Gideons International association would be to unite traveling salesmen for evangelism. In July, 1899, Nicholson, Hill, and Will J. Knights met at the YMCA in Janesville. Two of them continued with the distribution of the Bibles. Gideons began distributing free Bibles, the work they are chiefly known for, in 1908, when the first Bibles were placed in the rooms of the Superior Hotel in Superior, Montana. The organization describes its link to the story of Gideon: "Gideon was a man who was willing to do exactly what God wanted him to do, regardless of his own judgment as to the plans or
Beecher's Bibles throughout Kansas. The Beecher family was among the foremost abolitionist families in the country; Henry Ward's sister Harriet Beecher Stowe, had in 1852 written the anti-slavery classic "Uncle Tom's Cabin". Beecher's Bibles "Beecher's Bibles" was the name given to the breech loading Sharps rifles that were supplied to the anti-slavery combatants in Kansas. The name "Beecher's Bibles" in reference to Sharps carbines and rifles was inspired by the comments and activities of the abolitionist New England minister Henry Ward Beecher, of the New England Emigrant Aid Society, of whom it was written in a February 8, 1856, article in the