Bacon was born in New Haven, Conn., a son of Leonard Bacon. He graduated at Yale in 1850, and was pastor of the First Church in Litchfield, Conn., of the New England Congregational Church in Brooklyn, N. Y., and of the First Church in Stamford, Conn. Subsequently he spent several years in Europe, chiefly in Geneva, as student, preacher, and writer; was pastor of the Park Congregational Church in Norwich, Conn.(1878-82), and later of other Congregational and Presbyterian churches.
Bacon edited Luther's Deutsche geistliche Lieder (New York, 1883), and wrote: A Life Worth Living: Life of Emily Bliss Gould (1878), Irenics and Polemics, with Sundry Essays in Church History (1898), History of American Christianity (1898), Young People's Societies (with C. A. Northrup, 1900) and The Congregationalists (1904)