A great audience assembled, and men were ready with revolvers to use them if the mob molested the speaker.
Mr. Beecher would not ride in omnibuses where colored persons were refused. He invited Frederick Douglass to sit beside him on the platform in Plymouth Church—he would not have a pulpit, which half hid the pastor from his people. Mr. Beecher's sister, Mrs. Stowe, had published "Uncle Tom's Cabin" as a serial in 1851, and in book form in 1852, which electrified the North and infuriated the South.
When Stephen A. Douglas proposed the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, which was carried in 1854, Kansas became a battle-ground between slaveholders and lovers of freedom. Houses were burned, men were murdered, and all the horrors of civil war continued for four years. Mr. Beecher's voice and pen were never silent: "Peace in Kansas," he said, "means peace everywhere; war there will be war all over the land.... What is done must be done quickly. Funds must be freely given, arms must be had, even if bought at the price mentioned by our Saviour: 'He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one.'"
He took up collections in Plymouth Church and elsewhere for Sharp's rifles, and for Bibles as well. Some of the rifles were sent, it is said, in boxes marked Bibles, though without his knowledge, and were therefore called "Beecher's Bibles."
When John C. Frémont was the first nominee of the Republicans in 1856, Mr. Beecher, with the hearty concurrence of his church, spoke for the party two or three times a week all through the State of New York. An amusing incident occurred at Rome, N.Y., which illustrated Beecher's graphic utterance.
He said: "My friends, in this great campaign there are but two sides, and we must range ourselves upon one side or the other; there is no middle ground for any of us. On the one side is Buchanan, with the black shield of slavery, and upon the other is Frémont, with the white banner of liberty, and with one or the other of these two you must take your stand; but who is this that I see crawling under the fence? Oh, that is Millard Fillmore." Immediately a little fellow in the front row jumped up, looked under the chairs, and shouted out, "Where is he?" The people laughed so heartily, that the lad got up and left the hall.
Mr. Beecher was always quick at repartee, either in conversation or address. Before an audience of ten thousand people in Chicago, he was lecturing on "Communism," and said, "The voice of the people is the voice of God." A man in the gallery shouted, "The voice of the people is the voice of a fool." Beecher replied simply, "I said the voice of the people, not the voice of one man."
In one of his anti-slavery speeches he said "that it was a penitentiary offence to teach a slave." A man in the corner of the gallery exclaimed, "It's a lie!"
"Well," said Beecher, "I shall not argue with the gentleman in the corner, as doubtless he has been there and ought to know."
Very stirring scenes were witnessed in these times. Two Edmonson sisters, of light complexion, whose mother was born a slave, but whose father was free, had been brought up in Washington. The former owner of the mother, finding that they were uncommonly attractive, determined to send them to New Orleans to be sold in the slave market. The girls tried to escape, but could not.