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Unbounded Christianity: Defining Religion for Oneself in Nineteenth-Century New England Through Adin Ballou

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Unbounded Christianity: Defining Religion for Oneself in Nineteenth-Century New England Through Adin Ballou Unbounded Christianity: Defining Religion for Oneself in Nineteenth-Century New England through Adin Ballou Dissertation zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades Dr. phil. Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg Neuphilologische Fakultät Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCA) 6 Juni 2016 Erstgutachter: Prof. Dr. Jan Stievermann Zweitgutachter: Prof. Dr. Manfred Berg Eingereicht von Bryce Taylor, M.A. Plöck 50 69117 Heidelberg 06221-6377765 [email protected] Matrikelnr.: 3025839 To my wife, children, mother and father TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………………………………2 INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………………3 CHAPTER 1: FINDING PURPOSE, FINDING AUTHORITY……………………………………...11 1.1 PROVIDENCE………………………………………………………………………………..12 1.2 THE CHRISTIAN CONNEXION…………………………………………………………….18 1.3 COMMON SENSE, THE BIBLE, & BALLOU VS. BALLOU……………………………...30 CHAPTER 2: UNSTABLE BELIEF: THE CONSEQUENCES AND TRIUMPHS OF DISESTABLISHMENT AND THE FREE PRESS…………………………………………………...40 2.1 FROM ANNIHILATION TO SALVATION…………………………………………………43 2.2 UNIVERSAL SCHISM……………………………………………………………………….52 2.3 FAILURE IN NEW YORK…………………………………………………………………...58 2.4 BECOMING A RESTORATIONIST………………………………………………………...63 2.5 A NEW DENOMINATION – A NEW SOCIETY…………………………………………...67 CHAPTER 3: PERSONAL AND SOCIETAL REDEMPTION………………………………………72 3.1 BALLOU’S TEMPERANCE ………………………………………………………………...75 3.2 BALLOU’S ABOLITIONISM………………………………………………………………..87 3.3 ABOLITIONIST SCHISM……………………………………………………………………96 3.4. THE RAID ON HARPER’S FERRY……………………………………………………….105 CHAPTER 4: FLEEING THE NATION, FINDING UTOPIA……………………………………...110 4.1 CONSTITUTIONALISM……………………………………………………………………115 4.2 THE BEGINNINGS………………………………………………………………………....118 4.3 SURVIVAL AND DIVINE APPROVAL…………………………………………………..122 4.4 IN THE WORLD BUT NOT OF THE WORLD……………………………………………127 4.5 SEARCHING BEYOND THE VEIL………………………………………………………..133 4.6 THE END OF PRACTICAL CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM…………………………………..146 CHAPTER 5: THE NON-RESISTANT……………………………………………………………...156 5.1 FROM PATRIOT TO PRINCIPLE………………………………………………………….157 5.2 THE NEW ENGLAND NON-RESISTANCE SOCIETY…………………………………..162 5.3 BALLOU’S CHRISTIAN NON-RESISTANCE……………………………………………171 5.4 NON-RESISTANCE AND THE CIVIL WAR……………………………………………...180 5.5 A GLIMMER OF HOPE IN HOPEDALE – BALLOU AND LEO TOLSTOY……………185 CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………………………….191 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………………………….197 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To those who have facilitated and accompanied me on this journey through nineteenth-century New England, I cannot thank you enough. First and foremost, my unending gratitude goes to my dissertation supervisor, Prof. Dr. Jan Stievermann, for his support, patience, encouragement, and timely advice throughout each step of the research and writing process. This dissertation could not have been completed without his expertise and edits. I also would like to thank Prof. Dr. Manfred Berg for his willingness to take on my project despite his busy schedule. My deep appreciation also goes to Dr. Peter and Lynn Hughes. They were kind enough to let me spend a week at their apartment in Toronto scouring through their private Ballou archive. Peter, in particular, provided timely assistance throughout the past two years. Whenever I was unsure about a source or needed an article that I was unable to locate, he promptly provided the necessary documents. He also proofread, edited, and checked the historicity of my chapters. I will always be thankful for their kindness and support. Special thanks goes to Prof. John Turner of George Mason University who served as an outside reader and provided much needed advice and critiques. I also want to thank my brother, Dr. Michael Taylor, for his comments in regard to the overall structure, prose, and grammar of my project. This study could not have been completed without the grants and fellowships from Brigham Young University’s Religious Education Grant, the Congregational Library Fellowship, and funds from the Ghaemian Foundation at Heidelberg University. Much of my research is the result of a two- month sojourn in New England going through the archives of the Bancroft Memorial Library, Boston Public Library, Congregational Library, Boston Athenaeum, and Andover-Harvard Theological Library. The staffs as each library, especially those at the special collections departments at the Boston Public Library and the Andover-Harvard Library, helped me refine my searches and find my way through the labyrinth of archival material. Thank you also to my colleagues and friends at the Heidelberg Center for American Studies who provided friendship, good conversation, and insight. Most of all, I need to acknowledge the unending support of my family. My wife, Elizabeth Taylor, has always encouraged and supported me during my academic journey and been the primary caregiver for our beloved children Smith and Baron. Her sacrifice of time, energy, and personal comforts to raise our children in a foreign country are unequivocal. This project would not have been possible without her love and support. She is my treasure. My parents, David and Tamera Taylor have always been my biggest supporters. Their love, prayers, and encouragement throughout my life and during the long years of my studies, evince the meaning of father and mother. I could not have accomplished this without their examples of dedication and love. Loving thanks go to my in-laws Joe and Elizabeth Smailes. They too have provided support and much needed encouragement during my studies. Special thanks to my seven siblings, Kristin, Kurt, Scott, Michael, Jeff, Jon, and Kaylee, who have been examples of perseverance, friendship, and love all of my life. 3 INTRODUCTION During an interview with the famed Russian author Leo Tolstoy, Andrew Dickson White, (co- founder of Cornell University) asked Tolstoy “who, in the whole range of American literature, he thought the foremost.” Tolstoy mentioned his affinity for Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, John G. Whittier, Theodore Parker, and Felix Adler, but none of those authors received the Russian’s highest recommendation. “Adin Ballou,” replied Tolstoy. Astonished by his response, White remarked, “Indeed, did the eternal salvation of all our eighty millions depend upon some one of them guessing the person he named, we should all go to perdition together. That greatest of American writers was—Adin Ballou!”1 Who was Ballou and why did he merit such praise from Tolstoy? White’s recollection of Ballou was as a “philanthropic . religious communist,” and supposed that the Russian preferred Ballou above all others based on his “philanthropic writings.”2 White, a famed historian during the nineteenth century, knew of Ballou, but could not understand why he ought to have been remembered with such adulation and significance. Contemporary American religious historians seem to agree with White, and Ballou appears only sporadically in the historical record. Ballou, interestingly, does not appear in Richard Huhes’s Reviving the Ancient Faith, and Robert Abzug’s Cosmos Crumbling: American Reform and the Religious Tradition, despite Ballou’s prominence in the Restoration movement and his close ties with William Lloyd Garrison in the reform movements prior to the Civil War.3 Studies on Spiritualism, anarchism, and pacifism only briefly explain his role in each of these movements. In the Encyclopedia of American Religions, Ballou’s utopian community Hopedale is briefly explained, but the encyclopedia does not explain the creation of Ballou’s version of Christianity entitled “Practical Christianity.”4 William O. Reichert, a professor of political theory at Bowling Green State University complained, “Few figures in the history of American radicalism have been more seriously neglected than Adin Ballou.”5 Tolstoy addressed this question of Ballou’s vacancy in the study and legacy of nineteenth-century American Christianity, reform, and radicalism believing that the public in their complacency were so disturbed by Ballou’s ideas that they built a “tacit but steadfast conspiracy of silence”6 around them. More likely than a conspiracy surrounding Ballou’s ideas and practices, is that he was one of many reformers, religious journeymen, preachers, and utopians during the first half of American history in the nineteenth century. However, after 1 Andrew Dickson White, The Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Part II (New York: The Century Company, 1904), 82-83. 2 Ibid. 3 Richard T. Huhes, Reviving the Ancient Faith: The Story of the Churches of Christ in America (Abilene, TX: Abilene Christian University Press, 2008). Robert H. Abzug, Cosmos Crumbling: American Reform and the Religious Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). 4 J. Gordon Melton, Encyclopedia of American Religions (Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group Inc., 2003), 140. 5 William O. Reichert, “The Philosophical Anarchism of Adin Ballou,” Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 4 (August, 1964): 357. 6 Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You. Translated by Constance Garnett. (New York: Watchmaker Publishing, 1951), 17. 4 assembling numerous tracts, letters, newspaper articles, sermons, and books penned by Ballou in the archives of the Boston Public Library, and others, I too asked the question of why Ballou’s story has not been comprehensively explored. Through my research, I found Ballou’s window into the chaotic New England Christian landscape expansive and fascinating, and due to his vacancy in the historical record, I found it imperative that his story merited a lengthy
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