1. Findlay, James F. Jr. Dwight L. Moody: American Evangelist, 1837–1890 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), 43–45.Google Scholar The migration of rural youths to urban centers in the decades prior to the Civil War is well documented. See, for example, Halttunen, Karen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-class Culture in America, 1830–1870 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982), 1Google Scholar; Stanley Horlick, Allan, Country Boys and Merchant Princes: The Social Control of Young Men in New York (Lewisburg, Penn.: Bucknell University Press, 1975), 1Google Scholar; Nina, Mjagkij and Margaret, Spratt, eds., Men and Women Adrift: The YMCA and the YMCA in the City (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 1–2Google Scholar; and Whiteside, William B., The Boston Y.M.C.A. and Community Need: A Century's Evolution, 1851–1951 (New York: Association, 1951), 7–10.Google Scholar For Boston see Schnore, Leo F. and Knights, Peter R., “Residence and Social Structure: Boston in the Antebellum Period,” in Nineteenth-Century Cities, eds. Stephan, Thernstrom and Richard, Sennett (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1969).Google Scholar

2. The literature on urbanization, the rise of American middle-class culture, and advice literature is voluminous. Recent contributions to this genre include Hilkey, Judy's Character is Capital: Success Manuals and Manhood in Gilded Age America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997)Google Scholar, and Putney, Clifford's Muscular Christianity: Manhood and Sports in Protestant America, 1880–1920 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001)Google Scholar, both of which focus on the postbellum period. Studies that informed my thinking for this essay include Brown, Richard D., “The Emergence of Urban Society in Rural Massachusetts, 1760–1820,” Journal of American History 61:1 (1974): 21–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Halttunen, , Confidence MenGoogle Scholar; Horlick, , Country BoysGoogle Scholar; Mjagkij, and Spratt, , eds. Men and Women AdriftGoogle Scholar; Carroll, Smith-Rosenberg, Religion and the Rise of the American City: The New York City Mission Movement, 1812–70 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1971)Google Scholar; and “Beauty, the Beast, and the Militant Woman: Sex Roles and Social Stress in Jacksonian America,” American Quarterly 23:4 (1971): 562–84Google Scholar; and Whiteside, , Boston Y.M.C.A.Google Scholar

3. As historian Judy Hilkey put it in her recent study of advice literature in the Gilded, Age, “though we know a good deal about the success manual audience, there is no way of knowing with certainty what readers thought of what they read or whether or not success manuals shaped the way readers acted or looked at the world.” Character is Capital, 5–6.Google Scholar

4. Mount Vernon Association of Young Men (hereinafter referred to as M.V.A.Y.M), Minutes 1850–65, and Illuminator, vols. 1 and 2, 1850–60s, Mount Vernon Congregational Church Papers, Congregational Library, Boston, Mass. While the Association's records, including minute books, membership records, and two additional handwritten volumes of the literary magazine, continue into the 1880s, this essay focuses primarily upon the period prior to the Civil War, in part due to the fact that after the mid 1850s contributions to the Illuminator consist primarily of member critiques of the Association's literary exercises. For an account of the Association after the Civil War, as well as a more comprehensive history of the church with which it was affiliated, see Pauline, Holmes, One Hundred Years of Mount Vernon Church (Boston, Mass.: Mount Vernon Church, 1942).Google Scholar

5. M.V.A.Y.M., Constitution and Membership List, Mount Vernon Congregational Church Papers, Congregational Library, Boston, Mass. On the founding of the Boston YMCA, see Whiteside, 16–22.

6. Several Illuminator articles confirm that a majority of the Association's members worked in commercial settings. See, for example, “Liverpool, England,” Illuminator 1,20 October 1851; and “Satisfaction,” Illuminator 1, 1854.Google Scholar

7. Orsi, Robert A. and his colleagues make similar claims for the broad-ranging implications of their work in Gods of the City: Religion and the American Urban Landscape (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999)Google Scholar. In the introduction to this volume, for example, Orsi argues that religion plays a central role in the lives of migratory peoples as they enter, inhabit, and transform alien cityscapes and foreign cultural terrains. Analyzing the way in which religion serves as a means through which newcomers construct their urban selves, Orsi suggests, provides a more accurate picture of North American urbanization, as well as of the history of religions in the United States, 41.

8. Tweed, Thomas A., Our Lady of the Exile: Diasporic Religion at a Cuban Catholic Shrine in Miami (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 91–98, 134–42Google Scholar. According to Tweed, the term “diasporic” may apply “to a range of migrants—voluntary, impelled, or forced; permanent, temporary or circulatory,” 84. This description suggests that the young men of the Mount Vernon Association could aptly be described as a diasporic group. In the postscript to his work, however, Tweed states that the definition of diasporic excludes “economic migrants” such as Germans and Italians who came to the United States in the nineteenth century seeking work, 138. Because I find Tweed's category of “diasporic religion” helpful for analyzing the ideas and practices of the young men who participated in the Mount Vernon Association, I make use of the term “diasporic” in its broadest sense for the purposes of this essay.

9. Findlay, 48–51; M.V.A.Y.M., Minutes, 21 02 1850.Google Scholar See also Holmes, 73–77. In her account of the organization, Holmes suggests that Kirk was present at most of the Association's meetings, but the records reveal that he attended only rarely upon request. See, for example, M.V.A.Y.M., Minutes, 28 03 1853.Google Scholar

10. Constitution of the association of Young Men of Mount Vernon Church and Congregation, Minutes, 31 October 1850; M.V.A.Y.M. revised Constitution, Minutes, 11 10 1852.Google Scholar Notably absent from the Association's list of aims is any concern for the development of physical culture. As Clifford Putney suggests, Americans in the antebellum period tended to view sports and physical activity through the lens of Puritan concern for industry, interpreting these activities as spiritually threatening diversions rather than as means for building Christian character; see Muscular Christianity, 19–25. Interestingly, Henry Ward Beecher was one of the first to challenge the Boston YMCA to include physical culture in its program: “Where are your arrangements for putting muscle on a man?” he asked in an address to the organization in 1857; quoted in Whiteside, 39. It was not until after the Civil War, however, that the organization acquired a gymnasium and began to promote physical fitness alongside spiritual nurture and intellectual development. See Whiteside, 52.

11. Tweed asserts that the adjective “translocative” best describes the experiences of migrants whose “identity formation involves movement across time and space.” “Translocative,” he states, “refers to the tendency among many firstand second-generation migrants to symbolically move between homeland and new land.” Our Lady of the Exile, 94–95.

12. Untitled contribution to Illuminator 1, ca. June 1851Google Scholar; “A Dream,” Illuminator 1, ca. June 1851Google Scholar; and “Sympathy,” Illuminator 1, ca. February 1854.Google Scholar

13. In his review of novels, magazine articles, and other types of advice literature directed at young men, Horlick found that authors frequently chose this metaphor above other available options in order to “express the relationship of a young man to his society.” See Horlick, 161.

14. Untitled contribution to Illuminator 1, ca. June 1851.Google Scholar

15. “A Dream,” Illuminator 1, ca. June 1851.Google Scholar

16. “Be Consistent,” Illuminator 1, ca. winter 1853.Google Scholar

17. “Our Association,” Illuminator 1, 5 January 1854.Google Scholar

18. Halttunen demonstrates persuasively that the untrustworthy trickster, the “evil confidence man,” was a stock figure in antebellum advice literature. See Halttunen, especially chapters 1 and 2.

19. Orsi, 18.

20. “Sympathy,” Illuminator 1, ca. February 1854.Google Scholar

21. M.V.A.Y.M. Constitution, 31 October 1850Google Scholar; “A Dream,” Illuminator 1, ca. June 1851Google Scholar; and “Sympathy,” Illuminator 1, ca. February 1854.Google Scholar

22. Jereboam, Short, “The Mount Vernon Young Mens Christian Association,” Illuminator 1, ca. summer 1853Google Scholar. Jereboam Short appears to be a pseudonym, as this name does not appear anywhere in the membership roster.

23. M.V.A.Y.M., Minutes, 10 April and 14 August 1854Google Scholar. The organization of the first Boston Assemblies, formal balls for Boston's “first families” in 1845, along with the increasing popularity of dancing academies among the genteel classes in this period may suggest that the Association's condemnations of social dancing were, at least in part, motivated by desires to elevate their own class-status by critiquing the activities of Boston's Brahmins. On the history of dancing in Boston, see Brett, Howard, Boston: A Social History (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1976), 59.Google Scholar

24. “On Theatres,” Illuminator 1, 25 October 1852.Google Scholar

25. “Economy,” Illuminator 1, 28 March 1853.Google Scholar

26. For Halttunen's analysis of the shift away from sentimental culture in the 1850s, see Halttunen, 153. The history of theater in Boston is recounted in Elliot, Norton, Broadway Down East: An Informal Account of the Plays, Players, and Playhouses of Boston from Puritan times to the Present: Lectures delivered for the National Endowment for the Humanities, Boston Public Library Learning Library Program (Boston: Trustees of the Public Library of the City of Boston, 1978).Google Scholar

27. Halttunen, 153.

28. “Something about Influence—with a moral,” Illuminator 1, ca. 1854.Google Scholar

29. M.V.A.Y.M., Minutes, 13 06 1850.Google Scholar

30. M.V.A.Y.M., Minutes, 14 02, 14 03, 28 03, 10 10, 5 12 1853.Google Scholar

31. See, for example, “Home,” Illuminator 1, 28 February 1853Google Scholar; “The Women of New England signed M—,” Illuminator 1,28 March 1853Google Scholar; “The Marriage Relation,” Illuminator 1, ca. 1854.Google Scholar

32. Fanny, Fly, “Correspondence from a Lady,” Illuminator 1, 20 March 1853Google Scholar. Despite ongoing discussions, women were not permitted to attend meetings of the M.V.A.Y.M on a regular basis until 1873, when the Association admitted women to full membership and changed its name to the Mount Vernon Association of Young People.

33. Anonymous, “Correspondence from a Lady,” Illuminator 1, 4 April 1853.Google Scholar

34. M.V.A.Y.M., Minutes, 27 10 1853.Google Scholar

35. M.V.A.Y.M., Minutes, 11 06 1856.Google Scholar

36. M.V.A.Y.M., Minutes, 25 10 1852.Google Scholar

37. “Economy,” Illuminator 1, 28 March 1853Google Scholar; and “Marriage,” Illuminator 1, ca. 1853.Google Scholar

38. As Stuart M. Blumin and others have argued, the figure of the extravagant wife who squanders her domestic virtue and ruins her family through overspending was pervasive in the advice literature ot this period, See Blumin, , The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City, 1760–1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 186.Google Scholar For a specific example of this kind of literary usage, see Henry Ward, Beecher, Lectures to Young Men, 21st ed. (New York: M. H. Newman, 1851), 58.Google Scholar

39. On the susceptibility of both men and women to the allures of commercialism, see “Extravagance,” Illuminator 2, ca. October 1855.Google Scholar On women and the habit of “shopping,” see “Perplexities of Mercantile Life, by One who has tried it,” Illuminator 1, ca. 1851.Google Scholar

40. “Economy,” Illuminator 1, 28 March 1853Google Scholar. Here again, the young men of the Mount Vernon Association exemplify the sentimental concern to avoid hypocrisy that Halttunen discusses in Confidence Men.

41. “Wealth,” Illuminator 1, ca. 1854Google Scholar; and “Economy,” Illuminator 1, 28 March 1853.Google Scholar

42. See footnote 6 for a list of Illuminator articles indicating that many Association members worked in commercial arenas.

43. For a sampling of debates on these topics, see M.V.A.Y.M., Minutes, 13 02 1851, 16 01 1851, 12 04 1852, 28 12 1857, and 28 05 1860.Google Scholar

44. Horlick, 165.

45. “The Perplexities of Mercantile Life,” Illuminator 1, ca. 1851.Google Scholar

46. Orsi, 18. On the persistent juxtaposition of the “pure” landscape and the wicked urban metropolis in nineteenth-century culture, see also Hilkey, 104–8.

47. “The Religious Cottage,” Illuminator 1, ca. 1851Google Scholar; and “A communication from St. Anthony's Falls,” Illuminator 1, 29 July 1852.Google Scholar Other contributions to this theme include “Night,” Illuminator 1, ca. 1851Google Scholar; “A Visit to the Scenes of Childhood,” Illuminator 1, ca. 1851Google Scholar; and several essays entitled, “Home.”

48. “A Visit to the Scenes of Childhood,” Illuminator 1, ca. 1851.Google Scholar

49. Tweed, 87.

50. “Be Consistent,” Illuminator 1, ca. winter 1853.Google Scholar

51. Horlick, 67 and 147–78.

52. “Close of the Year,” Illuminator 1, 20 December 1852Google Scholar; and “True Ambition,” Illuminator 1, uncertain date.

53. “Our Responsibilities,” Illuminator 1, ca. 1852Google Scholar; Jereboam, Short, “The Mount Vernon Young Mens Christian Association,” Illuminator 1, ca. summer 1853.Google Scholar

54. “Our Responsibilities,” Illuminator 1, ca. 1852.Google Scholar; “Influence,” Illuminator 1, ca. 1852Google Scholar; and M.V.A.Y.M., Minutes, 31 07 1851.Google Scholar

55. “Correspondence from New York,” Illuminator 1, 27 September 1852.Google Scholar

56. “The Maine Liquor Law,” Illuminator 1, 27 September 1852.Google Scholar

57. M.V.A.Y.M., Minutes, 5 06 1851.Google Scholar

58. M.V.A.Y.M., Minutes, 27 09 1852.Google Scholar

59. “Wickedness in High Places,” Illuminator 1, 25 October 1852.Google Scholar

60. For debates on these topics, see M.V.A.Y.M., Minutes, 11 09 1854, 30 08 1852, 9 05 1853, and 28 08, 1851.Google Scholar

61. Untitled contribution to Illuminator 1, 23 May 1853Google Scholar; “Independence of Thought,” Illuminator 1, 21 June 1852Google Scholar; and M.V.A.Y.M. revised Constitution, 18 June 1855.Google Scholar

62. Debates on the Union took place on June 19, 1851, and June 16, 1853. Nichols offered his resolution on June 5, 1854. As agitation between the Northern and Southern states escalated, discussions of slavery, secession, and the use of force to preserve the Union continued. For example, M.V.A.Y.M., “Should the free states of this union consent to remain in the confederacy if the slave states insist on re-opening the African Slave trade?” Minutes, 22 08 1859Google Scholar; and “Resolved that no state has a constitutional right to secede from the Union and to prevent her the General Government has the right to use the force of the Federal Arms,” Minutes, 24 December 1860.Google Scholar

63. “A Dream with a Moral,” Illuminator 1, 30 August 1852.Google Scholar

64. M.V.A.Y.M., Minutes, 11 04 1853.Google Scholar Several years later, one-third of the members present voted against a resolution stating that “we regard the past and present treatment of the Indians, by the inhabitants of this continent, unjustifiable,” Minutes, 24 April 1856.Google Scholar

65. M.V.A.Y.M., Minutes, 16 08 1852.Google Scholar

66. M.V.A.Y.M., Minutes, 6 11 1854.Google Scholar

67. M.V.A.Y.M., “Is Roman Catholicism a greater evil than slavery?” decided in the affirmative 12 to 1, Minutes, 27 03 1851Google Scholar; and “Is Roman Catholicism a greater moral evil in our country that slavery?” decided in the affirmative 11 to 6, 12 February 1855.