CHAPTER IX
A PILGRIMAGE
In 1832, when Harriet Beecher was twenty-one years old, a great change took place in her fortunes. She was transplanted from her New England environment into the more dynamic life of the great, growing west. But of course we must not expect to find the west of eighty years ago very much like the west of to-day. In 1832 the middle of Ohio seemed separated by vaster distances and was more difficult of access than any part of our country this side of the Pacific Coast seems to-day. This alteration in our point of view has come about because there never has been a time or place in the history of the world when the growth of a region has been so swift or so picturesque as in that part of our country that we now call the “middle west.”
Of those wonderful things that were to take place in the advancement of our country’s resources and welfare, the building of schools, churches, libraries and institutions of all kinds, and the development of national spirit, Harriet Beecher’s father seems to have had a prevision. He saw the great possibilities in the growing western country, and felt a burning desire to have a share in upbuilding the best things there. His feeling in regard to this great work is illustrated in one little page of his biography.
In order to impress the full meaning of prayer upon his mind and heart, Dr. Beecher would sometimes write it out in his diary; and in one of these prayers written at about this time he said: “If there be anything which by living I can do, or by dying I can do, to mitigate on earth the miseries of sin and to save my country and to save the world, then speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.”
About this time also he wrote a letter to Catherine, in which he said: “I have thought seriously of going over to Cincinnati, that London of the west, to spend the remnant of my days in that great conflict, and in consecrating all my children to God in that region who are willing to go. If we gain the west, all is safe; if we lose it, all is lost.... This is not with me a transient flash of feeling, but a feeling as if the great battle is to be fought in the valley of the Mississippi, and as if it may be the will of God that I shall be employed to arouse and help marshal the host for the conflict.... These are only my thoughts, but they are deep, and yet withal, my ways are committed to God.”[6]
It was in this spirit that he received a call to become the head of Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio. Catherine sympathized with her father in his enthusiasm for the intellectual and spiritual development of the west, and she decided to go with him into the new work. In fact he had said to her, “If I go, it is part of my plan that you go.”
Harriet had now to leave her many friends in Hartford and the relatives in Litchfield and Nut Plains. Her two brothers, William and Edward, were now established preachers, and Henry Ward and Charles were in college. The sister next older than herself, Mary, was married and was living in Hartford. To separate from all these loved ones and go out into a far distant land was very hard.
The journey west occupied many days and had something of the fascination of a wild adventure. They were going into a new land, into a great missionary field; their hearts were high and their courage was good. They chose the most expeditious way of going, which at that time was by way of New York City, Philadelphia, over the mountains to Wheeling, and then down the Ohio River to Cincinnati. This, we must remember, was before the through railroad lines to the west had been built.
There were many pauses by the way for the Beecher cavalcade, since the fame of Dr. Lyman Beecher as the greatest of the pulpit speakers of New England had been carried everywhere, and the people in the large towns through which they passed wished him to stay long enough at least to preach to them—a request that he was anxious to grant.
The first stopping place was New York. Here they paused long enough for Dr. Beecher to preach several times and to see many of his friends among the ministers and to make more. Harriet found life in that great city of New York, as she said, “too scattering.” She believed it would “kill her dead” to live long in the way they were living there. It seemed to her like a sort of “agreeable delirium”! She began to be thirsty for the waters of quietness. But her father, she said, was in his element—dipping into books, consulting authorities for his orations, going around here, there, and everywhere, begging, borrowing, and spoiling the Egyptians, delighted with past success and confident for the future.