The Pennsylvania State University

The Graduate School

College of the Liberal Arts

CHILDREN’S MITE: JUVENILE PHILANTHROPY IN AMERICA, 1815-1865

A Dissertation in

History

by

David Michael Greenspoon

© 2012 David Michael Greenspoon

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

August 2012

ii

The dissertation of David Michael Greenspoon was reviewed and approved* by the following:

Lori D. Ginzberg Professor or History and Women’s Studies Dissertation Adviser Chair of Committee

Anthony Kaye Associate Professor of History

Gary Cross Distinguished Professor of Modern History

Hester Blum Associate Professor of English

Michael Kulikowski Professor of History and Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies Head of the Department of History

*Signatures are on file in the Graduate School.

iii

ABSTRACT

My research examines juvenile benevolence in early nineteenth-century America to better explain how the northern middle class – especially Christian activists among them – culturally negotiated the developing capitalist economy, and the place of children within it. “Children’s Mite” considers children’s books, records left by juvenile benevolent societies, parenting guides, and the writing of children themselves. I argue that as reformers who espoused middle-class values, as well as members of the middle class, taught children virtuous ways to use their money, they immersed girls and boys in the world of finance, and thus legitimized juvenile participation in a capitalist economy. Therefore, I contend that the then newly-popularized middle-class ideal of a sheltered, innocent childhood removed from the marketplace, represented, at least in part, an ideological construct. My findings help explain the rise of juvenile consumerism in the nineteenth century, a significant field of study given the importance of conspicuous consumption to current-day childhood, as well as the role of children’s merchandise in the modern-day economy. Furthermore, my dissertation sheds light on the complex relationships among nineteenth-century philanthropy, religion, and a burgeoning consumer economy. “Children’s Mite” suggests that consumerist and philanthropic impulses are not mutually exclusive. This project also considers how antebellum reform organizations, Sunday schools, and parents trained a rising generation to be entrepreneurs and consumers. “Children’s Mite” suggests that antebellum juvenile philanthropic associations, commonly organized out of Sunday schools, acted as spaces where children learned to reproduce their parents’ spending habits: an important indicator of class. In perhaps no arena were anxieties regarding the relationship between children and the economy so explicitly negotiated than reform and benevolent organizations. Reformers mobilized youngsters to participate in these causes as donors, producers of merchandise for fundraising, and members of juvenile societies. In most reform and benevolent causes in antebellum America, reformers recruited children to assume an active and distinct function. However, academics looking closely at the relationship between reform and the economy, including a developing consumer culture, have not extensively considered the role children played. This project examines three popular nineteenth-century causes into which girls and boys were recruited: Christian missions, temperance, and aid for Union soldiers during the American Civil War. These endeavors together highlight the diverse ways children were taught to engage in philanthropic campaigns. Indeed, some juvenile reform societies stressed self-sacrifice, while others emphasized a material culture, by which members could identify each other. Moreover, an examination of these three causes offers a valuable perspective by which to see how the relationship between children and philanthropy developed and expanded.

This project was completed under the supervision of Professor Lori D. Ginzberg.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Abbreviations v

Acknowledgements vi

Introduction 1

Chapter 1. Shaping Young Desire: The Material World of 24 Childhood Through the Eyes of Reformers

Chapter 2. A Penny Saves: American Children, Missionary Campaigns, 75 and Lessons in Money Management

Chapter 3. “With banner and with badge we come:” Making 121 Antebellum Children Sober and Respectable

Chapter 4. “Tempt the Eye and Please the Taste:” Juvenile Fairs and the 161 American Civil War

Conclusion 205

Bibliography 213

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

AAS American Antiquarian Society ABCFM American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions AHS Andover Historical Society ASSU American Sunday School Union BPL Boston Public Library HUL Harvard University Library MTU Massachusetts Temperance Union PUL Princeton University Library USSC United States Sanitary Commission

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It is with great pleasure that I thank those who have made this project possible. While completing this dissertation, the faculty at the Pennsylvania State University have been extraordinarily supportive. In particular, I wish to thank my adviser, Lori Ginzberg, for her generosity, advice, and feedback. She has devoted a lot of time questioning every word and pushing this project much further than it would have gone otherwise. I would also like to thank the other members of my committee for their encouragement and helpful questions and suggestions, namely: Hester Blum, Gary Cross, and Anthony Kaye. I would also like to thank the staff members of the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center and the Department of History, who have been helpful over the course of my doctorate, in particular: Jennifer Gilbert, Toni Mooney, Barby Singer, and Lindsay Wells. For their financial support, as well as their assistance in my research, I am indebted to the Congregational Library; the Friends of the Princeton University Library and the Cotsen Children’s Library at Princeton University; the de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi. I have also received support from my institution, in particular from: the College of the Liberal Arts, the Department of History, and the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center. They provided assistance that funded my research and gave me the time necessary to write. I would also like to thank the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic and the Society for the History of Children and Youth, whose financial support allowed me to present portions of my dissertation at their respective conferences. I would also like to acknowledge the institutions that generously shared materials: the American Antiquarian Society, the Andover-Harvard Theological Library and the Houghton Library at Harvard University, the Andover Historical Society, Boston Public Library, the Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature at the University of Florida, Hamilton College Library Special Collections, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Scudder Association, and the Special Collections Research Center at Syracuse University Library. Additionally the Pennsylvania State University Libraries have provided materials that proved invaluable for this project. While earning my doctorate a number of graduate students have made the process more rewarding and enjoyable. In particular, I wish to thank Andrew Prymak for his friendship and support. I also wish to thank Lynn Teichman, who, though not a graduate student, has been a constant source of encouragement, captivating conversations, and delicious meals. My family has been supportive through my life, and this is no less true while I pursued my doctorate. I would like to thank my mother and father, Ellen and Stan Greenspoon, for their encouragement and love. I would like to recognize my father for repeatedly reading through dissertation drafts and offering innumerable suggestions. I also wish to express my appreciation to my mother, who has worked hard to keep me connected in a process that can be lonely, with phone calls, greeting cards, and birthday cakes in the mail. I would also like to thank my brother Philip; my grandparents Mitzi Muenz, the late Sigi Muenz, and the late Anne Greenspoon; and my in-laws Janet, Mike, and Sam Abrams, and Davina and Micah Kleid. Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Marni Greenspoon, for her love, support, and advice. She has been in my life for as long as I have been writing this, and in that

vii time has shown extraordinary patience. It is hard to imagine how this project would have been completed without her encouragement, and her feedback on numerous drafts. I love you so much.

1

Introduction

In 1816 the Religious Rembrancer, a theological periodical, encouraged children to organize and financially support juvenile tract societies. “If you begin when you are young to give away a few cents monthly for some kind and religious purpose, you will soon find more delight in this use of money than in buying cakes and trifles.”1 Similar appeals appeared regularly in the Early Republic; such sentiments characterized both the hopes and fears of middle-class Americans who wrestled with the moral ramifications of children engaging the marketplace. Many adults believed girls and boys would use their money wastefully and immorally if they were not taught to devote it to benevolent causes. For these Americans, instilling proper financial values in children was essential for protecting their family’s socioeconomic status and preserving the religious integrity of the nation.

“Children’s Mite: Juvenile Philanthropy in America, 1815-1865,” examines juvenile benevolence in nineteenth century America as a lens through which to better explain how the northern middle class – especially Christian activists among them – negotiated the burgeoning capitalist economy and the place of children within it. I argue, that as members of the middle class and leading reformers who buttressed middle-class values taught children noble ways to use their money, they immersed girls and boys in the world of finance, and inadvertently legitimized juvenile participation in a capitalist economy. This suggests that the then-newly popularized middle-class ideal of a sheltered, innocent childhood removed from the marketplace, represented, at least partially, an

1 “An Address to Young Persons on the Utility of Forming Juvenile Tract Societies,” Religious Remembrancer, March 16, 1816, 114.

2 ideological construct, and that girls and boys were integrated into the marketplace through benevolent and reform activities.

In the early nineteenth century, the United States underwent dramatic economic changes, which heightened the importance of teaching children financial lessons, including guidance on spending and saving, while they were young. Technological breakthroughs, especially steam power, made mass production and more effective transportation possible. Markets became increasingly interconnected, as turnpikes, canals and, later, railroads moved goods faster across longer distances. New technology and the reorganization of labor reduced the demand for skilled workers, and made more people dependent upon wages.2 As the value of skilled work declined, Americans increasingly defined themselves by the merchandise they bought. Though most Americans in 1860 still lived in rural settings and depended on farming, people and capital were becoming concentrated in cities, such as New York, Philadelphia, and Boston.3 A tripartite class system with a more sharply demarcated separation of rich and poor grew out of this emerging capitalist system. Members of a burgeoning middle class, made up of non- manual workers and merchants, together with their families, demonstrated their status through possessions and manners that exhibited their socioeconomic position, by entertainment they deemed wholesome, through a commitment to an idealized domestic

2 Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 107-142; Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860 (1986; repr., Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 105-125; Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 23-26. 3 Sellers, The Market Revolution, 3-34; Christopher Clark, “The Consequences of the Market Revolution in the American North” in The Market Revolution in America: Social, Political, and Religious Expressions, 1800-1880, ed. Melvyn Stokes and Stephen Conway (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1996), 25.

3 tranquility built around an ideology of separate roles for women and men, and by building an evangelical empire committed to a diverse array of reform causes.4

Though the lives of children from wealthy families had always differed from those of their poorer counterparts, at the start of the nineteenth century the experiences of young dependents diverged more drastically along lines of class, marking the start of a long-term trend. In the antebellum era, a clearly defined population of working-class

Americans rapidly grew in urban centers. Often free blacks or recent immigrants from

Ireland or Germany, members of the working class, earned a living in diverse ways, including day labor; sweatshop and, later, factory work; sewing and other task work in the home; prostitution; and serving as sailors.5 In order to make ends meet, impoverished parents were compelled to send their children to work for wages.6 In contrast, middle- class fathers and mothers kept their sons and daughters from the workforce, preparing them for adulthood in homes, schools, academies, and Sunday schools.7 Relatedly, the birthrate among middle-class families dropped in the nineteenth century, meaning that mothers and fathers could spend more time with, and invest more money in, each child.8

Merely by being able to shelter their sons and daughters from wage labor, a family underscored its socioeconomic position. Women, understood to be especially virtuous

4 Stuart M. Blumin, Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City, 1760-1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Mary P. Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Lawrence W. Levine, High Brow/Low Brow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988); Paul E. Johnson, A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978). 5 Wilentz, Chants Democratic, 26-27; Stansell, City of Women, 105-129; 171-192. 6 Stansell, City of Women, 116-117; Jacqueline S. Reiner, From Virtue to Character: American Childhood, 1775-1850 (New York: Twayne, 1994), 125-150; Steven Mintz, Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 133-153. 7 Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class, 161-165; Mintz, Huck’s Raft, 75-117; Mary Kelley, Learning to Stand and Speak: Women, Education, and Public Life in America’s Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). 8 Mintz, Huck’s Raft, 77-78.

4 and therefore suited to preserve domestic tranquility, took on the primary parenting responsibilities in middle-class homes.9 Many middle-class Americans began regarding children as especially angelic, which justified sheltering them from corrupting influences.

Viewing children as particularly innocent also ultimately validated giving girls and boys playthings and other merchandise.10 Transforming children from sources of wealth into expenses made up a key part of the creation of a modern childhood that idealized early life as an especially happy period removed from vice and work; a notion which would be fully developed by the end of the nineteenth century.11

Nineteenth century Protestant leaders adopted changing attitudes towards children, partially in response to economic changes. Europeans and Americans had previously assumed that children were born with predetermined sinful natures, which needed to be conquered to ensure conversion and salvation.12 “Are you willing that while you serve the Lord Jesus Christ yourselves, that your children should be traitors and rebels against him” inquired Puritan theologian Cotton Mather of parents in 1702. He continued by explaining that “[y]our children are born like wild asses colt; and they will

9 Ruth H. Bloch, “The Gendered Meaning of Virtue in Revolutionary America,” Signs 13, no. 1 (1987): 37- 58; Nancy F. Cott , The Bonds of Womanhood: “Woman’s ‘ Sphere” in New England, 1780-1835 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1978); Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class. 10 Gary Cross, The Cute and the Cool: Wondrous Innocence and Modern American Children’s Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 22-23. 11 Viviana A. Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children (1985; repr., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994). The transition to ‘pricelessness’ that she identifies was uneven and shaped by class, race, gender, and geography. While the urban middle class embraced new attitudes towards childhood relatively quickly, farming families, which depended on the labor of their sons and daughters, took longer. Though the ideal that children should be sheltered gained near universal acceptance in America by the end of the twentieth century, the ability of families to realize this ideal varied. 12 Mintz, Huck’s Raft, 76-77; Reiner, From Virtue to Character, 1-19; John Locke, Some Thoughts Regarding Education (London: A and J Thompson, 1693). The contrast between Puritan childrearing and Locke’s advice should not be overstated. See: Holly Brewer, By Birth or Consent: Children, Law, and the Anglo-American Revolution in Authority (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 79-80.

5 continue no better, if you do not catechize them.”13 But by the first decades of the nineteenth century, most religious figures had adopted a more favorable view of childhood, advocating for less severe childrearing methods than their predecessors, and highlighting the malleability of girls and boys.14 Theologians were influenced by

Enlightenment thinkers, such as John Locke, who stressed that parents shaped their sons’ characters through careful cultivation.15 Americans were especially drawn to Scottish

Enlightenment thinkers, such as Francis Hutcheson, who underscored the virtue of personal development. This emphasis on moral growth and individualism found considerable resonance among Americans during the Revolution, and in its aftermath.16

Antebellum theologians, such as Horace Bushnell, embraced the notion that a child could be raised Christian from infancy.17 This was not achieved by crushing a youngster’s will, he insisted, but by gradually developing a child’s character. Caregivers, he explained, should not assume “that the child is to grow up in sin, to be converted after he comes to a mature age, but that he is to open on the world as one that is spiritually renewed, not remembering the time when he went through a technical experience, but seeming rather to have loved what is good from his earliest years.”18 Though Bushnell

13 Cotton Mather, Cares About the Nurseries: Two Brief Discourses. The One Offering Methods and Motives to Parents to Catechize their Children while yet Under the Tuition of their Parents. The Other, Offering Some Instructions for Children, How they May Do Well when they Come to Years of Doing for Themselves (Boston: T. Green, 1702), 32. 14 Mintz, Huck’s Raft, 80-81. 15 Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education; Anthony Fletcher, Growing up in England: The Experience of Childhood, 1600-1914 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 6-8. 16 Reiner, From Virtue to Character, 8-9; Daniel Walker Howe, Making the American Self: Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (1997; repr., New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 48-77; 108; Francis Hutcheson, A Short History to Moral Philosophy, in Three Parts; Containing the Elements of Ethicks and the Laws of Nature (Glasgow: Robert Foulis, 1747), 267-271. 17 Norman Pettit, “Infant Piety in New England: The Legacy of Horace Bushnell,” New England Quarterly 75, no. 3 (2002): 444-465; Margaret Bendroth, “Horace Bushnell’s Children’s Nurture” in The Child in Christian Thought, ed. Marcia J. Bunge (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm B. Eerdmans, 2001), 350-364. 18 Horace Bushnell, Discourses on Christian Nurture (Boston: Massachusetts Sabbath School Society, 1847), 6-7.

6 conceded that not all children had the potential to become Christians, his vision for childrearing placed greater responsibility on parents to cultivate pious girls and boys, or else send them where they would receive a religious education.19 Indeed, one pastor explained to parents that though formal religious instruction was important, “[f]rom you, probably more than all others, they will receive those impressions which will determine their character and their destiny for eternity.”20 Even the Calvinist minister Lyman

Beecher emphasized infant salvation and individual moral choices, while continuing to preach original sin.21 By ascribing religious significance to the ideal of the sheltered, innocent child, theologians heightened its importance, and asserted the supremacy of middle-class culture and family relations.

As greater emphasis was placed on the religious upbringing of children, childrearing reformers spearheaded new associations to ensure that girls and boys were properly schooled in Protestant theology. Mothers formed maternal associations, whose members prayed for their children’s salvation and read parenting guides.22 Sunday schools were also founded to instill religious values in children and other people in need of spiritual guidance. American Sunday schools, like their English counterparts, initially targeted the poor, but by the 1810s and 1820s a new breed of American Sabbath school

19 Bernard W. Wishy, The Child and the Republic: The Dawn of Modern American Child Nurture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1968); Reiner, From Virtue to Character, 21-23; Horace Bushnell, Views of Christian Nurture: And Subjects Adjacent Thereto, 2nd ed. (Hartford, CT: Edwin Hunt, 1848); Parental Anxiety (Philadelphia: ASSU, n.d.). 20 Daniel Dana, An Address Delivered August 16, 1818, at a Public Meeting of the Sabbath Schools: Under the Patronage of the Newburyport Sabbath School and Tract Society (Newburyport: W. & J. Gilman, 1818), 16. 21 Reiner, From Virtue to Character, 85-86; Charles Beecher ed., Autobiography, Correspondence, Etc. of Lyman Beecher (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1865), 2: 137-143; 346-350. 22 Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class, 89.

7 organizers included the children of middle-class churchgoers as well.23 Moreover,

Sunday school organizations, such as the American Sunday School Union (ASSU), helped form schools in remote regions, envisioning this work as part of building and preserving the republic.24 At the same time, secular schools took on the job of teaching literacy, so that Sunday schools could focus on teaching religion and principles considered necessary in a young republic. Taking their cue from childrearing reformers of the era, Sunday schools tried to build a children’s character, encouraging them to internalize moral lessons so that a girl or boy could govern their own behavior and be prepared for conversion.25

This project suggests that antebellum juvenile philanthropic associations, commonly organized out of Sunday schools, acted as spaces where middle-class children learned to reproduce their parents’ spending habits: an important indicator of class. For working-class children, these lessons conveyed the supremacy of middle-class culture and economic priorities. In perhaps no other arena were anxieties regarding the relationship between children and the economy so explicitly negotiated than in juvenile reform and benevolent organizations. Reformers mobilized youngsters to participate in these causes as donors, producers of merchandise for fundraising, and as members of juvenile societies. In practically every reform and benevolent cause in antebellum

America, reformers recruited children to assume an active and distinct role. However,

23 E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Pantheon, 1964), 375-379; Thomas Walter Laqueur, Religion and Respectability: Sunday Schools and Working Class Culture 1780- 1850 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977); Anne M. Boylan, Sunday School: The Formation of an American Institution, 1790-1880 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 16-18. 24 Sunday School Benevolence (Philadelphia: ASSU, c. 1840), 1-2. 25 Reiner, From Virtue to Character, 73; Boylan, Sunday School, 24-40; 141-152.

8 academics looking closely at the relationship between reform and a developing consumer culture, have not extensively considered the part played by children.26

“Children’s Mite” considers three popular nineteenth century causes into which adults recruited girls and boys: Christian missions, abstention from alcohol, and aid for

Union soldiers during the Civil War. These three campaigns are particularly revealing, because they were among the most common causes in which girls and boys enlisted, and though their constituencies overlapped, together they highlight the diverse ways children engaged in philanthropic and benevolent campaigns. Some juvenile societies stressed self-sacrifice, while others emphasized a material culture by which members could identify each other and which could reward exceptional service. Some organizations did both. Moreover, an examination of these three social causes until the end of the Civil War offers a valuable perspective on how the relationship between children and philanthropy developed and expanded.27

Though adults championing juvenile benevolence held up philanthropy and reform as activities in which girls and boys from all backgrounds should involve themselves, they were, in fact, talking about middle-class ideals of benevolence and childhood. In contrast, reformers depicted urban working-class children as naturally

26 Julie Roy Jeffrey, “‘Strangers buy… lest our mission fail’: The Complex Culture of Women’s Abolitionist Fairs,” American Nineteenth Century History 4, no. 1 (2003): 1-24. 27 Scholars have already identified the ways in which children were immersed in the marketplace after the Civil War. See: Lisa Jacobson, Raising Consumers: Children and the American Mass Market in the Early Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 18-19; Gary Cross, Kids’ Stuff: Toys and the Changing World of American Childhood (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 21l; Miriam Formanek-Brunell, Made to Play House: Dolls and the Commercialization of American Girlhood (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), 14. James Marten has also highlighted the American Civil War as a turning point in juvenile consumerism. See: James Marten, The Children’s Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 16-20; James Marten, Children for the Union: The War Spirit on the Northern Home Front (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2004), 121-126.Though Wendy Woloson observes that children’s candy became widespread in the 1840s, she identifies the 1860s as the period in which “children buying penny candies, rather than fashionable people seeking preserved fruits and comfits, made up the confectioner’s customer base.” Wendy A. Woloson, Refined Tastes: Sugar, Confectionary, and Consumers in Nineteenth Century America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins: University Press, 2002), 39.

9 immoral in their moneymaking: author James D. McCabe opined that among urban poor children, “[a]t ten the boys are thieves, at fifteen the girls are all prostitutes”28 Though

McCabe’s remark suggests a deep prejudice about working-class children, poor girls and boys did continue to engage the economy as shoppers, laborers, and salespeople. By holding up their daughters and sons as generous and temperate angels who did not need to contribute to their family’s income, but rather helped those in need, middle-class

Americans underscored differences between their own children and their poorer counterparts.

Urban working-class girls and boys earned money on the street in diverse ways.

Children collected scraps of rags, metal, and other materials; sold newspapers; peddled merchandise; and pilfered. At an early age, many girls from poor families also began working as prostitutes, and quickly learned the sex-trade. Successfully earning money on the city streets required developing financial skills: children had to negotiate prices with customers and merchants and locate the best prices. Though girls and boys made money for their families, they did not always give up their earnings willingly. Young workers commonly wished to exert control over their earnings to acquire merchandise they desired, such as candy, and to go on outings, rather than contribute it to the household.

Besides making money on the streets, children collected bits of fuel to warm their home, thereby saving some of their family’s cash income.29

Children and adolescents also worked for wages in the first American factories.

The entrance of children into factories characterized the broader transformation of juvenile labor outside of the home, from apprenticeships that trained skilled artisans, to

28 Timothy J. Gilfoyle, City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex (New York: Norton, 1992), 63. 29 Stansell, City of Women, 50-53; 193; Gilfoyle, City of Eros, 63-70; Woloson, Refined Tastes, 40-45.

10 inexpensive and unskilled labor. In 1790, Samuel Slater employed two girls and seven boys when he opened the first factory in the United States, a textile mill in Pawtucket,

Rhode Island. By 1801, Slater counted one hundred juvenile employees, aged four to ten.30 Slater expected the children he employed to work more than twelve hours a day for six days a week, but evidence suggests that children’s actual work schedule at Slater’s factory was irregular.31 Though children made up only a small portion of the Lowell,

Massachusetts textile mills workforce in the 1830s and 1840s, many adolescent females

(and young adult women) from farm families left their homes to work in these early factories. These young workers gained an appreciation for labor relations, collectively negotiating salaries and working hours when they went on strike in the 1830s, and when they organized for a ten hour workday in the 1840s.32

In their homes as well, working-class children contributed to the family economy by participating in outwork, a system in which members of poorer families, normally mothers, would take work into the home, such as unfinished garments to be sewn, in exchange for a low per piece rate. As a part of this process, children assisted their mothers with the simpler tasks of sewing clothing, assembling boxes, and making matches. They also couriered unfinished products from the merchant to their home, and returned the completed tasks back to the merchant.33 Older children also watched over their younger siblings at home, allowing their mothers to earn wages. Though helping with outwork and supervising younger sisters and brothers did not require the wheeling

30 Reiner, From Virtue to Character, 134. 31 Barbara M. Tucker, Samuel Slater and the Origins of the American Textile Industry, 1790-1860 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), 78-79 32 Dublin, Thomas. Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, Massachusetts, 1826-1860 (New York: Columbia University, 1979), 26-27; 86-131. 33 Stansell, City of Women, 116-117.

11 and dealing involved in work on the streets, or grant the same independence, it still positioned girls and boys as important parts of the family economy.

By the same token, girls and boys in farming families performed work that was essential to a family’s survival, long after urban middle-class families began sheltering their sons and daughters. Farm children cultivated crops, weeding land, covering seeds with soil, and frightening away birds.34 Children also assisted in the care of livestock and collected wild plants to supplement the family diet. As a boy on a farm in the 1810s,

Horace Greeley cleared rocks from fields, killed pests, harvested hops, and ploughed.35

Indicative of the important roles girls and boys played, children’s work on farms continued to be unregulated longer than other types of work.

The ways in which urban working-class children and farm children played underscored their relative autonomy in comparison with middle-class children. As with their urban middle-class counterparts, poor city-dwelling and rural children fit play into their daily routines. However, children in poor and agrarian families had to be more imaginative in their play and adapt their games to the circumstances in which they lived.36 For instance, in 1841, a group of boys on the Oregon Trail made a game out of bouncing off of the bloated stomach of a dead ox, which ended abruptly when one boy crashed through the animal’s stomach. Children also treated some of their farm work, such as hunting and threshing, as a sort of play.37 Urban working-class children, emblematized by the city newsboy, often played in city streets, around which their lives

34 Elliott West, Growing Up With the Country: Childhood on the Far Western Frontier (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989), 77-78. 35 Reiner, From Virtue to Character, 129. 36 Howard P. Chudacoff, Children at Play: An American History (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 54-55 37 West, Growing Up With the Country, 101-105.

12 otherwise revolved. Like farm children, newsboys made games out of their work. These children received less direction from adults on how to play, and what materials to incorporate into their recreation, than their middle-class counterparts. Additionally, their play was not sheltered from outside influences in a nursery. Their independence from parental authority, in work, play, and consumption, was a cause of concern for middle- class childrearing reformers, who regarded their unregulated behavior as symptomatic of the broader threat posed to societal stability by the poor.38

Still, more educational opportunities were available for urban poor and farming children than in earlier periods. By the middle of the nineteenth century, half of those aged five to nineteen were enrolled in a school.39 However, their presence in schools did not shelter them as it did middle-class girls and boys. The work responsibilities of farm and urban working-class children limited their time in school. Consequently, their attendance was irregular: a Pennsylvanian common school superintendant commented that aside from the “want of uniform books …the teacher meets no greater obstacle” than inconsistent attendance. Rural children went to school more frequently in the winter when the workload on the farm slackened, leading to periodic overcrowding.40 In contrast, antebellum middle-class children attended classes regularly, as school made up a more central part of their life.

The experiences of working-class and rural children reveal that the ideals of a sheltered childhood in the early nineteenth century were not universally shared and

38 Sánchez-Eppler, Dependent States, 154-171; West, Growing Up with the Country, 115. Still, middle- class children rebelled against their parents’ expectations of play. See: Chudacoff, Children at Play, 63-64. 39 Steven Mintz, Huck’s Raft, 135. 40 Carl F. Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780-1860 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983), 110; 14-15.

13 attained.41 Many children were exposed to the economy by working and earning money for the family’s survival. By removing their children from certain facets of the economy, and teaching them a set of economic principles that championed benevolence, middle class Americans set their children apart from other youngsters. In so doing, they deepened class divisions in the nineteenth century.

This project contributes to the historiographies of nineteenth century religion, childhood, reform, and the social consequences of capitalism’s expansion in the early republic. First, it builds on scholarship that links religion to commercial enterprises and consumerism, including the works of Colleen McDannell, Charles Sellers, and R.

Laurence Moore, arguing that in settings such as Sunday schools and the home (invested with spiritual significance in the nineteenth century), children learned how to handle money and to value merchandise embedded with religious meaning.42 At the same time, children were also taught to prize religious material for its aesthetic qualities.

Second, this project pushes scholars to reconsider how the modern child- consumer developed, highlighting the antebellum and Civil War eras as key periods in its development. Historians have contended that nineteenth century money management lessons valorized thrift. 43 However, “Children’s Mite” complicates this observation by demonstrating that instruction to be cautious with money was balanced with appeals to donate money to worthy causes, which helped pave the way for the child consumer.

41 Though the childhoods of middle-class boys and girls differed, adults tried to shelter both from elements of society that they found distasteful. 42 Colleen McDannell, Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995); R. Laurence Moore, Selling God: American Religion in the Marketplace of Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); Sellers, Market Revolution, 202-236. For Sunday schools specifically, see: 215. 43 John G. Cawelti, Apostles of the Self-Made Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 56; Lendol G. Calder, Financing the American Dream: A Cultural History of Consumer Credit (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 74-108; Jacobson, Raising Consumers, 61-62.

14

Academics across disciplines have explored the rise of juvenile consumerism in the

United States at later periods than the focus of this project, in particular during and after the Civil War, the turn of the twentieth century, following the Second World War, and in conjunction with the popularization of television in the 1950s.44 While the relationship between children and consumption evolved significantly during these periods, evidence suggests youngsters were being trained to spend money before the Civil War in ways that encouraged consumerism, through the lessons of parents, juvenile benevolent organizations and Sunday school classrooms. Indeed, organizers for diverse causes legitimized juvenile consumerism by encouraging children to desire merchandise and teaching them that these goods conveyed a great deal about the owner’s status. This effort to shape juvenile spending was spurred by a growing sense that a child’s character needed to be carefully cultivated, coupled with more efficient publishing technology that allowed reformers to reach youngsters through cheap books, tracts, and periodicals.

Third, “Children’s Mite” adds to the historiography of antebellum reform.

Historians have highlighted the diverse ways in which women and men took part in philanthropic activities, and have extensively considered how they challenged and reinforced gender roles, but have paid little attention to the participation of children.45

Reformers mobilized youngsters to participate in these causes as contributors, manufacturers and sellers of handicrafts for fundraising, and as dues-paying members of juvenile organizations. As Lisa Jacobson argues, the rise of juvenile consumerism was

44 Marten, Children’s Civil War; Jacobson, Raising Consumers; Ellen Seiter, Sold Separately: Children and Parents in Consumer Culture (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1993), 51-96; Stephen Kline, Out of the Garden: Toys, TV, and Children’s Culture in the Age of Marketing (London: Verso, 1993). 45 Nancy A. Hewitt, Women’s Activism and Social Change: Rochester, New York, 1822-1872 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984); Lori D. Ginzberg, Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics, and Class in the Nineteenth Century United States (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991); Bruce Dorsey, Reforming Men and Women: Gender in the Antebellum City (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002).

15 not as technology-driven as historians had previously assumed.46 “Children’s Mite” suggests that antebellum reform legitimized a growing consumer culture by fusing piety and benevolence with consumption in order to make a cause more attractive to children.

Moreover, my dissertation argues that juvenile benevolent societies and Sunday school classrooms were important sites where the concept and behaviors of socioeconomic class was taught to children.

Fourth, I contribute to the historiography of capitalism’s expansion more broadly by highlighting the important role middle-class children played. Scholars have accurately pointed out that in the nineteenth century, middle-class children became financial liabilities rather than contributors to a family’s income.47 However, historians have ignored the ways in which antebellum and Civil War era middle-class children were active participants in the economy. “Children’s Mite” demonstrates that middle-class

Americans envisioned children of all classes playing a dynamic financial role as fundraisers for benevolent causes and as consumers in the developing economy.48

Furthermore, this project uncovers how much effort middle-class parents made to prioritize conveying economic principles that they considered appropriate to the rising generation, which girls and boys were expected to practice while they were young.

I examine a wide range of qualitative evidence to demonstrate how children learned to spend money. Didactic juvenile literature, such as that published by the ASSU and the Massachusetts Sabbath School Society, reveals how reformers tried to make charity and benevolence appealing to children. This understudied style of literature is

46 Jacobson, Raising Consumers, 1. 47Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child, 3-6. 48 Though this is an understudied area, one work that considers children as a dynamic group in nineteenth- century America from a literary perspective is: Karen Sánchez-Eppler, Dependent States: The Child’s Part in Nineteenth Century American Culture (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2005).

16 explicitly instructional, offering a window into the anxieties adults felt towards their children, and towards nineteenth century America at large.49 In order to understand how reformers taught children to interact with the marketplace, I consider how this genre of writing taught children to use their money, books, and playthings. Additionally,

“Children’s Mite” examines instructional juvenile periodicals and newspapers, including those published by Sabbath school organizations, such as the Youth’s Penny Gazette, and children’s serials that focused on particular causes, like the Youth’s Temperance

Advocate and the missionary-centered Youth’s Dayspring. While “Children’s Mite” analyzes the content of juvenile literature, it also considers the aesthetics of these publications, especially the covers and illustrations, to determine how reformers designed their books and periodicals to cater to the tastes of girls and boys. I also examine records left by Sunday schools and their umbrella organizations. Sunday schools raised money for missionaries through having regular collections, organizing juvenile societies in classrooms. Sabbath schools also founded temperance societies that required abstinence pledges as a precondition for membership. Periodicals aimed at adults are also valuable sources for uncovering juvenile philanthropic activities. In adult Christian publications, such as the Christian Advocate, and reform focused periodicals like the Missionary

Herald, reformers glowingly reported on the efforts of children in benevolent causes.

Moreover, “Children’s Mite” utilizes parenting guides that reveal the lessons reformers wanted mothers and fathers to teach girls and boys regarding money and philanthropy,

49 Anne Scott MacLeod, American Childhood: Essays on Children’s Literature of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1994), 95-98.

17 including the advice of Lydia Maria Child, Lydia Sigourney, and Heman Humphrey.50

While parenting guides and instructional juvenile literature offer insights into the lessons children received regarding money, they also pose challenges for scholars. This literature does not give an objective depiction of how children and parents interpreted what they read and how they applied it. Moreover, the children described by these authors did not match reality, but rather the author’s ideals, which is valuable in its own right. Though prescriptive literature regularly depicted well-behaved children, with only one character flaw (or a handful) in need of correction, visitors to America commonly described

American youngsters as unruly.51

Where possible, “Children’s Mite” considers the perspectives that children left in their diaries and in memoirs written decades later. Memoirs are problematic, since they are normally written long after the events described, and memories can easily become corrupted. Though memoirs must be considered with this caveat in mind, they can still offer valuable perspectives on the experiences of, and ideologies about antebellum childhood. For instance, juvenile diaries and memoirs offer evidence on how children actually viewed charity and money in general. Moreover, children’s letters that appeared in juvenile periodicals often highlighted the fundraising efforts of girls and boys.

However, these sources also pose difficulties, as newspaper editors undoubtedly only published children’s letters containing outlooks towards philanthropy and reform that jibed with their own. It is also impossible to determine the extent to which parents guided the writing of these letters. In spite of the significant challenges associated with child-

50 Lydia Maria Child, The Mother’s Book (Boston: Carter, Hendee, and Babcock, 1831); Lydia H. Sigourney, Letters to Mothers (Hartford: Hudson and Skinner, 1838); Heman Humphrey, Domestic Education (Amherst, MA: J. S. C. Adams, 1840). 51 MacLeod, American Childhood, 128-129.

18 authored sources, they still offer significant clues as to how children absorbed financial lessons.

The first chapter of “Children’s Mite” examines the material world of childhood through the eyes of reformers concerned with the raising of children, who tried to mold girls’ and boys’ attitudes towards their possessions and other household merchandise.

This was part of an effort to shape their spending and saving decisions in childhood and adulthood, during a period when store-bought toys were just appearing. Reformers paid attention to the toys with which children played and to the books they read. For Sunday school organizers, children’s spending habits and the way they acted with their belongings were windows into their souls. Children who used their money benevolently were seen as virtuous, but those who spent selfishly were considered wicked. Similarly,

Sunday school reformers regarded children who played cooperatively and shared their possessions as upright, in contrast to those who played selfishly and destructively, whom the reformers considered unrighteous.

Juvenile literature and parenting guides suggest that though educators and childrearing experts envisioned ideal childhood as free from desire, reformers’ remedies to selfishness shaped, rather than eliminated childhood material want, ultimately legitimizing a brand of consumption that linked Christianity with consumerism. For instance, in the 1820s, Sunday schools used a pedagogy that relied on reward tickets to motivate pupils, a system satirized by Mark Twain in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Pupils exchanged tickets earned for scripture memorization, attendance, and good conduct for religious tracts, New Testaments, and entire Bibles. Additionally, reformers made their juvenile publications attractive merchandise, with eye-catching illustrations

19 and ornate covers, in order to catch the eye of children. Moreover, childrearing reformers encouraged children to collect and order the books they collected. Modern studies have identified juvenile collecting as an important training exercise for a life of consumption.

According to Russell W. Belk, “in the process of collecting, collectors rehearse and imitate the market-based economy in which we are strongly embedded.”52 Indeed, by encouraging youngsters to collect books, reformers prepared their children and pupils for a market economy that glorified consumerism within parameters that affirmed a commitment to Christian benevolence, and that championed middle-class values.

Collecting would remain a fixture of childhood into the late nineteenth century and beyond, albeit in more commercial ways, with girls and boys collecting items such as company trade cards, and candy premiums.53

The second chapter focuses on the ways in which children were encouraged to support Protestant and Catholic missionaries proselytizing to non-Christians. Reformers immersed children in a market economy by urging them to support missions as donors, as manufacturers of merchandise to be sold for the cause, and as dues paying members of juvenile societies or donors at Sunday schools. “Children’s Mite” also considers how reformers reinforced gender divisions by encouraging fundraising strategies for girls and boys that reflected the expectations on their adult roles: boys were commonly charged with outdoor work like gardening and collecting wood, while girls were encouraged to

52 Alison J. Clarke, “Coming of Age in Suburbia: Gifting the Consumer Child,” in Designing Modern Childhoods: History, Space, and the Material Culture of Children, ed. Marta Gutman and Ning de Connick-Smith (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008), 263. Original quote is from: Russell W. Belk, Collecting in a Consumer Society (London: Routledge, 1995), 55. 53 Woloson, Refined Tastes, 47-49; Jacobson, Raising Consumers, 18-19.

20 form sewing societies.54 The chapter ultimately argues that though advocates of missionary campaigns stressed the virtues of self-sacrifice to girls and boys, reformers employed market-oriented tactics to make benevolence appear more attractive. In 1856, for example, missionary organizers rewarded children for donating at least ten cents towards a missionary ship, the Morning Star, with illustrated ‘stock certificates’ in the vessel. The campaign proved so successful that the same missionary organization printed a new ‘stock certificate’ the following year, which they advertised as even more attractive and detailed than the previous premium.55

Chapter Three examines the recruitment of children into the temperance movement, whose members sought to eradicate alcohol consumption, and promised financial success to girls and boys who remained sober. While the popularization and radicalization of temperance cannot be ascribed to a single cause, teetotalism became uncompromising on account of the evangelical, perfectionist spirit of a religious revival labeled the Second Great Awakening, which was partially spurred by capitalism’s expansion. Temperance gained traction among elites looking for order in a world that seemed dangerously destabilized by the expansion of capitalism, including a breakdown of the traditional master-apprentice labor system.56 Though workshop owners stood to benefit financially from the growing use of wage labor, they simultaneously lost control over their employee’s time away from the workplace. In the face of these changes to labor relations, any regimen that made a merchant and his subordinates more industrious,

54 Cornelia, “Think of the Poor Heathen,” The Guardian, or the Youth’s Religious Instructor, March 1, 1823, 88; Charles H. Lane, “Wesley Chapel Juvenile Missionary Society,” Christian Advocate, May 19, 1847, 79. 55 The Morning Star (Boston: ABCFM, 1857), 9-10. ABCFM Archives, HUL. 56 Hewitt, Women’s Activism and Social Change, 113; Johnson, Shopkeeper’s Millennium; Sellers, The Market Revolution, 261-266; Wilentz, Chants Democratic.

21 as temperance promised, would no doubt be appealing. Consequently, employers committed to temperance forbade drinking on the job, stopped buying alcohol for their subordinates, and encouraged them to sign temperance pledges. The temperance movement also grew in response to a rapid rise in alcohol consumption in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Sources of water in America’s rapidly growing cities were accurately considered dangerously polluted; whiskey offered a safe and inexpensive alternative.57 Additionally, people escalated their drinking in response to anxiety they felt towards the instability brought on by the market revolution.58 Historians have highlighted the important role of temperance in the nineteenth century, but have paid little attention to the ways in which temperance reformers recruited children into their cause and the methods they employed to prepare children for the burgeoning market economy. Juvenile literature commonly portrayed sober adults as financially successful and pious, and drunkards as impoverished and faithless. Though temperance activists reaching out to girls and boys stressed fundraising less than did missionary organizers, the delicacies and rewards made for and distributed to children by temperance reformers taught youngsters to value consumer goods as both sources of pleasure and signifiers of status. In the 1840s, juvenile temperance societies organized children into military themed operations, which visually distinguished themselves with badges, banners, and other regalia. Meanwhile,

Sunday schools commonly organized temperance themed Fourth of July celebrations, which featured picnics that included elaborately displayed sweets.

57 Rorabaugh, Alcoholic Republic, 97-98. 58 Steven Mintz, Moralists and Modernizers: America’s Pre-Civil War Reformers (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 72-73. Johnson, Shopkeeper’s Millennium; Rorabaugh, Alcoholic Republic, 125-146; Blumin, Emergence of the Middle Class, 199-205.

22

The final chapter examines the role of children in nineteenth century benevolent fundraising fairs. American children began participating in these bazaars by the late

1820s, raising funds for causes such as foreign missions and the abolition of slavery.

Their role expanded during the Civil War, with a large-scale effort to aid Union soldiers.

Though historian James Marten highlights juvenile fundraising for the War, the ways these efforts shaped the relationship between children and the marketplace needs to be more closely considered.59 By attracting so many girls and boys to philanthropy, the Civil

War permanently fused charity with consumerism for a large number of northern children. At philanthropic bazaars, both before and during the conflict, adult organizers encouraged children to act as manufacturers, vendors, and consumers of luxury items.

These changes in juvenile philanthropy came in response to an escalated and more broadly felt sense of urgency to raise money for a cause, namely an impulse by northern civilians to contribute to the Union and help win the Civil War. During the Civil War, children participated in large fairs organized in urban centers, which raised money for the

United States Sanitary Commission, a quasigovernmental organization that delivered supplies and medical aid to Union troops. Girls and boys also held their own small fairs to help the soldiers, trading on their perceived innocence to lure in customers and boost sales. Consequently, organizers involved children in the marketplace, as they encouraged more aggressive entrepreneurship, and not only permitted, but vocally advocated for girls and boys to indulge material desire when it also fulfilled a loftier goal, in this case a

59 Marten, Children’s Civil War, 177-185.

23

Union victory. Though fairs more thoroughly immersed a larger number of children in nineteenth century consumer culture than other forms of juvenile benevolence, organizers still upheld that piety and self-sacrifice underlay true benevolence. However, the valorized consumption essential to a fair’s success spurred a shift in the meaning of self- sacrifice, which ultimately validated juvenile consumption, transforming it into a potentially virtuous and pious exercise, and helping to pave the way for the child- consumer of the late nineteenth century.

24

Chapter 1 Shaping Young Desire: The Material World of Childhood Through the Eyes of Reformers

“Teach children to be very economical,” advised reformer and childrearing expert

Lydia Maria Child in her 1831 guidebook for middle-class mothers. Mothers, Child elaborated, must never permit their sons or daughters “to cut up good pieces of calico, or paper, for no purpose — never to tear old picture-books, destroy old playthings, burn twine, or spend every cent they receive for cake and sugar-plums.”1 Child’s observation of a correlation between a child’s conserving and reusing of household goods and his or her financial habits characterizes a broader sentiment among antebellum reformers who included spending habits in their litany of juvenile behavior that mothers and educators needed to shape; if left uncorrected, a child risked financial and moral bankruptcy in adulthood. Childrearing reformers, therefore, believed that the ways in which middle- class children acted towards money and household objects reflected the moral character of the rising generation. Moreover, the attention paid by middle-class Americans to these financial lessons underscores the tenuous hold they felt over their status.

This chapter examines the material world of antebellum childhood through the eyes of childrearing reformers, who tried to mold the attitudes of girls and boys toward their possessions and other household merchandise in an effort to affect their spending, saving, and philanthropic decisions in adulthood. Adult reformers regarded children,

1 Lydia Maria Child, The Mother’s Book (Boston: Carter, Hendee, and Babcock, 1831), 41; Carolyn L. Karcher, The First Woman in the Republic: A Cultural Biography of Lydia Maria Child (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994), 138; 145. Similar sentiments are expressed in: “Waste Not – Want Not,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, July 19, 1848, 57.

25 childhood, and juvenile play more positively than seventeenth-century New England

Puritans, who had viewed their daughters and sons as naturally depraved. The fact that infants tried to crawl only confirmed their belief that children were like animals.

Therefore, they had wanted to push their children into adulthood as quickly as possible.2

Still, many antebellum childrearing reformers held that youngsters were greedy and would remain so unless raised to behave benevolently and frugally.3 Even reformers who judged childhood more optimistically argued that a naturally benevolent child could easily be tempted to act greedily. But the remedies to greed offered by many reformers enhanced rather than eliminated childhood desire, ultimately and ironically legitimizing juvenile consumption through religious and charitable labors. Though reformers regularly denounced juvenile selfishness, they also commonly promised material rewards (both short-term, and lifelong), for those children who handled money appropriately, and for those who behaved virtuously.

2 Karin Calvert, Children in the House: The Material World of Childhood, 1600-1900 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992), 19-38. However, even Puritans recognized that juvenile play had a place in children’s lives, within strict restraints. One Puritan, Benjamin Wadsworth, argued that “time for lawful Recreation now and then, is not altogether to be denied them… Yet for such to do little or nothing else but play in the streets, especially when almost able to earn their living is a great sin and shame.” Quoted in: Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Family: Religion and Domestic Relations in Seventeenth Century New England, New ed. (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), 67. 3 For examinations of Puritan attitudes towards their young, see: Morgan, Puritan Family, 65-108. Morgan depicts Puritan childhoods as more modern than later scholars, who have argued that Puritans, not to mention other colonists such as Quakers, regarded some play as an embodiment of sin. See: John Demos, A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 134- 136; Steven Mintz, Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 47-52; Howard P. Chudacoff , Children at Play: An American History (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 26. Though New England clergy commonly prescribed harsh childrearing methods, ordinary Puritan parents could be far more affectionate than sermons suggest. See: Chudacoff, Children at Play, 23. Later colonists were influenced by John Locke’s Enlightenment approach to childrearing. See: Jacqueline S. Reiner, From Virtue to Character: American Childhood, 1775-1850 (New York: Twayne, 1996), 18.

26

Juvenile Literature and Financial Lessons in the Antebellum Era

Contemporary juvenile literature focusing on money and playthings, written and published by Sunday school reformers, offers a window into how boys and girls were taught to spend money, and sheds light on the northern middle class’s conflicted attitudes towards money and consumerism. Nineteenth-century juvenile literature offered more than escapism; it also gave moral guidance to the reader, instructing him or her on proper behavior through example.4 The instructions offered in juvenile literature shifted from the abstract theology of Puritan juvenile literature, removed from the here and now, to

Christian-infused moral lessons applicable to daily life.

The first American books intended for children were written by New England

Puritans in the 1640s. However, the quantity and selection of juvenile publications mushroomed in the early nineteenth century in response to a deepening awareness that they could shape a child’s principles, along with a growing appreciation that children required age-appropriate literature, and that they should own multiple books. This coincided with the expansion of the book publishing industry in the United States in general, including benevolent literature and tracts distributed to the far reaches of the nation.5 The expansion of children’s literature included the appearance of juvenile periodicals surviving for more than a handful of issues. This required the continuous

4 Gillian Avery, Behold the Child: American Children and Their Books: 1621-1922 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 93-120; Anne Scott MacLeod, American Childhood: Essays on Children’s Literature of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1994), 89. 5 John Cotton, Spiritual Milk for Babes (London: J. Coe, 1646); Thomas Shepard, A Short Catechism Familiarly Teaching the Knowledg of God, and of Our Selves (Cambridge: Samuel Green, 1654); James Marten ed., Children and Youth in a New Nation (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 2-3. Though the earliest surviving copy of Cotton’s work was published in London, scholars believe that earlier copies were printed in the 1640s in New England.

27 publication of reading material for children and the steady intake of money through subscriptions.6

Though the characters are often undeveloped, and the storylines contrived, these books offer a window into the anxieties and fears with which antebellum reformers grappled, and the solutions they proposed. This is especially true with regard to the obstacles these fictional children face, and the resolutions at which they arrive to correct their own flawed characters.7 Additionally, antebellum children’s literature championed middle-class values to the young generation.8 The ways reformers tried to make juvenile literature more attractive to its target audience indicate that reformers were willing to tolerate and even feed juvenile consumer desire when they believed it served their goals.

Like all prescriptive literature, these children’s books should not be mistaken for an accurate depiction of antebellum girls and boys, who visitors to America commonly deemed unruly.9 Still, this genre offers historians and literary critics an invaluable perspective on antebellum middle-class adults’ attitudes towards childhood and the marketplace.

Antebellum children’s literature offered directions for handling money, in order to prepare young people for an adulthood more deeply immersed in a cash economy than previous generations. Reformers concerned with childrearing offered girls and boys instruction on appropriate ways to earn, save, spend, and donate money. Children were expected to begin following these instructions as early as possible. By following this

6 Two of the first American juvenile periodicals, which survived for an extended run, began in the 1820s: the Juvenile Miscellany in 1826, edited by Lydia Maria Child, and the Youth’s Companion in 1827, edited by Nathaniel Willis. While the former would only survive for only eight years – the editor’s unpopular antislavery writing forced her to abandon the periodical – the latter would survive, albeit with substantial shifts in format and subject matter, for more than a century. 7 MacLeod, American Childhood, 93. 8 Karcher, First Woman in the Republic, 68-79. 9 MacLeod, American Childhood, 128-129.

28 advice, reformers argued, children would become prosperous, benevolent, and model

Christians.

In addition to children’s books, reformers shared their views on childrearing in guidebooks, which enjoyed immense popularity in the nineteenth century. New ideas about childhood placed more pressure on parents to raise their daughters and sons correctly, making them eager buyers of such guidebooks. Not surprisingly, parenting guidebook authors assumed their audience to be middle-class parents trying to carve out a distinct status for children. These authors assumed correctly as middle-class parents were the primary buyers.10 The eclectic group of authors of this genre came from diverse

Protestant backgrounds, and so would appeal to a large segment of the burgeoning middle class.

The authors of childrearing guidebooks and children’s literature tried to shape juvenile consumption. Though they were ambivalent about consumerism, giving economic lessons to children appeared necessary when a family’s continued prosperity depended on a son inheriting and successfully continuing his father’s business, an outcome far from assured, especially in the face of financial panics in 1819, 1837, and

1857. By encouraging mothers and, to a lesser extent, fathers to teach financial lessons to youngsters, reformers conveyed values towards money and property widely held by middle-class Americans that were conducive to a burgeoning capitalist economy. At the same time, it placed a new economic responsibility on mothers as the primary teachers of these lessons that would ensure continuation of a family’s status into the next generation.

10 Anne L. Kuhn, The Mother’s Role in Childhood Education: New England Concepts, 1830-1860 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1947), 38-68; Bernard Wishy, The Child and the Republic: The Dawn of Modern American Child Nurture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1968), 20-23; Steven Mintz, Moralists and Modernizers: America’s Pre-Civil War Reformers (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995). 4-15.

29

Reformers attempted to shape children’s spending habits, in part through influencing their use and acquisition of belongings.

Middle-class Americans were ambivalent over whether to immerse children in the world of finance and consumer goods. This was a consequence of adults’ anxiety towards money in general, coupled with their belief that children were especially impressionable.11 Childrearing reformers instructed children that money was both practical, in contrast with a barter system, and capable of accomplishing virtuous tasks.

“God never puts money into a man’s hands” insisted one Sunday school book, “without at the same time imposing upon that man the obligation to do good with it.”12 Money was well-spent purchasing necessities, like food and housing; investing cautiously; producing domestic tranquility; and donating to benevolent causes.13 Moreover, they argued, modern minting methods were a testament to the wonders of industry.14 On the other hand, if children earned or spent money immorally, they ran the risk of committing irreligious and illegal activities, which would often culminate in an untimely death followed by damnation. Money was sinfully used when it was spent to buy luxuries to flaunt one’s wealth.15 Though reformers ultimately argued in favor of learning about

11 Scholarship on this anxiety expressed towards wealth and luxury includes: Colleen McDannell, The Christian Home in Victorian America, 1840-1900 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 49-50; Richard L. Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York: Vintage, 1993), 186-203; 314-326; Lorman A. Ratner, Paula T. Kaufman, and Dwight L. Teeter Jr. Paradoxes of Prosperity: Wealth-Seeking Versus Christian Values in Pre-Civil War America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009). 12 L.L. Knox, Money Matters, Explained to the Young (New York: Carlton and Porter, 1852), 120. Similar attitudes are expressed in: I Wish I Was Poor (New York: American Tract Society, 1864); The Dangers of Riches (New York: American Tract Society, n.d.), 15. 13 Knox, Money Matters, 13. 14 Ibid., 17-23. 15 Ibid., 69.

30 money at an early age, they warned against loving money for its own sake.16 One Sunday school tract explained that:

[m]urders, thefts, robberies, frauds, falsehoods, Sabbath-breaking, oppression, and a great many other crimes are committed because of the love of money. When you hear about the dreadful sufferings of the poor African, who is stolen from his native country and his beloved friends, and carried across the ocean to spend his life in the miseries of bondage, you make know that it is the love of money which induces the wicked oppressor to treat him so cruelly.17 Childrearing experts thus tread cautiously when teaching children the importance of money and its noble uses.

Instead of earning and saving as much as possible, reformers wanted children to replicate a constellation of spending habits that would help ensure their future family’s economic stability, while exhibiting taste and benevolence emblematic of the middle class. While frugality was a tenet of proper money management in juvenile literature, reformers cautioned that it was a vice to save money compulsively.18 Some stories depicted Dickensian elderly male misers who purposelessly saved their money, while other cautionary tales focused on greedy children hoarding sweets and toys, and coveting others’ possessions. Fictional selfish children often received their comeuppance, and such behavior, warned reformers, threatened the affection of friends and of God, and would lead to escalating immoral behavior in adulthood. 19 The lion’s share of responsibility to keep children from developing selfish habits fell on mothers, who were expected to nurture benevolent values in girls and boys from an early age. For though children were increasingly regarded as innately innocent, they could easily be led astray and instilled

16 Ibid., 13. 17Ibid., 65. See also:” Money – And Some Rules about Managing the Slippery Stuff,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, January 2, 1856, 2. 18 “The Miser and his Treasure,” Youth’s Companion, February 26, 1852, 175; “A Miserable Man,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, January 21, 1846, 8; “The Selfish Boy,” Youth’s Companion, December 18, 1840, 127; “Selfish Matthew,” Youth’s Companion, June 15, 1854, 30; Knox, Money Matters, 52-55. 19 “Selfishness,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, September 12, 1849, 74; “Selfish Matthew,” Youth’s Companion, June 15, 1854, 30.

31 with immoral habits.20 “It is better to have treasure in heaven, - a home and treasure that we cannot be robbed of and that will last forever,” explained an admonition against miserliness that appeared in a Sunday school periodical.21

For many childrearing reformers, inordinate love of money potentially threatened the domestic tranquility created by women, but if wealth was accumulated cautiously and governed by appropriate principles, profits and riches were not wicked.22 Lydia Huntley

Sigourney, an astute businesswoman in her own right, epitomized this outlook when she advised mothers that:

[t]he determination to be rich, when disjoined from honest industry, opens the avenues of sin; and even when connected with it, is dangerous, unless regulated by the self-denying spirit of religion. Allowed to overleap the limits of moderation, it becomes a foe to domestic enjoyment, and tramples on the social pleasures and charities of life.23 However, this warning did not translate into teaching daughters and sons complete financial self-sacrifice. Though Sigourney cautioned parents not to immerse their children in the details of finance, she enjoined mothers to teach children broad principles that would make their sons profit driven, while upholding Christian values, in adulthood.24

Instructional juvenile literature advised ambitious boys how to succeed financially and climb the social ladder. Children’s literature from the 1800s, 1810s, and 1820s had profiled trades, depicting tradesmen as cells in a larger organism. This was epitomized by

Englishman William Darton’s survey of trades, which went through American reprints in

20 Kuhn, The Mother’s Role in Childhood, 71-97; Wishy, The Child and the Republic, 24-33; Gary Cross, The Cute and the Cool: Wondrous Innocence and Modern American Children’s Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 23-29. 21 “The Miser and his Stock,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, July 7, 1858, 55. 22 “How to Get a Living,” Youth’s Companion, April 27, 1848, 207. 23 Lydia H. Sigourney, Letters to Mothers (Hartford: Hudon and Skinner, 1838), 169; Melissa Ladd Teed, “A Passion for Distinction: Lydia Huntley Sigourney and the Creation of a Literary Reputation,” New England Quarterly 77, no. 1 (2004): 51-69. 24 Lydia H. Sigourney, Letters to Mothers (Hartford: Hudon and Skinner, 1838), 73.

32 the first three decades of the nineteenth century, which highlighted the importance of each tradesman to a community.25 However, later juvenile literature downplayed skilled crafts in favor of economic accomplishment coupled with domestic harmony.26 One

Sunday school periodical regularly included short articles that highlighted the production capabilities of various industries, with statistics of American production and technological innovation intended to impress.27 In so doing, the authors glorified capitalism in America, along with middle-class values, while downplaying the work of skilled artisans and wage earners.

Girls were not the intended audience of many financial lessons, but they were still exposed to such instruction. Though children’s books and periodicals depicted both boys and girls facing financial decisions, stories involving explicit economic dealings more commonly cast boys as the central actors. Antebellum middle-class adults idealized both boys and girls as innocent, but treated them differently on account of their expected sex- roles in adulthood.28 But because the editors of early juvenile periodicals cast a wide net

25 William Darton, Little Jack of all Trades: For the Use of All Good Little Boys (Philadelphia: Jacob Johnson, 1808), 4. This is the first American printing of the text, but there were a number of American reprintings of the English original. Darton is a prime example of juvenile literature that champions a moral economy. The author surveys a series of trades, underscoring their contribution to society. The Book of Trades (Boston: Charles Spear, 1825) plagiarizes heavily from Darton. 26An article published in 1851 reduced all tradesmen to the term “skillful and practical mechanic.” See: “Mistakes of American Youth,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, October 22, 1851, 86. For literature that shifts the emphasis to personal profit, see: “How to get a Living,” Youth’s Companion, April 27, 1848, 207; “How to get Rich,” Youth’s Companion. November 1, 1849, 106; “Get all you Can,” Youth’s Companion, August 14, 1856, 67; “It’s What You Spend,” Youth’s Companion, August 20, 1863, 96. For more detailed sympathetic descriptions of the antebellum market economy aimed at children that are not evangelical in outlook, see: Scenes of American Wealth and Industry in Produce, Manufacturers, Trade, the Fisheries, &c. &c. For the Instruction and Amusement of Children and Youth (Boston: Allen and Ticknor, 1833); Many Things upon Money Matters; for the Use of Young People in the United States (Boston: Hale: 1835). 27 “Pins,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, March 22, 1843, 22; “Rail Roads,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, August 16, 1848, 65; “Coal Lands,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, February 28, 1849, 20; “Consumption of Wool,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, July 2, 1851, 56; “Tobacco,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, November 24, 1852, 96; “The Sugar Maple and Maple Sugar,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, May 25, 1853, 43; “Cotton,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, October 12, 1853, 83; “Books, Paper, and Rags,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, October 8, 1856, 83; “Liquor Manufacturing Statistics,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, August 19, 1857, 67. 28 Calvert, Children in the House, 97-119.

33 for potential subscribers and targeted both sexes, girls would have read articles that conveyed financial lessons. It is impossible to know how young female readers (or male readers for that matter) digested the financial instruction in these periodicals, but many would have no doubt found the lessons applicable to their adult lives. Historians have determined that middle-class women commonly earned money for the household and that a family’s financial success depended on a wife’s budget management.29 Moreover, adult females employed elaborate financial transactions for philanthropic causes: an arena in which women engaging the marketplace was more broadly considered respectable.30

Indeed, when juvenile literature depicted girls facing financial decisions, it was commonly framed in the language of benevolence. When Lydia Sigourney spoke broadly about children and finance, she tellingly instructed mothers to teach their daughters “the economy of charity.”31

When children received advice on financial responsibility in children’s literature, the lesson often centered on honesty as a part of piety. An article appearing in the Youth’s

Companion in 1829, entitled “Honesty in Keeping Accounts,” underscores the importance reformers placed on coupling financial skills with principles. George and

Henry, both around twelve years old, are each given twenty-five cents by their teacher and instructed to keep a written account of their expenditures. After a few weeks, their teacher calls on them to present their ledgers. The boys have kept careful records, which

29 Mary P. Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 198-210; Jeanne Boydston, Home and Work: Housework, Wages, and the Ideology of Labor in the Early Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 123- 126; Ellen Hartigan-O’Connor, The Ties that Buy: Women and Commerce in Revolutionary America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). 30 Lori D. Ginzberg, Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics, and Class in the Nineteenth Century United States (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990), 36-66; Anne M. Boylan, The Origins of Women’s Activism: New York and Boston, 1797-1840 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 171-209. 31Lydia H. Sigourney, Letters to Mothers, 6th ed. (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1845), 220.

34 show that they have spent their money on pencils, India rubber, alms for an elderly woman, and (in an act of self-promotion by the periodical) the Youth’s Companion. A few weeks later, their teacher calls on them to present their bookkeeping again. While

Henry’s records pass inspection again, the teacher discovers that George has altered a figure in his account book. When questioned, George claims that he made an innocent error. But his teacher reminds him that “our Maker sees both of us… and he knows whether he is angry with you and whether you are telling a lie. I hope I am not angry with you and I wish I could believe you were telling the truth” to which the dishonest boy

“burst into tears” and confesses that he falsified his records so that he could secretly spend some of the money.32 The lessons are clear: learning to keep honest financial records is an important skill, and God judges unscrupulous financial transactions unfavorably. A third, less stressed moral of the story, is that charity for the deserving poor was a valid use of money, along with school supplies, and, of course, the Youth’s

Companion.

In another children’s story on business integrity, the author underscored the importance of financial morality, while conveying the principles behind contracts and corporations. The story “Little Partners” outlines the core principles of a corporation and a contract through lessons in toys. Two boys enter an oral agreement or, as they call it a

“partnership,” to jointly assemble a ball, which they promise to share. If Willie will procure the necessary yarn and rubber, Danny promises to assemble the finished product.

Willie’s mother gives him yarn, but the boy spends his own money for used rubber, with enough money to buy a premade ball outright. Willie’s father laughs at his son’s poor

“business tact.” Though the boys initially play cooperatively with the ball, they soon

32 Gedea, “Honesty in Keeping Accounts,” Youth’s Companion, June 25, 1829, 19.

35 begin quarreling over who may play with it at what times, frustrating Willie, who declares their “partnership” unfair. Though Willie wants to withdraw from the arrangement, his father explains that dissatisfied parties cannot arbitrarily void an agreement or contract since, among other reasons, “you may injure your partner and make him lose money.” In his explanation, Willie’s father teaches his son, and through him young readers, a broader lesson about the binding nature of contracts, a principle for a boy to follow into adulthood in order to be successful and respected in middle-class circles.33

Learning to handle money did not just mean holding your own financial integrity to a high standard; it also involved avoiding the undeserving poor, confidence men, and hucksters. As historian Karen Haltunnen argues, antebellum Americans deeply distrusted duplicitous ‘confidence men,’ in response to the increase in transience and heightened financial anxiety, both spurred by the growing market economy.34 Members of the middle class worried in particular about the threat posed by people without roots in the community. Coupled with a rising concern for sheltering children, the unease over confidence men possibly duping boys and girls deepened, with threats to children including: peddlers, circus folk, undeserving beggars, and other hucksters. In one story, young Caroline is saving money for a tool box, but a door-to-door peddler tricks her into buying gold earrings (supposedly from London), and after some further cajoling, a pair of blue silk stockings and a bracelet. However, when Caroline’s mother returns, she determines that the earrings are “not gold, but gilt, and of the commonest quality, not

33 The Little Partners, The Snow Fort, and Little Howard (New York: New York Sunday School Union, 1859), 11; 15. Italics in original. 34 Karen Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle Class Culture in America, 1830-1870 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986).

36 worth one half the price paid for them.”35 Caroline is left with shoddy jewelry instead of the more practical work-box for which she was saving. The moral of the story was twofold: do not trust the claims of peddlers, and only desire that which is practical. In similar stories, children are duped or tricked if not saved by a wiser adult or peer into squandering their money on shows and paintings, which are low quality or immoral. In order for middle-class children to perpetuate their family’s socioeconomic status, reformers implied, children needed to learn how to root out confidence men.

While not all people without roots were unethical, reformers nevertheless urged children to treat even honest ones gingerly. In a short story appearing in a Sunday school periodical, John, a virtuous poor peddler whose wife is deathly ill, arrives at the door of a middle-class family, “not strong himself to do hard work.” Though buying goods from

John is portrayed as a benevolent act, the young girl who answers the door, Maria, does so cautiously. Before allowing him to enter, Maria asks her mother if she may invite the peddler into the home. Maria’s mother excludes her daughter from the financial transactions with John, from whom she purchases “a thimble for Maria, and some tapes and thread from out of his box.”36 However, the story concludes with the mother telling

Maria that she may use the newly bought thimble, to make an apron for the peddler’s daughter. Even though the story depicts the door-to-door peddler sympathetically, John is still initially treated warily, implicitly urging young readers to exercise similar caution, since even a seemingly innocuous peddler could be dangerous. Though not necessarily the story’s intention, such lessons served to deepen lines of class by encouraging children to distrust poorer people.

35 “The Pedlar and the Trinkets,” Youth’s Companion, June 9, 1845, 142. 36 “John the Pedlar,” Infant’s Magazine, November 1842, 172.

37

Adult reformers taught abstract theological principles through the language and workings of money, indicating that they assumed that children absorbed and understood economic concepts. Boys and girls owed debts to their parents and to God, taught instructional literature, responsibilities that resembled a financial debt. However, reformers portrayed debts to family and God positively, while other debts were to be avoided.37 Indeed, the prompt payment of debt was depicted as a religious obligation.38

The short dialogue “How Much are you in Debt” emphasized this principle. Henry enters his father’s counting-room and, gazing at his enormous account book, remarks that his father must owe many people money and a similar number must be indebted to him.

Henry expresses relief that he does not owe nor hold any debts, but is corrected by his father, who explains that the boy in fact owes two large debts, one to his “earthly father” and another even greater debt to his “Heavenly Father.”39

It is difficult to know how children internalized the financial lessons of their elders, though writing youngsters did wrestle with the moral lessons they received.40

Born in 1824 in northeastern Massachusetts, Lucy Larcom integrated a financial philosophy into her worldview early in her life, which she linked closely to her religious outlook. When she was five or six her father asked her to take some money and run some errands. Unbeknownst to her father, she took two extra cents to buy a “little painted sugar equestrian,” even though she “well understood that we could not help ourselves to

37 Dr. Charters, “On Being in Debt,” Youth’s Companion, July 14, 1837, 36; “Don’t Run in Debt,” Youth’s Companion, March 24, 1864, 46; “Live within your Means,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, May 13, 1857, 38. For an examination of how Americans despised debt in general, see: Edmund Morgan, “Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox,” Journal of American History 59, no. 1 (1972): 7-9. 38 “The Religion of Paying Debts,” Youth’s Companion, October 27, 1853, 108. 39 “How Much are You in Debt,” Forrester’s Boy’s and Girl’s Magazine, and Fireside Magazine, November 2, 1852, 145. See also: “The Debt Paid,” Youth’s Companion, February 4, 1864, 18. 40 Karen Sánchez-Eppler, Dependent States: The Child’s Part in Nineteenth Century American Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 18-40.

38 money.” Though she successfully stole her father’s pennies, the values she had learned stopped her from buying the sugar statue. Larcom recalled decades later that as she walked to the store,

[i]t was a bright morning, but it seemed to me as if the sky grew suddenly dark; and those two pennies began to burn through my hand, to scorch me, as if they were red hot, to my very soul. It was agony to hold them. I laid them under a tuft of grass in the footpath, and ran as if I had left a demon behind me. I did my errand, and returning, I looked about in the grass for the two cents, wondering whether they could make me feel so badly again. But my good angel hid them from me; I never found them.41 Larcom never confessed her dishonesty to her “austere” father, but she vowed to never steal again. At the age of five or six, Larcom was already receiving, struggling with, and forming strong opinions regarding moral and immoral decisions in which money played a central part, with her principles manifesting themselves as a nightmarish spiritual experience. Guided by the Ten Commandments, parents and educators had taught their children not to steal centuries before Larcom.42 However, the lessons children received regarding the use of money multiplied in the nineteenth century, as did their access to cash, and took on a heightened importance. The significance of the prohibition on stealing shifted from simply obeying the Ten Commandments to a more, market-oriented reverence for the principle of private property, including explanations of private ownership.43 Larcom’s spiritual experience indicates the extent to which some antebellum children absorbed financial principles and linked them with the fate of their souls. Moreover, the temptation that tried Larcom’s principles, and temporarily conquered them, suggests that children in the early nineteenth century faced commercial desire, making their interaction with family members partially driven by market forces.

41 Lucy Larcom, A New England Girlhood: Outlined from Memory (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1889), 75- 77. 42 Cotton, Milk for Babes, 5; New England Primer Enlarged (Boston: T. Fleet, 1737), 17. 43 C.S.M., “Stealing Pears,” Youth’s Companion ,August 24, 1839, 59; “Infant Schools” Youth’s Companion, March 12, 1829, 42; “Burglers (sic) and Burglary” Youth’s Companion, October 25, 1834, 92; “Labor and Property,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, December 22, 1847, 102.

39

The Commercial Temptations of Antebellum Childhood

Indeed, children encountered options for spending money that promised immediate gratification.44 Candy was arguably the most prominent of juvenile consumer products. Though sugar had been a luxury for eighteenth century Americans, the price of sugar fell in the nineteenth century, and candy had become a consumer commodity – available for as little as a cent – marketed to children of all classes by the 1840s. To make their product more appealing, candy vendors took advantage of nineteenth-century technological advances that allowed for new flavors and more attractive products.

Grocers displayed brightly colored candies in glass jars on shelves or counters to whet the desire of young consumers. Indeed, the variety of candies sold by grocers presented the first consumer decision many children faced; antebellum girls and boys no doubt spent a long time pondering over the colorful selection.45

Reformers targeted sweets as a temptation that harmed both social causes and young consumers. Authors of instructional juvenile literature often depicted sweets or pastries as the temptation which the young protagonist must overcome to behave benevolently, and warned that vendors went to considerable lengths to make their product attractive to young eyes.46 The fact that candy was inexpensive, argued childrearing reformers, made it especially pernicious. Because it robbed youngsters of their money gradually, children did not appreciate how much they spent over a stretch of time. Not

44 This was part of a broader expansion of character-defining consumer choices that opened up in the nineteenth century. See: Daniel Walker Howe, Making the American Self: Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (1997; repr., New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 110-114. 45 Wendy A. Woloson, Refined Tastes: Sugar, Confectionary, and Consumers in Nineteenth Century America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 32-43. 46 Self Denial: Or, Alice Wood and her Missionary Society (Philadelphia: ASSU, n.d.), 2.

40 only that, reformers argued, pennies quickly added up to greater amounts, when people pooled their money. Moreover, reformers insisted that a cent could do important things; a single penny tract could save many souls, or could feed a poor person.47 To further underscore that buying sweets was a poor way to spend money, these authors occasionally portrayed candy as a gateway to vice and poverty, and also highlighted the health risks posed by candy, arguing that sugar damaged teeth and reporting instances when candy was found to contain poison.48 Finally, reformers argued that the pleasure derived from a piece of candy was superficial and brief in contrast with the pleasure that came with spending money wisely.49

Additionally, merchants encouraged children to buy toys, or prompted their parents to do so, though not nearly to the extent that they would later in the century.

Children had few playthings by modern-day standards, and most of those they did have were made by themselves or their parents.50 Indeed, luxury toys still had to be imported from Europe and were affordable only by the wealthiest American families.51 Still, beginning in the 1840s, American manufacturers began producing toys made of wood and tin.52 Indeed, one commentator sensed that the toy industry was growing and making toys more attractive than before. He or she argued that toy Noah’s Arks, one of the earliest commercially manufactured toys, had grown more elaborate, observing that “in

47 L.D., “Worth of a Cent,” Youth’s Companion, December 12, 1834, 119; Pictorial Scenes and Incidents Illustrative of Christian Missions (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1852), 143; “‘Tis but a penny, but then I am sure, A penny will purchase a roll for the poor,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, October 8, 1845, 82; “Loose Pennies,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, March 17, 1858, 23. Thomas Smyth, The Destined Efficiency of Juvenile Missionary Effort (Charleston: B. Jenkins, 1847), 14. 48 “Confectionaries Poisonous,” Youth’s Temperance Advocate, December 1852, 48. 49 The Worth of a Penny (Philadelphia: ASSU, n.d.), 4-5; 7-8. 50Gary Cross, Kids’ Stuff: Toys and the Changing World of American Childhood (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 20-21; Miriam Formanek-Brunell, Made to Play House: Doll’s and the Commercialization of American Girlhood (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), 14-15. 51 Chudacoff, Children at Play, 54. 52 Mark Irwin West, “Nineteenth-Century Toys and Their Role in the Socialization of Imagination,” Journal of Popular Culture 17, no. 4 (1984): 109-110.

41 our boyish days, Noah’s family consisted of a few discolored pegs of wood, and it was quite an interesting problem in natural history to decide what animals certain jagged bits of pine were. Now the Patriarch and his family are quite works of art.”53 Though they were diminutive in comparison to what they would become, toy stores, or toy departments sold merchandise such as toy guns, swords, pull toys, rocking horses, drums, blocks, spinning tops, dolls, and kites.54

Children also bought and read commercial publications, aimed at a young audience, which lacked the heavy-handed moralizing of Sunday school literature. Often imported from England, or American copies of English publications, these books featured large, often colorfully tinted, illustrations. For instance, the story of Jack the Giant Killer was published for children by a number of publishers, sometimes including colorfully tinted illustrations.55 In Jack, the Giant Killer, the young title character treks across

England killing murderous giants, while making clever remarks. Jack’s most celebrated virtues are courage and a gift for killing giants. Lacking the lessons valued by childrearing reformers, it was singled out by one missionary and childrearing reformer as an example of books that were “frivolous and dangerous.”56 Unlike Sunday school literature, which was aimed to win souls and shape behavior, these books were designed to entertain and make money. Arguably the most successful of these publishers was

McLoughlin Brothers, which started publishing children’s books in the 1850s, relying on

53 “Toys for the Million,” Flag for our Union, December 20, 1856, 405. Similar sentiments were published in an American reprint of the Scottish periodical Chambers’ Journal. See: “Children’s Playthings,” Littell’s Living Age, December 6, 1856, 615. Dating back to the sixteenth century, model wooden Noah’s Arks were a common early toy made to be sold. See: Cross, Kids’ Stuff, 15. 54 Samuel Griswold Goodrich, Peter Parley’s Method of Teaching Arithmetic to Children (Boston: Carter and Hendee, 1833), 50; “Tall and Short,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, September 15, 1858, 76. 55 Jack, the Giant Killer (New York: McLoughlin Brothers, c. 1859-1862); Jack, the Giant Killer (New York: H.W. Hewitt, 1855). 56 John Scudder, An Appeal to Christian Mothers (New York: American Tract Society, n.d.), 54.

42 large, attractive, hand-colored illustrations to increase sales. In the 1860s the company premiered innovative “relief etched zinc plates,” which sped up coloring and gave the publisher a leg up over competitors. 57 Though McLoughlin Brothers published a wide variety of children’s books, it refrained from including the heavy religious moralizing of

Sunday school literature.58

In addition to buying playthings and sweets, children spent money on entertainment, such as circuses and peddler’s shows.59 During the nineteenth century, circuses extended their reach westward, featuring exotic animals and scantily clad performers.60 Many reformers deemed these shows immoral or wasteful, insisting that circus employees abused their animals and inspired children to ape their dangerous stunts. They also claimed that paying admission sustained the lifestyles of “generally idle and worthless people.”61 Moreover, insisted childrearing reformers, by paying admission to the circus, youngsters unwittingly “encouraged intemperance.”62 Furthermore, argued reformers, such shows were also frequented by disreputable people who would corrupt children who attended.63 One Sunday school author went so far as to insist that attending penny theaters would “lead to prostitution and robbery and all imaginable crimes.”64 It was far more virtuous, evangelical reformers argued, for girls and boys to spend their

57 Avery, Behold the Child, 125. 58 Ibid., 126. 59 “The Fool and his Pence Are Soon Parted,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, March 13, 1844, 23. 60 Janet M. Davis, The Circus Age: Culture and Society Under the American Big Top (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 16-19; Advice to Sabbath School Children (New York: American Tract Society, n.d. (inscribed 1824)), 11-12. Baldwin Library of Historic Children’s Literature, University Florida. 61 The Circus (Philadelphia: ASSU, n.d.), 11-13. See also, “The Circus,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, October 22, 1845, 2. 62 Mary Ann, “The Circus,” Youth’s Companion, November 5, 1846, 146. 63 Advice to Sabbath School Children, 11-12. 64 “Penny Theatres,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, June 23, 1852, 51.

43 money on benevolent causes, such as Christian missions.65 As an alternative to unwholesome entertainment, reformers organized and promoted afternoon and evening concerts performed by Sunday school pupils, often sung for parents, and raising money for missions. These concerts also included prayers, sermons, and accounts of missionary activities.66 Moreover, Sunday schools and juvenile missionary societies also held celebrations, normally held on a school’s anniversary, the Fourth of July, or in conjunction with other local Sunday schools.67

Teaching Religious Consumption to Children

Child rearing reformers also exposed children to economic principles by linking consumption with piety. This concept was implemented in antebellum Sunday school’s reward systems, which were themselves motivational teaching methods that conveyed lessons in saving towards purchases.68 Though Sunday schools originated as tools for educating an urban poor whom the middle class viewed with suspicion – their intent in

Great Britain – new institutions arose to instill evangelical Christianity in young

Americans, regardless of class, in the first decades of the nineteenth century.69 Partially supported by organizations like the American Sunday School Union (ASSU), these schools were founded in isolated regions of the country where children and adults had few alternatives to receive an education or religious instruction. Free black children also

65 “The Circus,” Youth’s Companion, August 2, 1849, 54. 66 John Scudder, “Letter from Doct. John Scudder,” Dayspring, June 1845, 22. 67 “A Happy Season,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, June 20, 1855, 51; Juvenile Missionary Society, West Parish, Andover. Exercises at the Seventeenth Anniversary, July 31st, 1847. West Parish Church Records (Andover, MA), AHS. Mss 376. Sub-Group V. Series F. Sub-Series 2. This juvenile missionary society held such celebrations annually, which was typical. 68 Reiner, From Virtue to Character, 81; 89. 69 E.P. Thompson, Making of the English Working Class (New York: Pantheon, 1964), 375-379; Thomas Walter Laqueur, Religion and Respectability: Sunday Schools and Working Class Culture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1976).

44 attended Sunday schools at higher rates than white children, since it offered them a rare opportunity to receive an education. These new schools taught theology and moral behavior to the next generation, which organizers deemed necessary for the success of the new republic.70

Early American Sunday school teachers, emulating their English counterparts, used reward tickets labeled “the ticket currency, “with passages of Scripture printed with a border on thin red and blue pasteboard,” to encourage attendance and good scholarship from their pupils.71 Many Sunday school organizers expressed unease toward rewarding pupils with cash – one Sunday school organizer declared the practice “peremptorily forbidden” – but initially saw little harm using tickets, which could be converted into religious prizes, even those assigned a monetary value.72 In an early and widespread example of what is labeled a token economy in modern psychology and educational studies, instructors awarded blue tickets to pupils for regular attendance, good behavior, or for memorizing passages from the Bible (the criteria of evaluation sometimes depended on the level of the student).73 Students could also be penalized tickets for poor

70 Boylan, Sunday School, 6-21. 71 Edwin Wilbur Rice The Sunday School Movement: 1780-1917, and the American Sunday School Union: 1817-1917 (Philadelphia: ASSU, 1917), 76; Boylan Sunday School, 44-45; Kimberly Reynolds, “Rewarding Reads? Giving, Receiving and Resisting Evangelical Reward and Prize Books” in Popular Children’s Literature in Britain, ed. Julia Briggs, Dennis Butts, and M.O Grenby. (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2008), 189-207; in particular, see: 189. 72 Y., “Manner of Conducting Sunday Schools,” Sunday School Repository, April 1, 1818, 10; Boylan, Sunday School, 44-45; Rice Sunday School Movement, 76. 73 Many authorities on modern token economies have argued for its effectiveness in comparison to other methods such as a “time out” deterrent. See: Holly A. Filcheck and Cheryl B. McNeil, “The Use of Token Economies in Preschool Classrooms: Practical and Philosophical Concerns,” Journal of Early and Intensive Behavior Intervention 1 (2004): 94-104. However, modern day token economies in schools do not necessarily rely on material premiums, using an alternative such as free time outdoors as a reward. Interestingly, some of the recent complaints regarding this system have echoed antebellum objections. Modern-day education critics still voice concern regarding the motivations behind a child’s behavior when they are being rewarded for it. Modern education scholars also continue to worry that token economies spur unnecessary and detrimental competition among pupils.

45 conduct in school or in church.74 If a child collected enough blue tickets she or he could exchange them for more valuable red tickets (normally valued at half a cent), which could, in turn, could be redeemed for religious tracts, New Testaments, or entire Bibles.75

One Sunday school booster defended the system by arguing that pupils learning for rewards was no different than adult workers driven by wages.76 Through this system,

Sunday school children received lessons in monetary reward, without normally being directly exposed to a cash economy. Indeed, one Sunday school booster went so far as to warn against assigning tickets a monetary value.77 Earning a Bible or New Testament with tickets was no easy task for a child: the 1825 New York Sunday School Union report recorded that of their 4,430 pupils, only 165 received a Bible and 211 a New

Testament (a larger number received less expensive tracts), signaling consistent attendance, good behavior, and enormous amounts of rote memorization from a boy or girl.78 Organizers hoped that when children received reward books, they would be continually reminded “of the kind regard and affection of the instructers of their youth, and would often tend to revive their pious precepts in their minds.”79 To encourage remembrance of the gift’s source, and add to the reward’s significance, Sunday school teachers affixed book plates inscribed with the child’s name. In cases where children were rewarded with cash, their prizes were commonly linked to benevolence. For example, at one Sunday school where pupils received money, they were required to give

74 Rice, Sunday School Movement, 76. Mirroring this philosophy, teachers and superintendants were also fined for absences. 75 Ibid., 52; 76. 76“Rewards and Punishments,” American Sunday School Magazine, August 1826, 237. 77 “School Regulations,” American Sunday School Magazine, September 1827, 257. 78 First Annual Report of the American Sunday School Union: Read at their Annual Meeting Held in the City of Philadelphia, on Tuesday Evening, May 24, 1825 (Philadelphia: ASSU, 1825), 54. 79 Third Annual Report of the American Sunday School Union: Read at their Annual Meeting Held in the City of Philadelphia, on Tuesday Afternoon, May 22, 1827 (Philadelphia: ASSU, 1827), 22.

46 half their earnings to charity, to instill the habit of benevolence.80

Early Sunday school organizers in the United States recognized the potential of tickets and other rewards to attract children, and ordered them from Sabbath school publishers as soon as a school formed.81 One Sunday school agent in the field, succinctly expressed the usefulness of premiums when he declared that “[i]f I did not adopt this plan, I should not succeed.”82 The ASSU responded to the demand from local Sunday schools, printing 726,000 tickets in its first year.83 Reward tickets became a ubiquitous feature of the Sunday school classroom. Indeed, Mark Twain lampooned the system in his 1876 novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, confident that his readers would recognize and be amused by the young Sawyer manipulating a Sunday school ticket reward system to win the attention and accolades that came with winning a Bible.84

Besides acting as a localized currency, the tickets themselves were infused with religious messages and meaning. Religious publishers printed tickets with passages from the Bible to inspire piety in the recipient even before she or he traded them for larger premiums. Indeed, one heavily republished anecdote highlighted that one reward ticket could have transformative properties: a wealthy woman asks her servant to bring her a ticket she sees lying on the ground, mistaking it for something valuable. Upon reading the passage, she is spiritually moved, and is “brought to the feet of Jesus” as a believer.85 In

80 “Sabbath Schools,” Boston Recorder, January 26, 1822, 14. 81 Y., “Manner of Conducting Sunday Schools,” Sunday School Repository, April 1, 1818, 10; Rice, Sunday School Movement, 52; 76. 82 The Seventh Annual Report of the Philadelphia and Adult School Union, May 25, 1824 (Philadelphia: ASSU, 1824), 67. 83 First Annual Report of the American Sunday School Union, 6. 84 Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1920), 32-42. 85 “Anecdote,” Religious Intelligencer, July 13, 1822, 112. The story held such resonance that it continued to be republished over fifteen years after its first publication. See: “Sabbath School Anecdotes,” Religious Intelligencer, July 28, 1837, 106.

47 another short story, an elderly widow is converted to Christianity when she reads the inscription on a Sunday school ticket presented to her by her dying child.86

A reward system that mirrored market transactions was not the only way Sunday schools could have chosen to reward children. While some American secular schools also used reward tickets (commonly designed to resemble actual currency), and some

American parents rewarded well behaved children with toys and books, a number of nineteenth century educational institutions employed less material motivational tools.87

For instance, public schools used desk position to distinguish academic performance, seating the best students in the front. One historian has shown that adolescent girls took their desk positions seriously a few decades later in the nineteenth century, working for grades without a material incentive.88 In another example of non-physical rewards,

Frederic Beasley, a president of the University of Pennsylvania, advocated rewarding students with days excused from class in recognition of exceptional performance.89 That the organizers of Sunday schools permitted, and even printed, reward tickets, despite these alternatives, indicates their willingness to embrace a consumer economy and encourage juvenile desire.

86 “An Affecting Incident,” Christian Advocate and Journal, June 29, 1827, 169. Universalists objected to the distortion of scripture by pulling passages out of context for reward tickets. See: Lucius, “Pious Fraud,” Trumpet and Universalist Magazine, July 19, 1828, 12. 87 The American Broadsides and Ephemera digital collection includes an array of these public school certificates. Seemingly redeemable for cash, the certificates resembled money. These certificates lacked the religious language of their Sunday school counterparts. American Broadsides and Ephemera, http://infoweb.newsbank.com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/iw- search/we/Evans?p_product=ABEA&p_action=keyword&p_theme=eai&p_nbid=R61Y48QEMTMzMjkx MjE2Mi42MzI4MDI6MToxNDoxMjguMTE4Ljg4LjI0Mw&p_clear_search=yes&d_refprod=ABEA&&s_ startsearch=keyword. 88 Jane H. Hunter, How Young Ladies Became Girls: The Victorian Origins of American Girlhood (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 169-220. 89 Rodney Hessinger, Seduced, Abandoned, and Reborn: Visions of Youth in Middle-Class America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 86.

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By the late 1820s, when Sunday Schools were broadening their appeal to include middle-class children, some Sunday school organizers began voicing concerns over the ticket and premium systems.90 First, they opined – plausibly – that many children memorized and parroted scripture to win prizes without pondering a text’s meaning or applicability.91 Second, Sunday school reformers worried that the reward system instilled selfishness in their pupils, learning to love tickets rather than God. To keep these feelings under control, the ASSU prescribed steps to ensure their pupils not become hubristic or greedy. Instructors should make “no particular display in the distribution of rewards,” advised Sunday school organizers, so that award ceremonies would not make boys and girls prideful.92 In order to discourage head-to-head rivalries, one Sunday school organizer suggested that predetermined numbers of marks should be set for which children could exchange tracts or Bibles, instead of giving prizes to the pupil with the most marks or tickets.93 However, such a system made it harder to control the number of prizes awarded, exacerbating a problem cash-strapped schools faced. Reward inducements placed a heavy economic burden on Sunday schools, which needed to continuously buy new books for winning pupils. Moreover, a new Sunday school had to purchase tickets, and it is unclear whether established schools reused redeemed ones, but many unredeemed tickets no doubt went missing. A large Sunday school could conceivably give out hundreds of books at one award ceremony so that only wealthier

90 Boylan, Sunday School, 44. 91 Rice, The Sunday School Movement, 77. 92 Third Annual Report of the American Sunday School Union, 21. Historians Jane H. Hunter and Nancy Green have claimed that some of the earliest critiques of classroom competitions appeared in secular schools in the 1830s and 1840s. However, these critiques in Sunday schools predate secular school concerns. Jane H. Hunter, How Young Ladies Became Girls: The Victorian Origins of American Girlhood (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 193. 93 “Rewards and Punishments,” American Sunday School Magazine, September 1826, 261; A.H. Davis, Observation on the Religious Instruction of Youth, Principally with a Reference to Sunday Schools, (Philadelphia: ASSU, 1828), 68-69.

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Sunday schools could easily sustain a premium system.94 Even the excitement spurred by tickets was short lived, charged critics, insisting that children drawn in to Sunday schools by tickets soon became disinterested and dropped out.95

Juvenile instructional fiction reflected adults’ concern that children would, like

Tom Sawyer, collect tickets out of vanity or selfishness, if not properly instructed. In The

Tickets young Ellen aggressively collects Sunday school tickets to ‘purchase’ a Bible, causing her mother to worry that her Sunday school success is making her prideful.

Though the mother is heartened that her daughter is a proficient pupil, she advises Ellen to reflect more critically on her motives, and ask herself whether she desires the Bible premium to learn from it, or to be praised in a public award ceremony and see her name inscribed on a book plate. Following this conversation, Ellen’s classmate and friend

Charlotte becomes despondent after losing her tickets in a lake. Ellen offers half of her tickets to Charlotte, but then – following her mother’s advice – investigates her intentions and realizes she is only being generous to receive praise for self-denial from her teacher.

Ellen ultimately gives half of her tickets to Charlotte, and tells her instructor that she wants no approbation for her act.96 In so doing, Ellen demonstrates that she does not learn for the sake of greed or vanity, and that she does not act generously for positive attention.

The Sunday School Tickets indicates that reformers envisioned the use of tickets as a medium through which children could express benevolence, while remaining aware that their premiums potentially encouraged greed and conceitedness.97

94 A Superintendant, Sunday Schools; Their Uses and Abuses (Philadelphia: ASSU, n.d.), 1. 95 “Sabbath Schools in New Jersey,” New-Jersey Sunday School Journal, August 1828, 113. 96 The Tickets: or a Story for Sabbath Scholars (New York: American Tract Society, n.d.). 97 The Tickets story was not without precedent. Children in Charleston, South Carolina gave Bibles ‘purchased’ with their Sunday school tickets “to destitute neighborhoods.” See: “Gleanings,” American Sunday School Magazine, July 1824, 20.

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Another children’s story published by the ASSU cast doubt on a correlation between Sunday school rewards and Christian morality. In the short story “John

Edwards,” the title character is a star pupil, memorizing and reciting two thousand verses of the Bible in three months, for which he earned “the largest reward ever given in the school.” Despite his achievement:

[i]n his class he was talkative and trifling; - at home he was disobedient to his parents, and unkind to his sisters; he kept company with the most wicked boys of the neighborhood, and imitated their example; - his tongue learned to utter lies and to curse; - he became very disorderly in the school; - he was ungrateful to his teachers, and slighted all their friendly and affectionate warnings; - he considered his diligence as a scholar a sufficient excuse for his improper behavior; and at length so gross was his misconduct that he was expelled from the school in disgrace. The story concludes by stressing the hollowness of memorizing scripture without considering its meaning and applying it to daily life. The author elaborates that “[i]t is well to be diligent and attentive to learning, but it is better to obey the commands of God; and he who learns but little and practices what he does learn, is more to be commended and admired, than the most diligent scholar whose character and conduct are not influenced by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”98

When Sunday school memorization, reward books and tickets fell into disfavor in the late 1820s, lending libraries filled the void, which organizers hoped would encourage children to think about the meaning of what they read, even if they did not memorize it.99

One article in a children’s periodical underscored this new priority when it rhetorically asked what children should be taught, answering “that it is not so much the acquisition of knowledge, as to teach them to think.”100 Advocates argued that library books acted as “a silent assistant teacher,” encouraging a more thorough comprehension, spreading lessons

98 “John Edwards” in The History of Joe Bennett and his Friend Thomas (Philadelphia: ASSU, n.d.), 25-28. Quotes from 27-28. 99 A Superintendent, Sunday-School Libraries; “Reward Tickets,” 1; New Jersey Sunday School Journal, July 1, 1827, 10. 100 W., “Hints on Education,” Youth’s Companion, April 16, 1827, 3.

51 to a child’s family, and, in contrast with reward tickets, ensuring that they would not become selfish.101 An ASSU report explained that:

[u]nder the former system, every child, who was rewarded, received the book as his own, and thus the actual consumption of books was very great and very rapid, while the variety was limited. But with libraries the case is reversed: the variety demanded is great and the consumption slow—two or three copies of each book being sufficient for a school of several hundred children.102 Indeed, Sunday school libraries, in contrast with reward books, relied on collective, rather than private ownership. Beginning in the mid-1820s Sunday school libraries took on a more central role as tickets and other premiums fell out of favor on account of their expense and their questionable pedagogical effectiveness.103

Reformers envisioned these libraries as key to a pupil’s religious education.

Though the organization of libraries varied from school to school, many were based on encouraging good behavior and the close reading of texts.104 For instance, in some schools, children would borrow a book for a predetermined period and exchange it for another one after they demonstrated an acceptable knowledge of that book to their teacher.105 Sunday school organizers anticipated that this would allow pupils to absorb key lessons from the work, and that other children in the class might learn something from the questioning process.106

Library books normally remained on the shelf until they wore out, so in contrast to a book premium, a library book could educate numerous children. However, after a library book passed through many borrowers, it would not be as aesthetically pleasing to

101 A Superintendent, Sunday-School Libraries, 19. 102 Sixth Report of the American Sunday School Union (Philadelphia: ASSU, 1830), 11-12. 103 First Annual Report of the American Sunday School Union, 40. 104 Second Annual Report of the American Sunday School Union: Read at their Annual Meeting Held in the City of Philadelphia, on Tuesday Evening, May 23, 1826 (Philadelphia: ASSU, 1826), 38. 105 Connecticut, “Little Peter and his Library Book,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, May 8, 1844, 39; A Superintendent, Sunday School Libraries, 1. 106 A Superintendant, Sunday-School Libraries, 20-21.

52 a child as a new premium. The ASSU sold libraries of their publications in three, five and ten dollar sizes, ready for shipment to isolated locales.107 Local Sunday schools bought libraries with funding from the ASSU, from sympathetic donors young and old, from the donations of Sunday school classes, and from adults and children allied with the school.108 Organizers insisted that teachers could use their carefully screened publications, instead of the hodgepodge of often inappropriate texts commonly included in Sabbath school libraries.109

The transition from premiums to libraries was incomplete and uneven, suggesting how effective some school teachers and superintendents found material rewards for motivating pupils. While some schools tried to eliminate reward systems, other Sunday schools resisted and continued to report on premiums’ effectiveness.110 A number of

Sunday schools retained ticket systems for younger pupils, while they cancelled the program for older children.111 In at least one school, the superintendent and teachers butted heads over whether to eliminate Sunday school tickets.112 Despite the concerns of some Sunday school organizers, premium systems persisted in local Sunday schools for

107 Uncle Edward, “Who Will be a Little Missionary,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, December 27, 1843, 104. Ultimately, the ASSU began focusing on distributing hundred volume ten dollar libraries. See: “Fourth of July,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, July 8, 1846, 54. 108 “Free Will Offering from Sunday-Schools for Needy Sunday Schools” in The Sunday School Pocket Almanac for the Year of Our Lord 1852 (Philadelphia: ASSU, 1852), 6-7; “Donations are Solicited to Aid the American Sunday School Union in Supplying Destitute Sunday-Schools with Library Books, &c., and Especially for Sunday Schools n the West,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, September 27, 1848, 78; Sunday School Benevolence (Philadelphia: ASSU, c. 1840). In this last work, the author argues that juvenile benevolence for presumably white children in the West brings greater returns and fills a more acute need than foreign missions. 109 “A Superintendant,” Sunday Schools Libraries, 8-10. This mix of potentially dangerous books included publications of denominational Sunday school organizations, which the ASSU deemed problematic for schools with pupils from different Protestant churches, and books ASSU organizers considered inappropriate for children in general, such as frivolous and salacious texts, and Unitarian and Universalist books, whose doctrines ran contrary to the Union. 110 Third Annual Report of the American Sunday School Union, 75; 78. 111 Third Annual Report of the American Sunday School Union, 75. 112 “A Teacher,” “The Old System,” American Sunday School Magazine, May 1827, 152.

53 decades, and the New York Sunday School Union continued sanctioning tickets until at least the 1840s.113

Eddy’s Tickets, a tract published by the General Protestant Episcopal Sunday

School Union in 1864, went even further in linking good behavior with material gain by encouraging the household use of tickets redeemable for rewards.114 If Eddy behaves himself and does proficiently in school, promises his mother, he will receive tickets, to be saved in a box. Eddy’s grandfather promises the boy a surprise if he can earn fifty tickets.

After Eddy earns 56 tickets, his reward is revealed to be an invitation to visit his grandfather and cousin, and “a beautiful Bible, bound in purple, with a gilt clasp, and on the cover was printed in gilt letters, EDWIN K. HALL.”115 As Eddy’s Ticket’s and continued advertising for Sunday school paraphernalia suggests, the use of rewards and token economies continued to find adherents, with children responding positively to material incentives.116 Indeed, the use of premiums has persisted in Sabbath schools to the present, adapting to trends in juvenile tastes.117

While many antebellum educators extolled the virtues of school libraries over tickets, childrearing reformers also encouraged children to assemble personal book collections. “This is an age of Books,” declared an editorialist in the Youth’s Companion

113 “Rewards in Sunday Schools,” Christian Advocate and Journal, August 30, 1833, 2; “Benevolent Societies,” The Independent, April 5, 1849, 18. 114 D.P. Sanford, Eddy’s Tickets: A Tale for the Little Ones (New York: General Protestant Episcopal Sunday School Union 1864), 17-18. 115 Sanford, Eddy’s Tickets, 17-21; 55-56. 116 Boylan, Sunday School, 156-160. Not all scholars agree that children enjoyed Sunday school premiums: in the English context, see: Kimberley Reynolds, “Rewarding Reads?,”189-208. 117 For examples of late nineteenth century tickets, see: “U.T.S.S.S.R.,” The Baptist Missionary Magazine, April 1880, 1; “Sunday School Board,” Christian Index, September 21, 1899, 8. For twentieth century uses, see: Colleen McDannell, Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America, (New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1995), 245. Sunday schools continue to offer an array of toys and rewards, including Christian themed knockoffs of Silly Bandz , a recent fad among children: “Faith Band Bracelets,” Christianbooks.com, http://www.christianbook.com/Christian/Books/gift_results/1081071160?page=398645&sp=107037&event =78963SBF|1173138|78963.

54 in 1842, “The world is full of Books. All have their Books. There are Books for Parents, and books for children (and a great deal more Books for children than their used to be, for which they ought to be very thankful.)”118 Indeed, since the beginning of the century, there had been a dramatic expansion in the selection and production of books, including instructional children’s literature. While the ASSU began discouraging reward systems in the late 1820s, it still encouraged Sunday schools to give New Testaments or primers to all pupils according to their reading level, for free or at cost.119 By 1830, the ASSU’s publishing operation alone had sold six million books, which undoubtedly found their way into Sunday school libraries and girls’ and boys’ personal collections.120

Though Sunday school organizations and child rearing authorities taught children to limit indulgent spending and to avoid luxury, buying and owning appropriate literature was commonly depicted as virtuous. While Youth’s Companion editor Willis eschewed advertising during his tenure as editor, he saw no contradiction in reviewing, or including excerpts of instructional juvenile books available for sale.121 This sentiment was characterized by a contributor to the Youth’s Companion following Willis’s tenure, who judged that “a desire to lay out pocket-money in the purchase of good books is one of the best indications that can be noticed in a youth.”122 While Sabbath school books and other instructional literature portrayed the assembling of libraries as an act of collecting –

118 N., “Books! Books! Books!,” Youth’s Companion, January 21, 1842, 146. 119 The Sunday-School Pocket Almanac for the Year of Our Lord 1852, 18. 120 Gillian Avery, Behold the Child, 99. 121 “Juvenile Review: Old Ruth,” Youth’s Companion, June 13, 1827, 11; “The Teacher’s Gift,” Youth’s Companion, December 29, 1837, 129. Willis eschewed advertising in the Companion. However, Diane Gruber identifies several ways his work embraced the marketplace. For an examination of Willis’s attitude towards advertising see: Diane Gruber, “Much of their tuition: The historical matrix of youth, consumerism, and mass culture as illustrated in the pages of the Youth's Companion, 1827—1929” (PhD diss., Purdue, 2002), 54-60. Gruber, however, does not consider Willis’s book excerpts as a form of advertising. 122 “Juvenile Libraries,” Youth’s Companion, January 19, 1860, 10.

55 encouraging children to neatly order and number the spines of their books – reformers did not treat this as a materialistic act of consumption.123 One article appearing in the

ASSU’s Youth’s Penny Gazette applauded the growth of “reading rooms and library associations,” but cautioned young readers that just borrowing books was not sufficient to be a good Christian. In addition to borrowing from Sunday school libraries, advised the article, children should collect appropriate books of their own, because keeping a home library saved valuable travel time, which could be better spent reading. The article concludes as an advertisement, reminding readers that the ASSU published a library series ideal for such a purpose, since “[t]here are few families who do not spend twice that sum for what it would be better for them, body and soul, to have done without.”124

Indeed, by encouraging youngsters to collect books, childrearing reformers and Sabbath school instructors prepared girls and boys for a market economy, which glorified consumerism within parameters that affirmed a commitment to Christian benevolence and that championed middle-class values.

By ascribing a religious significance to merchandise, conspicuous consumption became more acceptable to a middle class that praised self-denial, a phenomenon academics have labeled “pious consumption.”125 This effort to make instructional children’s literature physically attractive constituted part of a broader trend in antebellum

America, that of middle-class Americans prizing beautifully adorned and illustrated religious books. This process legitimized owning elaborately decorated and illustrated

123 Sánchez-Eppler, Dependent States, 29. 124 “Have you Good Books to Read?,”Youth’s Penny Gazette, May 9, 1855, 2. Also see: “The Neat Book- Case,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, November 6, 1844, 91. 125Lori Merish, Sentimental Materialism: Gender Commodity Culture, and Nineteenth Century American Literature (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), 89-90; Thomas Richards, The Commodity Culture of Victorian England: Advertising and Spectacle, 1851-1914 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990), 104.

56 editions of the Bible, the supreme icon of Protestant Christianity, which middle-class families displayed to guests in their parlors (creating an additional market for Bible stands), underscoring their home’s moral purity as well as their socioeconomic status.126

The demand for attractively designed Bibles was epitomized in 1846 by the popular

Harper Brothers illustrated Bible, which its publishers advertised as “the most splendidly elegant edition of the Sacred Record.”127 By commodifying scripture, publishers made

Bible ownership both a religious and status-affirming experience, which effectively wedded the sacred and the profane.128

Indeed, in their efforts to win the hearts of children, reformers sometimes depicted

Bibles as desirable commodities.129 They opined that every child should own his or her own personal Bible, instead of simply using the family Bible.130 Although children were warned not to appreciate a Bible for its aesthetic beauty, reformers occasionally depicted

Bibles as significant keepsakes or as attractive pieces of merchandise.131 The 1857 poem

“I’ve Got a Little Bible,” which appeared in the Youth’s Companion, opens with a girl’s description of her personal Bible’s physical attributes, highlighting the characteristics of the book that made it a piece of merchandise:

I’ve got a little Bible Which my father gave to me; And, oh, it is the prettiest thing That ever I did see.

126 McDannell, The Christian Home in Victorian America, 83-84. 127 Peter J. Wosh, Spreading the Word: The Bible Business in Nineteenth-Century America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994); Paul C. Gutjahr, An American Bible: A History of the Good Book in the United States, 1777-1880 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press: 1999), 46; 70; Eugene Exman, The Brothers Harper: A Unique Publishing Partnership and its Impact Upon the Cultural Life of America, 1817-1853 (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), 244. 128 McDannell, Material Christianity, 4-8. 129 In adult American literature, the image of the child acquiring a Bible as an attractive commodity was depicted in the popular novel, The Wide, Wide World. Susan Warner, The Wide, Wide World, 4th ed. (New York: George P. Putnam, 1851), 1: 34-36. 130 Stephen Nissenbaum, The Battle for Christmas (New York: Knopf, 1996), 176. 131 Harriet Beecher Stowe, “The Bible a Comforter,” Youth’s Companion, September 9, 1842, 70.

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Its cover, oh, how red it is! Its leaves are edged with gold, And tight together this bright clasp Of silver doth it hold, This is the very Bible Which my father gave to me.

Thus, the Bible entered the world of children’s goods. Similar descriptions could have easily been made of a Christmas gift book, an attractive diary, or other book with no explicit religious significance. But the second stanza backs away from the physical image drawn by the opening, highlighting that the main value of a Bible lies not in its exterior, but in its contents:

Here is the outside but within The richest pearls do lie; Which may be found by even such A little girl as I. And I will learn a verse each day, And when to school I go, I’ll say them to my teacher, and My pretty present show. This is the very Bible Which my father gave to me.132 By the end of the poem, the author has underscored the theological content as the most precious characteristic of the girl’s Bible. However, by initially presenting the Bible as an eye-catching, consumer object, even when the text was allegedly the real prize, educators helped legitimize and direct juvenile desire. Indeed, even after the girl concedes the supremacy of the words in the Bible, she still mentions that she will exhibit her “pretty present” to her teacher. It was permissible to admire a Bible’s physical attributes, so long as the child acknowledged the ultimate value remained in the text.

The pleasure of desire and material acquisition was celebrated by childrearing reformers when it involved acquiring a Bible; when young Charles Seymour goes to a

Bible printer, in “It Is More Than A Book,” the boy visits a New York Bible society’s

132 “I’ve Got a Little Bible,” Youth’s Companion, May 28, 1857, 88.

58 publishing house, where he witnesses the wonders of mechanized printing and receives a

“small and beautifully bound testament” from his mother. The boy’s “eyes sparkled with pleasure, as he looked at its embossed cover and gilt edged leaves, and he thanked his mother repeatedly for buying it for him.”133 Though the story’s author predictably follows this description by explaining that Charles Seymour ultimately appreciated the

Bible for its message, rather than its appearance, the tale initially draws young people to desire the Bible by highlighting its physical attributes and the pleasure that came with ownership. Moreover, the Bible is ascribed heightened value as a product of the wondrous technology of industrialism that Charles Seymour discovers in the publishing house.

Determining whether children actually prized religious books for their physical appearance, or whether reformers were projecting their own love for finery, is difficult.

However, James Lawrence Whittier, a fifteen year old Bostonian apprenticed to a bank, favored attractively packaged religious literature over plainer editions when the American

Bible Society distributed 75 Bibles and 200 New Testaments at his Sunday school in

1831. Whittier recorded in his diary that the Bibles were “[b]eautifully printed,” “on good paper,” and bound “with calf skin,” in contrast with the New Testaments which he derisively describes as “not quite so good,” and “bound in red cloth.”134 A regular attendee of Bible class, Sunday school, and religious sermons, Whittier still appreciated the Testaments and Bibles as commodities with values beyond the message of the text.

Reformers did not treat scripture alone as merchandise for children: they also adapted instructional juvenile literature’s physical appearance to pique the interest of

133 “It Is More Than A Book!,” Youth’s Companion, September 25, 1833, 76. 134 Diary of James Lawrence Whittier, 1830-1831, entry for April 24, 1831. AAS.

59 youngsters. Periodicals improved their illustrations and mastheads over the first half of the nineteenth century. Early juvenile periodicals had been sparsely illustrated, or not illustrated at all. Lydia Maria Child’s pioneering Juvenile Miscellany, which first appeared in 1826, originally contained no illustrations and a masthead made up only of type. In 1827, the Juvenile Miscellany began including pictures, and in 1828 illustrations became a consistent feature of the periodical.135 By the 1840s, less expensive periodicals published by benevolent organizations, such as the Youth’s Penny Gazette and the

Child’s Paper (published by the ASSU and the American Tract Society respectively) featured large, detailed etchings of exotic animals, episodes from domestic scenes, and naval adventures on their covers, all designed to attract the eyes of children.136 An editor of the Youth’s Penny Gazette explained that in addition to being “instructive,” it was necessary for the paper to be “well adorned.”137 Though Youth’s Companion illustrations would remain rudimentary before the Civil War, its editor acknowledged the importance of the periodical’s physical appearance when he added more detail to the masthead in

1849.138 Early issues of the Youth’s Companion contained no illustrations at all, and even though illustrations were added, they did not match the artistry of their competitors.

Children’s letters to juvenile periodicals reveal that publishers were correct to assume that children appreciated the aesthetic qualities of what they read. Children wrote to the Youth’s Companion complaining that it lacked the fine artwork of the Child’s

Paper, to which Nathaniel Willis responded that that it could not afford such a format

135 Front Material, Juvenile Miscellany, September 1829, 2. 136 Avery, Behold the Child, 99. Though Avery dismisses Sunday school literature prior to the 1850s as “austere and confined to doctrinal teaching,” 1840s issues of their Youth’s Penny Gazette were published with considerable attention to artwork, and included stories intended to entertain, as well as instruct. 137 “The Design of our Paper,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, September 20, 1843, 74. 138 Cover, Youth’s Companion, May 3, 1849, 1.

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“however pleasing it would be to the Editor to adorn the Companion with costly attire and adornments.”139 By the same token, two children wrote a letter to the Child’s Paper exclaiming that the newspaper was “so beautiful, with its nice print, its pretty pictures, and its interesting little stories.”140

Paraphernalia related to the Youth’s Penny Gazette underscored that the periodical was packaged as a consumer product. In addition to designing its periodical to be visually appealing, the Youth’s Penny Gazette sold a card of 26 tickets for 25 cents, with each ticket able to be exchanged for a copy of the periodical. To encourage this advance payment plan, the tickets on the card “surrounded a very attractive picture” which remained for the child to keep after all the tickets had been used.141 Moreover, the

Youth’s Penny Gazette heightened the perceived value of the periodical by offering readers instructions on how to preserve and file the paper with supplies available at the

ASSU depository.142

As reformers encouraged juvenile book collecting, large benevolent organizations with extensive publishing wings, such as the ASSU and the American Tract Society, tried to make their books and tracts attractive to boys and girls. Reformers had to compete with presses such as McLoughlin Brothers, which published colorfully tinted children’s books without the religious lessons stressed by Sunday school literature. Many publishers of juvenile instructional literature believed that they first had to entice youngsters to pick up their books with pretty designs, before children could absorb the lessons in their books.

“Is there anything more attractive to an intelligent child, than a new book, with its bright

139 “To Subscribers,” Youth’s Companion, April 17, 1856, 207. 140 “Child Charities,” The Child’s Paper, June 1854, 24. 141 “Beautiful Vignette Tickets,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, March 8, 1843, 18. 142 “File Your Paper, My Boy,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, January 31, 1844, 10.

61 cover, and gilded letters on the back – its uncut leaves – clear print – its well engraved frontispiece and attractive pictures?” asked an editorial in the Youth’s Companion. 143

When John Scudder, a Protestant missionary to India, went on a speaking tour to

American children in the 1840s, he distributed a tract he wrote at little or no cost, but still considered how to package his merchandise attractively. He wrote to the ASSU, his publisher, lamenting the inferior publishing and binding quality. Scudder also complained to the ASSU that their poor packing had damaged the tract. Concerned with more than just the condition or content of his tracts, Scudder also wanted to make his tract appeal to the tastes of young readers. Scudder asked the ASSU to send him books in more appealing colors, insisting that he preferred covers “in the pink, and pretty blue, and green.”144 The ASSU regularly advertised its books as attractive possessions in its periodicals and its almanacs. For instance, a book advertisement appearing in the ASSU- published Youth’s Penny Gazette cited a review from the Hartford Daily Courier, which had described the book as “[a] very neat little quarto volume nicely bound in muslin, and embellished with several fine cuts.”145 When Christmas and New Years approached, the

Youth’s Penny Gazette adapted its advertisements to highlight ASSU publications as ideal gifts for the season, announcing that it was selling “New and Beautiful Books,

Especially Designed for the Approaching Holidays.”146

Still, a segment of the ASSU resisted this trend towards emphasizing a publication’s appearance, as they worked to boost school libraries’ popularity. These

143 A.H., “Christmas,” Youth’s Companion, December 15, 1853, 136. 144 John Scudder to J. Meeks, September 12, 1843. Frederick A. Packard, Incoming Correspondence, May 18, 1840-Jan 9, 1846; n.d. Papers of the ASSU, 1817-1915. Reel 200. Underlining in Original. 145 “Notices of our New Books,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, January 25, 1843, 8. 146 “New and Beautiful Books, Especially Designed for the Approaching Holidays,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, December 13, 1843, 100.

62 reformers tried to curb youngsters’ penchant for crisp, brightly colored books, warning them not to overlook the worn out volumes in their Sabbath school libraries, whose lessons did not fade.147 Despite such ambivalence towards treating their products like commercial merchandise, the ASSU ultimately still tried to make their publications attractive.

In addition to books, many childrearing reformers argued that juvenile playthings and other household items could convey appropriate financial values. Conservative childrearing advisor and Amherst College president Heman Humphrey, who one historian has characterized as “more frigidly intellectual than warmly emotional,” permitted juvenile play, provided it facilitated their improvement, and was not performed on Sabbath.148 Humphrey believed that play and benevolence should be linked, since juvenile play offered an excellent medium through which children could learn to be charitable with their belongings.149 At the same time, the play he encouraged underscored class divisions. Drawing a direct connection between play and forming a philosophy towards money, Humphrey advocated for children to share or give up some of their toys

(offering other girls and boys the opportunity to play), so that selfish tendencies would be replaced by “a benevolent emotion which springs up and takes its place in his bosom.”150

The Amherst College president suggested that teaching self-sacrificing attitudes towards playthings would naturally transition into lessons on wealth and poverty outside of the

147 Seventh Annual Report of the American Sunday School Union May 26, 1831 (Philadelphia: ASSU, 1831), 15. 148 Quote from: Claude Moore Fuess, Amherst: The Story of a New England College (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1935), 60; Heman Humphrey, Domestic Education (Amherst MA: J. S. C. Adams, 1840), 164-165. 149 Humphrey, Domestic Education, 183-185; 232. Humphrey suggested a multipronged approach to parents to curtail juvenile selfishness that began at birth, arguing against having one child, as youngsters without siblings naturally behaved greedily. See: Humphrey, Domestic Education, 129. 150 Ibid., 185.

63 nursery. After children learned lessons of benevolence through their playthings,

Humphrey encouraged mothers to highlight to their children that they were privileged in contrast to poor families. To make the point especially vivid, Humphrey charged mothers to take their sons and daughters to slums on errands of benevolence. “It is all the better,” explained Humphrey, “if they [children] have something of their own, to put in the basket, with their mother’s charities.”151 While intended to inculcate a spirit of benevolence in boys and girls, the exposure would undoubtedly also highlight class differences.152

Lydia Maria Child, a less disciplinarian author of parenting advice than

Humphrey, also glowingly spoke of instructional play, wanting older children to be benevolent with their playthings.153 When she discussed infant care, she contended that

“[h]aving had his little mind excited by a new object, he should be left in quiet, to toss, and turn and jingle it at his heart’s content.”154 However, Child envisioned only superficial exposure to money in early childhood. She advised mothers that “should you chance to be spinning a dollar, or a cent, for his amusement, you can, in the midst of the play, stop and say, ‘This dollar is round, as well as the ball; but the dollar is flat, and the ball is not flat.’ If George puts his hand on the dollar, he will feel that it is flat; and if he puts his hand on the ball, he will feel that it is not flat.”155 But as children grew older,

Lydia Maria Child emphasized deeper financial lessons, arguing that children should be

151 Ibid., 187. 152 Ibid., 185-189. 153 Child’s more permissive attitude is evidenced by her toleration for respectful quiet play on the Sabbath, especially for young children. See: Lydia Maria Child, The Mother’s Book, 67; Karcher, First Woman in the Republic, 142-144. 154 Child, Mother’s Book, 3. 155 Ibid., 12.

64 taught through their possessions to not be miserly or a wasteful.156 Like Humphrey, she instructed mothers to “earnestly encourage children to be generous in giving and lending to each other; and show peculiar delight when they voluntarily share anything of which they are particularly fond.”157

Authors of instructional children’s literature used toys and candy as a frame of reference by which to teach lessons on benevolence in children’s literature. When childrearing reformers set a lesson within a context of play, toys, and confectionary, they could preserve the notion of juvenile innocence and also make the story contextually relevant to young readers presumed to be middle class. Authors of antebellum juvenile literature commonly portrayed children who were not yet true Christians as selfish with their belongings. In one such story, a greedy boy hides his candy, so he will not have to share, only to discover afterwards that they have melted into a sticky mess.158 However, when children showed generosity with their possessions, they behaved properly and

Christian-like.

The short story “The Humming Top,” addresses a child’s desire for playthings, and suggests how this impulse can be transformed into philanthropy. The story depicts a well-behaved boy named George who goes to a store with his father, where he admires an assortment of beautiful playthings “so nicely ranged on the shelf and in the windows. For a long time, the little boy was so much pleased with all, that he knew which not which to desire most.” George’s father permits his son to select a toy out of a selection, and he chooses a spinning top. George loves his new acquisition and plays with it for a lengthy

156 Ibid., 25; 40-41; 126-128. 157 Ibid., 41. 158 “The Melted Candy,” Youth’s Companion, July 3, 1833, 27.

65 stretch of time, after receiving parental permission, and without allowing it to distract him from his academic obligations.

Though the story’s author does not reprimand George for desiring and enjoying toys, the toy also serves a benevolent purpose. When George’s cousin, Arthur, arrives for a visit, he admires the top, and comments that he cannot afford such a plaything. George glibly offers his new possession to Arthur assuming that “papa will buy me another.”

George’s father corrects his son, allowing the boy to give his top, but assuring him that he should not expect a replacement. George’s offer to Arthur suddenly changes from a frivolous gesture, to true self-denial. The author explains the boy’s predicament and decision:

George thought for a moment; he liked spinning his top more than any other play; but then said he, ‘Arthur has fewer playthings than I; -- he will enjoy it very much; he must have the top.’ So he gave it to his cousin saying that he had a ball he would pay with instead; “and father,” continued he, “I shall have more pleasure, in giving this top to Arthur, than in spinning it myself the whole day long.” George’s father expresses approbation towards his son’s decision as Arthur leaves. While this story commends self-denial, it does not denounce the ownership of playthings more broadly, underscoring the ambivalence that many reformers felt towards children’s toys.

Though George is depicted as a self-sacrificing model for emulation, he still owns other toys, which he is not required to give away to be virtuous.159

While reformers preferred children showing benevolence with their belongings and favored educational religious merchandise, they distinguished between non-religious possessions they regarded as relatively innocuous, and those that they viewed as pernicious threats. This is underscored in a publication of the Massachusetts Sabbath

School Society, entitled “Boy’s Pockets.” The text surveyed the contents of a fictional

159 “D**,” “The Humming Top,” Juvenile Miscellany, May 1829, 189; “The Humming Top,” Youth’s Companion, June 11, 1829, 11.

66 boy’s pockets (while acknowledging that girls, too, carried diverse artifacts), shedding light on how Sunday school educators judged the material culture of children and how they distinguished among merchandise that they considered unacceptable, tolerable, and commendable. The list of objects a young boy carried including: “part of an exploded firecracker,” “a bag of marbles,” “several pieces of twine and strings,” “pieces of fancy- colored paper,” “a penny whistle,” and “a dead mouse.”160 Though the author is ambivalent towards these items, he or she expresses relief that among this motley collection, there were no “old ends of cigars, or any such disgusting objects. Even a dead mouse is scarcely more disgusting than they would be.” Moreover, the author finds it commendable that this particular boy carried a pencil, for it might aid his academic pursuits.161 Following this survey of an imagined boy’s pockets, the author expresses his or her hope that in adulthood:

their pockets, while they may present less variety and better taste in the selection, may prove as free of “wrong intent” as now. May no dirty tobacco quid be found there, no dirty cigar end back in a corner, and, more than all, no “skeleton” keys, or implements of evil doing. We trust that these pockets may be well lined with “the needful” and the desirable; then, if their hearts are well stored with good intentions and noble purposes, how much good the emptying of such pockets will accomplish!”162

Though the author is not fond of many of the things the boy saves, tobacco and alcohol pose far graver threats. “Boy’s Pockets” illustrates the broader argument made by reformers that consumer desire among children was permissible, so long as they desired merchandise that didn’t precipitate a love for vices.

In their efforts to shape juvenile spending and play, childrearing reformers opposed any type of play that might lead to gambling, apparently a more pernicious vice

160 Boys’ Pockets and Other Stories (Boston: Massachusetts Sabbath School Society, 1835), 5-6. 161 Boys’ Pockets, 7. 162 Boys’ Pockets, 13-14.

67 than debt. During the early nineteenth century, market volatility prompted many

Americans to eschew unnecessary financial risks, which they believed precipitated greater economic instability and dishonesty.163 Writing with Sabbath school pupils in mind, an evangelical reformer observed that gambling destroyed family stability, because it “fosters pride, indolence, licentiousness, and extravagance; it paralyzes the benevolent and social affections; jeopardizes the best interests of families and individuals, and its direct moral tendency is to misery and ruin.”164 Since adults permitted boys more freedom to be away from the home than girls, where they could interact with a broader sphere of peers, warnings about gambling focused on them, and instructional stories invariably cast boys as the central characters. In a story appearing in the Youth’s

Companion, Samuel asks Joseph to pitch buttons. Joseph refuses because his father has warned him that:

the boys that play so with buttons, soon learn to toss up cents; and then they learn to cheat and steal to get cents to play with, and as soon as they grow bigger they play cards and gamble, and get into the penitentiary; and that it often happens that they fight, and sometimes the one kills the other and comes to the gallows.165 Likewise, Sunday school reformers depicted lottery tickets as a mercurial investment, which harmed even the winners, who lacked experience handling large amounts of money. Consequently, they would have no knowledge how to use their winnings effectively, and descend down the familiar spiraling path towards greater vice and ruin.166

Playing cards, even without stakes, posed a threat to the moral integrity of youth, since

163 Joshua D. Rothman, “The Hazard of the Flush Times: Gambling, Mob Violence, and the Anxieties of America’s Market Revolution,” Journal of American History 95, no. 3 (2008): 674-677. 164 P.H. Brown, “Gambling,” Sabbath School Visiter, March 1836, 70. 165 “Gambling,” Youth’s Companion, April 14, 1830, 185. 166 What Are Tickets Today? (Philadelphia: ASSU, n.d.); “Is there any Harm in Buying a Lottery Ticket?,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, February 3, 1858, 9; The Lottery Prize: A Story Founded on Fact, 4th ed. (Boston: Massachusetts Sabbath School Union, 1844).

68 there had been “more gambling, and cheating, and vileness, and wickedness by their instrumentality than by any other game.”167

Some reformers envisioned marbles as a dangerous pathway to gambling for children. Becoming more elaborately decorated in the 1850s, marbles proved popular with boys, as evidenced by their frequent discovery at nineteenth century archaeological sites.168 The primary sticking point for reformers was that boys stood to win or lose their marbles in direct competition with one another. With prized marbles on the line, young competitors took their games seriously; the Yale Literary Magazine observed that when boys played, they felt “intense excitement, the rivalry, the shame in defeat, the triumph in success.”169 It is not difficult to see why reformers viewed this competitive play with alarm, regarding it as a gateway to gambling.170 A former marble player wrote to the

Youth’s Penny Gazette to confirm the fears of Sunday school reformers that the game made lifelong gamblers, exacerbated when boys wagered additional marbles on a shot.

Marbles, he claimed, spurred violence and discord between boys because “[a]s each boy plays for himself and is very anxious to excel, he is disposed at every step to question the veracity of his playmates and deceive them as much as possible. Now, it is plain that such conduct will very soon lead to angry passions, hard words, and often hard blows.”171

Varying attitudes towards marbles underscored the ambivalence middle-class

Americans felt towards juvenile desire. “Winning Marbles,” published in the Youth’s

Penny Gazette, outlined reformers’ concerns towards gambling while permitting children

167 “The Pack of Cards,” The Youth’s Companion, February 12, 1863, 27. 168 Jeff Carskadden and Richard Gartley, “A Preliminary Seriation of 19th-Century Decorated Porcelain Marbles,” Historical Archaeology 24, no. 2 (1990): 55-69. 169 “Playing at Marbles,” Yale Literary Magazine, June 1847, 330. Marbles was not a single game, but a number of different games. For a more detailed description of two antebellum marble games, Bound Out and Ring Taw, see: Boy’s and Girl’s Book of Sports (Providence, RI: Geo. P. Daniels, 1839), 15-17. 170 “A Taste for Gambling,” Youth’s Companion, January 4, 1849, 144; Chudacoff, Children at Play, 47. 171 S.P., “Marble Playing,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, November 19, 1856, 97.

69 to play the game, and allowing juvenile desire. Young Robert asks his sister Jane to sew him a marble bag because he owns so many marbles and might otherwise misplace some.

His mother overhears their conversation and expresses puzzlement since she thought

Robert only owned a few marbles. Robert replies that he is a proficient player and has won other children’s marbles. Dismayed, his mother forbids him from playing ‘for keeps.’ When Robert questions her instruction, she responds that “[w]inning marbles may lay the foundation for a love of gambling.” While his mother forbids this proto-gambling, she does not forbid marbles altogether, telling her son that “[i]f you ever want more marbles, purchase them honestly and honorably, and your sister will knit you a bag for them, when she has finished your father’s purse.”172 Similarly, Lydia Maria Child did not condemn marbles outright, as she encouraged using marbles as a potential teaching tool for arithmetic lessons.173

Other reformers were less compromising, opining that children must never play with marbles, regardless of whether or not the games were ‘for keeps,’ believing that they invariably paved the road to gambling.174 Even if the games were not ‘for keeps,’ one

Sunday school author cautioned, the Bible still warned to “avoid even the appearance of evil.”175 Besides its relation to gambling, these reformers argued that marbles kept children away from school; brought them into contact with unsavory characters; led to cursing and dishonesty; and soiled or damaged their clothes. In other words, for

172 O & E, “Winning at Marbles,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, October 13, 1847, 1. 173 Lydia Maria Child, The Mother’s Book, 15. 174 “The Game at Marbles,” Youth’s Companion, December 10, 1841, 123. 175 “Playing Marbles” Infant’s Magazine, July 1832, 111-112; Chudacoff, Children at Play, 47. Chudacoff argues that when not for keeps, marbles was considered acceptable play by child rearing reformers. However, articles in ASSU publications indicate that reformers were divided over whether marbles without stakes was tolerable.

70 reformers more rigidly opposed to the game, playing marbles, whether for keeps or not, jeopardized children’s middle-class standing.176

Reformers also encountered difficulty crafting a response to a growing tendency among Americans to lavish children with toys and other gifts, which they feared threatened to foster a selfish streak. Concern revolved around Christmas and New Year’s

Day (also a common gift giving day in the nineteenth century), which among the middle class became more closely associated with youngsters in the nineteenth century.177

Christmas had not always been popularly regarded as a holiday rooted in the home centered around ideals of happy children from prosperous families receiving gifts, purportedly from Santa Claus. In the eighteenth century, Americans commonly celebrated Christmas in public spaces, with frequent interaction between people of different classes, though in ways that reinforced socioeconomic divisions. For instance, a commonly practiced tradition involved poor people wassailing for money at the doors of elite families.178 However, in the early nineteenth century the meaning and ideals of

Christmas changed in response to the rise of a tripartite class structure; for the middle class, the holiday became a domestic child-centered celebration, involving both material desires and piety.

Early in Christmas’s transformation, reformers promoted Sunday school books as ideal presents for children. The growing acceptance of juvenile consumerism by reformers was reflected in their attitudes towards Santa Claus, by midcentury the

176 “Playing Marbles,” Infant’s Magazine, July 1832, 111-112; No Title, Youth’s Penny Gazette, March 16, 1853, 21; “The Marble Player,” Youth’s Companion, July 27, 1838, 43; “Five Good Reasons for Not Playing Marbles,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, September 11, 1844, 75; “Playing Marbles,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, September 25, 1844, 78; “A Query,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, March 17, 1852, 22. 177 Stephen Nissenbaum, Battle for Christmas; Elizabeth H. Pleck, Celebrating the Family: Ethnicity, Consumer Culture, and Family Ritual (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 47; 51-53. 178 Nissenbaum. Battle for Christmas, 9-11.

71 quintessential icon of children’s Christmas gifts. During the first decades of the nineteenth century, Santa Claus transformed from an ambiguous, often diminutive, figure whose activities were not child-centered, into the familiar rotund gift-giver to children, whose physical appearance was crystallized in Thomas Nast’s Civil War and

Reconstruction era illustrations that appeared in Harper’s Weekly.179

As Santa Claus became a child-centered figure, reformers and educators initially expressed concern because they considered it detrimental to dupe boys and girls over a fictional character’s authenticity, and also worried that the promise of a magical gift giver would inculcate excessive materialism in young believers. Some nineteenth-century parents viewed Santa Claus as a convenient middleman, allowing them to feel less complicit in satisfying the consumer desires of their sons and daughters.180 For some educators, though, lying to children about Santa Claus represented an act of deceit, imperiling family cohesiveness.181 The fact that antebellum alcohol merchants had depicted Santa Claus in bar culture probably made reformers think less favorably towards the gift giver, though they never expressed this explicitly in juvenile literature.182

Nathaniel Willis, the editor the Youth’s Companion, challenged the value and utility of

Santa Claus in 1828, reprinting an article that explained that such stories were false, and argued that “merry” celebrations were an inappropriate commemoration of Christ’s birth.183 However, Willis’s puritanical attitude softened over his decades as editor, though he continued to condemn facets of the holiday that he found especially repugnant. In

179 Nissenbaum, Battle for Christmas, 84-89; Cross, Cute and the Cool, 90-95; “Christmas, 1863,”Harper’s Weekly, December 26, 1863, 824-825. 180 Cross, Kids’ Stuff, 46-48. 181 “Christmas Presents,” Youth’s Companion, February 29, 1828, 157. 182 Nissenbaum, Battle for Christmas, 90-99. 183 “Christmas Presents,” Youth’s Companion, February 29, 1828, 157.

72

1846, Willis’s periodical weighed the pros and cons of Santa Claus, reprinting an article that disparagingly told parents that the gift giver was a remnant of Catholicism, but now judging the character as innocuous.184 Another article in the Companion, published four years later, similarly identified troublesome components of the Santa Claus legend, telling readers that “your papa is the only true Saint Nicholas,” but stopping short of fiercely condemning the story or calling Christmastime gift giving into question.185

The ASSU took a few years longer to warm up to Santa Claus than Nathaniel

Willis. The short-story “Santa Claus Caught at Last,” underscores the consternation reformers felt towards the fictional gift giver. Here a mother explains to her daughter that parents teach their children that “a very little man comes down the chimney, with presents of toys and candies and picture-books for good children, and puts them in their stockings.” Telling such stories are dangerous, the mother continues, and if children spoke such falsehoods to their parents they would rightly be punished. She concludes by arguing that if parents perpetuated the myth of Santa Claus to their children, then – once they discovered he was fictional – children would question the veracity of everything taught by their mothers and fathers, fraying bonds of filial obedience.186 Moreover, an

ASSU published poem claimed that children may confuse the gift giver with God.187 The

184 “Old Santa Claus,” Youth’s Companion, February 5, 1846, 159. An 1836 story appearing in the Youth’s Companion briefly mentions Santa Claus as a gift giver, and only challenges his authenticity by putting Santa Claus in single quotation marks. See: “Christmas Day,” Youth’s Companion, January 15, 1836, 138. 185 M.W.D., “Saint Nicholas Discovered,” Youth’s Companion, December 5, 1850, 125. 186 “Santa Claus Caught at Last; or the Danger of Deception,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, December 13, 1843, 98. Before the Civil War, Santa Claus was normally given a different appearance than his modern incarnation. Commonly, he was depicted as an unusually small man. 187 “Is Not Santa Claus a God?,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, January 7, 1846, 102.

73

ASSU regarded the Santa Claus tale as so pernicious that they published a tract (no- longer extant) in the mid-1840s warning of the legend’s dangers.188

By the end of the 1840s, the ASSU had softened its hostility towards Santa Claus, characterizing a broader acceptance by the middle-class of children as conspicuous consumers. Transforming St. Nicholas from a source of selfishness into a teacher and judge, the ASSU used Santa Claus to convey lessons on appropriate behavior in the home.189 In “Two Visits from Santa Claus,” published in 1848, the narrator follows St.

Nicholas on his rounds the night before Christmas, presuming him to be real. Santa gives a modest assortment of gifts to a family of well-behaved children, who treat their gifts with care, and a wider array of gifts to a family of poorly behaved children who proceed to quarrel and quickly destroy their gifts. Santa responds to the latter family by warning that “I’ll fix those children next year.” The Santa Claus in this story is not a pernicious lie, threatening family cohesion; the author reinvents him as an instructor, whose lessons enforce domestic bliss, and the proper care of property.190

Santa Claus’s redemption from pernicious enabler of juvenile idolatry and greed into an innocuous myth, or even a noble teacher, is indicative of broader shifts in the attitudes of reformers towards children, as it allowed for the acquisition of some luxuries by youngsters. Though reformers publically dreamt of a childhood filled with lessons on frugality and benevolence, the mechanisms they employed to realize this ideal also

188 The Twenty-First Annual Report of the American Sunday School Union, for Establishing Sunday Schools, and Circulating Religious Publications, (Philadelphia: ASSU, 1845), 18. No copy of the tract Santa Claus remains, but its existence is reported in listings of ASSU publications. 189 For an examination of how Santa Claus was more broadly understood as a moral judge, see: Nissenbaum, Battle for Christmas, 71-76. 190 J. – M. – B. –, “Two Visits From Santa Claus,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, December 20, 1848, 103.

74 legitimized children desiring acceptable luxuries, and prepared youngsters for a capitalist economy, partially driven by a growingly consumerism-centered society.

75

Chapter 2 A Penny Saves: American Children, Missionary Campaigns, and Lessons in Money Management

“Children, is it not worth while (sic) to try and see if you cannot yourselves do something” asked an antebellum Sunday school author regarding juvenile aid for

Christian foreign missions. “Induce others to join you, and see how much money you can save, and make in the coming year.”1 As this quote suggests, adults did not just teach children the concepts of self-denial and benevolence in the abstract, to be put into practice later in life. Instead, childrearing authorities expected youngsters to act on these principles as soon as they could understand them. Indeed, reformers sought to involve girls and boys in American-organized missionary campaigns that expanded in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Appeals to children familiarized them with money and the financial operations of benevolent organizations. But even as reformers expressed ambivalence over juvenile consumer desire, their actions integrated children in a capitalist economy, glorified corporatism, and inadvertently made juvenile consumerism more socially acceptable to a burgeoning middle class. Therefore, by recruiting children to support missionary campaigns, reformers pushed young supporters to take on roles that tempered the ideals of a sheltered childhood, and made children active participants in the marketplace.

This appeal for children to support missions was part of a larger movement in the nineteenth century to uplift society; in response to the early nineteenth century’s economic and societal uncertainty, middle-class women and men turned to benevolent and reform societies in greater numbers, in search of control over the world and its

1 Self-Denial: Alice Wood and her Missionary Society (Philadelphia: ASSU, n.d.), 27.

76 ultimate perfection.2 Many reformers rooted their aims in religious prophesy as they tried to usher in the millennium described in the Book of Revelation, to be followed by the

Second Coming of Jesus Christ.3 Other reformers did not anchor their activities to

Scripture, but these more modern-thinking reformers still expressed a similar optimism that the nation, and the world, would be markedly improved through their work. While sharing common fears of instability and utopian visions of what they could accomplish,

Americans spearheaded diverse causes, including temperance, tract and Bible distribution, missionary efforts in distant lands, the construction and operation of asylums, the abolition of slavery, and women’s rights.

Recruiting Children for Reform and Benevolence

Both women and men took part in philanthropic activities, and historians have considered how these causes both reinforced gender roles and gave female participants an opportunity to challenge their prescribed sphere.4 However, scholars have paid little attention to the participation of children. Perhaps in no arena were antebellum anxieties

2 Antebellum century social movements are an extensive field of study. For surveys of these organizations, see: Ronald G. Walters, American Reformers, 1815-1860 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978); Steven Mintz, Moralists and Modernizers: America’s Pre-Civil War Reformers (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995). For an overview of female participation, see: Lori D. Ginzberg, Women in Antebellum Reform (Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 2000). 3 Steven Mintz, Moralists and Modernizers, 16-49. For an excellent overview of the meaning of the Millennium in antebellum life, see: David Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 285-327. The Millennium is described in the Bible in Revelation 20:1-6. 4 The role women played in reform and benevolence is a vast area of study. Key works include: Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: “Women’s Sphere” in New England, 1780-1835 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977), especially: 149-169; Mary P. Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 105-144; Nancy A. Hewitt Women’s Activism and Social Change in America: Rochester, New York, 1822-1872 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984); Lori D. Ginzberg Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality , Politics, and Class in the Nineteenth-Century United States (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990); Anne M. Boylan, The Origins of Women’s Activism: New York and Boston, 1797-1840 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); Bruce Dorsey, Reforming Men and Women: Gender in the Antebellum City (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002).

77 regarding the relationship between children and the economy so explicitly negotiated as in reform and benevolent organizations. Yet scholars have scarcely considered how reformers mobilized youngsters to participate in these causes as donors, producers of merchandise for fundraising, or as members of juvenile societies.5 Furthermore, historians examining the relationship between reform and capitalism and a developing consumer culture have not extensively considered the role children played.6 In practically every reform and benevolent cause in antebellum America, reformers recruited children to assume active and distinct roles, as entrepreneurs, manufacturers, salespeople, and consumers. This juvenile participation offers a telling window into the relationship of children to the marketplace. Moreover, the enlistment of children reveals how reformers sought to prepare youngsters to emulate their parents’ socioeconomic status, and gives historians a new perspective on how class is reproduced.

Adults recruited children into philanthropic causes for four reasons. First, to teach benevolence to the next generation and ensure the continuation and expansion of their specific movements, reformers believed children must be taught to appreciate a cause’s

5 Scholarship on this topic is relatively sparse and has rarely considered the phenomenon outside of one specific cause. Moreover, this research has not paid sufficient attention to the effect these activities had on the status of children. For children in abolitionism, see: Holly Keller, “Juvenile Antislavery Narrative and Notions of Childhood,” Children’s Literature 24 (1996): 86-109; Deborah De Rosa, Domestic Abolitionism and Juvenile Literature (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003); Harriet Hyman Alonso, Growing Up Abolitionist: The Story of the Garrison Children (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002), 99-108; Martha L. Sledge, “‘A is an Abolitionist’: The Anti-Slavery Alphabet and the Politics of Literacy,” in Enterprising Youth: Social Values and Acculturation in Nineteenth-Century American Children’s Literature, ed. Monika Elbert (New York: Routledge, 2008), 69-82. For children and missionary philanthropy in England, see: F.K. Proschaska, Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 73-94. For reform in juvenile literature, see: John C. Crandall, “Patriotism and Humanitarian Reform in Children’s Literature,” American Quarterly 21, no. 1 (1969): 3- 22. For American children and missionary campaigns from a literary perspective, see Karen Sánchez- Eppler, Dependent States: The Child’s Part in Nineteenth-Century American Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 186-220. For an examination of the role of children in Civil War fundraising, see: James Marten, The Children’s Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 177-185. 6 Julie Roy Jeffrey, “‘Stranger, Buy…Lest Our Mission Fail:’ The Complex Culture of Women’s Abolitionist Fairs,” American Nineteenth Century History 4, no. 1 (2003): 1-24; Scott Gac, Singing for Freedom: The Hutchinson Family Singers and the Nineteenth-Century Culture of Reform (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007).

78 import and be prepared ultimately to take charge. Because children were regarded as particularly innocent and malleable, reformers believed that children could be won over through moral suasion. One missionary reformer explained that by organizing children into missionary societies, they would be led to evangelical work in adulthood and

“learn… after they grow up they are to make money for Christ, that they are to spend it for Christ, and that all the sum which they should realize from their farms or their merchandize (sic), and which would not be necessary for themselves and family, would be a surplus fund belonging to the church.”7

Second, reformers funded projects with children’s donations. Though it is impossible to calculate precisely how much money children gave, it seems to have been a small proportion of the total raised. Though reformers understood that most individual children could not give a lot, reformers saw enormous potential in girls and boys based on their large numbers and their impressionability, and children were significant donors for specific causes.8

Third, reformers believed that benevolence improved children’s conduct, making them morally upright and financially responsible individuals who would be better prepared for adulthood.9 While reformers considered children especially innocent, they were also considered particularly corruptible. Teaching children the importance of

7 John Scudder, Sabbath School Missionary Associations, with an Address to Sunday School Children in the United States, on the Subject of their Engaging in the Work of Foreign Missions, 3rd ed. (Boston: Massachusetts Sabbath School Society, 1841), 16-17. Also see: “American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Thirty-Third Annual Meeting,” Missionary Herald, November 1842, 428. 8 “Charity by Children,” The Guardian, or Youth’s Religious Instructor, February 1, 1819; “Large Streams from Little Fountains Flow,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, August 16, 1848, 66. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) estimated that it raised five thousand dollars from children in 1840. See: “American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Thirty-Third Annual Meeting,” Missionary Herald, November 1842, 429. 9 Thomas Smyth, The Destined Efficiency of Juvenile Missionary Effort (Charleston SC: B. Jenkins, 1847), 18-19.

79 benevolence, argued reformers, would instill a lifelong appreciation for benevolence, and would ultimately make them better people and better Christians.

Finally, reformers sensed that children’s support made their causes appear nobler, in light of a growing perception among the middle class that young people were especially angelic (even more so than adult women), and embodied the future of the young nation.10 One Sunday school reformer insisted that children were instinctively benevolent, arguing that “[t]he first emotion of a little child’s heart, when an object of sympathy presents itself, is sympathy.”11 Therefore, a dime contributed by a child affirmed the importance of a cause as “an object of sympathy” in ways an adult’s donation did not. Adult reformers further emphasized the holiness of juvenile benevolence by comparing it to the Widow’s Mite parable. In the Gospels of Mark and

Luke, a poor widow gives two small copper coins, or mites, at the Jewish Temple. Jesus

Christ explains to his followers that her contribution represents true self-sacrifice, making it a greater gift than larger donations from wealthy donors requiring no personal denial,

“[f]or all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living.”12 Applying Jesus’s teaching to the contributions of children in the nineteenth century, antebellum reformers stressed the significance of juvenile philanthropy, even if it the amount given by a youngster was a pittance. When they did not explicitly invoke the story of the Widow’s Mite, they still applied the principle that so

10 “Fifteen Cents to Send the Gospel to the Heathen,” Youth’s Dayspring, December 1851, 186; Steven Mintz, Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 75-93; Gary Cross, The Cute and the Cool: Wondrous Innocence and Modern American Children’s Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 23-29. The notion that women were considered especially angelic by antebellum Americans is made in: Barbara Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860,” American Quarterly 18, no. 2 (1966): 152-158. The idea that money from different sources are ascribed with varying significances is explored in: Viviana. A. Zelizer, The Social Meaning of Money: Pin Money, Paychecks, Poor Relief, and Other Currencies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997). 11 “The Pitiful Children; or, Giving Bread to the Hungry,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, March 12, 1856, 1. 12 Mark: 12: 38-44; Luke: 20:45-47; 21:1-4.

80 long as a donation came with self-sacrifice and good intent, God viewed it more favorably.13

Before the nineteenth century, adults encouraged children to give to poor members of the community, but without the aid of an organized benevolent society. This meant giving “money, or such meat and drink as they have to spare,” when they saw “a poor man, or woman, or child, in want.”14 Similarly, the earliest juvenile philanthropic societies in America, organized in the mid-1810s, targeted the local poor as beneficiaries.

Such charity tended to prioritize children as recipients of charity, beginning a trend that would continue in juvenile associations through the nineteenth century and creating a sense of imagined unity among all children, with American girls and boys sympathizing with their global counterparts. For instance, a Female Juvenile Tract Society was founded out of the South Church in New York City in 1816, with contributions (four cents monthly from each member) collected to distribute “[t]racts among the poor of that city, and assist Sabbath schools.”15 That same year, an organization for boys was established in Plattsburg, New York, made up of members aged six to fourteen. Memorization of

Bible verses by its members was its primary intent, but members were also asked to

13 For instance, see: “Bible Societies,” Sunday School Messenger, March 1829, 83; “The Widow’s Offering,” Youth’s Dayspring, March 1852, 35; Self-Denial; Or, Alice Wood and her Missionary Society, 12-13; “Widow’ Mite,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, March 1860, 3. 14 John Newbery, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, Intended for the Instruction and Amusement of Little Master Tommy, and Pretty Miss Polly: With Two Letters from Jack the Giant Killer; As Also a Ball and Pincushion; the Use of Which will Infallibly Make Tommy a Good Boy and Polly a Good Girl. 10th ed. (London: Bible and Son, 1760), 76; New England Primer. Improved for the More Easy Attaining the True Reading of English. To Which is Added the Assembly of Divines, and Mr. Cotton’s Catechism (Boston: Nathaniel Coverly, 1782), 34. Before the early nineteenth century, few children’s books were published in the United States. However, it is likely that the Newbery book was also read by American children. 15 “From the Christian Herald,” The Weekly Recorder, October 9, 1816, 83.

81

“contribute one cent per week, if possible, to buy some clothes or bread for poor children or give them a Bible and good books.”16

Though displays of sympathy from juvenile societies began locally, by the end of the 1810s American Protestant reformers asked children to give money for the spiritual salvation of people they would likely never meet, appealing for money for Protestant missions in foreign lands, Native Americans, and remote settlements in the American

West.17 In particular, children were encouraged to aid heathen children. In so doing, missionary boosters built a sense of community among American children with young people around the world. American children could buy their way into this community with a donation to the missionaries. This appeal to children paralleled a broader expansion of the missionary appeal in America, as it grew in the first decades of the nineteenth century.18 The money raised by American missionary organizations (the largest being the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), founded in 1810), sent approximately two-thousand people to form and continue missions across the world by 1870.19 The ABCFM was dominated by the Congregational Church, but other denominations followed suit by creating their own foreign missionary societies.20 In addition to Native Americans, missionaries evangelized people with mixed

16 “Juvenile Bible Society,” Christian Herald, November 16, 1816, 180. 17 “Juvenile Department,” The Weekly Recorder, September 1, 1819, 4; Juvenile societies began giving to the ABCFM by the early 1820s. By 1821, reports of juvenile missionary society contributions appear in the ABCFM list of contributions. See, Report of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Compiled from Documents Laid Before the Board at the Twelfth Annual Meeting, Which was Held at Springfield, Mass. Sept 19 & 20, 1821 (Boston: Crocker and Brewster, 1821), 116-203. 18 John A. Andrew III, Rebuilding the Christian Commonwealth: New England Congregationalists and Foreign Missions (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1976), 70-96; Thomas Smyth, Destined Efficiency of Juvenile Missionary Effort, 17. 19 William R. Hutchison, Errand to the World: American Protestant Thought and Foreign Missions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 45. 20 Mintz, Moralists and Modernizers, 62.

82 results around the globe, including the Sandwich Islands (arguably their greatest success),

Africa, and Asia.21

For guidance on recruiting young people, American missionary advocates looked to British reformers, who had recognized years earlier the importance of training children to be charitable.22 One historian found that of all juvenile benevolent causes in England, foreign missionary organizations started especially early (beginning in 1804) and were particularly effective at encouraging youngsters to give charity.23 Indeed, English missionary boosters published juvenile books and periodicals that promoted the cause and raised large amounts of money for foreign missions.24

Early American juvenile periodicals permitted missionaries and their boosters to communicate with children. Beginning in 1819, The Guardian, or Youth’s Religious

Instructor, encouraged children to give money towards evangelical efforts, and urged parents, teachers, and ministers to also appeal to girls and boys.25 The periodical included accounts by missionaries, reports of missionary activity around the world, and appeals for middle-class children to give money.26 By the early 1830s, the Youth’s Companion began appealing to children to support missionaries.27 The outreach to children by missionaries was enabled by the expanding market for children’s literature, which included the growing popularity of juvenile periodicals and the expansion of Sunday schools, opening

21 Clifton Jackson Phillips, “Protestant America and the Pagan World: The First Half Century of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions” (1958; repr. PhD diss., Harvard University, 1969); William E. Strong, The Story of the American Board: An Account of the First Hundred Years of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (Boston: Pilgrim Press, 1910). 22 “Bible Societies,” Sunday School Messenger, March 1829, 81. 23 Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century England, 75-76. 24Ibid., 76-77; 81-83. One of the more notable English children’s publications was the: Juvenile Missionary Magazine, published by the London Missionary Society. See also: Naya, The Little Hindoo Convert (London: Religious Tract Society, n.d.) 25 “Charity by Children,” The Guardian, or Youth’s Religious Instructor, February 1, 1819, 50. 26 Robert May, “Mr. May’s Letters,” The Guardian, or Youth’s Religious Instructor, March 1, 1819, 89; “Religious Intelligence,” The Guardian, or Youth’s Religious Instructor, May 1, 1829, 172. 27 Reiner, From Virtue to Character, 72-101.

83 a door for missionaries to maintain sustained communication with children to appeal for money.28

Josiah Brewer and the Youth’s Companion

Starting in 1831, Josiah Brewer, an American missionary in Turkey since 1826, took advantage of the growth of juvenile periodicals, appealing to children through

Nathaniel Willis’s Youth’s Companion for about six years while evangelizing abroad.

While working in the Near East with the support of a female missionary society, he founded a Sunday school for Greek children on the island of Syra (missionaries regarded the Greek Orthodox Church with contempt); began a charity school with around eighty pupils in Smyrna, in western Asia Minor; and taught English to male students at a local college.29 Additionally, Brewer operated a children’s newspaper in Smyrna entitled O

Philos Ton Neon or the Friend of Youth, published to “promote Christian Education,” and filled with articles from the Youth’s Companion translated into Greek.30

Brewer appealed directly to American youngsters for funding through the Youth’s

Companion. Regularly addressing “My Dear Young Friends,” Brewer tried to maintain a familiar, friendly relationship with his young readers.31 Initially, Brewer simply asked for their prayers to help overcome the challenges he faced, but by his second letter, his

28 Boylan, Sunday School, 16-18; James Marten, Children and Youth in a New Nation (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 1-3. 29 “New Haven Ladies Greek Association,” Religious Intelligencer, March 13, 1830, 666; Fisk P. Brewer, Sketch of the Life of Rev. Josiah Brewer: Missionary to the Greeks (1880), 7; Clifton Jackson Phillips, “Protestant America and the Pagan World,” 141-142; Stephen Addison Larrabee, Hellas Observed: The American Experience of Greece, 1775-1865(New York: New York University Press, 1957), 46; 179-182; 192; 293. 30 Fisk P. Brewer, Sketch of the Life of Rev. Josiah Brewer, 9-10; Josiah Brewer, “Another Letter from Asia,” Youth’s Companion, February 3, 1832, 147; “Editor’s Address,” Friend of Youth, September 15, 1832, 1. 31 Josiah Brewer, “Letter from Asia,” Youth’s Companion, November 23, 1831, 107.

84 accounts of Smyrna included appeals for money, especially to finance the Friend of

Youth, which had suspended publication due to lack of funds.32 “Without assistance from

America,” he warned, “this publication, so desirable for the ignorant multitudes of children in Smyrna and the region round about must be suspended. Their parents are either unable or unwilling to become subscribers, and we have even incurred debt to print a single number.”33 The financial potential he saw in American Protestant children was partly a product of their large numbers, for “[t]here are two or three millions of you to whom I would should be glad to speak a few familiar words.”34

Brewer’s letters to the Youth’s Companion detailed the circumstances of Greeks in Asia Minor, highlighting his own struggles, accomplishments, and the immense potential in his work.35 For instance, Brewer boasted that,

within the last two years, through the blessings of God, we have been enabled to establish, and by means of funds obtained chiefly from America, entirely to support, nine or ten schools, besides rendering partial assistance to several others, in Smyrna, Patmos, Haivali, Ipsara, and elsewhere. In the schools, which were exclusively ours, at least a thousand children have been in a course of training to read the Holy Scriptures in their own languages, and to learn a little writing and a little Arithmetic, Geography and History.”36 However, he lamented that financial difficulties had forced him to close some of his schools, making his appeal to American youngsters all the more urgent.

The Youth’s Companion included letters from children, or sent on behalf of children, to Josiah Brewer, which offer us a peek into how sympathetic children responded to his appeal, and reveal the diverse ways children offered aid: children

32 Ibid.; Josiah Brewer, “Another Letter from Asia,” Youth’s Companion, February 3, 1832, 147. 33 Josiah Brewer, “Another Letter from Asia,” Youth’s Companion, February 3, 1832, 147; Josiah Brewer, “Letter from Asia,” Youth’s Companion, November 23, 1831, 107. Despite Brewer’s optimism, the circulation of the Youth’s Companion was only “several thousand” at the time. See: “Editorial Correspondence,” Youth’s Companion, January 29, 1829, 144. 35 Josiah Brewer, “Letter from Asia,” Youth’s Companion, November 23, 1831, 107; Josiah Brewer, “The Little Greek Paper,” Youth’s Companion, December 19, 1832, 31; Josiah Brewer, “To the Youth of America” Youth’s Companion, January 16, 1833, 139. 36 Josiah Brewer, “The Little Greek Paper,” Youth’s Companion, December 19, 1832, 31.

85 organized juvenile benevolent societies to raise money, collected funds as families, or acted alone.37 One young girl wrote that after reading Brewer’s appeal, she had “been trying to realize how many more privileges I enjoy than they [non-Protestant Greeks] do; and as I had something laid up that was given me for spending money, I thought, instead of spending it on some trifling thing, I would send it to you.”38 Arriving at the same conclusion, an adolescent male explained that he thought “that money would be put to a good use” to support Brewer’s newspaper, and so “proposed to some of my companions to have a subscription, and being encouraged to do it, I accordingly drew up a subscription, and obtained the sum of $9.25 cts.”39 In at least one case, juvenile support for Brewer could involve sustained involvement of groups of children. A female juvenile society in western Massachusetts raised money for Brewer’s mission by sewing regularly and selling luxury items at fundraising fairs they organized, which each raised 150 to 200 dollars. The girls also saved money for Brewer’s mission by not using tea, coffee or butter, and receiving its value in money from their parents to send to Brewer.40

To honor donors, and doubtlessly to encourage more contributions, the Youth’s

Companion published the descriptions of the donors and the amounts given, as well as donors’ letters, with their initials or names. Although such lists of donors were commonplace, adult reformers seemed to sense that children, more than adults, could be swayed by public recognition. The thrill of having one’s contribution appear in print surely encouraged some children to give.41 In many cases, children only gave their initials to the Youth’s Companion, or no name at all, perhaps out of modesty or in

37 S.S., “Donations for the Little Greek Paper,” Youth’s Companion, March 20, 1833, 176. 38 S P. T , “Letter to the Editor,” Youth’s Companion, February 15, 1832, 156. 39 C.B., “Donations for the Little Greek Paper,” Youth’s Companion, April 18, 1832, 196. 40 A.B., “Juvenile Benevolence,” Youth’s Companion, February 6, 1835, 152. 41 “To a Correspondent,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, September 20, 1843, 74.

86 accordance with their parents’ instruction.42 However, even seeing their donation in print gave children a sense of pride. Children were no doubt also moved when Brewer wrote that when reading the reports of juvenile contributors, he was “affected almost to tears.”43

Moreover, Brewer’s emotional outpouring would have deepened the link felt by children towards the Smyrnan missionary.

As Brewer’s mission struggled to raise money, he devised a fundraising strategy that rewarded young contributors of at least two dollars, “with our thanks, our paper.”44

A few months earlier, he had changed the format of his Greek newspaper to include

English articles, making it accessible to his American donors.45 Brewer reasoned that this provided American children with a window into his work; it also meant child donors received a material reward for their philanthropy. American subscribers to the Smyrna- published Friend of Youth had even more contact with Brewer and the work his mission performed, instilling a sense of responsibility by American children toward their Greek counterparts. Indeed, reading the same newspaper read by Greek children must have deepened the connection American children felt for the objects of their benevolence.

Letters by American children describing their donations highlighted their sense of obligation. For instance, three children declared that “[t]aking into consideration the high and precious privileges which we enjoy, and considering also the poor and miserable condition of the Greek Children at Smyrna… we have used our united efforts to procure by subscription, something for them.”46 Brewer also included compositions by Greek

42 Josiah Brewer (Editor’s Note), “Letter from Mr. Brewer,” Youth’s Companion , February 6, 1833, 151. 43 Josiah Brewer, “Letter from Mr. Brewer,” Youth’s Companion , September 5, 1832, 62. 44 Josiah Brewer, “Letter from Mr. Brewer,” Youth’s Companion, February 6, 1833, 151. 45 “Editor’s Address,” Friend of Youth, September 15, 1832, 1; Josiah Brewer, “The Little Greek Paper,” Youth’s Companion, December 19, 1832, 31. 46 “Letters from American Youth,” Friend of Youth, September 29, 1832, 1.

87 children, which described their physical environments and their culture, making them less abstract to potential supporters and showcasing the training in English they had received from Brewer’s schools.47 Young Augustus O. Van Lennup demonstrated his abilities in

English when he wrote a short composition in English, explaining that the salt in Smyrna:

comes from a place called Salines, at some distance from here, near Menimen, which is North-East from Smyrna. These Salines, are great holes which they make in the sand and fill with water of the sea. By the heat of the sun, the water goes off in evaporation, and there stays only the salt, which they clean, because it was in the sand; so we eat in Smyrna.48 Articles like this, though often on mundane topics such as local flora and fauna, made the welfare of Smyrnan children a more tangible cause for philanthropy, which must have made an American child’s donation seem more significant.

Josiah Brewer’s efforts in the Mediterranean and Asia Minor faced considerable roadblocks. In 1828 he was forced to briefly return home to America, on account of pressure from British authorities.49 In addition to tension with the colonial government,

Brewer also encountered perennial financial difficulties, and by 1834, his support amongst youngsters was faltering.50 Lacking sufficient funds, the Greek Paper ceased publication in September of 1837; Brewer himself left Smyrna permanently the following year.51 Though the Friend of Youth folded, his targeted campaign to youngsters reveals how early periodicals allowed missionaries to sustain long term relationships with young

Americans (reports on Brewer continued in the Companion for nearly six years), while asking them to alter their spending habits. Moreover, Brewer’s appeals for juvenile

47 Brewer claimed that Greek compositions would not be significantly revised from what he received. See: “Juvenile Composition” Friend of Youth, October 13, 1832, 2. 48 Augustus O. Van Lennup, “On Salt,” Friend of Youth, December 15, 1832, 2. 49 Michael J. Brodhead, David J. Brewer: The Life of a Supreme Court Justice (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1994), 1. 50 “The Little Greek Paper,” Youth’s Companion, October 25, 1834, 92; “Don’t Forget the Poor Greeks,” Youth’s Companion, February 27, 1835, 165. 51 “Little Greek Paper,” The Youth’s Companion, March 2, 1 838; Brodhead, David J. Brewer, 2.

88 philanthropy suggest that regularly published juvenile periodicals permitted reformers to use sophisticated marketing techniques directed towards children.

Formalizing and Expanding the Missionary Appeal to Children

After Josiah Brewer’s outreach to girls and boys, other missionaries across the world wrote to children, asking for their prayers and their pennies (though there is no evidence that they were directly influenced by the missionary to Smyrna).52 John

Scudder, a missionary to southeast India and Ceylon, began appealing to children in the late 1830s and continued until his retirement in the 1850s. Scudder wrote to children through periodicals, but also published a number of juvenile books on his experiences in heathen lands, and wrote letters directly to children.53 To more effectively aid evangelism, Scudder suggested girls and boys form “missionary societies” to support his cause.54 Outreach to American children became more central to Scudder’s work when he returned to America in 1842 on account of illness.55 John Scudder, accompanied by his wife Harriet, went on a speaking tour in the United States, and John published more on his experiences in India.56 Through these efforts, he championed American missionary expeditions, before sailing back to south Asia in 1846 where he evangelized among

52 Though Brewer is the first missionary I can find who maintained a long term financial appeal to American children, there is no evidence that he directly influenced future missionaries. 53 Minutes of the Juvenile Missionary Society, July 25, 1851, West Parish Church Records (Andover, MA), AHS. Mss 376 Subgroup V Series A Sub-Series 3. 54John Scudder, “S.S. Missionary Associations,” The Youth’s Companion, January 1, 1836, 129; Scudder, Sabbath School Missionary Associations. 55For instance, during his return to the United States he published: John Scudder, Letters to Sabbath School Children on the Condition of the Heathen (Philadelphia: ASSU, 1843). 56 Papers of John Scudder, Book 10. Papers of the Scudder Association. Scudder recorded the size of each audience of children on his tour.

89

Indians until he retired to South Africa on account of illness; John Scudder died in

1855.57

In 1850, the effort to reach children was formalized and made more regimented by the ABCFM with the introduction of the monthly children’s missionary periodical, entitled The Youth’s Dayspring.58 The periodical included letters from missionaries, illustrated accounts of cultures around the world, poetry, reports from juvenile missionary societies, general lessons on benevolence, and appeals for money. Though the periodical ceased publication in 1855, the last two pages of the Journal of Missions were thereafter reserved for a supplement entitled the Youth’s Dayspring. The Youth’s Dayspring allowed missionaries and their supporters to regularly communicate with children and appeal to them for support.

Missionaries and their supporters envisioned mothers, in addition to books and periodicals, as key instructors of benevolence, encouraging them to teach their daughters and sons in the home the importance of philanthropy for evangelism. John Scudder directed mothers to raise their children to be missionaries in heathen lands, advising them

57 “Embarkation of Missionaries,” The Missionary Herald, December 1846, 421; “Death of Mrs. Scudder,” New York Evangelist, January 31, 1850, 18; “Death of the Rev. John Scudder,” New York Observer and Chronicle, April 19, 1855, 122; J.B. Waterbury, Memoir of the Rev. John Scudder, M.D., Thirty-Six Years a Missionary in India (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1870); Clifton Jackson Phillips, “Protestant America and the Pagan World,” 47; “John Scudder,” American National Biography, http://www.anb.org/articles/08/08-01355.html?a=1&n=john%20scudder&d=10&ss=0&q=2. 58 Though it originally included a lot of juvenile content, the Dayspring had been published by the ABCFM as a general interest auxiliary periodical to the Missionary Herald. However, as children became regarded as a more specific group to which to appeal, the periodical was renamed the Youth’s Dayspring and was published to cater specifically to “the capacities and tastes of children.” See: “The Dayspring,” Dayspring, December 1849, 46. See also, Report of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Presented at the Twenty-Second Annual Meeting, Held in the City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Sept. 8, 9, 10. 1841. (Boston: Crocker and Brewster: 1841), 42; William Ellsworth Strong, The Story of the American Board: An Account of the First Hundred Years of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (Boston: Pilgrim Press, 1910), 149.

90 that in “the cradles you rock, lie unfolded the hopes of christless nations.”59 Applying the thoughts of John Locke, Scudder opined that children remained exceptionally impressionable until the age of four, before most children would enroll in Sabbath schools.60 He believed American mothers bore this obligation naturally as Christians.

Anchoring his attitude to scripture, Scudder cited Proverbs 22:6: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it”61 Scudder argued that

Christian mothers needed to take several steps to instill a love for missionary work in their sons and daughters, providing them with appropriate books (which not surprisingly included Scudder’s own children’s books on missionary work), and telling stories to their young that both detailed the terrors of heathen lands and celebrated the efforts of

Christian missionaries.62 He suggested that mothers present illustrations “of a mother throwing her child to the crocodile” to their sons and daughters by the time they were two or three and explain to them “that it is the Bible that has made us to differ, and taught the importance of sending the Bible to the heathen to prevent such cruelties.”63

Scudder argued that part of the early lessons on benevolence should involve financial principles. Christian mothers needed to instill proper values towards money in their children so that they would support the missionary cause, and eventually take up the calling themselves. Mothers, insisted Scudder, should teach the importance of regular philanthropy to their sons and daughters“[a]s soon as they can understand the idea (and

59 John Scudder, An Appeal to Christian Mothers in Behalf of the Heathen (New York: American Tract Society, n.d.), 10. 60 John Scudder, An Appeal to Christian Mothers, 11; John Scudder, “A Letter on the Formation of Juvenile Missionary Societies in Sabbath Schools,” Christian Observer, August 9, 1844, 128. 61 “Dr. Scudder in Boston,” The Farmer’s Cabinet, December 3, 1846, 1. 62 Scudder, An Appeal to Christian Mothers, 52-55. 63 “Dr. Scudder in Boston,” The Farmer’s Cabinet, December 3, 1846, 1.

91 they will understand it at a very early age) that money is needed to spread the Gospel of our Savior.”64

Sunday schools also immersed children in benevolent causes. John Scudder understood that Sunday school attendance was key to raising children to support missionaries, explaining that “[t]he hope of the church is, to a great extent, in her Sabbath schools – the field from which she gathers most of her victims, defenders, and heralds.”65

Indeed, he prognosticated that “[i]f we could see a Foreign Missionary Association formed in every Sabbath school in Europe and America…we might be justified in entertaining strong hopes that the gospel would find its way into every country and district of country by the end of the present century.”66 Scudder believed that Sabbath schools were ideal spaces in which to organize juvenile associations that would introduce youngsters to missionary work and teach self-denial through regular contributions.67

Sunday schools sometimes collected donations and included lessons on benevolent causes.68 The connection between missionary work and Sunday schools was underscored by books, tracts, and periodicals published by Sunday school societies. Taking advantage of cheaper and faster publishing technologies, the American Sunday School Union

(ASSU) published a wide range of such books, and distributed them through agents working across the country.69 One such book encouraged children to establish juvenile societies to support missions; Self-Denial: or, Alice Wood and Her Missionary Society

64 Scudder, An Appeal to Christian Mothers, 56. 65 John Scudder, Letters to Sabbath-School Children (Philadelphia: ASSU, 1843), 51. 66 Scudder, Sabbath School Missionary Associations, 32. 67 John Scudder, “A Letter on the Formation of Juvenile Missionary Societies in Sabbath Schools,” Christian Observer, August 9, 1844, 128. 68 Sunday School Minutes, Newton, Massachusetts. First Church (Congregational). Records, 1773-1972. CL. 69 Paul C. Gutjahr, An American Bible: A History of the Good Book, 1777-1880 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 11-16; R. Laurence Moore, Selling God: American Religion in the Marketplace of Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 16-17; Boylan, Sunday School, 10-11.

92 taught children not to buy treats, but rather to dedicate their pennies to missionary efforts.70 Furthermore, Sunday schools often organized semi-separate missionary societies with members recruited from Sabbath school classes. Many of these juvenile mission societies (specifically of girls) met regularly to sew for missionaries, while hearing stories of missionary exploits, followed by prayer and solicitations for donations.71

Instead of parents handing money to youngsters to drop in the Sunday school missionary box (though this must have happened frequently), many reformers thought that children’s donations should be an expression of Christian self-sacrifice. Ten-year-old

Louisa Jane Trumbull had absorbed the importance of self-denial to charity, noting that

“a real benevolent person gives to the poor and deprives herself many things.”72 In the

1810s and 1820s, missionary organizers began urging children not to buy “sweet things and trifles,” including toys, for the more noble cause of missions.73 Reformers quickly expanded juvenile items for self-denial to include domestic staples, such as sugar, tea, and butter, and promoted arrangements for parents to give children their value in money for donations to the missionary box.74 One sick girl in Lowell, Massachusetts took the spirit of self-denial extraordinarily solemnly when she gave up taking medicine in order to give the money to the mission box, insisting that “the Lord will take care of me.”75

Though envisioned by adults as a refusal of luxury items, juvenile self-denial exposed the

70 Self Denial; or, Alice Wood and her Missionary Society. 71 “Minute Books of the Sunday School Missionary Society [Clinton, NY], from its organization on Dec. 6th 1846, to 1857.” Rare Books, Hamilton College Library. 72 Holly V. Izard, Worcester Through a Child’s Eyes: The Diaries of Louisa Jane Trumbull, 1829-1837 (Worcester: AAS, 2005), 402. 73 “Juvenile Missionary Society of Carlisle,” Religious Miscellany, October 10, 1823, 234. 74 “Dialogue Between a Mother and her Children,” Guardian, or Youth’s Religious Instructor, March 1, 1821, 84; A.B., “Juvenile Benevolence,” Youth’s Companion, February 6, 1835, 152. 75 “Children’s Missionary Offerings,” New York Observer and Chronicle, February 4, 1843, 20. Ultimately, the girl’s peers gave money to buy the medicine.

93 economic value of household goods to children, making the relationship between the home and market clearer. As a result of these appeals by missionary organizers, some children, no doubt, began more explicitly viewing the food and other merchandise in their homes as products of the marketplace.76

John Scudder recognized the importance of instilling self-denial in children, threatening to change publishers if they did not value it as highly as he. In 1842, Scudder lodged a complaint with his publisher, the ASSU, when a letter he included from a boy detailing his self-denial of luxuries and how it benefited missionaries was excluded from the proofs they sent to him of his latest book for children. He defended its inclusion, protesting that “it is the only one which speaks of self-denial, as going without things, to get money for the missionary cause.” He offered instructions how the letter on self-denial could be reinserted into the text; if the Union did not comply, he warned, he would take his work to another publisher. 77 The ASSU either agreed with Scudder that this oversight would compromise the publication’s value or feared losing him as an author, for the committee included the letter in the final text.78

Missionaries and their supporters also encouraged children to raise money through their labor. While missionaries expected both boys and girls to pray for the missionaries and sacrifice luxuries for them, reformers expected children to work for the missionaries in gender-defined ways. The gender-specific fundraising tactics helped to

76 It would be beneficial for girls to understand the household economy, since in adulthood astute shopping skills would be integral to preserving middle-class status. See: Jeanne Boydston, Home and Work: Household Wages and the Ideology of Labor in the Early Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 102-103. 77 Letter from John Scudder to Frederick Packard, July 3, 1842. Frederick A. Packard, Incoming Correspondence, May 18, 1840-Jan 9, 1846; n.d. Papers of the ASSU, 1817-1915. Reel 200. Underlining in original. 78 Minutes of the Publication Committee, July 17, 1842, 1817-1915. Publication Committee Records, Minutes, Jan 2, 1833-Dec 18, 1843. Papers of the ASSU, 1817-1915. Reel 225; Scudder, Letters to Sabbath-School Children, 34.

94 enforce childhood gender roles, and prepare girls and boys for womanhood and manhood.79 Missionary reformers encouraged boys to earn money by farming small plots of land lent to them by their fathers, and selling the produce. “There is now a very good time for boys to earn money, as it is gardening time,” wrote one boy to a missionary.

“[T]hose men who have boys old enough can hire them to dig their gardens, and give as much as they think they are worth, and in that way, they can earn a great deal of money for the missionaries.” Alternatively, the young writer suggested that boys “ask their father for a small piece of their garden, and they might cultivate it, and raise vegetables such as lettuce, radishes, beets, cabbages, and squashes, and sell them and get some money for the missionaries.”80 Another group of boys in Portsmouth, New Hampshire reported to the Youth’s Dayspring in 1852, that to raise money for missions “[w]e pick up chips, get shavings, shovel snow, go on errands, and do a good many things.”81 One “very industrious and ingenious” boy, inspired by a missionary’s speech, aided the cause as a carpenter, making a cedar sewing box to sell. Though the child’s work resembled the labor of an adult male tradesman, the boy’s dependent status in the family offered his mother an opportunity to act benevolently, by selling the sewing box to a “lady visitor” in the drawing room.82 In short, reformers argued that middle-class boys were fit to labor for money, so long as their earnings went to benefit missions.

79 Dorsey, Reforming Men and Women, 2-4. 80 John Scudder, Letters to the Sabbath-School Children, 35; While this enforced appropriate work roles for girls and boys, it simultaneously complicated assigned gender roles more broadly, since gardening was understood to be the work of adult women. 81 “Letter to the Day Spring,” Youth’s Dayspring, April 1852, 60. 82 “Harry’s Work Box,” The Child’s Paper, June 1855, 22.

95

Girls were expected to earn money by sewing, preparing them for their responsibilities as wives, mothers, and charity workers.83 One young respondent to a missionary noted that girls in her community “formed sewing societies, and made pin- cushions, needle-books, emery bags, and the like, and send the money that is got from the sale of them to the missionaries, to be used for the heathen.”84 Indeed, accounts of juvenile female benevolence commonly highlighted sewing circles as a primary source of revenue and made up large portion of a society’s meetings.85 In “The Juvenile Sewing

Society,” seven-year-old Emma’s entrance into the world of benevolence depends on her sewing proficiency. Emma wants to join a girls’ sewing society, but reports to her father that they require ten cents for membership. Instead of handing her the dime, Emma’s father agrees to provide her with three handkerchiefs, which she may hem in exchange for the ten cents. Through effort and self sacrifice, Emma completes the handkerchiefs, earning the money with “approbation from her parents.”86 While girls’ work more closely resembled domestic labor, it nonetheless demonstrated to middle-class children that female labor, in this case sewing, could have moral value that furthered the missionary cause.

However, the Sunday school story, Lucy Wheaton; or, the Little Missionary, appears to complicate this gendered division of labor by approvingly depicting a seven-

83 On the prominent place of sewing in the lives of middle-class women, see: Boydston, Home and Work, 82-83. Sewing was also important for working-class women, who were more likely to sew for money as seamstresses. See: Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860 (1986; repr., Urbana: Illinois University Press, 1987), 106-115; Micheal Zakim, Ready-Made Democracy: A History of Men’s Dress in the Early Republic, 1760-1860 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 157-184. 84 Scudder, Letters to the Sabbath-School Children, 37. 85 “Female Benevolence,” Youth’s Companion, April 24, 1833, 196. 86 A.D.A., “The Juvenile Sewing Society,” Youth’s Companion, March 31, 1853, 194.

96 year-old girl collecting scraps around New York to raise money for missionaries.87

However, the girl’s poverty permits the girl to perform this work without violating middle-class respectability and gender roles, while demonstrating her dedication to missionaries.88 Tellingly, after Lucy Wheaton’s family becomes more prosperous, the girl focuses on sewing to raise money.89 Still, middle-class girls would no doubt read Lucy

Wheaton and be exposed to a female protagonist who behaved benevolently while earning money outside of a domestic setting.

The opportunities for girls varied from organization to organization. When societies included members of both sexes, girls sometimes took on positions of leadership, but in other cases, the role of girls and young women were sometimes subordinate. In female-only societies, girls could take on executive positions and hold some influence over the direction of a society. A female juvenile missionary society in

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, allowed boys to join because there was no male counterpart, but their constitution stated that the society’s “business shall be conducted by little girls alone.”90 However, in another example of juvenile missionary benevolence, girls faced limitations. The Greene Street Church Juvenile Missionary Society of New York City welcomed male and female children and adolescents. However, the society allowed only boys to occupy the highest positions, and changed its constitution so that only males could ask questions at meetings, even though female members of the society tended to

87 Ann R. Wells, Lucy Wheaton; or, the Little Missionary, 2nd ed. (Boston: Massachusetts Sabbath School Society, 1856), 46-49; Stansell, City of Women, 51. 88 Wells, Lucy Wheaton, 6-7. 89 Ibid., 93-94. No doubt, Wheaton’s advancing age would also place greater expectations on her to raise money in ways more respectable for her gender. 90 “Juvenile Missionary Society of Carlisle,” The Religious Miscellany, October 31, 1823, 234.

97 remain active longer than their male counterparts.-91 In this case, reformers regarded girls as able fundraisers, but they denied them positions of leadership.

Missionary descriptions of heathen practices reinforced American middle-class gender roles. Descriptions of heathen practices highlighted their failure to uphold proper gender roles, and noted it as a failing of their non-Christian beliefs. One missionary appealed to mothers to champion the missionary cause to their children because the

Indian practice of throwing widows on their husbands’ funeral pyres could be avoided only if they adopted American Christian gender roles, since “[t]his is the way by which she [a Hindu widow] believes she is to obtain heaven.”92 Another missionary lamented to children that because Zulus were non-Christian, gender prescribed divisions of labor were askew: women were “compelled to perform all the hard work, such as digging, planting, harvesting, and carrying burdens,” while the men did nothing.93

Similarly, missionary boosters highlighted the ways in which heathen children were vulnerable to physical and spiritual mistreatment. For instance, missionary John

Scudder claimed that, as a religious offering, “hard-hearted” Indian mothers threw their infants into the Ganges River to be eaten by crocodiles.94 Moreover, Scudder explained, a group in India, known as the “Thugs or Phansiagars” murdered adults and trained their children to be murderous thieves. Consequently, the orphans were brought up believing

91 The First Annual Report of the Greene Street Juvenile Missionary Society with the Constitution and By- Laws (New York: H.R. Piercy, 1835), 2; 8; The Third Annual Report of the Greene Street Juvenile Missionary Society (New York: H.R. Piercy, 1837), 2; The Fifth Annual Report of the Greene Street Juvenile Missionary Society (New York: H.R. Piercy, 1839), 2; 10; Constitution and By-Laws of the Junior Missionary Society of the Greene Street M.E. Church (New York: J.W. Oliver, 1841), 2.Commitment to the cause in this case is measured by the retention of executives and managers, as recorded in these annual reports. 92 Scudder, Letters to Sabbath School Children 40-42; Scudder, Appeal to Christian Mothers, 38-39. Quote is on 39. 93J.T., “Houses of the Zulus in South Africa,” Youth’s Dayspring, July 1850, 107. 94 Scudder, Letters to Sabbath School Children, 18-19. Quote is on 18.

98 that “it is just as proper to kill a man, as it is to kill a snake which lies in his path and which would bite him as he passes.”95 Scudder reminded to American children how fortunate they “were not born in a heathen but in a Christian land.”96 In so doing, Scudder taught American children that they bore a special responsibility, on account of their age, to support missionaries through prayers and through pennies. By contrasting the supposed circumstances of heathen and Christian children, missionary boosters championed ideals of a sheltered childhood, built on evangelical middle-class Christianity, while immersing youngsters in the principles of philanthropy.97

Though missionary boosters encouraged girls and boys to raise money, juvenile fundraising never approached the financial complexity of their adult counterparts. Indeed, historians have highlighted that adult benevolent organizations, including female associations, utilized a corporate structure in their financial dealings.98 Instead, juvenile benevolent societies relied on regular small contributions (sometimes as often as weekly), sewing, and fundraising fairs. Nevertheless, through these money making strategies, children were immersed in the marketplace, though adult reformers labeled their actions works of benevolence. Indeed, one female juvenile missionary society in Andover,

Massachusetts, earned interest on the money they raised.99

Children’s literature highlighted philanthropic financial dealings that were more elaborate, in order to convey money-themed lessons, commonly outlining how reformers used the money to deepen the commitment of the young reader. For instance, in “Fifty

Cents for Twine,” missionary expeditions required seemingly mundane things, in this

95 Ibid., 10-12. Quote on 11-12. 96 Ibid., 12. 97 “Missionary Schools,” Youth’s Dayspring, March 1851, 33. 98 Ginzberg, Women and the Work of Benevolence, 41-52. 99 It is unclear whether the interest was paid by a bank or an adult supporter of the society.

99 case twine to tie up evangelical publications for shipment.100 Another short piece highlighted “the amount of time, labor, patience, money, and study, which are needful to put a copy of a Bible, or a Testament, or even a single gospel in the hands of a heathen.”101 Missionaries who returned to America sometimes visited juvenile missionary societies, or wrote them letters from their missions, regaling the children with stories of their proselytizing, and explaining the cultural practices of the indigenous people. 102

Even when evangelizing in distant places, missionaries found time to write to children explaining what their contributions accomplished.103 These explanations sometimes highlighted the infrastructure required for benevolent activities. By highlighting these operations, reformers showed young readers that benevolence required extensive purchases of material as well as complex financial transactions to succeed, without actually requiring children to fully engage them.

The juvenile organizations founded to raise money for missions varied, but on the whole, adult reformers walked a fine line between instilling filial subordination in girls and boys, and wanting them to internalize the virtues of benevolence and act on their own. Instructional children’s literature commonly depicted girls and boys confronting financial choices and opting to spend their money benevolently, or else using it selfishly, and ultimately regretting that decision.104 Indeed, reformers wished that a single missionary’s speech or letter would inspire youngsters into action. By depicting children, presumed to be naturally virtuous, quickly taking up the missionary cause, reformers

100 “Fifty Cents for Twine,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, October 23, 1850, 88. 101 “The Missionary Printer,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, November 22, 1848, 94. This article encouraged reader to read more about book manufacturing in: The Missionary Printer (Philadelphia: ASSU, 1848). 102 Minute Books of the Sunday School Missionary Society (Clinton NY). Rare Books, Hamilton College Library. 103 Minute Books of the Sunday School Missionary Society (Clinton NY), March 10, 1850. Rare Books, Hamilton College Library. 104 H., “The Four Dollars – An Angel’s Thought,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, January 31, 1855, 10.

100 could underscore that their cause was virtuous. In The Little Girls’ Missionary Meeting, young girls meet “among themselves” in a bucolic setting for a missionary meeting. The girls happily sew and learn about heathens and missions, with no adults in sight and only the promise that they will arrive later to provide a snack.105 Likewise, in Self Denial, young Alice Wood is inspired by one missionary speech to organize a girls’ sewing society without regular direction from adults.106

The ideal of unsupervised children raising money for children underscored juvenile enthusiasm for the missionary project. In reality, juvenile missionary societies were often overseen by a superintendant (often a school principal or teacher) or other adults, who instructed children on missionary activity and managed the money they raised.107 For instance, at a juvenile female sewing society in Maine, the minister’s wife:

[r]eads for their improvement and pleasure, interesting portions of the sacred and profane history, biographies, and missionary intelligence, and often gives variety by engaging in familiar, friendly conversation: sometimes upon the objects of the various other benevolent institutions of the day; and at others she gives them affectionate advice and instruction in relation to their different duties to their parents, to each other, and to society; and points out the path in which they must walk if they would be respected and happy in this life, and forever happy in heaven.108 Behind the fictional depiction of children acting on their own were adults closely supervising their actions and trying to instill the importance of benevolence. The children’s book Lucy Wheaton depicts how reformers hoped that adults would shape children’s spending, while still allowing children to show initiative in virtuous spending.

In the story, seven-year-old Lucy begins saving money after hearing a missionary speak to her Sunday school.109 However, after she succumbs to temptation and buys candy with

105 The Little Girls’ Missionary Meeting (Philadelphia: ASSU, 1845), 3. 106 Self Denial; or, Alice Wood and her Missionary Society, 4-6. 107 For instance see: V.S.B.,“Children’s Missionary Societies,” Christian Watchman, September 28, 1832, 154. 108 B.A.,“Juvenile Sewing Society,” The Youth’s Companion, September 8, 1830, 62. 109 Wells, Lucy Wheaton, 12-17.

101 money intended for missionaries, she requires guidance from her Sunday school teacher, who spies Lucy leaving the shop.110 Lucy recognizes the sinfulness of her behavior, seeks forgiveness, and adjusts her behavior accordingly. Though the Sunday school teacher plays a part in shaping Lucy’s spending habits, the girl rarely requires adult guidance to behave benevolently.

Some adult missionary boosters maintained this balance between juvenile inspiration and adult oversight with regard to control over the money raised. In 1844, a

Methodist periodical suggested that young members of juvenile missionary societies elect all officers, aside from an adult corresponding secretary who was responsible for the money raised. However, many missionary organizers still wanted children to have some latitude over what missions they supported. The corresponding secretary was also supposed to spend the money he or she safeguarded “as he may be directed by the society.”111 Similarly, a society in Washington, D.C. allowed youngsters to vote on the specific mission to fund, which reformers hoped would “open a correspondence between the missionary and the society, which will no doubt bring the great cause of missions more powerfully before their youthful minds, and operate a constant stimulant to urge them onward in their labor of love.”112

Juvenile societies and Sunday schools selecting their own targets of benevolence became common enough that the Methodist Missionary Board complained that that it was undercutting their general treasury. Though Board members conceded that juvenile societies’ targeted philanthropy was “done innocently,” they held that it undermined the

Board’s ability to organize and fund missions effectively. Instead, they directed adult

110 Wells, Lucy Wheaton, 63-69. 111 B.K.Peirce, “Juvenile Missions,” Zion’s Herald, August 21, 1844, 135. 112 “Revival Intelligence,” Christian Advocate, March 7, 1834, 2.

102 supervisors to relay money to the Methodist Missionary Board to “preserve the unity of the missionary administration, and give consistency and power to our missionary system.” 113

Making Philanthropy Rewarding

Reformers stressed self-denial as a key principle in juvenile philanthropy, but they simultaneously argued that giving charity made children happy, highlighting spending as a source of pleasure to children. For instance, one editor reported that: “[t]o see the youthful eye kindle with delight at the thought of being permitted to appropriate from its little resources, or the fruit of its own earnings, something that may contribute to the welfare of the unblessed children of Africa, must afford peculiar satisfaction to every parent, who would wish its child distinguished for those humane and generous feelings, and benevolent habits.”114 A young member of a Connecticut juvenile missionary society shared this sentiment, insisting that “it makes us so happy to know that our pennies will soon be in Persia…We love to earn, we love to give. We are happier than we were, before we earned money for others.”115

Moreover, to encourage juvenile support, missionary reformers portrayed the spectacle of “heathen” rituals as a source of pleasurable wonder. In this way they offered children a sensory reward for their contributions. In her 1847 children’s book Missionary

Cabinet, Helen Knight acts as a tour guide, taking young readers through displays of relics collected by missions and displayed at ABCFM headquarters in Boston. Filled with vivid descriptions and detailed illustrations, the author recommends that “when children from the country visit the city [Boston], they must be sure to go there [ABCFM office], to

113 “Missionary Circular,” Zion’s Herald, September 30, 1857, 154. 114 “Religious Intelligence,” Christian Advocate, May 1, 1833, 229. 115 C.D. Dill, “Giving Makes Happy,” Youth’s Dayspring, March 1851, 40.

103 behold the curious things which the missionaries sent home from the heathen lands where they are at work.”116 Though the author highlights the wickedness of the artifacts on display, she still depicts a visit to the ABCFM office as an exciting romp, for “[t]here are a great many other things in the case, which I cannot describe. Look carefully and find them all out.”117 John Scudder also regarded the exoticism of foreign languages as a source of wonder for young supporters of missionaries. Scudder mailed ASSU tracts translated into Tamil to a juvenile society in Massachusetts, which the members prized, with the secretary describing the books as “quite a present,” and noting that the gifts were housed in the society library.118

Reformers also promised children rewards for their commitment to benevolent causes, so as to make philanthropy more gratifying, and to give girls and boys a sense of belonging to the cause. A female juvenile missionary society in Massachusetts used attractive membership cards and anniversary meeting agendas. Both featured a detailed illustration they would reuse for years of a white missionary giving a piece of religious reading to a dark-skinned girl and boy in a tropical location (indicated by the palm trees and thatched huts).119 The American Missionary Association printed elaborate membership certificates in 1858 for its “Children’s Anti-Slavery Missionary Society,” which featured illustrations and scriptural passages that underscored their anti-slavery and evangelical beliefs, while also linking membership to a beautiful piece of merchandise.120 In 1842, John Scudder returned to America and remained until 1846,

116 Helen Knight, Missionary Cabinet (Boston: Massachusetts Sabbath School Society, 1847), 6. 117 Knight, Missionary Cabinet, 43. 118 Minutes of the Juvenile Missionary Society, July 25, 1851. West Parish Church Records (Andover, MA), AHS. Mss 376 Subgroup V Series A Sub-Series 3. 119 West Parish Church Records (Andover, MA), AHS. Mss 376 Subgroup V Series F Sub-Group Mss 376 Sub-Group V Series G; Subseries 2. 120 No Title, The American Missionary Magazine, May 1858, 116.

104 during which time he toured the country distributing copies of his tract for free or at little cost to children attending his talks. At these events, Scudder autographed copies of the small book for his young attendees, adding value to his gift.

Moreover, as literary critic Karen Sánchez-Eppler suggests, non-Christian children in distant lands became “desirable commodities,” when children in juvenile missionary societies purchased the right to figuratively acquire the targets of their benevolence in distant lands. In some cases, this symbolic purchase, and act of cultural imperialism, was completed when juvenile missionary societies named children after adult supporters of their organizations, or people associated with the society who had died. 121 These rewards encouraged children to fill the treasuries of missionary campaigns, but at the same time linked benevolence with the consumer impulse. Being honored in such a lasting and public way possibly also motivated some children and adults to take leading roles in juvenile missionary societies.

Though reformers showcased the contented child to promote juvenile benevolence, they also used the image of the dying child for similar ends. The dying truth-teller figured heavily into the period’s literature, most famously depicted in the death of little Eva St. Claire in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. In the Early Republic, Americans believed that a deathbed speech was especially truthful, since the speaker held no ulterior motive.122 The special significance nineteenth century Americans drew from dying words, combined with the natural innocence attributed to youngsters, made the depiction

121 Karen Sánchez-Eppler, Dependent States,191. Sánchez-Eppler offers an exploration of how encouraging juvenile support for missionaries was cultural imperialism. 122 Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (New York: Vintage, 2008), 10-11. One of the most popular instructional books of the period, The Dairymen’s Daughter, focused on a dying female devotee discussing her faith. Legh Richmond, The Dairyman’s Daughter: An Authentic Narrative, Abridged (New York: American Tract Society, n.d.).

105 of a child’s death especially moving. A Vermont Sunday school sent nine dollars to the

ABCFM, but ascribed special significance to a dollar of that contribution: the “legacy” of their deceased schoolmate Laura. Though she had died at the age of five, the school pointed out that Laura practiced self-denial and that “[w]hen she came to die, her heart was still alive with the same desire, and she wished what was then in her possession should go to make the heathen know of the Savior.”123 Similarly, for one father, the recent death of his daughter inspired him to make a ten dollar contribution to build

Sunday school libraries in the West. He pledged to donate every year for the cause, and in this way form a figurative gold chain between his dead daughter and himself across the chasm of death. In the process, he reasoned, “her legacy shall go on like a little stream out of heaven – pure bubbling water from the river of life, ever flowing fast by the throne.” 124 Moreover, the depiction of dying children in juvenile literature pressured young readers to give money, for it highlighted that death could come at any time, and that “when you come to die, you will never be sorry for what you have given to the cause.“125

The “Children’s Ship:” The Morning Star and the Micronesia Mission

Arguably the grandest antebellum juvenile fundraising project undertaken by supporters of American missionaries was the construction of the Morning Star, a 150 ton ship built by the ABCFM at a cost of $12,000 to spread Christianity into Micronesia and the Marquesas Islands.126 The idea for girls and boys to fund such a large project drew inspiration from the English missionary ship, the John Williams, which was funded with

123 “Laura’s Legacy,” Youth’s Dayspring, March 1854, 43. 124 “The Golden Chain,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, December 3, 1845, 100. 125 An Infant Missionary (Boston: Massachusetts Sabbath School Union, 1851), 8. 126 “Missionary Intelligence,” New York Observer and Chronicle, August 28, 1856, 274.

106 the contributions of children, and set sail in 1844.127 Named after a missionary killed while evangelizing in the New Hebrides Island, the London Missionary Society raised

£6,237 from children to build the ship, and more when the John Williams required money for repairs and support.128

Years before American missionary boosters began raising money for the

Morning Star, they used the John Williams to inspire children to be a larger part of the worldwide evangelical endeavor, and to illustrate that the combined donations of many children could accomplish great things.129 However, the ABCFM originally explained to children that they did not need a ship, as they sent missionaries on commercial vessels.

Instead, they directed children to contribute on the scale of the John Williams effort, with the funds to be used to build and operate schools in foreign lands.130 In this way, argued one missionary booster, children would have figurative ownership over missionary schools: “The schools would be your schools. The many thousand in them would be instructed through your liberality. They would look to you as their benefactors.”131

Despite their insistence that a ship was unnecessary, American reformers continued to celebrate the exploits of the John Williams in juvenile publications years after it had set sail. By August of 1856, ABCFM organizers changed course to launch a campaign to build a ship.132 They believed a vessel was now necessary to evangelize the South Pacific

127 “The Missionary Ship,” The Boston Recorder, July 25, 1844, 118; “The Missionary Ship. Appeal to Children and Youth,” The Missionary Herald, September 1856, 284. 128 Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century England, 81-82. 129 “The Missionary Ship,” The Youth’s Dayspring, December 1851, 178; “The Missionary Ship Again,” The Youth’s Dayspring, February 1851, 17; “The Children’s Ship,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, June 8, 1853, 42. 130 “Missionary Schools,” The Youth’s Dayspring, March 1851, 33; “The John Williams at Hobart Town,” The Youth’s Dayspring, February 1853, 24. 131 “Missionary Schools,” The Youth’s Dayspring, March 1851, 33. Italics in original. 132 Ted Livingston, Morning Stars 1-VII, Ships of the Gospel (Salem, MA: Higginson Book Company, 2006), 49.

107 on account of “the wide and increasing field of labor which is there opened to the Board” and a need for regular support.133 The financial difficulties that came with three consecutive deficits, along with the precedent set by the John Williams, no doubt encouraged the Board to turn to youngsters to fund the costly project.134

Children received instructions to contribute to the Morning Star from newspapers and Sunday school lessons. No doubt parents also cajoled their sons and daughters to participate in the project. The appeal published in the ABCFM’s Missionary Herald asked “[w]ill the children and youth, operating through the American Board, furnish such a vessel? Will they make an effort, without much delay, and raise the twelve thousand dollars?”135 The organizers expressed confidence that “[w]e have no doubt you can raise the sum.” The appeal justified the ship’s price tag, explaining that the Micronesian

Islands spanned a huge area, and had/ thus far received almost no attention from missionaries; “[i]f the American Board would send them the Gospel, it must own a vessel for this purpose.” The appeal described the proposed ship, justifying the need for the extra expense that came with a coppered hull, which would “protect her from those destructive worms of those seas.” They also helped children understand the many parts that went into such an elaborate project of benevolence, detailing the small part that a donation could purchase. “Some perhaps may be able to give a plank,” explained the anonymous author, “or a spar, or a piece of timber; some a bolt, a peg, a nail, or a screw; others a strand in the cable, a thread in the canvas, or an ounce of the anchor.”136

133 Report of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions Presented at the Forty-Seventh Annual Meeting Held in Newark, New Jersey, October 28-31, with the Minutes of the Special Meeting Held in Albany, New York, March 4-6, 1856 (Boston: T.R. Marvin, 1856), 22; 28. 134 Report of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions Presented at the Forty-Seventh Annual Meeting, 20. 135 “The Missionary Ship: Appeal to Children and Youth,” Missionary Herald, September 1856, 284. 136 “The Missionary Ship: Appeal to Children and Youth,” Missionary Herald, September 1856, 284.

108

The confidence placed by the Board was well founded; children responded with contributions to support the Morning Star’s mission. Despite lackluster support from the

South, the fundraising efforts yielded impressive results, raising considerably more money than required or expected.137 Among the donors were missionaries’ children in foreign lands and Native American girls and boys. By January of 1857, “the Youth’s

Fund” for the Morning Star totaled $22,000.138

The donations were not exclusively monetary: some Sunday schools sent supplies to equip the vessel, which were purchased with children’s contributions. For instance, a

Boston Sunday school gave a chronometer for the ship, bought with two hundred dollars in children’s donations, and ceremoniously presented their gift to the treasurer of the

ABCFM, followed by a speech by the ship’s captain.139 In another case, a school in

Ipswich, Massachusetts, purchased “a very elegant Bible” for the Morning Star’s crew.140

The adjective used to describe the Bible indicates that this book was a piece of luxurious merchandise. However, by making the “elegant” merchandise a gift for a missionary ship, its purchase became an act of benevolence.

The ABCFM tried to entice young donors with eye-catching stock certificates in the Morning Star, awarded for a donation of at least ten cents. Featuring the donor’s name, the amount given, and an illustration of the vessel on the high seas, the Board designed the promised certificates to sway children. Indeed, an appeal for donations

137 The Morning Star (Boston: ABCFM, n.d.), 12. ABCFM Archives, HUL. 138 “Religious Summary,” New York Evangelist, January 15, 1857, 20. 139 “The Chronometer for the ‘Morning Star,’” The Boston Evening Transcript, November 19, 1856, 2. 140 “The Missionary Ship Morning Star,” New York Tribune, November 13, 1856, 3.

109 highlighted the attractive “vignette of the ‘Morning Star’” on the 120,000 certificates printed.141

Though the Morning Star stock certificate was smaller than a real nineteenth century stock certificate, it closely resembled the real thing, and gave young investors a sense of corporate ownership.142 However, the Morning Star stock certificate program was not the first time children envisioned their donations as investments. For instance, a

Rochester Sunday school raised $120 over two years for the ABCFM’s Children’s

Education Fund; in 1852, the young secretary of the juvenile society wrote that with their contributions “we have an investment in this missionary stock, and our teachers are not willing it should depreciate on their hands.”143 The ABCFM took Rochester’s penchant for the language of high finance to a new level in 1856, by introducing it to a much larger audience and attaching a material reward to missionary investments. The stock certificate distribution program familiarized children with financial matters of which they may not have previously been aware, and used language that cast young givers as noble entrepreneurs. English children had been sold or given John Williams commemorative medals and were presented with cakes and oranges on the day of the ship’s launch, but by rewarding young donors with stock certificates, American missionary boosters immersed girls and boys more deeply in the marketplace, by promising corporate ownership.144

Descriptions of fundraising for the Morning Star cast child contributors as “little owners

141 “The Missionary Ship ‘Morning Star,’” New York Evangelist, October 9, 1856, 172. 142 Bob Tamarkin and Les Krantz, The Art of the Market: Two Centuries of American Business as Seen Through its Stock Certificates (New York: Stewart, Tarbori, and Chang, 1999), 37-82. 143 “An Investment in Missionary Stock,” Youth’s Dayspring, July 1852, 111-112. Quote from 111. Italics in original. 144 William Hordle, “Launching of the New Ship,” Juvenile Missionary Magazine, June to December 1844, 9; “Medal of the New Ship,” Juvenile Missionary Magazine, June to December 1844, 12.

110 of the Missionary Packet.” 145 Though the only profits a young donor could yield would be the happiness and satisfaction of seeing the mission succeed, the stock-certificates instilled in youngsters the pride of corporate ownership and the pleasure of possession.

Morning Star stock certificates were popular with children on account of their attractive appearance and the sense of ownership that they instilled. Thirteen year old

Caroline Cowles Richards received a dollar from her grandmother to give for the

Morning Star at Sunday school. She prized her stock certificate, making note of the ship design and writing in her diary that “we are going to keep it always.”146 Underscoring the seriousness with which some children took their investment, an evangelical periodical reported that a boy who had donated ten cents to the Morning Star boarded a ship he believed to be the missionary vessel (a larger ship also named Morning Star having been docked nearby). A sailor asked him who he was, to which he replied “I’m one of the owners of this ship.”147 This anecdote underscores the pride some children took in the vessel their small donations had funded (with the share certificate to prove it). Appeals for donations reinforced this sense of ownership, explaining that “[a]ny little boy or girl who has ten cents to give for this object, may have one of these beautiful certificates, stating that he is owner of one share in this ship.”148

The Morning Star was ceremonially launched on November 12th, 1856. The celebration surrounding the event reveals the balance reformers tried to achieve between juvenile amusement and instruction, and between spontaneity and order. A crowd of around three or four thousand excited celebrants, about three quarters of whom were

145 A Merwin, “The ‘Morning Star,’” New York Times, July 17, 1857, 3. 146 Caroline Cowles Richards, Village Life in America (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1913), 30. 147 Mansfield, “Sailing of the Morning Star” New York Evangelist, December 11, 1856, 242. 148 “The ‘Morning Star,’” Farmer’s Cabinet, November 6, 1856, 2.

111 children, gathered at a nearby church before the ship left port.149 It is not clear who brought the children, or whether they arrived on their own volition, but in at least one instance, a Sunday school brought its pupils to the event.150 Prior to the launch, attendees sang the “missionary hymn” and reverends delivered a prayer and a sermon, explaining the significance of the ship’s mission.151 After the ship set sail, and only after having received a signal that they might do so, the adult missionary boosters permitted the children to be mildly raucous, waving their handkerchiefs and loudly shouting

“Hurrah!”152

Organizers wanted children’s investments in the Morning Star, punctuated by stock certificates, to spark a long term interest in missionary campaigns. Hiram Bingham

Jr., the missionary traveling to Micronesia aboard the Morning Star, suggested to a

Sunday school superintendant and friend that he should preserve the students’ concern for the ship, and encourage them to pray for its continued safety.153As Bingham’s sentiment suggests, ABCFM organizers wanted children to continue supporting the ship after it had left Boston, publishing accounts of their ship’s exploits in juvenile literature.154 Surely, the ABCFM continued to relay these reports to children with the foreknowledge that the

Morning Star might require costly repairs in the future, or that they would eventually need to replace the Morning Star. Following the ship’s departure, it stopped first at the

149 “The Missionary Ship,” New York Observer and Chronicle, November 20, 1856, 370; “Launching of the Morning Star,” The Independent, December 4, 1856, 390; “Launch of the Missionary Packet ‘Morning Star,’” Farmer’s Cabinet, November 20, 1856, 2; Ted Livingston, Morning Stars 1-VII, 57. 150 “Launch of the Missionary Packet ‘Morning Star,’” Farmer’s Cabinet, November 20, 1856, 2. Indeed, the New York Times assumed that all the children present were from Sunday school. See: “A Missionary Brig in the Breakers,” New York Times, December 6, 1856, 8. 151 “The Missionary Ship,” New York Observer and Chronicle, November 20, 1856, 370; “Launch of the Missionary Packet ‘Morning Star,’” Farmer’s Cabinet, November 20, 1856. 152 Jane S. Warren, The Morning Star (Boston: American Tract Society, 1860), 40. 153 Hiram Bingham Jr. to John.C. Salter, November 9, 1857. Bingham, Mr. and Mrs. Hiram Jr. ABCFM Archives (77.1, Box 9), HUL. 154 L.H. Gulick, “The Morning Star,” The Independent, April 22, 1858, 4.

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Sandwich Islands (evangelized years earlier by Bingham’s father), where it received another crowd of excited children that gave the Morning Star a flag. The missionary vessel then sailed to Micronesia to perform missionary work. A New York Times contributor highlighted the juvenile (and adult) empathy for the Morning Star, commenting, after the ship nearly wrecked off Cape Cod, that “[h]er loss, under these circumstances, would have caused more real sorrow than is often felt for the loss of the most valuable ship,” on account of its young supporters.155

After the Morning Star was built, the ASSU and the ABCFM continued to link philanthropy and consumerism, selling models of the Morning Star, “carefully enclosed in a glass case, which is contained in a pretty box.”156 Anticipating differing budgets and intended uses for the miniature, it was made available in three sizes ranging in price from three to ten dollars. The sellers expected stock-holding Sunday school scholars would want the miniature replicas in their classrooms, while the larger model was intended for parlors.157 Though sales of the model ship were modest, the willingness with which the

ABCFM and the ASSU pitched this merchandise to Sunday schools suggests their recognition that juvenile desire could buttress the children’s affinity for the missionary movement.

Reformers hoped that the Morning Star fundraising campaign would inspire future fundraising efforts, “that the young friends who have begun to give for this great object will keep on giving, and thus be trained up to benevolence, and that some of them

155 “A Missionary Brig in the Breakers,” New York Times, December 6, 1856, 8. 156 “Glass Models of the ‘Morning Star’ for Sunday-School,” The Independent, December 25, 1856, 260. 157“Religious Summary,” New York Evangelist, April 16, 1857, 124.

113 may go out in future years, in this ship, as missionaries.”158 The organizers of at least one other benevolent institution were sufficiently inspired by the ABCFM’s success to create a stock certificate program of their own. When a female-run “Home for the Friendless,” an asylum for the destitute in New York City, required more money less than two months after the Morning Star’s launch, it appealed to children, printing and distributing ten cent stock shares in their institution available by mail, or as they explained, “in the same manner in which the Sunday Schools of the land have recently contributed to build the

Missionary Ship - ‘The Morning Star.’”159 The certificate produced by the poor house was more elaborate than the original Morning Star certificate, featuring elaborate intaglios, Bible passages that highlighted the importance of children and philanthropy, and illustrations of the buildings operated by the society. Moreover, the text of the certificate highlighted the child’s role as investor, proclaiming that “The Certifies that

______by payment of ______Cents is entitled to ______

Shares in the Home for the Friendless.”160

The ABCFM itself piggybacked on its own success shortly after the Morning Star departed, appealing to children for the ‘Missionary School Fund,’ for the education of non-Christians in foreign lands. While the ABCFM had made appeals to children for juvenile education prior to the Morning Star, after 1856 the Board followed the model of the Morning Star fundraising method, dividing the $50,000 they required into half a million ten cent stock certificates made available to youngsters. Intending to pry dimes from children, and cultivate consumer desire, the ABCFM stressed the certificate’s

158 “Foreign Missions: Forty-Seventh Annual Meeting of the American Board,” New York Observer and Chronicle, November 6, 1856, 354. 159 “The Home of the Friendless,” Merry’s Museum and Parley’s Magazine, January 1, 1857, 84. 160 “American Female Guardian Society and Home for the Friendless,” (New York: J. Bien, 1857).

114 appearance, explaining that the new stock certificate was more attractive than the original one printed for the Morning Star. The ABCFM then detailed the components of the certificate’s design, and tantalized the children further by promising that there were even more details to be discovered after it was attained.161

In 1866, the ABCFM had a second Morning Star built, after the first one had become dilapidated beyond repair. The Board hoped to raise money from a new generation of children in Sunday schools (as they would for subsequent Morning Stars until the 1950s), and used a similar stock certificate enticement, but elaborated on it by offering a book on the original Morning Star for donations over fifty cents.162 By October

1866, missionary Hiram Bingham Jr. acknowledged the considerable donations

“thankfully received” from children for this enterprise.163 Indeed, two thousand Sunday schools had raised money for the cause, and 150,000 stock certificates were issued.164

When the ship set sail in September of 1866, a crowd of 3,000, overwhelmingly made up of children, celebrated the launch.165

Calling Juvenile Benevolence into Question

Despite the vocal championing of juvenile benevolence before the Civil War, it did not sit well with everyone. Criticisms of children’s charity commonly stemmed from the ways in which it situated boys and girls in the marketplace. The ASSU Publication

Editor, Frederick Adolphus Packard, acknowledged, “that a large revenue is derived by

161 The Morning Star (Boston: ABCFM, n.d.), 9-10. ABCFM Archives, HUL; “Children and Youth,” The Missionary Herald, February 1857, 64. 162 Livingston, Morning Stars I-VII, 84; 174; “For the Children,” Missionary Herald, January 1868, 35. 163 Hiram Bingham Jr., “To the Stockholders of the New Morning Star,” The Missionary Herald, October 1866, 305. 164 “Monthly Summary,” Missionary Herald, November 1866, 360; Hiram Bingham Jr., Story of the Morning Stars, The Children’s Missionary Vessels (Boston: ABCFM, 1897), 75. 165 “Monthly Summary,” Missionary Herald, November 1866, 360.

115 many of our religious benevolent societies” from children.166 In 1851, the ASSU made the collection of money from Sunday Schools a fundraising strategy, but the Union still hesitated to declare the funds integral to their efforts, explaining that:

[w]e need not say that no very large or permanent supplies to our funds can be expected from a source so uncertain and variable as our Sunday-schools; and, of course, such contributions can in no case or degree supersede the necessity of an appeal to the churches and to the benevolent public for their accustomed aid, and, indeed, for much than they have been accustomed to afford. 167 One particularly assertive method by which children raised money was door-to-door collecting, which mirrored the systematic work performed by female reformers visiting the urban poor to collect money for reform causes.168 Some reformers, no doubt, believed that popularized notions of childhood innocence made young people particularly proficient at soliciting money from adults, that “[c]ollectors are chosen who, with their little cards, their winning smile, and irresistible requests, obtain all of that come within their reach at least some small donation.”169 However, this money-making tactic made

Frederick Adolphus Packard uncomfortable. He worried that the children who collected door-to-door became nuisances since “[t]he pupils are accustomed to solicit aid from any source that is accessible to them, and make themselves obnoxious by their unseasonable importunity.” 170 Packard may have feared that the behavior of these children would resemble impoverished children begging or huckstering in American slums.171

Furthermore, Packard grumbled that juvenile collecting made children maliciously competitive with one another, citing an example where girls from one church collected

166 Frederick Adolphus Packard, The Teacher Teaching (Philadelphia: ASSU, 1861), 334. 167 Twenty-Seventh Annual Report of the American Sunday School Union (Philadelphia: ASSU, 1851), 43. 168 Stansell, City of Women, 4-68. 169 B.K. Peirce, “Juvenile Missions,” Zion’s Herald and Wesleyan Journal, August 21, 1844. As Gary Cross observes, children became viewed as cute and treated as objects of indulgence. See: Gary Cross, The Cute and the Cool: Wondrous Innocence and Modern American Children’s Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). 170 Packard, Teacher Teaching, 335-336. 171 For an examination of urban working class children earning money on the streets of New York, and the concern reformers showed towards them, see: Stansell, City of Women, 203-209.

116 money as a way to best their friends, rather than as an expression of self-denial or a love of God.

Outright opponents of evangelical Christianity regarded juvenile benevolence as de facto theft from young contributors by adult reformers. Liberal Christians,

Universalists in particular, targeted organized juvenile benevolence on the grounds that children did not understand how adults used their contributions. Unwitting children were being “cheated out of their gingerbread money,” opined one author, “to give to institutions of which they hardly know the name.”172 Similarly, a writer to the editor of a

Universalist periodical argued that juvenile missionary societies pried money from unwitting children “long before they are capable of writing their own names, or knowing for what they are associated.” Such societies, they complained, would train a new generation of evangelicals who would support the evangelical missionary movement through adulthood. 173 However, some liberal Christians ultimately encouraged juvenile benevolence themselves: by the late 1840s, Unitarians encouraged Sunday schools pupils to support local poor children and to supply books for prisoners.174

Roman Catholics and the Society of the Holy Childhood

Roman Catholics took longer to target children specifically as sources of charity than most Protestants, but once they began, the hierarchal structure of the Church permitted the organization to spread quickly and raise considerable money. Conceived in

172 “On the Arrogant Pretensions of the Orthodox Clergy,” Universalist Magazine, July 28, 1827, 21. 173 An Observer, “Movements of Orthodoxy,” The Christian Telescope and Universalist Magazine, August 4, 1827, 181. 174 The First Annual Report of the Executive Committee of the Children’s Mission to the Children of the Destitute (Boston: Benjamin H. Greene, 1850), 3; “How Much One Word May Do,” Christian Register, July 28, 1849, 118; T.H.D., “Middlesex Sunday School Society,” Christian Register, June 17, 1848, 98.

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1843 by the Bishop of Nancy, France, the Society of the Holy Childhood (Association de la Sainte Enfance) was made an official Canonical Institution by Pope Pius IX in 1856.

Pope Pius also asked bishops to implement the organization in their diocese. Acting as a juvenile counterpart to the global adult missionary organization, the Society for the

Propagation of Faith, Church fundraising campaigns relying on children were introduced in the United States, with support coming from New England, the Mid-Atlantic, the

South, and the West.175

Catholic infants could join immediately after their baptisms, with monthly donations, coupled with daily recitations of a variant of the Hail Mary (with the added passage: “Virgin Mary, and Saint Joseph pray for us and, and for the little infidel children”). In contrast to Protestant organizations, both requirements of membership could be fulfilled by parents or other relatives until the child was old enough to perform it him or herself.176 Members were also encouraged to “induce children, who were not members, to enrol themselves under its lovely standard.”177 Money was collected by appointed collectors who passed the money on to a director, who sent the money to the central organization. In contrast to their Protestant counterparts, Catholic children and their adult supervisors never had discretion over how their locally raised money was dispensed. The Society of the Holy Childhood boasted that the collective global donations of Catholic children supported sixty missions, of which 49 were based in

Asia.178 American and Canadian Catholic children donated the equivalent of 49,498

175 The Society of the Holy Childhood (c. 1860), 13; 18-20; J. Willms, “Holy Childhood, Association of the,” Catholic Encyclopedia: An International Work (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1913), 7:399- 400. 176 J. Willms, “Holy Childhood, Association of the,” 7:399-400; Society of the Holy Childhood, 27. 177 Society of the Holy Childhood, 35. 178 Ibid., 5.

118 francs in 1859, amounting to 3.9 percent of the over 1,200,000 francs raised (French children raised the majority of the money).179

Though similar to many Protestant organizations in their fundraising method – that is, soliciting regular small donations – their differing church structures affected their goals. The Society of the Holy Childhood stressed financially supporting the baptism of newborns over education, particularly in China, though they still advertised that they schooled ten thousand children annually.180 In contrast, Protestant organizations like the

ASSU and the ABCFM prioritized Christian education. Indeed, the ASSU avoided the topic of baptism altogether, because they represented denominations with differing views on when a baptism was appropriate. Further underscoring the Society of the Holy

Childhood’s Catholic character, churches held masses in commemoration of Society members.181Additionally, the Society of the Holy Childhood appears to have lacked the operational apparatus of local organizations common to their Protestant counterparts, including executive committees, managers, and regular meetings. This structural difference was likely symptomatic of the hierarchal organization of Catholicism.

Like Protestant juvenile missionary organizations, adult organizers hoped that instilling the habit of giving would ensure that it continued into adulthood, and promised rewards for benevolence. However, the rewards promised for benevolence and the events differed from the Protestant ones because of Catholicism’s distinct theology. Catholics promised indulgences to children as a reward.182 Catholic reward systems could also more closely resemble gambling than those encouraged by Protestant juvenile missionary

179 Ibid., 5-6. 180 Ibid., 5. 181 Ibid., 32. 182 Ibid., 31-32.

119 organizations, who viewed gambling as sinful. Organizers of the Society of the Holy

Childhood encouraged local societies to hold lotteries, with merchandise donated by children and leftover organizational paraphernalia awarded for prizes. Finally, the Society encouraged local parishes to hold raffles, with winners given the honor of naming newly baptized infants. 183

In addition to indulgences and raffles, Catholics offered rewards to young participants that resembled the premiums offered by their Protestant counterparts. The

Holy Childhood sent medals to local churches, intended for initiates as markers of their membership. Moreover, the periodical Annals of the Holy Childhood was sent to young collectors to update them on the progress of Catholic missions.184

As the embrace of juvenile benevolence by Unitarian and Roman Catholic

Churches suggests, organized children’s charity expanded from a handful of Protestant

Sunday schools in the 1810s, to a wide-ranging and large-scale movement to motivate children that included a broad spectrum of Christian denominations. The large number of children involved in juvenile benevolence is suggested by Jane Warren, who dedicated her 1860 narrative of the first Morning Star’s construction and exploits “[t]o the two hundred thousand stockholders.”185 As Warren’s dedication indicates, thousands of children were enlisted to support the Morning Star, the largest of many antebellum efforts to recruit girls and boys to support missionary campaigns. Warren’s decision to refer to them as “stockholders” indicates how juvenile benevolent work introduced children into the world of finance. Moreover, many of the ways adult reformers encouraged children’s

183 Ibid., 29. 184 Annals of the Society of the Holy Childhood for the Redemption of Pagan Children, Volume 7 (London: Thomas, Richardson and Son, 1866). 185 Warren, The Morning Star, 1.

120 participation, such as stock certificate premiums, gave legitimacy to juvenile consumerism.

121

Chapter 3 “With banner and with badge we come:” Making Antebellum Children Sober and Respectable1

Hundreds of school children gathered with their teachers, parents, and other well- wishers, in Randolph, Massachusetts, on July 4th, 1842, to celebrate both the nation’s independence, and the temperance cause. The event linked a commitment to sobriety with patriotism, and featured temperance sermons, a reading of the Declaration of

Independence, and prayer. The day’s activities concluded like many similar celebrations, at a bucolic grove (named the “Washingtonian Grove” for the event) with food that in this case, had been “abundantly supplied by the mothers, and tastefully arranged on the table by the daughters, [which] were partaken of with thankful hearts and smiling faces, by parents, and children, and friends together, after the blessing of God had been invoked.”2

This cross-generational celebration of the nation and sobriety, along with delicacies, typified an enduring effort by temperance movements to incorporate children into their campaigns, as both targets of their rhetoric and as active participants. Such activities were appropriate, since, as one temperance reformer observed, alcohol

“respects no rank, age, sex, or condition; all have felt the desolating effects of the monster of Intemperance.”3 Temperance activists’ use of awards and other material incentives to pique the interest of youngsters suggests that reformers felt comfortable feeding juvenile desire if it advanced their goal. The treats and rewards made for and distributed to children by temperance reformers taught youngsters the value of consumer

1 “Celebration at Rockport,” Youth’s Companion, July 30, 1841, 46. 2 “Randolph,” Cold Water Army [Periodical], July 14, 1842, 183. 3 “An Address,” Youth’s Temperance Advocate, October 1845, 284. Italics in original.

122 goods as both sources of pleasure and signifiers of status. In this way, temperance activists prepared children for the rapidly growing market economy, commonly linking a boy or girl’s sobriety or drunkenness with their future socio-economic success or failure in adulthood.

Historians have highlighted the important role temperance played in the nineteenth century among the northern middle class. Challenging earlier scholarship of the 1960s, more recent work has argued that the temperance movement was part of an attempt to acclimate to a capitalist economy, rather than representing traditional elites trying to reestablish control.4 Additionally, scholars have begun considering the ways in which the temperance impetus and consumer culture intersected. They have suggested that merchants used the language of temperance and that temperance activists integrated entrepreneurial tactics into their campaigns.5 However, historians have paid little attention to the ways in which temperance reformers recruited children into their cause, and how they attempted to prepare children for a place in the burgeoning market economy. This chapter argues that by dissuading youngsters from consuming alcohol and tobacco, adult temperance reformers trained children to behave in ways considered becoming of the middle class. Moreover, juvenile temperance allowed children to indulge their desires and be consumers, so long as their consumption did not include these vices.

4 This debate is summarized in: Steven Mintz, Modernists and Modernizers (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 162. The principal monograph that argues that temperance primarily sought to defend traditional power structures is: Joseph R. Gusfield, Symbolic Crusade: Status Politics and the American Temperance Movement (1963; repr., Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986). Work that challenges Gusfield includes: Ian Tyrrell, Sobering Up: From Temperance to Prohibition in Antebellum America, 1800-1860 (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1979). Tyrrell argues that antebellum temperance movements consisted of a series of distinct campaigns, which drew support from different groups, and which were driven by motives, which varied and even conflicted. 5 See, for example: John W. Frick, Theater, Culture and Temperance Reform in Nineteenth Century America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Graham Donald Warder, “Selling Sobriety: How Temperance Reshaped Culture in Antebellum America,” (PhD diss., University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 2000); Scott Gac, Singing for Freedom: The Hutchinson Family Singers and the Nineteenth-Century Culture of Reform (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007).

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The efforts to recruit children to the missionary and temperance causes shared a number of motivations. Boosters of both causes regarded juvenile participation as character-building exercises that instilled the virtue of self-denial. Temperance and missionary organizations both expected juvenile societies to produce a new generation of activists. However, juvenile temperance differed from its missionary counterpart in significant ways. In general, juvenile temperance societies did not stress benevolent money management as much as their missionary counterparts did. By the 1840s temperance reformers stressed a material culture of ephemera to children as an essential part of belonging to the cause. Juvenile missionary societies had membership cards, and, eventually, stock certificates, but they were less central than the material culture surrounding juvenile temperance. Moreover, while missionaries like John Scudder hoped that some of his readers would grow up to be missionaries in far-flung locales, temperance reformers depicted their male recruits becoming economically successful in adulthood, and married to female teetotalers, who preserved a family’s middle-class social standing by creating domestic tranquility. Together, the juvenile components of these two popular antebellum causes reveal the diverse ways children in the antebellum era were immersed in the principles of the marketplace, and were expected to participate in the economy from an early age.

The Evolution of the Temperance Movement

While temperance would become one of the most popular causes in the antebellum era, in the colonial period and the early years of the Republic virtually no one demanded a complete halt to alcohol production, distribution, or consumption. In

124 seventeenth century New England, Puritan leaders condemned drunkenness as sinful, but condoned restrained drinking. “Drink is in it self (sic) a good creature of God, to be received with thankfulness,” proclaimed Puritan theologian Increase Mather, but cautioned that “the abuse of drink is from Satan; the wine is from God, but the drunkard is from the Devil.”6 Similarly, Benjamin Rush, Pennsylvania physician and framer of the

Declaration of Independence, cautioned his readers against strong spirits, but permitted wines and beers.7 Americans at the turn of the nineteenth century drank a lot by today’s standards, consuming an average of seven gallons of pure alcohol annually.8 Moreover, the economic instability of the early nineteenth century gave many Americans a new cause for drinking, which often included spirits, instead of less potent beverages.9

Despite the popularity of drinking at the beginning of the century, the crusade against alcohol developed into antebellum America’s most popular and enduring cause.

Efforts to curb drinking proved successful at altering people’s behavior. Drinking became commonly regarded as the root of a myriad of problems, including poverty, illness, and domestic violence.10 Temperance in the nineteenth century was no monolithic organization: with each successive wave of temperance organizations, the motives, tactics and aims changed, and even at times conflicted.11 Children’s participation in temperance roughly mirrored the development of adult organizations. What had in the 1810s been an

6 Increase Mather, Wo to Drunkards (Cambridge, MA: Marmaduke Johnson, 1673), 4; W.J. Rorabaugh, The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 23. 7 Rorabaugh, Alcoholic Republic, 39-46; 107; Mark E. Lender and James K. Martin, Drinking in America: A History, Revised and Expanded Ed. (New York: Free Press, 1987), 38-40. 8 Frick, Theater, Culture and Temperance Reform in Nineteenth Century America, 21; Rorabaugh, Alcoholic Republic; Mintz, Moralists and Modernists, 72. By comparison Americans currently drink 2.8 gallons a year. 9 Rorabaugh, Alcoholic Republic, 125-146. 10 Rorabaugh, Alcoholic Republic, 189-190; 200-206; Scott C. Martin, Devil of the Domestic Sphere: Temperance, Gender, and Middle-class Ideology, 1800-1860 (DeKalb: University of Northern Illinois Press, 2008), 40-53. 11 Tyrrell, Sobering Up, 6.

125 attempt by Protestant religious elites to retain traditional controls on alcohol consumption, emphasizing restraint rather than total abstinence, had become, by the late

1820s, an uncompromising movement to eradicate alcohol from Americans’ daily life.

This temperance message, considering all drinking catastrophic, became a fixture of antebellum juvenile literature, epitomized by the reoccurring mantra “Touch not, taste not, handle not.”12

Congregationalist ministers in New England spearheaded early efforts to eliminate alcohol, but as the temperance impulse spread in the 1820s and 1830s, a broader cross-section of the middle class committed itself to the movement’s propagation. As support for temperance mushroomed, counting more than one million members by 1833, it expanded far beyond its New England roots into the rest of the nation.13 By the start of the 1840s, Protestant working-class tradesmen and their families also committed themselves to temperance under their own leadership. In the 1850s, many temperance reformers moved beyond moral suasion and tried to legally ban alcohol consumption in communities and states. Some of these efforts succeeded in prohibition legislation, but their victories were almost always short lived. Temperance organizers faced resistance from some Roman Catholics, immigrants, and non-evangelical

Protestants. Indeed, many Irish Catholics regarded saloon ownership as one of the few paths to socio-economic improvement.14 Temperance campaigns, of course, fell far short

12 “Temperance in Youth,” Youth’s Companion, April 9, 1829, 183. 13 Tyrrell, Sobering Up, 87-88; Frederick A. Frickardt, ”The Sons of Temperance” in Sons of Temperance Offering 1851 (New York: Cornish, Lamport, and Company, 1850), 268. 14 Tyrrell, Sobering Up, 147; 299-300. However, some Roman Catholics, especially among the Irish, formed temperance societies beginning in 1840. See: Bruce Dorsey, Reforming Men and Women: Gender in the Antebellum City (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), 202-203; Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 199-200.

126 of completely eliminating alcohol, but they transformed American drinking patterns, reducing annual per capita consumption from seven to three gallons by 1840.15

Temperance and Preserving Middle-Class Respectability in Children

Temperance reformers idealized middle-class social norms in the tracts, almanacs, sermons, periodicals, newspapers, poems, broadsides, plays, novels, and children’s books that carried their message.16 One of the most commonly used themes in temperance rhetoric depicted a dystopian inversion of middle-class values precipitated by drunkenness, with wives and children represented as the victims of abuse and poverty.

Insobriety, temperance reformers insisted, threatened appropriate gender roles, affectionate family relations, and domestic tranquility that they championed as an ideal that all families should emulate. At the same time, this trope gave middle-class women a platform on which to challenge their precarious legal status, while upholding that women were naturally suited for domestic duties.17

Juvenile literature depicting children endangered by enraged, drunken, and abusive parents, often leading to the son or daughter’s untimely death, became a staple of instructional antebellum temperance literature. The ubiquity of alcohol in children’s lives and their vulnerable position in the antebellum household, coupled with the growing perception of girls and boys as innocent and angelic, inspired adult reformers to portray youngsters as both helpless targets of drunken fathers and (less commonly) mothers, and

15 Mintz, Moralists and Modernizers, 74. 16 Scott C. Martin, Devil of the Domestic Sphere, 7; Paul E. Johnson, A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York: 1815-1837 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978), 57-58. 17 Martin, Devil of the Domestic Sphere, 47; Mintz, Moralists and Modernizers, 74; Barbara Leslie Epstein, The Politics of Domesticity: Women, Evangelism and Temperance in Nineteenth-Century America (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1981), 102-107; Carol Mattingly, Well-Tempered Women: Nineteenth Century Temperance Rhetoric (Carbondale: University of Southern Illinois Press, 1998), 14-15.

127 as potential inebriates themselves, duped into a life of insobriety by duplicitous liquor dealers. Temperance literature commonly depicted alcohol transforming an otherwise responsible and kindly father into a violent drunkard who abuses his children and wife. In so doing, the husband threatened the domestic tranquility preserved by his wife.

Moreover, as one literary critic suggests, temperance reformers insinuated that drunkenness precipitated incestuous relationships between fathers and daughters.18

Children made effective vulnerable targets in antebellum literature, because, she contends, “it is the very powerlessness that makes children, not wives, the ideal agents of home protection.”19 While less frequently represented in juvenile temperance literature, reformers also depicted drunken mothers as a threat to the safety and innocence of their children. In some respects, however, the drunken mother posed a greater threat. Some reformers argued that drinking while nursing harmed infants. Moreover, intemperate mothers were commonly understood to be an even greater abomination to domestic tranquility than a drunken father, because women were the primary caregivers, and understood to be the defenders of the home.20

Children were not just threatened by drunken fathers: temperance reformers also viewed boys and girls as vulnerable to imbibing alcohol, and consequently made the appeal to, and conversion of, children a component of their efforts.21 Commonly

18 Karen Sánchez-Eppler, Dependent States: The Child’s Part in Nineteenth-Century American Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 69-100. 19 Sánchez-Eppler, Dependent States, 95. While adult women generally faced uneven power relations with men, they retained considerable influence over the home, even if this power was not defined legally. 20 Martin, Devil of the Domestic Sphere, 24-25. 21 Literary critics have paid more attention to the relationship between temperance and children than historians. See: Anne Scott Macleod, A Moral Tale: Children’s Fiction and American Culture, 1820-1860 (Hamden, CT: Archon, 1975), 108-111; Sánchez-Eppler, Dependent States, 69-100. The only references by historians to juvenile temperance have been cursory. See: David I. MacLeod, Building Character in the American Boy: The Boy Scouts, YMCA, and their Forerunners, 1870-1920 (Madison: University of

128 envisioning cities as loci of vice, reformers believed that children in urban environments in particular were prone to intemperance.22 Although some reformers’ fears of juvenile intemperance were clouded by class prejudice, activists were wise to target children as potential drinkers. During the early nineteenth century, children encountered alcohol, both with and without their parents’ approval. Many parents before the Revolution and in the Early Republic intended to train responsible drinkers rather than teetotalers. To that end, fathers regularly gave their sons the sweet sediment that settled to the bottom of their glass of spirits, insisting that it would prepare them to drink in moderation as adults.23

Additionally, it was common practice at the turn of the nineteenth century for mothers to calm agitated infants with alcohol or laudanum: a mixture of alcohol and opium.24 An elderly woman, critiquing the excesses of the temperance impulse, grumbled that when she had raised young children, she “never thought… I could do without a decanter of gin.

There’s nothing like it for the colic.”25 Her comment characterized the sentiments of many parents at the turn of the nineteenth century who felt comfortable introducing alcohol to youngsters, and even regarded it as salubrious.

Older children covertly sampled alcohol as well.26 Adolescent boys patronized saloons in the early republic. Children at play, imitating their father’s militia services, sometimes also included the drinking that went along with men’s military activities.27

Temperance activists warned that children, especially boys, might take up drinking if not

Wisconsin Press, 1983), 83-84; Mary P. Ryan, Cradle of the Middle-Class: The Family in Oneida County, 1790-1865 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 133. 22 “Juvenile Temperance Societies,” New York Evangelist, July 23, 1831, 276. 23Rorabaugh, Alcoholic Republic, 14; Karin Calvert, Children in the House: The Material World of Early Childhood, 1600-1900 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992), 123-146. 24Rorabaugh, Alcoholic Republic, 177; Calvert, Children in the House, 76-77; 123. 25 Calvert, Children in the House, 76. 26 Howard Chudacoff, Children at Play: An American History (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 63. 27 Rorabaugh, Alcoholic Republic, 14.

129 monitored. An article in a juvenile periodical warned that “very many of our readers, particularly young men and lads, may be occasionally presented with inducements for drinking, when they are abroad and associated with others who are perhaps less established and guarded in moral habits than themselves.”28

To temperance reformers, boys’ and girls’ sobriety was not only imperiled by their own curiosity, peers, or by ill-advised parents; children also faced a threat from malicious and profit-driven shopkeepers, who would dupe children into a life of drinking.

Boys in particular were depicted as the gullible prey of duplicitous shopkeepers.29

Children sometimes descended into drunkenness and poverty on account of making poor spending decisions. One temperance story appearing in a juvenile periodical tells of a boy named Henry who could not resist spending all of his pennies on “sugar-plums, and candy, and raisins, and figs, and a great many other things that children love.” The candy seller captures the children’s attention by making the candy especially tasty and attractive. The merchant proves so effective at luring youngsters, that Henry confuses his salesmanship for friendship. This confectioner is also a liquor merchant, and begins selling the boy cordials, which he soon prefers to candy. Eventually, rum is sneaked into the less potent cordials, pushing Henry unwittingly farther down the path to drunkenness.

The story predictably concludes with a warning to young readers that on account of his early insobriety, Henry became an impious, disobedient inebriate, who “is a companion for wicked young men and women, and spends all the money he can get in folly and vice.”30 Another juvenile temperance periodical fueled similar fears decades later when it

28 “Entire Abstinence,” Youth’s Companion, April 9, 1829, 184. 29 Steven Mintz, Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 83-84. 30 “The Confectioner: A Tale for Children,” Youth’s Companion, November 9, 1827, 96.

130 reported that some confectioners in New York had been caught selling sugar plums injected with brandy to children, warning that “[i]t is an infamous traffic, thus to make drunkards of our boys and girls. Let parents and children all beware of them.” 31 From the perspective of temperance reformers, children were vulnerable to the perils of alcohol from diverse people in their lives – namely, parents, peers, and shopkeepers – making them targets of the temperance movement. While children, no doubt, drank in the early nineteenth century, the extent to which the juveniles imbibed, and the degree to which stories of juvenile drunkenness were the products of reformers’ imaginations, is difficult to determine.

If parents expected their children to be teetotalers, charged reformers, they must be temperance women and men themselves. “Let him [your child] see an example of total abstinence from inebriating beverages of every sort,” insisted Heman Humphrey.

“Let them [alcoholic drinks] never appear upon your dinner table, nor be handed around among your friends, and it will be strange, indeed, if he does not grow up a hale and perfectly healthy young man.”32

Parents could not save a son or daughter from insobriety alone: children also needed to take action to remain free from alcohol. Frightened that the next generation teetered on the cusp of intemperance, reformers addressed children in novels, periodicals, tracts, sermons, and Sunday school lessons. As early as the 1820s, some temperance reformers highlighted children as suitable targets for their moral suasion, trying to

31 “Brandy Drops,” Youth’s Temperance Advocate, February 1, 1855, 8. 32 Heman Humphrey, Domestic Education (Amherst, MA: J.S. & C. Adam, 1840), 193; Anne L. Kuhn, The Mother’s Role in Childhood Education: New England Concepts, 1830-1860 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1947), 54.

131 persuade them in juvenile periodicals and books to regulate their behavior.33 Temperance messages in juvenile literature became so commonplace in the nineteenth century that one literary critic commented that “[t]o inveigh against the danger of drink and to warn children of the fate of the drunkard was nearly as standard in the literature as to admonish them against the perils of disobedience.”34

In addition to disrupting family stability and spurring domestic violence, nineteenth century juvenile literature also portrayed alcohol as a temptation that wasted fortunes and wrecked an individual’s earning potential, adversely affecting their class status. Fathers squandered their family’s money at the saloon. “Every groat that clinks in the till of the dram-seller is, as it were, a bell announcing the starvation of a child, and the eternal ruin of its parent” declared one Sunday school author.35 Selling alcohol produced more drunkards and manufactured nothing of value, in contrast to the output of a laborer, farmer, or tradesman. In spite of their destructiveness, liquor sellers profited from their trade, and lived comfortably at the expense of others.36 The children’s book The Little

Captain underscored these principles, condemning both alcohol’s production and consumption. James, the father of the fictional family, takes up drinking and invests in a distillery, dismissing his family’s objections. James’s insobriety destroys his family’s respectable middle-class standing, compelling its members to sell most of their valuables and move into a slum when his half-hearted attempts at sobriety (refusing to completely abstain or sign a pledge) lead quickly to backsliding. His downward spiral into poverty

33 “Entire Abstinence,” Youth’s Companion, April 9, 1829, 184. 34 MacLeod, A Moral Tale, 111; John C. Crandall, “Patriotism and Humanitarianism Reform in Children’s Literature, 1825-1860,” American Quarterly 21, no. 1 (1969): 8-10. 35 The Sunday-School Pocket Almanac for the Year of Our Lord 1852 (Philadelphia: ASSU, c. 1852), 21. A groat is an English coin worth four pence. 36 Charles Jewett, The Youth’s Temperance Lecturer (Boston: Whipple and Damrell, 1841), 14-15.

132 leads to the death of his baby, Paul.37 Only after James murders his older son in a rage does he begin his path to redemption. This includes economic recovery, by regaining his original career and returning his family to respectable middle-class standing.38

Youngsters, reformers insisted, could use their money – however paltry a sum – more productively than by buying tobacco and alcohol. Many adults assumed that children were naturally gluttonous; intemperance exacerbated this trait and ensured that a child would continue to be wasteful in adulthood:

A young man who learns to drink, soon becomes a spendthrift. He early begins to waste his money on that which does him no good; and as it goes for drink, so it soon goes for cigars, candies, shows, horse-riding, theatres, &c., and before he is twenty he expended enough to give him a good start in the world.

Moreover, a youth who was not wasteful with his money absorbed broader economic principles:

He soon learns a very important lesson, that if money is not expended, it is in his pocket; and if he does not want to keep it there, if his pocket is too heavy, he can lay it up in a Savings banks. He soon finds he has an interest there; something laid up for a wet day; he looks over his bank-book and begins to feel happy in his amount.

If a child or adolescent learned and reproduced these spending habits, insisted the author

“[h]e will surely go on and become a rich man.”39 Though both boys and girls were promised prosperity, the measure of success was gender-specific. For boys, financial success involved successful entrepreneurship, coupled with wise spending habits, while for girls, the prosperity of temperance meant marriage to teetotalling men, to be followed by domestic tranquility.40 Temperate spending habits learned early did not just benefit the individual and his or her family, but also contributed to the nation’s prosperity. One reformer explained that “the temperance cause will thus contribute to the wealth of our

37 Lynde Palmer, The Little Captain: A Temperance Tale (Boston: American Tract Society, 1861), 87. 38 Ibid., 103-131. 39 “The Saving Habit,” Youth’s Temperance Advocate, September 1856, 34. 40 Thomas P. Hunt, The Cold Water Army, 2nd ed. (Boston: Whipple and Damrell, 1840), 30-31.

133 country beyond all human estimate. Let it then be valued as a great patriotic institution.”41

To underscore the sinfulness of alcohol in juvenile literature, children who drank were depicted handling money dishonestly. In one short story, a boy named James earns three cents for rum by covertly selling “the book the Sabbath school teacher gave me.”42

Similarly, in a sermon delivered by temperance orator John B. Gough, unreformed children of drunkard parents gamble their pennies in the streets.43 Offering earning and spending alternatives to these vices, Nathan’s First Dollar and What He Did with It details how young Nathan uses a dollar earned through honest labor. He does not squander his dollar “to see shows, nor for rum, nor brandy, nor cigars, nor tobacco.”

Instead, Nathan purchases a sheep with his dollar, which he contracts out to a farmer for four years, after which time he will receive two sheep. Nathan continues this cycle until he has made a lot of money, which he invests in New York City real estate with great success. Ultimately, Nathan donates the twelve thousand dollars his investment yields “to one of our best colleges, to erect buildings and found a professorship of Christian theology.”44 When Nathan earns money that goes to noble purposes it is through transactions depicted virtuously and, just as importantly, saves it by not indulging in vices.

Preserving Sobriety with Pledges and Societies

Once a child had been convinced of alcohol’s evils, it was imperative that he or she never backslide into drunkenness. As with adults, temperance pledges were a key

41 “The Saving Habit,” Youth’s Temperance Advocate, September 1856, 34. 42 N. Boynton, The Dialogue (Boston: H. Bowen’s Chemical Print, c. 1830), 1. 43 John B. Gough, Orations Delivered on Various Occasions (London: William Tweedie, 1855), 199. 44 Uncle Madison, Nathan’s First Dollar and what he Bought with it (Boston: James M. Usher, 1862), 5-7.

134 tool by which children were enrolled into and kept in the movement. Here too, temperance reformers inadvertently immersed children in an important component of a market economy. They believed that if children or adults signed temperance pledges, they would be more likely to live lives of sobriety and affirm their Christian character.45 A written pledge became the key initiation rite for associations tailored for children. Taking a temperance pledge was no trifle, for “[s]igning one’s name to a pledge is rather a serious matter: it is a covenant with all other members to live up to the pledge.”46 The pledge of a juvenile temperance society in Worcester neatly encapsulates the content of these oaths: “I do solemnly promise to abstain from all Intoxicating Liquors of every name or kind, and not to furnish them to others, as a beverage; from the use of Tobacco, and from all profanity.”47 Presented to children at home by family members, at Sunday schools, as well as at temperance events, children’s pledges were intended to compel boys and girls to permanently self-regulate their behavior, while simultaneously immersing them in the principles of a written contract.

Temperance reformers inadvertently broached a question that seemed settled in the mid-nineteenth century, as to whether a boy or girl could enter contracts.48 Deflecting charges that children could not understand the pledge, temperance reformers conceded that children needed their parent’s permission before they signed a pledge, joined a society, or attended an event. This requirement undermined any criticism that youngsters

45 Nancy A. Hewitt, Women’s Activism and Social Change: Rochester, New York, 1822-1872 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), 99. 46 “Pledges” in The Temperance Almanac of the Massachusetts Temperance Union (Boston: Whipple and Damrell, 1841), 28; Holly Brewer, By Birth or Consent: Children, Law, and the Anglo-American Revolution in Authority (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 264-287. By the mid- eighteenth century, children were deemed incapable of agreeing to a contract, except for “necessities,” which became more narrowly defined over the course of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. 47 Order of Exercises at the Regular Monthly Meeting of the Old South Band of Hope, Worcester, March 29th, 1858 (Worcester, MA: Henry J. Howland, 1858), 1. 48 Brewer, By Birth or Consent, 264-287.

135 unwittingly made oaths they could not grasp. For who was better qualified than a mother or father to judge whether their son or daughter was capable of understanding the pledge?

Moreover, leaving the final decision over whether a child could sign upheld a commitment to family order that temperance reformers valued.

Still, reformers expected children to grasp the pledge’s meaning. “Children Do

Know What the Pledge is,” insisted one article in its title, reprinting an anecdote from an

American Sunday School Union report of a sick six year old pledge-taker who refused medicine if it contained alcohol.49 Indeed, as one reformer explained: “[a]s soon as children are old enough to be impressed with a sense of the enormous evils of

Intemperance, and to realize the fact that it is wrong to break a promise, they are old enough to be secured against those evils by pledging themselves to abstain from the use of those articles which are the cause of all such evils.”50 Most children understood intemperance based on their life experiences, argued another activist, for “[t]hey have seen too many drunkards staggering in the streets, they see too many dram shops where whiskey is sold to make men drunk, not to know.”51

Requiring parental consent for a child to sign a pledge, or otherwise participate in temperance activities, posed a problem for temperance reformers. How could a child’s temperance work win over his or her parents, one of the reformers’ principal intents, if those same mothers and fathers had to sign off on their children participating? In one case, reformers skated around this dilemma in temperance fiction by making a child’s request to join the temperance cause as sufficient to melt a parent’s heart. A ten-year-old boy asks his mother if he may join the local temperance society, to which she replies that

49 “Children do Know what The Pledge is,” Youth’s Companion, August 6, 1841, 52. 50 H.W.L., “Juvenile Temperance,” Youth’s Companion, March 10, 1837, 169. 51 “Keeping the Pledge,” Youth’s Temperance Advocate, March 1848, 10.

136 he is too young. The boy retorts that the evils of alcohol were revealed to him when

“some boys were skating on the river on Christmas day, and they had some beer there, and some of them drank too much and could not stand.” The mother is moved by her son’s observation, and his noble intention, deciding that he is in fact “not too young,” and may join immediately.52 Temperance reformers also countered objections to juvenile pledges by opining that the destruction of family stability at the hands of intemperance dwarfed any disruption caused when a child joined a society against his or her parents’ wishes.53 In most cases, though, reformers seem to have only enlisted children with the consent of their parents.54 In at least one instance, the parental-consent requirement was used to exaggerate support amongst boys and girls. A juvenile “total abstinence” temperance society founded in Cincinnati in the late 1830s drew members from Sunday schools in the city. The superintendant of one of these Sunday schools boasted that his school had recruited 94 members for the juvenile temperance society, but added that

“many more stand ready to join so soon as they obtain their parent’s consent.”55

Though temperance pledges remained the central means by which reformers envisioned themselves saving children from alcohol, some adult reformers expressed concern that an oath taken by a boy or girl could easily be broken, necessitating the formation of juvenile organizations. Regularly scheduled temperance activities, reformers argued, piqued the interest of boys and girls, helping to ensure a sustained commitment to sobriety on the part of children. Additionally, mingling with fellow young pledge-takers,

52 “Juvenile Advocates of Temperance,” Youth’s Temperance Advocate, August 1847, 370. 53 “Am I to Blame Mother?” New York Evangelist, May 1, 1830, 20. 54 Thomas P. Hunt, Life and Thought of Rev. Thomas P. Hunt: An Autobiography (Wilkes-Barre, PA: Robert. Baur & Son, 1901), 262. 55 “Sunday School Temperance Society,” Youth’s Companion, August 3, 1838, 48.

137 instead of being corrupting influences, would reinforce the meaning of the pledge.56 Such societies could also be mechanisms of surveillance and enforcement. One temperance reformer observed that “by some it is made a great objection to children’s signing the pledge, that no one looks after them and knows whether they keep it or break it.” Though the author claimed that he or she believed most children kept their promises, the prevalence of this concern “shows the importance of having a good society, which shall report all the members who violate the pledge.”57

Temperance reformers hoped1 these societies would thrive wherever children gathered. Reverend Dowling, an English Baptist minister visiting the United States, typified the grand ambitions reformers held for these societies when he told the children of the Buchard Sabbath School Total Abstinence Society in New York that “[t]here should be a society formed in every Sunday school and every public school; and all the children in the country should be marshaled to walk in processions, with banners and badges.”58 Juvenile temperance societies’ popularity followed closely on the heels of mushrooming adult organizations. Societies intended for young members appeared as early as 1829, if not earlier, popping up throughout the country over the course of the

1830s.59 While the first societies were organized inconsistently, Sunday schools became important loci of organizing by the mid 1830s.60 The number of societies, however, remained sporadic and without consistent strategies of organization until the early 1840s.

56 “Importance of Combination,” Youth’s Temperance Advocate, May 1847, 358. 57 “Signing the Pledge,” Youth’s Temperance Advocate, February 1844, 206. 58 “Address of Rev. Mr. Dowling,” Youth’s Temperance Advocate, October 1844, 233. 59 In 1830, there are references to juvenile temperance societies in Spotsylvania, Virginia (founded in 1829 with 48 members) and in Westport, New York (founded in 1829 or 1830). See: “The Third Annual Report of the Virginia Society for the Promotion of Temperance,” Columbian Star and Christian Index, May 8, 1830, 297; “Revivals,” Boston Recorder and Religious Telegraph, June 30, 1830, 102. 60 “Temperance Societies in Sunday Schools,” Christian Advocate and Journal, February 27, 1835, 106.

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Membership in temperance societies was contingent on upholding the pledge.61

Breaking the pledge carried consequences, and any child caught repeatedly violating his or her oath could be expelled. Liberty M. Maple was expelled from her juvenile temperance society for “swearing and cider,” her name scratched from the list of members.62 Though boys or girls could covertly imbibe without much likelihood of being caught, they ran a risk of humiliation, and expulsion.63 Tellingly, Liberty M. Maple was the only name scratched out, with her offenses jotted down in a lengthy list of members.

This seems to suggest that reformers hoped that the threat of consequences alone would shape a child’s behavior, without the need to actually punish.64 Additionally reformers reminded youngsters to regulate their behavior in the sight of their peers, because when they signed a temperance pledge they became models of sobriety to intemperate boys and girls, who judged the value of the juvenile societies based on its members’ conduct.65

Temperance juvenile societies’ penalties could also be financial, which reinforced economic principles. When some societies began requiring dues for membership in the mid-1840s, they also introduced fines for disobedient members. An archetypical 1850s juvenile temperance society constitution spelled out that members could buy their way back into good standing for the first two infractions (one cent for the first violation and three cents for subsequent breaches), but only if they first admitted their guilt to the adult superintendent. For the third offence and beyond, however, the

61 Ibid. 62 “New Catalog of Members: Nov. 1860,” Old South Band of Hope Records, First Church (Worcester, MA), Records, 1724-1920. AAS 63 Owing to the greater freedom boys enjoyed outside of the home, one would assume they would have more opportunities to covertly drink. See: Calvert, Children in the House, 112-113; Chudacoff, Children at Play, 43; Mintz, Huck’s Raft, 83-84. 64 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, 2nd ed. (New York: Vintage, 1995). 65 William Adams Jr., “A Word to the Children,” Youth’s Temperance Advocate, September 1860, 36.

139 adult superintendant could opt to expel a member.66 By linking financial penalties to insobriety, temperance organizers underscored to children that sobriety brought financial success.

Juvenile temperance societies were not solely mechanisms of surveillance, but also acted as important means by which children could participate in the temperance movement. Mary P. Livermore understood that “[t]o maintain an interest among the little people, frequent meetings were necessary, which must be made attractive with music and recitation and brief stirring speeches.”67 While both girls and boys were welcomed into many juvenile temperance organizations, they sat apart at meetings.68 At one society, girls and boys both delivered “compositions,” “songs,” and “dialogues” at meetings, giving girls the opportunity to present publically. However, only boys gave “sermons” and “declamations,” presentations that one would assume more closely resembled a minister’s sermons.69 The initiation ceremony for new members became a centerpiece of the society’s activities, which would remind current members in attendance of the meaning of the pledge they had already signed. Temperance reformers intended for society activities to be entertaining as well as instructive for youngsters, with one particularly optimistic reformer claiming that “recitations and dialogues” were more enjoyable than “old sleighing and drinking parties.”70

66 Band of Hope Ritual, (Rockland, ME: Z. Pope Vose, 1860), 8-9. 67 Mary A. Livermore, The Story of My Life; or, The Sunshine and Shadow of Seventy Years (Hartford, CT: A.D. Worthington and Company, 1897), 377. 68 Band of Hope Ritual, 6. This is consistent with antebellum children’s play which, aside from between siblings, was normally sex-segregated. 69 Minutes of the Old South Band of Hope, November 9, 1857. Old South Band of Hope Records, First Church (Worcester, MA), Records, 1724-1920. AAS. 70 No Title, Youth’s Temperance Advocate, March 1858, 9.

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Family Temperance Societies

In the early 1830s, adult temperance reformers also encouraged children to join family societies, made up of the members of a single home, and built around the household display of the organization’s constitution. Reformers stressed the value of placing the constitution where it would be regularly seen, which would constantly remind members of their pledge, even when parents were not present. Recommending that a family society’s constitution be “cased in a neat frame, and conspicuously suspended,” one reformer further suggested that the document be regularly shown to children “as the act of their parents,” and “enjoin it on them as they revere our memories, sacredly to regard our sentiments.”71 The New York State Temperance Society considered family societies effective at enforcing abstinence, printing approximately one hundred thousand family society constitutions, which they instructed be pasted into family Bibles.72 The visible presence and discussion of an attractively framed family society’s constitution was meant to pass temperance principles to the next generation. Middle-class Americans commonly decorated their homes to express their family’s religious and benevolent convictions and their socio-economic status.73 Similarly, a constitution on a parlor wall or pasted in a family Bible affirmed a family’s socio-economic class by making a temperance pledge a conspicuous feature of the middle-class home. Indeed, one

71 “Family Temperance Society,” New York Evangelist, June 11, 1831, 252; “Family Pledges” in The Temperance Speaker, ed. John Marsh (New York: National Temperance Society, 1860), 9-10. 72 “New York State Temperance Society,” Religious Intelligencer, June 2, 1832, 14; For an examination of the public use of family Bibles in homes, see Colleen McDannell, Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 67-102. 73 Colleen McDannell, The Christian Home in Victorian America, 1840-1900 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 39; Richard L. Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York: Vintage, 2002), 251-252; Andrea M. Atkin, “‘When Pincushions Are Periodicals’: Women’s Work, Race, and Material Objects in Female Abolitionism” in American Transcendental Quarterly 11, no. 2 (1997): 93-113. Atkin argues that objects in the home, such as pincushions and pot holders emblazoned with abolitionist imagery and slogans, could act as powerful reminders and enforcers of reform convictions.

141 temperance reformer suggested that a prominently displayed family temperance pledge

“would make a much more respectable appearance on the walls of a house, than many more expensive ornaments.”74 Reformers hoped the merchandise produced in support of juvenile temperance would help ensure that the rising generation would remain committed to the cause by reminding youngsters of their promise.

Militarized Juvenile Temperance:

Cold Water Armies and the Cadets of Temperance

Juvenile temperance organizing in antebellum America underwent visible shifts in structures and strategy, which partially paralleled the trajectory of adult temperance. The year 1840 witnessed significant changes in adult temperance societies, expanding to include men, women, and children from working-class backgrounds. In April of 1840, six working-class Baltimoreans turned their backs on saloons, pledged themselves to sobriety, and organized the Washingtonians, equating George Washington’s victory over

British tyranny with their liberation from the bonds of intemperance. Within a few years, their action mushroomed into a national movement.75 By June of 1842, the Massachusetts

Washingtonians counted 40,000 members.76 While they shared earlier temperance societies’ commitment to teetotalism, this working-class attempt at temperance advocacy did not privilege religious and economic elites. Washingtonians also extended a helping hand to the drunkard, regularly featuring orators who highlighted their redemption from

74 “Family Temperance Pledge,” Christian Secretary, April 14, 1843, 3. Italics in original. 75 The Washingtonians are understudied by academics. The most detailed examination of the Washingtonians remains: Ian R. Tyrrell, Sobering Up, 159-180. 76 Robert L. Hampel, Temperance and Prohibition in Massachusetts, 1813-1852 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1982), 104.

142 drunkenness.77 In contrast, earlier temperance organizations had focused on keeping sober men, women, and children from alcohol, while giving little thought to those already off the wagon.78 Washingtonians also opened opportunities for female participation in auxiliary Martha Washington societies, which enjoyed substantial popularity. Moreover, the Washingtonian emphasis on moral suasion over more coercive or political tactics affirmed the importance of women’s work in reform organizations.79 Washingtonians appealed to working-class artisans by making songs, parades, and picnics principal features of their organizations.

Shortly before the Washingtonians, a juvenile temperance organization called the

Cold Water Army was organized in Boston by Reverend Thomas Hunt, establishing a model that would be replicated throughout the nation. 80 Their frequent interaction with the Washingtonians suggests that many of the children involved were working class.

Indeed, like the Washingtonians, Cold Water Armies integrated elements of working- class culture into their events, holding parades, public concerts, and picnics, while donning military-themed regalia. Reformers regarded the ephemera, including “roll- books, badges, banners,” and printed songs, as essential parts of effective organizing.81

Considering their common use of moral suasion, public events, and regalia as principal tactics, Cold Water Army and Washingtonian events would naturally fit together. Despite the working-class elements of Cold Water Armies, their promotion of sobriety and promises of socioeconomic mobility instilled a middle-class ethos in its members.

77 Martin, Devil of the Domestic Sphere, 139. 78 Hampel, Temperance and Prohibition in Massachusetts, 119. 79 Tyrrell, Sobering Up, 179-182. 80 One Hundred Years of Temperance: A Memorial Volume of the Centennial Temperance Conference Held in Philadelphia, PA., Sept. 5, 1885. (New York: National Temperance Society and Publication House, 1886), 262. 81 N. Crosby, No Title, Pittsfield Sun, August 5, 1841, 2.

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Local Cold Water Armies were bound to one another through a common print culture of books and periodicals, along with touring temperance lecturers.82 Hunt made a booklet he had published for young recruits a key part of these organizations, illustrating the primary activities of the organizations and their benefits, which included future financial stability for members.83 Other publications updated children with news from juvenile and adult temperance activities across the nation (and in some cases foreign lands), and offered suggestions for young readers on how to organize.

The organizations’ militaristic theme, with the associated paraphernalia, was intended to pique the interest of youngsters, since, as one supporter observed, “[c]hildren love martial movements. They are animated by the parade the music, the banners, and the march.”84 In addition to fueling juvenile exuberance, these public marches, with banners and badges, were intended to set “an example to their elders,” embarrassing them to leave saloons and embrace temperance.85 Along with driving away the liquor merchant’s business through public shaming, children in the Cold Water Army were asked to stop doing business with anyone who sold alcohol.86 Temperance reformers believed that children pleading for sobriety would be especially convincing, on account of their perceived innocence: one activist reported that when non-committed adults witnessed a

Cold Water Army exhibition, “their hearts softened, and their tears could not be

82 “Only a Dollar,” Cold Water Army, December 16, 1841, 64; Charles J. Warren, The Cold Water Army: Remarks upon the Advantages, Necessity, Organization, Future Efforts; Means of Sustaining the Interest, Diploma, and Roll Book, of the Temperance Enterprise Among Children and Youth (New Haven, CT: Hitchcock and Stafford, 1842), 10-11; One Hundred Years of Temperance, 262.The notion of publications acting as a uniting force is derived from: Benedict R. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and the Spread of Nationalism, Revised Ed. (London: Verso, 1991). 83 Thomas P. Hunt, Life and Thoughts of Rev. Thomas P. Hunt (Wilkes-Barre, PA: Robert Baur & Son, 1901), 262. Ronald G. Walters argues that the Cold Water Army was founded in 1836, but I find no evidence of the Cold Water Army before 1839. See: Ronald G. Walters, American Reformers: 1815-1860 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978), 131. 84 “Fourth of July,” The Constitution (Middletown, CT), July 13, 1842, 3. 85 “Anniversary of Washington’s Birthday,” The Sun (Baltimore), February 26, 1842, 2. 86 Thomas P. Hunt, The Cold Water Army, 23-24.

144 restrained.”87 John B. Gough, a reformed drunkard and among the most prominent temperance orators, claimed that he converted shortly after he witnessed a Cold Water

Army marching down the street. Gough recalled in his memoirs that “tears silently flowed down my cheeks. With a start and a heavy sigh, I turned away, - oh! So utterly miserable, shut out by my own act from all participation in such pure delights.”88 For

Gough, the sight of children marching invoked a desire to return to the “wondrous innocence” he perceived in the marching temperance youngsters.89 The emotional spectacle of children publically condemning alcohol was also demonstrated when Sunday school children remained stationary and sang at a temperance parade held in Cincinnati in

1842. The Washingtonians parading by the juvenile choir “uncovered their heads, and with deep emotion passed the line, which to them, and to the multitude, was a scene, evidently, of most touching interest.”90

Consistent with their militaristic appearance, descriptions regularly cast the Cold

Water Army as an outfit of soldiers under the supreme command of God, their general, waging a just war against the tyrannical King Alcohol, which would ultimately conclude with the latter’s complete obliteration. This rhetoric added to the perceived value of Cold

Water Army merchandise. One juvenile temperance periodical extolled the children’s mission, explaining:

Few victories in the history of man are to be compared, for brilliancy and importance to those achieved by the Cold Water Army. They have broken the snares of the most insidious adversary; they have trampled under foot the devouring monster; they have cut off the head of this swaggering boasting Goliath; they have marched off the field of battle with trumpets blowing and banners flying. Let every enlisted soldier continue to do his duty, and in a few years there will be a complete rout of the enemy. All the old tipplers,

87 Charles Bowers, “Exhibition at Concord,” Cold Water Army, March 2, 1843, 106. 88 John B. Gough, Autobiography and Personal Recollections of John B. Gough, with Twenty-Six Years’ Experiences as a Public Speaker (Springfield, MA: Bill, Nichols and Co, 1869), 119. 89 Cross, Cute and the Cool, 27. 90 Iota, “Correspondence, Commercial Advertiser,” New York Spectator, April 16, 1842, 4.

145

drunkards, and moderate drinkers, if they are not converted, will have passed away, and the new generation, coming up on pure cold water principles, will take complete possession of the land. Go on, boys. Go on. Increase your forces. Fear nothing. You are sure of victory.91 Such violent imagery and literary flourish was no doubt intended to enthrall youngsters and draw them into the temperance movement.

Temperance reformers commonly associated this war-like campaign against the consumption of alcohol with the American Revolutionary War.92 The Cold Water Army’s founder, Thomas Hunt, told children that Founding Fathers (along with Andrew Jackson) endorsed the Cold Water Army, including Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Rush, and John

Adams.93 In contrast, Hunt noted in the same pamphlet that the treacherous Benedict

Arnold “was a rumseller and a drunkard”94 The Fourth of July was the high point of the boy or girl’s temperance calendar, affirming the juxtaposition between their struggle and the American Revolutionary War.95 Their ‘dry’ celebrations were not, of course, universal, for many Americans in the Early Republic regarded the day as valid reason to step up their drinking.96 Reformers believed that featuring children at temperance festivals assisted their reclamation of the Fourth of July as an annual reaffirmation of one’s independence from the British and from alcohol. As one reformer put it, “[t]he

Sabbath School celebrations are admirably adapted to turn what has heretofore been made an opportunity for unlicensed indulgence, into a season for rational rejoicing and

91 “Triumphs of the Cold Water Army,” Youth’s Temperance Advocate, May 1844, 216. 92 For an investigation of how the memory of the American Revolutionary War is reshaped by competing interests, see: Alfred P. Young, The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution (Boston: Beacon, 1999), 85-194. Historians have observed that the memory of the American Revolution entered the rhetoric of temperance reformers. See, Rorabaugh, Alcoholic Republic, 194-195. 93 Hunt, Cold Water Army, 15. 94 Ibid., 35 95 Tyrrell, Sobering Up, 178. 96 Matthew Dennis, Red, White, and Blue Letter Days: An American Calendar (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), 36; Len Travers, Celebrating the Fourth: Independence Day and the Rites of Nationalism in the Early Republic (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997), 131; Rorabaugh, Alcoholic Republic, 45.

146 glorious triumph over such indulgence, and the enjoyment of true freedom of mind and body.”97

Temperance themed merchandise played an important part in Cold Water Army activities. Adult temperance organizations, including the Massachusetts Temperance

Union (MTU) through the sympathetic publisher Whipple and Damrell, produced cloth badges to distribute to Cold Water Army members, featuring the organization’s name and an illustration of a Cold Water Army rally.98 The MTU also produced roll books, temperance songsters, certificates of membership and army banners.99 Diplomas of membership for Connecticut Cold Water Armies were designed to be attractive “with a beautiful wood engraving, designed and prepared” especially for the organization.100

During the early 1840s, the heyday of Cold Water Armies, these items sold remarkably well. In 1842, the MTU reported that in one year it had sold thirty thousand badges and one thousand banners for Cold Water Army events.101

Medals and badges publically declared children’s membership in the organization and reminded them of the commitments that came with their attire. Furthermore, the uniformity of the children’s medals and badges erased outward appearances of class and created a new arena of consumer desire endorsed by temperance societies.102 Some temperance merchandise was bought by Sunday schools and organizations and distributed to the children’s armies. Fancier items were made available for parents to buy

97 “Fourth of July,” Farmer’s Cabinet, July 1, 1842, 3. 98 “Cold Water Army,” Christian Reflector, June 9, 1841, 90; Editor, “Cold Water Army,” Youth’s Companion, July 30, 1841, 46. 99 “Soldiers Attend,” Cold Water Army, May 26, 1842, 154. 100 Warren, The Cold Water Army, 14. 101 “Fourth of July,” The Cold Water Army, June 9, 1842, 163. 102 The argument that badges, medals, and uniforms can act as an alluring juvenile consumer object, which on the surface obfuscated class differences, is made in: Tammy M. Proctor, “(Uni)forming Youth: Girl Guides and Boy Scouts in Britain, 1909-1939,” History Workshop 45 (1998): 104; 116.

147 for their Cold Water Army sons and daughters. For example, the MTU began offering scarves in 1841 that were available at two different prices, depending on whether it included a tassel. 103 In another instance, the MTU advertised one juvenile temperance book as “neatly bound and lettered, and will make a pretty Christmas or New Year’s present for any cold water army soldier.”104

The MTU published a weekly periodical, The Cold Water Army, which promoted the cause and reported on the activities of individual societies. To increase circulation, the editors of the periodical offered a specific premium for a set number of new subscriptions. For instance, the MTU awarded a children’s book from their “Picnic

Tales” series in exchange for signing up three children for the periodical, and the entire set of four books for signing up ten new subscribers. “Our Soldiers are our agents, you know,” explained the paper’s editors.105 Premiums offered to children included instructional children’s literature, and anti-alcohol banners of varying quality.106 The banner premiums were gendered with different designs and slogans for girls and boys.107

In effect, temperance reformers offered material awards for participation in the cause, and consequently linked consumption with reform and virtue. Though the Cold Water Army periodical failed to surpass a circulation of more than around fifteen hundred, the editors of the newspaper revealed their willingness to tap into juvenile material desire to grow their publication and teach temperance principles.108

103 Hampell, Temperance and Prohibition in Massachusetts, 92. 104 “For Sale,” Cold Water Army, December 23, 1841, 68. 105 “To Our Readers,” Cold Water Army, November 24, 1842, 50. 106 “Mr. Crosby’s Fifteenth Letter,” Cold Water Army, December 16, 1841, 62. 107 “To Our Readers,” Cold Water Army, November 24, 1842, 50. 108 “Our Paper,” Cold Water Army, June 9, 1842, 162.

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Reformers fed juvenile desire at temperance picnics featuring delectable food, which had attracted large numbers of boys and girls to Fourth of July celebrations.109

Sunday school teacher Mary Livermore observed that during Fourth of July picnics, her

Cold Water Army “took on its largest proportion that day, for the promise of the bountifully spread tables sure to be found in the grove on such occasions, drew the entire juvenile population.”110 One report of a Fourth of July celebration for children that offered food as an attractive draw, explained that “[a]wnings were thrown up, under which tables were spread, and laden with the richest variety of cakes and fruit, and the place was decorated with evergreens and flowers in a beautiful manner.”111 One of the fancier cakes at a Cold Water Army picnic, which bound temperance with luxury, was shaped like a pyramid:

made by a succession of cakes, each upper cake smaller than the next one. Against the pyramids stood little boys made of paper or other material, and painted, holding little cold water banners. … The little fellow has a badge with the words “Cold Water Army” upon it, and he has a neat little silk banner with a red silk fringe and gilt flag-staff. There is neatly printed on the banner the American eagle and the following stanza,

“Ladies, to you I’ll pledge my hand, In love and temperance strong; For though a boy ten inches high, Cold Water is my song.”112

Elaborately designed food did not simply feed children. It made temperance itself a wondrous and luxurious activity.

The Cold Water Army enjoyed wide popularity, winning the esteem of prominent political figures, which legitimized and raised the profile of these organizations. For

109 The material culture of the Fourth of July is addressed in: Leigh Eric Schmidt, Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 34-35; Tyrrell, Sobering Up, 178; Dennis, Red, White, and Blue Letter Days, 14-15. 110 Livermore, The Story of My Life, 378. 111 “Doings of the Day,” Boston Daily Courier, July 8, 1841, 1. 112 “Mr. Crosby’s Eleventh Letter,” Cold Water Army, November 18, 1841, 46.

149 instance, in April of 1844, a Cold Water Army rally was held at the Tremont Temple in

Boston, a theater reclaimed by evangelical reformers for their activities. The hall overflowed with 4,000 to 5,000 temperance children, with “the girls occupying the galleries, and the boys the lower floor.” The significance of the rally was heightened with the attendance of the Mayor of Boston and the Governor and Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts.113 The attendance of these leading Bay State men surely heightened the visibility of Cold Water Armies.

Despite its military ethos, girls as well as boys were welcomed as members.

Though idealized illustrations of the Cold Water Army more commonly focused on boys, the movement’s founder’s booklet on the organization opens with a girl inquiring about the Cold Water Army.114 Girls were taught that their future marital happiness, and the economic prosperity of their households, depended on whether they participated in the

Cold Water Army.115 Indeed, one Cold Water Army booster argued that girls had a special prerogative to be active in temperance because “it has been women’s business to have life embittered by the consequences of intemperance in men.”116 Still, temperance reformers prescribed sex-segregated activities: girls and boys were often divided during temperance rallies and meetings, stressed with Army songs that included alternating lyrics for girls and boys.117 Though female and male members were differentiated, Cold

Water Armies offered girls an opportunity to temporarily distance themselves from the home in order to defend it, by donning militaristic paraphernalia and participating in a

113One Hundred Years of Temperance, 263; “Boston Cold Water Army,” Youth’s Temperance Advocate, April 1844, 210. 114 Hunt, The Cold Water Army, 5-6. 115 Ibid., 31-33. 116 Charles J. Warren, Cold Water Army Dialogues. Selected, Arranged, and Enlarged; for Schools, Families, Pic-Nics, and Cold Water Army Reviews (New Haven, CT: S. Babcock, 1842), 21. 117 Warren, Cold Water Army Dialogues 4; 7; “Cold Water Army,” Youth’s Companion, March 12, 1841, 174; N. Crosby, “Mr. Crosby’s 25th Letter,” Cold Water Army, March 3, 1842, 106

150 martial movement. However, when they participated in public demonstrations, female

Cold Water Army members acted as symbols of domestic tranquility, linking temperance with a middle-class home built on sharply demarcated gender roles.118 This was emphasized when Cold Water girls carried banners that declared that they would only marry temperance men. For instance, girls from Weymouth and Braintree, Massachusetts carried a banner that stated “Tetotal or No Husband.”119 For many girls, no doubt, Cold

Water Armies presented the first opportunity to publically champion the virtues of their expected gender role. Female participation created a need for separate gender-specific temperance products: the MTU produced fans for girls that were emblazoned with

“beautiful lithographic prints” of a Cold Water Army picnic.120

Military themed juvenile-temperance organizations still thrived after the Cold

Water Armies had disappeared in the late 1840s, and continued to appeal to working- class children.121 The Sons of Temperance, a male-run temperance society organized like a fraternal secret society (with a female auxiliary), created an affiliated youth wing named the Cadets of Temperance for boys aged ten to seventeen, which operated for decades.122 The effort to create juvenile auxiliaries of the Sons of Temperance began in

1844, when some New York members of the Sons of Temperance resolved to enlist

118 Mary P. Ryan, Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825-1880 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 132-141. 119 T.T., “Cold Water Army,” Cold Water Army, March 10, 1842, 110. 120 “Soldiers Attend,” Cold Water Army, May 26, 1842, 154. 121 MacLeod, Building Character in the American Boy, 83-84; One Hundred Years of Temperance, 263.The causes for this decline are ambiguous, but some reformers faulted the frequent turnover of youngsters and the absence of any overarching organization. Macleod has explained this downturn as an overall loss of interest after the initial spark of enthusiasm had passed. 122MacLeod, Building Character in the American Boy, 83-84; One Hundred Years of Temperance, 526; The Constitution, Order of Business, Rules of Order, and Form of Application for the Formation of Cadets of Temperance in Wisconsin As Established by the G.D.S.T. at its April Session, A.D. 1851 (Madison, WI: Carpenter and Tenney, 1851), 6. David I. MacLeod identifies 1846 as the founding year of the Cadets. However, evidence from One Hundred Years of Temperance suggests that the first Division of the Cadets was organized at the end of 1845. They were named the “Division of the Juvenile Sons of Temperance.” The name Cadets of Temperance was first introduced in 1846.

151 youth under the age of sixteen. However, their plan did not garner sufficient support from the organization’s leadership. After several unauthorized juvenile societies had been organized, a youth auxiliary formally sanctioned as a division of the Cadets of

Temperance was formed in Germantown, Pennsylvania, in December of 1846.

The Sons of Temperance treated Cadets Sections as training grounds for future members of the parent organization, allowing Cadets to transition into the Sons of

Temperance when they reached adulthood. By 1850, the Cadets of Temperance had mushroomed in popularity, attracting 250,000 members, with branches in most parts of the United States.123 Members of the Sons of Temperance envisioned the relationship between Sons and Cadets of Temperance as parallel to that of church and Sunday school, with junior organizations training young people for membership in the adult organization.124 The Cadets of Temperance replicated the fraternal lodge structure of the adult organization to which they were affiliated, complete with titles for officers intended to sound magisterial, such as Archon, Vice Archon, and Watchman.125

In some ways, Cadets of Temperance sections resembled the Cold Water Armies, using a military theme to make their organizations appealing. Significantly, they also relied on paraphernalia to entice youngsters, making regalia and other ephemera part of belonging, requiring them for full participation in meetings.126 However, the two organizations diverged in their attitude towards female members. Cold Water Armies

123 Hampel, Temperance and Prohibition in Massachusetts, 129. For instance, California and South Carolina had Cadets of Temperance sections. See: “Cadets of Temperance,” Daily Democratic State Journal, November 15, 1853, 2; “Cadets of Temperance,” Charleston Mercury, May 12, 1856, 2; Charles M. Miller, The Order of Cadets of Temperance (1887), 2-3. 124 One Hundred Years of Temperance, 526. 125 Constitution and By-Laws of Sparkling Fountain: Section, No. 80. Cadets of Temperance. Adopted April, 1851 (Wytheville, VA: D.A. St. Clair, 1851), 3. 126 Constitution and By-Laws of Sparkling Fountain: Section, No. 80, 12; Constitution and By-Laws of Washington Section, No. 2, Cadets of Temperance, Providence, Rhode Island. Instituted at Providence, Rhode Island, July 1, 1848 (Providence, RI: M.B. Young, 1848), 15.

152 typically recruited both boys and girls, but the Cadets of Temperance – which intended for its young male members to graduate into the adult fraternal organization – excluded girls until 1880.127 Indeed, one short piece highlighted female exclusion by portraying girls watching the Cadets of Temperance march, and “wish[ing] their brother… would join this happy company.”128

Cadets of Temperance and Cold Water Armies faced resistance from some temperance reformers because of their glorification of war and the fueling of juvenile desire. No doubt, the declaration of war with Mexico in 1846, opposed by most Sunday school organizers as unchristian and destructive, only deepened their aversion to military themed organizations.129 When the Cadets of Temperance first appeared, some observers voiced apprehension towards their regalia and their militaristic persona.130 One Cold

Water Army booster had dismissed such criticism, explaining that children’s love for war and drills were “innocently gratified” when focused towards temperance, since “[t]hey are not led to blood and carnage, but to temperance and peace.”131 In spite of this defense, temperance martial movements did not sit well with all reformers. “The Cold Water armies have had their day” observed another temperance reformer in 1848. “They savored

127 “Cold Water Army,” Youth’s Companion, March 12, 1841, 174; One Hundred Years of Temperance, 528; Miller, The Order of Cadets of Temperance, 3. After 1880, girls began being organized into separate female sections. However, in smaller communities, girls and boys were organized into mixed organizations. 128 Estelle, “The Glorious Fourth,” Youth’s Companion, June 29, 1854, 37. In addition to differing attitudes towards female members, the Cadets of Temperance also had a more formal organization than the Cold Water Army. 129 “London Dolls,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, April 15, 1846, 1. The article’s author declared that “[w]e hope we shall not be considered as unpatriotic, when we say, that … timber is more rationally used for wooden horses, than for ships of war.” 130 A.R., “Cadets of Temperance,” New York Evangelist, November 4, 1847, 74. 131 “Fourth of July,” Constitution, July 13, 1842, 3.

153 too much of war to be very acceptable. The Cadet system [Cadets of Temperance] is with many very popular, but this too savors of the military.” 132

Though Sunday school reformers shied away from militarism in temperance youth groups, they did not eliminate material rewards. In the 1850s, American Sunday school reformers favored replicating English non-militant juvenile temperance organizations, called Bands of Hope, which had begun mushrooming in size in Britain in the late 1840s and would become a ubiquitous working-class organization by the late nineteenth century.133 Some American temperance reformers, reading reports of Bands of

Hope successes in Britain, tried to emulate their success. By 1856, Sunday school reformers in America called on children and adult reformers to imitate their British counterparts and establish Bands of Hope throughout the United States. A juvenile temperance periodical noted with admiration that “[i]n England, the children are now gathered in beautiful Bands of Hope, and have frequent Gala days, beautiful processions, and clever pic-nics.”134 This appeal to American children came from Britain as well: in a letter to children appearing in the New York Evangelist, Peter Sinclair, a Scottish booster of the Bands of Hope, outlined the importance of his organization to American children and highlighted their popularity among youngsters in Britain.135 “Will you, dear children, begin this work?” asked Sinclair, recommending that his young American audience “ask your kind teachers to hold meetings, and explain to you what you can do.”136 Unlike the

Cadets, children of both sexes were included and in at least some cases, girls were

132 “Juvenile League,” Youth’s Temperance Advocate, July 1, 1848, 26. 133 P.T. Winskill, The Temperance Movement and its Workers: A Record of Social, Moral, Religious, and Political Progress (London: Blakie & Son, 1893), 2: 192; Lilian Lewis Shiman, The Band of Hope Movement: Respectable Recreation for Working-Class Children 17, no. 1 (1973): 49-74. 134 “Bands of Hope,” Youth’s Temperance Advocate, August 1, 1852, 36. 135 P.T. Winskill, The Temperance Movement and it Workers, 191. 136 Peter Sinclair, “Letter from Peter Sinclair,” The New York Evangelist, March 5, 1857, 75.

154 encouraged to take on positions of leadership.137 Bands of Hope relied on less militaristic rhetoric than Cold Water Armies and Cadets of temperance, but their meetings were still supposed to be entertaining, consisting of: “singing, speaking, social intercourse, receiving new members, and distributing cards and papers”138

Making Sobriety Attractive: Juvenile Temperance Paraphernalia

Children clamored for the temperance premiums adult reformers offered during the 1840s and 1850s in exchange for the pledge. Adult temperance activist Thomas

Robbins organized a local Cold Water Army in 1841 for girls and boys younger than sixteen. When his order for one hundred temperance medallions arrived, he commented in his diary that the young members “have almost overrun me” for them. Robbins’ diary suggests a quid pro quo with the children, writing that he “[g]ave them the most of the badges. They sign a solemn pledge to abstain from all intoxicating drinks.”139 Mark

Twain, a man not known for self-denial, recalled his love for temperance premiums. He remembered that when he joined the Cadets of Temperance in Hannibal, Missouri, at around fifteen years of age, his intent was to acquire the “red merino sash” that members of that branch received, rather than a commitment to sobriety.140 “The boys joined in order to be privileged to wear it,” Twain explained, while in contrast “the pledge part of the matter was of no consequence.” Moreover, Twain opined that the local Cadets operation folded because it failed to organize enough events for the boys to parade with

137 “Form of a Constitution,” Youth’s Temperance Advocate, June 1858, 22. 138 “To the Leaders of the Band,” Youth’s Temperance Advocate, July 1859, 26. 139 Thomas Robbins, Diary of Thomas Robbins, D.D: 1796-1854 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1887), 2: 628-629. 140 For a study of Twain’s relationship with tobacco, see Everett Emerson, “Smoking and Health: The Case of Samuel L. Clemens,” New England Quarterly 70, no. 4 (1997): 548-554. Twain recalled that he began smoking at the age of eight or nine. His brief three-month long membership in the Cadets of Temperance was his sole break from his lifelong addiction.

155 their sashes.141 Yet Twain’s adolescent experience with the Cadets must have left an impression, albeit an unpleasant one, for as an adult author, he satirized the Cadets of

Temperance in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The young title character joins the Cadets of Temperance, “attracted by the showy character of their ‘regalia,’” rather than a principled objection to drink or tobacco.142 While other evidence indicates that some children took the commitment to temperance more seriously than Twain and his friends, surely the ephemera given to children expanded its appeal.

Adult temperance organizations, for their part, encouraged juvenile desire when it benefited their campaigns, producing and distributing medallions, badges, songsters, and banners. A contributor to the Youth’s Companion remarked that though a new anti- tobacco medal for children was “humble in its pretentiousness, [it] may be of more value to the nation than the acquisition of California with all her treasures.”143 Still, just as for candy and playthings, reformers designed medallions and badges to be visually appealing to seduce boys and girls. In a story appearing at the height of Cold Water Army fervor, young Peter wishes to march with the temperance children “and gladly would he have had such a shining medal and new white ribbon on his neck and breast as they wore.”144

Moreover, reformers encouraged juvenile societies to place temperance merchandise at the center of their meetings and events. Children received medallions and badges at particular celebrations or for various accomplishments, including pledging the oath and enlisting in a temperance society. The presentation of a badge to a child made up an

141 Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Autobiography (New York: Collier, 1925), 99-100. 142 Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (New York: Harper, 1920), 185-186. 143 “A Medal for the Boys,” The Youth’s Companion, July 21, 1853, 52. 144 “Children Think,” Youth’s Companion, April 16, 1841, 194.

156 important part of the Band of Hope and Cadets of Temperance initiation ceremony.145

Bands of Hope awarded “medals or merit cards” for good attendance.146 Children were expected to wear their regalia at all meetings and events, including juvenile marches and picnics. One Cadets of Temperance section went so far as to stipulate that members were not “permitted to vote or speak unless clothed in suitable regalia” at meetings.147 The close association between temperance paraphernalia and children made its way into at least one children’s temperance song, entitled “With Banner and Badge We Come,” which highlighted temperance paraphernalia as a key component of a member’s identity.148 The medallions and badges publically declared children’s membership in the organization and reminded them of the commitments that came with their attire.

Furthermore, the similarity of the children’s medals and badges erased outward appearances of class among members, but at the same time created a new arena of consumer desire endorsed by temperance societies. The most commonly reprinted illustration of the Cold Water Army enforces this ideal by depicting identical little boys in similar outfits, banners in hand, and uniform faces, marching through the streets of

Boston.149

Adult temperance reformers also presented medals to children for extraordinary commitment to the temperance cause or their local organizations. One New York City

Cold Water Army, made up almost entirely of boys and girls under fourteen, rewarded members who recruited fifteen other children to sign the pledge with medals for the boys,

145 Band of Hope Ritual (Rockland, ME: Z. Pope Vose, 1860), 13. 146 Ibid., 7-8. 147 Constitution and By-Laws of Sparkling Fountain: Section, No. 80. Cadets of Temperance. Adopted April, 1851 (Wytheville: D.A. St. Clair, 1851), 12. 148 “Celebration at Rockport,” Youth’s Companion, July 30, 1841, 46. 149 “The Cold Water Army,” Youth’s Companion, March 27, 1840, 181.

157 and rosettes for the girls.150 In at least one case, the awarding of premiums was less regimented. In the town of Salisbury, Connecticut, a little girl “found the whiskey of a toper, who mal-treated his wife in proportion as he drank. Knowing well that it was not there for either mechanical, medical, or sacramental purposes, she entered into the spirit of the Maine Law, and emptied out the contents of the jug.” When a temperance lecturer heard what she had done, he presented the girl “with a beautiful gold-plated medal, as a

‘reward of merit,’ with a request, that next time she should not only spill the liquor, but break the jug.”151

Banners also played an important part in juvenile temperance processions. In some instances, banners were made locally for an organization. When Unitarian minister and abolitionist Samuel Joseph May raised a Cold Water Army in South Scituate,

Massachusetts, he made banners by hand.152 However, other Cold Water Army banners were purchased readymade from religious publishing houses and benevolent organizations. Though banners were not normally given to children to keep, in some cases the honor of carrying the banner at a procession was awarded to the child who collected the most temperance pledges.153

The merchandise brandished by Bands of Hope members reinforced a sense of belonging to an organization that perpetuated middle-class values. Though Bands of

Hope shied away from the more militaristic language and ephemera of the Cold Water

Armies and the Cadets of Temperance, they were still invested in a material culture designed to encourage juvenile desire. Bands of Hope merchandise included “Roll

150 K.M.G., “A Large Cold Water Army,” Youth’s Temperance Advocate, March 1847, 351. 151 “A Little Girls who Earned the Maine Law Medal,” Youth’s Temperance Advocate, September 1, 1855, 35. Italics in original. 152Samuel J. May, Memoir of Samuel Joseph May (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1873), 163-164. 153 Hunt, Life and Thoughts, 263; “A Lad Worth Naming,” Youth’s Temperance Advocate, July 1, 1848, 28.

158

Books, Constitutions, Cards, Certificates, Song Books” among other items.154 Local

Bands regarded this merchandise as necessary for their success. When a Band of Hope branch was founded in New Jersey, the organizers quickly contacted the American

Temperance Union, requesting “fifty red [membership] certificates and cards.”155 The cards requested in the letter made the connection between sobriety and financial success more concrete, serving as a “letter of reference … signed by a respectable man,” vouching that the young bearer was committed to sobriety, and thus an industrious worker.156

In addition to using temperance merchandise to encourage juvenile membership in societies, reformers used paraphernalia to include children in the political campaigns to enforce temperance. Once states enacted temperance legislation, reformers continued to remind children of the legislation’s significance and the importance of defending it against repeal efforts, highlighting the laws as one generation’s gift to the next. This reminder was commonly accomplished with medallions being given to boys and girls in commemoration of particular temperance victories. For instance, in July of 1855, the

American Temperance Society sold a satin badge, available in “yellow, green, pink or white” commemorating the “Prohibitory Law, Passed in New York, April 9, 1855.”157

The choice of four colors suggests that the badge was designed to be attractive to children, echoing the color varieties in children’s candy. Similarly, the MTU sold a medal in honor of New York’s prohibition law, “designed as presents for children and youth, in schools and families, and are particularly appropriate as presents for classes in Sabbath-

154 Advertisement, Youth’s Temperance Advocate, March 1859, 12. 155 JLM, “From Mt. Holly, NJ,” Youth’s Temperance Advocate, August 1859, 30. 156 “Something About the Bands of Hope,” Youth’s Temperance Advocate, January 1860, 2. 157 “A beautiful badge for pic-nics and juvenile processions for sale at this office,” Youth’s Temperance Advocate, July 1855, 28.

159 schools as rewards of merit; or indeed, as a token of friendship, a remembrancer, or as a cheap though permanent gift.”158 Adult reformers regularly treated youngsters as passive recipients of the temperance movement’s political legacy, and as innocent advocates when a locale faced a temperance referendum, but in one case, children were charged to raise money for a monument to sobriety. The American Temperance Union suggested that children help construct the public memory of the temperance campaign by donating pennies to build a monument commemorating the Maine Law passed in New York.159

However, the role of enticements to draw children to temperance should not be overstated. Some children appeared to have taken their pledge seriously, and pondered the significance of the oath on their conduct. It is difficult for historians to access the thoughts of individual young people towards the Cold Water Army, or other temperance activities, but anecdotal evidence suggests that some young members understood the meaning of their pledge and grappled with its implications. Even Mark Twain, as cynical as he was, implied that so long as he remained a member, he upheld his pledge. William

Robert Ware, a boy from Massachusetts, showed more reverence for his temperance pledge than Twain, and mulled over its implications. Ware joined a Cold Water Army at the age of eight, but after he signed the pledge, he experienced difficulty reconciling his temperance principles with the 1840 ‘Log Cabin and Hard Cider’ presidential campaign of his hero William Henry Harrison, since even non-alcoholic cider represented a violation of a temperance pledge.160 For young Ware, signing the pledge meant upholding

158 “New Temperance Medal,” Water-Cure Journal, September 1855, 64. 159 “Great Monument for the Maine Law - July 4th, 1855,” Youth’s Temperance Advocate, July 1855, 28. Additionally, reformers expected children to persuade their family members who could vote to support temperance laws. 160 Grace Williamson Edes, Annals of the Harvard Class of 1852 (Cambridge, MA: Privately Printed, 1922), 204; Charles Jewett, The Youth’s Temperance Lecturer (Boston: Whipple and Damrell, 1841), 12. See also: “Springrove Juvenile Total Abstinence Society,” Youth’s Temperance Advocate, March 1847, 9.

160 a set of principles, which he understood and meditated upon, even when this meant finding fault with his role model. When thirteen year old Georgiana Souther Barrows, of

Fryeburg, Maine, evaluated temperance lectures she attended, she did not blindly laud or dismiss all of the speeches. Instead, she considered the quality of both the message and delivery of each talk. While she described some lectures as simply “very interesting indeed,” or “very good indeed,” she sharply faulted another temperance talk, grumbling that she “never was so disappointed in anything as much as that lecture.”161

More than sixty years after he created the first Cold Water Army, Thomas P. Hunt declared in his memoirs that “whether it be Cadets, or Bands of Hope or any other name under which the children are gathered, let them be gathered.”162 Though the operations of these juvenile operations varied, Hunt’s sweeping commendation of juvenile temperance societies highlighted their common goal: to recruit children to the cause and maintain their interest. However, these juvenile societies shared other similarities, as they endeavored to prepare youngsters for a fast growing market economy. Temperance reformers in the nineteenth century correlated children’s sobriety with their economic success. Moreover, reformers also immersed children into a consumer culture, by using premiums in their organizing to pique the interests of boys and girls. This ephemera gave children a sense of united purpose in the campaign to eradicate alcohol.

161 Diary of Georgiana Souther Barrows, 1842. Entries for January 17, 1842; April 6, 1842; and July 4, 1842. AAS. Underlining is in original. 162 Hunt, Life and Thoughts, 263.

161

Chapter 4

“Tempt the Eye and Please the Taste:” Juvenile Fairs and the American Civil War1

“Every child that buys a toy,

Heals the wounds of some brave boy”2

- Inscription above the Children’s Department at the Great Central Sanitary Fair in

Philadelphia, 1864.

In her memoir of her life during the American Civil War, Union fundraiser and

Sanitary Commission leader Mary Livermore highlighted the widespread popularity of bazaars for the benefit of soldiers, which she had famously organized and promoted.

“The fair mania extended into the country,” she recalled, “and children’s letters were daily received containing various sums of money netted by their little enterprises.”3 Such observations characterize the visible role children played in financing the Civil War as fundraisers for the Union, in particular for the quasi-governmental United States Sanitary

Commission (ASSC).4 Moreover, Livermore’s remark invites further inquiry into the broader effect of the war on juvenile philanthropy and consumption.

1 “Juvenile Fair at Cambridgeport,” The Youth’s Companion, June 5, 1856, 27. 2 “Our Own Great Sanitary Fair,” Our Daily Fare, June 16, 1864, 61. 3 Mary A. Livermore, My Story of the War (Hartford, CT: A.D. Worthington, 1896), 154. For a modern scholarly biography of Livermore, see: Wendy Hamand Venet, A Strong-Minded Woman: The Life of Mary Livermore (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005), 107-126. Unfortunately, Livermore destroyed the majority of her correspondence. See Venet, A Strong Minded Woman, ix. 4 The study of the effect of the Civil War on children and childhood is surprisingly limited considering how heavily studied the conflict is in general. The principal book on the subject is: James Marten, The Children’s Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998). For an examination of the relationship northern children had with the War see: James Marten, Children for the Union: The War Spirit on the Northern Home Front (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2004). For a study of children and northern fundraising fairs, see: Beverly Gordon, Bazaars and Fair Ladies: The History of the American Fundraising Fair (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1998), 99-101. For the response of northern

162

The American Civil War reconfigured the relationship among benevolence, self- denial and consumerism for northern boys and girls, as home front organizing around the war more fully legitimized juvenile consumption. Children’s philanthropy during the conflict, rooted in earlier juvenile fundraising strategies, valorized consumption, where the principal way a child could help win the war was by playing a part in the consumer economy revolving around the sanitary fairs. In other words, by making, desiring and accumulating merchandise, children helped save the Union. After the Civil War, consumerism would become an increasingly integral part of what reformers and child- experts considered an ideal childhood. This vision of childhood, buttressed by juvenile benevolence, highlighted class disparities by placing expectations on the care of girls and boys which only elite families could afford. Moreover, it prepared middle-class children for consuming as adults, which would become more integral to daily life by the end of the century.5

This chapter examines the role of children in benevolent fundraising fairs to benefit the Union War effort, which offered children an expanded role in the world of finance. By attracting so many girls and boys to philanthropy, Civil War bazaars linked charity and consumerism for a large number of children in the North. At philanthropic bazaars, both before and during the conflict, organizers encouraged girls and boys to act as manufacturers, vendors, and consumers of luxury items. Fairs more closely enmeshed

children to Lincoln’s children, see: James Marten, “‘I Think it’s Just as Mean as it can Be: Northern Children Respond to Lincoln’s Assassination” The Lincoln Herald 102, no. 4 (1999): 117-121. For the effect of the conflict on southern children, see: Edmund L. Drago, Confederate Phoenix: Rebel Children and their Families (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008); Anya Jabour, Topsy Turvy: How the Civil War Turned the World Upside Down for Southern Children (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2010). For the effect of the War on female adolescents and young women in the South, see Victoria E. Ott, Confederate Daughters: Coming of Age during the Civil War (Carbondale: University of Southern Illinois Press, 2008). 5 Elaine S. Abelson, When Ladies Go A Thieving: Middle-Class Shoplifters in the Victorian Department Store (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Peter N. Stearns, Consumerism in World History: The Global Transformation of Desire (London: Routledge, 2001), 44-60.

163 consumer culture with philanthropy than other forms of juvenile benevolence, but organizers appealing to children still insisted that piety and self-sacrifice underlay true benevolence. However, the valorized consumption essential to a fair’s success accelerated a shift in the meaning of self-denial, which further validated juvenile consumption, transforming it into a virtuous exercise, and helping to pave the way for a child-consumer who would become more fully developed by the late nineteenth century.6

Moreover, other fundraising schemes encouraging children to aid the Union Army also immersed girls and boys into entrepreneurship and consumerism, while minimizing the importance of actual self-denial to philanthropy, so that actions framed as sacrifice ultimately buttressed a consumerist ethos.7

Children in Antebellum Fairs

The “Fair Mania” identified and championed by Mary Livermore preceded the

Civil War by over three decades. English women began organizing philanthropic fundraising fairs at the start of the nineteenth century, with American women quickly following suit in the late 1820s.8 Though larger and more common in the American

North, philanthropic bazaars were organized across the country, and by the 1830s had

6 Lisa Jacobson, Raising Consumers: Children and the American Mass Media in the Early Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004); Gary Cross, Kids’ Stuff: Toys and the Changing World of American Childhood (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997). 7 The literature on the northern home front during the American Civil War, and the conflict’s effect off the battlefield is rich. For example, see: George M. Frederickson, Inner Civil War: Northern Intellectuals and the Crisis of the Union (New York: Harper and Row, 1965); Lori D. Ginzberg, Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics, and Class in the Nineteenth Century United States (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990), 133-173; Jeannie Attie, Patriotic Toil: Northern Women and the American Civil War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998); Melinda Lawson, Patriot Fires: Forging a New American Nationalism in the Civil War North (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2002); Judith Ann Giesberg Army at Home: Women and the Civil War on the Northern Home Front (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009). 8 F.K. Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 48-49; Beverly Gordon, Bazaars and Fair Ladies, 36-37. Eighteen-Twenty Seven was the earliest such fair found in America by Gordon.

164 become a common fundraising strategy in the United States.9 Benevolent fairs raised money for a diverse array of antebellum campaigns, while simultaneously publicizing the importance of their causes, sharing them with uncommitted shoppers drawn in for the merchandise.10 Though these fundraisers revolved around the annual sale, they depended on the far-from-glamorous year-round labor of volunteers. A fair may have only lasted several days, but it required manufacturing merchandise, finding an appropriate venue, advertising the event, and soliciting donations.

Shortly after they began organizing fairs, female reformers started recruiting children as patrons and volunteers. For these organizers, whose responsibilities included the lion’s share of childrearing, sons and daughters were accessible targets for recruitment, over whom mothers exerted considerable influence.11 While both girls and boys played parts in fairs, the way children were included in fairs reflected their gender.

Girls were overwhelmingly presumed to be the primary juvenile producers for benevolent

9 Suzanne Lebsock, The Free Women of Petersburg: Status and Culture in a Southern Town, 1784-1860 (New York: Norton, 1984), 218-220; Gordon, Bazaars and Fair Ladies, 37; Elizabeth R. Varon, We Mean to Be Counted: White Women and Politics in Antebellum Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 12; 42.Varon observes that southern fairs to benefit colonization preceded the better- known abolitionist bazaars in the North. 10 Anne M. Boylan, The Origins of Women’s Activism: New York and Boston, 1797-1840 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 182-186. 11 The significant role played by women in antebellum childrearing is well established. See, for example: Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: “Women’s Sphere:” in New England, 1780-1835 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1978), 46-47; Mary P. Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790-1865 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 157-165; Jeanne Boydston, Home and Work: Housework, Wages, and the Ideology of Labor in the Early Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 80-82; Julia Grant, Raising Baby by the Book: The Education of American Mothers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 21-29.This is not to say that husbands played no part in the upbringing of their sons and daughters. Historians have uncovered that fathers commonly took an active interest and participated in the upbringing of their daughters and sons. See: Stephen M. Frank, Life with Father: Parenthood and Masculinity in the Nineteenth-Century American North (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998). Still, Frank acknowledges that under normal circumstances, women performed the lion’s share of childrearing responsibilities.

165 fairs, both in sewing circles and on their own. 12 Children were welcome attendees since they made up a sizable proportion of the American population, and were understood to be especially naturally inclined spendthrifts. Additionally, inviting children to fairs meant more admission fees would be collected. Moreover, the visible presence of children at these sites showcased that these symbols of innocent virtue supported the cause.13 One fair booster alluded to the symbolic meaning derived from juvenile participation, as well as the profits it would yield, opining that the spectacle of a fair held by a Sunday school class on Christmas Eve “will form a beautiful sight, well worth the trifling sum they intend asking for admission.”14 Finally, involving girls in bazaars prepared them to run fairs in adulthood.

Fair boosters highlighted to children that bazaars were enjoyable events that satisfied consumerist desire. These were pleasurable occasions that fulfilled juvenile material desires. In 1829, a contributor to Lydia Maria Child’s juvenile periodical invited elite and middle-class girls to attend benevolent fairs, enticing them with a recent sale in

Boston that had offered attractive “dolls, of all sizes and kinds.” The author detailed individual dolls offered, including one “dressed in a beautiful Turkish dress, all sprinkled with gold, and a glass feather in her turban;” and a “black doll, that looked as if she

12 “Children’s Fair,” Salem Gazette, May 10, 1831, 2. This is the earliest example of a child-centered fair that I have found. During the same period, agricultural fairs became popular, making the fair an even more ubiquitous feature of antebellum life. 13 Karen Sánchez-Eppler, Dependent States: The Child’s Part in Nineteenth-Century American Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005) , 221-232; Modern sociologists have observed that involvement in social causes is not entirely driven by rational thought or material interests, but also by emotion, which in this case would be the sympathy felt for a child understood to be innocent and vulnerable. See: Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper, and Francesca Polletta eds., Passionate Politics : Emotions and Social Movements (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001). The introduction written by the three editors (27-44) serves as a good survey of the contribution this collection makes to understanding how irrational emotions attract and drive supporters. The sixth chapter, “A Revolution of the Soul: Transformative Experiences and Immediate Abolition” by Michael P. Young (99-114), suggests that this sociological approach can be applied to nineteenth-century social movements. 14 “Sunday School Fair, for Christmas Eve,” Evangelical Magazine and Gospel Advocate, December 16, 1842, 399.

166 would make a very good waiting maid.” The charitable side of the enterprise was given secondary importance: only after the author detailed toys and other luxuries sold at the fair, extolling luxury (not to mention perpetuating racist, ethnic, and class stereotypes), did she or he inform young readers that the money raised through this consumption funded “two infant schools” that minded the young children of poor families, while their cash-strapped mothers were compelled to work to support their families.15 This appeal highlighted and reinforced class divisions as it encouraged sympathy for poor families.

By the early 1830s, some fair organizers advertised reduced admission for children, thereby inducing girls and boys to attend, and also encouraging parents to bring their children along with them to fairs.16 In addition to attending fairs, children volunteered for adult bazaars and organized sales of their own, selling products made with their labor. Like other forms of juvenile benevolence, fairs were commonly organized through the Sunday school classroom. Child-supported fairs funded a myriad of causes, including orphanages, seaman’s aid societies, poor relief, Sunday schools libraries for the West, and support for Greeks in Turkey.17

Though their actions were cloaked in the language of benevolence, girls were immersed in the marketplace at fundraising fairs in a number of ways. When girls sold their merchandise, they learned how to market wares as the items made their way to the buying public, in a process that highlighted consumerism as a process aligned with their benevolent goals. A girl would see or imagine products she had made, displayed, pitched

15 “Infant School Fair,” Juvenile Miscellany, January 1829, 307. 16 “Ladies’ Fair,” Rhode Island American and Gazette, June 8, 1832, 1; “Ladies’ Fair,” New Bedford Mercury, February 20, 1835, 2. 17 “Ladies’ Fair,” The Rose Bud, or Youth’s Gazette, December 15, 1832, 63; “Juvenile Fair,” Christian Register, December 21, 1844, 203; No Title, Sun (Pittsfield, MA), January 8, 1835, 2; “Children’s Fair,” Salem Gazette, May 10, 1831, 2.

167 to, and ultimately sold to customers, with the proceeds going towards benevolent and reform causes.

Like their typically wealthier white counterparts, black children participated in fairs by producing and selling merchandise, and so were taught to value luxury items and how to make them appealing to customers.18 However, African-American children participated in bazaars less commonly. When a girl’s grammar school for African-

American children in New York City organized a fundraising fair in 1856, their profits went towards purchasing an organ for their own classroom. The items sold by the grammar school pupils were not just necessities, but also modest luxuries, with tables featuring “needlework, artificial flowers, and painting.”19 That the proceeds of the fair went entirely to the school holding the fundraiser, rather than an external target, underscores the underfunding many African-American schools faced.

One young secretary of a juvenile missionary society in Maryland explained why his organization began organizing fairs and how their operation functioned. His missionary society, made up of schoolchildren and organized on the recommendation of their teacher, began collecting monthly one cent donations from its members. When the girls and boys did not raise money quickly enough for their taste, the children and teacher decided to organize a fundraising fair, ultimately held at the secretary’s father’s storeroom. The children set to work, aiming to raise the thirty dollars required to educate a Native American girl. In exchange, a missionary promised to rename the girl after the

18African-American benevolence and reform more broadly differed on account of the socioeconomic disparity between white and black reformers. The effect of racially derived socioeconomic inequalities on benevolent and reform activities is explored in: Gerda Lerner, “Community Work of Black Club Women,” in The Majority Finds its Past: Placing Women in History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 83- 93; Shirley J. Yee, Black Women Abolitionists: A Study in Activism (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992). 19 “Colored School Fair,” New York Daily Times, May 10, 1856, 1.

168 young patrons’ Sunday school teacher. As it expanded its fundraising operations, female members took on a central role, but in a way that enforced and reproduced gender roles.

Girls in their school prepared “useful and fancy articles” to sell at the fair. As an act of self-denial, the girls apparently chose to sew merchandise during recess instead of playing, which the male secretary claimed “they preferred…to their play.” Significantly, the female pupils’ self-denial produced luxury objects, to be sold at a fair, validating a consumer economy. When the children counted their profits, they found that they had exceeded their target, raising forty-five dollars (plus five dollars donated by their teacher).20 A desire for more money drove juvenile benevolent organizations to select fairs as a fundraising strategy, as they offered children an opportunity to raise larger amounts of money than they could otherwise.

Still, many reformers expressed ambivalence towards children participating in fairs: a Sunday school periodical editorial asked young readers whether fairs should be a part of benevolent fundraising. The article offered an uncharacteristically ambiguous answer, asking children to weigh benevolent fairs’ effectiveness against their morality.

Instead of offering a definitive judgment, the brief article suggested children “talk with their parents and teachers or other friends about them, and make up their minds whethers

(sic) fairs are on the whole a wise mode of raising money, even for the very best object.”21 In an age when children’s literature was intended by reformers, above all else, to instruct, ambiguous conclusions are rare, suggesting that the author and the overseeing

American Sunday School Union review board were themselves ambivalent, even though

20 James H. Grove, “Juvenile Societies,” Christian Advocate, February 17, 1847, 27. With the remaining ten dollars, the children bought a life membership in the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopalian Church for their teacher. 21 “Fairs,” Youth’s Penny Gazette, October 8, 1856, 83. Italics in original.

169 the article was published over twenty-five years after children started attending benevolent fairs.22

Not all reformers expressed such ambivalence. A short story in the Youth’s

Companion was more forceful in cautioning that fairs did not require sufficient self- sacrifice to be true Christian charity. Instead, the story suggested that they embodied feminine vices, especially vanity, and grumbled that volunteers often participated to

“gratify... [their] own love of excitement, and not for the sake of doing good for others.”23

The fair’s appeal, with well-stocked tables of fashionable luxuries, contradicted the reoccurring lesson in juvenile literature to not fall in love with fashion at the expense of

Christian virtues, such as humility and charity.24 Instead, fair tables, brimming with fancy merchandise, seemed to extol abundance and to glorify indulgence.

Still, for many radical abolitionists, fairs represented an important site where children could be initiated into the movement.25 Though some anti-slavery Quakers objected to fairs, on the basis of their commitment to simplicity, other abolitionists regarded fairs as essential sources of funds, not to mention festive social events.26 One

22 Gordon, Bazaars and Fair Ladies, 50. 23 H.A.D. “True Charity,” Youth’s Companion, July 13, 1843, 38; Abelson, When Ladies Go a Thieving, 6. For a children’s story criticizing fairs as sites of unnecessary consumption, see: M.A.D., “The Self-Denial of Minnie and Lottie,” Youth’s Companion, August 5, 1858, 122. 24 The rejection of fashion and vanity occurs frequently in period instructional juvenile literature. See, for example: M.H. Maxwell, The Penny Saved and the Penny Earned (Philadelphia: ASSU, 1854), 27-28; 51- 52. 25 Harriet Hyman Alonso, Growing Up Abolitionist: The Story of the Garrison Children (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002), 129-131. 26 Nancy A. Hewitt, Women’s Activism and Social Change: Rochester, New York, 1822-1872 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), 36; Benjamin Quarles, “Sources of Abolitionist Income,” Mississippi River Historical Review 32, no. 1 (1945): 71-75; Julie Roy Jeffrey, “‘Strangers buy… lest our mission fail’: The Complex Culture of Women’s Abolitionist Fairs,” American Nineteenth Century History 4, no. 1 (2003): 1-24; Debra Gold Hansen, Strained Sisterhood: Gender and Class in the Boston Female Antislavery Society (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993), 124-139; Lee Chambers Schiller, “‘A Good Work among the People’: The Political Culture of the Boston Antislavery Fair,” in The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America, ed. Jean Fagan Yellin and John C. Van Horne (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 249-274; Julie Roy Jeffrey, The Great Silent Army

170 historian attributes the abolitionists’ penchant for fairs to an attempt to showcase their movement as jovial and well-meaning to a public which viewed them with distrust and animosity.27 Maria Weston Chapman, who along with her sisters spearheaded the Boston fair, opined that fairs did “more towards softening the public heart towards [the cause] than many a more imposing instrumentality.”28 Though women from Boston organized the best-known, largest, most fashionable, and most profitable anti-slavery bazaars, more modest fairs were operated by women throughout New England, the Midwest and the

Mid-Atlantic.

For all their radical politics, anti-slavery fairs acted as spaces that glorified consumerism and luxury. Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of the popular anti-slavery novel

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, characterized the excitement surrounding these fairs – and simultaneously highlighted their commercial appeal – when she labeled the 1854 Boston sale as “decidedly the most fashionable shopping resort of the holidays.”29 Indeed, as one historian observed, anti-slavery fairs embodied a “pull between moral principles and restraint and self-gratification and consumption.”30 Patrons who attended these events and bought merchandise did not entirely embody the principle of self-sacrifice through their giving. Instead, abolitionist organizers encouraged attendees to go home with attractive merchandise, feeling good for having helped.

Adult abolitionists designed fairs to attract girls and boys by featuring merchandise intended to suit their tastes, promoting children’s toys as seductive,

of Abolitionism: Ordinary Women in the Antislavery Movement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 104-126. 27 Jeffrey, “‘Strangers buy… lest our mission fail,’” 2. 28 Maria Weston Chapman quoted in: Gordon, Bazaars and Fair Ladies, 56. 29 Harriet Beecher Stowe quoted in Chambers-Schiller, “A Good Work Among the People,” 268. 30 Jeffrey, “‘Strangers buy… lest our mission fail,’” 4.

171 purchasable commodities at their bazaars.31 Boston fair organizer Maria Weston

Chapman introduced a children’s department in 1841 to keep the children under control and raise more money for the cause.32 Judging from the items sold for children, principally dolls, it seems most likely they anticipated that more girls would attend the fairs than boys. In addition to toys, anti-slavery fairs also featured children’s clothing and books. The clothing sold was not cheap or utilitarian, but attractive and fashionable.33

Juvenile books and candy – made with non-slave labor sugar – were also featured at these bazaars.34 Indeed, abolitionists showed a lot of interest in selling anti-slavery children’s books, especially after the publication of the extraordinarily popular Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1851.35

Adults also envisioned children as manufacturers of merchandise for anti-slavery fairs. For instance, West Brookfield’s juvenile sewing society contributed a box of their handiwork for the Boston fair, “as a token of their simpathy [sic] for the slave.”36

Moreover, adult abolitionists ascribed a special significance to the items they received from boys and girls. Juvenile abolitionists were more than passive supporters of the crusade: they were engaged participants who invested their time and resources into the cause, which, like missionary fundraising, required them to support people they would

31Mary A.W. Johnson, Mary S. Parker, and Delia Gould, “Anti-Slavery Fair,” Liberator, November 30, 1833, 191. 32 Maria Weston Chapman to Deborah Weston?, n.d. Weston Family Papers, BPL; “The Eighth Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Fair,” Liberator, December 24, 1841, 208. 33 “The Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Fair,” Liberator, December 18, 1840, 203; Anne Warren Weston et al., “Twenty-First National Anti-Slavery Bazaar,” Liberator, December 15, 1854, 198; 34 “Anti-Slavery Sale,” Liberator, March 9, 1849, 39; Maria Weston Chapman, “Marlboro Hall,: On the Days of the Massachusetts Anti Slavery Fair, Dec. 1840,” Liberator, January 1, 1841, 3; Lydia Maria Child, “The Ladies’ Fair,” Liberator, January 2, 1837, 3; For a broader look at the free produce movement, see: Lawrence B. Glickman, Buying Power: A History of Consumer Activism in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 61-90; Carol Faulkner, “The Root of Evil: Free Produce and Radical Antislavery, 1820-1860,” Journal of the Early Republic 27, no. 3 (2007): 377-405. 35 Deborah C. De Rosa, Domestic Abolitionism and Juvenile Literature, 1830-1865 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), 28-31. 36 Charlotte P. Henshaw to Caroline Weston, December 14, 1841. Weston Family Papers, BPL.

172 likely never meet. The organizers of Rochester’s anti-slavery fair gave religious significance to contributions they received from children, declaring the contributions a fulfillment of the Biblical passage “suffer little children to come unto me, for such is the

Kingdom of Heaven.”37

Children, especially girls, also organized and held their own anti-slavery bazaars, shepherded by sympathetic women.38 Perhaps the most sustained and publicized juvenile anti-slavery fairs were organized by girls in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, with the assistance of adult female abolitionists. The Pawtucket Juvenile Anti-Slavery Society, inspired by the nearby female juvenile Providence society, held benevolent fairs for at least eight consecutive years, beginning in 1836.39 Items for sale included “clothing and fancywork of valuable material and durable workmanship” manufactured by the young members.40

This society expanded its operation by publishing and selling an annual gift book, entitled the Envoy, in the mold of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society’s, the Liberty Bell.41

The girls of Pawtucket directed their revenue to anti-slavery activities, including the publication of the Liberator and local abolitionist work.42

37 “The Sixth Rochester Anti-Slavery Bazaar,” North Star, January 12, 1849, 2. The biblical reference is taken from Matthew 19:14. Reformers commonly cited the passage as a justification and exaltation of juvenile piety and benevolence. 38 Quarles, “Sources of Abolitionist Income,” 71-72. 39 I.J. Adams, “Anti-Slavery Fair,” Liberator, September 24, 1841, 155; Deborah Bingham Van Broekhoven, The Devotion of these Women: Rhode Island in the Anti-Slavery Network (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002), 103-105; Van Broekhoven attributes their longevity to their focus on a single task, namely the fair, and avoiding divisive political debates. 40I.J. Adams and N.L. Brayton, “Anti-Slavery Fair,” Pawtucket Gazette and Chronicle, September 11, 1840, 3; I.J., Adams, “Anti-Slavery Fair,” Pawtucket Gazette and Chronicle, October 15, 1841, 3. 41 Maria Weston Chapman, “A New Anti-Slavery Token,” Liberator, September 18, 1840, 150; “New Book,” Liberator, October 16, 1840, 167. 42 Nancy L. Brayton, “Generous Donation,” Liberator, September 20, 1839, 151.

173

Children Engage the American Civil War

The American Civil War expanded and legitimized the role played by youngsters, as a far broader cross-section of children responded to a widely felt patriotic fervor and to appeals for the resources required for a massive mobilization of men and supplies. Within the first month of the firing on Fort Sumter, public schools began contributing money to support Union soldiers.43 Indeed, children were recruited in public and private secular schools, which had not been significant loci of organizing for philanthropy before the war. Boys and girls in the northern states took a keen interest in the Civil War, learning about the conflict through word of mouth and print. Though most did not experience the war first-hand (though their fathers and older brothers often did), many of these young volunteers keenly sought out avenues by which to experience the perceived excitement of the war and lend a hand to the Union cause.44 Within months of the war breaking out, authors of articles of juvenile literature incorporated the Civil War, both to pique youngster’s interests, and as a means by which to make their instruction relevant to their young readers’ tastes and concerns.45

Adults used the War as a frame of reference by which to teach academic and moral lessons.46 An 1864 alphabet book made the War its theme for words and names to

43 Frank B. Goodrich, The Tribute Book: A Record of the Munificence, Self-Sacrifice, and Patriotism of the American People During the War for the Union (New York: Derby and Miller, 1865), 117-118. In this example, grammar schools in East Cambridge, Massachusetts donated three hundred dollars in April of 1861. While this appears to be an especially early example of juvenile wartime philanthropy, it is unclear if this money came from the teachers, students, or both. 44 Marten, Children’s Civil War, 148-186. 45 Marten, Children’s Civil War, 31-67; “How a Man Feels when He is Shot,” Youth’s Companion, October 3, 1861, 158. This is one of the earliest examples I have found of Civil War related material appearing in a juvenile publication. 46 Southern wartime juvenile publications were rarer, likely on account of a smaller publishing industry to begin with and wartime conditions. Schoolbooks made up the lion’s share of juvenile literature published in the Confederacy. See for example: Boys and Girls Stories of the War (Richmond: West and Johnson, n.d.); The First Reader for Southern Schools (Raleigh, NC: Christian Advocate Publishing Company, 1864); Robert Fleming, The Elementary Spelling Book, Revised and Adapted to the Youth of the Southern

174 teach the sounds and order of the letters of alphabet, while coupling it with the excitement of battle and loyalty to the Union.47 For older children, periodicals, books, and even board games incorporated the War and related news to boys and girls, using issues related to the conflict as a lens through which to convey religious and moral lessons. Bestselling author Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote a short children’s story in 1864 that likens the disloyalty of a boy wearing a copper badge, indicating sympathy for the anti-war Copperheads, to the disloyalty of another boy betraying God by his cursing.48

But children participated in the War as more than passive readers, listeners, and observers. Middle-class girls and boys were limited in their mobility, and consequently faced restrictions on their wartime volunteerism. Despite these limitations, children in the

North contributed to the war effort in a plethora of ways, often in a classroom environment, including tactics that encouraged entrepreneurship and consumerism. Some juvenile fundraising efforts shifted targets from traditional targets of juvenile benevolence to war-related philanthropy. Before the conflict, “Miss Smith’s Class” of girls in Philadelphia had regularly sewed garments for the benefit of the poor, but once

War broke out “they rather had the privilege of contributing their mite to the noble men who were hazarding life itself, for our common country.”49 Another juvenile missionary society, organized out of a Sunday school in Philadelphia, raised money for the United

States Christian Commission, which delivered religious instruction to Union soldiers in the field.50

Confederacy, Interspersed with the Bible Readings on Domestic Slavery (Atlanta: Franklin Steam Printing House, 1864). 47 Marten, Children’s Civil War, 60-61. 48Harriet Beecher Stowe, “Badges,” Youth’s Companion, April 14, 1864, 57. 49 “Our Own Great Central Fair,” Our Daily Fare, June 16, 1864, 61. 50 “United States Christian Commission,” German Reformed Messenger, March 15, 1865, 3.

175

Resembling the earlier appeals for juvenile missionary support, adult promoters of

Civil War fundraising underscored closeness between the young giver and the recipient of donations. Like missionaries’ appeals to the young for donations, soldiers’ letters were depicted, in at least one case, as a reward for a child’s benevolence. Moreover, letters from soldiers would safely bring children closer to the action of the war. This figurative closeness between donor and soldiers is emphasized in the 1865 children’s novel, Little

Conquers: or, the Children’s Comfort-Bag, in which Franky and his younger sister

Nellie, on the advice of their soldier uncle, assemble bags of provisions and treats, with accompanying letters, for soldiers in the field.51 The children sew twelve comfort bags

(called tomfort-bags by young Nellie), and to fill their bags, they raise money by picking raspberries. In addition, Franky and Nellie also earn the money by sacrificing butter and molasses respectively, echoing a fundraising technique stressed decades earlier by John

Scudder, among others. The charity meted out by the siblings is distinctly juvenile, underscored when Franky insists on including sugar plums, which he believes the soldiers will enjoy. However, the book makes clear that this sugary choice of gifts is based on Franky’s youthful palette rather than an appreciation on his part for what soldiers actually wanted.52 In so doing, the author underscored the innocence of the donors to heighten the purity of the Union cause, and that charity mattered for the giver as well as the recipient.

Moreover, the author emphasized that children could get closer to the war, while remaining safely in the home, by donating to the war effort. To personalize their offering and connect emotionally with their beneficiaries, the children dictate letters for the

51 Caroline E. Kelley, Little Conquerors; or, The Children’s Comfort-Bags (Boston: Henry Hoyt, 1865), 58-64. 52 Ibid., 69-83.

176 soldiers to their aunt with a solemnity that amuses her (an expression of cuteness absent from early antebellum appeals for children’s money).53 The following month, Nellie receives a letter from a Union soldier in Tennessee, who presumes familiarity with the girl, writing that “[i]f I ever go North, I hope I shall see you and Franky.”54 Franky covets his sister’s letter – which she prizes as a precious treasure – until he receives a letter from the recipient of his comfort bag.55 Franky’s soldier praises the boy for his self-sacrifice, and encourages piety and principled behavior to him, with an air of familiarity similar to

Nellie’s soldier.56 Though the target of benevolence shifted from non-Christians and the deserving poor to Civil War soldiers, wartime philanthropy was similarly framed as a

Christian act that would instill moral behavior in a child and last through adulthood.

Children and the Sanitary Fairs

Though children gave money for comfort bags assembled by women, or put together their own, the most visible means by which northern children participated in the

Civil War was raising money for the USSC, a large-scale quasi-governmental organization, which provided supplies, medical equipment and moral instruction to soldiers in the Union Army.57 Over the course of the War, northerners at home raised millions of dollars for the benefit of the Sanitary Commission. In no small way, this was

53 Ibid., 99. 54 Ibid., 109. 55 Ibid., 110-111. 56 Ibid., 112-117. 57 William Quentin Maxwell, Lincoln’s Fifth Wheel: The Political History of the United States Sanitary Commission (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1956); Frederickson, Inner Civil War, 98-112. Historians have also explored the effect of the Sanitary Commission on the status of women. See: Lori D. Ginzberg, Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics, and Class in the Nineteenth Century United States (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990), 133-173; Jeanie Attie, Patriotic Toil: Northern Women and the American Civil War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998); Judith Ann Giesberg, Civil War Sisterhood: The U.S. Sanitary Commission and Women’s Politics in Transition (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2000).

177 accomplished through fundraising fairs, which ranged from small local affairs to elaborate spectacles in the North’s large cities, especially in New York, Philadelphia, St.

Louis, and Chicago.58 The largest fairs were more extravagant than antebellum bazaars, including relic museums (often featuring battlefield artifacts or items belonging to significant historic figures), restaurants, floral exhibits, art galleries, live performances, elaborate bureaucracies and myriad departments of merchandise, each with formal leadership and male and female organizing committees.

As with antebellum bazaars, adults boosters welcomed children at sanitary fairs, with reduced priced tickets commonly made available to boys and girls, and even cheaper tickets available to pupils through public schools.59 In the case of the Philadelphia Great

Central Sanitary Fair, 23% of the 253,924 tickets issued were intended for children (with tickets making up a large proportion of the fair’s revenue).60 The extent to which children explored Sanitary Fairs independent of parents and teachers is difficult to determine, but

58 Sanitary fairs have been examined as a fundraising effort spearheaded by women (thought the heads of the major fairs were men) in: Gordon, Bazaars and Fair Ladies, 50-94; Attie, Patriotic Toil: 198-219. Sanitary fairs have also been highlighted as a significant expression of national identity. See: Lawson, Patriot Fires,14-39. The New York Metropolitan Fair raised approximately two million dollars and the Philadelphia Great Central Fair raised roughly one million dollars. Fairs with receipts in excess of one hundred thousand dollars were also held in Brooklyn, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and twice in Boston and Chicago. For a helpful chart of major fairs, see: Gordon, Bazaars and Fair Ladies, 66-71. In fact, fairs sometimes proved too profitable, as the large publicized amounts stifled other donations, to the detriment of the United States Sanitary Commission. Though rarer and less extensive than their northern counterparts, Confederate women organized fairs to build gunboats for the Confederacy. The Palmetto State and the Georgia were built with over $30,000 in donations raised through gun boat fairs, along with other fundraising methods. See: Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 28-29; Gordon, Bazaars and Fair Ladies, 96-99. I have found little documentation of children participating in these fairs, but future research may uncover such evidence. Edmund L. Drago finds children attending a fair in Columbia, South Carolina as attendees. Drago, Confederate Phoenix, 92-93. 59 Horace Howard Burness, “The Great Central Fair: Please Take Notice,” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 9, 1864. At the Philadelphia Fair, children under thirteen were admitted at half price (25 cents). On the last days of the fair, before the cheap days, adult admission was reduced to twenty-five cents, and children under fourteen were admitted for ten cents. See: “Great Central Fair,” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 27, 1864, 5. 60 “Number of Visitors,” Our Daily Fare, September 11, 1865, 104. Of the 253,924 tickets released, 23,323 were “Minor Tickets,” 33,215 were “School Tickets,” and 2,000 were given to benevolent institutions for children.

178 the fact that children at fairs occasionally got lost from their guardians suggests that some boys and girls examined the spectacles on their own.61

Children from diverse socio-economic backgrounds were welcome to attend

Sanitary Fairs, but the date at which they entered reflected and reinforced class differences. Intended to be accessible to most men, women, and children, admission prices typically dropped as a fair progressed (the larger fairs lasted weeks), with elite men and women attending first, paying high admission fees. As the local fair became less fresh and novel, public schools were encouraged to send their pupils at a reduced price.62

Towards the end of the fair, most urban children, both black and white, would have been able to attend with their schools.63 In another case, the Northern Home for Friendless

Children in Philadelphia brought almost two hundred boys and girls towards the end of the Fair, many of whom were “soldier’s orphans or the children of those now in the armies of the nation.” When they arrived, the soldier’s children received gifts and explored the fair.64

The fair’s broad accessibility, which affirmed it as a citywide effort, was a theme of the 1865 children’s book, Little Mirabel’s Fair. Young Mirabel is an orphan in New

York City and though she yearns to attend the city’s fair, she is unable to afford admission. One night, Mirabel dreams she is at the fair after closing time, guided by a

“child-angel” who was her deceased twin sister.65 The fair itself has become enchanted

61 “Lost Children,” Philadelphia Press, June 18, 1864, 4. 62 Office of the Public and Private School Department of the Great Central Fair. May 20, 1864. To the Committee and Teachers of the Public Schools, PUL; “Great Central Fair: Public Schools.” (Ticket). Collection of publications and ephemera related to the fairs, dinners, etc., held at Cincinnati, Albany, St. Louis, New York, Chicago, Indianapolis, and other locales, 1861-1864, PUL; “The Metropolitan Fair,” New York Times, April 19, 1864, 4; “Metropolitan Fair.” New York Times, April 20, 1864, 5. 63 “Metropolitan Fair,” New York Times, April 20, 1864, 5. 64 “Visit of Children from the Northern Home,” Philadelphia Press, July 4, 1864, 1. 65 Susan M. Waring, Little Mirabel’s Fair (New York: William H. Kelley & Brother, 1865), 8.

179 by spirits; “in every booth they found little busy sprites, that took care of every thing, and saw that nothing was lost, or broken or soiled.” These sprites sang songs that underscored their loyalty to the Union, with the chorus “[f]or the sake of the sick and wounded soldiers.”66 Adding to the enchantment, many of the exhibits sprang to life in Mirabel’s dream. For instance, the people depicted in paintings in the art gallery department “had become tired, and had come down out of their frames, and were walking about the fair, to see how it was getting on.”67 Mirabel’s tour of the fair includes lessons on the emancipation of slaves and the funding of the war: she approaches a female incarnation of “America” raising Africa from enslavement.68 Her dream concludes with animated winged banknotes proclaiming that “[w]e are going to take care of the sick and wounded soldiers,” as they soared overhead, before turning into sprites.69

When Mirabel wakes up, a prosperous family discovers and adopts her, because they believe that the girl will fill the void of their deceased daughter. The book’s author illogically concludes that that the fair “brought joy and comfort to a poor little child named Mirabel.”70 Though in reality, Mirabel cannot initially attend, she figuratively joins the city’s collective effort in philanthropic consumption in her dream-induced fantasy, reinforcing the ideal that a sanitary fair, and the consumerism it entailed, was a project that included all the members of a city, regardless of socio-economic class. In so doing, Mirabel’s Fair cast American consumerism as accessible to Americans of all backgrounds, and the sanitary fair as an event that appeared to unite all northerners behind the war.

66 Ibid., 21. 67 Ibid., 25. 68 Ibid., 46-48. 69 Ibid., 49. 70 Ibid., 52.

180

Sanitary fair organizers designed their events with children in mind.71 The children’s department in New York’s fair was considered so extravagant that adults were charged an extra fee to enter (twenty-five cents accompanied by a child, and fifty cents without).72 Designed to pique the interest of boys and girls, the children’s department featured performances as well as booths vending and child-manufactured merchandise.73

Indeed, one report identified “ladies and children,” as the “best patrons of the fair.”74 The children’s department carried a wondrous and elaborate display, including a small skating rink (reused from the fair held in Brooklyn), children’s playthings and books for sale, and a confectioner’s table.75 The New York Children’s Department was beautifully decorated, with “[t]he ceiling and walls, wherever visible, were painted with the then fashionable cuir color, relieved with delicate patterns in blue and maroon. The booths along the walls were elegantly draped, and their divisions marked by gonfalon shaped ensigns, while a stage at one end of the room gave promise of entertainments to beguile the time spent here by children.” Similarly, the Central Fair in Philadelphia featured a children’s playground (conveniently near the ice cream parlor, but surprisingly distant from the confectionary), a skating Rink and a toy fishing pond.76 Stage productions in the

Philadelphia Children’s Department included plays and animal shows.77

These performances proved so popular with adults that some children were not able to find places in sold out performances. The Metropolitan Sanitary Fair devised a

71 “The Children and the Fair,” The New York Times, March 23, 1864, 4. 72 “The Metropolitan Fair,” New York Times, April 15, 1864, 4. 73 “The New York Sanitary Fair,” Philadelphia Inquirer, April 5, 1864, 1. 74 “The Metropolitan Fair,” New York Times, April 8, 1864, 8. 75 “General City News,” New York Times, March 27, 1864, 8; “The Metropolitan Fair,” New York Times, April 15, 1864, 4. 76 Great Central Fair Buildings, Logan Square, June 1864 (Philadelphia: Ringwalt and Brown (for the Great Central Fair for the U.S. Sanitary Commission), 1864), 2; “Diagram of the Great Sanitary Fair,” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 14, 1864, 8. 77 “The Metropolitan Fair,” New York Times, April 17, 1864, 5.

181 plan to ensure that boys and girls would be privileged over “those having passed the bounds of childhood” for these shows, requiring adult season ticket holders pay additional admission.78 The performances in the department intended for children became so distracting, that a New York Herald editor worried that “they interfere materially with the sales.”79 Though many of these attractions did not explicitly involve consumption, they fed juvenile desire in a space that glorified consumption.

Children also acted as consumers at the fair, with organizers intending to arouse the material desire of boys and girls, so that they would “wonder, and hesitate, and debate, and wish, and long, over and over again, before they can make up their minds which or what to choose [for purchase].”80 For instance, organizers of the 1863 Chicago fair recalled that child attendees were enthralled by “two half-blood cashmere goats” on sale. “Many a little fellow was routed from the nursery to see the ‘Goat Team’ at the Fair, and was carried back crying in agony of spirit, because ‘papa’ would not buy the whole establishment for him.” Ultimately the goats were purchased by a father for three hundred dollars, fulfilling his child’s desire.81 Children also desired less extravagant items: the

New York Times reported that at the Toy Department of the 1864 New York fair,

[n]ot one child could be induced to pass the stand without taking a good long look at the numerous delights of childhood. Dolls, tops, whips, soldiers, wagons, trumpets, rattles, and a variety that would almost set Santa Claus crazy, were here displayed to their wondering eyes. And almost every mother was obliged to purchase some toy for her little one, if for no other reason, for the “sake of peace and quiet.”82 Though it is impossible to untangle children’s sales from adults’ sales, the sections intended primarily for youngsters, or in which boys and girls would heavily participate

78 A Record of the Metropolitan Fair in Aid of the United States Sanitary, Held in New York, in April 1864 (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1867), 149-150. Quote is on 150. 79 “The Fair,” New York Herald, April 18, 1864, 5. 80 “The Union Square Building,” New York Times, April 4, 1864, 1. 81 History of the North-Western Sanitary Fair, Held in Chicago (Chicago: Dunlop, Sewell & Spalding, 1864), 61. 82 “The Metropolitan Fair,” New York Times, April 7, 1864, 8.

182 were some of the larger departments in the fairs. The 1864 Philadelphia Fair’s receipts totaled $1,135,343, which was in no small part on account of child-focused sections, or sections in which children played a large part: the children’s department, organized and stocked in large part by the city’s toy merchants, raised $14,908.65, the children’s clothing department $5,280, the school department $36,760.40, and the confectionary and fruits department $3,708.01.83 Together these four sections accounted for $60,656.66, or over five percent of the fair’s revenue. This may not sound like a lot, but the juvenile departments were more profitable than most other individual departments, which would have been aimed mainly at adults. Though these figures suggest that children played an important economic part in the Philadelphia fair, this total is both rough and incomplete.

For instance, this large sum does not include the money made from ticket sales (of which children made up a large portion), which totaled $179,447.20. At the same time, adults must have purchased some of the confectionaries. At the New York fair, for instance, an attractive candy saleswoman appears to have attracted the interest of amorous male attendees. As one report explained, “[t]he children go to buy sugarplums, the gentlemen to look at Miss Caleb, the ‘fairest of the Fair,’ who weighs out the bon bons with her own dainty little hands.”84 Moreover, many children in attendance were no doubt brought to the fair by their parents.

Major fairs, with the aid of local government, made use of public schools as loci of organizing. At the 1863 Cincinnati Sanitary Fair, each private or public school had the

83 “The Grand Financial Report,” Our Daily Fare, September 11, 1865, 100; Charles J. Stillé, Memorial of the Great Central Fair for the United Sanitary Commission, Held in Philadelphia. June 1864 (Philadelphia: United States Sanitary Commission, 1864), 110; Children were regular customers at the confectionary department, which is indicated in: “The Metropolitan Fair,” New York Times, April 16, 1864, 4. 84 “The Metropolitan Fair,” New York Times, April 16, 1864, 4.

183 opportunity to organize a table of its own at the fair.85 Children in a Long Island public school held a small fair of their own and funneled the proceeds to a large sanitary fair held for both Long Island and Brooklyn in February of 1864.86 At the Philadelphia Great

Central Sanitary Fair, local public schools donated merchandise, prompting one newspaper contributor to comment that “section and district, and school, and division, and class, all are vieing (sic) with each other to be foremost in the work.”87 One

Philadelphia fair executive board member recalled that items from schools “came by the car load,” with an estimated 30,000 school children sewing for their fair. 88 The

Philadelphia fair promised two banners as school prizes, in an effort to encourage donations, while simultaneously spurring “a proper spirit of rivalry.” One of the banners was intended for the school that raised the most relative to its enrollment while the other was awarded to the school that earned the most money overall.89 One account of the

Philadelphia fair detailed the diverse money-making schemes boys and girls employed in schools:

The needle, as usual, did its fair share. Subscription-books by the thousand were opened and kept in circulation, boxes for the reception of spending-money were found in many schools, and children were taught to give rather than to waste, - concerts, reading, tableaux, charades, tea-parties, May-parties, festivals, elocutionary exercises, fairs, lectures, exhibitions of every imaginable sort and kind, not even excluding sleight of hand, or the oxycalcium phantasmagoria, nay, even the opera was successfully attempted.90 In Philadelphia, as elsewhere, donations by teachers and pupils in public and private schools to the Great Central Fair were sold in a separate department. Public and Private

85 Children’s Department: Great Western Sanitary Fair (c. 1863). Collection of publications and ephemera related to the fairs, dinners, etc., held at Cincinnati, Albany, St. Louis, New York, Chicago, Indianapolis, and other locales, 1861-1864, PUL. 86 History of the Brooklyn and Long Island Fair, February 22 1864 (Brooklyn: “The Union” Steam Presses, 1864), 165. 87 “The Public Schools and the Sanitary Fair,” Philadelphia Inquirer, April 26, 1864, 8 88 Stillé, Memorial of the Great Central Fair, 106-107. 89 Ibid., 106; “The Public Schools and the Sanitary Fair,” Philadelphia Inquirer, April 26, 1864, 8. 90 Stillé, Memorial of the Great Central Fair, 106.

184

Schools Department sales continued strongly through the duration of that fair, selling

“perfumery, dry and fancy goods, toys, books, wax fruit, and silver ware” among other merchandise.91 In total, 3.2% of the fair’s receipts came from the Schools Department, which made it among the most profitable of the many departments present at the fair.92

During the Civil War era, local governments had more authority over public schools than over most other areas of daily life and so amended laws to make it easier for children to support the war effort. On the day that Chicago opened one of the first large scale sanitary fairs in 1863, the public schools shut down, along with courts and post offices.93 In New York City, the school board waived its restriction on collecting money in classrooms so that girls and boys could organize to support the Sanitary Commission.94

Schools were closed in Cincinnati, in response to student’s inattentiveness due to the fair, and so that pupils would have time to rehearse their performances for the city’s fair.95

Though sanitary fair organizers encouraged children to contribute utilitarian merchandise, the items manufactured by children were often luxurious. The school department of the Cincinnati fair initially asked that children contribute “[s]ocks, gloves, drawers, under-shirts, pickles, jellies, and canned fruits.”96 However, the merchandise produced by pupils for sale for the Union went beyond the purely pragmatic, including dolls, “handsome quilts,” a “small shell box,” and “quivers of cigar-lighters.”97 The final item suggests that the effort to raise money for the war included a wider circle than just reformers who would have considered smoking a vice.

91 “The Great Central Fair,” Philadelphia Press, June 24, 1864, 1. 92 “The Grand Financial Report,” Our Daily Fare, September 11, 1865, 100. 93 Goodrich, Tribute Book, 160. 94 “The Sanitary Fair and the Schools,” New York Times, February 27, 1864, 5. 95 History of the Great Western Sanitary Fair (Cincinnati: C.F. Vent, 1864), 97; 275. 96 Ibid., 90. 97 Ibid., 275; 325.

185

Girls and boys also sold items at fairs, carving out a legitimized and visible space for them to act as salespersons of luxury items, and immersing them in a consumer economy. Arguably, the most publicized young salesperson at sanitary fairs was the

“Little Old Woman who Lived in a Shoe,” regularly played by a little girl. Philadelphia’s

Children’s Department contained a large sized shoe:

of sufficient capacity for a Gargantua or a Titan, or some other large-footed gentleman, and a little girl in grandmother’s cap and spectacles sits comfortably in her mammoth brogan, and retails her baby-doll brood to whomever is disposed to make an investment in that line. This fair stressed that the brand of consumerism offered by the girl appeared to cross class lines, explaining that the:

“Old Woman” has children of varied fortunes among her household, for patrician silks, velvets and laces lie cheek-by-jowl with plebian calico. But she makes no distinctions when a purchaser comes along, and she sells her velveted pet with as much satisfaction as she parts with a six penny doll. Despite her position as a vendor of merchandise, Philadelphia’s Little Old Lady was nonetheless portrayed as a model of self-denying feminine benevolence for the nation, highlighted by a poem prominently positioned near the display that concluded:

A mother most dear, a patriot true, I sacrifice all for the red white blue. However, the self-denial of the ‘Little Old Lady’ was at odds with the notion outlined by

John Scudder and other antebellum reformers who had encouraged children to give up luxuries entirely. The ‘Little Old Lady’s’ virtue and benevolence partly stemmed from her ability to obfuscate class lines while still extolling consumerism.98 Indeed, an important component of consumerism is that it appears to promise social mobility, while in actuality enforcing differences of class.99

98 “Our Own Great Fare,” Our Daily Fare, June 16, 1864, 61. 99 Peter N. Stearns, Consumerism in World History: The Global Transformation of Desire, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2006), 7.

186

At the Great Western Fair, held in Saint Louis, Union General Ulysses S. Grant’s eight-year-old daughter Ellen helped raise money for the War, using her father’s celebrity status and employing childhood wondrousness. Dressing up as the ‘Little Old Lady Who

Lived in a Shoe’ and sitting in a giant shoe made of pasteboard, Grant sold dolls as well as photographs of herself, with the proceeds going to the USSC. According to one observer, “[a] crowd of spectators gathered about to witness the undertaking, and gazed with great interest upon the little old woman, as soon as it was whispered about that she was Gen. Grant’s daughter.”100 Ellen’s mother recalled years later her daughter “was delighted with the selling of dolls and her photos, telling me the ladies gave her a half dollar for every doll and every picture.”101 Ulysses Grant received word of Ellen’s participation from his wife and responded positively in a letter written to his daughter. “I know you must have enjoyed it very much,” wrote Grant from Cold Harbor, Virginia, surrounded by the carnage of a costly battle, asking her to “send me one of your photographs taken at the Fair.”102 Rather than likening her to a peddler, the lauded position of Ellen Grant suggests that elite adults celebrated children in a public commercial role when it benefitted the Union effort.

100 “Interesting Incident,” Youth’s Companion, June 23, 1864, 100. 101 Julia Dent Grant, The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant (New York: Putnam, 1975), 131. Julia Grant also notes that her sons bought items at the fair and won raffle prizes. 102 Ulysses S. Grant, The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, Volume 11, ed. John Y. Simon (Carbondale: University of Southern Illinois Press, 1984), 16. The Battle of Cold Harbor took 7,000 Union and 1,500 Confederate lives on January 3, 1865. See: James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 733-737. At the New York sanitary fair, a four year old girl used a similar sales tactic. See: “The New York Fair,” Zion’s Herald, April 20, 1864, 63. The earliest example of a girl playing the “Little Old Lady” may have been at the Brooklyn Fair in February of 1864. See, Mary Stephens Robinson, A Household Story of the American Conflict: The Work of Two Great Captains (New York: Tibbal and Son, 1871), 40-41. The idea for Ellen to participate in this way may have come from her mother after visiting the New York Fair. See: “The Fair,” New York Herald, April 23, 1864, 1. Ulysses S. Grant took an interest in juvenile benevolence outside of his daughter’s contribution. In 1864, General Grant sent an autographed carte de visite to children organizing a fair in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. See: “Items,” Chicago Tribune, July 13, 1864, 3.

187

Though boys and girls commonly worked in sex-separated environments, their work was often similar. In a Philadelphia female high school, the students sold items they produced, such as drawings, and collected “fancy goods” to sell at the local sanitary fair.

A boy’s high school in the same city did similar work, appealing for goods from local businesses, and decorating the Philadelphia’s fair’s School Department.103 In the Little

Conquerors, Franky performs work usually reserved for girls and women when his uncle encourages him to sew for the soldiers. At other times, the wartime fundraising impulse opened up new opportunities for girls to participate in public and commercial positions.

At the Chicago fair, “young maidens” helped raise $377.00 in profit selling newspapers, work ordinarily performed by boys.104

Children also partook in fair raffles, though the clergy and the USSC regarded it as gambling. Like their antebellum antecedents, raffles permitted fair organizers to sell high-priced merchandise that few individual buyers could afford. One critic, writing to a

Methodist periodical, claimed that sanitary fair raffles began a slippery slope towards a

“bet on a game of cards, a fisticuff, or a cock-fight.”105 The USSC forbade raffles, claiming they were illegal and immoral. But for many children, raffles presented an opportunity to win playthings otherwise beyond their budgets. In a letter to the editor, a girl challenged the clergy’s opposition to raffles. Allegedly writing with her father’s consent, Bertha wrote the New York Times that all the girls she knew were excited about a doll going up for raffle at the Metropolitan Fair in New York, which “is so big and beautiful and has such splendid clothes.” However, she was concerned that religious

103 “Our Own Great Sanitary Fair,” Our Daily Fare, June 15, 1864, 53. 104Goodrich, Tribute Book, 165; David Nasaw, Children of the City: At Work and at Play (New York: Anchor, 1985), 101-114. Nasaw focuses on the early twentieth century. However, antebellum newspaper sellers are usually described as male. 105 “Metropolitan Fair,” Christian Advocate and Journal, February 25, 1864, 60.

188 leaders are making such raffles unpopular. Likewise, she lamented that an expensive afghan made by her sick mother would not sell, if not raffled at the fair. In her letter,

Bertha implicitly claimed that without a raffle for the doll, an opportunity to aid soldiers

(including her older brother) would be lost. She thus called on the newspaper to “write a long piece…about the ministers interfering with the kind ladies, who are working so hard, and doing so much good for the poor soldiers.” 106 Yet, at least one defender of raffles was willing to concede that fairs threatened the virtue of boys and girls. A female advocate of raffles at the New York Fair, relented that “[t]here need be no raffles at the

Children’s Department if they are thought likely to lead the youthful mind out of the way it should go.”107

In addition to participating in adult-run operations, children also organized their own fairs. Mary Livermore recalled received letters along with money raised from bazaars operated by children regularly. In many ways, the juvenile fairs replicated adult ones, combining patriotic fervor and commercialism. Livermore described one juvenile fair as “spread under the trees, with an assortment of toilet-mats, cushions, needle-books, pen-wipers, patriotic book-marks, dolls and confectionery. The national colors floated over the little saleswomen, some of the very smallest sitting in high dinner-chairs, and all conducting their business with a dignity that provoked laughter.”108 Though the merchandise available and the displays of patriotism were not unusual for any sanitary fair, in this case the childish cuteness of the vendors drew in and entertained customers.

Juvenile organizers of sanitary fairs played on their cuteness in drawing in patrons, but they also demonstrated skillful salesmanship. Livermore recognized the

106 Bertha, “An Appeal in Favor of Raffling,” New York Times, February 21, 1864, 5. 107 A Record of the Metropolitan Fair, 134. 108 Livermore, My Story of the War, 153.

189 shrewd selling techniques children developed, as they mixed philanthropy with salesmanship. She recalled that one boy volunteering for a juvenile fair in Chicago was

“imitating the candy vender who was licensed to sell his wares from a stand just around the corner.”109 Near Philadelphia, two young sisters raised a dollar fifty from a fair they organized, with which they intended to buy comforts for soldiers at the Washington

Soldier’s Hospital. Though they only raised a small amount, the girls displayed impressive entrepreneurship, charging three cents admission, and “had little dolls’ things of their own manufacture, dressed some little china dolls, made pincushions and book- marks, had candy-bags, etc.” Additionally, they sold refreshments to the roughly two dozen children attending. These girls organized and operated their fair cleverly, integrating philanthropy with amusement for their young patrons, as the children present

“made the room ring with their merry shouts, and after two or three hours of harmless enjoyment, went home satisfied that they had had a good time.”110

Children’s participation in these sites of consumption became spaces where boys and girls exhibited their loyalty to the nation.111 This sentiment was further reinforced through public displays of national regalia. An illustration of a juvenile sanitary fair published shortly after the war underscores this by including a canopy of the American flag.112 Children often gave concerts at sanitary fairs, singing patriotic songs. At one such juvenile recital at the first Chicago Fair, the participating children “displayed tiny flags,

109 Ibid. 110 A., “What Little Children Can Do for the War,” The Independent, October 30, 1862, 6. Italics in original. Not all children were such good vendors. One girl at the Metropolitan Fair mistakenly sold 350 dollars worth of diamonds for three dollars and fifty cents. See: “Worries of the Ladies at the New York Sanitary Fair,” San Francisco Bulletin, May 28, 1864, 1. 111 Goodrich, Tribute Book, 98. Similarly, the Public School Department of the Central Fair in Philadelphia featured “a canopy of bunting, in the national colors.” See: “The Philadelphia Fair,” Philadelphia Press, June 14, 1864, 1. 112 Goodrich, Tribute Book, 98.

190 which they waved in the chorus, in perfect time with the melody, raising the enthusiasm of the delighted audience to such a pitch, that the entire house rose to their feet, and gave three cheers to the little song-birds.”113 Likewise, when girls and boys sold items made in

Sunday school at the Maryland Fair, they were asked to come “dressed in the national colors,” becoming human symbols of patriotism.114

Though the targets of philanthropy shifted, the ways in which adult organizers encouraged children to give for the sake of the soldiers echoed similar themes to those employed decades earlier. For instance, a short story in July of 1863 relied on the trope of the dying young philanthropist buying his salvation with a deathbed donation for the soldiers. Young Artie earns money clearing snow, but when he falls deathly ill, the boy instructs his father that “I want you to give my money to the soldiers” in the form of religious reading material.115 In another Civil War era children’s story, a deathly ill girl named Alice sews a pincushion for the Boston Sanitary Fair. The author recommends to young readers that when they see Alice’s pincushion at the fair, they should “remember her lying in her little bed, never to leave it alive, a silent prayer for her will ascend to God from your hearts, for you know God hears our prayers, if uttered in sincerity, no matter in what place.”116

The Diversity of Juvenile Civil War Fundraising

Children earned money for the Union through other means that encouraged both juvenile consumerism and entrepreneurship. For instance, some Chicagoan high school

113 History of the North-Western Sanitary Fair, Held in Chicago (Chicago: Dunlop, Sewell & Spalding, 1864), 36. 114 “Children’s Table at the Maryland Fair,” Zion’s Herald and Wesleyan Journal, January 13, 1864, 8. 115 “Give it to the Soldiers,” Youth’s Companion, July 16, 1863, 114. 116 “A True Story for Children,” Youth’s Companion, December 10, 1863, 199.

191 boys published at least five issues of a newspaper beginning in March of 1865, with the proceeds going to the Sanitary Commission. The newspaper featured a hodgepodge of original compositions, jokes, poems, puzzles, editorials, articles culled from other publications, as well as advertisements. Children publishing newspapers was not without precedent. Several groups of boys began their own amateur newspapers in the antebellum era. In an extraordinary case, a twelve year old girl in upstate New York named Nellie used her brother’s printing press to produce the Penfield Extra, beginning in December

1861, and reached a circulation over 3,000.117 She tried to profit from her newspaper through advertising, subscriptions, individuals, photographs of herself, as well as autobiographies that featured “a nice steel plate engraving of Nellie in her boots.”118 With the exception of Nellie’s newspaper, these earlier child-published newspapers made little money through their enterprises, and none raised money for benevolent purposes.

However, the wartime editors of the Dearborn Extra in Chicago laid out elaborate mechanisms to raise money, selling individual copies for five cents, and offering a monthly subscription for twenty-five cents. The newspaper was sold at a single newsstand in the city.119 Schools in the city could also purchase copies by the hundred for

$3.00, two-hundred for $5.00, or five-hundred for $10.00.120 In so doing, the boys utilized a common sales technique of lowering per-piece newspaper prices when bought in bulk, to encourage large purchases.

117 Dennis R. Laurie, “Nellie Williams and the Penfield Extra,” Almanac: AAS Newsletter 70 (2006): 1. 118 “Little Nellie’s Photograph,” Penfield Extra, August 16, 1862, 2; “Nellie’s Life,” Penfield Extra, June 28, 1862, 4. 119 “The ‘Dearborn Gazette,’” Dearborn School Gazette, March 28, 1865, 2. Collection of publications and ephemera related to the fairs, dinners, etc., held at Cincinnati, Albany, St. Louis, New York, Chicago, Indianapolis, and other locales, 1861-1864, PUL. 120 “Apology of the Editor,” Dearborn School Gazette, March 21, 1865, 1. Collection of publications and ephemera related to the fairs, dinners, etc., held at Cincinnati, Albany, St. Louis, New York, Chicago, Indianapolis, and other locales, 1861-1864, PUL.

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In another case of juvenile philanthropy, Sunday school pupils in Kalamazoo,

Michigan used the same investment theme employed by the American Board of

Commissioners for Foreign Missions for its Morning Star, but nothing suggests that they were directly inspired by the missionary ship (though a Kalamazoo church Sunday school did organize a “Morning Star Association” in 1856).121 In February of 1864, children began the Bird’s Nest Bank, sprouting from a Union Soldier’s one cent donation.

Children who contributed ten cents received certificates and became stockholders in the bank. Eighty percent of the money went to freedmen, and the remaining twenty percent went to the benefit of the bank (in a manner determined by the supervising instructor).

Good humored rumors swirled that the organizers of the Bank had consulted financier

Jay Cooke, who had spearheaded the adult-centered Union war bonds campaign.

Children working for the Bird’s Nest Bank sacrificed their play time to sell certificates.

The Bird’s Nest Bank fundraising system expanded outside of Kalamazoo, with the bank counting stockholders in nearly every Union state. The Bank’s promotion utilized the popularity of sanitary fairs, offering stocks at the Chicago Sanitary Fair (the nearest major fair), and raised $240 one year after its creation, and over $800 in total.122

As the Civil War concluded, one of the most elaborate juvenile fundraising schemes for the Sanitary Commission effectively played on boys’ and girls’ wishes to be part of the action, through a fundraising scheme named “The Army of the American

121 W.S.H., “Morning Star Association,” Youth’s Dayspring, November 1856, 88. 122 Goodrich, Tribute Book, 373-375; “The ‘Bird’s Nest Bank,’” The American Missionary, February 1867, 41. The only states that did not send contributions were Rhode Island and Maryland. The fact that Goodrich regarded this aid for freedmen as part of the war effort demonstrates that the Bird’s Nest Bank was regarded as part of Civil War fundraising.

193

Eagle.”123 Spearheaded by Alfred L. Sewell, chairman of “The Special Committee on

Printing, Blank Books, Stationery” for the May 1865 sanitary fair in Chicago, children entered the “Army of the American Eagle” as privates by contributing fifteen cents to the

Sanitary Commission.124 In exchange, they each received an attractive colorful card depicting “Old Abe,” an eagle who acted as mascot for the Eighth Wisconsin Regiment, set against a brightly colored shield emblazoned with the American Flag. The back of the card outlined Old Abe’s role in the war and how the money raised would be used. The back of the card also promoted a book published by Sewell on Old Abe’s life, that would be put on sale one or two weeks prior to the Chicago Fair, with the proceeds going to benefit soldiers.125 Sewell encouraged girls and boys to sell these cards to children and adults in return for a “handsomely printed” certificate confirming their promotion.126 The certificate included the emblem of the USSC, illustrations of soldiers, and patriotic imagery, reminding young fundraisers that they were participating in the war effort.127

While the rank of corporal or sergeant required selling a manageable ten or twenty Old

Abe cards respectively, a boy or girl had to sell four thousand cards to earn a major general’s commission (Sewell retained supreme command as the lieutenant general of the imagined army). Sewell’s military commission scheme proved overly optimistic (early in the campaign he stated that he wanted “a General and two to six colonels in each state”

123 “Northwestern Sanitary Fair,” Zion’s Herald and Wesleyan Herald, April 19, 1865, 64; “Alfred L. Sewell,” American Phrenological Journal, October 1867; Alfred L. Sewell, “Our New Firm: A Glance at the Past and a Look Ahead,” Little Corporal, February 1869, 31. 124 “Circular on the Special Committee on Printing, Blank Books, Stationery,” The Bugle Call, February 1865, 2; “The Soldier Bird. Boys, and Girls, Attention!,” The Bugle Call, February 1865, 1. Collection of publications and ephemera related to the fairs, dinners, etc., held at Cincinnati, Albany, St. Louis, New York, Chicago, Indianapolis, and other locales, 1861-1864, PUL. Although the 1865 Chicago fair took place after the War’s conclusion, money was still needed to aid Union veterans. 125 The New Picture of the Eagle (Chicago: Dunlop, Sewell, and Spalding, 1865). 126 Marten, Children’s Civil War, 184-185. 127 Marten, Children’s Civil War, 184.

194 and raise a total of ten thousand dollars) as no child ever attained a rank higher than

Colonel (at one thousand cards, this still required remarkable entrepreneurship).128

Offering no training or suggestions on vending to his young recruits, Sewell expected children to form clubs and brainstorm their own sales strategies, but he enticed them with promises of prizes and fame. Though children had collected money through

‘Alert Clubs’ since 1861, their subscription systems had been less organized and centralized than Sewell’s fundraising scheme.129 Sewell promised that the boy and girl who sold the most cards would each be awarded a gold medal, and the runners-up would win silver or bronze medals, but he ultimately awarded gold medals to all three children who earned the rank of Colonel. The winning children were also promised a telegram inviting them to be present at the Chicago Fair for the award ceremony, no doubt an exciting prospect.130 The obverse of the medals tied Sewell’s fundraising scheme to the national imagery, depicting an eagle and the text “Army of the American Eagle.” The medal’s reverse elaborated on the theme of patriotism and linked a boy’s or girl’s fundraising prowess to his or her loyalty to the nation, with the inscription “Medals of

Honor Awarded at the Great Sanitary Fair in Chicago, 1865, for Patriotic Services.”131

The lofty message of the medallion must have heightened a winning child’s sense that

128 “The Soldier Bird. Boys and Girls, Attention!,” The Bugle Call, February 1865, 1. Collection of publications and ephemera related to the fairs, dinners, etc., held at Cincinnati, Albany, St. Louis, New York, Chicago, Indianapolis, and other locales, 1861-1864, PUL. 129 Gordon, Bazaars and Fair Ladies, 90; “An Appeal to the Little Girls of Harrisburg,” Evening Telegraph (Harrisburg), March 14, 1864 (Evening Edition), 3; The Soldier’s Friend. U.S. Sanitary Commission (Philadelphia: Perkinpine and Higgins, 1865), 40. Still, children’s Alert Clubs should not be viewed as entirely disorganized, as teachers in Pennsylvania were sent instructions on how to organize the clubs. 130 Alfred L. Sewell, The Person Receiving This Will Please Send it to Some One Who Will Join Us In Working for the Soldiers (c. 1865). Collection of publications and ephemera related to the fairs, dinners, etc., held at Cincinnati, Albany, St. Louis, New York, Chicago, Indianapolis, and other locales, 1861-1864, PUL. 131 B.F. Taylor, “A Glimpse at the Great Fair,” in Supplement to the Little Corporal (c. 1865), 2. Collection of publications and ephemera related to the fairs, dinners, etc., held at Cincinnati, Albany, St. Louis, New York, Chicago, Indianapolis, and other locales, 1861-1864, PUL.

195 she or he had helped save the Union. Sewell made the promised award ceremony even more exciting and auspicious by suggesting that Ulysses and Julia Grant, as well as

William Tecumseh and Ellen Sherman might attend.132 Many boys and girls surely glowed at the thought of being recognized for extraordinary patriotism in the presence of a prominent general or his wife.

Sewell backed away from making the medals a quid pro quo for successful fundraising, explaining that “[w]e offer these rewards, not because the boys and girls of

America need any other incentive than exalted patriotism to work for our soldiers, but because we think the hard workers should be honored.”133 Still, the effort that went into designing a medal for the event, the cost involved in minting them, and the pomp surrounding the ceremony indicate that Sewell recognized that the medals motivated girls and boys. Girls made up the bulk of the most successful donors, including an African

American child who earned a silver medal.134 A report on the “Army” published by

Sewell, justified female involvement in a military themed organization, explaining that

“[b]elieving it ‘Women’s Right’ to be an angel, his army is bewilderingly rich in little girls. He has Julias that are Lieutenants, he has Mollys that are captains, as they had in the Revolution [a reference to Molly Pitcher]; and Marys that are Lieutenant-

Colonels.”135 The “Army of the American Eagle” fundraising campaign proved successful. At its zenith, Sewell was receiving four to five hundred dollars a day from

132 Alfred L. Sewell, “Boys and Girls,” Chicago Tribune, April 24, 1865, 3. 133 Ibid. 134 “U.S. Sanitary Commission,” Chicago Tribune, June 10, 1865, 4. 135 “B.F. Taylor, “A Glimpse at the Great Fair,” in Supplement to the Little Corporal (c. 1865), 2. Collection of publications and ephemera related to the fairs, dinners, etc., held at Cincinnati, Albany, St. Louis, New York, Chicago, Indianapolis, and other locales, 1861-1864, PUL.

196 children (and more on exceptional days).136 Many children were recruited by Sewell, who claimed to have heard from twelve thousand of them (so many that Sewell required seven clerks to help manage the children’s participation), raising over sixteen thousand dollars.137 Though based out of Chicago and seemingly receiving the most aid from

Illinoisan children, the Army of the American Eagle inspired boys and girls from across the Union. Indeed, Sewell’s three most successful young fundraisers, who earned the rank of colonel, lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Toledo, Ohio; and New Bedford,

Massachusetts with other successful children living in locales such as: St. Louis,

Missouri; Portland, Michigan; and Boston, Massachusetts.

Ultimately, the profits from the “Army of the American Eagle” amounted to almost one-tenth the total amount raised by the Chicago fair.138 At the fair itself, “Old

Abe” the Eagle was put on display, with cards sold for fifteen cents and histories of the eagle sold for fifty cents.139 Though Sewell’s hope that Ulysses Grant and his wife might attend did not materialize, General Joseph Hooker attended the medal ceremony, and briefly appeared on the stage at the vocal encouragement of the audience. Major Hudson, who had apprehended Confederate President Jefferson Davis trying to escape the Union

Army, also addressed the audience, regaling attendees with the story of the ex-president’s capture.

136 Alfred L. Sewell, “The Veteran Eagle, and What the Children Did,” Little Corporal, December 1866, 88. 137 Marten, Children’s Civil War, 185; Alfred L. Sewell, Supplement to the Little Corporal” (c 1865). Collection of publications and ephemera related to the fairs, dinners, etc., held at Cincinnati, Albany, St. Louis, New York, Chicago, Indianapolis, and other locales, 1861-1864, PUL. His collection of letters would have been invaluable for scholars, had they likely not been destroyed in the 1871 Great Chicago Fire. 138 “Alfred L. Sewell,” American Phrenological Journal, October 1867, 134; Alfred L. Sewell, “The Veteran Eagle, and What the Children Did,” Little Corporal, December 1866, 88. 139 Don’t Fail to see the Live War Eagle, (c. 1865). Collection of publications and ephemera related to the fairs, dinners, etc., held at Cincinnati, Albany, St. Louis, New York, Chicago, Indianapolis, and other locales, 1861-1864, PUL; Joseph O. Barrett, History of ‘Old Abe,’ The Live Eagle (Chicago: Alfred L. Sewell, 1865).

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The Little Corporal and the Lasting Selling Power of the War

Alfred Sewell’s appeals to children continued after the War’s end, raising money for destitute children, with particular focus on the orphans of slain Union soldiers. The primary means by which he maintained communication with his army of fundraisers was through The Little Corporal, a monthly juvenile periodical he published and edited, which boasted 35,000 subscribers at the end of its first year, and reached 85,000 subscribers by the beginning of 1869.140 Unlike previous juvenile periodicals, which relied primarily on regional circulations, the Little Corporal reached a much more geographically widespread audience.141

The Little Corporal continued some of the themes developed by Sewell in his appeals to children during the Civil War and remained invested in the imagery of the War itself. Sewell suspected that children would continue to be fascinated with the war after its conclusion, and used the popularity of war with children to boost revenue. Viewing the Little Corporal as the natural continuation of the Army of the American Eagle,

Sewell regularly set stories during the conflict. Sewell retold the story of the Army of the

American Eagle and narrated Old Abe’s military exploits in the Little Corporal. Boys and girls (especially the former) were included as imagined participants in the war. The cover of issues of the periodical depicted a boy sitting and reading the Little Corporal in an idealized Victorian domestic setting. The militarist fantasy created an exciting sense of independence for a child while keeping him or her safely at home. Though safe in the

140 Alfred L. Sewell, Supplement to the Little Corporal” (c. 1865). Collection of publications and ephemera related to the fairs, dinners, etc., held at Cincinnati, Albany, St. Louis, New York, Chicago, Indianapolis, and other locales, 1861-1864, PUL; Alfred L. Sewell, “The Veteran Eagle, and What the Children Did,” Little Corporal, December 1866; “Large Circulations,” Little Corporal, January 1869, 14. 141 Mark I. West, “The Little Corporal,” in Children’s Periodicals of the United States, ed. R. Gordon Kelly (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1984), 282.

198 bosom of a comfortable home, the boy in his own military-themed world, indicated by the military uniform he is wearing, with the two chevrons of a corporal, and by his enthrallment with the periodical in front of him. The physical space in which the Little

Corporal was published perpetuated its military theme: outside the office for the Little

Corporal in Chicago lay a gigantic 1,275 pound cannonball, which boys integrated into their play, leapfrogging over it as they passed.142

Sewell built on his wartime organizing, giving the first issue of the Little

Corporal to young members of the Army of the American Eagle.143 Sewell explained to his young readers that the end of the Army of the American Eagle was “only the successful close of our first campaign,” and that “[t]he new campaign is to bless the soldier’s orphans, and the poor children all over the land.”144 Through the Little

Corporal, Sewell continued to encourage boys and girls to help the northern victims of the War, in particular orphans, “whose papas are slumbering in unknown graves far over all the broad sunny South.”145 Destitute children would be given the Little Corporal and pictures of Abraham Lincoln reading with his son Tad. The Little Corporal would teach them “to hate wrong and vice, and love goodness and purity.” Moreover, the picture of

President Lincoln would instill in boys and girls the “glory and reward which surely crowns a pure and virtuous life.”146 Later in the periodical’s run, children were also encouraged to buy subscriptions for African American children in the South, as well as for foreign missionaries, while still giving subscriptions to the impoverished sons and

142 “Picture of the Big Cannonball,” Little Corporal, August 1869, 21. 143 West, “Little Corporal,” 277-278; Sewell, Supplement to Little Corporal, 1. 144 Alfred L. Sewell, “New Campaign for the Army of the American Eagle,” in Supplement to Little Corporal, 1. Collection of publications and ephemera related to the fairs, dinners, etc., held at Cincinnati, Albany, St. Louis, New York, Chicago, Indianapolis, and other locales, 1861-1864, PUL. 145 Glance Gaylord, “Soldiers’ Orphans,” Little Corporal, January 1866, 3. 146 Sewell, “New Campaign for the Army of the American Eagle,” 1.

199 daughters of dead Union soldiers. In one issue, Sewell reprinted a letter from a female war orphan who desperately wants to subscribe, but “can not (sic) raise the money.”

Sewell claimed that such letters were common, and that considering that many young readers:

have plenty that is nice to eat and to wear, and kind parents to provide you with books and papers to read, and to see that no real want of yours is unsatisfied, you do not wish to forget, I am sure, the hungry little mouths and minds and hearts that are everywhere, and I know you would be glad to do something for them. And I think you could do a great deal of good by sending “The Little Corporal” to some of these who want it so much, but cannot pay for it.147 To honor contributors, the Little Corporal kept a “Blue Book” (the color of Union uniforms), which listed donations for the benefit of war orphans. Donors also received a letter of acknowledgement that listed the names of the boys and girls getting the Little

Corporal because of their gifts.148

Though Sewell maintained the virtue of charity in his periodical, especially as it pertained to the Civil War, he also offered financial rewards to children who sold a lot of the printed material he produced. In so doing, Sewell extolled the virtues of capitalism to his young readers. For instance, Sewell advertised that he would sell twenty copies of his history of Old Abe at a reduced bulk price of three dollars. Children could sell the books for twenty cents each, so if they sold all twenty, they would collect four dollars. If a child sold a block of fifty, he or she would raise ten dollars for an investment of only six dollars, a personal profit of four dollars. Sewell underscored to young readers that they stood to benefit from this arrangement, explaining that he was “giving you a chance for a profit in selling them”149 Sewell attached a benevolent act to the sale of his history of Old

Abe, adding that “[f]or every six dollars you send for these books you may forward the

147 “Letters,” Little Corporal, April 1866, 61. 148 “The Corporal’s Blue-Book,” Little Corporal, May 1866, 77. 149 Alfred L. Sewell, “New Campaign for the Army of the American Eagle.”

200 name and address of some soldier’s orphan or poor child, and I will send to that one, free of charge, a copy of the Premium Picture [of Lincoln] and ‘Little Corporal’ for one year.”150 Likewise, he offered to sell children copies of an earlier biography of Old Abe or the colorful cards at a discount, giving children an opportunity to profit.

As Sewell’s juvenile periodical took off, charity took a subordinate position to an increasingly elaborate premium system he devised, which rewarded children who recruited a lot of new subscribers. Significantly, the primary material benefactor of this fundraising technique was not a benevolent cause, but the editor and owner of the Little

Corporal, with charity taking on a secondary role. Children received prizes for selling subscriptions of the Little Corporal. Moreover, the largely symbolic prizes associated with the Army of the American Eagle, namely faux military commissions and medals, gave way to overtly consumer goods. In exchange for signing up a small number of subscribers, a child would receive a modest prize, such as an illustration of Abraham

Lincoln with his son Tad for two subscriptions, or a reproduction of Raphael’s painting

“Cherubs of the Sistine Madonna” for ten subscriptions (a number that was subsequently reduced), which Sewell heavily promoted in the periodical over an extended period, emphasizing its detail and quality.151 However, Sewell advertised a range of more expensive premiums for children, clubs, and schools that proved especially adept at selling subscriptions. Sewell initially made pipe organs of varying qualities the premier prizes, but added sewing machines, silver watches, shotguns, pianos, and velocipedes.152

150 Ibid. 151 “Our New Premiums,” Little Corporal, July 1866, 13; “Raphael’s Cherubs,” Little Corporal, July 1866, 15; “Raphael’s Cherubs,” Little Corporal, November 1866, 78. Sewell also recruited children to sell the engraving as canvassers, and receive a cash commission in return. 152 “Our Organ Premium,” Little Corporal, October 1866, 7; “A Good Silver Watch for a Prize,” Little Corporal, March 1867, 45; “To Country Boys and Young Men: the Greatest Premium for You,” Little Corporal, August 1867, 29; “Steinway’s Pianos,” Little Corporal, October 1867, 61.

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Sewell experimented with the popularity of new prizes with boys and girls. For instance, after he tested a new design of interlocking building blocks on his own children and found them to be “one of the most interesting toys I have ever seen,” he offered the toy (named Crandall Blocks after their innovator) as a prize for organizing a club with eight subscribing members.153 Four months later, Crandall blocks, spurred by good sales, expanded to include a variety of styles and colors; Sewell consequently adapted his promotion by offering different formats of blocks as a reward for enlisting larger or smaller numbers of subscribers.154 The Little Corporal also offered cash rewards for subscription sales, but underscored its preference for non-monetary rewards, because it could award more valuable prizes, by securing “very large discounts from the articles we offer as premiums.”155 Though selecting a premium over cash may have given a girl or boy better value, it also offered the child less control over his or her consumption, and would likely rule out donating the prize to a benevolent cause. The entire operation of subscriptions and premiums became so extensive that the Little Corporal boasted “it has kept twelve clerks, male and female, (besides the two editors, and the printers, and binders,) in the Corporal office, to take care of our ever-marching army, and to send off the premiums and magazines.”156

Though both boys and girls were encouraged to organize clubs of subscribers to win premiums, Sewell envisioned some of his rewards as naturally suited for one sex over the other. Sewell presumed that boys (especially in rural locales) would want the shotguns he offered, explicitly addressing his announcement of their availability “[t]o

153 Alfred L. Sewell, “A New and Useful Toy,” Little Corporal, April 1867, 61. For more on George Crandall’s contribution to the toy industry, see: Cross, Kids’ Stuff, 37-39. 154 “Crandall’s Blocks: More Styles and Prices Reduced,” Little Corporal, August 1867, 29. 155 “Cash Commissions,” Little Corporal, December 1870, Addendum. 156 “Our Premiums,” Little Corporal, March 1870, 45.

202 country boys and young men.”157 Similarly, when the Little Corporal began offering a velocipede as a prize for the most sales in 1869 (while cleverly including an article on the joys of velocipede ownership in the same issue), the editor offered an organ as an alternative prize, insisting that “[o]f course a lady or girl would be likely to prefer the

Organ, while a boy or young man might prefer a Velocipede.”158

Sewell also offered cash to the boys and girls who sold the most subscriptions in a given time. One such competition held in 1866 awarded the first prize of one hundred dollars to Katie Anderson, who sold 263 subscriptions, more than twice the number sold by the second place winner.159 Katie Anderson’s extraordinary skill at sales was briefly used as a source of inspiration directed at young readers for a future contest. The Little

Corporal advertised shortly after Anderson’s victory that “[i]f you go to work with the energy that Katie Anderson displayed, you may take home the hundred dollar prize next

December” (though Sewell withdrew the contest when he sensed few were competing in earnest, and substituted the cash prize with the organ premium).160 The primary motivation for selling large numbers of subscriptions was not salvation or an impulse to do good. Rather, it was to win premiums and cash prizes, which Sewell promised were

“worth the effort.”161

Though his priorities shifted from wartime charity to the commercially driven

Little Corporal, Sewell continued to invoke the imagery and tropes of juvenile benevolence. Sewell thus linked subscribing to the Little Corporal with the same

157 “To Country Boys and Young Men: the Greatest Premium for You,” Little Corporal, August 1867, 29. 158 “The Velocipede Prize,” Little Corporal, March 1869, 45; H.I.S. Rider, “My Velocipede,” Little Corporal, March 1869, 46. See also: Karin Calvert, Children in the House: The Material Culture of Early Childhood (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992), 114. According to Calvert, opposition to girls or women riding bicycles stemmed from a broader discomfort with women straddling an object. 159 “Award of Premiums,” Little Corporal, July 1866, 14. 160 “Cash Premiums,” Little Corporal, August 1866, 30. 161 “The Cash Prizes Again,” Little Corporal, April 1866, 61.

203 evangelical Christian morality deployed in reformers’ children’s literature published before the conflict. However, Sewell’s use of these themes ultimately contributed to the financial success of his periodical. For instance, Sewell tied the recurring virtuous dying child to buying Little Corporal subscriptions. In 1867, Sewell received and published a letter written by the parents of a recently deceased twelve-year old subscriber named

Minnie. Before Minnie died, she arranged for some of her savings to buy subscriptions of the Little Corporal for her cousins. In another instance, May L. DeWitt raised money for her subscription to Sewell’s periodical with the same self-denying techniques championed by missionary reformers: she sacrificed coffee and tea, and in exchange her father bought her the Little Corporal. DeWitt encouraged children to follow her example in a letter she sent to Sewell, which he subsequently republished.162 Another child reported giving up purchasing firecrackers to buy the Little Corporal.163 Moreover, like antebellum juvenile benevolent societies, children were encouraged to organize clubs aligned with the Little Corporal. However, instead of being dedicated principally to self- denial and charity, the clubs Sewell promoted dedicated themselves to pooling resources to win premiums, and subsequently expand the circulation of the Little Corporal. Despite its commercial message, one contributor to the Little Corporal ascribed benevolent and religious significance to the periodical, and likened its publication and sale to the work of missionaries, explaining that “I believe God has a special mission for the LITTLE

CORPORAL, and hope its usefulness may never be sacrificed for popularity or profit.”164 Similarly a subscriber from Saginaw, Michigan, canvassing for new subscribers, commented that “[w]e have sent over twenty-five subscribers from nearly as

162 “Children’s Letters,” Little Corporal, July 1867, 12. 163 “Prudy’s Pocket,” Little Corporal, November 1869, 78. 164 “Prudy’s Pocket,” Little Corporal, August 1869, 31.

204 many places, and feel as if we have been doing missionary work, and had been well paid for it.”165 Underscoring its alignment with evangelical campaigns, missions in Fuzhou,

China received subscriptions to the Little Corporal, and reported back to the periodical with accounts of its popularity amongst children and its positive influence on them.166

As the Little Corporal’s strategies to increase its subscriptions indicate, by the end of the Civil War, many Americans had become more comfortable explicitly encouraging juvenile consumerism. This shift towards glorifying juvenile consumption, rather than ambivalence towards it, was in no small part spurred by fundraising for the

Union, which was itself a product of antebellum benevolence. During the Civil War, children were organized through print culture, Sunday schools, and public and private schools, to manufacture, sell, and buy for the benefit of the Union, especially through fundraising fairs for the USSC. Indeed, the Civil War expanded juvenile participation in philanthropy, offering children multiple avenues by which to participate in fundraising as entrepreneurs, investors, and consumers.

165 “Prudy’s Pocket,” Little Corporal, March 1870, 46. 166 Sarah L. Woodin, “Letter from China,” Little Corporal, October 1869 , 59; Mark I. West, “Little Corporal,” 280-281. Sewell continued as editor of the Little Corporal until he was forced to give up control of the newspaper after his publishing offices were destroyed by the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Though the Little Corporal continued to operate for four more years without Sewell, the periodical reduced its emphasis of Civil War language and imagery after his departure.

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Conclusion

An 1870 article on juvenile play lamented that many wealthy parents spoiled their children with extravagant toys, but also regretted that “poor children suffer because they have no material whereon to exercise their imaginations.”1 The author’s concern for impoverished children characterized a broad sentiment of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: that all children should make play a primary activity and that all girls and boys should be removed from the workforce.2 Though the article’s author worried about overly-indulged, privileged children, he or she could not have imagined how large the toy industry would grow to be, or how ubiquitous and influential the idea of the child- consumer would become.3

1 “The Rationale of Toys,” Harper’s Bazaar, August 13, 1870, 517. 2 Viviana A. Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children (New York: Basic Books, 1985). Of course, wealthier families could more effectively shield their children from the dangers of the market. 3 The development of juvenile consumerism in the late-nineteenth and twentieth century is well documented. Though scholars differ over the extent to which children are discerning consumers, they agree that children, and the idea of childhood, have played an integral role in the growth of consumer culture in the twentieth century. “Children’s Mite” pushes this further by suggesting that children and perceptions of childhood were an important part of the growth of consumerism before the Civil War, and contending that ideas of childhood affected the development of philanthropy. See: Ellen Seiter, Sold Separately: Parents and Children in Consumer Culture (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1993); Stephen Kline, Out of the Garden: Toys, TV, and Children’s Culture in the Age of Marketing (London: Verso, 1993); Miriam Formanek-Brunell, Made to Play House: Dolls and the Commercialization of Childhood, 1830- 1930 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993); Gary Cross; Kids’ Stuff: Toys and the Changing World of American Childhood (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997); James Marten, The Children’s Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 20; Lisa Jacobson, Raising Consumers: Children and the American Mass Market in the Early Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004); Peter N. Stearns, Anxious Parents: A History of Modern Childrearing in America (New York: New York University Press, 2003), 163-210; Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Knopf, 2003), 318-320; Daniel Thomas Cook, The Commercialization of Childhood: The Children’s Clothing Industry and the Rise of the Child Consumer (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004); Howard P. Chudacoff, Children at Play: An American History (New York: New York University Press, 2008). Mary Lynn Stevens Heininger, “Children, Childhood, and Change in America,” in A Century of Childhood, 1820-1920, Mary Lynn Stevens Heininger et al eds. (Rochester, NY: Margaret Woodbury Strong Museum, 1986), 15-18.

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As children of all classes became more closely associated with play in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, elite parents lavished their youngsters with more playthings, and the toy industry mushroomed. Both the quantity and variety of playthings grew. In the late nineteenth century, the rise of toy production paralleled the broader growth of American industry, with innovations in manufacturing playthings that helped

America surpass Europe as the center of the toy trade. At the turn of the twentieth century, toy advertising became more sophisticated and commonplace. Toy manufacturers also began targeting children directly, instead of just appealing to their parents, much in the same way as antebellum reformers had targeted children.4

Changes to playthings over the past century-and-a-half have more closely linked children to the appeals of the toy industry, at the expense of familial relationships. Early nineteenth century playthings manufactured by adults were replicas from adult life intended to prepare children for adulthood, and to strengthen family ties.5 However, from the late nineteenth into the twentieth century, toys evolved to generate entertaining fantasylands divorced from reality, with which adults were unfamiliar. Having an imaginary world that their parents did not understand, and in which the child was in control, gave girls and boys a sense of liberation.6 For instance, 1930s toys representing characters from films and comic books – like Mickey Mouse and Charlie Chaplin – became popular among youngsters.7 This change ultimately gave the toy industry more control over children’s play at the expense of parental guidance.8 Toys on the market in

4 Cross, Kids’ Stuff, 28-29. 5 Formanek-Brunell, Made to Play House, 8-10; Cross, Kids’ Stuff, 50-81; Karin Calvert, Children in the House: The Material Culture of Early Childhood, 1600-1900 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992), 118. 6 Cross, Kids’ Stuff, 83. 7 Ibid., 102. 8 Ibid., 188.

207 the 2010s, including Captain America, G.I. Joe, Transformers, and Monster High, suggest that many toys continue to facilitate imaginary universes, instead of preparing girls and boys for adulthood.9

Corporations are aware of children’s economic influence and devote considerable resources to appeal to them. Indeed, the outreach to children has grown into a multibillion dollar toy industry, buttressed since the 1950s by promotional television shows (essentially half hour advertisements) and television commercials that whet juvenile desire. 10 Corporations also appeal to youngsters because of their influence over adult spending decisions – such as grocery purchases and the family’s choice of restaurant – with promotions such as Little Orphan Annie endorsing Ovaltine and

McDonalds Happy Meal premiums.11

In contrast, many parents, educators, and reformers have expressed anxiety over desirous children. These concerns have been especially acute over poorer children and adolescents, whose spending habits have been characterized as wasteful and threatening to the middle-class ideal of the innocent child.12 In response to the child-consumer, banks supported instituting school lessons on banking techniques at the turn of the twentieth century. Additionally, interest groups and activists continue to challenge commercials and juvenile television programs that they consider inappropriate, resist corporate influence in school, and lament that children are overly exposed to advertising.13 For instance, when Nike introduced an exercise on designing a shoe to elementary school

9 Interestingly, many popular toys in 2011 are continuations of 1980s product lines. This suggests that the childhood toys of parents and their daughters and sons are more similar than that of earlier generations. 10 Kline, Out of the Garden; Seiter, Sold Separately. 11Cross, Kids’ Stuff, 6-7; 226-227; Jacobson, Raising Consumers,183. 12 Jacobson, Raising Consumers, 62-64. 13 Seiter, Sold Separately, 98.

208 curricula across the country for the 1997-1998 school year, the National Education

Association decried the lesson as a “despicable use of classroom time.”14 Still, by the early twenty-first century most adult Americans presume that children’s primary interaction with the economy is as consumers.15

The child-consumer is now a key part of the United States economy and the principal financial role expected of youngsters, but it is not the only way parents and educators anticipate children engaging the marketplace. Though secondary to consumerism, parents, religious leaders, and educators continue to encourage youngsters at an early age to earn, save and donate money. Continuing a trend starting at least as far back as the antebellum era, the impulse to teach responsible spending habits is heightened when a family’s socio-economic status is in greater doubt. For instance, in response to the recession that began in 2008, the educational children’s television program Sesame

Street focused more on the subject of money, with sponsorship from PNC Bank, in a new series entitled “For Me, For You, For Later.” In one episode of the series, the Muppet

Elmo teaches children the importance of a balanced financial outlook, instructing children to keep three money jars, labeled: saving, spending, and sharing. To encourage putting away money, while linking frugality with amusement, Elmo demonstrates to his young audience that an entertaining noise is produced by shaking a jar of coins. In another installment, Elmo stars in a song entitled “Elmo’s Gonna Save,” in which the title character dances around Sesame Street with Muppet penguins (voiced by the rapper,

14 Naomi Klein, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2000), 93. 15 Jacobson, Raising Consumers, 6-7; 58-70.

209

Common), earning and saving money, while taking delight in the process. In so doing,

Elmo teaches that conservative financial habits can be fun.16

The Sesame Street and PNC Bank financial management campaign does not teach children to save every penny: Elmo instructs children to spend some money (the ‘For Me’ portion) on their whims. In one video in the series, Ava decides to spend her money on a paint set for herself, selecting one set over another because it “has more colors.”17 Even the “saving” jar is for self-gratification, albeit delayed: in another video in the series, young Leo is saving his money for a guitar he wants. Charity is encouraged in the new series as the “For You” component of money management: in one film in the series, Leo gives some of his money to feed kittens.18 Elmo addressed Sesame Street’s new direction in an interview with Ron Lieber of the New York Times, explaining that he is giving money “where the tsunami was in Japan… We’re pitching in and we’re putting some of our money together to send to help.” 19 Though purportedly instilling responsible financial values, the message of this series of Sesame Street stresses the charitable and entertainment value of saving, feeding into notions that childhood should be an especially delightful period of life. Spending on personal gratification is stressed more than in the nineteenth century, but children continue to be taught at an early age that appropriate money management involves self-denial for the benefit of the less fortunate.

Likewise, the child philanthropist, especially a dying one, remains a powerful icon in American culture, capable of stirring others to generosity. In 2011,

16 “Elmo’s Three Jars,” YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzoxZG9OH5M&feature=share. 17 “Ava Chooses a Paint Set,” PNC Bank, http://pnc.thedigitalcenter.com/assets/show/10795-e-ava- chooses-a-paint-set. 18 “Leo Manages his Money,” PNC Bank, http://pnc.thedigitalcenter.com/assets/show/10798-h-leo- manages-his-money. 19 Matthew Orr and Ron Lieber, “Talking Money with Elmo” New York Times Online, April 2011, http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/04/15/business/100000000776361/talking-money-with-elmo.html.

210

Washingtonian Rachel Beckwith announced that all she wanted for her ninth birthday were donations towards her goal of raising three-hundred dollars for supplying potable water for Africa, through the organization “Charity: Water.” “I don’t want a birthday party,” she explained, “I don’t want gifts, I just want people to have clean water.”

Beckwith sacrificed birthday gifts and operated a fundraising website, but she fell short of her goal by eighty dollars. After she was killed in an automobile collision a few weeks after her birthday, Beckwith’s pastor reopened the dead girl’s fundraising website, to extraordinary success (with help on Twitter from actress Alyssa Milano): over 30,000 donors had contributed more than a million dollars within a few weeks. On Beckwith’s posthumous website, one anonymous donor echoed antebellum sentiments, opining that

“Rachel will meet all her goals in heaven.”20 The outpouring of support following

Beckwith’s death underscores how powerful the ideal of the self-sacrificing and charitable child remains in the United States. However, the charitable organization through which Beckwith showed self-denial linked philanthropy with consumerism, by selling merchandise such as shirts, notepads, wristbands, and bracelets. On its merchandise page, “Charity: Water” explains that people should “[h]elp bring clean water to people in need. And look good doing it.”21

This project complicates our understanding of the rise of consumerism by contending that the concepts of philanthropy and consumerism are not historically separate impulses. Over the course of the nineteenth century, reformers used the tactics of consumerism to win the affection of children. “Children’s Mite” has demonstrated that

20 “Rachel’s 9th Birthday Wish,” Charity: Water, http://www.mycharitywater.org/p/campaign?campaign_id=16396. 21 “Store,” Charity: Water, http://www.charitywater.org/store/.

211 antebellum juvenile instructional literature and child-centered missionary and temperance societies passed financial lessons to girls and boys, instructing children how to effectively raise and spend money, while permitting juvenile consumerism that was considered appropriate. Childrearing reformers also condemned miserliness and taught children that giving could be a source of virtuous pleasure. Moreover, fundraisers for the Civil War encouraged children to produce, buy, and sell luxury objects, when it aided the Union cause. In these ways, reformers immersed girls and boys in marketplace principles and legitimized juvenile consumption, by framing it as a potentially virtuous exercise. After the American Civil War, as Alfred Sewell’s Little Corporal suggests, the principles extolled in juvenile philanthropy became virtues ascribed to juvenile consumerism itself.

Though childhood has developed into a separate phase of life that is supposed to be free from anxieties of the marketplace, girls and boys are still taught how to handle money to prepare them for adulthood. However, nineteenth century middle-class childhood was never removed from the marketplace: as “Children’s Mite” has demonstrated, such a ‘golden age’ of childhood never existed. Children’s pennies and spending habits have long been contested terrain: since the early nineteenth century, children played an active part in the economy as contributors to philanthropic causes, receiving encouragement to do so from adult reformers. Moreover, participation in these causes involved children in other facets of the economy: namely entrepreneurship, manufacturing, and consumption. In so doing, middle-class Americans deepened class divisions, as they championed the virtues of their financial priorities. The efforts of reformers to recruit children suggest that rather than pine for an imagined era when children were not involved in financial matters, Americans should contemplate which

212 financial priorities should be conveyed to girls and boys and train them to understand the workings of money.

213

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VITA DAVID MICHAEL GREENSPOON

Education:______

 The Pennsylvania State University, Ph.D., History, August 2012.  McMaster University, M.A., History, November 2004.  University of British Columbia, B.A. (hons.), History, May 2002.

Selected Publications:______Article:

 (Co-written with Stephen Heathorn), “Organizing Youth for Partisan Politics in Britain, 1918- c. 1932” The Historian 68, no. 1 (2006): 89-119. [Peer Reviewed]

Reviews:  Victoria E. Ott, Confederate Daughters: Coming of Age during the Civil War, in Civil War History 58, no. 1 (2012): 112-114.  Dennis Denisoff ed., The Nineteenth-Century Child and Consumer Culture, in H- Childhood (March 2010).

Selected Honors and Awards:______ Research Fellowships, Richards Civil War Era Center, The Pennsylvania State University, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011.  Congregational Library Travel Scholarship, 2010.  Hill Fellowship, Department of History, The Pennsylvania State University, 2010.  Society for Historians of the Early American Republic Graduate Student Travel Award, 2010.  Ezra Jack Keats/Janina Domanska de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection Research Fellowship, University of Southern Mississippi, 2010.  Friends of Princeton University Library Research Grant, Princeton University, 2008-2009.  RGSO (Research and Graduate Studies Office) Dissertation Support Grant, College of Liberal Arts, The Pennsylvania State University, 2008.

Select Presentations:______ “Rewarding Piety: Sunday School Prizes and Juvenile Consumption in Nineteenth Century America,” The Society for the History of Children and Youth Biennial Conference, Columbia University, June 2011.  “‘Till Every Child and Youth has Enlisted’: Juvenile Temperance Armies in Antebellum America,” The Organization of American Historians Conference, Houston, Texas, March 2011.  “‘Little Owners of the Missionary Packet:’ The ‘Morning Star’ and Juvenile Benevolence,” The Society for Historians of the Early American Republic Conference, Rochester, New York, July 2010.