The State Rights Democrat

Mrs. Elizabeth Tilton on Sunday last
was visited in her home at 148 Heaven
street, Brooklyn, by a lady resident of
this city who was formerly an intimate
friend of her family. The visit was
made at Mrs. Tilton's request. She
said that she had but few visitors, and
no one of her old friends came to see
her except when they were sent for.
She lived quietly with her mother, Mrs.
Morse, and her two sons, Carroll and
Reid.

She spoke in the general terms of her confession
as her previous efforts to save
Mr. Beecher. She said that she had
entered bodily into the plan concocted
at the outbreak of the scandal to face
down the charges and to lie out of
them. She kept a lie on the end of
her tongue all the time, and for four
years she was ready at any moment to
speak if she thought it would help Mr.
Beecher. Since her confession she had
enjoyed greater peace of mind than
ever before. She had repented in sackcloth
and ashes, and she believed that
she had obtained Divine forgiveness
and that she had nothing now to fear
for the future. When Mrs. Tilton was
asked if her husband had influenced
her to make the confession, she said:
"Not at all. He did not know that I
contemplated such a thing, and had not
seen me to speak to me about it." Mrs.
Tilton added that she was persuaded
to go to hear Mr. Beecher preach by
Mrs. Thomas G. Shearman and others
who had lamented with her at being
deprived of his spiritual consolation.
She went one Sunday to Plymouth
Church heavily veiled and took a seat
in the gallery. No one recognized her.
and but two or three persons knew she
was there. Mr. Beecher was ignorant
of her presence. He preached his
powerful sermon on the downfall of
William C. Godman, the forger, and the
burden of his argument was that confession
was the only balm for a guilty
soul. Coming from his lips the advice
had a peculiar force, and the words
rang in her ears for days afterward.
She felt a gradual growth of a determination
to free her conscience of the
weight of falsehood, which before that
sermon was a burden, held lightly,
and reaching at length, as she described
as a "state of gradual exaltation,"
she felt that not to confess would be the
greatest act of her life. She was afraid,
she said, if the confession came upon
him unawares he would take his life. To
a lady member of Plymouth Church she
wrote in a wretched strain, saying: "Tangled
place in this world or a cell clear vines
to rest is in State Prison along side
William C. Gilman, and so I wish I
were there." Mrs. Tilton expressed
the greatest surprise at Mr. Beecher's
conduct since her confession. She had
felt all along that her lies were buoying
him up, and she dreaded the state
of despair into which she thought her
recantation would plunge him. "How
can he so defy God and man!" she
said. As to her future, Mrs. Tilton
said that she felt she had none this side
of the grave. Her health was impaired,
and her troubles made her physically
miserable. Her son Carroll, to whom
she was devoted, left the Polytechnic
Institute when her confession was published,
and remained home with her,
exhibiting the tenderest regard for her
in many ways, and seeking to protect
her from many annoying visitors. He
was induced to meet James Sherman,
brother to Thomas Sherman, and that
gentleman, who Mrs. Tilton thinks
acted as his brother's emissary, sought
to induce Carroll to abandon his home
on the ground that his mother had confessed
herself to be an outcast, and his
father was a dishonorable man. The
lad rejected the proposal. Again Mrs.
Tilton said, she had been annoyed by a
lecture agent who had insisted upon her
going into the field, guaranteeing her a
fortune of $100,000 if she would consent.
She wholly refused to entertain
any proposition of the kind. She
claimed that the subject of her reunion
with her husband had never been
broached between them, and asserted
distinctly that she was more averse to
living with him than he could possibly
be. She did not now feel that she
was entitled to resume her relations as
a wife to her husband and a mother to
her children. It having been suggested
to Mrs. Tilton that others had suffered
through her prolonged opposition
to her husband, and that she might
give corroborative evidence which
would partly vindicate them, she expressed
an aversion to entering into the
details of her sin, but intimated that
she intended to prepare a history of
her experience with Mr. Beecher, and
leave it to her husband's friends, to be
made use of as they pleased after her
death. The interview is described as
having been intensely sorrowful. Mrs.
Tilton was deeply in earnest in all that
she said; and the lady commenting upon
it, remarked with feeling: "No
one could hear Elizabeth Tilton tell her
story of woe and disgrace without believing
that she was speaking the
truth."