Lyman Beecher

Lyman Beecher (1775-1863) was born in New Haven, Connecticut, on October 12, 1775. He was a Presbyterian minister, most known for his role in the Second Great Awakening. Having studied theology at Yale and preached at various congregations, he eventually became President of the Lane Theological Seminary in 1832. Beecher was considered a controversial figure at the Seminary due to his support for temperance and the abolition of slavery. The vast bulk of Beecher’s writings are on theological matters, as opposed to political economy. His only known economic tract was entitled “Means of National Prosperity,” which was originally delivered as a sermon to his congregation at the First Church of Christ in Litchfield, Connecticut. The sermon would be reproduced in the fifth edition of Mathew Carey’s Addresses of the Philadelphia Society for the Promotion of National Industry. It was selected in place of several other essays which Carey originally intended to include in the work. Writing on the matter, Mathew Carey declared Beecher’s tract to be “very far superior to those essays, being much more argumentative and convincing.” Lyman Beecher would die on January 10, 1863, at the age of eighty-seven.