Background
Leonard Bacon was born on February 19, 1802, in Detroit, Michigan.
Leonard Bacon was born on February 19, 1802, in Detroit, Michigan.
Leonard Bacon prepared for college at grammar school in Hartford, Connecticut; he graduated from Yale College in 1820 and from the Andover Theological Seminary in 1823.
On September 28, 1824, he was ordained as an evangelist by the Hartford North Consociation; it being his intention to go as a missionary to the Western frontier. The next day brought a letter from the ecclesiastical society of the First Church of New Haven, asking him to supply their vacant pulpit. After preaching fourteen sermons he was called by the society with a vote of 68 to 20 to become its minister at a salary of $1, 000. He was installed over this noted church on Mar. 9, 1825, when he was twenty-three years of age.
The young man was rather appalled by the weight of his responsibilities. In the pews before him sat Noah Webster, the lexicographer, James Hillhouse, senator, Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton-gin, and many of the faculty of the college. The congregation was accustomed to a high order of ministerial ability. His immediate predecessor was Nathaniel W. Taylor, whose sermons were an intellectual event; before him, Moses Stuart, distinguished for scholarship and effective speech, had been the pastor.
Evidently Leonard Bacon did not at first fulfil the hopes of his parish, for after some months a committee waited upon him, intimating that his sermons were not worthy of the high place he held. His answer was, "Gentlemen, they shall be made worthy. " With the years he grew in power and gained hold upon the affections of his people. They were proud of his unusual influence in the city, of the commanding position he occupied in Congregational councils, and of the reputation which extended beyond the boundaries of the denomination. He was the sole and active pastor of the First Church for forty-one years, and pastor emeritus until his death. When it became known that he was leaving the active ministry the corporation of Yale offered him a chair in the Divinity School, and he was acting professor of revealed theology from 1866 to 1871, when he became lecturer on church polity and American church history, holding this position until his death in his eightieth year.
On going to New Haven he organized a society for the improvement of the colored people of that city. In 1846 he published a volume entitled Slavery Discussed in Occasional Essays. This fell into the hands of a comparatively unknown lawyer in Illinois, Abraham Lincoln. A statement in the preface made a profound impression on the future emancipator: "If that form of government, that system of social order is not wrong, - if those laws of the southern states, by virtue of which slavery exists there and is what it is, are not wrong, nothing is wrong. " The sentiment reappeared in Lincoln's famous declaration, "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. "
In his own theological views, Bacon was broad-minded and an advocate of liberal orthodoxy. In all matters concerning the welfare of his community or the nation, moreover, he took a deep and constant interest, and was particularly identified with the temperance and anti-slavery movements, his services to the latter constituting perhaps the most important work of his life.
He also was in sympathy with the system of thought known as the "New Haven School, " yet he held his convictions in a spirit of abundant charity.
He contributed greatly to the anti-slavery movement.
Bacon was not primarily a great preacher. Although his sermons were always solid and dignified, they could be on ordinary Sabbaths very dull. But no occasion of unusual significance found him unequal to his task.
His style in writing was the clear expression of a practical understanding, glowing with moral earnestness. At times it was made graceful by phrases of rare felicity.
He was twice married: in July 1825, to Lucy Johnson of Johnstown, New York, and in June 1847, to Catherine Terry of Hartford, Connecticut Fourteen children were born to him.