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Rufus Wilmot Griswold, aside from having a remarkable name, produced a large number of rather lovely books on literature. In The Prose Writers of America. With a survey of the history, condition, and prospects of American literature (1847), he surveys the writers of the day, catching plenty of folks who don’t make more recent texts. His treatment of Ralph Waldo Emerson is interesting, and it includes a brief comment on William B. Greene. RALPH WALDO EMERSON [Born 1803.] THE development of the transcendental philosophy in New England is deserving of more consideration than can here be bestowed upon it. I […]

When I posted William B. Greene’s response to Jesse H. Jones in The Word, I promised some material on Jones himself. Jones is a figure of interest in our developing genealogy of mutualisms. Although he disagreed in various regards with Greene, he was another advocate of a mutualism based in Christian principles. In his didactic novel, Joshua Davidson, Christian (and I hardly needed to mention its didacticism, with a title like that, I suppose), he writes, From this [Public Spirit] there unfolds a form of society, which may be called Mutualism, in which there is a mutual bearing of burdens, […]

The Lancet is publishing a new study, which suggests that excess mortality in Iraq resulting from the US invasion and subsequent conflicts tops 650,000. The number is based on a survey. Iraq Body Count is currently showing a minimum figure of 43,850, based on incidents reported in major media. Check out the Wikipedia page on the earlier Lancet study for background and criticism. There is also a page there about Iraq Body Count.

There is a partial archive of Samuel Milton Jones’ Letters of Love and Labor at the Ohio Memory site. The site is extensive, and includes a large number of radical and civil rights items. Another piece of potential interest is this circular from Thomas Low and Mary Gove Nichols’ Memnonia Institute.

“T)EAR SIR—Tn reply to the queries eoutaiiied tn YOur note of the 26th nIt..” at The Very Idea!

Some time ago, I noted the presence of some work by Charles V. Kraitsir in the Google Books archive. Here is a more complete bibliography and listing of online texts. Kraitsir was one of those eccentric geniuses championed by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody. William B. Greene was, of course, another, and the three of them all taught, according to at least some reports, at Kraitsir’s school in Boston. Kraisir, Charles. The Poles in the United States of America, preceded by the earliest history of the Slavonians, and by the history of Poland. Philadelphia: Kiderlen and Stollmeyer, 1837. —. Significance of the […]

[This is a very nice account of how one of the children of the Valley Forge Owenite community eventually joined the Shakers. It’s one of a number of documents relating to the “high tide” of Owenite community experiments about 1826 that I’ve been collecting.] HOW I CAME TO BE A SHAKER.____ George M. Wickersham._______ While attending the memorial service of Elder Giles B. Avery, Jan. 4, 1891, I felt impressed to ask myself this question,—How came I to be a Shaker? Why I was so impressed I cannot tell; I hope it will do no harm. In the year 1824, […]

I’m updating my bibliographies for William B. Greene. The last time I did a major update, there were lots of question marks. Now, there are fewer questions about the major, book- and article-length works, but a whole lot of new questions about letters to periodicals, sermons and such. That’s progress. The contributions to radical papers, including some fairly important interventions in debates in The Word and The Index, have only really be mentioned in the literature of anarchism. The contributions to religious periodicals have been unknown or ignored. I think I’ve now tracked down at least most of the material […]

Ah, the joys of the transitional library. Google Books, which obviously searches its “full texts” using raw OCR scans, actually returns 37 books with the phrase “T)EAR SIR.” (When you do the search, it will tell you there are 50, but. . .) The full phrase, “T)EAR SIR—Tn reply to the queries eoutaiiied tn YOur note of the 26th nIt..” is from Self-paying Colonization to North America: Being a Letter to Captain John P. Kennedy by M. Wilson (A. Thom: 1848), which looks quite interesting, although at least one page-scan is entirely unreadable. That’s sad, because this is a genuinely […]

I’m in the midst of gathering together the last year’s worth of research, for a much-needed overhaul of the Libertarian Labyrinth site. I have high hopes that the site can be a really useful resource for libertarians of various stripes who value the lessons of history. In the meantime, here is a round-up of all of the material on William B. Greene, mutualism, mutual banks and land banks I have posted to this blog and The Very Idea! William Batchelder Greene Mutualist and transcendentalist bits – William B. GreeneMore William B. GreeneJust a bit more on Greene and TranscendentalismOn Why […]