Theodore Tilton at Ohio Wesleyan University, and Bid Him Into Phi Kappa Psi
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Appendix Zeta2: The Pembroke Intellectual Line Connecting brothers of Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity at Cornell University, tracing their fraternal Big Brother/Little Brother line to tri-Founder John Andrew Rea (1869) John Andrew Rea, tri-founder of Phi Kappa Psi at Cornell . . befriended Theodore Tilton at Ohio Wesleyan University, and bid him into Phi Kappa Psi . . Ted was mentored by Henry Ward . John Clapp studied under John Beecher, who also seduced Leverett who studied under his wife . Urian Oakes. . Henry Ward Beecher followed in . Oakes, in turn was protected by the tradition of Lyman Beecher . Colonel Richard Norton . Lyman Beecher studied under Timothy . Norton was a friend of Oliver Dwight IV . Cromwell . Dwight studied under Naphtali . The Lord Protector was brought over to Daggett . Puritanism by Swithun Butterfield . . who studied under . and Butterfield was patronized by the Thomas Clapp . Earl of Pembroke’s spouse . Below we present short biographies of the Pembroke intellectual line of the Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity at Cornell University. “Who defends the House.” We begin with John “Jack” Andrew Rea, Cornell Class of 1869 and one of the three founders of the New York Alpha Chapter of the Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity at Cornell University, who bid brother Theodore Tilton: Theodore Tilton (Oct. 2, 1835 – May 25, 1907) was a American newspaper editor, poet and abolitionist. He was born in New York City to Silas Tilton and Eusebia Tilton (same surname). In October of 1855 he married Elizabeth Richards. From 1860 to 1871, he was the assistant of Henry Ward Beecher; however, in 1874, he filed criminal charges against Beecher for "criminal intimacy" with his (Tilton's) wife. Brother Tilton was educated in the public schools of New York City and graduated from New York College. He became a member of City College of New York Plymouth Church, at Brooklyn, New (CCNY) York. Ted took down the first verbatim stenographic reports of Henry Ward Beecher's sermons ever published. Under the inspiration of his employer’s sister, Harriet (Beecher) Stowe, he allied himself with the Abolitionists at an early date in espousing the cause of freedom for enslaved African-Americans. He was an intimate among the Pantheon of American defenders of liberty, at time when the Republic was endangered by the rule of Oligarchs. His mentors and friends included Garrison, Phillips, fellow fraternity brother Charles Sumner, Greeley. Ben Wade, Frederick Douglass, Lucretia Mott, Whittier and others. Brother Tilton escorted John Brown's martyred body, which was secretly carried from Philadelphia to New York. John Brown's wife was at Ted’s house when the message from Citizen Brown told her to tend to her safety, and to not come to his prison cell at Harper’s Ferry. Ted was also with Henry Ward Beecher at Fort Sumter in 1865 when the American flag was unfurled over the U.S. Army facility attacked by the insurrectionists in 1861, killing American soliders. He was editor of the New York Independent from 1856 to 1871, succeeding Henry Ward Beecher as Editor-in-Chief about the year 1861. During this time, he journeyed to Washington to watch the United States Congress in deliberation, sitting next to future fraternity brother Carl Schurz, editor of the St. Louis Republican. Their headquarters for these sorties into Washington politics was “newspaper Row” on 14th Street between Pennsylvania and F Street. Ted 2 later founded the Golden Age in 1871, which he edited for nearly four years. Next to Henry Ward Beecher he was one of the most popular men upon the American lecture platform. The young New York Alpha’s choice of brother Tilton and Schurz as exemplars of the new Cornell Chapter of Phi Kappa Psi came as Tilton and Schurz were peaking in their national prominence. They were both tapped into New York Alpha’s Class of 1870. By 1872, Ted and Carl were at the center of Horace Greeley’s bid for the American Presidency, a race in which Andrew Dickson White was considered, briefly, for the Vice Presidential ticket. Greeley’s untimely demise was lampooned by cartoonist, Thomas Nast, and both Carl and Ted were featured in the nationally syndicated feature: The day after Whitelaw Reid’s Tribune editorial prompted Nast to add “We Are on the Home Stretch!” to his “Tidal Wave” cartoon title, a letter appeared in The New York Times (October 10, 1872), which provided Nast with the germ of another cartoon: “The New- York Tribune of this morning says, ‘We are on the home stretch, and confident of success.’ True! H. G. is going home to Chappaqua [New York], and has every prospect of reaching there.” The notion developed into perhaps the most controversial image of the 1872 election, “We Are on the Home Stretch.” When published (October 23, dated November 2) two weeks before the landslide results of the presidential election were reported, it must have seemed like a deliciously forthright act of political prophecy. Morbid images of political defeat had been drawn before and would be in the future. Building on Reid’s brazen editorial in the face of dismal portents for the Greeley campaign, “The Home Stretch” would have seemed like an appropriate response. Nast could not have foreseen that Greeley’s wife would die of consumption on October 30, a week after the cartoon hit the newsstands, or that the losing candidate himself would die on November 29, less than a month after the election. Earlier in October, upon hearing of Mary Greeley’s illness, Nast withheld a cartoon showing her candidate-husband by the open grave of Democracy. The artist reasoned “that its idea and purpose were likely to be misconstrued.” On the day of the woman’s death, the New York Daily Herald, obviously unaware of her demise offered its enthusiastic endorsement of Nast’s “Home Stretch” cartoon, calling it “one of the best hits of the campaign… Go and get the paper, if you haven’t seen it, and laugh your fill for once.” In it, candidate Greeley is depicted arriving at his Chappaqua residence, carried on a stretcher by stiff and stately Whitelaw Reid 3 (in front), managing editor of the New York Tribune, and Senator Reuben Fenton of New York (in the back back), an early supporter of Greeley. A boy on the left is trying to return the Gratz Brown tag, which has fallen off Greeley’s coat. Beyond the front gate, the mourning party includes the Reverend Theodore Tilton, weeping, and Senator Carl Schurz, who tips his hat in respect. To the center-rear, the U.S. flag atop “The Greeley Ho[use]” (or “Ho[tel]”) flies upside down to signal distress. The overall design purports to represent the Tribune front page on the day after the election, including a burlesque of the newspaper’s masthead. Brother Theodore Tilton was described as "young, handsome, religious, intense," by historian William Harlan Hale The talented Tilton edited a New York daily, called The Independent, dedicated to emancipation of African-Americans held in slavery. Andrew A. Freeman wrote in Mr. Lincoln Goes to New York that Mr. Lincoln met the Independent's owner and publisher, Henry Bowen, when then candidate Lincoln came to New York to deliver his address at Cooper Union in February 1860. While Mrs. Lincoln was the subscriber, her husband was the reader. Beecher was a regular contributor to the Independent, as was his sister, Harrier Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Nathaniel Hawthorne and many other notable Americans contributed to the paper. Its editorial policy was one of strong opposition to slavery which it thought best represented by Seward, not Lincoln. Brother Tilton's commitment to abolition ran deep. What was at first, perhaps, only the sympathy of a sensitive soul, abhorring oppression, injustice, and wrong, soon came to be one of the deepest convictions of brother Tilton’s nature; and it is not surprising that though his friends were desirous that he should qualify himself to enter the ministry in the Congregational church, Ted preferred the career of a journalist. When businessmen Bowen bought the Independent in 1860, he named his pastor, Henry Ward Beecher, as editor and his fellow parishioner, Theodore Tilton, as editorial assistant. Prior to that purchase, Beecher had already been the author of a "Star Papers" column in the weekly newspaper. Tilton had worked on The Churchman and the New York Observer. Pastor Beecher first knew Theodore Tilton as a clever and attractive young man who reported his sermons. Even before the latter became his editorial assistant Beecher had become fond of him and interested in his future. The two men became devoted colleagues and friends. There were also practical reasons why Henry Ward [Beecher] found young Tilton so valuable a friend. Tilton was well known in newspaper offices, and no one better than Henry Ward Beecher knew the importance of publicity. What with his auctions of slaves, 4 his 'Beecher's Bibles,' his acrimonious controversies with a score of public men (including the New York City Council for serving champagne at a dinner), and his relationship to the author of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' Henry Ward Beecher had not done so badly in keeping in the public eye. But he had reached the point where he really needed a first-class publicity man who could put his heart into the job. Phi Kappa Psi’s Theodore Tilton was precisely that man. The devotion ran deep. Bowen, Beecher and Tilton were known as "the Trinity of Plymouth Church. The church itself was a significant national force between 1849 and the outbreak of the Civil War. Henry Ward Beecher, noted abolitionist and minister of Plymouth Church, made the church a center of antislavery sentiment.