RUNNING HEAD: Paper #1

Dolores Daly
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Henry Ward Beecher & Sally Maria Diggs
Molloy College















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As we ambled along the tree-lined streets of the very much gentrified neighborhood of
Brooklyn Heights, we came upon Plymouth Church located at 57 Orange Street between Henry
and Hicks Streets. When the church was founded in 1847 by 21 transplanted New Englanders
the church was the third Congregationalist church to be organized in Brooklyn then a separate
city from New York (Plymouth Church, 2014). Its first pastor was Henry Ward Beecher.
A little later that afternoon we entered the building of the Brooklyn Historical Society where
on display was a piece of artwork that depicts a large terracotta bust of Sally Maria Diggs,
nicknamed "Pinky" because of her pale skin. Miss Diggs, who in 1860, at the age of nine years
old, was the first of a series of pale-skinned female slaves whom the Reverend Henry Ward
Beecher "auctioned" to his congregation to buy their freedom. Sally Maria Diggs is framed by a
wreath of poison ivy. The artwork on display at the Brooklyn Historical Society was inspired by
the giant terracotta portraits of European cultural heroes surrounded by American plants that
ornament the Society's 1880 building. The building's iconography pairs Michelangelo with
tobacco and Beethoven with blackberries (Brooklyn Public Library, 2004). The Historical
Society's archive also contains the bill of sale for Sally Maria Diggs.
This story was intriguing. Was the good reverend simply an altruistic individual or could he
have had ulterior motives when arranging these auctions. One could also speculate that pale-
skinned female slaves obtained their pale skin because they were the offspring of white masters
that had impregnated their black, female slaves. While unable to uncover concrete evidence, the
story is quite interesting and rich in history, artwork and even architecture.
Plymouth Church was once the destination of Beecher Boats, nineteenth-century ferries
filled with New Yorkers coming for a Sunday-morning dose of the abolitionist firebrand Henry
Ward Beecher who was said to have preached theatrically at his Plymouth Church. Brooklyn
Heights is an exquisite area (the neighborhood, considered New York City's first suburb, was
landmarked in 1965) where 619 buildings date from before the Civil War according to the
Plymouth Church website.
A heroic likeness of Beecher still appears in the church's courtyard. The statue of Beecher
was created by sculptor Gutzon Borglum, noted for his work on Mount Rushmore. In front of the
Romanesque castle of the nearby Brooklyn post office, a second life-size Beecher faces Borough
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Hall, a newly freed woman at his feet. Famed Abolitionist Beecher's church, which contains a
number of beautiful Tiffany windows, was for decades not only the moral and spiritual center of
Brooklyn and New York but of all America (Brooklyn Public Library, 2004).
The original mock auction took place in 1860. Some 67 years later (in 1927) the
congregation of Plymouth Church saw its then present pastor share his pulpit with an African
American woman. The congregation heard him recall that far off day when the North was
shocked with a concrete illustration of how the institution of slavery functioned. As he talked,
the woman who stood beside him saw, perhaps, not men and women of 1927 but men and
women of 1860. She heard, perhaps, not the voice of the present pastor but the voice of Henry
Ward Beecher. For it was she who had long ago had been "sold" in that same pulpit! After 67
years "Pinky" had come back to Plymouth Church! This was arranged in order to aid in
celebrating the 80th anniversary of Henry Ward Beecher's first sermon at Plymouth Church
(Time, 1927).
"Pinky" was now named Mrs. James Hunt and resided in Washington, D. C. Sally Maria
Diggs had been born a slave in 1851 in Port Tobacco, Charles County, Md. When she was seven
years old her mother and two brothers were sold to a Virginia plantation; she never saw them
again. Soon after, she and her grandmother were sold to a slave trader in Baltimore. Later her
grandmother purchased her own freedom, but, lacked money to do as much for "Pinky." But in
1860 the grandmother thought of appealing to Henry Ward Beecher, already famed as an anti-
slavery speaker. Learning that "Pinky's" owner valued her at $900, Beecher staged the "auction,"
raised $1,100 in excess of the amount needed. One of the members of the congregation, Author
Rose Terry, put a ring in the collection plate. Always dramatic, Henry Ward Beecher slipped the
ring on Pinky's finger, cried: "With this ring I do wed thee to freedom (Time, 1927).
The painter Eastman Johnson painted a portrait after seeing Pinky sitting on the ground
gazing at her Freedom Ring. When Eastman was asked to paint the young girl, he was
presented with a moral dilemma. Eastman had been raised in Maine as a northerner, and his
sister had married into the family of an abolitionist preacher. On the other hand, Johson had
recently lived in Washington, D.C. with his father. His father, after his first wife died, re-married
a widow who owned 3 slaves. Thus, the Johnson family was a house divided. By painting the
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ransomed slave girl and later exhibiting the portrait publicly, Eastman made both a choice and a
political statement (American Medical Association, 2003).
Meanwhile, Sally went to live with a Brooklyn family, was re-named Rose Ward and she
dropped from the public eye. Later she went to Washington, graduated from Howard University
a famous college for African Americans. In 1882 she married James Hunt, an African American
lawyer. The identity of "Pinky" and Mrs. Hunt was established by Dr. J. Stanley Durkee, then
President of Howard University, pastor of Plymouth Church in . Hearing that Beecher's "Pinky"
was living in Washington, Dr. Durkee sought out Mrs. Hunt. He found that she remembered
details of her life in Brooklyn (Time 1927). She also had in her possession a copy of the bill of
sale executed in 1860. The same bill of sale that is now on display at the Brooklyn Historical
Society. Dr. Durkee brought Mrs. Hunt back to the church for a special celebration, which must
have been quite an emotional event not only for the former Pinky, but for all who attended.
Beechers success was actually surprising to his family. Born in 1813, no one predicted
success for Henry Ward Beecher. He seemed destined to be overshadowed by his brilliant
siblingsespecially his sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote the bestselling book entitled
Uncle Toms Cabin. But, when Henry was urged to follow his fathers footsteps and enter into
the ministry, the charismatic Beecher found international fame by shedding his fathers Old
Testament fashion and style and instead started preaching a New Testamentbased gospel of
unconditional love and healing. He became one of the founding fathers of modern American
Christianity. By the 1850s, his spectacular sermons at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn Heights had
made him New Yorks number one tourist attraction (Applegate, 2006).
Beecher inserted himself into nearly every important drama of the era, not only antislavery.
He was also involved in womens suffrage movements, the rise of the entertainment industry and
tabloid press, and controversies ranging from Darwinian evolution to presidential politics. He
was notorious for his irreverent humor. Beecher also shipped riflesnicknamed Beechers
Biblesto the antislavery resistance fighters in Kansas. Thinkers such as Emerson, Thoreau,
Whitman, and Twain befriended and sometimes even parodied Beecher (Applegate, 2006).
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And then it all fell apart. In 1872 Beecher was accused by feminist firebrand Victoria
Woodhull of adultery with one of his most pious parishioners. Suddenly the Gospel of Love
seemed to rationalize a life of lust. The cuckolded husband brought charges of criminal
conversation in a salacious trial that became the most widely covered event of the century,
garnering more newspaper headlines than the entire Civil War. Beecher survived, but his
reputation and his causesfrom womens rights to progressive evangelicalismsuffered
devastating setbacks that echo to this day (Applegate, 2006).


















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References
American Medical Association, (2003) Eastman Johnson Freedom Ring, 1860. Retrieved
September 15, 2014 from
http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=481216
Applegate, D. (2006). The Most Famous Man in America. New York, NY: Doubleday
Again, Pinky (1927) Time Magazine
Brooklyn Public Library. (2004) Pinky Looking at her Freedom Ring. Retrieved September
15, 2014 from
http://www.bklynlibrary.org/civilwar/cwdoc013.html