A Trip to Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn NY (Part 1)

During my recent trip to New York City, while visiting Col. Frank McNulty and his family, who I have written about in Knoxville's Million Dollar Fire, I just had to stop in and see a couple folks that I teach about in my American history survey courses. 

In Part 1, I will be sharing some pictures that I took of the final resting places of Henry Ward Beecher and Horace Greeley. But first, a little history on the place that they call home--Green-Wood Cemetery.

Founded in 1838 and now a National Historic Landmark, Green-Wood was one of the first rural cemeteries in America. By the early 1860s, it had earned an international reputation for its magnificent beauty and became the prestigious place to be buried in New York, attracting 500,000 visitors a year, second only to Niagara Falls as the nation’s greatest tourist attraction. Crowds flocked there to enjoy family outings, carriage rides, and sculpture viewing in the finest of first generation American landscapes. Green-Wood’s popularity helped inspire the creation of public parks, including New York City’s Central and Prospect Parks.

Green-Wood is 478 acres of hills (lots of hills!), valleys, glacial ponds and paths, throughout which exists one of the largest outdoor collections of 19th- and 20th-century statuary and mausoleums. Four seasons of beauty from century-and-a-half-old trees offer a peaceful oasis to visitors, as well as its 560,000 permanent residents. A magnet for history buffs and bird watchers, Green-Wood is a Revolutionary War historic site (the Battle of Long Island was fought in 1776 across what is now its grounds), a designated site on the Civil War Discovery Trail and a registered member of the Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary System.
  

The Statue of Liberty can be seen from the gates of Green-Wood at 25th Street & 5th Avenue. 

Before the trees bloom, Greenwood's west side includes some beautiful views of Manhattan.

 

The highest portion of the cemetery is also the highest elevation of Brooklyn. It also the point that honors New Yorkers in the military. The monument on top of the hill honors New York's Union soldiers.

First up, Henry Ward Beecher, whose recent biographer labeled him "the most famous man in America." Beecher, a brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, found fame when he shed his father's Old Testament style fire-and-brimstone theology for a New Testament based gospel of unconditional love and healing. By the 1850s, his sermons in Brooklyn Heights became a large draw and he soon immersed himself into nearly every important drama of the era, most notably the anti-slavery and women's suffrage movements.

 

Second, is Horace Greeley, who possibly sported the coolest neck-beard of the 19th century. Founder and editor of the New York Tribune, Greeley was an eccentric social reformer, an ardent opponent of slavery, and erratic political strategist and failed presidential aspirant. Greeley continuously pressed Lincoln to emancipate the South's four million slaves during the Civil War. After a powerful mid-August 1862 editorial, Lincoln responded in an August 22 letter (perhaps the most significant letter written during by Lincoln as president) addressed to Greeley that was intended to both prepare and shape northern public opinion as he waited patiently for a Union victory to announce what only a few insiders knew at the time--that the president intended to use his broad executive powers as Commander-in-Chief to emancipate all slaves behind Confederate lines.