Henry Ward Beecher
George Augustus Baker Jr.
American Art
Henry Ward Beecher, the theatrical Congregationalist pastor of Brooklyn's Plymouth Church and a powerful antislavery orator (and the brother of Hamet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin), has been criticized by modern historians for convincing a wide national audience that abolition should be
achieved gradually through the Christianization of African-American slaves, Despite his avoidance of radical abolitionist measures, his oratory nevertheless remained a powerful wartime force. He offered the following indictment of the complicity of New Yorkers in the practice of slavery: "We clothe ourselves with the cotton which the slave tills . . . It is you and I that wear the shirt and consume the luxury. Our looms and our factories are largely built on the slave's bones. We live on his labor."
MEDIUM
Oil on canvas
DATES
1874
SIGNATURE
Signed lower left: "G.A. Baker / 1874"
ACCESSION NUMBER
1999.54.1
CREDIT LINE
Gift of the American Art Council
MUSEUM LOCATION
This item is not on view
CAPTION
George Augustus Baker Jr. (American, 1821â1880). Henry Ward Beecher, 1874. Oil on canvas, 30 1/8 x 25 1/8in. (76.5 x 63.8cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the American Art Council, 1999.54.1 (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 1999.54.1_reference_SL1.jpg)
IMAGE
framed, 1999.54.1_reference_SL1.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph
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