Leonard Woolsey Bacon - Controversial Statements

Controversial Statements

Bacon evidently enjoyed getting involved in contemporary issues, such as divorce, temperance, Sunday rest, and the public conduct of officers of the United States armed forces. In many of these matters, however, he displayed a reluctance to impose religious views. When, in 1880, he wrote an open letter to The New York Times complaining about a steamboat company that evaded Connecticut's blue laws, he made it clear that laws mandating Sunday as a mandatory day of rest were not to be construed as endorsing any particular religion or discriminating "in favor of church-going".

Bacon appeared to have had a habit of causing controversy. In 1884, for instance, he felt compelled, in another letter to the Times, to state that contrary to reports he was not in favor of "a uniform, universal divorce law throughout the States". In 1887, when he was the pastor of the Independent Presbyterian Church in Savannah, he caused a stir by publicly declaring that he favored mixed (black and white) schools and that he would not mind his daughter being seen walking with an African American or even marrying one.

In 1898, as pastor in Litchfield, Connecticut, he wrote a letter published in The New York Times chastising Captain Robley Dunglison Evans (known as "Fighting Bob"), later admiral in the United States Navy, for boasting and profanity. Evidently this was part of a feud of sorts; the Chicago Daily Tribune reported on the news saying that Bacon "again fell foul" of "Fighting Bob" with his "sarcastic letter".