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Adin Ballou's Hopedale Community and the Theology of Antislavery

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Lewis Perry
Lewis Perry
Affiliation:
Mr. Perry is assistant professor of history inthe State University of New York at Buffalo, New York
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Extract

There is now general agreement among historians that American abolitionism developed out of religious origins. Considerable attention has been paid to the sources of antislavery feelings in previous religious movements, particularly the Finneyite revivals in New York and the benevolence societies led by Lyman Beecher in Massachusetts. What has not been sufficiently explored is the possibility that antislavery, at least in the minds of some of its chief advocates, was a religious movement in its own right, with its own distinctive approach to theological problems.1 And yet to pursue this possibility is merely to take seriously a complaint made by the denominations themselves against uncomprising abolitionists: that is, that abolitionists had abandoned organized religion because of their own dogmatic suspicion of all attempts to subject divine impulses to earthly forms of organization.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , September 1970 , pp. 372 - 389
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1970

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References

1. An exception is David Brion Davis, who writes at the conclusion of an article on an earlier period of antislavery than I am going to discuss: “To the extent that slavery became a concrete symbol of sin, and support of the antislavery cause a sign of Christian virtue, participation in the reform became a supplement or even alternative to traditional religion. As a kind of surrogate religion, antislavery had long shown tendencies that were pietistic, millennial, and anti-institutional.” See his “The Emergence of Immediatiam in British and American Antislavery Thought,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 49 (1962), 229Google Scholar. Another exception is John L. Thomas, who has studied the ways in which for reformers “antislavery was simply the core of a complex of general reform.” See his “Antislavery and Utopia,” The Antislavery Vanguard: New Essays on the Abolitionists, ed Martin Duberman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965). p. 248.Google Scholar

2. Barnes, and Dumond, , eds., Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld, and Sara Grimké, 1822–1844 (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1934), I, xixGoogle Scholar. Changing attitudes of historians towards Weld may be traced in Barnes, , The Antislavery Impulse, 1830–1844 (New York: Harbinger Books, 1964)Google Scholar, with a valuable introduction by McLoughlin, William G.; Thomas, Benjamin P., Theodore Weld: Crusader for Freedom (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1950)Google Scholar; and Filler, Louis, The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830–1860 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960).Google Scholar

3. For a lucid presentation of some of Ballou 'a views, see Reichert, William O., “The Philosophical Anarchism of Adin Ballou,” Huntington Library Quarterly, 27 (1964,), 357–374CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The only modern biography is Faulkner, Barbara Louise, “Adin Ballou and the Hopedale Community,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Boston University, 1965Google Scholar, available on microfilm. Fortunately Ballou left a detailed autobiography and a lengthy history of his community: Autobiography of Adin Ballou, ed. William S. Heywood (Lowell: Vox Populi Press-Thompson and Hill, 1896)Google Scholar; and History of the Hopedale Community, From Its Inception to Its Virtual Submergence in the Hopedale Parish, ed. William S. Heywood (Lowell: Thompson and Hill, 1897)Google Scholar. Where no other citation is given, I have followed these two books

4. Herald of Freedom, 05 6, 1842, p. 2.Google Scholar

5. Non-Resistant, 02. 2, 1839, p. 3Google Scholar. The quotation is taken from the instructions of the executive committee of the New England Non-Resistance Society to Wright, their traveling agent.

6. The “come-outer” paper, the Disciple, as reprinted in Herald of Freedom, 02. 16, 1844, p. 2.Google Scholar

7. I have developed these ideas at greater length in “Versions of Anarchism in the Antislavery Movement,” American Quarterly, 20 (1968), 768–782.Google Scholar

8. See especially his address to the Buffalo convention of the Liberty Party, found in the Model Worker, 07 28, 1848, p. 1.Google Scholar

9. Herald of Freedom, 04 4, 1843, p. 1Google Scholar; Abstract of the Argument, in the Public Discuss'ion of the Question: “Are the Christians of a Given Community The Church of Such Community?” (Albany, 1847).Google Scholar

10. Model Worker, 08 11, 1848, p. 1.Google Scholar

11. On Restorationism, besides Ballon's Autobiography, see Rupp, I. Daniel, ed., An Original History of the Religious Denominations at Present Existing in the United States (Philadelphia: J. Y. Humphreys, 1844), pp. 637–655Google Scholar; Eddy, Richard, Universalism in America, II (Boston: Universalist Publishing House, 1886), pp. 260–342Google Scholar; and Gorrie, P. Douglas, The Churches and Sects of the United States (New York: Lewis Colby, 1850), pp. 221–223.Google Scholar

12. On the non-resistants, see John, Demos, “The Antislavery Movement and the Problem of Violent ‘Means’,” New England Quarterly, 37 (1964), 501–526Google Scholar; and Curti, Merle, “Non-Resistance hi New England,” New England Quarterly, 2 (1929), 34–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Both share my judgment of Ballou's ability and fidelity.

13. For the text, see Ballou, Adin, Non-Resistance in Relation to Human Governments (Boston: Non-Resistance Society, 1839)Google Scholar; or The Liberator, 12. 6, 1839, p.4Google Scholar; or Non-Resistant, 11. 16, 1839, pp. 1–2Google Scholar. Quincy's judgment may be found in Ibid., December 7, 1839, p. 3.

14. On Ballou's quarrels with other abolitionists in the 1850s, see the eighth chapter of Perry, Lewis Curtis, “Antislavery and Anarchy: A Study of the Ideas of Abolitionists before the Civil War,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University, 1967.Google Scholar

15. Cf. Thomas, John L., The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison (Boston: Little, Brown, 1963), pp. 312–313Google Scholar; Weisberger, Bernard, They Gathered at the River: The Story of the Great Revivalists and their Impact upon Religion in America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1958), pp. 156–157.Google Scholar

16. Ballou, , History of the Hopedale Community, p. 17.Google Scholar

17. Quoted in Noyes, John Humphrey, History of American Socialisms (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1870), p. 164.Google Scholar

18. Practical Christian, 05 17, 1845, p. 3Google Scholar; Sept. 19, 1846, p. 3.

19. See Ibid., Nov. 27, 1841, p. 2; Jan. 22, 1842, p. 2.

20. Besides Hopedale documents in Liberator, 12 25, 1840, p. 4Google Scholar; and Feb. 26, 1841, pp. 1–2; see especially letters by “Humanitas,” 12 25, 1840, p. 3Google Scholar; by Abby Folsom, Jan. 8, 1840, p. 2; by N. H. Whiting, March 5, 1841, p. 2; and by eight Ohioans, March 5, 1841, p. 3. There was another surge of interest in the autumn of 1843. The Liberator, like Ballon, disliked the Owenite subversion of individual moral responsibility in the Skaneateles community. See Ibid., January 5, 1844, p. 3.

21. Practical Christian, 09. 28, 1844, p. 3Google Scholar; Liberator, 11. 8, 1844, p. 4.Google Scholar

22. Draper, William F., Recollections of a Varied Career (Boston: Little, Brown, 1908), p. 25.Google Scholar

23. Ballou, , Autobiography, pp. 380–381.Google Scholar

24. Practical Christian, 05 15, 1840, p. 2.Google Scholar

25. Ibid., September 30, 1848, p. 2; February 3, 1849, p. 2; July 21, 1849, p. 3; Ballou, , Autobiography, pp. 381–382.Google Scholar

26. Practical Christian, 04 2, 1859, p. 2Google Scholar; Ballou, , History of the Hopedale Community, pp. 77, 143Google Scholar; Field, Anna Thwing, “Anti-Slavery, and other Visitors, to the Community,” in Hopedale Reminiscences: Papers Read Before the Hopedale Ladies' Sewing Society and Branch Alliance (Hopedale: School Press, 1910)Google Scholar. Another famous resident was “The Man with the Branded Hand,” the slave stealer lauded in Whittier's poem.

27. Sarah E. Bradbury, “Community Life as Seen by One of the Young People,” and Patrick, Ellen M., “Our Community School and Its Teacher,” Hopedale Reminiscences, pp. 14, 41, 54Google Scholar; the Diamond, 11 15, 1851, p. 66.Google Scholar

28. Ballou, , History of the Hopedals Community, pp. 327–330.Google Scholar

29. Ballou, Adin, History of the Town of Milford, Worcester County, Massachusetts, From Its First Settlement to 1881 (Boston: Franklin Press, 1882), pp. 1025–1026Google Scholar; Practical Christian, 08 21, 1841, p. 4Google Scholar; December 27, 1845, pp. 2–3; January 10, 1846, pp. 1–2; Liberator, 10 9, 1846, p. 4Google Scholar; November 27, 1846, p. 4; November 9, 1855, p. 3; September 23, 1859, p. 2.

30. Liberator, 08 2, 1839, p. 4Google Scholar; November 13, 1840, p. 4; January 8, 1841, p. 3; March 5, 1841, p. 4; Practical Christian, 06 11, 1842, p. 3Google Scholar; June 25, 1842, p. 4.

31. History of the Hopedale Community, pp. 87–90.

32. Liberator, 07 5, 1839, p. 4.Google Scholar

33. History of the Hopedale Community, pp. 101–102; Practical Christian, 06 10, 1848, p. 3.Google Scholar

34. Ballou, , Autobiography, p. 366.Google Scholar

35. History of he Hopedale Community, pp. 95–97. These changes are handily summarized in Thomas, “Antislavery and Utopia,” pp. 249–254.

36. For Ballou's gentle ridicule of those who came in quest of such a paradise, see History of the Hopedale Community, p. 169.

37. Practical Christian, 09 19, 1846, p. 3Google Scholar; October 3, 1846, p. 3.

38. Ballou, , Christian Non-Resistance, In all its Important Bearings, Illustrated and Defended (Philadelphia: J. Miller M'Kim, 1846), pp. 84–85, 214.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39. History of the Hopedale Community, pp. 339–340.

40. Finally Ballou wrote a three-volume Primitive Christianity and Its Corruptions (Boston: Universalist Publishing House, 1870Google Scholar; Lowell: Thompson and Hill—Vox Populi Press, 1899, 1900) which demonstrates abundantly the diligence of his search for the practices and understandings of those closest in time to Christ.

41. Practical Christian, 05 15, 1840, pp. 1–2.Google Scholar

42. Ibid., June 1, 1840, pp. 1–2.

43. Ibid., July 15, 1840, pp. 1–2. See also Christian Non-Resistance, In All Its Important Bearings, pp. 66–80.

44. Quoted in Bercovitch, Sacvan, “Typology in Puritan New England: The Williams Cotton Controversy Reassessed,” American Quarterly, 19 (1967), 181.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45. Miller, , Roger Williams: His Contribution to the American Tradition (New York: Atheneum, 1962)Google Scholar. See also Morgan, Edmund S., “Essay Review: Miller's Williams,” New England Quarterly, 38 (1965), 513–523CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Calamandrei, Mauro, “Neglected Aspects of Roger Williams' Thought,” Church History, 21 (1952), 239–258CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Moore, LeRoy, “Roger Williams and the Historians,” Church History, 32 (1963), 432–451CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Two important contributions have appeared since this article was written: Rosenmeier, Jesper, “The Teacher and the Witness: John Cotton and Roger Williams,” William and Mary Quarterly, 25 (1968), 408–431CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Morgan, Edmund S., Roger Williams: The Church and the State (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1967).Google Scholar

46. Isaac Backus and the American Pietistic Tradition (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967).Google Scholar

47. Ballou, , Autobiography, p. 336.Google Scholar

48. Ballou, , Christian Non-Resistance, In All Its Important Bearings, pp. 178–179.Google Scholar

49. Ballou, , History of the Hopedale Community, pp. 65, 67–68.Google Scholar

50. Reprinted in Ibid., pp. 20–21. As years passed, these other communities were increasingly visualized in the West.

51. Autobiography, p. 406.

52. “The Hopedale Community,” a tract reprinted in the Liberator, 12 12, 1851, p. 4.Google Scholar

53. Ballou, , History of the Hopedale Community, p. 293Google Scholar. The same sort of typology may be found on pp. 291, 298–300.

54. Frederickson, George M., The Inner Civil War: Northern Intellectuals and the Crisis of the Union (New York: Harper and Row, 1965)Google Scholar is recurrently sensitive to this theme. See also Albrecht, Robert C., “The Theological Response of the Transcendentalists to the Civil War,” New England Quarterly, 88 (1965), 21–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar