He knew full well the strength of the forces arrayed against him. “An Abolitionist,” he said later in life, “was enough to put the mark of Cain upon any young man that arose in my early day, and until I was forty years of age it was punishable to preach on the subject of liberty. It was enough to expel a man from church communion if he insisted on praying in prayer meeting for the liberation of the slaves. If a man came to be known as an anti-slavery man it almost preluded bankruptcy in business.” Several times angry crowds gathered near Plymouth Church and threatened to attack it, but Beecher cared nothing for personal danger. When the irrepressible conflict between liberty and slavery was reddening the plains of bleeding Kansas, he took up a collection in the church to buy rifles for the free soilers. Some of them were sent through the enemy’s lines in Missouri in boxes marked “bibles,” and though this was done without his knowledge, “Beecher’s bibles” became a proverbial synonym for improved firearms. When the flame first kindled in Kansas spread to blaze forth into the war of the Rebellion, none realized more fully than he the stern duties of the hour. Beecher was away from Brooklyn when the news came that Fort Sumter had been attacked. On reaching home he was greeted by his eldest son with the question, “Father, may I enlist?” “If you don’t I’ll disown you,” he replied. He threw himself heart and soul into the work of arming for the defense of the Union. Plymouth Church became a rendezvous for regiments passing to the front, and its pastor’s house at 124 Columbia Heights a veritable storehouse for military goods. He was largely instrumental in raising and equipping three regiments for the Union army. The third of these, which he organized almost unaided, was the Long Island Volunteer regiment, afterward enrolled as the Sixty Seventh New York. In this his son, Henry Barton Beecher, held a lieutenant’s commission. Indeed, Beecher’s enthusiasm outran the government’s unreadiness. Lack of necessary funds compelled the army authorities to delay the acceptance of his volunteers; and in the summer of 1862, after McClellan had made his fruitless attempt to reach Richmond, Beecher gave voice to his impatience at what seemed to him the inactivity of the authorities at Washington. He hated half measures, and believed that the nearest way to peace lay through a vigorous prosecution of the war.