The Stammering Century

by Gilbert Seldes

  As the radicals failed, the level on which radicalism operated declined. Its preoccupations grew gradually ignoble. Mr. Mumford’s “Golden Day”—the time from Hawthorne to Whitman— was streaked with murk; but it created radicals with intelligence and fire, with more of vision and less of envy. In our day, the stature of both adversaries is diminished. The Sacco-Vanzetti trial brought forth no great reactionary and no great radical; for the issues involved, the protagonists were on both sides puny and insignificant.

  What is left? To avoid complexes and neuroses, to compromise and to adjust ourselves, to cultivate our gardens, to be mechanics (if not mechanisms) in an age of machinery—these are the suggestions from Freud, and Spengler, and a host of others. The brave young men are turning to science; the worried ones, to Rome; the thoughtful ones, to a form of classicism. Are these, also, salvation hunters? Is there no way but the way of normalcy to live with some scope and some satisfaction? The history of radicalism suggests only that to live sanely one must avoid cults; but, as one is about to plunge headlong into sanity, one is recalled by a few casual sentences of Marcel Proust:

  “The magnificent and lamentable family of the neurotics is the salt of the earth. Everything great that we know we owe to neurotics. It is they, and none else, who have founded our religions and composed our masterpieces. The world will never know all it owes to them, and more especially all they have suffered in giving what we possess.”

  And yet—

  Illustrations

  “Bible Communists—Prophet and Family.”

  An American Camp-meeting

  Frances Wright D’Arusmont

  Matthias

  Charles Grandison Finney

  John Humphry Noyes

  A. Bronson Alcott

  The Women’s Crusade

  Carry A. Nation

  Amelia Bloomer

  Andrew Jackson Davis

  The Sisters Fox, the Original Spirit Rappers

  Orestes Augustus Brownson

  John Alexander Dowie

  SOURCES

  Impeccable in taste and judgment throughout her Trumpets of Jubilee, Constance Mayfield Rourke is again perfect in her attitude toward bibliography. “To end a book,” she says, “with a display of the machinery by which it has been assembled is to stress the toil which has gone into its making, not the pleasure.” It is perfectly obvious that in a book of this kind, the principal sources are the works of each of the persons studied, and after their works (or when no printed records exist) the principal biographical studies. I have consulted pamphlets, magazine articles, old newspapers; nearly every book of travel or of social criticism which covers the United States of the nineteenth century has something bearing on the movements I took for my subject. The subject-index of any good library will provide the reader with sources in profusion.

  There are, however, a few books to which I owe something more than facts. As a layman in respect to both history and psychology, I needed more than anything else an authority to which, to refer the strange phenomena I found. I discovered, for instance, that when Bronson Alcott took a negro girl into his school all of New England seemed to rise against him; was that an accident or was it a commonplace at that time? I found extraordinary states of bliss in certain stages of conversion; were they aberrations or entirely normal? In the second case my book of reference has been William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience; on the historical side, the standard of reference was Charles and Mary Beard’s Rise of American Civilization. By both of these works I have been able to check my own tendency to think everything new to me was exceptional; I have quoted them, borrowed from them, even borrowed their quotations; and only wish I could have done more to incorporate their qualities into my own work.

  Some special sources have been exceptionally useful. Professor Benjamin B. Warfield’s essay on Noyes and his Bible Communists (in volume 78 of Bibliotheca Sacra) is really a study of the whole revival movement in relation to cults; A. M. Bellwald’s Christian Science and the Catholic Faith; Gaius Glenn Atkins’ Modern Religious Cults and Movements; and Podmore’s various books on allied subjects, not only cover the field, but establish interrelations of peculiar importance. The facts and the documents in the story of the early camp-meeting are all in Catherine C. Cleveland’s work, from which I have borrowed much of the firsthand testimony.

  The work of research has been comparatively easy because of the marked tendency of most of my subjects to write autobiographies; and easier still because they were such unusual people that strangers were moved to print in their behalf or against them. The first half of the past century, moreover, was the period of Europe’s second discovery of America: Chevalier and George Combe and Mrs. Trollope and dozens of others noted the things which a foreigner found strange. Many of the notes in fine type, supplying the domestic background, are due to these foreign observers; most of the rest come from dailies and weeklies of the time.

  Index

  The links below refer to the page references of the printed edition of Reveille in Washington. While the numbers do not correspond to the page numbers or locations on an electronic reading device, they are retained as they can convey useful information regarding the position and amount of space devoted to an indexed entry. Because the size of a page varies in reflowable documents such as this e-book, it may be necessary to scroll down to find the referenced entry after following a link.

  (Italics indicate footnotes)

  A

  Abolition, 202, 204, 249, 407

  Alcott, Bronson, 11, 200, 205, 207–225, 242, 249, 255, 360

  Anthony, Susan B., 44, 241, 279, 280

  Anti-Saloon League, 6, 203, 204, 268

  Association, 6, 203, 250

  Awakening, the Great, 21

  B

  Ballou, Adin, 205, 227–237

  Beard, Chas. and Mary, 36, 87

  Beecher, Henry Ward, 154, 268, 307, 315

  Beecher, Lyman, 100, 101, 108 ff., 240, 249

  Bi-sexuality, 76, 326. See under Celibacy and under Sex, Noyes’ ideas

  Bloomer, Amelia, 279, 281–286, 334 ff., 409

  Brook Farm, 177, 199, 208, 345

  Brownson, O. A., 341–347

  Burr, Aaron, 34, 149, 192

  C

  Calvinism, 8, 10, 14, 19, 27, 37, 47, 94, 148, 152, 171, 304, 358 ff.

  Camp Meeting, xxv, 3, 6, 36, 51–67, 250

  Celibacy, 75 ff. See Bi-sexuality

  Christian Science, 6, 11, 276, 296, 326, 354, 356, 376–388, 402

  Communism and Communities, 199–205, 235. See under Hopedale, Fruitlands, Dowie, Brook Farm, Owen, Rapp, Noyes and Oneida, etc.

  Conversion, 47, 102 ff., 142–155; and sex 152 ff.

  Cragin, George and Mary, 120, 168 ff., 188

  D

  Davis, Andrew Jackson, 231, 321 ff., 326, 336, 347

  Dixon, Hepworth, 164 ff., 176, 182, 185, 186

  Dow, Lorenzo, 61 ff.

  Dowie, Alexander J., 70, 276, 389–401

  Draper, E., 228 ff.

  E

  Eddy, Mary B. G., 326, 373, 376–388, 389, 394

  Edwards, Jonathan, xxiv, 6, 11, 13–35, 36, 41, 93, 96, 97, 138, 140, 145, 147, 149, 150, 151, 152, 192, 295, 296, 358, 360, 362, 381

  Edwards, Pierrepont, 35, 192 and footnote

  Edwards, Sarah Pierrepont, 20, 23, 147

  Emerson, R. W., 4, 11, 199 ff., 207, 209, 218, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 245, 296, 297, 315, 349 ff., 355, 359

  F

  Finney, C. G., 6, 69, 94, 98, 100–115, 117, 118 and footnote, 133, 135, 141, 147, 150, 151, 159, 160, 169, 172, 244, 256, 296, 297, 357, 358

  Folger family, 120 ff., 169

  Fourier and his ideas, 10, 187, 199 and footnote, 250, 297, 349

  Fox sisters, 180, 331–341, 346

  Freud, S., xxiv, xxvii, 145, 410

  Fruitlands, 70, 199, 214–220

  Fuller, Margaret, xxvii, 4, 207, 222, 259

  G

  Garrison, W. L., xxix, 101, 158, 173 and f
ootnote, 202, 207, 229, 239–247

  Gough, J. B., 150, 254

  Greeley, Horace, xxvii, 3, 158, 180, 199 and footnote, 204, 207, 259, 282, 307, 315, 334 ff. Mrs. Greeley, xxvii,

  H

  Harris, T. L., 323–326, 370, 386

  Hawthorne, N., xxiv, 219

  Hopedale, 70, 205, 227–237

  J

  James, William, 142 ff., 152, 348, 349, 350, 355, 364

  Joyce, James, 400

  L

  Lane, Charles, 208 ff.

  Lee, Ann, 182, 291, 382, 386. See also under Shakers

  Lewis, Diocletian, 261 ff.

  M

  Mather, Increase, 18

  Matthias (Robert Matthews), 5, 101, 115, 117–131, 133, 152, 169, 217, 297, 303, 307, 389, 390

  Medical quacks, 299–304

  Mencken, H. L., xxiiiff., 303, 307

  Mesmer and Mesmerism, xxiv, 297, 305–307, 319, 349, 353, 373, 381

  Millerism, 5, 119, 160, 161, 199

  Millennium, beliefs concerning, 70, 81, 87, 158, 159 ff., 160–163. See under Rapp

  Moody, D. L., 16, 96, 98, 99, 135–140, 265, 389

  Mormons, xxvii, xxviii, 4, 5, 101, 117, 400. See also Smith

  Mysticism, 11, 357, 365, 366–375

  N

  Nation, Carry A., 268, 272, 273–277, 390

  Nettleton, Asahel, 98, 100, 101, 109

  New Harmony, 81–91

  New Thought, 3, 9, 11, 155, 296, 348–365, 366, 367, 383

  Noyes, J. H., 5, 69, 77, 82, 115, 133, 150, 157–197, 244 ff., 249, 251, 296, 342, 349, 357, 360, 383, 389

  O

  Oberlin, 6, 100, 112, 114, 115, 256 ff., 268

  Oliphant, L., 323 ff.

  Oneida Community, 106, 204, 231, 235, 297. See under Noyes

  Owen, Robert Dale, 89, 90, 325, 342 ff.

  Owen, Robert, xxvii, 4, 10, 69, 74, 81–91, 93, 117, 251, 313, 318, 342, 349, 359

  P

  Palmer, Joseph, 217 ff.

  Perfectionism, 7, 8, 101, 115, 155, 157, 160, 163, 166 ff., 171–197, 244 ff., 249, 251, 256, 357, 386. Cf. Noyes

  Perkins, Elisha, xxiii, 300 ff.

  Phrenology, xxvi, 158, 231, 256, 268, 282, 304, 307–319, 321, 359, 360, 402

  Pierson family, 120 ff.

  Prana, 368 ff.

  Prohibition, 6, 249–272, 279, 407. See under Washingtonians, Women’s Crusade, Willard, and Nation

  Psychoanalysis, xxvi, 143, 148, 404 ff.

  Puritans and Puritanism, 7, 9, 11, 17, 26, 361, 366, 383

  Putnam, Allan, 337 ff.

  Q

  Quimby, P. P., 326–329, 357, 377, 381, 382, 383, 389

  R

  Radicalism, 199–205, 402–411

  Rapp and the Rappites, 4, 6, 69–79, 89, 194, 204, 251, 297, 342, 386

  Reform and Reformers, 199–205, 402 ff.

  Revivalism, 8, 36–49, 93–115, 119, 133–142, 148, 250, 355, 373

  Rourke, C. M., 109, 112

  S

  Sex and conversion, 152 ff.

  Sexual theories of J. H. Noyes, 181–193

  Shakers, 70, 182, 195, 204, 211, 219, 233, 235, 297, 382, 386

  Sin, 106, 107, 142–155. See under Calvinism and Conversion

  Smith, Joseph, xxviii, 4, 5, 117, 130, 152, 182. See under Mormons

  Spiritualism, 83, 119, 158, 295, 296, 329, 331–341, 383, 402

  Stetson, Augusta, 387, 388

  Stone, Lucy, 241, 242, 279, 290, 291

  Suffrage, 249, 265, 279–281

  Sutras, 367 ff.

  T

  Temperance. See under Washingtonians and Prohibition

  Transcendentalists, 5, 9, 11. See under Emerson

  Trollope, Frances, 41, 63 ff., 87, 342

  W

  Walker, Mary, 241, 282, 287–290, 297

  Washingtonians, 203, 252–254, 267, 282

  Will, Edwards on, 31 ff.

  Willard, Frances, xxix, 6, 139, 160, 255–272, 276, 277, 280, 290, 360

  W. C. T. U., 254 ff., 280

  Women’s Crusade, 261 ff., 267, 268

  Wright, Fanny, 4, 89, 246, 280, 303, 341–344

  Y

  Yoga, 326, 371–375, 386

  Z

  Zion City. See under Dowie