William B. Greene Archives - Page 2 of 3 - The Libertarian Labyrinth

Josephine Lowell – extracts on the Greene family

September 13, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

William Rhinelander Stewart. The Philanthropic Work of Josephine Shaw Lowell. New York: Macmillan, 1911. [page 13] I know a great many men in the army who are: My brother, and first cousin, H. S. Russell, in Gordon’s Regiment (2d Mass. Vol.), Capt. Curtis, Lieut. Motley, Lieut. Morse, Capt. Tucker, Lieut. Bangs, Lieut. Robson in the same Regiment; Joe and Ned Curtis, the former belonging to the Ninth Regiment, N. Y., the latter, a surgeon in the Georgetown Hospital. My cousin, Harry Sturgis, in Raymond Lee’s Mass. Regiment. My uncle, William Greene, Colonel of the 14th Mass.; Dr. Elliott and his […]

Greene family portraits

September 13, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

Charles Carleton Coffin. History of Boscawen and Webster, from 1733 to 1878. Concord, N. H.: Republican Press Association, 1878. 384-394. GREENE, NATHANIEL. Nathaniel Greene was born in Boscawen, 20 May, 1797. He was christened Peter; but having great respect for the memory of his father, by permission of the legislature of Massachusetts he took the name of Nathaniel. Educational advantages at the beginning of the century were limited to eight or ten weeks of schooling in winter, and a term of about the same length in summer. Two of his teachers were,— Miss Lucy Hartwell, who afterwards became the wife […]

Charles Sumner visits the Greenes in Paris, 1857

September 13, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

Edward Lillie Pearce, Charles Sumner. Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. III, 1845-1860. Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1894. “March 26 [1857]. Wrote letters home ; visited the Invalides, and saw the new tomb of Napoleon ; then visited Mr. William B. Greene and his most intelligent wife, living off beyond the Luxembourg; saw something of that quarter ; then dined with Elliot C. Cowdin, a merchant here, once connected with the Mercantile Library Association [of Boston], — the first time I have met company at dinner for ten months ; then to the Italian opera, where I heard the last […]

Notice of William B. Greene, Transcendentalism, etc

September 13, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

“New Publications.” The Religious Magazine and Monthly Review. 45, 5 (May, 1871), 544. TRANSCENDENTALISM, and THE FACTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS, and the Philosophy of Mr. Herbert Spencer, are the titles of two remarkable pamphlets by Mr. William B. Greene, and will furnish what William Corbett would call ” a bone to gnaw,” to those who have a liking for such hard problems in Psychology. We look upon Mr. Greene as an able and independent writer, less satisfactory, perhaps, than he would be were it not for the slight excess of individualism which marks his productions.

Notice of William B. Greene, The Blazing Star

September 13, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

“Notice of New Books,” The New Englander, XXXII, 1 (January, 1873), 183. MR. WILLIAM B. GREENE’S BLAZING STAR† seems to us to shine by a reflected light, and that light, whatever there is, is reflected from the Appendix on the Jewish Kabbala, if this be not darkness visible. We frankly confess to have been able to gather little or nothing from both except the excitement of our curiosity to learn somewhat more of this same Kabbala. But whatever these first portions of this volume have failed to furnish has been more than compensated by the tract on the Philosophy of […]

Anarchy in Jamaica Plain, etc.

August 16, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

I had some contact with John Ruch, a writer for the Jamaica Plain Gazette, awhile back. He had seen a letter from William Batchelder Greene to Gen. Benjamin Franklin Butler, posted here. I gave him a general rundown on Greene’s life, and what I knew about his time in Jamaica Plain. His article, “Anarchy in JP,” is now available, and thanks largely to Dan Clore has been getting quite a bit of attention in anarchist circles. John did a very nice job, particularly as there are very few very complete biographical sources on Greene. (You can see my own first […]

William B. Greene, Communism vs. Mutualism

April 28, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

[This is a repost, probably the first of several, highlighting some of the more important statements about the philosophy of mutualism. Long-time readers and students of mutualism should note, particularly as I did not note it myself before, Greene’s apparent adoption of the “cost principle,” and the linked principle of deferred and social profit: “so much as the individual laborer will then get over and above what he has earned will come to him as his share in the general prosperity of the community of which he is an individual member.” That does not mean, however, that Greene had jumped […]

John Adams, mutual bank advocate

April 19, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

With two other researchers now working on Josiah Warren, I’ve been trying (as regular readers will know) to get notes together and sources archived. It’s rather wonderful, I must say, to be working in a field so wide open that it’s a relief to find that someone else can make use of your research. One less book to write. My notes on The Boston Investigator turned out to be a little less complete than I had hoped, so I’ve been taking another look at those microfilm reels—no hardship since each pass through a literature as rich as this tends to […]

An early mutual banking proposal

April 8, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

I’m wrapping up my first exploration of The Spirit of the Age (a little more rapidly than I had hoped, thanks to an Interlibrary Loan mix-up), and am already planning a road trip to scan more of this really important mutualist paper. My lengthy side-trip, from the William B. Greene research through the work of Joshua King Ingalls and ultimately to The Spirit of the Age, has paid an unexpected dividend (if, in this context, I can safely speak about the paying of dividends)—a discussion of Mutual Banking in the 1850 volume which casts Greene’s work in a somewhat different […]

Pierre Leroux, The Nature of Man

March 13, 2007 Shawn P. Wilbur

William B. Greene’s two early works on mutualism are very similar, to the point of repeating some sections, but the differences are also telling. Greene was attempting to combine elements of the thought of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Pierre Leroux in both volumes, but it probably fair to say that Equality (1849) is philosophically dominated by Leroux’s influence, as Mutual Banking (1850) is dominated by Proudhon’s. I have lamented at various times the lack of knowledge of Proudhon’s work, even among anarchists. Leroux is virtually unknown, although interest in his work appears to have been a common denominator among an early […]