Title: Liberation from Man and God in Boston: Abner Kneeland's Free-Thought Campaign, 1830-1839
Abstract:radical free thought in America in the 1820s. The old debate about completing the Revolution was reopened. A contingent of refugee radicals from England, men such as Gilbert Vale (1788-1866), George H...radical free thought in America in the 1820s. The old debate about completing the Revolution was reopened. A contingent of refugee radicals from England, men such as Gilbert Vale (1788-1866), George Houston (?-1840), and George H. Evans (1805-1856), supplied fresh leadership and an aggressive polemical style to the revivified movement. Robert Dale Owen (1801-1877) and Frances Wright (1795-1852) put together a short-lived reformist coalition with the newly-formed Workingmen's Party, especially to press for universal free education. New York was the major center of activity, but after 1825 the new generation of militants celebrated Tom Paine's birthday as a political holiday in a surprising number of cities and towns throughout the nation. One remarkable phenomenon was the reemergence of surviving members of the previous generation of freethinkers. It became clear that throughout the country late eighteenth-century radicalism had been submerged and intimidated but not vanquished by the revivalism and general conservatism of the early 1800s.1 John Fellows (1760-1-844), republican bookseller and biographer of Elihu Palmer (1764-1806), contributed to the new radical journals. Judge Thomas Hertell (1771-1849), who had joined the Tammany Society in 1803 when Palmer was still a prominent figure, was a leader in the movement to abolish imprisonment for debt. TheRead More
Publication Year: 1980
Publication Date: 1980-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 72
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