of reconciling the two conflicting powers of freedom and slavery.