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CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM
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A New York State Study

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THE BURNED-OVER DISTRICT OF NEW YORK IN THE 1840s

BY MICHAEL BARKUN.

We are living, we are dwelling

In a grand and awful time;
In an age on ages telling,
To be living —is sublime.
Hark! the waking up of nations,
Gog and Magog, to the fray;
Hark, what soundeth, is creation’s
Groaning for its latter day.

—Oneida Community hymn—

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1986

 ‘ heology |_ibrary

SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY
AT CLAREMONT
California B5

Copyright © 1986 by Syracuse University Press

Syracuse, New York 13244-5160

All Rights Reserved

« First Edition

Photographs appearing on pages 74, 76, and 78 are from the Oneida Community Historical
Committee, those on pages 6 and 7 are from the George Arents Research Library, and those
on pages 4, 5, 34, 38, and 48 are from the Loma Linda University Heritage Room.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National
Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ANSI Z39.48-1984. @9)"

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Barkun, Michael.
Crucible of the millennium.
(A New York State study)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Millennialism—New York (State) — History — 19th
century. 2. Utopias— History — 19th century.
3. Christian communities— New York (State) —History —
19th century. 4. New York (State) —Church history.
I. Title. II. Title: Burned-over district. III. Series.
BRS55.N7B37 1986 277.47'081 86-5777
ISBN 0-815 6-2371-2
ISBN 0-815 6-2378-X (pbk.)

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

 For

DEBBI and MIRIAM

MICHAEL BARKUN is Professor of Political Science at Syracuse University.
He is the author of Disaster and the Millennium and Law without Sanc-
tions: Order in Primitive Societies and the World Community, as well as
numerous articles on millenarianism and on international law. He has held
fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and from
the Ford Foundation. His Ph.D. in Political Science is from Northwestern
University.
 CONTENTS

Acknowledgments
Introduction
The Millenarian Stream 13
The Rise of the Millerites ol
The Imagery of Apocalypse 47
The Growth of Utopian Communities 63
Millerism and the Utopians 89
Natural Disasters and the Millennium 103
Socioeconomic Disasters and the Millennium 113
Organizing for the Millennium 125)
NH
KF The Millenarian Process
CONN
FWY
© 139
Notes 161
Bibliography Wa,
Index 189
 ILLUSTRATIONS

Miller family chapel

Interior of the Miller chapel
Community-House at Oneida Reserve
Community Buildings at Oneida Ff
wn
ND

William Miller
Millerite camp meeting 38
The Millerite chart 48
John Humphrey Noyes (early 1840s) 74
John Humphrey Noyes (late 1840s or early 1850s) 76
John Humphrey Noyes and the extended Community “family” 78
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ul N AN EARLIER WORK, Disaster and the Millennium, \ attempted to

provide some answers to the question of millenarian origins: why do
individuals expect this imperfect world suddenly to be transformed into one
without pain, suffering, or injustice? I proposed that catastrophic stress
played a pivotal role in inducing people to abandon old loyalties in favor of
an imminent millennium. I also suggested that disasters were as much a
matter of human perception as of measurable damage and, hence, interacted
in complex ways with the mental categories a culture provides.
A subsequent Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Hu-
manities permitted me to reflect further on the nature of these complexities.
Of all the distinctions that might be made among calamities, one of the most
significant appeared to be that between natural disasters and those caused
by human actions. The mixed blessings of modernity imply the gradual re-
placement of the former by the latter. At this early stage of the inquiry, as I
sought to understand the nature of these two types of disaster, the com-
ments of a number of people helped me refine the problem; those of J. David
Greenstone, Adda B. Bozeman, and Arthur N. Gilbert were particularly
useful.
It became evident that the emergence of artificial disasters could not
be fully explained or analyzed in the abstract, especially inasmuch as my
interest remained the link between collective stress and millenarian move-
ments. With the aim of identifying a historical situation which displayed the
concrete details of the process, I examined and discarded a number of pos-
sibilities before my attention fell upon the United States in the 1840s—
1x
 xX ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

more specifically the region in which I live, the so-called Burned-over Dis-
trict of upper New York State, for I realized that the very ground on which
I stood had been the center of American millénnialism, flourishing precisely
during the nineteenth-century transition between natural and artificial
disasters.
In tracking the millennialism of the 1840s, the rich collection of
Burned-over District materials at Syracuse University has been of particular
value. The staff of the George Arents Research Library, and especially its.
Rare Book Curator, Mark Weimer, have been patient and helpful guides to
the Oneida Community and Millerite holdings. I am also grateful to Imogen
Noyes Stone for granting me permission to work with the Oneida manu-
scripts collected by her father, George Wallingford Noyes.
For assistance in securing illustrations, | am grateful to Mark Weimer
at Syracuse, and to James R. Nix, chairman of the Department of Archives
and Special Collections at the Library of Loma Linda University.
A number of individuals generously shared unpublished or prepubli-
cation materials with me: Ronald Abler, the late Catherine Covert, Law-
rence Foster, Otohiko Okugawa, David Rowe, and the late Ernest Sandeen.
I drew particular stimulation from conversations with Robert Fogarty,
Lawrence Foster, David Rapoport, and David Rowe.
If there is an “invisible college” of those who study American millen-
nialism, then surely it convened in the Spring of 1984, when Ronald Num-
bers and Wayne Judd organized a conference in Killington, Vermont, on
“‘Millerism and the Millenarian Mind in 19th-century America.” I profited
greatly from the intellectual community they fostered. Subsequently, much
of the material presented at Killington was included in a volume edited by
Ronald Numbers and Jonathan Butler, The Disappointed, and I have made
use of it in the chapters that follow.
The model with which I conclude was given an informal airing at the
1981 Annual Meeting of the International Society for the Comparative
Study of Civilizations in Bloomington, Indiana. The occasion for a system-
atic reworking of these ideas was presented when Edward Wynne invited
me to contribute an essay to his journal, Character. In its pages, Robert Fo-
garty offered an incisive and useful critique of the model, and the incarna-
tion which appears here benefitted a good deal from his comments. The dis-
cussion of contemporary fundamentalism and apocalypticism in the final
chapter grew out of an article in the Fall 1983 issue of Soundings, “Divided
Apocalypse: Thinking About the End in Contemporary America,” and a
paper presented at the 1985 Annual Meeting of the Society for the Scientific
Study of Religion, in Savannah, Georgia, “Nuclear War and Millenarian
Symbols: Premillennialists Confront the Bomb.”
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xl

Completion of the manuscript was made possible by release from nor-

mal teaching obligations, for which I am grateful to Syracuse University; to
its former Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, John J. Prucha; and to the
Department of Political Science and its former Chairperson, Thomas Patter-
son. June Dumas and Judy Jablonski typed more versions of the manuscript
than I am sure they care to remember, but did so with unfailing good hu-
mor. My wife Janet offered the encouragement and support that made the
book possible, and our daughters, Debbi and Miriam, can now finally see
“Dad’s book,” about which they have been unceasingly curious. This book
is for them. :

Syracuse, New York MB

Spring 1986
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 INTRODUCTION

lfN 1843, the following letter appeared on the front page of the March
15 issue of the New York Daily Tribune:

The millennium of the sacred writers and the golden age of the poets
have buoyed up the drooping heart in every age and every condition of
life. The harmony of the material world, its ability to supply our wants,
and the constant swelling up of the Soul for a purer and better state,
convince every reflecting mind that a benevolent Creator designed Man
for Happiness in the present state of existence, in spite of all the teach-
ings of the Church.

That the Paradise of Eden is to be regained at some period or other,

there are but few who doubt. By what peculiar means this Heavenly
boon is to be secured is yet altogether problematical.

The letter was written by John Collins, a Boston abolitionist associ-

ated with William Lloyd Garrison. Later that year he left Boston to establish
the Skaneateles Community in central New York, a utopian experiment
based on the teachings of Robert Owen. His letter was not sent to the
Tribune’s publisher, Horace Greeley, but rather to a Tribune columnist, Al-
bert Brisbane, who had established himself as the principal American ex-
ponent of the French utopian philosopher, Charles Fourier.
The occasion for the letter’s publication in Brisbane’s column was the
rise of the religious movement known as Millerism. Led by a largely self-
1
 2 INTRODUCTION

taught Baptist preacher, William Miller, it swept the northeastern United

States—and most especially upstate New York—between 1840 and 1844
with predictions of the imminent Second Coming of Christ. Miller at first
predicted that the Second Advent would take place some time between
March 21, 1843, and March 21, 1844. When that year passed uneventfully,
he gave his approval to a revised deadline of October 22, 1844. Collins’ let-
ter, dated “Boston, February 20, 1843,” was written as millennial Cg
tations neared their peak. Given the state of intercity mail at the time,' the.
letter probably arrived in the first days of March, about the time the Tribune
on March 2 devoted an entire issue to a furious attack on the Millerite move-
ment..Brisbane included the letter in his March 15 column, with the end of
the world less than a week away.
This conjunction of a millenarian preacher, an Owenite utopian, and
a Fourierist publicist suggests the richly textured fabric of American reli-
gious and social experimentation in the 1840s. Like ““The Movement” of the
1960s, which loosely linked civil rights, antiwar activity, and the counter-
culture, a pre-Civil War network drew together those committed to the per-
fection of the world. The intricate linkages among social reformers, com-
munity builders, and revivalists—roles sometimes combined in the same
individual—suggests how difficult and ultimately misleading it may be to
categorize the ventures of the 1840s as either religious or secular, for the
protagonists do not fall neatly into mutually exclusive compartments.
In retrospect the slow nineteenth-century separation of a secular from
a religious vision of the perfect society depended upon the presence of tran-
sitional figures, neither fully secular nor conventionally religious. While
some like Miller continued traditions of scriptural interpretation little
changed since the Middle Ages, others—such as Collins, Brisbane, and
John Humphrey Noyes, founder of the Oneida Community—constructed
millennia-in-miniature. Their utopian communities grappled with earthly
issues of property distribution, sex roles, and work relationships, seeking
to wrest from the earth a perfection Miller insisted must be thrust down
from heaven.

THE BURNED-OVER DISTRICT

Millenarian and utopian fires burned across much of the northeastern

United States, from New England to the Western Reserve of Ohio, but no-
where with greater intensity than in the belt of upper New York State called
the Burned-over District. The incendiary metaphor evoked the emotional
 INTRODUCTION 3

conflagrations of religious excitement that later led the greatest nineteenth-

century revivalist, Charles Grandison Finney, to observe, “I found that re-
gion of the country what, in the western phrase, would be called, ‘a burnt
district.” ”’ Defined by the route of the Erie Canal, the Burned-over District
extended from just east of Utica to just west of Buffalo, north to the foothills
of the Adirondacks and the shore of Lake Ontario, and south to the tip of
the Finger Lakes.* But the fires of the District burned with uneven bright-
ness as movements rose and declined, so by the end of the decade of the
1840s Millerism, which had once swept the region, was discredited, while
John Humphrey Noyes’s Perfectionism was just beginning to marshall its
energies.
In 1848, William Miller’s family, excommunicated from their local
Baptist church, built a small, green-trimmed white clapboard chapel on
their farm in Low Hampton, New York, at the eastern edge of the Burned-
over District. Set on a country road, it was intended for the personal use of
the Millers and their friends in the years that followed what became known
as the “‘Great Disappointment,” the failure of the Second Coming of Christ
to occur at the time Millerites had predicted. The fields that once sur-
rounded the chapel are now wooded and overgrown, but a path still winds
down a hundred feet or so to “Ascension Rock,” the smooth stone outcrop-
ping on which, tradition has it, the Miller family awaited the Second Com-
ing. In those days, when fields instead of underbrush surrounded the Rock,
it commanded a vista across the valley toward the Green Mountains of Ver-
mont. Millerism, whose symbol was once a vast revival tent set up in city
after city along the Eastern seaboard, was now reduced to this backcountry
redoubt. Virtually the chapel’s only ornamentation is the defiant motto
painted in an arc across the wall behind the pulpit: ‘For at the time ap-
pointed the End shall be.”
In the same year the Miller chapel was built, the members of the
Oneida Community began the first Mansion House in the very center of the
Burned-over District, on the edge of Oneida Creek. Enlarged in 1849 and
1851, it was dwarfed by a second Mansion House in 1862, which by the final
additions of 1877—78 assumed the form of a large quadrangle.’ The great
Victorian edifice, with its 300 rooms and spacious courtyard, its high-ceil-
inged library and graceful assembly hall, was as powerful a statement of
confidence as the Miller chapel was of embattled fortitude.
One can scarcely imagine two more dissimilar structures, yet both
represented the same millenarian aspirations and both emerged from simi-
lar adversities. Despite their differences, religious millenarianism and uto-
pian experimentation coexisted in space and time, flourishing in the same
region at almost the same moment. Each was an unorthodox response to
 4 INTRODUCTION

The Miller family chapel was erected in 1848 adjacent to Miller’s home
on a country road in upstate New York near the Vermont border. Cour-
tesy Loma Linda University Heritage Room

the state of the world, rejecting the imperfections of the status quo in favor
of radical transformation. Thus it is tempting to emphasize the similarities
and to see them as manifestations of a regional ethos that encouraged rad-
ical religious and social experimentation, which contemporaries called “‘ul-
traism.””4
Yet the differences are as striking as the similarities—militancy versus
withdrawal, mass movements as against small, insular coteries, the venera-
ble language of religion confronting the embryonic language of secularism.
Indeed, the very coexistence of these polarities in the Burned-over District
begs the question: If some current of cultural radicalism was indeed run-
ning in Upstate New York, why were its forms so strikingly different?
Granted a widespread intuition that the world of early nineteenth-century
 INTRODUCTION 3)

The interior of the Miller chapel is nearly as austere as the exterior, the
severity broken only by the defiant motto on the wall. The plaque lists
the church’s twenty charter members. Miller himself died the year after
the chapel was built. Courtesy Loma Linda University Heritage Room

America needed systematic renovation, why were the putative instruments

so extraordinarily diverse, pulling apart both ideologically and organiza-
tionally? Some sought to convert an erring world before it ended, while oth-
ers tried to create a new world of their own. The religious chiliasts awaited
a millennium-in-macrocosm, while the utopian experimenters tried to con-
struct a millennium-in-microcosm.
These tensions expressed themselves in three problems, connected, re-
spectively, with causation, organizational and intellectual forms, and with
future significance. The causal problems involve questions of common spa-
tial and temporal location, as well as precipitating circumstances. Did chili-
asm and utopianism spring from discrete or common causes? If the former,
6 INTRODUCTION

S oe IME BEP
COMMUNITY-HOUSE AT ONEIDA RESERVE.

This wood cut, made by an Oneida Community member, is probably

the earliest existing picture of the Community’s building. Seen here
from the side, the structure was in fact a combination of three con-
nected buildings. At the right is the four-story first Mansion House,
erected in 1848. An L-shaped addition was placed behind (left) in 1849,
followed by a long shed in 1851, when the picture was made. Source:
The Circular, November 30, 1851. Courtesy George Arents Research
Library, Syracuse University

then their common location in space and time may have been fortuitous. If
the latter, then the identification of the causes may have utility far beyond
the early nineteenth century. And if there were common causes, what char-
acteristics of Upstate New York turned it, however briefly, into an area in
which these factors produced such extraordinary effects? Thus, one impor-
tant aspect of causation is the potential interaction between demographic
characteristics of millenarians and utopians and situational factors in the
Burned-over District.
If both Millerism and the utopian communities sprang from common
causes, then their radically different forms of organization must be ex-
plained. Millenarians and utopians were both transformationalists, com-
mitted to the radical restructuring of society. Yet the former moved aggres-
sively to increase the number of believers, while the latter concentrated
 INTRODUCTION 7

Community Buildings, Oneida, N. Y.

By 1862, the Oneida Community had erected the second Mansion

House (foreground), and in 1869—70, a large Children’s House to the
left of the new Mansion House. Part of the original Mansion House ap-
pears here at the extreme left; it was torn down shortly after this en-
graving was made. The building at the rear is the Tontine, built in 1863
to accommodate kitchen, dining room, and workshops. In the late
1870s, a rear wing was built onto the second Mansion House that con-
nected it with the Tontine to form a quadrangle. Source: Frank Leslie’s
Illustrated Newspaper, April 2, 1870. Courtesy George Arents Re-
search Library, Syracuse University

upon separation from the world. The former spoke a venerable language of
religious argumentation, based upon the exegesis of such Biblical texts as
the Book of Revelation. The latter, while often elaborating a theology of
their own (as, for example, among the Shakers and at Oneida), paid increas-
ing attention to social and economic issues, and often consciously invoked
an early socialist vocabulary. We may expect interaction between beliefs and
forms of organization. To what extent, therefore, were the disparate orga-
nizational forms simply the social implications of beliefs, millenarian
prophecies mandating proselytizing and utopian blueprints requiring with-
drawal? Or was the relationship precisely the reverse, in which beliefs bent
or were formed to explain and justify social arrangements?
8 INTRODUCTION

Just as the groups may have formed under common pressures, so their
survival as groups may have required the solution of common problems. Ad-
vocating the total transformation of society has rarely been a popular po-
sition and hence has been difficult to sustain over long periods. Proselytizing
and withdrawal are alternative strategies for maintaining commitment to
deviant beliefs. Some reinforce group loyalty by converting unbelievers,
while others do so by separating from them. .
The problems of future significance are just as difficult to resolve, for
knowing how things turned out does not imply that the logic of intervening
historical development is clear or simple. The millennium which visionaries
invoked after the Civil War was increasingly secular rather than religious,
preoccupied with bread and butter issues, the redistribution of wealth and
redistribution of political power that was assumed to follow wealth. Millen-
arians drifted into a new world of financial conspiracies and monetary pan-
aceas. Some on the fringes of Populism in the 1890s railed against the
“money power,” a dark cabal of bankers and manipulators whose alleged
designs for domination blocked the way to a perfected America. In the
1930s, Dr. Frances Townsend and his followers claimed that all would be
well if only the government would place cash in the hands of elderly Ameri-
cans, who could then spend the country into prosperity. Utopian colonies
after the Civil War attracted decreasing popular attention and numbers of
people. Far fewer were founded, and those few passed their brief lives for the
most part in rural obscurity. Consequently, the sudden prominence of
“communes” in the 1960s and of the “new religious right”’ in the 1970s and
*80s was as dramatic as it was unanticipated.
The chapters that follow consider these problems in the order given:
causation, form, and significance. The argument to be presented is that
Millerism and the utopian communities arose from common causes. The
steadfastly rural character of much of the Burned-over District, together
with the New England origins of most of its inhabitants, modified the
stresses of the period in ways that produced a special receptivity to millen-
arian and utopian appeals. The District functioned as a reservoir collecting
and discharging individuals in search of beliefs concerning imminent world
transformation.
The common origins of millenarian and utopian groups does not, of
course, account for their pronounced differences. I shall argue that those
dissimilarities resulted from the different strategies used by millenarians
and utopians to grapple with a common set of intellectual and organiza-
tional tasks, as well as by the differential challenges of urban and rural en-
vironments. Both had to explain and make sense out of a troubling and con-
fusing reality, and translate their explanations into social patterns that
 INTRODUCTION 9

could command allegiance. For the Millerites that involved pushing out into
the world. I shall argue that their decision to seek converts in the cities had
at least as much to do with their collapse as did the failure of William Mill-
er’s prediction.
The utopian experiments were a way out of the seemingly insur-
mountable problems posed by trying to organize urban populations. The
new utopian communities were means through which millenarian expec-
tations could be expressed and partially satisfied without risking total or-
ganizational failure. The utopians’ withdrawal was thus the result of a
shrewdly intuitive reading of reality, rather than, as has been implied in the
innuendos of their detractors, the consequence of moral cowardice or dis-
torted perceptions. The communities functioned as both sanctuaries and
laboratories, pushing conceptions of the future into more avowedly secular
forms, confronting problems of social and economic change that traditional
religious constructs did not address, and preserving nuclei of adherents to
fight another day.
Religious chiliasm—the belief in the imminent consummation of hu-
man history —developed from the late Middle Ages to the early nineteenth
century as a symbolically powerful way of organizing experience. Its special
quality lay in its ability to make sense of certain types of troubling events—
wars, governmental successions, and natural disasters. Its intellectual fail-
ure in the 1840s lay in the fact that these calamities were of declining signif-
icance. Rather, Americans were concerned about the transformation of vil-
lage-oriented, deferential, traditional society in which sentiments of
community were taken for granted, to an increasingly city-oriented, com-
petitive, modern society peopled by men-on-the-make. Associated with this
broad transformation were more particular dislocations such as the rise of
industry in the Northeast, the exhaustion of marginal farmland in New En-
gland, the vulnerability of the economy to panic and depression, and the
intractable political problem of slavery. To all these, religious millenarian-
ism had little to say, not because its followers failed to perceive the problems
or because they failed to feel deeply about them, but rather because the
problems did not fit within the literary conventions of traditional millenni-
alism.
Millenarians could not effectively mobilize and maintain commitment
outside the rural areas where their initial strength lay. In the cities they were
prey to competitive forces, such as the religious denominations that per-
ceived them as rivals and the new mass press that saw their eccentricities as
‘good copy.”’ Intellectually, Jacksonian and post-Jacksonian economic
transformations posed problems to which interpreters of the Book of Rev-
elation had given scant attention. Hence the apprehension of change, the
10 INTRODUCTION

vague feeling of teetering on the edge of calamity, combined with the ina-
bility either to do anything about it or even to articulate it very clearly.
Thus the overlap of millenarianism and.utopianism in space and time
was not coincidental; nor were the two simply slightly different manifesta-
tions of the same underlying factors. Both sought to demonstrate that de-
spite stresses and calamities in which the innocent seemed to suffer, the
world was still a moral order where the righteous could expect vindication.
They also shared a commitment to a reconstructed world free from sin and
evil. Millenarianism, much the older tradition, was an ancient way of trying”
to envision and control the future, for knowledge of God’s timetable for the
world explained present suffering and promised future salvation. Nonethe-
less, millenarianism performed its traditional tasks less and less effectively
in a world where social and economic dislocations were becoming ever
larger and more threatening, and where diverse and worldly urban popula-
tions could only with the greatest difficulty be persuaded to put aside their
usual ways. The utopians, whose origins were far more recent, displayed
greater intellectual flexibility in attempting to understand the new stresses
modernity had brought. Abandoning the cities and their organizational
problems, the utopians sought a “‘clean slate,” totally new communities in
the countryside whose very smallness made every aspect of life controllable.
The millenarians were not totally misguided in seeking the city, for in
an urbanizing America fundamental change demanded that city popula-
tions be engaged. Yet at the same time utopians shrewdly recognized that
the tools to rally such populations effectively were not yet available. Hence
the issues connected with the transformation of society were vigorously de-
bated in the 1840s but scarcely settled. It was left to later generations to
wrestle anew with the gap between religious and secular visions, and be-
tween movements of expansion and withdrawal.
The period under consideration suggests that a cycle of sorts can be
traced, from mass religious millenarianism through utopian experimenta-
tion to a new mass secular millenarianism in the late nineteenth and twen-
tieth centuries. Another turn of the wheel may now be in progress. The
“armed visions” after 1865 burned themselves out in the 1960s, just as re-
ligious millenarianism caught terminal fire among the Millerites. The New
Left may be considered the Millerism of the twentieth century. The “end of
ideology” that Daniel Bell announced in 1963 arrived approximately on
schedule and, like its nineteenth-century predecessors, came on an overlap-
ping utopian wave in the form of the countercultural communes. They in
their turn have given way to the resurgent fundamentalism of Jerry Falwell,
Hal Lindsey, and Pat Robertson.
 INTRODUCTION 11

Finally, some comments are in order about the terminology I employ.

Terms commonly used by social scientists, such as “interest group” or “‘vol-
untary association” do not lend themselves to groups that believe they pos-
sess ultimate truth. In addition, those who have written about such groups
have not always agreed on what to call them or about how terms borrowed
from theology ought to be applied. J. E C. Harrison has suggested, for ex-
ample, that “millenarian” should be used for popular, unlettered religious
movements, while “‘millennialist”’ should be reserved for more cerebral con-
siderations of the end-time, such as the creation of chronologies to match
Biblical prophecies.’ However useful such a distinction might be in some
contexts, it seems out of place here, since the scholarly musings of one gen-
eration had a way of emerging in the popular religiosity of another. In any
case, the division is not yet supported by the weight of scholarly usage,
which has treated the terms synonymously, a practice continued here.
The terminology for utopian experiments has been, if anything, more
confusing. In part, the confusion stems from the pejorative connotations of
“utopian,” with its overtones of impracticality. These negative associations
were incurred during the doctrinal wars between Marxian and non-Marx-
ian socialists, in which the former sought, in general successfully, to sup-
plant and stigmatize the latter. Since ideological weapons sit uneasily in
scholarly discourse, attempts have been made to find a more neutral term—
for example, Arthur Bestor’s ““communitarian.’’® Unfortunately neither
“communitarian,” “communal,” nor any alternative has come into general
academic usage. Since, despite its negative connotations, “utopian” contin-
ues to have wide currency, it will be used here, with “communitarian” and
““communal”’ employed as occasional synonyms. ““Commune,”’ having
come into common usage during the 1960s, will be used in the everyday
speech sense of a contemporary group-living experiment. For present pur-
poses, individuals will be considered to participate in a utopian experiment
if the following attributes are present: conscious creation of a separate so-
cial unit, as evidenced by voluntary measures of withdrawal from the dom-
inant society, and attempts at a relatively high level of group self-sufficiency,
combined with a commitment to the realization of some ideal state of social
relationships. These criteria may still be met by the many groups whose ef-
fective life was very brief but whose desire was for long-term autonomy.
“Utopia” and “millennium” are to one another as microcosm is to
macrocosm. What the utopian community hopes to achieve within a small
and self-sufficient group, the millenarian movement anticipates on a cosmic
scale. In the most general sense, millenarians look to a coming world trans-
formation. Millenarianism is, therefore, the belief that the world is about to
12 INTRODUCTION

experience an overturning, in which all that is imperfect or corrupt will van-

ish and in its place will stand a new order of things, where human beings
will live without sin, evil, or suffering. An achieved millennium is a realized
ideal, not on the scale of an insular community that cuts itself off from an
imperfect environment, but on a scale so vast that no corner of the world
exists any longer in an imperfect form.
Beyond this broad characterization, millenarians have gone their sep-
arate ways, arguing about the speed of the transformation, the causes of its
occurrence, the fate of those unworthy to enjoy it, and the exact nature of
the promised heaven on earth. These competing conceptions of a perfected
future have been articulated in the idioms of countless cultures, Western
and non-Western; as well as in the voices of differing religious traditions,
social philosophies, and political ideologies. Although most of the discus-
sion that follows concerns a few limited manifestations of the impulse to
perfection, we shall begin by tracing, however sketchily, the manifold cur-
rents that have made up the broader millenarian stream.
 THE MILLENARIAN STREAM

THE MILLERITE MOVEMENT seems an exotic growth, set

against American religious institutions, yet it grew out of a
'® tradition that substantially predated America itself. Indeed,
it is a useful corrective to note that the very phenomenon of
millenarian movements—groups driven to such extravagant expectations
about the future—possess continuity through time and an extraordinary
extension through space such that few regions of the world have lacked
examples.

THE MILLENNIUM IN THE WEST

In its most abstract form the concept of a millennial age refers to a future
time free from cares, imperfections, and suffering. Within Western religions
such a time was first expressed by the prophets of the Hebrew Bible, who,
reflecting upon the defeats and exile of their people, envisioned a time of in-
gathering under a restored Davidic kingdom. Beginning in the immediately
pre-Christian centuries, this theme of restoration was gradually expanded
to the dimensions of a cosmic event. God would not merely restore Israel,
but would redeem all the righteous of the world. As the event took on the
scope of total historic consummation, it became entwined with the Resur-
rection of the Dead, the Last Judgment, and a panoply of natural calamities
accompanying the intervention of God in history.' With the exception of the
13
14 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

Book of Daniel, these fully apocalyptic visions were not articulated in ca-
nonical works, developing instead in a separate Hebrew and Aramaic liter-
ature that purported to explicate the hidden eschatological meaning of
prophetic teaching. Although God necessarily was to be the agent of the
transformation, divine will was expressed through and personified by the
Messiah, now more than simply the scion of the Davidic line. The person of
the Messiah would not merely restore Israel to its former glory; he would
inaugurate the period of divine rule preceding the Last Judgment.
Christianity developed in this apocalyptic ambiance, filled with spec-
ulations concerning the nature and imminence of Last Things. Christian es-
chatologists, having imbibed Jewish apocalyptic ideas, developed them
within a Christological framework. Christian apocalyptic literature dwelt
upon the promise of a Second Coming and the links between it and the con-
summation of history. Their central text was the Book of Revelation and its
vision of a time when the righteous “‘lived and reigned with Christ a thou-
sand years” —the literal millennium, after which only the Resurrection of
the Dead and the Last Judgment would remain.?
Both Jewish and Christian views of the end-time continued to develop
in subsequent centuries, within the framework that early apocalyptic writ-
ing provided. The ambiguous language and vivid yet imprecise imagery this
literature employed meant that significant questions remained unanswered:
How was one to know how close the day of fulfillment was? Was progress
toward it inevitable, or could it be accelerated by human effort? As the mil-
lennial time came closer, did its imminence affect the duties owed by citizens
to the state? These and cognate issues kept millenarian authors occupied
through the Middle Ages and into the early modern period. Submerged dur-
ing periods of stability, millennialism had a way of thrusting to the surface
during times of disorder and unease, as it did during the mid-seventeenth
century in England.

THE MILLENNIUM IN THE NON-WESTERN WORLD:

One of the discoveries Western observers made as they explored and domi-
nated the non-Western world was that Europeans were not the only peoples
attracted to a perfect future. The reports first of travellers, missionaries, and
government officials, later of ethnographers, historians, and journalists,
contained numerous descriptions of ideas and groups in Asia, Africa, the
Americas, and Oceania that in broad outlines resembled the Judaeo-Chris-
tian craving for a consummation of history. At first it appeared that these
 MILLENARIAN STREAM 15

were instances in which native peoples had adapted imperfectly understood

missionary teachings to their own situations. Faced with incomprehensible
and seemingly invulnerable Western forces, it was tempting to believe that
transcendent powers would save them and re-establish the comfortable
world they had known before conquest. And, indeed, well-documented
cases exist of non-Western movements at least partially based upon Chris-
tian models, of which the most famous is perhaps the Taiping movement of
1856—61, whose leader, Hung Hsiu-ch’uan, had been profoundly influ-
enced by a chance reading of a missionary’s pamphlet.
However, as evidence accumulated it has becorhe clear that these non-
Western millennialists have not been living solely upon the ideas of the West.
Rather, many chiliasts of the Third World came naturally to their inheri-
tance, drawing upon independently developed salvationist themes. Recov-
erable oral traditions that pre-date Western contact, as well as closer analy-
sis of the relation of non-Western movements to indigenous popular religion
and culture, make clear that while the millennium as a literal thousand-year
period may be exclusively Western, the concept of a historic end-time is not.
Native American peoples of both eastern and western America devel-
oped large and influential millenarian movements, from the religion of
Handsome Lake among the Iroquois to the Ghost Dance among the Plains
Indians.* Elsewhere in the Western hemisphere, sketchy documentation
produces a blurred and incomplete picture, but such movements almost cer-
tainly existed among the Indian peoples of what is now Brazil, and quite
possibly among Andean tribes as well.’
Information concerning Southern Africa is far richer and more com-
plete. Indigenous millenarian movements assumed a major role in the first
organized resistance to colonization, and continued to emerge periodically
throughout the colonial period, although with the passage of time bor-
rowed Christian motifs became more conspicuous.® Northern Africa and
the Near East exhibit a quite different millenarian tradition, drawn from the
popular Islamic belief that a divinely sanctioned Imam will inaugurate an
age of religious purity. While numerous claimants have arisen, the most fa-
mous and powerful was undoubtedly the “Mahdi,” whose followers con-
trolled much of the Sudan between 1881 and 1898.7
Writers prone to identify millenarian impulses exclusively with their
Western manifestations occasionally asserted that Asian peoples, who alleg-
edly lacked a linear conception of history, were immune to chiliastic ap-
peals. There is now ample evidence that, at least at the level of popular reli-
gion and culture, this is not the case. Popular Buddhism, with its concept of
the “Buddha of the future,” is merely one example. The Taiping Rebellion,
already referred to, is a far more potent one, for this millenarian challenge
16 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

to the Chinese Empire ranks as the bloodiest civil conflict of the nineteenth-
century. Far from constituting merely:an adaptation of Christian doctrine,
it also drew heavily from the murky but well-established teaching of the
Chinese secret societies.®
Although the cultural significance of Oceania may come less imme-
diately to mind than that of East Asia, millennial doctrines have exerted ex-
traordinary influence there. Nowhere has this been clearer than in the case
of the Melanesian cargo cults. The zeal of anthropologists has given rise
to a vast literature, a product of both the wealth of ethnographic data and
the tendencies of the movements to proliferate in marginally differentiated,
island-specific forms.?
~ In short, one can scarcely identify a region that has not, at one time or
another, generated its own version of the millenarian dream. That this has
so often occurred against the backdrop of struggles with the West is a prod-
uct of both the accidents of access to data (Western scholars had to be there
to collect it) and the need for some extraordinary stress-event to trigger dis-
content with the present. In any case, such movements are far too widely
dispersed and far too deeply rooted in their respective cultures to be attrib-
uted simply to the borrowing of Western religious motifs. Instead, there ap-
pears to be some common human propensity to foresake incremental in fa-
vor of total change when conditions demand, a matter to which we shall
return at a later point.

THE RISE OF SECULAR MILLENNIALISM

This necessarily compressed outline of a rich and complex subject would be

incomplete without consideration of the idiom in which chiliastic yearnings
have been expressed. The focus to this point has been upon religion as the
carrier of millenarian expectations. For many peoples and historical epochs
this has indeed been the case, with the redemptive age brought forward
through a supernatural intervention into the flow of mundane events. Al-
though human beings might in some cases accelerate the process, the fun-
damental agent of change was taken to be some divine force.
Beginning in the eighteenth century in the West, however, this exclu-
sively religious conception began to split into separate religious and secular
forms. The modern era might, in fact, be viewed in terms of the increasing
dominance of secular millenarian visions, in which total transformation
was to occur by organized human effort. Millennial potency was attributed
to a wide variety of secular forces—the power of reason, so beloved by the
 MILLENARIAN STREAM 17

philosophes; science and technology, with their apparently limitless poten-

tial for resolving seemingly intractable problems; concepts of national mis-
sion favored by romantic nationalists; the power of race, in the eyes of right-
ists in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and the Marxist
conception of a class struggle unfolding in history.'°
The ideologies of these movements in fact take on the character of, as
it were, secular religions, in which ideas that are not conventionally reli-
gious perform religious functions for those who believe in them. They speak
to ultimate concerns, seemingly answer the most vexing questions with cer-
tainty, hold out hope of future salvation, and demonstrate that an appar-
ently chaotic world is underlain by profound moral order. Thus in an ana-
lytic sense secular millenarianism is neither a contradiction in terms nor
devoid of religious overtones. Its political and social belief systems differ
from religion as it is conventionally known by dispensing with conventional
religious language and symbols, while at the same time serving as religion’s
functional equivalent.
This bifurcation of millennialism into religious and secular variants is
of special significance for the period of the 1840s when the competition be-
tween them was both intense and still novel. To those for whom the millen-
nium was inconceivable without the exercise of divine power, doctrines of
non-religious salvation were heralds of error, while for those more im-
pressed with the potency of human effort, continued confidence in divine
intervention resulted only in wasted opportunities for change.

MILLENN IALISM AS A GENERIC PHENOMENON

The differences participants saw between religious and non-religious vi-

sions have not always been so apparent to outside observers. Similarly, the
cultural gulfs separating Western and non-Western concepts of total trans-
formation seemed far wider to those who first observed them than they have
to later scholars. Thus the tendency of recent scholarship has increasingly
been to recognize millennialism as a global phenomenon, transcending his-
torical periods as well as cultures, encompassing the traditionally religious
as well as the avowedly secular. While respecting the distinctiveness of
individual movements, this tendency has also recognized their common
substratum.
The identification of commonalities has occurred alongside an aware-
ness that no single discipline holds the key to understanding millennialism.
By convention, Western movements have most often fallen under the pur-
 18 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

view of historians, while non-Western movements have engaged the inter-

ests of anthropologists. However, sociologists, political scientists, and psy-
chologists have made equally significant contributions. The
interdisciplinary character of the study of millenarian movements received
its most significant recognition in the 1960 University of Chicago confer-
ence, “‘Millennial Dreams in Action,” among the first scholarly meetings to
systematically draw together social scientists from different disciplines and
geographical competences for an examination of chiliasticphenomena.'! In
the quarter-century since the Chicago conference, the interdisciplinary
character of research on millennialism has become firmly established. '?
One of the most influential products of the Chicago conference was
the definition of ‘‘millenarian”’ proposed by Norman Cohn and subse-
quently incorporated into the revised edition of his highly influential Pur-
suit of the Millennium’:

any religious movement inspired by the phantasy of a salvation

which is to be
a. collective, in the sense that it is to be enjoyed by the faithful as
a group;
b. terrestrial, in the sense that it is to be realised on this earth and
not in some otherworldly heaven; ;
c. imminent, in the sense that it is to come both soon and
suddenly;
d. total, in the sense that it is utterly to transform life on earth,
so that the new dispensation will be no mere improvement on the pres-
ent but perfection itself;
e. accomplished by agencies which are consciously regarded as
supernatural.

Useful though it is Cohn’s definition remains excessively narrow in its insis-

tence that a movement be “‘religious,” its assertion that the motivation is a
“phantasy,” and its identification of the operative powers as ‘“‘superna-
tural.” Ironically, armed visions of modern political ideologies would have
little place in such a definition, despite the fact that Cohn’s own initial con-
cern was to trace the millenarian roots of communism and Naziism.'4
Nonetheless, Cohn’s definition proved an admirable starting point for the
comparative study of Western and non-Western movements, without the ne-
cessity for viewing the latter as distorted offspring of the former.
 MILLENARIAN STREAM 19

THE MILLENNIUM AND RATIONALITY

One goal has been not simply to describe and classify such movements but
also to explain the reasons for their occurrence. When the question of ori-
gins is joined, the issue of fantasy versus reality, of subjectivity versus objec-
tivity, becomes critical. A fissure runs through millenarian studies between
those who attribute millennialism to a fundamental misapprehension of
reality, as against those who view the movements as the product of a partic-
ularly acute perception. These antithetical positions are most clearly re-
presented in the work of, respectively, Cohn and Anthony F. C. Wallace.
The vision of the millennium can be considered a fantasy to the extent
that predictions of the millennium’s imminence have been uniformly inval-
idated. In addition, movements that have done political and military battle
with the authorities have usually been defeated. It thus has seemed persua-
sive to argue that prophets and followers relied upon an incorrect under-
standing of the world. Cohn has gone further, insisting upon the psycho-
pathological character of the movements. Where there were people “living
in a state of chronic frustration and anxiety,” that frustration and anxiety
would “‘suddenly discharge... itself in a frantic urge to smite the ungodly—
and by doing so to bring into being... that final Kingdom where the Saints
... were to enjoy ease and riches, security and power for all eternity.’’!’ This
was not the calculated advancement of group interests; it was, rather, ex-
pressive behavior designed to exorcise inner demons.
Although Cohn reached this position from an essentially psychoan-
alytic perspective, scholars with different theoretical baggage drew parallel
conclusions. Thus Marxist writers such as E. J. Hobsbawm attribute the
chiliasts’ failure to their imperfect understanding of the causes of their mis-
ery and a flawed grasp of the need for effective organization. Since they do
not know how social and political change may be brought about, they uti-
lize methods that can only lead to failure. Their grievances against the es-
tablished order may be real, but their remedies remain parochial and naive.
The Southern European peasants Hobsbawm studied lashed out against ad-
versaries in acts that may have had cathartic value but left them worse off
than before.'¢
The work of Anthony E. C. Wallace represents a different orientation.
Wallace argues that under conditions of extreme collective stress, commu-
nities face the alternatives of dissolution or revitalization. If they persist in
traditional modes of thought and behavior, they face loss of group integrity
through conquest or absorption, because of their inability to meet new
challenges. If they recast their world view and begin to act upon this
changed conception of reality, new energies can be tapped and the group’s
 20 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

life can be reinvigorated. Millenarian movements serve this function by pre-

senting an alternative set of beliefs and way of life, which promises to cure
the ills against which established institutions have proved powerless.'7
Hence millennialists may correctly judge when a society can no longer con-
duct business as usual. Existing institutions possess an inertial character
such that they encourage repetition of old patterns of behavior even in the
presence of radical challenges to the status quo. Liberated from such alle-
giances, millennialists more readily grasp when usual ways of doing things
have become dysfunctional.
Wallace’s concept of the revitalization process is cross-cultural and
cross-historical, yet grew out of anthropological research on the survival di-
lemmas of non-Western peoples. In tribal settings, where millennialism of-
ten engaged the loyalties of most of a group’s members, it was tempting to
view it as a creative and ultimately healthy response to mortal dangers. In
Western societies, larger and more diverse, millennialism has been more apt
to pit some members of a society against others. Where non-Western mil-
lennialism may be likened to international conflict, with state set against
state, Western millennialism often has had the character of civil war. As in
much fratricidal warfare, the conflict of millenarians with their fellow citi-
zens has had an unusually bitter edge, to which may be traced perhaps the
propensity to view chiliasts as not simply mtisguided but incapable of ra-
tional thought.
The view to be taken here will probably satisfy neither the irrational-
ists who view millennialism as an aberration nor the rationalists who see it
as a sensible and self-interested response. At least some of the millenarians
we shall consider drifted into non-falsifiable assertions incapable of being
checked against confirming external evidence or, by contrast, into predic-
tions so patently without external foundation that disconfirmation was in-
evitable. As we shall see, Millerism in particular evoked strong charges of
abetting insanity both in its own time and in later years. By the same token,
millenarians will also be seen to have grasped, sometimes more clearly than
their neighbors, the fragility of American society and the extent to which
old truths could no longer be taken for granted. Notwithstanding their
worldly failures, they possessed an insight that their more complacent con-
temporaries lacked.
 MILLENARIAN STREAM 21

AMERICAN MILLENARIANISM BEFORE 1800

The millenarian ferment that reached its climax in the Millerite debacle was
an intellectually respectable feature of New England Protestantism, which
grew from English roots. The English Civil War (1642—46) had been the
occasion for millenarian speculation and organization on a grand scale.
The millenarian Puritan sects subsequently suffered major political and in-
tellectual defeats. Feared as disturbers of social order and stigmatized as ir-
rational “‘enthusiasts,”'* the chiliasts melted away into obscurity after the
Restoration. Gone were the Diggers, a fragile community that rejected the
institution of private property, and gone too were the Fifth Monarchy Men,
whose belief in an imminent reign of Christ on earth led them into a disas-
trous attempted coup against the government of Cromwell. While groups
such as these dissolved in disillusionment and defeat, their attitudes and
writings did not in fact vanish. Popular religion in the English countryside
and among urban artisans continued to take the promised millennium se-
riously, long after it had passed out of middle and upper-class fashion. ' Bib-
lical exegesis with strong millenarian overtones retained its respectability
among scriptural scholars. The invitingly ambiguous imagery of the books
of Daniel and Revelation provided continued warrant for millenarian schol-
arship among clerics otherwise cut off from or unsympathetic to the more
emotionally gripping popular millenarianism which hung on among the
lower orders.
New England, as an outpost populated by Dissenters, was perhaps
more than usually receptive in the eighteenth century to survivals from the
seventeenth. Cerebral chiliasm, concerned with the unravelling of scriptural
puzzles (what were the beasts in Revelation, for example, and which of them
had already arrived?), was intensified and modified by the religious revivals
of the Great Awakening (1730—45), which encompassed much of colonial
America. Its New England phase spread from Northampton, Massachu-
setts, up the Connecticut River Valley, and reintroduced and partially re-
legitimated emotional religiosity. At the same time, its major intellectual fig-
ure, Jonathan Edwards, gave millenarian thought a characteristically
American tone. Millenarianism had traditionally looked for portents as ev-
idence of imminent change, particularly natural calamities and political dis-
ruptions. Edwards added to these categories that of personal spiritual re-
newal. The Awakening also built upon the belief that America represented
a new beginning, hence had some special mission to perform in the econ-
omy of world salvation. This belief in turn interlocked with the Puritan sus-
picion of England as a decadent society that had lost its claim to being a di-
vine instrument.
 Fog) CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

When in the mid-1700s the climactic struggle took place between En-
gland and France for the political division of North America, New England
clerics were initially unsure how to react. Qn the one hand, the confronta-
tion between Protestant England and Catholic France conformed well to
English millenarian rhetoric, which identified the Pope with the Anti-
Christ. On the other, it was tempting to see the struggle as between nations
that differed only in their degrees of unworthiness.”° It was difficult not to
view the fall of the French fortress at Louisbourg, Cape Breton Island
(1745), as the victory of God’s elect: ““Against the onslaught of popery and
slavery the sacred cause of liberty became the banner under which New
Englanders rallied ... not only had the course of providential history hal-
lowed the rise of liberty, but the triumph of liberty would be realized in the
coming of the millennium.’
Virtuous New England rather than corrupt England was the instru-
ment of victory, with the implication that the arena of millenarian battle had
shifted decisively from Europe to America. The gradual assimilation of po-
litical liberty to millenarian history marked “a subtle but profound shift in
emphasis—the religious values that traditionally defined the ultimate goal
of apocalyptic hope—the conversion of all nations to Christianity —be-
came diluted with, and often subordinate to, the commitment to America
as a new seat of liberty.””?? The implications of the shift lay not only in the
new geographical locus of millenarian events but in the suggestion, hardly
novel historically but new in an American context, that the millennium
could be politicized. If liberty might be used as a rallying point against the
French in Canada, it could and would be used against the British in America
thirty years later.?3
In fits and starts, expectation of the millennium continued through
the Revolution itself. In 1775 many, particularly in New England, prepared
for the Revolution as for a crusade. Whatever special role America had to
perform could be accomplished only with full independence. However, with
the attainment of independence, national unity gave way to political parti-
sanship. Religious observance was on the decline in America and even more
dramatically in Revolutionary France. Anti-Christ seemed to be everywhere
at once. “Events had left the nature of God’s plan in doubt, and millennial-
ists addressed themselves to issues which bespoke a fear that the signs of the
times were not as clear as they ought be.”’24 The constitutional edifice was
outwardly complete, yet if the millennium had in fact arrived, its existence
was difficult to detect after the passing of revolutionary euphoria. Perhaps
independence and constitutional restructuring were not enough.25
The significance of disillusionment was twofold. In the first place, it
resulted from the prophetic disconfirmation inevitable in revolutionary sit-
=
 MILLENARIAN STREAM 25

uations. The postrevolutionary situation never fulfills the original prerevo-

lutionary promise. Second, the emphasis after 1790 was increasingly upon
the primacy of inner over outer change. This altered orientation avoided the
disillusionment associated with the imperfections of social, economic, and
political institutions. If personal transformation lay at the root of virtuous
social behavior, then inner transformation must necessarily precede visible
social change. This spiritual inner-directedness pushed more radical forms
of transformation farther into the future, for society could scarcely be stood
on its head before the spiritual odysseys of individuals had been completed.
As in the Great Awakening, the instrument for thesé personal changes was
the revival, in which prolonged soul searching in a group setting was led by
preachers adept at arousing feelings of guilt and remorse. Stimulated by a
sense of personal unworthiness, revival participants were offered the hope
of redemption through a transformative religious experience.

THE SECOND GREAT AWAKENING

The post-1790 revivals were neither as brief nor as spatially confined as

their colonial predecessors. Dating the “Second Great Awakening” permits
simply a specification of its outermost boundaries and the years of maxi-
mum activity. On this basis, it began about 1795 (half a century after the
First Great Awakening had ended), and lasted until some time between
1835 and about 1860, depending upon the area of the country: The Awak-
ening ‘“‘seems to have begun in different parts of the nation at different times
and to have reached a series of peaks in different years in each area.”’° Geo-
graphically, the revivals reached their greatest intensity not in New England
but in areas where the first generation of settlement was just ending, then
regarded as “the West.” That included particularly the Burned-over District
and northern Ohio, areas that had received migratory streams out of West-
ern New England. Less intense revivalism also occurred in the Ohio and
Connecticut valleys.?” In New York State, revivals occurred in every county,
but most often on either side of the Erie Canal, diminishing sharply in the
lower Hudson Valley. All told, at least 1,343 revivals occurred in the state
between 1825 and 1835, and most frequently between 1829 and 1832.?* De-
mographically, the counties implicated in the revivals were those with the
highest proportion of individuals born in New England. Late eighteenth-
century population movements brought New Englanders into New York
State by two routes: from Connecticut and Massachusetts into the upper
Mohawk Valley and western Catskills, and from Vermont above the Adiron-
 24 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

os

dacks into the St. Lawrence Valley and around to the eastern shore of Lake
Ontario. The convergence of these streams in central New York around
1800 pushed the Yankee population directly westward into the Finger Lakes
and the Genesee River Valley. The movement was sufficiently systematic to
constitute the transplantation of portions of New England society: “Jeffer-
son and St. Lawrence counties were the new Vermont. Oneida was the new
Connecticut. Farther west, Genesee, Wyoming, and Chautauqua contained
people of considerably mixed local New England derivation, scarcely tinged
by other strains.’’2?
The upstate revivals benefited from such superbly gifted orchestrators
as Charles Grandison Finney, whose intuitive grasp of the psychology of
conversion contributed substantially to the revivals’ success. Finney and fel-
low revivalists systematically developed Jonathan Edwards’ emphasis on in-
ner renewal as the precondition for salvation. If fundamental transforma-
tion occurred in the hearts of believers rather than in the institutional
structure of society, some traditional theological conceptions would be
weakened. The first was the Calvinist insistence upon predestination, for
the point of the revivals was to stimulate personal change. The saved and the
damned had not been irreversibly chosen by the deity; rather, the category
into which one fell was subject to willed change. Individuals might save
themselves, or rather open themselves up to God’s saving grace. While in
theory this might happen at any time, it was more likely to happen under
the prodding of a skilled revivalist, who knew how to arouse a sense of de-
spair while at the same time holding out the possibility of transformation.
As predestination reinforced the social hierarchy of the colonial village, so
revivalists’ conversions harmonized with the new Jacksonian social mobil-
ity. Increasingly, all things were deemed possible, including freeing the
world from sin by the exercise of personal initiative.
The revivals’ emphasis upon the significance of human agency held
important implications for millenarianism. Traditional chiliasts had been
premillennialists. That is, they believed the millennium would be preceded
by the Second Coming. Only after the return of Christ would the thousand
years of peace and plenty begin. Premillennialism emphasized not simply
the totality of change but its suddenness. The Second Coming would
abruptly sever the flow of historic time in order to purge the world of sin and
evil. Themes of discontinuity and purification led premillennialists to as-
sociate the inauguration of the millennium with tumult and disaster, as di-
vine forces destroyed all that was corrupt in earthly life.
The revivalists, more optimistic about human potentialities, inclined
toward a different view. Most were postmillennialists who believed that the
Second Coming would follow rather than precede the thousand-year king-
 MILLENARIAN STREAM 25

dom of God on earth. The climactic moment was not likely to come in the
very near future, for it had to be preceded by the conversion of those as yet
unsaved. This view of history reduced the anxiety associated with a belief
in imminent divine intervention; it also emphasized gradualism, a reformist
approach to problems, and the importance of human effort. The world was
to be made ready for the consummation of history through incremental im-
provements instead of by a once-and-for-all, miraculous solution. Just as
human effort could redeem the state of one’s soul, so it might in time redeem
the outer world through the virtuous behavior of the saved. Premillennial-
ists tended to be anxious and pessimistic, for their millennium was to be
preceded by the descent of Christ in clouds and thunder. Only after the
purging cataclysms would the thousand years begin.
There had already been glimpses of postmillennialism in the first
Great Awakening, as the sheer fact of spiritual invigoration came to be in-
terpreted as a sign the millennium was near. Evidence for premillennialism
was generally gleaned from the state of the external world of politics and
nature, but the evidentiary base for postmillennial expectation lay within
the souls of believers. The fervor and spread of belief was evidence of how
far humanity had traversed the ordained course of history. While this shift
was implicit in the eighteenth century, it became explicit in the nineteenth.
Not surprisingly, the more revivalists learned about William Miller
and his premillennialism, the less they liked it. Finney’s and Miller’s paths
finally crossed in Boston in the Advent year, 1843. Finney took in one or two
of Miller’s Bible classes, and then “invited him to my room, and tried to
convince him that he was in error.” Initially certain he had demonstrated
the internal contradictions of Miller’s position, Finney succumbed in the
end to uncharacteristic despair: “‘it was vain to reason with him, and his
followers, at that time. Believing, as they most certainly did, that the advent
of Christ was at hand, it was no wonder that they were too wild with excite-
ment, to be reasoned with to any purpose.””*° Premillennialism was now so
far outside the realm of accepted doctrine that a postmillennialist like Fin-
ney found belief in it incomprehensible.

POSTMILLENNIALISM IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Nineteenth century postmillennialism did not, of course, exclude God from

participation, but the deity’s role had been altered from that of sole actor to
co-participant; the emphasis shifted to human efforts, often mobilized
through benevolent societies and other voluntary associations.*! Inevitably,
26 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

the concentration upon human efficacy subtly subordinated the traditional

interventionist element in millenarian thought. The perfection of the world
would not occur all at once through direct divine intervention, but gradu-
ally as divinely inspired individuals came to dominate society.
In postmillennialist terms, the perfection of the outer world would re-
sult from the perfection of the inner world. First, saved individuals would
manifest their spiritual improvement in virtuous behavior. The more such
people, the higher the moral tone of political and economic endeavor: ‘“‘eth-
ical renewal... was prerequisite to social righteousness.’’32 Second, such in-
dividuals would feel obligated to induce similar changes in others. Their
own perfection carried the obligation to assist the perfection of those pres-
ently unregenerate through the active support of religious causes in general
and revivalism in particular. Thus, the newly ‘“‘saved”’ were not expected to
smugly enjoy their salvation.
Putatively virtuous behavior and religious activism both encouraged
a peculiar social militancy whose hallmark was the simultaneous pursuit of
religious evangelism and social reform. Those touched by the revivals sup-
ported conversionary religion through financial and personal participation
oriented toward reaching the unsaved. A multitude of missionary organi-
zations and societies devoted to the publication and distribution of Bibles
and religious tracts formed in pursuit of this goal. The same persons com-
mitted to these causes, however, were often involved in others of an appar-
ently more secular character, concerned with the amelioration of social ills.
Reformist efforts were sometimes aimed at improving the status of women,
reducing urban poverty, or eliminating political corruption, but were most
often directed at the abolition of slavery and at temperance. This “‘politics
of benevolence,” as John Hammond calls it, arose from the belief that the
unregenerate could not achieve salvation if social circumstances prevented
them from fully exercising free will. Since revivalist conversion was consid-
ered the product of personal choice, any condition that inhibited choice
made conversion less likely. Thus it seemed natural for the saved to shoulder
“the obligation to order the world in a manner that would facilitate the con-
version of others.’’?? There was an evident logic at work here, for once hu-
man efficacy was acknowledged in the religious sphere, there was no nec-
essary reason to exclude it from the secular sphere (although, of course,
those involved would not even have acknowledged the validity of the dis-
tinction). The logic seemed all the more compelling, inasmuch as the post-
millennial fervor occurred at a time when commercial and technological
growth confirmed the power of human effort and ingenuity. Postmillenni-
alism also seemed the ideal vehicle to develop more fully the view already
articulated by the eighteenth-century New England millenarians that Amer-
 MILLENARIAN STREAM 2

ica occupied a unique position in the divine plan of history. As the new locus
of salvationist activity in the world, it would also presumably achieve a state
of moral improvement before others.

THE PARADOX OF POSTMILLENNIALISM

The problem with postmillennialism lay in the fact that the more seriously
it was taken, the less millenarian it became. The greater the emphasis on the
human role in moral purification, the greater the belief in step-by-step so-
lutions to social problems. The greater the commitment to incremental re-
form, the more remote the final goal of total perfection became. Effective
problem-solving lay in the additive consequences of many small steps rather
than in any capacity to achieve comprehensive solutions. And yet if this were
indeed the case, what was left of the millennium itself? The total perfection
of life on earth might remain an aspiration and a standard against which
the present was measured, but it also took on the character of a far-off
dreamy vision that none living would ever personally see.
The postmillennialism that developed from the revivals was conse-
quently optimistic, gradualist, and human centered. Its compatibility with
reform movements lent momentum to organizations devoted to the allevia-
tion of social ills, particularly in the growing urban centers. By the same to-
ken, postmillennialists themselves found it easy to pass into a semi-secular
reliance upon human good will and the growth of scientific knowledge:

The churches and the benevolent societies connected with them were
still considered important instruments of the coming kingdom [after
the Civil War], but great significance was now attached to such imper-
sonal messianic agencies as the natural and social sciences. The spirit
of brotherhood was still given a major role in perfecting the world, but
it was often regarded as an achievement of human evolution with only
tenuous ties to a transcendent deity.*#

James Moorehead suggests that postmillennialism was inherently

unstable and might best be viewed as a transitional phenomenon, midway
between the premillennialism it sought to supplant and a more naturalistic
religion of uplift and social improvement. In the end, it satisfied no one, for
its developmentalism managed to offend premillennialists while it remained
too attached to supernaturalism for the taste of liberals. Hence it could not
28 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

survive the subsequent polarization between Protestant fundamentalists

and liberals in the early twentieth century.>°
In the 1830s and 40s, however, the decline of postmillennialism lay far
in the future. During the revivals of the Second Great Awakening, when evil
still seemed conquerable by religious will, the postmillennialists saw no
need for a flawed society to be destroyed in a supernatural conflagration.
Their commitment to progressive human betterment transformed the mil-
lennium from an event that was to begin at a fixed point in time to a process
capable of realization by degrees, little more than a metaphor of distant per-
fection. With eschatological transformation pushed into a non-specific fu-
ture, there was little reason to despair of the present or to face the anxieties
of imminent divine judgment. The task was not to abandon life as usual nor
to await catastrophic upheaval but to push ahead with the tasks mandated
by the reformist ethos.
The wide acceptance of revival-oriented evangelical Protestantism af-
ter about 1830, under such master practitioners as Finney, emphasized the
importance of human effort and de-emphasized, albeit unintentionally, the
importance of divine intervention. The significance of human effort in turn
encouraged an incremental approach to the struggle between good and evil,
decomposed now into a thousand skirmishes rather a climactic, cosmic bat-
tle. Reformers, struggling against low church.attendance, alcoholism, slav-
ery, or urban poverty, saw themselves as the instruments of whatever millen-
nial consummation might eventually be attained in God’s good time.
Postmillennialism was in two senses the victim of its own success. On
the one hand, when the revival spirit was at full strength it induced an ex-
aggerated optimism, so rapidly did religious invigoration and philan-
thropic endeavor seem to proceed. The fervor could not be sustained indef-
initely, however, and social problems often were surprisingly stubborn, as
the abolitionists found. The result could be at least temporary disillusion-
ment. Compared to premillennialists, who could stake all ona fixed date for
the “end of the world,” postmillennialists found it easier to weather disap-
pointments and learn to fight on. But they did so by pushing the millennium
forward or, rather, by becoming accustomed to its continual recession into
the future. This, in turn, engendered a second form of failure through suc-
cess. As postmillennialism was interpreted in reformist terms, the intimate
link between the millennium’s realization and religious commitment weak-
ened. If reform was a way of doing God’s work on earth and bringing per-
fection closer, and if the instruments for perfectability consisted of organi-
zation, hard work, and knowledge, then one hardly needed to remain
immersed in orthodox religious activity in order to do it.3¢ Further, the post-
millennial optimism permeated American culture, playing upon older con-
 MILLENARIAN STREAM 29

ceptions of America as the “‘redeemer nation” destined to effect the world’s

salvation.” To the extent that most Americans remained optimistic nation-
alists, they partook of the postmillennial ethos in a manner that was both
unconscious and uncritical, postmillennialists without realizing it. Hence,
even though religious writers continued to discuss postmillennialism in
theological terms, postmillennial themes of progress and uplift found their
way into more secular and naturalistic interpretations.** Particularly after
the Civil War, it might truly be said that almost all Americans with the ex-
ception of nativists, agrarian radicals, and declassed older elites had im-
bibed postmillennial orthodoxy in its diluted secu]an form. It became part
of the American ‘“‘civic religion,” according to which the nation had a spe-
cial obligation and a special capacity to develop social virtue.*? Thus the
double paradox: that the more seriously postmillennialism was taken the
less explicitly millenarian it became, with the result that it could not main-
tain itself as an independent theological position on the fundamentalist-lib-
eral battlefield of the 1920s. At the same time, the diffusion of postmillen-
nial beliefs throughout American culture made it the source not only for a
thousand sermons but for inspirational political rhetoric as well, such that
by the very time that it succumbed in religious circles its secular version
triumphed in the society at large.
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 THE RISE OF THE MILLERITES

THE INFLUENCE of postmillennialism makes the appearance

of Millerism all the more curious. For if indeed doctrines of
gradual improvement were becoming widespread, why re-
* turn to an older tradition, so seemingly at odds with the
sunny American temperament? Before an answer can be given, the history,
personnel, and doctrines of Millerism must first be outlined.

THE RETURN OF PREMILLENNIALISM

The Second Great Awakening reached one of several peaks between 1838
and 1844, with particularly intense revival activity in Millerism’s climactic
year, 1843.' Thus, the most dramatic period of Millerite premillennialist ac-
tivity coincided with a surge in revivalist, essentially postmillennialist, con-
versions. While this juxtaposition has sometimes been attributed to a
vaguer and more general millenarian ambiance,’ the distinctions already
drawn between the two millenarian orientations suggest the need for a more
precise explanation, especially in view of the fact that no subsequent pre-
millennial movement approached Miller’s in notoriety.
Millerism strongly resembled earlier European millenarian move-
ments. It included a complex apparatus of Biblical exegesis, which sought to
extract every concealed meaning from sacred texts; emphasis upon a spe-
cific date on which a miraculous event was to occur; the cessation of routine
31
32 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

activity as the date drew closer; preoccupation with images of catastrophe,

both as signs of the future and as instruments of the world’s destruction;
increasing characterization of the existing society as evil and corrupt; and
the drive to take the salvationist doctrine out into that society through mil-
itant proselytizing. There were also three notable dissimilarities: First, the
Millerites were apolitical. Unlike earlier millenarians, such as the Taborites,
a Bohemian sect that mounted a war against unbelievers in the fifteenth cen-
tury, or the Fifth Monarchy Men, Puritan extremists who tried unsuccess-
fully to unseat Oliver Cromwell in 1661, the Millerites made no move
against the existing political order. They did not articulate obvious social
protest. Thus, they did not advocate radical redistribution of wealth or
power, although they found much to criticize in the status quo. Second, and
not unrelated, their membership did not encompass significant numbers of
the endemically poverty-stricken or oppressed. While that did not mean the
Millerites were without grievances, it did mean that for the most part they
did not have to worry about obtaining the necessities of life, and they cer-
tainly did not face the chronic deprivations experienced by peasant millen-
arians in pre-industrial Europe or Asia. Third, while William Miller offered
intellectual and spiritual leadership, he was not a charismatic figure in
whom followers identified superhuman gifts.*Indeed, Miller insisted that
anyone else who studied the Bible could reach identical conclusions. Thus
the Millerites can be distinguished, on the one hand, from their postmillen-
nialist contemporaries, and, on the other, from their doctrinally similar
forebears. Why, then, should the 1840s have seen any substantial premillen-
nialism at all, given the postmillennial ethos, and why when it came was it
a premillennialism free of radical social doctrines?
These problems may best be approached by first establishing the nar-
rative of the Millerite experience through the “Great Disappointment” of
1843—44, when the predicted Second Coming failed to occur, and then sur-
veying the available information concerning the demographic characteris-
tics of the movement. Millerism conveniently divides into three phases. The
first from 1831 to 1839 covers Miller’s early but unorganized attempts to
communicate his views in Eastern New York and Western New England.
Then, from 1839 until early 1843, an organization took shape under the
leadership of the Reverend Joshua V. Himes, who promulgated Miller’s
ideas systematically through the population centers of the coastal North-
east. In the brief third phase, from the spring of 1843 through the depressing
fall of 1844, Millerism spread with increasing rapidity in the Burned-over
District west of Rome, New York, before the final prophetic disconfirma-
tion.
 RISE OF THE MILLERITES 33

THE RISE OF MILLERISM

Millerism occurred at the center of American consciousness, since it re-

mained in and around the most urbanized and economically developed sec-
tion of the country. While Mormonism moved progressively westward, to
Ohio and Missouri in the 1830s, Illinois until the mid-1840s, and the Great
_ Basin thereafter,} Millerism, because it never faced the same level of com-
munity hostility, sought the great Eastern cities. While generally accepted as
“the largest and most influential early nineteenth-century pre-millennial
group,’ the precise numbers involved will never be known. The Millerites
did not compile membership lists as such, and only at a late stage did Mil-
lerites clearly break with denominational Protestantism. As knowledge of
Miller’s teachings spread, it also became difficult to distinguish truly com-
mitted members from sympathizers or the merely curious, although the
progressive failure of his predictions presumably weeded out the less com-
mitted. The generally cited estimate of seriously committed Millerites at the
movement’s height is 50,000. The source of the figure was Miller’s own es-
timate, contained in his autobiographical ‘Apology and Defence,” written
in the post-Disappointment Summer of 1845: “In nearly a thousand places
Advent congregations have been raised up, numbering, as near as I can es-
timate, some fifty thousand believers.’’> This estimate reflects the 1844
“‘come-outer” movement when Millerites withdrew from churches with
which they had been affiliated. Since Miller also claimed six thousand con-
versions obtained by his own personal effort, and since his personal mod-
esty was legendary, 50,000 does not appear an inflated figure. It is possible
that upwards of a million others were “‘skeptically expectant.’’¢
David Rowe has suggested another, albeit indirect, measure of Miller-
ite numbers by calculating the ratio between the movement’s leaders and
followers. Drawing upon letters to Miller from sympathizers in upstate
New York, Rowe noted that many bore multiple signatures. Published
sources provided the means for identifying signatories who were leaders of
the movement. This suggests a ratio of one acknowledged leader to 23 com-
mitted members of the rank and file. On the basis of the known leadership
cadre for the region, the ratio yields a committed followership of about
4,600. Rowe derives the same relative numbers from the fact that 200 Mil-
lerite meetings are known to have taken place in the Burned-over District by
October 1844. Assuming conservatively that each meeting consisted of no
more than 25 people, this implies an audience of about 5,000.’
By any means of estimation, the numbers were formidable, especially
in light of the concentration of Millerism in the Northeast, with some late
extension into the West (Ohio and Michigan). The entire national popula-
34 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

William Miller as he appeared in the early 1840s. He was already past

sixty when the millennial date arrived, but he appears here looking fit
and relatively youthful, with an expression that is both contemplative
and curiously sad. The years after the “Great Disappointment” were
marked by rapidly deteriorating health for Miller, and he died in 1849
at the age of sixty-seven. Source: The Midnight Cry. Courtesy Loma
Linda University Heritage Room

tion at the time was about 19,000,000. New York State in 1840 had a pop-
ulation of almost two and a half million.*
Little in William Miller’s past pointed toward the role he occupied in
the early 1840s. His forebears had lived in Springfield, Massachusetts, since
at least 1675, residing there until the mid-1700s, when the family moved to
 RISE OF THE MILLERITES 35)

Pittsfield. The date of the move by Miller’s grandfather from Springfield to

Pittsfield is of some significance, because Springfield was deeply involved in
the revivals of the First Great Awakening. Since the elder Miller was born in
Springfield in 1730, and Miller’s father was born in Pittsfield at the end of
1757, the move may have occurred during the young manhood of Miller’s
grandfather, about 1750. That would place the family deep in Great Awak-
ening territory during the critical years of the 1740s. Miller himself was
born in Pittsfield in 1782, but the family moved once again four years later,
this time to Low Hampton, New York, just across the border from
Vermont’; as a young man he also lived briefly in the neighboring Vermont
town of Poultney.
Miller fought in the War of 1812 and filled local political offices there-
after. He was a Mason, a Democrat, and a reasonably prosperous farmer.
Descended from a line of preachers, he went through a youthful flirtation
with deism but eventually returned to the fold as a fervent Baptist. Despite
William Lloyd Garrison’s charge that Miller was illiterate, he seems to have
been reasonably well-read. Though scarcely scholarly, his religious skepti-
cism coincided with attempts by Poultney deists to broaden his intellectual
horizons. Foremost among them was the renegade politician, Matthew
Lyon, whose anti-Federalist activities as a Congressman had led to convic-
tion under the Sedition Act. Although Lyon was probably an Episcopalian
by birth, he held to the deism of Ethan Allen, under whom he had fought in
the Revolution. During the time that Lyon lived in Poultney, he accumulated
a formidable personal library, which he generously shared with his neigh-
bors, including Miller.'° It was doubtless with Lyon in mind that Miller
wrote of the Poultney rationalists: ““They put into my hands the works of
Voltaire, Hume, Paine, Ethan Allen, and other deistical writers.’’'' If so,
they left little enduring mark on his style, and he looked back upon this pe-
riod with the ruefulness others might reserve for the sexual pecadillos
of youth.
The episode with Lyon was the late stage of a long process of self-
education. Miller’s formal education was of the patchy sort typical of a
modest rural childhood. From nine until fourteen he received three months’
formal education a year, of whatever sort the common school in Low
Hampton could provide. His home contained only three books, the Bible,
the Psalter, and a hymnal, which his mother taught him to read. Beyond
that, he was an autodidact. The full extent of his reading is not known, be-
yond the references to deistic writers. Joshua Himes claimed that in late ad-
olescence Miller also devoured ‘“‘ancient and modern history,” perhaps in
Lyon’s library.'* However, Miller’s writings, particularly the earliest, rely far
more heavily on Biblical citations than upon any secular authorities, and his
36 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

own reminiscences suggest that questions of Biblical interpretation led him

to history rather than the other way around."
His gradually developing religious ideas bore close resemblance to
those of British chiliasts both prior to and contemporary with him. The
ideas of Joanna Southcott (1750—1814) in particular resembled Miller’s, as
Millerites subsequently found on a visit to England after the Great Disap-
pointment.'* Yet Miller does not seem to have participated in any known
trans-Atlantic millenarian contacts, although there was a'good deal of in-
ternational communication among millenarians from the late eighteenth
century onwards.'’ Independent invention rather than diffusion seems re-
sponsible for the similarities. Miller may also have drawn ideas from the
popular religion of the area. He lived in or near the area of the First Great
Awakening. Small but emotionally charged millenarian movements flickered
spasmodically in the Vermont counties that bordered Lake Champlain, ad-
jacent to Miller’s home.'* Although to all appearances theologically self-
taught, the congruence between his Biblical interpretations and older read-
ings of millenarian symbols strongly implies access to an oral if not a writ-
ten exegetical tradition.
An exhaustive reader of the Bible, he labored with a concordance in
relative seclusion for fourteen years. He became convinced that the Second
Advent was imminent and began in 1831 to preach it locally. Word gradually
spread from the Low Hampton locality to adjacent areas of Western New
England and Eastern New York. Miller did not draw a following then or
later by virtue of any “personal magnetism” or the attribution of extraor-
dinary gifts. He was not, in a word, “charismatic” in either a theological,
Weberian, or common-usage sense. His expanding influence in the 1830s
was due in part to exogenous social factors to be dealt with in due course,
in part to his indefatigible itinerant preaching, and in part to the “‘fit’”’ of his
conclusions regarding the Second Coming with the intellectual framework
of scholarly millenarianism which had remained intact through the revival
periods.
Miller claimed to have lectured 800 times between June 9, 1834, and
June 10, 1839, and 4,000 times over the whole of his public career up until
1845.'7 Whether exaggerated or not, his early biographer, Sylvester Bliss,
mentions more than 230 communities in which Miller spoke between 1831
and 1844, and since in many he delivered a series of lectures, the number of
total appearances was considerable by any calculation.'® More revealing
than sheer numbers is the pattern of geographical dispersion. Before 1839,
he appeared exclusively in New York and Vermont. Although he spoke in
Rome, New York, in 1838, almost all his New York State appearances were
in the Champlain Valley, Adirondack foothills, and Albany-Troy areas. He
 RISE OF THE MILLERITES Mh

reached Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire in 1839, the year he

met Joshua Himes. The pre-1839 areas were, not surprisingly, those closest
to his home and, in New York, were those which at the time had the largest
proportion of New England-born inhabitants.'? In about 1834, Miller’s
views were published in a sixty-four-page pamphlet, issued in Brandon, Ver-
mont, in a printing of unknown size. In 1835 a second printing of 1,500 was
issued. Since he distributed most of these pamphlets himself when he lec-
tured or in response to letters, the area of their immediate circulation co-
incided with the area in which his name was already, known through other
means.”°
During the peripatetic years of the 1830s, Miller’s teachings were geo-
graphically confined, and there was nothing resembling a “Millerite move-
ment.” Miller functioned as an advocate rather than as an organizer, as yet
another revivalist, albeit one with an idiosyncratic message. Geographical
expansion and organization began simultaneously after his 1839 meeting
with Himes, a Boston minister already enmeshed in causes that ranged
from temperance to abolitionism. Himes’s eventual defection from aboli-
tionism to Adventism was taken more in sadness than in anger by his friend
William Lloyd Garrison, who wrote in The Liberator: ‘‘] am somewhat in-
timately acquainted with Mr. Himes. I am sorry that he has become the vic-
tim of an absurd theory, but I still regard him as a sincere and worthy
man.”2! In a less guarded moment, his underlying resentment emerged: “‘A
considerable number of worthy abolitionists have been carried away by it
[Adventism], and for the time being, are rendered completely useless to our
cause. But the delusion has not long to run, and let us rejoice.”
It is not clear how Himes first heard of Miller. The most likely expla-
nations are word-of-mouth or through the circulation of Miller’s printed
materials. Miller had by this time preached in Southern New Hampshire
and the small towns around Boston. In any case, Himes first saw Miller in
Exeter, New Hampshire, at a Christian convention where Miller spoke. On
the basis of those lectures, Himes brought Miller to his Chardon Street
Chapel in Boston beginning December 9, 1839, Miller’s first appearance in
a major American city. The Boston appearance opened a new phase, not
simply because of the urban setting, but because Himes quickly took on the
responsibility of systematically spreading Miller’s message throughout the
Northeast. The results were equivocal. On the positive side, Himes thrust
Miller’s views beyond eastern New York—western New England, with spe-
cial attention to urban areas. In addition to Boston, Miller or his followers
appeared in Portland, Maine; New York City; and Philadelphia.
Himes’s greatest organizational contribution lay, however, in his
adaptation of the camp meeting, which had been invented by the Presbyte-
38 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

Millerite camp meetings in the Northeast centered about the “Great

Tent,” imposing even in this rendering that appeared in one of the
movement’s main detractors, the New York Herald. With its combi-
nation of size and impermanence, the tent might almost serve as a met-
aphor for Millerism itself. Source: New York Herald, November 14,
1842. Courtesy Loma Linda University Heritage Room

rians at Cane Ridge, Kentucky, in 1801, and was utilized extensively during
the Second Great Awakening.*? The virtue of the camp meeting lay in the
creation of a total environment, where participants were insulated from the
distractions of mundane existence. The value of such a device may be ap-
preciated in light of Miller’s and Himes’s initial reception in New York City.
While Miller’s audiences eventually increased, the two millenarians first en-
tered a friendless city where lack of funds and supporters obliged them to
sleep in an anteroom off the lecture hall.** The Millerite version of the camp
meeting was the “‘Great Tent.”” Himes’s promotional genius had hit upon
the idea of a mammoth tent, 55 feet high at the center, 300 feet around the
circumference, with a capacity of 3,000—4,000.?5 With or without the fa-
mous tent, Millerite camp meetings sprang up throughout the Northeast.
The camp meeting, in effect, built a temporary artificial environment. Thus,
the initial site at East Kingston, New Hampshire, was accessible by rail
from Boston and New York, yet sufficiently isolated so that those who at-
tended were a self-selected group of believers and potential believers, per-
 RISE OF THE MILLERITES Sy)

haps 10,000 in all. During a four-month period in 1842, thirty such meet-
ings were held.”* Through Himes’s carefully orchestrated efforts, Millerite
doctrines spread as far south as Washington, north to Montreal, and west
to Cincinnati.
Millerism’s distinguishing characteristic was, of course, its willing-
ness to make a specific prediction concerning the timing of the Second Com-
ing. Yet in this respect at least, Miller himself was a reluctant as well as an
unsuccessful prophet. He was not initially willing to venture a date, yet suc-
cumbed under pressure from expectant followers. In the early 1830s, he
gave the time as “sometime in 1843.” In early 1843,'he modified that view
and spoke of “the Jewish year, 1843,” by which he meant the period from
March 21, 1843, to March 21, 1844. Bitterly disappointed Adventists sought
some way out of the disillusionment and ridicule of failure, and thus in Au-
gust 1844 Samuel S. Snow proposed a new chronology which reset the date
at October 22, 1844. Miller, depressed and ill, was reluctant to endorse
Snow’s recalculation. The new date, however, swept Adventist circles, and,
under Himes’s prodding, Miller finally endorsed the new prediction.2’
As the first millennial date approached, Millerism grew at an accel-
erating rate. The formerly skeptical wondered whether Miller might not be
correct after all. In any case, by that time Himes’s incessant propagandizing
had made Miller’s name a household word. Nonetheless, the aggressive
move into urban areas was in fact double-edged, exposing Millerism to scof-
fers as well as to potential converts, for it coincided with the first great
American newspaper circulation war, between James Gordon Bennett’s
Herald and Horace Greeley’s Tribune. Bennett seized upon the Millerite
camp meeting at Newark in November 1842 to run a sensational ten-
installment feature with accompanying cartoons, later reprinted as an
eight-page tabloid “extra.” The “‘end of the world” theme proved an excel-
lent circulation builder, and for the next two years Millerism was carica-
tured, lampooned, and defamed in the mass press.?* Despite the Herald’s
attacks on “‘prophetic fevers and millennium inflammations,” Joshua
Himes sent the paper a letter of thanks, presumably on the principle that any
publicity is good publicity; and, indeed, the Newark meeting, for whatever
reason, attracted 6,000.
While the Tribune was equally hostile to Miller’s ideas, Greeley
mounted the attack in a far different manner. On March 2, 1843—nineteen
days before the period of Advent expectation was to begin—Greeley de-
voted an entire issue to rebuttal. Most of the front page was given over to a
reproduction of one of the Millerites’ famous chronological charts, with
vivid engravings of the beasts and trumpeters of Revelation. Unable to ac-
commodate the chart in a standard vertical orientation, the Tribune repro-
40 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

~~

duced it on its side. Since the paper’s front page hardly ever bore visual ma-
terial more arresting than a one-column headline, one may imagine readers’
reactions to the lopsided Biblical menagerie. However, the accompanying es-
say by a Baptist clergyman from Providenée was as turgid a treatment of
Scriptural texts as Miller’s own. Clearly, for Greeley, Miller’s views were too
important to poke fun at. The press was equally hostile in Boston, as well
as in the smaller cities of the Burned-over District itself.??
The more significant expansion of Millerism, however, was through
the Burned-over District itself. Under the pressure of ridicule such as Ben-
nett’s, Millerism could make relatively little headway after its initial appeal
to the curious. In the rural counties of Western New York, however, the cli-
mate.was more sympathetic. Beginning in the Spring of 1843, Himes and his
and Miller’s lieutenants finally took their message into the relatively un-
touched area west of Rome. The short but rapid diffusion of Millerism west-
ward in the third phase effectively shifted its center of gravity away from the
large but skeptical Eastern cities.
The more Millerism grew and the closer the final prediction came, the
more it resembled a social movement rather than simply a set of deviant be-
liefs. On the one hand, conventional churchmen became increasingly
alarmed at both the beliefs and the sheer numbers of Millerites. With ap-
prehension came hostility; Miller was a competitor, not a colleague. The
other side of rejection by the orthodox was the Millerites’ own increasing
discomfort at remaining affiliated with religious institutions that seemingly
were unable to recognize the truth. By 1843, Second Adventists such as
Charles Fitch, who considered Millerism’s opponents to be Antichrist,
urged the faithful to separate from their churches: “‘If you are a Christian,
come out of Babylon. If you intend to be found a Christian when Christ ap-
pears, come out of Babylon, and come out Now.’’*° This appeal inaugu-
rated a sectarian phase in which large numbers of Adventists participated.
The failed predictions of 1843—44 progressively and drastically di-
minished the movement’s size. Unfortunately, precise measures of the fall-
off do not exist, for the period of sectarian development in 1843—44 was
too brief to permit the introduction of accurate record-keeping. Those who
remained faithful constructed elaborate structures of rationalization, such
as Apollos Hale’s and Joseph Turner’s “closed door’’ theory, according to
which God closed the ‘‘door of mercy”’ on unbelievers on October 22,
1844.3! Among unbelievers, the Great Disappointment became the lurid
stuff of legend. Adventists allegedly put on white “‘ascension robes,” and
waited on hilltops for translation into Heaven; sold off or abandoned their
property in expectation of the great day; and, most prominently, went mad~
from disillusionment and despair.
 RISE OF THE MILLERITES 41

The folklore of Adventism has presented particular problems for the

two major modern Adventist churches, the Seventh Day Adventists and the
Advent Christians, and nowhere more than on the issue of insanity. Hence
one of Millerism’s foremost modern apologists, Francis Nichol, contended
in 1944 that an examination of New England asylum records showed Mill-
erism to be implicated in only 39 of 1,516 cases, and then almost certainly
as a result of error or intolerance.*? In fact, the psychiatric profession in the
1840s took an exceedingly dim view of any activity that produced ‘‘exces-
sive” mental or sensory stimulation. Revival religion, with its strong emo-
tional component, was particularly suspect, and the American Journal of
Insanity suggested as late as 1845 that Millerism ‘was a greater danger to
public health than yellow fever or cholera.*?
Yet a recent examination of asylum records demonstrates that the re-
lationship between Millerism and insanity may have been more complex
than partisans on either side have recognized. Ronald and Janet Numbers
found records of 170 admissions for causes related to Millerism. An exten-
sive analysis of case records at three asylums in New Hampshire, Massa-
chusetts, and New York disclosed, on the one hand, that the disappointed
predictions did not precipitate breakdowns, but, on the other, that physi-
cians made the admissions on the basis of patients’ overt behavior, not be-
cause of their beliefs. Millerism could not be held responsible in the major-
ity of the cases, which involved chronic mental disorders, except in the
indirect sense that some already disordered persons may have self-selected
it. But in approximately 18 percent of the Millerite cases, involving acute,
short-term illness,

Millerism [might] have been a contributing cause of mental disease.

The intense emotional excitement of the movement, the inner conflict
and confusion induced by dashed hopes and hellish fears, and the ex-
hausting toll on body and mind taken by prolonged exposure to noise,
fasting, or deprivation of sleep ... might well have caused the emotion-
ally vulnerable to crack under the strain.

These individuals clearly constituted a minority of Millerite asylum admis-

sions and a far smaller minority of the movement’s rank and file. A far
clearer picture of Second Adventism emerges by turning from the dis-
oriented few to the anxious but coping many.
42 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

DEMOGRAPHIC CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MILLERITES

Although Millerism began in Eastern New York and enjoyed its early suc-
cesses there and in New England, the center of gravity of the movement
shifted westward to the Burned-over District. At least as many individuals
seem to have accepted Miller’s teachings in the District as in New England,’
particularly remarkable in the light of the disparity in size of the two areas.
The shift to Western New York State can be documented by the number of
towns introduced to Millerism on either side of a north-south line through
Rome. Through 1842, contact had been made in fifty-six communities east
of Rome and only twenty-seven to the west. Between 1843 and 1845, the
relative magnitudes are reversed: fifty-seven east, as against 154 west.*° In
1843 Miller appeared in Utica, Rochester, Lockport, Buffalo, and Lewis-
ton; lectures in Rochester, Buffalo, and Lockport followed in 1844.
Millerite organizers, particularly Himes, sought to reach the largest
possible audiences. The distribution of tracts, the itineraries of lecturers,
and the march of the Great Tent tended to be in areas of high population
density. When Second Adventism began moving away from the coastal
cities, it followed the railroads and canals, where the largest audiences could
be assured. Rochester, well situated on transportation arteries and already
filled with religious and reformist enterprises, became the center for mis-
sionary efforts in the Burned-over District.*” *
In light of the systematic orientation toward urban areas, it is note-
worthy that the most intense and enduring Millerite affiliations in fact oc-
curred in relatively under-propagandized rural areas and small towns. The
significance of smaller communities became apparent in Millerism’s final
phase, particularly in 1844—45. Even before the disillusionment of October
1844, conversions in urban areas such as Rochester declined as the most
easily reachable audiences were exhausted.** Just as the saturation of East-
ern New York mandated attention to the West, the saturation of urban areas
made the less immediately reachable small-town and rural populations
more attractive. In this respect, Millerism follows a pattern apparent in
most millenarian movements across many cultures and time periods until
the twentieth century—the ascendancy of rural over urban areas.*” There
the faithful benefitted from the greater intimacy of personal relationships,
the greater homogeneity of the population, and the relative insulation from
systematic opposition.
The strength of Burned-over District rural areas was especially evi-
dent as predictions came and went. Members least likely to leave the move-
ment were those in the small towns of Western New York. Indeed, the move-
ment actually continued to grow there after October 1844 and into 1845.
 RISE OF THE MILLERITES 43

These back-country sanctuaries appear to have maintained themselves in

part through the out-migration of committed Millerites from major cities,
where ridicule and even mob violence prevented the holding of public meet-
ings.*° Millerites were able to maintain a critical mass of committed mem-
bers more readily in sparsely settled and less sophisticated areas.
Not all rural areas were equally affected. The counties on the Penn-
sylvania border, known as the Southern Tier, were almost wholly unaf-
fected, and although Miller had begun in the eastern part of the state, the
Hudson Valley was untouched. Geographical distribution was strongly re-
lated to migration patterns. The Southern Tier counties, for example, were
populated heavily by persons who had migrated from Pennsylvania. The
Hudson Valley was a long-settled area, whose population was already stable
and indigenous at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Millerite areas,
by contrast, were peopled by recent migrants of New England origins. Al-
though transportation of Western New England had only begun about
1790, by 1830 the Yankee character of the Burned-over District was already
established.*!
The geographical distribution of Millerism provides clues to its social
composition. Finneyite revivals were particularly attractive to the newly af-
fluent urban middle class.4? Millerism seems to have had a special appeal for
solid but somewhat less-well-off citizens. David Rowe’s analysis of 116 Mil-
lerite leaders in the Burned-over District suggests that even its elite blended
rural and urban, farmers, artisans, and merchants. Indeed, their occupa-
tions as recorded in the 1850 census (albeit several years after the event)
show that almost 20 percent were farmers, as against 6 percent who were
merchants, and 13 percent craftsmen. About half—45 percent—were iden-
tified as ministers, a figure which almost certainly reflects the dispropor-
tionate number of clergy in the leadership stratum, and may not adequately
reflect their actual sources of livelihood. Twenty percent were engaged in oc-
cupations that were clearly non-rural, and 2.4 percent were professionals.**
It is reasonable to assume that individuals who took community leadership
roles possessed higher social status than other Millerites whose names are
lost to the historical record. The high proportions of farmers and artisans
parallels the composition of Mormonism in its early Burned-over District
phase.**
Second Adventism thus struck its deepest roots among rural and
small-town New Yorkers of New England birth or ancestry. They were nei-
ther conspicuously rich nor strikingly poor. Rather, they were solid, estab-
lished individuals, with places in the community, skilled enough to prosper
in reasonably good times. Like so many participants in pre-industrial social
movements their most striking characteristic was their very typicality.
44 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

AWAY FROM THE GREAT DISAPPOINTMENT

Millerites took three routes away from the failed predictions of 1843-44.
Presumably the greatest number found their way back into conventional re-
ligious denominations, although we shall never know how large a propor-
tion simply melted back into American Protestantism. A far smaller number
of confirmed Adventists, accepting rationalizations for the failed predic-
tions, sought some enduring mode of organization. The most significant of
these groups became, under the leadership of James White, Joseph Bates,
and, later, Ellen G. White, the Seventh Day Adventist Church, which grew
from 200 members in 1850 to 3,500 at the point of its formal organization
in 1863.45
_» The third route is in many respects the most interesting, for it was
traversed by those Adventists traumatized by the failures yet yearning for a
continued sense of millennial mission within an enclosed community.
Those who did so by migrating to already existing utopian communities,
notably the Shakers, will be considered in a later chapter. Here it remains to
describe those who confronted failed predictions by creating separate com-
munities of their own. At least three such communities can be identified: the
Germania Company (1856—79), in Germania, Marquette County, Wiscon-
sin; Adonai Shomo, also known as the Community of Fullerites, (1861—97)
in Worcester County, Massachusetts; and Gelesta (1863—64) in Sullivan
County, Pennsylvania.
Like many utopian communities, the Germania Company and Adonai
Shomo left few traces. Both appear to have grown out of contacts made at
an Adventist camp meeting held in Groton, Massachusetts, in 1855, eleven
years after the Great Disappointment. The insubstantial evidence that re-
mains is in part attributable to their exceedingly small size, for Adonai
Shomo began with about 10 members and grew to only 25 or 30, while Ger-
mania began with 6 families and 5 single members.* By the end of the cen-
tury, Adonai Shomo did not seem identifiably Millerite. Materials collected
by the Oneida Community scholar of communitarianism, William Hinds,
emphasize its “seventh day Sabbath” and vegetarianism. This suggests that
the doctrines of Ellen White, one of the founders of Seventh-day Adventism,
dominated.*” White had combined Adventist theology with a seventh-day
(i.e., Saturday) Sabbath and a strong emphasis on health and diet reform as
religious obligations.
The shortest-lived community, Celesta, maintained the clearest ties to
Millerite teachings. Its founder, Peter Armstrong, sought to establish a
mountain retreat where the 144,000 saints of the Book of Revelation would
 RISE OF THE MILLERITES 45

gather at the Judgment. Although the community itself was very small, its
newspaper, The Day Star of Zion, was widely distributed. Its first issue
claimed a printing of 3,000 copies and 1,200 subscribers, and lists of finan-
cial contributors contain individuals as far distant as Minnesota, Oregon,
and England.** Early issues were heavily concerned with attempts to fend
off the attentions of government. Believing that the Advent had not occurred
only because too few believed in it, the stalwart Armstrong asserted that
“we are no longer in subjection to earthly governments.” This produced
some practical problems, not the least of which was the necessity of ignoring
Civil War conscription. The failure of the subsequent prosecution led Arm-
strong to assume the operations of a higher powers, ““Why did not the war
department put our faith to the test. The answer is obvious.— Their times
are ended.” Lest any other arms of the state become similarly intrusive, Ce-
lesta petitioned the Pennsylvania legislature to be considered “peaceable
aliens and religious wilderness exiles from the rest of the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania.”’*”
Although none of the Millerite communities was in the Burned-over
District, at least two of the three had considerable ties with New York State.
The Germania Co. appears to have been composed at the outset of groups
from Rochester, N.Y., and from Massachusetts. By the 1940s, however, it
had completely assimilated to its Midwestern religious environment. The
later members included both Lutherans and Catholics, and the community
itself built the local Methodist Episcopal church.*° As for Celesta, indirect
evidence is available from the lists of contributors published in the Day Star,
for whom state of residence is given. The 1864 issues list 245 contributors
spread over 20 states and England. The vast majority, as might be imagined,
were from the Northeast and Middle West. But, there were more New York-
ers (33) than those of any other state, followed by Maine (26), Connecticut
(25), and Massachusetts (17). Curiously, only 15 were Pennsylvanians.
There may have been a fourth Millerite community with Burned-over
District origins. In about 1850, Thomas Lake Harris and more than a
hundred followers established the Second Adventist community of Moun-
tain Cove in Fayette County, Virginia (now West Virginia). The group dis-
solved in about 1853. Harris went on to become well known as a prolific
writer of spiritualist literature and as the founder of more stable spiritualist
communities later in the century. The possibility of Millerite influence at
Mountain Cove derives not only from the community’s known Adventist
expectations but from its proximity to the Great Disappointment and from
the origins of its moving figures. Harris had grown up in Utica, while an-
other leader at Mountain Cove, James L. Scott, came from Auburn, New
46 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

York. However, unlike Harris’ later ventures, which generated a sea of pub-
lished and unpublished writings, Mountain Cove vanished leaving little
trace?
Millerism was thus a movement of abrupt rhythms. It appeared to
come out of nowhere, since few other than those in Miller’s home territory
knew his ideas until the great Himes-directed campaigns. Onlookers, ob-
serving Millerism at its zenith, perceived its growth to be as rapid (and as
apparently irrational) as fashion. The collapse of Miller’s predictions
seemed to be followed by the rapid collapse of the movement, although the
actual magnitude of the reduction is difficult to measure and, as we shall
see, invalidated predictions may have been the least of its problems.
What unquestionably increased public fascination was that so many
should rally so quickly behind so colorless a figure as Miller. While contem-
porary descriptions note the depth and sincerity of his personal commit-
ment, he seems utterly lacking in glamour and magnetism. How then could
he have drawn so many from their accustomed beliefs and behavior? An im-
portant part of his and the movement’s appeal lay in situational factors
which predisposed the otherwise skeptical. We shall examine those factors
in detail in chapters six and seven. Environmental forces increased the plau-
sibility and legitimacy of Miller’s message, and without that message, the
environmental factors alone would not have produced a distinctly millen-
arian response. If people did not respond dramatically to Miller’s person-
ality, they did grasp excitedly at his ideas, and it is to the intellectual frame-
work of Millerism that we now turn.
 THE IMAGERY OF APOCALYPSE

WILLIAM MILLER’S own writings were singularly free of rhe-

torical excess. His principal work, Evidence From Scripture
, and History of the Second Coming of Christ About the Year
7 &>° 1843,' advances its argument with plodding deliberateness.
Miller manipulated Biblical chronology with the familiarity of one who had
pondered many years before putting pen to paper, but, perhaps because he
was an autodidact, meticulous concern for detail overrode emotion. His ob-
sessive interest in the books of Daniel and Revelation resulted from the be-
lief that their ambiguous symbols could be decoded in order to yield a chro-
nology from Creation to the Last Judgment. Miller rarely wrote about
modern events and only then as validations of Biblical prophecies. The Mil-
lerite press, on the other hand, consistently sought to validate prophecies by
recourse to the news of the day. Hardly an issue of Signs of the Times or The
Midnight Cry went by without a digest of recent events filled with millennial
import.
The Millerite publications thus continued the search for portents that
had occupied millenarians since the Middle Ages. They reasoned that since
God acted in history, historical events carried double meanings. On one level
they had consequences for human beings in the affairs of everyday life; what
happened in the world necessarily made some people better off and others
worse. On a second level, they constituted a code. Just as the symbols in sa-
cred books required translation so that their deeper significance could be
understood, so seemingly mundane events needed to be decoded so that
their spiritual messages could be read.
47
Always in search of techniques for reaching out to the public,
Miller-
ism’s most arresting form of pedagogy was the chart, in which
a com-
bination of words and pictures described the correlations Miller
had
drawn between Biblical time and world history. The awesom
e imagery
of the Book Revelation, with its beasts and trumpeters, here
takes on
an almost whimsical appearance. Courtesy Loma Linda Univers
ity
Heritage Room
 IMAGERY OF APOCALYPSE 49

The New Testament Book of Revelation was perhaps the critical text
in this enterprise, for it combined a dramatic apocalyptic scenario with
symbols that were as ambiguous as they were vivid. With its seven seals,
seven angel trumpeters, and seven bowls of wrath, Revelation simulta-
neously beckoned and frustrated generations of interpreters. Yet its climac-
tic vision of ‘‘a new heaven and a new earth” implied that if its enigmas
could be solved, the solution would reveal with exactitude the timing of the
millennium. For once the meaning of the text was clarified, it would then
establish the eschatological import of real-world events. Integral to the mil-
lenarian world view was the belief that out of the, welter of life on earth, a
special category of events existed whose significance was simultaneously
mundane and transcendant. To capture the transcendant significance, the
role of these events in the divine scheme, it was necessary first to know the
divine plan. Since that plan was set out in canonical texts, only after the
texts had been penetrated could the cosmic chronology of world events be
established.
Hence millenarian writings reflect a double decoding process, one as-
pect of which involved ambiguous scriptural passages, the other of which
involved equally ambiguous real world events. Neither could be done suc-
cessfully without the other. Biblical symbols disclosed their meanings by an
application of exegetical rules (such as the ‘‘year-day”’ rule according to
which each day mentioned in a text constituted a year of historic time), and
by the judicious selection of historic figures and events to correspond to the
symbols. But events alone were an unordered chaos that had to be reduced
to manageable proportions, and a knowledge of Biblical categories aided in
this winnowing process. Miller himself began with the text, and moved
from them to events. The testimony of Second Adventist periodicals sug-
gests that the followership was far more concerned with the ambiguity of
events, doubtless because Miller’s Biblical interpretations had reduced their
scriptural uncertainty, but also because temporal events continually empha-
sized the disordered state of the empirical world.
Millerites tried to reduce the disorder by distinguishing between those
events that carried a divine message and those that did not. Most events
were not deemed to be portents and could be safely disregarded. Those that
remained were of truly momentous significance, for, if properly understood,
they held the secret of the end-time. On the strength of Biblical precedents,
Second Adventists recognized two categories of portents: political upheav-
als and disturbances in the natural world. War, civil strife, and the toppling
of governments counted heavily among portentous events; so too did natu-
ral disasters such as earthquakes, storms, and volcanic eruptions. What was
omitted was as significant as what was included. Social and economic con-
50 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

ditions were important only insofar as they might have direct political con-
sequences. The depression of the late 1830s and early 1840s was mentioned
only in passing, and slavery scarcely alluded to, despite Miller’s well-known
abolitionist views. The plight of the urban poor, when noted at all, was of-
ten viewed through the lens of anti-Catholic nativism.

WAR AND RUMORS OF WAR

Millerite commentaries on threats to peace were of two kinds: On the one

hand, Adventists were always on the alert for war between major European
powers. The more likely a continent-wide conflagration, the nearer the Sec-
ond Coming must be. On the other hand, there was a more specialized con-
cern, particularly intense in 1840—41, for the fate of the Ottoman Empire.
The Empire occupied a special position in Millerite calculations because of
the belief that a significant Ottoman defeat was the empirical correlate of
events described in the Book of Revelation.
War between the Great Powers always seemed imminent, yet always
was avoided at the last moment: “The late accounts from Europe and Asia,
relating to the unprecedented preparations for war, and particularly the dis-
sensions among the principle nations of Europe, we think very clearly shows
that the ‘spirits of devils’ has actually gone forth to the kings of the earth to
gather them to battle.”
If this seemed the case in May 1840, the final combat appeared even
closer in March of the following year, when “‘it now requires but a spark to
set the whole world in a blaze!” In large part, the expectation of war lay in
the belief that Catholic and Protestant powers were set implacably against
one another, a common seventeenth-century millenarian theme now trans-
posed, ironically, to the era of the post-Napoleonic balance of power: “Let
things run on in this train a few years longer, and the points of exasperating
collision continue to multiply ... and such a popular feeling will be raised
as will merge all other conflicting interests in itself, and range the several
nations in a general war, for and against popery; such a war as prophecy
makes that to be, which is immediately to precede the universal peace.’”
The hoped-for war did not of course come in 1841, or in 1842. Yet in
1843 expectation remained high enough so that even the harmonious
course of international relations could be reinterpreted as ‘“‘the calm that
precedes the hurricane.” ‘“Things cannot long thus continue,” Signs of the
Times wrote. “Affairs must soon arrive at a crisis.”’* Peace was a matter of
appearances that could not endure: “While the war-like attitude of nations
 IMAGERY OF APOCALYPSE 51

has waxed and waned, and at times almost, (apparently) settled down with
a guarantee of peace ... a change has again spread a cloud over the world’s
civil and political horizon, which, at each recurrence has become more dark
and foreboding.’’s
The same unquenchable faith was evident in discussions of ‘“‘the East-
ern question,” the Great Power rivalries in the Levant. Operating on “‘the
worse, the better’’ logic favored by premillennialists, Millerites kept close
track of deteriorating conditions in the Ottoman Empire. Fear of Russian
influence in Constantinople and of potential Russian control of the Straits
brought Britain, France, Austria, and Prussia into the convoluted politics of
the Empire. During the Summer and Fall of 1840, the powers jockeyed for
position. The French, supporting Muhammed Ali, the rebellious Ottoman
governor of Egypt, were arrayed against the Russians, Austrians, Prussians,
and the Sultan, all anxious for their own reasons to quash Muhammed Ali’s
separatist ambitions. An Anglo-Austrian attack on Syria and Lebanon was
required to root out Ali’s forces. In the end the Sultan’s throne was nomi-
nally secured, the five European powers all became equally involved in the
Empire’s politics, and the Straits were closed to warships of all nations.°
Before the 1841 settlement, however, the outcome was not:so clear. As
the lines of battle were drawn, the most audacious Millerite interpretation
came from the pen ofJosiah Litch, a young Methodist minister who had em-
braced Second Adventism. On August 1, 1840, Litch predicted that the Ot-
toman Empire would in fact fall August 11.7 Like millenarians before and
after, he sought to place these events within the ambiguous scenario pro-
vided by the New Testament Book of Revelation. Revelation’s author, pro-
ceeding through traditional sequences of seven’s, placed the apocalypse at
the end of the breaking of seven seals, the sounding of seven angel trumpet-
ers, and the pouring of seven bowls of wrath. Litch identified the defeat of
the Ottomans with the conclusion of the sixth angel’s trumpet blast, which
would leave only the seventh angel’s call before the literal beginning of the
end (Revelation, chpt. 11). August 11 came and went. An English-Austrian-
Ottoman force bombarded Ali’s troops in Beirut and landed in early Octo-
ber 1840. The Signs of the Times greeted the Beirut attack with the obser-
vation that “‘a general war is inevitable; the kings of the earth and the whole
world will be involved.”’* Litch could hardly contain himself. He wrote
Himes: ““What a prospect! Nothing short of one universal blaze of war all
over the world can be anticipated.”””
By the time calm returned to the Eastern Mediterranean, Millerites
had to face the question of what it had all meant. Despite the small matter
of August 11, Litch remained confident, explaining that. what actually had
happened on the eleventh was the beginning of the Ottomans’ irreversible
a2 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

political decline: “I am entirely satisfied that on the 11th of August, 1840,

The Ottoman power according to previous calculation, DEPARTED TO
RETURN NO MORE. I can now say with the utmost confidence, ‘the sec-
ond woe is past and behold the third woe*cometh quickly.’””' Litch argued
that on August 11, the European powers had tendered an ultimatum to Ali
to end his rebellion, thus assuming effective control over the internal affairs
of the Empire. Unfortunately, as Eric Anderson has pointed out, Litch’s hy-
pothesis was non-falsifiable, for it was validated if the powers intervened ef-
fectively, but also would have been validated if Ali’s rebellion had succeeded,
for that too would have diminished the Sultan’s power.'' Matters never
being as they seemed, Adventists were still writing in 1843 that “every in-
dication ... is that the nations of the eastern world are fast approaching a
crisis the result of which man cannot predict.”
The great apocalyptic war never came, of course, in the Near East or
in Europe, at least not in the Millerites’ lifetimes. Indeed, there was scarcely
a worse time to indulge in such predictions than the 1840s, since the 1815
settlement at Vienna still held fast and limited war remained the rule. Thus,
in a period of unprecedented international order, Millerites were reduced to
chasing alarms of war and then rationalizing away its non-appearance.

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL INSTABILITY

The two major Millerite periodicals— Signs of the Times in Boston and The
Midnight Cry in New York—paid close attention to social and political
instability. Generally, however, poverty and civil strife were not considered
to be themselves portents of millennial transformation. Rather, they were
moderately useful data from which the imminence of revolution might be
inferred, or simply additional evidence of the general moral decline pre- -
sumed to accompany the “latter days.” Although most such information
was consequently cast in a subordinate role, a major exception was the in-
flux of poor Catholic immigrants and the rise of an American Catholic
Church. Both publications took up the hackneyed theme of Protestant
nativism.
Direct references to poverty were relatively rare in the Adventist press,
despite the economic pressures of the early 1840s. There were occasional
queries as to why “distress, despondency and gloom” should persist “while
we have means of prosperity and happiness so abundant,” but the anony-
mous author took these social speculations no further.'? A more eloquent
yet resigned statement came from a postmaster writing from Steuben
 IMAGERY OF APOCALYPSE 53

County in southern New York State: “‘Nearly half of our population want
bread. What grain there is, is principally in speculators’ hands, and can’t be
had without money, and that is not to be had. ... Such things will be in the
latter days.’’'* This letter is remarkable not only for its description of rural
poverty but because it is one of the few Millerite writings that suggests any
interest in the fiscal and economic forces at work in American society.
Millerites were in fact far more interested in English than American
poverty: “The gloom that overspreads the manufacturing districts of En-
gland is apparently increasing rather than diminishing. ... Thus, the dis-
tress of nations is accumulating on every hand.’’'’ The civil strife of early
industrial England received extended coverage, less because of the human
suffering than because of the revolution it portended: ‘The internal state of
England is like a vast volcano that may at any moment explode.”'* This was
a matter of some consequence not simply because armed violence was gen-
erally portentous, but because the fate of great powers was especially im-
portant. All other things being equal, therefore, an event in England was
more noteworthy than the same event in America. In noting poverty and so-
cial unrest in England in the Summer of 1843, The Midnight Cry observed:
“the Lord is calling us to look at the fulfillment of prophecy in the greatest
government of the world, one which takes the lead among the so-called civ-
ilized and Christian nations.”!” Millenarians generally dwelt on themes of
social and political inversion: “the last shall be first and the first shall be
last.” Consequently, any news that might suggest the imminent fall of the
mighty was important; poverty and social unrest were not nearly as signif-
icant when they occurred in America.
Notwithstanding the importance accorded foreign news, political dis-
turbances in America were duly noted, although Millerite observers were
not always sure precisely what they meant. No Josiah Litch arose to corre-
late American politics with the Book of Revelation. In response to the dis-
array of political parties under President John Tyler, Signs of the Times
could only conclude: ‘What will be the end of these things, it is impossible
to foresee. But one lesson we may all learn from this state of things, and that
is, ‘not to put our trust in princes.’ ’’'*
Perhaps because Signs of the Times was published in Boston, the con-
stitutional crisis known as the “Dorr Rebellion” was the subject of exten-
sive reporting and comment during the Spring and Summer of 1842. Op-
posed to the restrictive franchise in Rhode Island, Thomas Dorr and his
followers sought to introduce and implement a new state constitutional doc-
ument to replace the existing one, which scarcely differed from the old co-
lonial charter. The rift between the Dorr forces, advancing their unofficial
“constitution,” and the legislature, at first willing to make only token vot-
54 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

ing reforms, led to virtual civil war, which ended in the defeat of the Dor-
rites. The Dorr Rebellion was important primarily as an indicator of the
public’s nervous irritability: “It may be considered one of the signs of the
times—of the combustible material of which the present age is composed
...such is the intolerance, irritability, recklessness, and feverish state of the
public mind, that aside from Miller’s views, many are predicting and ex-
pecting, near at hand, some terrible convulsion in the moral, if not the nat-
ural world.”’!?
In the same way, mob violence in America meant something, yet Mil-
lerites were never sure quite what: “‘How far this spirit of violence may be
considered portentous of the final overthrow and destruction of a world of
wickedness, by a justly offended God, every one of course will bsleft to form
his own opinion.”’?°
Where Catholics were concerned, biciindust there was neither coyness
nor mere generalities. The identification of the Pope with the Antichrist had
become a convention of Protestant chiliasts, imported to America along
with other Reformation motifs. Millerite excoriations of the Pope conse-
quently fell within the mainstream of Protestant millenarian thought: ‘‘He
[the Pope] will continue to make war with the true saints until Christ shall
come a second time without sin unto salvation. Then the Beast, False
Prophet, and Dragon will be spun together, and the millennial eign
will commence.”’?!
Anti-Catholic themes received a new edge from the Catholic immi-
gration which began in the 1820s. The anti-Catholicism of Protestant mil-
lennialists, virtually unchanged since the sixteenth and seventeenth centu-
ries, now fused with the economic, social, and political resentments of
American nativists, who saw in the Catholic immigrants an alien, unas-
similable element. One had only to open the floodgates for America to be
drowned in a sea of politically ambitious yet devious Catholics:

Give the Catholics the power and the occasion, which is never long
wanted, and submission or death would be the only alternatives!

The Roman Catholics already number their millions in the United

States, and nearly 100,000 are added to the number yearly by emigra-
tion. They already vaunt loudly, ask strong favors of state governments, |
and are getting them allowed. Papacy is almost wholly allied with one
of the corrupt political parties in our land [presumably the Democrats],
which bids fair to control the nation.22 |

The Midnight Cry displayed .a special fondness for the melodramatic ‘“Mis-
sissippi Valley conspiracy,” according to which Catholic secret societies
 IMAGERY OF APOCALYPSE 55

would attempt to convert the apparently gullible inhabitants of the Valley,

flood it with pliable Irish Catholic immigrants, and politically separate it
from the rest of the country. Although this particular nativist fairytale had
its vogue in the 1830s, Millerites reprinted it from thenativist press a decade
kee

DISTURBANCES IN THE NATURAL WORLD

For millenarians the world was a slate upon which God wrote for those who
knew how to decipher the message. That message sometimes took the form
of the fate assigned to nations in war and revolution. But the physical world,
too, contained these putatively divine communications. Two types of natu-
ral phenomena drew Millerites’ attention—astronomical anomalies and
natural disasters.
A tradition connecting the end of the world with unusual natural oc-
currences had persisted through the early nineteenth century. Dire implica-
tions were drawn from sudden darkening of the mid-day sky on November
42, 1807; the total solar eclipse of June 16, 1808; the spectacular auroral
display of 1827; and the dramatic meteor shower of November 13, 1833.74
Millerism consequently reinforced a pre-existing popular apprehension
concerning untoward natural events.
Several such events conveniently occurred in 1843. Some thought they
saw a cross on the face of the moon. Others noted lights and haloes around
Venus and Jupiter.25 The most dramatic sign of all was the comet that came
in February, and prompted one Signs of the Times reader to comment, “‘I
could not but think of ‘the Signs of the Son of Man in Heaven.’ 6
Not content merely to catalog contemporary occurrences, Millerites
combed past records for puzzling celestial phenomena. They claimed to find
evidence that fixed stars were disappearing and that the Northern Lights
had only become visible in the 1700s.?” They were particularly fascinated by
reports of the earlier “Dark Day,” when on May 19, 1780, the daylight sky
had gone to near blackness from eastern New York to Maine. Ezra Stiles had
attributed the “Dark Day”’ to the smoke of forest fires. A stationary weather
front seems to have trapped the polluted air until it cut off the sun’s rays.
Stiles likened the sudden darkness to “‘the miraculous Eclipse at the Cruci-
fixion of our Blessed Savior.’’2* In the revivalist atmosphere of the time, the
“Dark Day” was an unimpeachable sign to many of the nearing end and was
in fact the stimulus for the first major Shaker missionary campaign in New
England.??
56 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

The Millerites collected such nuggets with the same eagerness with
which they greeted the rise in international tensions. Yet they were at the
same time troubled by the fact that neither.past nor present celestial events
had the desired effect on the general population: “‘Many years ago these
signs were noticed but not sneered at. Now, when they are more numerous,
and better authenticated, they are either denied or laughed at.’’*° The pop-
ular skepticism was especially vexing, since heavenly portents seemed to be
incontrovertible public proof. “Many ask for more signs [of the Second Ad-
vent], but the more they are multiplied, the less effect they will produce.””!
Some portents were simply marvels, meant to astonish and disconcert
humanity. Others, however, touched human lives through their power to kill
and destroy. The portentous significance of disasters was not lost on the
Millerites, who habitually linked political and natural disturbances. Thus
under the headline ‘Earthquakes, Conflagrations, and Moral and Political
Convulsions,” one Adventist wrote that they were “‘signs of the times,
which were foretold to take place in the latter days.”’** This led to a dogged
selectivity with which the news of the day was read, for it appeared to con-
stitute an endless litany of misfortune: ‘““The pen grows weary in record-
ing—and the press in publishing the daily records of desolating earth-
quakes, sweeping fires, distressing poverty, natural perplexity, political
profligacy, private bankruptcy, and wide-spread immorality, which abound
in these last days.’’
While fires and volcanic eruptions were given their due, great storms
and earthquakes seemed to have the greatest power to rouse even the most
fatalistic collector of dour events. A collection of shipwreck and storm tales
bore the brisk Biblical heading, “The Sea and the Waves Roaring,””3+ and the
Lisbon earthquake, although it had taken place eighty-eight years earlier,
was still well remembered, for with it Revelation’s sixth seal was thought to
have been opened.**
The most difficult problem with earthquakes lay in their prediction.
Actual earthquakes begat prophecies of future earthquakes. London, for
example, had experienced two moderately strong earthquakes four weeks
apart in 1750, and panic overtook many people four weeks later in the ex-
pectation of a third, which never occurred.** The Millerites’ own earth-
quake predicament was somewhat more complicated. They were not living
in a place or time when earthquakes were frequent, and none seem to have
occurred in America during the years of high Millerite activity. On the other
hand, Adventists believed that they possessed independent and altogether
reliable evidence that the millennium was imminent; and if the millennium
was imminent, then earthquakes should occur. The theoretical framework
within which Millerites operated thus made earthquake prediction plausi-
 IMAGERY OF APOCALYPSE 57

ble and tempting. The difficulty, as they well recognized, was that previous
earthquake predictions had often been incorrect, and that a false prediction
ona matter of such high public interest and visibility could only increase the
ridicule from which they already suffered in the popular and religious press.
Their vulnerability does not appear to have been lost upon their adversaries,
for in early 1843 anonymous handbills in Boston prophesied an imminent
tremor. An Ohio Adventist who had heard about the handbills implored
“our Second Advent friends at the east tell us what is true respecting the
matter.” The editors of The Midnight Cry replied that it was simply “too
clumsy a hoax to require notice ... utterly without foundation.’’>” Yet the
very issue that contained this lofty disclaimer also carried an article on the
contemporary frequency of earthquakes.
As it had been for the chiliasts of earlier centuries, the world was filled
with mysterious but decipherable correspondences: Biblical texts could be
joined with past and present events, and politics and morals were reflected
in the movements of earth, sea, and sky. Seemingly discrete or random
events took their places for initiates in an elaborate web of divinely guided
interconnections. There could be correlations but not coincidences.
Some events might be so inherently dramatic, such as the “Dark Day,”
that most individuals might be driven by them to reflect upon the state of
the world. But the language of portents was in its own way a technical vo-
cabulary whose manipulation depended upon a knowledge of sacred texts
and an ability to sort out the portentous from the trivial. In the hands of
devoted and virtuosic practitioners, these manipulations produced a view of
the world quite different from that of skeptics. William Lloyd Garrison, ap-
parently at least an occasional reader of Signs of the Times, wrote:

It is amusing to see how the most ordinary events are cited by the ad-
vocates of this new theory [Millerism], as proofs that “the day of the
Lord is at hand.” The fire at Hamburgh—the earthquake at Cape Hai-
tien—falling of the chandelier in the U.S. House of Representatives—
the pecuniary embarrassments of the times—these, and many other
equally remarkable occurrences, are set forth as solemn warnings.**

Garrison’s heavy-handed sarcasm aside, the point was that events deemed
“most ordinary” by unbelievers were “extraordinary” to the Millerites, be-
lieving themselves in possession of the means to decode the news of the day.
The events of daily life are inherently ambiguous. Devoid of inherent
meaning, significance must be given to them by both spectators and partic-
ipants. In the usual transactions that constitute normal social life, the act of
58 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

ascribing meaning takes place so frequently and is so facilitated by a reper-

toire of cultural categories that we are scarcely aware it occurs at all. The
ascription of meaning becomes a conscious process for those who possess
an unorthodox system of beliefs, as well as for those who battle ideological
deviants, as Garrison had to reassert the criteria of “‘ordinariness” in the
face of Adventist claims.
Belief in divine providence was scarcely sbsali from American society
in the 1840s, when evangelical Protestantism was a vital force. Yet two sig-
nificant historic shifts had given most Protestants a world view antagonistic
to traditional portents. In the first place, postmillennialism, anchored in a
commitment to free will, made the individual soul rather than the external
environment the primary arena for the clash between good and evil. In the
second place, a growing naturalism allied to the growth of the sciences in-
vested the natural order with a harmony reflective of divine design. Post-
millennialism made gradual spiritual advancement crucial, rather than a
mechanistic scheme of abrupt, stepwise ascents. Naturalism altered the sig-
nificance of portents. Where millenarians were once accustomed to empha-
sizing breaks in the pattern—prodigies and disasters—now the vay pat-
tern itself bespoke divine concern.
The Millerite framework for organizing reality was thus at odds with
those cultural forces most closely linked to American optimism—belief in
the power of the individual will and confidence in the cumulative effects of
gradual improvement. Saving souls could alter individual fates at the time
of judgment, but it could not alter the timetable itself.’ In like manner, the
reformers’ scale of improvement seemed pathetically modest beside the Mil-
lerites’ cataclysmic overturning.
In the end it was a question of who offered the more convincing con-
struction of reality, the Millerites with their savior descending from the
clouds or their postmillennialist adversaries urging that effort and patience
would reap an eventual reward, even if the generation now living would
never see it. While it is a gross oversimplification to characterize the debate
as between optimists and pessimists, each emphasized different kinds of
evidence and envisioned the future in different terms. Second Adventism of-
fered a world view drastically different than that of the postmillennial reviv-
alists, a world view in which progress was a mirage, calamity and conflict
the norm, and stability an illusion. Second Adventism took nothing about
the present for granted except that it would become continually less Stable
until it ceased to exist altogether.
 IMAGERY OF APOCALYPSE 59

IMPLICATIONS OF MILLERISM

The brevity of Millerism, together with its unconventional beliefs, have

given it the character of a historical footnote—a brief, atypical episode nei-
ther related to nor consequential for the shaping flow of events. Yet Miller-
ism also demands to be taken seriously, if only as a function of its size and
notoriety. In doing so, we would do well to bear in mind Christopher Hill’s
advice to scholars of Puritan millenarianism: ‘‘Each generation ... rescues
a new area from what its predecessors arrogantly and snobbishly dismissed
as ‘the lunatic fringe.’ ’”* Tia
The Millerites were ironically the victims of their own success. The
Great Disappointment was, of course, a major cause of rapidly dropping
membership, yet prophetic disconfirmation does not fully explain their de-
cline. The continuation of an Adventist cadre after 1844 begs the question:
If some members found itpossible to continue on the basis of post-October
1844 rationalizations, why were more not able to do so? The problem 1s al-
ready well-known in millenarian studies, on the basis of the cognitive dis-
sonance argument offered by Festinger, Riecken, and Schachter, who argue
that a contradiction between strongly held beliefs and disconfirming evi-
dence produces tension which the individual wishes to resolve. He or she
may do so by either explaining away the disturbing evidence or accepting
the more traumatic necessity of jettisoning the beliefs. The analysis of Mil-
lerism by Festinger et al. produced curiously mixed conclusions, in large
part attributable to the incomplete data from which they worked. Looking
back on the 1843—44 sequence of prediction-disappointment-new predic-
tion, they saw the new prediction as evidence of the tenacity of millenarian
beliefs. They saw in its post-1844 failure evidence of the final power of ir-
refutable evidence: ‘‘Although there is a limit beyond which belief will not
withstand disconfirmation, it is clear that the introduction of contrary evi-
dence can serve to increase the conviction and enthusiasm of a believer.’’*°
Each disappointment was a stimulus to new predictions until multiplying
disconfirmations broke the cycle. The cycle was broken, they added, be-
cause rank-and-file Millerites did not utilize the single device that can most
successfully fend off disillusionment—the search for converts. From a so-
cial psychological viewpoint, “if more and more people can be persuaded
that the system of beliefs is correct, then clearly it must, after all, be correct.
... If everyone in the whole world believed something there would be no
question at all as to the validity of this belief.””*"
Millerite proselytizing did apparently fall off by late 1844. On the
other hand, there had earlier been enough itinerant, unofficial Adventist
preachers to suggest that many Millerites had a heavy psychological invest-
60 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

ment in their beliefs. When the final disappointment came, the movement
turned inward. In part, this was a consequence of the movement’s headlong
growth earlier, which produced adherents faster than the organization
could absorb them and led to factionalism} particularly through the mili-
tancy of Burned-over District members. After October, the attention of re-
maining Millerites turned to questions of internal control and the resolution
of factional strife. Himes, ever the organizer, was clearly more interested in
the future locus of decision-making within the small surviving movement
than in embarking upon a new campaign for converts. Miller, ill and dis-
appointed, played a diminished role in the mid-1840s.
Beyond questions of personality, the movement’s declining energy was
related to its spatial distribution. Himes’s masterly command of commu-
nications media dictated the search for urban converts, yet in the end it was
the rural areas that held on. Clearly, as astute as Himes was in raising public
enthusiasm, he had somehow misjudged his audiences. The communica-
tions media that produced proselytes could also produce ridicule and even
violent attacks. Miller had begun in small-town America, and in a real sense
that is where Millerism ended.
Finally, the abrupt end of Millerism raises issues concerned with mil-
lenarianism and social protest. Millerites had few qualms about attacking
the evil in the world, yet they did so without addressing political issues. Al-
though many had had experience in movements of social reform, they did
not steer Millerism into such well-worn channels as abolitionism. Finan-
cially pressed though Millerite farmers apparently were, one searches in
vain for overt themes of agrarian radicalism. These were not Populists ob-
sessed with conspiracies or fiscal panaceas. The evil of the world lay in its
inattentiveness to moral precepts and its lack of religious observance rather
than in the oppressive use of power by one group against another. Those
drawn to Miller came because they thought he was right rather than be-
cause they felt his prophecies would advance their personal interests. Elites
in the communities Millerism touched were sometimes patronizing but
were often curious and sympathetic, suggesting little fear of social upheaval.
The Second Adventists’ disdain for social protest was particularly sur-
prising since many were victims of economic dislocations and had much to
be angry about. The absence of anger in the movement does not suggest that
its members enjoyed an extraordinary sense of well-being or that they pos-
sessed a stoicism their neighbors lacked. Rather, Millerism’s apolitical tone
was a direct consequence of the system of portent analysis described in this
chapter.
Millerism had no room for social protest because its intellectual struc-
ture could accommodate only the stereotypical events of the latter days—
 IMAGERY OF APOCALYPSE 61

the wars, celestial marvels, and natural disasters already identified as the es-
sential eschatological signs. Occurrences that failed to fit within these cate-
gories might be personally significant, but they were theologically trivial.
The anxieties of the 1840s were thus discharged by a circuitous route.
The stuff of protest was transmuted into the elaborate and archaic language
of chiliastic expectation. The imagery of war and disaster was, like referred
pain, an expression of troubles that lay elsewhere.
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 THE GROWTH OF UTOPIAN COMMUNITIES

THE UTOPIAN ALTERNATIVE

THE ESCHATOLOGICAL DRAMA of the 1840s did not revolve

exclusively around Millerism. A very different kind of millen-
Mea arian activity appeared alongside Second Adventism: uto-
steeeee pian communities. These social experiments occurred in ap-
breskinnnitely the same region as the religious excitations, but their small size
and indrawn character bespoke a quite different style. The communities did
not have the capacity to absorb large numbers, even where, as in the case of
the Shakers, they actively sought new members. Despite their small size,
they attracted attention far out of proportion to their numbers.
Many of the communities were shaped by religious goals. They sought
to preserve distinctive forms of worship and unorthodox theologies. None-
theless, even the manifestly religious groups contained secular elements.
The best-known utopian practices involved more than narrowly religious
subjects and addressed the role of women, the structure of the family, the
organization of work, the distribution of property, and the regulation of
sexual expression. Although conventional, non-communitarian religious
groups often held strong beliefs about these issues, their beliefs tended to
support prevailing social practices, such as the subordination of women, the
primacy of the nuclear family, wage labor, private property, and sex within
marriage. The utopian communities, on the other hand, radically chal-
lenged them. Their translation of heterodox beliefs into action necessarily
involved the justification of new forms of social and economic organization
at least as much as the justification of new theological dogmas.
63
64 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

This fusion of belief and practice implied a distinctive attitude toward

the efficacy of human actions. The postmillennialists projected the perfect
society into the future as the cumulative consequence of incremental im-
provement. The receptivity of postmillennialists to a “‘politics of benevo-
lence” reflected their confidence that the world could be perfected by a com-
bination of religious observance and social reform. The premillennialists,
on the other hand, assumed that the final consummation was an imminent
rather than a relatively remote event. The overturning of human institutions
consequently would take place in the immediate future. This allowed no
time for remedial action, which was in any case considered inadequate to
the task. The millennium would be the product of direct divine intervention.
The function of human effort was to warn as many as possible, and in so
doing to gather a “saving remnant” that would enjoy the fruits of the mil-
lennial kingdom.
Utopians fell uneasily into this scheme of classification. On the one
hand, the very act of establishing self-contained communities suggested a
confidence in human action, for the creation of new institutions made sense
only as instruments for the advancement of their members. Although not all
utopians subscribed to the belief that a sinless society could be achieved on
earth—a tenet of both the Shakers and the Oneida Community—all be-
lieved that communal living promoted higher-states of individual virtue. A
few communities, among them the Adventist Communal groups described
in Chapter Two, explicitly saw themselves as anterooms in which the faith-
ful could cluster before entrance into the millennial age.
The Shakers and the Oneida Perfectionists were neither premillenni-
alists nor postmillennialists in any clear sense of the terms. Both have been
described, somewhat inelegantly, as “‘intermillennialist,” suggesting that
they viewed the present as farther on the road to perfection than did post-
millennialists, but the final consummation as more distant than premillen-
nialists claimed.'
The Shakers, “Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing,” incorporated
idiosyncratic conceptions of the Second Coming. Their foundress, Mother
Ann Lee, had experienced a vision of Christ during the Summer of 1770 in
her English prison cell. She had been jailed for “disturbing the peace” in
emotional religious services. In the course of the vision, she reported, Christ
had urged her to spread the truth she had earlier discovered, that the source
of human evil, and the act of disobedience in the Garden of Eden, was sex-
ual intercourse.* The Shaker commitment to total celibacy thus figuratively
placed Shakers in Eden before the Fall, the perfection which had been lost
and must now be regained. As a result of the commitment to celibacy, Shak-
erism was destined to rely entirely on converts to maintain itself.
 GROWTH OF UTOPIAN COMMUNITIES 65

Another more controversial Second Adventist doctrine may have de-

veloped among Ann’s followers after her group moved to America in 1774.
That was the claim that just as God had taken male form in the person of
Jesus, so the spirit of the divinity was subsequently embodied in Ann Lee.”
Valentine Rathbun, a Shaker apostate, wrote in 1780, four years before
Ann’s death, that her followers believed ‘‘all God’s elect must be born
through her; yes, that Christ through her is born the second time.’’* There
is no clear evidence that Ann herself held this view, but since much the
greater part of Shaker history took place after her death, followers’ beliefs
may be more significant than her own. fii)
John Humphrey Noyes’s millennialism was far more complex and in-
finitely better recorded through his own voluminous writings and the re-
markably candid letters of him and his family. In the summer of 1833, when
Noyes was twenty-two, he came to the view that Christ had appeared spir-
itually to the apostles in A.D. 70, when the Temple in Jerusalem was de-
stroyed by the Romans.’ Having placed this invisible Second Coming in the
past, he accounted for the sadly flawed state of the world by arguing fora
distinction between the apostolic church, which had ascended to heaven,
and the temporal church, which perpetuated error on earth.°
The more serious problems concerned the relationship between the
Second Coming of A.D. 70 and the millennium. Had the millennium already
occurred? Was it even now in progress? Or had it somehow been deferred?
These complications made Noyes ambivalent and defensive in the presence
of more decisive premillenarian views.” Noyes conceded that ““The Devil...
still reigns. ... That great day of the Lord Almighty is yet future.” But as he
saw it in 1835, “when that day will fully come, knoweth no man, save the
Father only, but looking at prophecy and the movements of his providential
hand in waking up the world, we cannot but regard it as near.””* This line of
argument, which placed the Second Coming in the distant past and the mil-
lennium in the near future, led Noyes to suggest that “‘a third appearance of
Christ is approaching.” When he came later to rebut Miller, he chose not
to emphasize this point, lest he and Miller appear to be arguing simply
about numbering. The passage of time seems merely to have increased
Noyes’s perplexity, and he confessed to one correspondent in 1840 that he
was still reluctant to deal with the millennium in print."
These theological concerns were shadowed by Noyes’s personal crises.
During a protracted nervous breakdown in spring 1834, Noyes was left
shaken by a dramatic vision of a physical Second Coming at odds with his
own beliefs. Described by Noyes in his Confessions fifteen years after the
event, the account is worth quoting at length:
66 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

I received a baptism of that spirit which has since manifested itself ex-
tensively.in the form of Millerism. My doctrinal views had no affinity
with Miller’s theory of the Second Advent. I knew that the first judg-
ment took place immediately after the destruction of Jerusalem, and
that it was a transaction in the spiritual world. Yet | expected a second
judgment at the end of the times of the Gentiles, or rather a second
manifestation of the first judgment, i.e., an extension of it to the visible
world. The spirit which now came upon me produced an irresistible
impression that this manifestation was about to take plave immedi-
ately. It was a terrible moment. ... After several similar crises, the
impression left me, and I received in its stead a persuasion that the judg-
ment of the world will be a gradual spiritual operation, effected by
truth and invisible power, without any of the physical machinery which
> alarms the imaginations of most expectants of the great day."!

The experience made a profound impression upon Noyes, terrified by this

sudden cataclysmic vision which he was temporarily incapable of throwing
off. At about the same time, and apparently still in the vision’s grip, he
wrote.a semi-coherent Adventist letter to his mother: “Do your hearts fail?
It [sic] tell you another coming of the Son of Man is at hand. As the light-
ening shinest from the east even unto the west, so shall his coming be...
Dear Mother, do your hearts fail? If you love Gad with all your heart Do you
keep his commandments? If so, you will stand in the evil day.’’!
Noyes had a second breakdown exactly a year later in New Haven,
Connecticut, where his sister Joanna lived. The visit left her certain her
brother was deranged “‘when he begins to talk about his suffering for the
world, and that he is immortal, &c.”' This tantalizing suggestion of iden-
tification with Christ occurs nowhere else in documents by or about Noyes.
Nonetheless, Joanna’s letters show her to be a sober witness whose overrid-
ing concern was John’s mental health. If her account is accurate, then Noyes
was at that time far more similar to Ann Lee than has been thought. Given
Noyes’s vague but persistent references to a “third coming,” he may in 1835
have considered that he himself embodied it, as Ann Lee’s followers (and
perhaps Ann herself) considered the Shaker Mother to have embodied the
Second. .
Noyes did not establish his communal group at Putney, Vermont, until
1841, and in Oneida County, New York, until 1848, by which times these
episodes were past. Nonetheless, his earlier views of the millennium and
Second Coming suggest the tormented chiliast more than they do the clear-
eyed planner. Noyes the socioeconomic innovator and community builder
replaced but could never obliterate the image of Noyes the reckless spiritual
voyager. '4
 GROWTH OF UTOPIAN COMMUNITIES 67

The Fourierists, for their part, eschewed the more elaborate forms of
chiliastic speculation even as they remained totally committed to the millen-
nium. This avoidance was due to the fact that some were deists, beginning
with their French master, Charles Fourier, himself, and including his leading
American disciple, Albert Brisbane, while others were liberal Christian
ministers, including George Ripley and William Henry Channing."
In any case, the movement required alterations in Fourier’s original
doctrines, which were bizarre where they were not impenetrable. Since
Fourier believed he had discovered nothing less than the secret of the uni-
verse (modesty not being his strongest suit), American “‘Associationists,”” as
they called themselves, tried to prune away elements of his thought that
seemed irrelevant to community-building or were unpalatable to Ameri-
cans. In particular, they tactfully omitted Fourier’s discussions of the sexual
benefits of utopia, which ranged from virginity for those who wanted it to
polymorphous perversity.'6 The master’s death in 1837 doubtless made
these omissions easier.
The American Fourierism which remained was firmly fixed upon the
details of utopian communities themselves, the “‘phalanxes.” But behind
the mundane details of social engineering lay a clear commitment to a mil-
lennial perfection that the phalanxes would soon realize. As Charles Dana
candidly put it in 1844: “Our ulterior aim is nothing less than Heaven on
earth.’’!” This view was shared by other Fourierists of a religious cast, such
as the Pittsburgh theologian H. H. van Amringe, who was in the midst of
writing a millenarian tract when he discovered and embraced Association-
ism: ‘We ourselves, in this age of the world, are on the eve of... a great and
terrible day of the Lord,” he wrote, but at the same time the Advent, like
Noyes’s, would be a spiritual rather than a physical event."*
Although Albert Brisbane did not employ the conventional millenar-
ian style in his own writings, their millenarian substance is never in doubt.
In his old age he recalled the first flood of the Fourierist vision: “‘I had a vivid
conception of a great function as the destiny of ... humanity; I saw the as-
sociation of our globe and the humanities upon it with the Cosmic Whole
to which they belong.’’!? These recollections, although not always correct in
detail, faithfully record the millenarianism of Brisbane’s past, for much the
same lyrical mysticism infused his 1840 essay, Social Destiny of Man: “The
terrestrial Destiny of man is TO OVERSEE the globe, which is a vast do-
main confided in his care. ... If man performs well the noble task delegated
to him, he is rewarded for it by the satisfaction of the leading desires of his
nature, by: ‘General riches, Individual happiness, Reign of Justice, UNITY
OF ACTION.’ ”’?°
68 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

Brisbane’s appeal lay in the shrewd interweaving of pre- and postmil-

lenarian themes, as well as in the fusion of religious and secular. The pos-
sibility of radical, imminent change blended with a Victorian evocation of
inevitable progress, and without removing God from the picture, Brisbane
effectively emphasized the importance of human effort. The effort required
was the unraveling of the divine “social Code,” “pre-existing, in the mind
of God prior to the creation of each globe.””?! To do Fourier’s work was thus
to do God’s. Brisbane rhapsodically anticipated that “the boon—the Par-
adise itself will be the Moral Harmony of the Passions in Associative Un-
ity —the Kingdom of Heaven which comes to us in this terrestrial world.”’?2
It was up to those in this world to grasp the doctrine Fourier and his disci-
ples made available to them and achieve for themselves in one stroke what
the premillennialists depended upon God to produce and what the post-
millennialists deferred to a distant future.
It has been commonplace to view American utopian experiments as
social laboratories in which tinkerers redesigned institutions as inventors
might modify machines. One of the communities’ most important chroni-
clers, Arthur Bestor, referred to them as “patent office models of society.”
While the development of new arrangements for productivity and daily life
were surely significant elements of the utopian enterprise, they derived their
value, as far as many utopians were concerned, from the fact that they were
instruments bringing the millennium nearer. It could be achieved here and
now, if only in miniature.

THE RELIGIOUS ORIGINS OF UTOPIAN COMMUNITIES

The millennialism of Shaker, Perfectionist, and Fourierist communities con-

tinued a long association of utopian experiments with religious radicalism.
The roots of the earliest American communalism lay in European heresy
and religious dissent. A heresy-prone region lay diagonally across central
and western Europe, stretching from what is now Czechoslovakia through
western Germany and into the Low Countries, bridging the Channel to En-
gland.”4 Within this zone of endemic religious unrest lay many millenarian
sects, whose commitment to total change had sometimes drawn them into
physical combat during the religious wars of the Reformation. Defeat tamed
them, however, and those that survived did so by learning virtues of political
accommodation or withdrawal from temporal affairs. The bellicose Tabor-
ites merged into the Moravian Brethren, the once feared Anabaptists who
 GROWTH OF UTOPIAN COMMUNITIES 69

had seized Miinster in 1534—35 became Mennonites, and the anti-Crom-

wellian Fifth Monarchists dissolved into Quakerism.
Beginning in the second half of the seventeenth century, significant
numbers of schismatics from this area began to arrive in America.”> Already
politically quiescent, they wished only to be left alone, a predisposition rein-
forced by linguistic barriers for those who came from German-speaking
areas. Even had they wished to resume political militancy, the colonial am-
biance did not encourage it. Such old targets as the Papacy were distant, and
with neither the means nor the opportunity to strike out at former adver-
saries, the sectarians threw their energies into the maintenance of enclave
communities to preserve their traditional lifestyles. Indeed, ‘‘the sect that
clung with religious fidelity to its ideal of a completely reconstructed society
became more positively communitarian in outlook and policy than it had
been in Europe.”2¢ Eastern Pennsylvania in particular drew German-speak-
ing settlements whose energy and strength of will inspired more secular-
minded communitarians later, and brought grudging admiration from their
neighbors. The Ephrata Cloister, the Harmonie Society, and Zoar—all
founded before 1820—were simply the most conspicuous manifestations of
sectarian migration. In larger measure, the whole world of the ‘“Pennsylva-
nia Dutch,” both communitarian and non-communitarian, involved the
transplantation of the now-docile “radical Reformation.” Varying degrees
of community separateness were thus a result of neither social planning nor
social theorizing; rather, they were the pragmatic outgrowth of the desire to
perpetuate distinctive ways of life. Nearly a dozen foreign-language com-
munities were founded before 1825, a growth not to be matched until a
renewal of linguistic separatism in the 1840s with the beginnings of mass
immigration.””
Since only eight believers journeyed to America in 1774, the Shakers
can scarcely be considered a transplanted European sect. Nonetheless,
Shakerism too could claim ties, however tenuous, with Reformation radi-
calism. The Edict of Nantes (1598) granted legal protections to French Prot-
estants (Huguenots). When the Edict was revoked in 1685, the subsequent
persecutions led the ‘“Camisards,”’ Huguenots in the Cévennes south of
Lyons, to attempt to retain their autonomy by force of arms. They held out
through a quarter century of ecstatic prophecy and guerrilla warfare, but
with the defeat of their insurrection, a remnant migrated to the presumably
more hospitable atmosphere of Protestant England.** These ‘French
Prophets” managed to antagonize most of their English coreligionists with
predictions of miracles and the end of the world, neither of which they were
able to bring about. Nonetheless, their hostility to the corruption of church
and state may well have found a more lasting home in Shakerism, to which
70 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

some of their sparse following repaired. The major influence on Ann Lee
was surely Quakerism but the legacy of the “French Prophets” cannot be
ignored.?? 4
The German-speaking sects and, to a lesser extent, the Shakers con-
stituted instances of what Bernard Siegel has referred to as “defensive struc-
turing’’—social organization based upon the.desire to draw boundaries
between one’s own group and an environment perceived as threatening or
corrupt. The function of such-boundaries is to reduce to the minimum
transactions between the two, neither adopting the society’s values nor in-
curring its displeasure. Essential negotiations are generally placed in the
hands of a small number of community functionaries, leaving the bulk of the
population unsullied by direct contact.*? Historically, those groups that
have most successfully claimed such a right to separation have. been reli-
gious groups without political ambitions. Given the pluralistic character of
American society, it has seemed more conducive to social equilibrium to ac-
cept most such claims even when groups have deviated significantly from
accepted norms.*!
The successful invocation of quasi-separatist claims in the early dec-
ades of American communalism owes much to the fact that the groups that
were claiming it appeared clearly to be seeking separation on religious
grounds, even where other motives existed, as, for example, the desire to
preserve a language other than English. However, by the 1820s, an increas-
ing proportion of communal ventures were animated in whole or in part by
more secular concerns, as in the case of Robert Owen’s and the Owenites’
desire to create a social structure that would eliminate a pauper class. From
the time of the founding of the first Owenite community at New Harmony,
Indiana, in 1825, the basis of utopian experimentation was significantly ex-
panded beyond religion.
Nonetheless, the process of secularization was neither abrupt nor
complete. Robert Owen, despite his public abhorrence of religion, still
found it useful and somehow natural to call his organizers “‘social mission-
aries,”’ just-as Friedrich Engels could ignore Shaker theology sufficiently to
commend their communities as models German workers would do well to
emulate.32 Utopian experimentation began to exhibit a new category of mo-
tives. Until the 1820s pre-existing groups had merely wanted to maintain
their identity and cohesion in an environment whose values they rejected.
They brought with them into their communities clearly formulated religious
beliefs and, often, complex patterns of daily living. Secularizing tendencies
brought new elements of conscious social design. The more secular the com-
munity, the more likely that its members had had little contact with one an-
other prior to the community’s founding. They desired not to preserve a
 GROWTH OF UTOPIAN COMMUNITIES 71

threatened way of life but to create a way of life for which there was little
existing precedent.
In this, as in other respects, the Shakers were transitional. The loyalty
to Shaker religious doctrine was as central as were the creeds of the German-
speaking sects. Yet apart from very small numbers of English members, in-
habitants of Shaker communities had had no experience of Shakerism out-
side the communities. While Shaker “‘families,” the group’s 30-to-150-
member units, existed to preserve a belief system, they also existed to create
a way of life where none had existed before. The plasticity of their early so-
cial forms perhaps explains the extraordinary'attraction they held, not sim-
ply for millenarians such as Noyes but for secular social reformers. Indeed,
as the century progressed this attractiveness caused Shakerism to exhibit its
own secularizing tendencies as it attracted members more intrigued by in-
stitutional ingenuity than by doctrines. Shakerism pointed simultaneously
back to the millenarian sects of the radical Reformation and ahead to the
political sectarianism of nascent socialism.

THE OWENITE PROLOGUE

Although the great burst of community building occurred in the 1840s, it

built upon the efforts of Robert Owen and his followers two decades earlier.
Owen had begun in a more conventionally philanthropic vein as the be-
nignly paternalistic master of his rural textile mill at New Lanark, Scotland.
As a laboratory for innovation in education, housing, and work organiza-
tion, New Lanark was a mandatory stop on the itineraries of touring social
reformers. The New Lanark reforms were possible because as an industrial
enterprise dependent upon water power, it was sited in the countryside
rather than the blighted city: “it was not so ‘advanced’ as Manchester [and]
it might be possible to preserve something of the spirit of community and
close industrial relationships that had been lost in the larger city.” Just as
Owen rejected the city as a locus for effective change, he came in time to
leave New Lanark as well, in the belief that no community built upon in-
dustrial production could achieve the desired harmonization of interests.*?
By about 1817, Owen had acquired a nonreligious millenarian concep-
tion of the future, seeking, as one of his followers wrote, “the construction
of a great social and moral machine, calculated to produce wealth, knowl-
edge, and happiness, with unprecedented precision and rapidity.”** With
curious ambivalence, Owen exiled industry from his communities, yet built
his millennial vision upon the assumption that technology might free hu-
Yee CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

manity from toil.> His public pronouncements in the summer of 1817 may
not have “aroused the attention of the civilized world, alarmed the govern-
ments, astounded the religious sects of every denomination, and created an
excitement in all classes,” as he later asserted,** but they marked Owen’s
public emergence as a full-fledged millenarian figure instead of merely a phi-
lanthropic reformer, and they articulated a millennium based explicitly on
reasoned analysis of social ills rather than upon religious revelation. His
pugnacious opposition to religion did not, however, inhibit him from ap-
propriating its language. Looking back upon the addresses of 1817 with
forty years’ hindsight, he wrote that their message

will now advance without retrogression until they shall so regenerate

the human mind, that it shall be “born again,” and will entirely change
society over the world, in spirit, principle, and practice, giving new sur-
roundings to all nations, until not one stone of the present surround-
ings of society shall be left upon another. For in consequence of this
change “old things will entirely pass away and all will become new.’’?”

Owen’s millennium would simultaneously free humanity from the toil and
the novel oppressions of the factory systenr, while it liberated individuals
from the selfishness of the nuclear family. The result would combine mate-
rial satisfaction, individual fulfillment, and community cohesion.
Owen was already familiar with the communal religious sects long be-
fore his own utopian experiments. He knew of, admired, and wrote about
the Shakers as early as 1818, and was particularly impressed by their ability
to neutralize family loyalties—a result of strict sex segregation and the sep-
aration of parents and children—and their economic self-sufficiency, which
“he triumphantly cited... as proof that the principles of communitarianism
were sound.”’38
An indifferent speaker but a prolific and powerful writer, Owen was
already an international celebrity by the time of his first trip to America in
1824. The tangible product of the American visit, into which he ploughed
much of his mill-owner’s fortune, was seven communities founded in 1825—
26 by him or his disciples. The most famous, at New Harmony, Indiana,
had had an earlier life as a religious community of the German Rappite sect.
But Owen’s American visit was clearly as important for the vision it im-
parted as for the communities themselves. His 1825 lectures before the
House of Representatives seemed interminable, but John Quincy Adams,
James Monroe, and assorted legislators, cabinet officers, and jurists all du-
tifully attended.*? Owen was otherwise occupied in England when his
 GROWTH OF UTOPIAN COMMUNITIES 73

American communities foundered. Among their human debris was Frede-

rick Evans, who, in search of a more stable group life, converted to Shaker-
ism in 1828. Evans rose in time to the post of Elder and worked to link the
Shakers with the proto-socialism of his Owenite youth. In the later years of
the nineteenth century he assiduously cultivated relationships with figures
as diverse as Leo Tolstoy, with whom he held a lengthy correspondence, and
the aging John Humphrey Noyes, who treated him with uncharacteristic
deference.*°

THE ONEIDA COMMUNITY

By the end of the 1840s, Owenite communalism had lost its momentum. In
its place stood the Oneida Community with its satellite groups, its vigorous
publications program, and the charismatic figure of Noyes; the Fourierists,
with their elaborate system of support organizations and dizzying rate of
community foundation; and the Shakers who, virtually alone of the sectar-
ians, were prepared to reach out for new members.
After the psychological crises of his youth, John Humphrey Noyes had
returned to his family’s home in Putney, Vermont. In this benign atmos-
phere, Noyes commenced to put into practice his belief in “perfectionism,”
the possibility of living free of sin in this life. Perfect holiness dissolved ex-
clusive personal bonds into a single community, and nowhere more dra-
matically than in relations between men and women. As early as 1837,
Noyes had written in the “Battle-Axe Letter” that “When the will of God is
done on earth, as it is in heaven, there will be no marriage. ...In a holy com-
munity, there is no more reason why sexual intercourse should be restricted
by law, than why eating and drinking should.”’*! By the power of his advo-
cacy and the strength of his personality, Noyes soon surrounded himself at
Putney with a core of believing friends and family members, who by about
1841 had formed a de facto communal living arrangement. The group was
small—fewer than fifty, including children.*”
Communal ownership of property emerged in response to economic
pressures rather than ideological commitment. By early 1844 the group
seemed better supported by pooling of privately held resources than by so-
liciting contributions. By 1845 economic arrangements involved full sharing
of property, although the ideological statement of “Bible communism” did
not appear until four years later.**
The full introduction of ‘““complex marriage” (non-exclusive sexual
74 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

John Humphrey Noyes in one of his earliest photographs, probably a

daguerreotype of the 1840s, when Noyes was in his early thirties. Dur-
ing this period, Noyes organized his first communal group in Putney,
Vermont, and at the same time conducted a one-man campaign against
Millerism. Courtesy Oneida Community Historical Committee

relationships) was far more delicate both within and outside the commu-
nity. Noyes initially revealed and practiced the doctrine only among his
closest followers but in 1846—47 began its systematic promulgation. By
unanimous agreement, in a meeting June 1, 1847, the community answered
 GROWTH OF UTOPIAN COMMUNITIES 7h)

in the affirmative Noyes’s question: “Is not now the time for us to com-
mence the testimony that the Kingdom of God has come?’ By this time,
however, the breath of scandal had made continued residence in the Putney
area untenable, and the community prepared to reassemble around a small
existing perfectionist coterie in Oneida County, New York. /
In the Oneida Community, Noyes artfully interwove pre-Marxian so-
cialism, the nascent women’s movement, an overriding concern for social
solidarity, and a benign industrialism. Where Owen had proscribed indus-
trialization, recreating an arcadian atmosphere, Noyes encouraged mecha-
nization combined with a job-rotation system,td discourage boredom and
status distinctions. The center of Noyes’s labors remained Oneida, but as
the Oneida Community prospered, branches were established in Walling-
ford, Connecticut; Manlius, New York; Brooklyn, New York; Cambridge,
Vermont; Newark, New Jersey; and (once again) Putney. Wallingford lasted
as long as its parent, formally until 1881, but the others lacked an adequate
economic base and were disbanded in the 1850s, their members absorbed
into the main group.*> Noyes himself spent long periods with the Brooklyn
group, but he remained the dominant force at Oneida even during absences
at Brooklyn, other branches, and abroad. ae iae
The Oneida Community’s cohesion was the product of Noyes’s in-
creasingly elaborate theories of sexuality. By 1844 he had come to accept
Robert Dale Owen’s distinction between the pleasurable aspect of sex (its
“amative”’ function) and its reproductive aspect (the “propagative’’ func-
tion).46 Robert Dale Owen, Robert Owen’s eldest son, had remained in New
Harmony after his father left and after the communal phase of the town’s
life had ended, and though never directly involved in communitarian activ-
ities, he joined a wide range of reformist causes. The younger Owen drew
from his distinction the corollary that birth control was best accomplished
through male continence (coitus interruptus). This perfectly fitted Noyes’s
view of sexual union as a religious act, for complex marriage could now go
forward without burdening the woman with unwanted offspring. Sexual re-
lations without ejaculation served as a means by which less perfect individ-
uals could reach higher degrees of perfection through intimacy with more
spiritually advanced (usually older) partners. At the same time, the web of
non-reproductive unions gave physical form to the belief that the commu-
nity consisted of a marriage of each to all.*”
Sustained by successful light industrial enterprises, the Oneida Com-
munity eventually afforded its members a comfortably bourgeois style of
material life. At the social level, it functioned as a vast extended family. In
the words of one of its hymns:
76 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

This daguerreotype of John Humphrey Noyes can be dated only ap-

proximately. It appears to have been taken sometime between 1845 and
1855, at about the time Noyes took his little community to what was to
become its permanent headquarters in Oneida County, N.Y. Courtesy
Oneida Community Historical Committee

We will build us a dome

on our beautiful plantation,
And we’ll all have a home
and one family relation**
 GROWTH OF UTOPIAN COMMUNITIES Wi,

As Lawrence Foster has pointed out, the family metaphor gave Oneida a
striking resemblance to the Shakers, whose rigorous celibacy was in other
respects the antithesis of complex marriage.*?
While still at Putney, Noyes was anxious to differentiate “Bible com-
munism” from other communal ventures that encouraged greater with-
drawal from the larger society. His journal, The Perfectionist, took simul-
taneous aim at both Shakers and Fourierists in July 1843: “‘We do not
believe that any of the schemes of seceding communism, which at present
abound, are the representative executors of [the spirit of the Gospel].”°° Af-
ter the Putney Community was well established, the Shakers continued to
be attacked as sinister and doctrinally impure proselytizers. In a metaphor
heavy with menace Noyes noted: “Shakerism is silently spreading wide its
nets.”’>' The failure of Shakerism to abjure its own peculiar doctrine of the
Second Coming continued to gall Noyes. No matter how heterodox it was
in other respects, for Noyes Shakerism was at one with mainline Christian
denominations in perpetuating “the heaven-daring falsehood . . .that Christ
did not come... within the generation in which he lived.’’
Yet Noyes could also see the virtues of the Shakers, particularly when
in doing so he might play the Shakers off against the Fourierists. Thus sand-
wiched among the pejorative comments were oddly charitable remarks,
suggesting the Shakers possessed at least relative superiority over their com-
petitors: ‘In our view, the Shakers’ plan of communism has far better
claims to public interest and confidence than any of the recent schemes; and
Ann Lee better deserves the name of a ‘benefactor of the human family’ than
Fourier, or Henshaw, Ripley or Collins.”%? This otherwise unpredictable
rapprochement with Shakerism may owe less to new-found ideological
compatibility than to new fears of organizational competition. The Shakers
had been the most active proselytizer among communitarians. By 1843—44,
however, Fourierism was undergoing spectacular growth, particularly in the
Burned-over District, impelled by the organizational and propagandistic
skills of Albert Brisbane.
Perfectionist perceptions of associationism were almost as ambivalent
as its views of Shakerism. Less than half a year after comparing Fourier un-
favorably to Ann Lee, Noyes published a lengthy essay on Fourierism that
was notably more balanced. Associationism was portrayed as “refreshing”
in its “conservative moderation,” “yet we are not converted to its princi-
ples.” The problem lay in the Fourierist emphasis upon the creation of
proper social and economic institutions, as opposed to Noyes’s view that
the fundamental problem was the creation of noble characters: “good men”
precede, rather than follow, “good institutions.”°* Where the spirit is ‘“‘vi-
tally diseased,” it must be cured by an “internal process.””®° Fourierism was
78 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

The patriarchal John Humphrey Noyes, shown here on the Oneida

Community’s grounds in about 1863. He is the figure in the right fore-
ground, standing astride, with top-hat in hand, the extended Commu-
nity “family”? behind him—164 men, women, and children, about
three-quarters of its membership at that time. Courtesy Oneida His-
torical Committee

fundamentally misguided, since it concentrated only upon the outward

manifestations, the symptomatology, rather than the root cause.
By the spring of 1846, on the eve of the transfer to Oneida, Noyes had
grown even more mellow in his views on Associationism, in part no doubt
because the Fourierist agitation of earlier years had receded. Noyes now
portrayed the Putney group as the true communitarians, moving forward in
the knowledge that they alone possessed the true doctrine. At the same time,
he indulged in some curious historical revisionism: ‘We have been Associ-
ationists theoretically for more than ten years [i.¢., since before 1836], and
practically in a small experimental way, for six years [since 1840].””5¢
Neither estimate accords well with the known facts, although both
may represent Noyes’s subsequent recollection. There was always a measure
 GROWTH OF UTOPIAN COMMUNITIES 79

of de facto communalism at Putney, the natural product of group living in

a hostile environment. In no sense, however, was the Putney group a for-
mally organized utopian venture before, at the earliest, 1844. De facto com-
munalism, accordingly, is what Noyes apparently meant when he observed
that “‘about six years. ago we began the experiment of external union of in-
terests.’’ But ever mindful of the need to differentiate pure from impure
communitarians, he was careful to add: ‘‘This experiment has always been
a secondary matter with us, Our primary project has been to publish the
gospel of salvation from sin, and to form a SPIRITUAL PHALANX.”’’”
The audacious appropriationof the central Fourierist metaphor
marked both the symbolic ascendancy of Perfectionism over Association-
ism and Noyes’s irrevocable self-identification as.a utopian. Having a dozen
years earlier proclaimed his desire to “‘live or die for {the millennium],”’
Noyes had now scaled down his dreams from world transformation to the
creation of.a perfect world in miniature.

THE FOURIERIST COMMUNITIES

The Fourierist phalanxes were the single most numerous class of commu-
nities founded in the 1840s. Bestor identifies twenty-five begun between
1841 and 1846, while Okugawa counts twenty-three.** Neither the Perfec-
tionists nor the Shakers at the peak of their vitality approached this level of
activity. Since Fourierism never achieved complete cohesion as.a social
movement, communities were often distantly related local ventures, but all
sprang ultimately from the mind of Fourier—or rather what his American
disciples chose to think was in his mind.
Albert Brisbane provided whatever central focus Fourierism had. Born
and raised in the Burned-over District, he was strikingly atypical of its pop-
ulation. His father’s family, with roots in the Philadelphia area rather than
in New England, moved to Batavia, between Rochester and Buffalo.*? In a
region of evangelical Protestants, his father was the town skeptic. Brisbane
was thus largely insulated from revival religion, the more so since he was
sent to New York City for his education at seventeen and eb ashis young
manhood in Europe.
His intellectual “grand tour”
t was the stuff of legend. He sat at the feet
of Goethe, Heine, and Hegel, but it was the reclusive, irascible Fourier who
set his mind ablaze in 1832.°! The dour prophet could scarcely have given
his young follower much encouragement; Brisbane later recalled that “in
the three years of my association with Fourier, | never saw him smile.”*
80 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

Nonetheless, Brisbane, the searching son of a skeptical father, was drawn to

Fourier’s curious theism, which superimposed upon the God of the philos-
ophers the belief that that remote deity had fashioned a code for social life,
discovered by Fourier himself. i
Brisbane resolved to bring this code, which purported to explain so-
ciety as Newton’s physics had explained the material world, to America.
The task was made far more feasible with the conversion of Horace Greeley
to Associationism in 1841. Brisbane wrote a Fourierist column on the New
York Tribune’s front page, from March 1842 until September 1843, possi-
bly the first regular column of signed opinion in any American newspaper.®
On October 5, 1843, Brisbane founded The Phalanx, a periodical devoted
to the growing band of American Fourierists, which he edited until he re-
‘turned to Europe in the spring of 1844.
Not content with journalistic efforts alone, Brisbane agitated for the
formation of Fourierist societies to advance the master’s ideas and to insure
their implementation in self-sufficient rural communities. By mid-1844 a
thousand people had actually moved into the four largest communities, and
Bestor estimates fifteen to twenty non-resident supporters for every com-
munity member.* If so, that suggests a movement roughly half the size of
Millerism. Fourierism’s decline, however, was as dramatic as its rise. Un-
dercapitalized, dependent upon the generosity of their non-resident pa-
trons, the communities struggled unsuccessfully through the depression
years that followed the Panic of 1837. By the time Brisbane returned from
his European trip at the end of 1844, the communities were dissolving, and
once sympathetic newspapers other than the Tribune grew suddenly skep-
tical.*° The $400,000 capitalization that Fourier had recommended for a
single community was not to be had in an economy where, as Brisbane later
recalled, “between Albany and Buffalo there were, I should say, scarcely a
dozen men who had escaped bankruptcy.”

THE VITALITY OF THE SHAKERS

Despite the general shift away from sectarian communities, the Shakers re-
mained highly visible. In part, this was the result of their active proselytizing
among revival Protestants. It was also no doubt due to their reputation for
meticulously organized, prosperous communities, which drew a steady
stream of visitors. It is more difficult to know, however, whether perceived
Shaker vitality was matched by increases in size. Foster identifies three
phases of Shaker growth: an initial period between Mother Ann Lee’s death
 GROWTH OF UTOPIAN COMMUNITIES 81

in 1784 and the turn of the nineteenth century; a second phase up to 1820;
and a third expansion between 1837 and about 1855.°’ The second and
third phases in particular were associated with movement into new regions
of the country, especially the Midwest and the Ohio Valley. Yet it remains
difficult to clearly link missionary activities and the development of new
Shaker communities, on the one hand, with actual growth in membership
on the other.
The Shakers’ uncompromising insistence upon celibacy required a
continuous infusion of new members through the conversion of adults, with
or without children, and the acceptance of orphan children who could be
kept until their majority. The absence of natural increase as a recruiting
mechanism produced an inherently precarious situation, since it was never
clear that the existing generation of members would be replaced.** While
Shaker population figures exist, they are most often estimates, sometimes
contradict one another, and make it extremely difficult to determine
whether the movement was growing, contracting, or just maintaining itself.
A 1799 Shaker estimate placed the membership at more than 1,600. Ste-
phen Marini’s estimate for 1815 is 4,000, while an 1823 Shaker estimate
placed their numbers at 4,000—4,300.”? Edward Deming Andrews places
the peak size at 6,000 in the mid-1850s.7! While these somewhat contradic-
tory figures still suggest impressively steady growth, this long-accepted pic-
ture has been at least partially called into question by William Sims Bain-
bridge’s research with census records.”
Bainbridge utilized the manuscript enumerations for religious cen-
suses. Unfortunately, Census records do not reliably identify individuals for
religious purposes prior to 1840, which makes it impossible to substantiate
early claims of Shaker size. The religious censuses were also separated by
twenty-year intervals. Nonetheless, they present a picture of size and direc-
tionality that significantly differs from those cited earlier.
Census figures show total Shaker community populations of 3,608 for
1840; 3,489 for 1860; and 1,849 for 1880.7? Although all communities suf-
fered decreases in memberships between 1860 and 1880, a mixed picture
emerges between 1840 and 1860, when some communities expanded while
others declined. Without comparable figures for 1800 and 1820, it is diffi-
cult to make reliable inferences, yet Bainbridge’s data permit some provi-
sional observations: First, the movement appears to have been significantly
smaller than previously thought, although still large for a network of com-
munal settlements. Second, unless the twenty years between the censuses of
1840 and 1860 contain a very large but transient population gain, the Shak-
ers were merely holding their own during the 1840s. Their missionary activ-
ities were vigorous because they had to be in order to replace losses through
death and defection.
82 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

THE TEMPORAL AND SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION OF UTOPIAS

Utopian communities did not emerge in an even stream, nor were they
evenly distributed over the country. They were concentrated in a few rela-
tively brief periods and were located in rural settings, near the urban centers
where their supporters clustered.
Identifying the universe of American utopian movements has always
been hindered by the brief life spans of many communities, which often did
not permit the accumulation .of documentary evidence for later investiga-
tors.. Nonetheless, 270 communities have been reliably identified for the 132
years between 1787 and 1919.74 The foundings of these communities exhibit
a wavelike pattern. !
>» Fully one-third of the communities—91—were begun in two seven-
year periods:
1842—48 55 founded
‘1894-1900 36 founded

Although no comparably rigorous utopian census yet exists for the years af-
ter 1919,”> the period after World War I holds two other utopian waves, the
first during the Great Depression and the second during the 1960s.” The
first wave in the 1840s reveals its magnitude when compared to the adjacent
decades:”’ ;
1820-29 15 founded
1830-39 11 founded
1840-49 —60 founded
1850-59 22 founded

Put somewhat differently, the communities of the 1840s accounted for al-
most 60 percent of all the communities begun between 1820 and 1859. In-
deed, notwithstanding substantial communitarian activity in the 1890s and
1930s, this magnitude of experimentation was not equaled until the com-
munes of the 1960s.
“‘Utopia’’ may be “‘no-place”’ etymologically, but the communities
themselves had precise spatial locations. These locations were as interesting
for where they were not as for where they were. Arthur Bestor pointed out
in 1951 that although they were rural, they were not sited on the frontier.
Despite often primitive living conditions, sometimes approximating the ri-
gors of frontier life, utopian experimentation did not take place along the
advancing edge of western settlement. Of the ninety-nine nineteenth-cen-
tury communities Bestor studied, forty-five were located in the Northwest
Territory of Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Michigan. Another
 GROWTH OF UTOPIAN COMMUNITIES 83

twenty-eight lay in western New York, sections of the Ohio Valley outside
the Territory, and adjoining areas of the upper Mississippi Valley. More
complete data for the pre-Civil War decades yields the distributions by state
found on Table 4.1.78 “In point of fact,” Bestor wrote, ““Communitarianism
developed in a fairly normal environment of settled agricultural and com-
mercial life.”””? Communitarians might have wanted to escape from the per-
ceived evils of the society at large, but they rarely leap-frogged settled areas
to do so. Given their need for large and inexpensive parcels of land, a partial
explanation lies in the continued availability of such blocs east of the Mis-
sissippi and north of the Ohio throughout the period.*? It was not necessary
to move very far in order to satisfy the need for, separateness and self-suffi-
ciency; indeed, moving too far risked economic disaster. The Harmony So-
ciety—known also as “‘Rappites”’ after their leader, Father George Rapp—
had been the first German communitarian group to cross the Appalachi-
ans, having come from southern Germany first to Beaver County, Pennsyl-
vania, and then to their settlement of Harmonie, Indiana, on the banks of
the Wabash River. They sold the settlement to Robert Owen, however, and
moved back East to Economy, Pennsylvania, because in the early 1820s, In-
diana was simply too far from the markets upon which the Rappites relied.
While the establishment of communities generally moved from east to
west, the process lagged behind settlement, so that communities appeared
in available pockets of land within already settled areas.*' Up until 1800,
twelve of the fifteen communities founded by then lay in eastern Pennsylva-
nia or New England. By 1860, however, communities had been established
throughout the Ohio Valley, the upper Mississippi Valley, and as far west as
Texas and Oregon.*?
This westward flow, lagging slightly behind settlement itself, exhibits
one major anomaly —the sudden growth of communitarianism in New
York State during the 1840s, at a time when the logic of population move-
ment dictated greater activity in the Middle West. Communities had, after
all, developed in Ohio and Indiana by the 1820s; Louisiana and Missouri by
the 1830s; and Illinois, lowa, and Wisconsin by the 1840s. Nonetheless, the
1840s became a period of extraordinary utopian proliferation not only in
Ohio, northern Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin, but in upstate New York,
where utopian energies might well have been considered spent.
Until 1840, according to Bestor’s data, only eight out of fifty-three
communities had been founded in New York. In any given decade after
1663, no more than three communities had been established in New York,
and in some (the 1810s, for example), none at all. But of fifty-four begun
during the 1840s, ten were in New York State, excluding the Oneida
branches and the non—New York communities organized by New Yorkers.
 84 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

Okugawa’s date is again very similar: fifty-two communities begun nation-

ally in the 1840s, of which ten were in New York. Much of the spurt was
accounted for by the Fourierist wave in the first half of the decade, which
accounted for seven of the ten communities. At the end of 1843, Albert Bris-
bane reported to his fellow Fourierists: “I have visited lately the central and
Western part of [New York State], and have been surprised to see that the
principles of a Reform, based upon Association and unity of interests, have
found their way into almost every part of the country.’’*? The other com-
munities included one that was strongly indebted to Owen’s ideas (Skanea-
teles), a German-speaking sectarian group far better known after its move
to lowa, where it became Amana (first called Ebenezar), and the Perfection-
ists (Oneida).
~
~

THE COMPOSITION OF UTOPIAN COMMUNITIES

Communitarian populations were noteworthy only in their very ordinari-

ness. The conception of the utopian community as a smug haven for intel-
lectuals is wide of the mark, for they often imposed an arduous physical ex-
istence on their members which effectively discouraged dilettantes.** Brook
Farm, the retreat favored by Boston Transcendentalists, passed its first years
(1841—44) heavily laden with ministers and writers, but when the commu-
nity took a clearly Fourierist path in 1844, the membership shifted to profes-
sionals, business persons, and workers.** New Harmony possessed much
the same reputation for supercharged intellectuality, based upon Owen’s fa-
mous keelboat journey down the Ohio bearing Philadelphia’s scientific and
intellectual elite to his new community. The “boatload of knowledge’’
brought an unprecedented body of notables westward, but it was neither the
usual mode of utopian recruitment nor did it do anything to strengthen
New Harmony’s cohesiveness.*¢
The communities differed greatly in recruiting practices. New Har-
mony alternated between the introduction of scholar-celebrities who
quickly left and an open door to others who came out of questionable mo-
tives. Longer-lived communities, such as the Shakers and Oneida, de-
manded acts of personal renunciation, which included the signing over of
assets through contracts enforceable in the courts of the larger society.*” The
greater the personal investment, the greater the propensity to remain
through difficult times. Acts of renunciation were reinforced on a regular
basis by such internal behavioral controls as rituals of group confession to
abase the backslider and the systematic elimination of opportunities for per-
 TABLE 4.1
Number of Utopian Experiments by State

1800-09
Kentucky
New York
Ohio
Pennsylvania me
KN
NR

1810-19
Indiana
WN
Massachusetts h
Ohio
Vermont =
—

1820-29
Indiana
New York
Ohio
Pennsylvania
‘Tennessee Bb
Hw
PN

1830-39
Indiana
Louisiana
Missouri
New York
Ohio
Pennsylvania KY
RP
RNY
Pe

1840-49
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Massachusetts
Michigan
Missouri
New Jersey BP
YN
NNANHA
New York 10
Ohio 1
Pennsylvania
Texas
Vermont
Wisconsin wn
Nr
86 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

Table 4.1 (continued) 1850-59

Connecticut
Indiana
lowa
Minnesota
Missouri
New Jersey
New York
Ohio
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Texas
West Virginia
Wisconsin RB
RP
eS
BR
WY
WH

sonal privacy. Not surprisingly, the more extensive the renunciation and
control, the longer the community lasted.**
The social background of utopians was broadly representative of the
geographical areas from which they came. The New York State experiments
drew, predictably, from New York and New England. The Shakers were
among the most numerous utopians, with their regional network of com-
munities and aggressive recruiting. The wide range of Shaker agricultural
and craft enterprises contributed to self-sufficiency at the same time that it
provided scope for individuals with similar pre-conversion backgrounds:
barrel-making, the preparation of medicinal herbs, broom-making, and so
on.*? The Shaker efforts to secure converts from among disillusioned partic-
ipants in revivals insured that mainstream denominations, such as Baptists
and Methodists, were well represented. Only in two respects was Shaker
membership unusual: age and sex composition. A high proportion of Shak-.
ers came in childhood, adolescence, or young adulthood. This may have
been a response to the uncertainties of youth which found temporary sur-
cease in the highly structured Shaker ‘‘families” and almost certainly owes
something to the relative paucity of public social welfare institutions. In any
case, the influx of the young appears to have been greatest around mid-cen-
tury. In 1840, Shakers were not conspicuously younger than the general pop-
ulation. The number of the very old among them was, however, unusually
high throughout much of the movement’s history, perhaps because of the
security the communities offered the elderly, perhaps because Shakers were
more fit, or simply that the rapid defection of those who had come as chil-
 GROWTH OF UTOPIAN COMMUNITIES 87

dren left the aged behind.” Just as the age distribution became skewed after
the census of 1840, so too did sex ratios. The image of Shakers as predom-
inantly female is based upon the composition of the movement after the
Civil War. Communities always contained more women than men, but the
imbalance was modest in the early decades of the century, and may simply
have been due to the greater longevity of women. Thus, in 1819 the New
Lebanon and Watervliet societies contained 312 males and 421 females. Be-
tween 1840 and 1849 an equal number of men and women—fifteen—en-
tered one “‘family”’ at New Lebanon.”' In 1840, the first year for which cen-
sus figures are available, all Shakers communities were 57.7 percent female,
as against 48.8 percent of the population. However, the imbalance became
dramatic with the passage of time: 59.1 percent’ in 1860; 64.5 percent in
1880; and 72.2 percent in 1900.%? In short, the demographic peculiarities of
the Shakers were a product of the post—Civil War era. In the 1840s they ap-
pear to have been far more typical of the general population.
Fourierist communities drew a varied, not to say plebeian, member-
ship. Of the sixty-seven individuals who joined Brook Farm in its first Four-
ierist year (1844), there were seven professionals, six business people, and
forty-three workers. The latter included shoemakers, farmers, carpenters,
and printers.” The largest Fourierist community of all was the North Amer-
ican Phalanx, founded in 1843 in Monmouth County, New Jersey. Its roots,
however, lay in the Albany area from which sixty of its members had come.

Among them were a morocco manufacturer, an agent for the Erie

Canal, a homeopathic doctor, grocer, a shoe store proprietor, a drug-
gist, a coachmaker, a coal dealer, a stove dealer, a lawyer, a painter, the
owner of a small steamship line, the part-owner of a tobacco company,
a blacksmith, a carpenter, a wood turner, a silver plater, a mason, a hat-
maker, and their families.”

In the Burned-over District itself, Fourierist communities ran heavily to

farmers and laborers.”* The Fourierist society in Rochester was dominated
by propertied professionals and shopkeepers, but the community which the
society founded at Sodus Bay was another matter; two-thirds to three-quar-
ters of the 256 who resided at one time or another came from outside Roch-
ester. Their rural origins strongly suggest that they were farmers. The rela-
tively small number of urban artisans who did affiliate quickly left.?°
Urbanites might sympathize with Fourierist aims but were unable or un-
willing to effect the necessary break with their accustomed way of life.
88 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

Occupational variety was also evident among the Oneida members.

“The men who joined the society were neither poets nor political anar-
chists, but farmers and mechanics who knew how to runa mill, plow a field
and lay a foundation.”*” The majority were farmers, with a heavy admix-
ture of artisan occupations. Eventually, there was a sprinkling of profession-
als (a lawyer, a Methodist minister), but the community retained its asso-
ciation with occupations that involved manual labor and manufacturing.”
The former livelihoods of utopians were those customarily found in a
society composed of farms and small towns, and in roughly the same pro-
portions. The members do not appear to have been primarily intellectuals
in search of an arcadian sanctuary. Their religious affiliations, too, appear
to have been typical, where such information is available. Congregational-
ists predominated among the Oneida Perfectionists, but then 85 percent of
the first members came from New York, Vermont, and Massachusetts.”
Whatever factors of self-selection were operating, they did not function to
give the communities a makeup significantly different from what prevailed
in the world outside. However unusual the social arrangements of the uto-
pias, their members were unexceptional. Whatever the reasons may have
been for the swift failure of some ventures, it was not because utopians were
“unworldly,” because they lacked survival skills, or because they were un-
used to wresting a living from a harsh landscape.
 MILLERISM AND THE UTOPIANS

ge THE LOCATION of communal groups within well-settled

areas suggests the uneasy balance the utopians tried to main-
tain between separation and engagement. On the one hand, the corruption
and imperfection of the world demanded separation and the opportunity to
begin anew. On the other, the larger significance of such an endeavor was
lost if it remained the preserve only of a committed elite, for then it lost its
power to influence the behavior of others. Hence communities were con-
stantly pulled between the need to create a microcosmic millennium within
an unredeemed society and the desire to draw that society towards their vi-
sion of a perfect future. These contradictory forces manifested themselves in
the physical design of communities, their patterns of behavior, and their
place in the movement of people and ideas.
The insularity of utopian communities was physically and metaphor-
ically confirmed by the systematic employment of gates and fences, for ter-
ritorial boundaries could not be left in doubt.! High levels of self-sufficiency
made frequent contact with the outside unnecessary for most residents in
any case. Notwithstanding the commitment to a physically separate exis-
tence, however, spatial boundaries were semipermeable, permitting trans-
actions in both directions. Some of the contacts must have been unwelcome,
as the existence of post-contact cleansing rituals at Oneida and the Shaker
communities suggests. Often they were the result of economic necessity,
where, as in the case of Oneida, commerce in manufactured goods under-
wrote the group’s standard of living.
89
 90 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM
.

Utopian groups were well aware of one another’s existence, as well as

of the Millerites’. The likelihood of mutual knowledge increased when in
the 1840s communitarianism retrogressed from an emphasis on Middle
Western locations to upstate New York. A return to the east, with its supe-
rior transportation and communications networks, increased the opportu-
nities for mutual awareness. Indeed, Arthur Bestor suggests that the siting
of later colonies may even have been influenced by knowledge that earlier
groups had chosen the same area: .

At the height of the movement, between 1840 and 1849,... twenty-four

experimental communities of all types were founded in the three states
= of Massachusetts, New York, and Ohio, and exactly half were within
thirty miles of a pre-existing colony of Shakers or German sectarians.
Only two were more than sixty miles distance from such a center
of communitive example and influence, and none was as far away as
seventy-five miles.

Whether deliberate or fortuitous, the overlapping pattern of location facili-

tated information transfer.
Neither physical separateness nor sectarian exclusivity blocked the
movement of persons and ideas. Occasionally, indeed, systematic efforts
were made to reach out to those with related but differentiable beliefs.
Three types of evidence argue for the existence of a millenarian-utopian net-
work that drew together those who yearned for a perfect future: First, there
were attempts to systematically recruit members of similar groups through
formal proselytizing, including the use of itinerant missionaries. This was
vigorously employed by both the Shakers and Millerites. Much more nu-
merous were cases of individual or small-group migration from one com-
munity or movement to another. Virtually every group received members _
from or sent members to other groups. It is difficult to know the proportion
of utopians and millenarians who entered without prior affiliation in simi-
lar ventures, but a sizable number appear to have been “seekers,” individ-
uals in quest of levels of fulfillment that had eluded them in the past.: Finally,
many reports testify to groups’ mutual knowledge, sometimes expressed as
conscious imitation of others’ practices. Most groups printed and circu-
lated books, newspapers, pamphlets, and periodicals for themselves and for
sympathizers, which were exchanged for the publications of others. The rel-
atively recent mass circulation newspapers, eager to build readerships, gave
prominent play to articles on religious enthusiasm and social experimenta-
tion, accentuating or even inventing sensational details. The curious often
 MILLERISM AND THE UTOPIANS 91

traveled to revivals and communitarian experiments to satisfy their hunger

for information. These varying modes of contact suggest that all groups
could glean at least some knowledge about likeminded predecessors and
contemporaries as they experienced the contradictory forces of separatism
and mutual awareness.

INTERGROUP KNOWLEDGE AND IMITATION

'

Exchange of information among millenarians and utopians in the Burned-

over District was facilitated by a growing and sophisticated communica-
tions network within a geographically compact area. The Erie Canal
reached Little Falls, east of Utica, by 1820 and was completed to Lake Erie
in 1825. Tributary canals extending north and south of the main “ditch”
were constructed well into the 1830s, supplemented by a growing network
of tollroads.* The circulation of ideas rested not only upon this infrastruc-
ture but upon a national literacy rate that had reached 75 percent by 1840,°
conceivably higher among the New England-bred population of upstate
New York. Sectarians were prolific writers and publishers, and the internal
evidence of Perfectionist and Fourierist periodicals suggests that elaborate
systems for the exchange of publications kept groups abreast of one anoth-
er’s activities.
The vigorous religious press of New York and New England diffused
sectarian positions that might otherwise have achieved purely local notice.
The significance of publication as a precondition for growth was nowhere
more evident than in the dissemination of William Miller’s views. They first
appeared in a Baptist paper, the Vermont Telegraph, ot Brandon, a short dis-
tance from Miller’s home. The paper later issued these articles as a pam-
phlet. By 1839 Miller’s views had been accepted by the editors of the Chris-
tian Palladium, published in New York Mills, New York, and thereafter it
became an organ for the systematic propagation of Adventist ideas. Joshua
Himes oversaw two major publications, the Signs of the Times in Boston
and the Midnight Cry in New York. At least one copy went to every clergy-
man in New York State. By 1843—44, these publications were aided by book
rooms in Buffalo and Syracuse.°
Utopians proved equally adept if somewhat more restrained publi-
cists. Although the most ambitious Owenite publication program was in
England, more than a dozen periodicals were issued in the United States,
most of them in New York State. They continued to appear through 1844,
long after most of the Owenite communities had disbanded.’ By 1843—44
(192 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

Noyes had developed a farsighted conception of print media. Already active

as an anti-Millerite writer, he planned a preaching campaign in New York
City against Second Adventism for the spring of 1843, but the mysterious
throat ailment that began in 1842 forced him to cease all public speaking by
the beginning of the following year.’ The cancellation forced him into still
greater reliance on the printed word, and he wrote George Cragin: “I am
more and more persuaded that our strength is to lie in publishing rather
than in preaching. The invention of printing has changed everything, ... we
must devote ourselves to training a regiment of writers.’’? By the following
year, he had formulated a grandiose plan for government by plebiscite, in
which ballots would be distributed and collected by rail: ‘Let a periodical
paper be established at the seat of government, as the sole method of pro-
posing, discussing, enacting and recording the laws. Let the whole people,
with their papers for their gathering point, resolve themselves into a per-
manent legislative convention.”’!®
Albert Brisbane was not an ideologist of the media, but he was a con-
summately gifted practitioner. His propagandistic efforts proceeded along
two fronts simultaneously. The column in Greeley’s Tribune adroitly
reached out to the unattached and curious. The frequent and insistent arti-
cles asserting the compatibility of Fourierism and religion argue the desire
to reach a new and skeptical audience. The column overlapped on the life-
span of the “house organ” of American Fourierism, The Phalanx, which af-
ter a few false starts, appeared irregularly between 1843 and 1845. It was
succeeded by The Harbinger from 1845 to 1849. By then, Fourierist efforts
were in others’ hands, and indeed The Harbinger was moved from New
York City to Brook Farm in 1847."!
More than anything else, the mutual knowledge acquired by millen-
arians and utopians suggests both an underlying community of belief and
an ability to separate means from ends. There was a high level of agreement
about ends. Thus, there was general commitment to a future state of affairs —
in which unhappiness would not exist and in which people would feel
bound together in a fulfilling common enterprise. The precise manner in
which this utopia/millennium was to be achieved, however, and the actions
appropriate for the period prior to its achievement, remained in vigorous
dispute. Agreement about the end permitted selective borrowing of tech-
niques by groups otherwise unsympathetic toward one another.
The Shakers were reasonably well acquainted with the German-
speaking communal groups that settled early in Pennsylvania and Ohio and
later established such outposts as Amana west of the Mississippi. Personal
visits were the principal medium, facilitated by the Shakers’ far-flung mis-
sionary expeditions. Nonetheless the language barrier made a full inter-
 MILLERISM AND THE UTOPIANS 93

change of ideas difficult, and occasional suggestions of federation between

Shaker and German pietist groups were never implemented. '
A week after Robert Owen arrived in America in 1824, he visited the
Shaker community at Niskeyuna near Albany, and the following year pur-
chased the Rappites’ land and buildings in Indiana. Owen’s negative views
on religion notwithstanding, his reactions to both groups were notably pos-
itive. For their part, the Shakers were well-informed about Owen’s reforms
at New Lanark. Prior to the purchase of Harmonie, Indiana, from the Rap-
pites, and its rechristening as New Harmony, Owen had corresponded with
George Rapp and exchanged publications with him. When he visited Har-
monie, he met not only with Rappites but with Shaker emissaries from Ohio
and Kentucky."
By the 1840s, Owenite community building had spent itself. Notwith-
standing the somber state of the communities themselves, Owen’s personal
prestige remained high. In 1844, he returned to the United States after an
absence of seventeen years in order to visit his sons in New Harmony. On
the way, he stopped at the Ohio Phalanx in Belmont County, an enterprise
of Pittsburgh Fourierists in which the millenarian writer H. H. van Amringe
played a major role.'* His visit to the Ohio Phalanx symbolized his growing
sympathy for American Fourierism, then at the brief pinnacle of its influ-
ence, and until his departure for England in October 1845, he tried to en-
gineer a fusion of Fourierism and the remnants of Owenism, a venture that
foundered on the ideological objections of Brisbane, John Collins, and oth-
ers. Despite Owen’s pleas that his American disciples join the phalanxes,
few did.'*
The Oneidans exhibited perhaps the greatest catholicity of view con-
cerning other groups, attributable to their own growing prosperity, Noyes’s
intellectual syncretism, and the longevity of their enterprise, which encour-
aged them to see themselves as the culmination of others’ less successful ef-
forts. The Perfectionists drew heavily upon Owenite and Fourierist ideas in
the physical organization and expansion of Oneida.'* Noyes, occasionally
fulsome in his praise for Owen and Fourier, acknowledged a special debt to
the Fourierist experiment at Brook Farm, which ended just as Oneida be-
gan.'? The Oneidans possessed at least two written accounts of visitors to
the North American Phalanx, from which they may have adopted principles
of economic organization, building design, and sexual practice.'*
The world the utopians inhabited was consequently far less insular
than the form of their communities suggested. The fact that a group orga-
nized its common life on the basis of separation and self-sufficiency did not
imply ignorance or disinterest about the world beyond its gates. Pressed as
most were economically and prone to factionalism, they understood that
94 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

one’s crisis was often another’s boon as the disaffected moved from group
to group. The most extreme manifestation of this competitiveness was con-
scious, systematic proselytizing. -

SYSTEMATIC RECRUITMENT FROM OTHER GROUPS

Millerites and utopians competed for the same members. To the extent that
eschatological hopes were periodically raised by religious revivals, the res-
ervoir of potential members was occasionally expanded as the previously
uninvolved experienced intense upswings of emotional religiousity. Curi-
ously, however, there was relatively little formal “raiding” of other groups.
Millenarians and utopians only occasionally systematically recruited from
one another, and more often tacitly respected each other’s boundaries.
While happy to receive those who voluntarily changed affiliation, they did
not often seek to disengage those already attached.
Millerite recruitment benefited from widespread religious revivalism.
Their adroit use of revivals made it difficult for the casual observer to sep-
arate them from more conventional evangelical Protestants. Particularly in
Second Adventism’s early phase—prior to 1840— its spokespersons gained
access to revivals on the presumption that they differed little from Finney
and his followers, and clergy who extended lecture invitations to Miller may
well have been expecting simply another revivalist.'? Miller’s access to pul-
pits was particularly significant in the days before his writings were widely
disseminated, and before he benefited from Joshua Himes’ formidable or-
ganizational talents. As the millennial predictions of 1843—44 approached,
Millerism was spread by a dogged force of self-appointed itinerant preach-
ers.
The Shakers, persecuted in England and cut off from normal social |
life by celibacy and the community of goods, were far more realistic about
the need to battle for souls. Since they asked far more of their members than
mere personal assent to Ann Lee’s teachings, and since celibacy required the
constant replenishment of their numbers from the outside, they began early
to send out missionaries. Their most fertile fields were the revivals them-
selves, which often raised expectations that the churches could not satisfy.
Beginning in the 1780s, while Mother Ann was still alive, Shaker mission-
aries followed the revivals through New England, New York, and Kentucky,
offering a stable way of life rather than a quick psychological “‘fix.’’2°
When the Shakers and the Millerites confronted one another after the
Great Disappointment, it is difficult to determine where Millerite searching
 MILLERISM AND THE UTOPIANS ys)

ended and Shaker proselytizing began. In the past the Shakers had plucked
up those on the fringes of emotional revivalism, but Millerism was a move-
ment that, to all appearances, had utterly failed, leaving thousands of ad-
herents stunned and bewildered. The Shakers did not have to labor in order
to convince Millerites that they had unmet spiritual needs; they had merely
to open themselves to the yearnings of people suddenly deprived of their
sense of meaning. Hence the interactions between Shakers and Millerite Sec-
ond Adventists belongs not to the history of proselytizing but to the more
complex saga of intergroup migration.

INTERGROUP MIGRATION

The millenarian-utopian network consisted not merely of the exchange of

publications and visits in order to satisfy intellectual curiosity; it often in-
volved the movement of persons from one group affiliation to another.
These transfers occurred for many reasons: in some instances, a group
ceased to have a continued corporate existence, as in the case of utopian
communities that dissolved. In other instances, a group no longer met the
needs of all its members. An unknown proportion of the disaffected may
well have returned to such mainstream organizations as recognized reli-
gious denominations, major political parties, and middle-class social re-
form associations. However, the weight of evidence strongly suggests that
many defectors moved to groups only marginally different from those they
had left. The sheer number of millenarian and utopian groups in the 1820s,
30s, and 40s accounts for the complexity of voluntary transfers. Bestor in-
fers from it the existence of an overarching ideology:

The most striking evidence of the reality, the unity and the strength of
the communitive tradition is furnished by the men and women whose
loyalty to it impelled them from one community to another. The social
idealism it inspired was often powerful enough to override religious
preconceptions permitting many adherents lightly to cross the line di-
viding theocratic communities from free-thinking secular ones.”!

The pattern of intercommunal migration appears to have been set

early and maintained throughout the history of American communal ex-
perimentation. Otohiko Okugawa reports that of the 270 communities he
identified between 1787 and 1919, migration can be established in most of
96 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

the cases. Migration sometimes occurred when a community was estab-

lished, drawing members with earlier community experiences. This was the
case for three-fourths of the communities. During the community’s exis-
tence, it often received members from other groups, a situation which oc-
curred in 64 percent of the cases. In 62 percent of the cases, when commu-
nities dissolved, at least some of their members migrated to other utopian
experiments. More frequently, sectarians moved to other religious groups,
while those in nonreligious groups tended to move to likeminded commu-
nities. Nonsectarian communities in general experienced more migration,
but this may have been a result of the shorter life span of secular utopias.”2
. Crossgroup transfers were already evident by the 1820s. Despite Rob-
ert Owen’s well-publicized aversion to religion, two Kentucky Shakers
joined New Harmony.”? When the Owenite communities failed, the Shakers
in turn more than recouped earlier losses. Several refugees from New Har-
mony became Shakers, including Frederick Evans, who was to become the
leading figure in Shakerism. Other Owenite adherents to Shakerism made
up in numbers what they may have lacked in individual distinction. When
the Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, Community broke up in September 1826,
after a life of only nine months, emissaries from it entered negotiations with
the Mount Lebanon Shakers. The result wa’ fifty or more conversions.24
The Great Disappointment provided an unprecedented opportunity
for millenarian-utopian migration, for few among the disappointed Second
Adventists were prepared to risk further failures. Whether or not this pro-
duced, as Whitney Cross suggests, “the largest [Shaker increase] since the
early days,” it must have been considerable, for in 1846, two hundred
Millerites are known to have joined Shaker groups in western New York
and Ohio.”* In at least one case, a Millerite group requested a Shaker
missionary.?°
A major link between the two groups was Enoch Jacob, who edited
the Cincinnati Millerite paper, The Western Midnight Cry. In 1845, the title
was changed to The Day-Star, and in 1846, after Jacob’s conversion to Shak-
erism, it became a major organ for communicating the Shaker message to
Millerites.?” One of Jacob’s readers was an anguished Second Adventist,
Henry Bear, who left a detailed account of his journey to Shakerism. Bear
was impressed not only with the Shakers’ ideas but with the manner in
which they had realized their egalitarian beliefs: “The principle of a united
consecration convinced me of their superior love, for while the Shakers lived
in common in their houses, the adventists were living, some in fine houses,
and others in poor rented hovels. Some could, and would, ride in fine car-
riages while others had to walk.’’?8 Bear reports attending a “‘convention”
at the Whitewater, Ohio, Shaker community together with “not far short of
a hundred” Millerites, including Jacob, and shortly thereafter converted.
 MILLERISM AND THE UTOPIANS D7;

The demise of Millerism was not the only event of the decade from
which the Shakers benefited. When the Fourierist phalanxes collapsed, at
least a few Associationists transferred allegiance. Despite the small num-
bers, these must have been particularly welcome converts, in view of the dis-
dain in which Fourierists had held Ann Lee’s followers.’? It also stands as an
exception to the reluctance of secularists to join sectarian communities.
The end of the decade brought Millerites into the Oneida Community.
Earlier, while Noyes was still at Putney, he had suffered defections to Mill-
erism. By 1843—44, nine adults and five children had left Putney, and almost
surely some had switched to Second Adventism, for Noyes had written of it
as early as 1842 that ‘“‘it has found some weathercocks among our nominal
brethren.’>° Within five years, the situation was reversed. ““The Oneida
Family Register,” in which were inscribed the Community’s members at the
beginning of 1849, identifies eight as former Millerites. Noyes continued to
attract Second Adventists as late as the mid-1860s. D. Edson Smith and his
wife, early members of the ill-fated Millerite community of Celesta in Sul-
livan County, Pennsylvania, subsequently joined Oneida. Recalling the Ce-
lesta connection decades later, Smith remembered: “‘It was the socialistic or
communistic idea that imprest [sic] me. I was born with very strong com-
munistic proclivities. And at that time [about 1864] I was deeply interested
in the ‘Second Coming’ idea.”?! By 1900 the Smiths were living in Santa
Ana, California, which suggests that they had become Townerites, a faction
which formed within the Oneida Community in the 1870s and migrated
West shortly after the Community became a joint-stock company in 1881.
As long as Millerism remained a vital force, however, utopians eyed it
warily, for Second Adventism shared their desire for perfection even as it re-
jected all hope of significantly improving human institutions. While com-
munitarians viewed with dismay the thousands marching behind Miller’s
banner, they cherished the hope that they would be the beneficiaries of Mill-
er’s error—an expectation which, as we have seen, proved to be more than
mere wishful thinking.

UTOPIANS’ PERCEPTION OF MILLERISM: A Study in Ambivalence

John Humphrey Noyes remarked of the Millerites that they “hear the same
voice we have heard, that God is coming into the world and the day of judg-
ment is at hand; but to them the voice is not clear enough to save them from
the delusions of their own imagination.” The utopians could never fully
grasp the reasons for the misunderstanding, especially since the voice
sounded eminently clear to them. The utopians’ antipathy was dictated by
98 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM
-

doctrinal disagreements, competition for members, and the belief that Mill-
erism was irrational and fanatic. In this they reflected the attitudes of many
non-communitarians: clerics citing theological and exegetical errors, re-
formers bemoaning the loss of members to their causes, and newspapers
revelling in descriptions of alleged irrationality.
To Noyes’s Perfectionists, then still in Putney, Millerism had produced
an “excitement ... throughout the land.” It was, indeed, a “‘wind ...
sweeping over the country.’’4 John Collins, founder of the Skaneateles
Community, in Mottville, New York, reported inquiries about Millerites
“from every part of the country.’ William Lloyd Garrison, neither a uto-
pian nor an Adventist (indeed unsympathetic to both), found himself an in-
voluntary witness to their rise, since the social and intellectual circles of
New England abolitionism were also reservoirs for communitarian and
Millerite recruitment. From this vantage point, Garrison saw a veritable
Millerite onrush: “Thousands have been converted to this strange faith.’
He professed to see in Millerism’s rise “‘an event scarcely paralleled in the
history of popular excitements. Multitudes, who were formerly engaged in
the various moral enterprises of the age, have lost all interest in works of
practical righteousness and think and talk of nothing else but the burning
up of the world.’’? ‘
The seriousness with which Millerism was taken is evident from the
energy consumed in its refutation. Noyes’s periodicals, The Witness and
The Perfectionist, published eighteen articles on Millerism between 1840
and 1845. The centerpiece was a five-part series, “The Second Coming of
Christ,” in 1842 and 1843 numbers of The Witness.3* Like Charles Finney,
Horace Greeley, and others, Noyes concentrated upon demonstrating that
the internal logic of Miller’s argument was flawed, and that he had incor-
rectly understood the sacred texts that provided the necessary warrant for
his conclusions.
Noyes saw in Miller’s ideas the penultimate expression of “that old
desparate [sic] delusion of Christendom,—the denial that [Christ] has al-
ready come,” for the Second Coming had taken place “within the lifetime
of some of his [Christ’s] followers.” Like many others, he was impressed
by the appearance of internal consistency in Miller’s scheme of Biblical in-
terpretation. Hence Miller could only be defeated by breaching the logical
bastions of his argument. The closed system of traditional millenarian
thought within which Miller worked would only yield “by demonstrating
that his calculations ;.. are false.”’*? Thus considerations of both principle
and practicality argued for rebuttal of Miller in the very terms of Biblical
theology that he himself employed. The need to breach a logical system ac-
counted for the space anti-Miller articles consumed in Perfectionist publi-
 MILLERISM AND THE UTOPIANS 99

cations, for it was difficult to engage one part of Miller’s argument without
dealing with all of it.
Significantly, the need to address Miller’s, doctrine was shared even by
critics of a more secular turn of mind. John Collins of the Skaneateles Com-
munity had little use for religion. Noyes had seen in Miller Christianity’s
false views concerning the Second Advent; Collins also professed to see
much that was typical of Christianity. Miller was not an unrepresentative
fringe figure, but in fact stood upon the same foundation as his orthodox
Christian opponents. By implication, to defeat, Miller was to defeat Chris-
tianity, although of course by 1843—44 Miller’s opponents among ortho-
dox Christians were numerous and vocal. Yet Collins was convinced that
the defeat of Miller would aid the cause of secularism rather than of main-
stream Protestantism: ‘When men can rise to a clearer insight into the in-
ternal springs of nature, into the character and motives of their own minds,
they will need no revelation beyond nature to instruct them what to obey.””*!
Communitarians generally eschewed the more sensational charges
about Millerites retailed in the penny press. On the other hand, their pa-
tience wore thin when Adventists retained their following after the initial
disappointment in 1843. Anticipating that failure would cause immediate
collapse, utopians became testy when Millerites persevered. Noyes’s Perfec-
tionist began in 1844 to reprint lurid accounts from the general press about
irrational Millerite economic behavior.*? “‘Its pretences, and its failure have
come within our immediate observation,” wrote John Collins, referring ap-
parently to Millerites in Central New York.*? The Fourierist Tribune, which
largely rejected the sensationalism of such competitors as James Gordon
Bennett’s Herald, published an account of Millerites disposing of their
wealth in anticipation of the great day.** William Lloyd Garrison was not
alone in his view, expressed in March 1843, that “the delusion has not long
to run, and let us rejoice,’’*> but he and others like him had to contend with
more than a year and a half of continued chiliastic expectation.
Although sympathy for Millerism was distinctly muted, it was not ab-
sent. Three factors predisposed utopians to view Miller as less than the
complete embodiment of evil—as, at worst, a sincere if misguided individ-
ual. In the first place, Miller’s social views, while not closely linked to his
theology, were nonetheless clear and well known. They were not drastically
different from those of his communitarian critics. His reformist credentials
commanded a grudging respect. Second, as the anti-religious John Collins
recognized, Miller’s doctrines were an exaggerated version of teachings
long current in the Christian churches. Hence indiscriminate attacks on
Miller could easily pass into attacks on Christian orthodoxy; conversely, a
respectful attitude toward religion in general inhibited critics. Finally, hope
100 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

remained that the excitement over adventism would lead individuals to re-
flect on the meaning of history. They might begin in error, but once that er-
ror was exposed, they might then move ferward to a higher stage of knowl-
edge and spiritual growth.
Although Miller did not dwell on his social views, particularly in his
later life, there was no question of his fidelity to reform causes. Garrison
observed that “‘the cause of temperance, of anti-slavery, of moral reform, of
non-resistance finds in him an outspoken friend.”*° Francis Nichol, Mill-
erism’s foremost modern apologist, portrays Miller as an anti-abolitionist,
but David Rowe has demonstrated that Nichol treated literally a letter that
was intended sarcastically.47 Much of Second Adventism’s leadership was
conspicuously abolitionist as well, including Himes, Charles Fitch, and
Elon Galusha.** Since so many prominent utopians were vigorous oppo-
nents of slavery —Noyes, Collins, and Brisbane among them—they clearly
found it difficult to publicly flay a fellow reformer.
Similarly, Miller’s claim to stand in the Christian mainstream was
compelling enough to deflect some of the hostility directed by religionists.
Miller himself opposed sectarianism, even when by 1844 the momentum of
his doctrine caused uncontrollable defections of Adventists from the exist-
ing churches. Noyes’s Perfectionist approvingly reprinted Miller’s un-
heeded December 3, 1844, warning against sectarian ventures.*? Clearly,
the religious issue placed utopians in a situation of conflicting pressures. On
the one hand, they wished to deflate Millerite claims. On the other, most of
them did not wish to portray themselves as opponents of religion. In some
cases, like Noyes’s, they were in fact deeply committed to religious beliefs,
heterodox though they were in some respects. Others, like Albert Brisbane,
were not formally religious, but wished to present themselves as sympa-
thetic to religion in general. As Millerism moved toward its climax, Bris-
bane’s newspaper column was increasingly concerned with demonstrating _
the harmony between Fourierism and religion. He devoted three columns to
it in the fall of 1842 and five in the first four months of 1843.5° He was at
pains to demonstrate that adherence to the Associationist cause was com-
patible with, and indeed the logical result of, religious commitment.
The hope was, of course, that Millerism might stimulate a process of
inquiry, which would bring new members to the utopians’ doors. It is diffi-
cult to determine how much of this hope represented considered judgment
and how much the fantasizing of individuals confronted with a temporarily
formidable opponent. When Noyes observed that “we have reason to rejoice
that this delusion makes occasion for many to examine honestly the subject
of the Second Coming,” he may well have been alluding to the proto-Mil-
lerite vision he himself experienced during his 1834 breakdown.*! John Col-
 MILLERISM AND THE UTOPIANS 101

lins, perhaps less burdened by a tortured psyche, shared the hope that “‘the
inquiries we have [concerning Millerism], coming from every part of the
country may eventuate in moral instruction.”’*?
The Fourierists were invariably less forthright, referring unmistakably
to Millerism yet never permitting the name itself to flow from their pens.
Notwithstanding their indirection, they too professed to see in the move-
ment a hopeful sign, an imperfect indicator of a broader millennial expec-
tation. This view appears most clearly in a lengthy review in The Phalanx
of January 5, 1844, of Nature and Revelation, by H. H. van Amringe. Van
Amringe, unlike Miller, saw the Second Advent as a spiritual rather than
a physical event. Clearly referring to Miller, the anonymous reviewer
remarked:

It is almost universally believed that Christianity, at the present day, en-

joys a high state of prosperity, and that the Millennial reign, which is
now shortly expected, will be an enlargement, and a happy fruitfulness
of the religious principles which form the fundamentals of the estab-
lished creeds of Christendom. Some persons, indeed, look for an actual
coming of Christ in the Body, while others interpret the promises of the
Second Advent spiritually.

After noting van Amringe’s spirituality with approval, the essay concludes
in fine millenarian fashion: ‘“‘Old things are now to pass away, and all things
are become new.’’® So far as The Phalanx was concerned, Miller’s errors
lay in details rather than in broad outlines.
The utopians’ fascination with and ambivalence toward Millerism
may have resulted from their seeing much of Miller in themselves. At one
level, the distinction between the communitarian and the chiliast seems ob-
vious—the former retreating to a self-contained community, the latter
awaiting divine intervention in history—but the communitarians shared
Miller’s hope for a great overturning. They simply drew a different set of
inferences from it. The burgeoning of communities in the 1840s was a re-
sponse to both the widespread yearning for a transformed world and the
phenomenon of Millerism itself. The utopians believed they had discovered
a third route to the millennium, neither the gradualism of the postmillen-
nialists nor the catastrophism of the premillennialists. This third way em-
phasized the perfection of one small area at a time to form, as it were, mil-
lennial islands in a turbulent sea.
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 NATURAL DISASTERS AND THE MILLENNIUM
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wf THEERUPTION of millennialism during the 1840s came in the

45 wake of two waves of disasters between about 1810 and 1844.
LA, The first, early in the century, consisted of natural calamities.
While several fell equally upon New England and New York,
their greatest impact was felt by the rural population of western and north-
ern New England. The floods, epidemics, and crop failures described in this
chapter acted as goads that pushed an increasingly impoverished farming
population westward into the Burned-over District.
A second series of disasters—the subject of the following chapter—
occurred in the 1830s and 40s, overlapping upon the final shocks of the first
wave. The second group differed in both its causes and its impact. Where
the earlier stresses resulted from uncontrollable natural forces, the later
ones resulted from the structure of society and the economy. Where the first
had pushed hill-country farmers into the fertile valleys of upstate New York,
the second hit soon after they had settled into what they believed would be
a more secure existence. These sequential calamities turned hopes for the
millennium from a distant dream into an imminent reality. What was once
conventional piety became an event that was anticipated daily.
This was so because the catastrophic events of three and a half dec-
ades had had two profound effects on the inner lives of their victims: First,
the disasters had to be given meaning. Why were sufferings visited upon a
population of conspicuous religious devotion? Disasters must not only be
survived; they must be fitted into a picture of the world as an ordered place,
where moral purpose informs even apparently arbitrary events. Second, the
103
104 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

more forcefully the question of moral order was posed, the greater the ten-
dency to question orthodox positions; and the greater the suspicions about
orthodoxies, the greater the receptivity to other ways of thinking about the
world.

THE SETTLEMENT OF THE BURNED-OVER DISTRICT

The growth of Burned-over District millennialism in the 1840s cannot be

understood apart from the people who settled it. Settlement is rarely a ran-
dom process. The proximity of populations, available transportation
routes, incentives and disincentives for migration, the security and promise
of adjoining, sparsely populated areas—all may dictate the size, dynamics,
and composition of new populations.
In the case of the Burned-over District, the most significant reservoir
of potential settlers lay in New England. As they entered New York, they
brought with them the values, cultural patterns, even the very architecture,
of the towns they had left. In the absence of large numbers of persons from
other areas, the New England migrants effectively placed the stamp of their
origins upon all non-urban sections of the district; even early cities such as
Rochester, destined to eventually receive foreign immigration, remained
heavily Yankee. Between 1790 and 1820 a New England society of church,
state, and family had been transferred to the “Second New England” of Up-
state New York. Just as its farm families replicated the corporate households
of New England, so its developing towns “were little more than a paternal-
istic update of the New England village.”! Millennialism was part of the
same legacy. The inhabitants of the district brought with them religious pat-
terns in which millennial themes and emotional excitation were already
present. They had grown accustomed to view the world as an arena in which
God’s plan unfolded in history and, in consequence, a locus for confronta-
tions between the holy and the mundane.
No less important were their motives for moving in the first place.
While New York was not without its attractions, notably the availability of
fertile land, the migration at its most massive was also a movement of es-
cape. However glowing the reports from the west, major population move-
ments, particularly in the period that directly preceded the most intense mil-
lenarian activity, were in response to the rapidly declining quality of rural
life in New England. The stresses to which many rural Yankees were sub-
jected in the early nineteenth century did much to push them out. The pe-
riod, particularly from about 1810 through 1832, was a time of massive,
 NATURAL DISASTERS 105

multiple natural calamities. In the rugged back country of western and

northern New England the rocky soil and primitive transportation required
heroic expenditures of labor to sustain even a modest standard of living.
Given their meager resources, farmers could count on little in the way of a
margin of safety for bad times: “‘the hill country remained in the best of
times a marginal subsistence economy, in the worst of times an agricultural
disaster.”’? Often only the supplemental income provided by home handi-
craft occupations permitted farm families to survive at all.° The extraordi-
nary combination of natural hazards during the approximately twenty
years up until about 1832 went far beyond the,retuperative powers of many
of these communities.
The ravages of nature were not, to be sure, focused exclusively on New
England. Climatic disturbances and epidemic disease, for example, were of
international scope in the early nineteenth century. The significance of nat-
ural disasters lay in the inability of a marginal agricultural population to
effectively withstand them, and in their predisposition to interpret their fate
in religious terms. Natural calamities lent themselves to an understanding
as divine chastisement for sins, which in turn required further efforts at re-
ligious rejuvenation. In this circular process, the ethos of religious enthusi-
asm facilitated a religious interpretation of disaster victimization, which in
turn increased the likelihood of further religious revivals. Migration pat-
terns drew this victim-population, with its attendant religious attitudes,
into New York.
The Revolution had opened Upstate New York for settlement when,
through the vicissitudes of war and the inevitable white pressure for land,
the Iroquois had been compelled to relinquish most of their territorial
rights, a process complete by the late 1780s.* Subsequent settlement was
sufficiently rapid so that by 1800 what was later to be the Burned-over Dis-
trict was a settled rather than a frontier area, and by 1825 “‘all of the terri-
tory in New York had come into the private or public possession of the white
man, and expansion of settlement had reached the boundary limits.’”°
The majority of these settlers were New Englanders, with smaller
streams coming up from Pennsylvania and New Jersey.° Although Rhode Is-
land and New Hampshire were represented among the initial settlers, the
majority came from western Connecticut, western Massachusetts, and
western Vermont—and roughly in that order.”? With the exception of ex-
treme western and southern New York, almost all parts of the upstate area
were settled by 1810. New York land opened up after the Revolution, often
tied to large-scale speculation, provided the most accessible outlet for excess
population in the New England hill country.* The tendency of New En-
glanders to move in clusters of families from the same town made it easy to
106 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

reproduce New England society in the new settlements, and where migra-
tion did not occur en masse, relatives soon joined the original settlers to
produce culturally homogeneous communities.’ As early as 1799—1800, re-
vivals began to appear in western New York. They peaked again noticeably
in 1807-1808, suggesting that the penchant for emotional religiousity had
been transplanted along with other cultural patterns.'°
Between 1810 and 1830, significant population ‘drops occurred in
towns in western and northern New England.'! While leapfrogging emigra-
tion to Illinois, Ohio, and Wisconsin was now a factor, significant numbers
continued to move into New York State. By this time, however, the conse-
quence of migration was rarely settlement, except in occasional pockets
around which earlier migrants had moved; rather, the result was the con-
solidation and increase of already existing communities.
In this process of filling-in, Vermonters were particularly conspicu-
ous. The first Vermont migrants had simply moved across Lake Champlain
to adjacent areas of New York State. Although Vermont settlers also moved
into central and western New York prior to 1810, when they did so, they in-
termixed with persons from Connecticut and Massachusetts. By 1820,
however, land in northern New York near Lake Champlain had either en-
tered private hands or been worked to exhaustion. The Vermont migration,
consequently, was diverted to central and western New York where fertile
land was still available, and in such numbers that recognizably ‘“‘Vermont-
er” communities began to appear.'*
The significance of this migratory shift lay in the religious culture of
Vermont, subtly distinguishing it even from neighboring areas of New En-
gland. This distinctiveness resulted from the mountain barriers that iso-
lated Vermont from the rest of New England and preserved its frontier char-
acter into the early 1800s. Broken up internally by mountain barriers as _
well, it was a society where social controls were weak and political, social,
and religious dissent was difficult to suppress. Indeed, Vermont’s reputation
for ideological laissez-faire may well have attracted dissidents who felt
threatened in areas to the south, making it a sanctuary for points of view
out of favor elsewhere."
Vermont, like most of the New England hill country, was itself popu-
lated during a series of migrations between 1770 and about 1810.'* The ru-
dimentary society established there owed much to supporters of the Great
Awakening revivals. When the religious climate in Connecticut and Mas-
sachusetts became hostile to the Congregationalist supporters of Jonathan
Edwards, they sought the freer atmosphere to the North.’ A full generation
or more prior to the migrations into New York, the Great Awakening had
institutionalized postmillennialism among the ‘“‘New Lights,” as the Awak-
 NATURAL DISASTERS 107

ening’s theological reformers were known. The Second Coming was de-
ferred until the completion of a process of spiritual renewal on earth. The
apocalyptic moment now depended upon the spread of personal and com-
munal piety for which the stimulant was clergy-led campaigns of self-ex-
amination and prayer.'* Vermont preserved and concentrated the Great
Awakening heritage, and even those who had not themselves lived through
it knew it at vivid second hand through the tales of participants.
These and similarly devout but insular populations were also the most
vulnerable, for they lived in the least materially advantaged circumstances.
Their movement into the Burned-over District between 1810 and 1830 re-
sulted less from the pressure of people upon land than from the magnifica-
tion of this pressure through a series of traumatic events.

NATURAL CALAMITIES 1810-1832

Attempting to establish a baseline against which to measure natural dis-

turbances is an extraordinarily difficult task. In the absence of a continuing
inventory of natural stresses that might identify normal periods, judgments
concerning periods of intense stress are bound to appear subjective. Clearly,
no such systematically established baseline exists for the early nineteenth
century. Nonetheless, some judgments are possible that go beyond pure sub-
jectivity. Thus, we may take account of the self-understanding of contem-
poraries, manifested in newspaper reports, sermons, and other indicators of
opinion. Reasonably safe inferences may also be drawn from the proximity
in time of reported stresses and out-migration. These considerations seem
particularly appropriate for the Jacksonian period, which in general has
been characterized by such terms as “optimism,” “expansion,” and “prog-
ress.” Consequently, evidence of despair, pessimism, and danger must be
taken seriously, precisely because they contradict the general impression of
sunny improvement.
The other major consideration concerns the different abilities of com-
munities to absorb stress. Clearly, hill country New England was relatively
more vulnerable than fertile flatlands to the west and south. All other things
being equal, a subsistence population may experience as a disaster events
accepted by more prosperous groups with some equanimity. The calamities
of the period in fact divide into those of broad extent, encompassing the
whole northeastern United States, and those limited to smaller areas such as
clusters of counties. The former included such national, indeed interna-
tional, events as epidemics and climatic changes, the latter such localized ca-
108 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

lamities as floods. In both cases, however, the destructive capacity of the

events depends upon the interaction of natural forces with the stress toler-
ance and recuperative capacities of the affected populations.
Vermont in particular was struck by a large number of spatially cir-
cumscribed but intense natural stresses, including flood, disease, and food
shortages. Two-thirds of the mills in Rutland and Windsor counties were
destroyed by flash floods in 1811, which also drowned livestock, washed
away soil, and carried off bridges.'” In 1813—14, cerebro-spinal meningitis,
known popularly as “spotted fever,” spread from the Burlington military
garrison throughout the state. Estimated fatalities exceeded 6,000, a mor-
tality rate of about 3 percent, given the 1810 population of 217,000.'* Major
floods hit the southeastern section of the state in 1826 and the Champlain
valley in the west in 1830. The valley floods were particularly destructive at
this time because food production was moving from the exhausted hilltop
farms to lower-lying areas and because the deforestation of hillsides in-
creased the already heavy runoff. Agricultural productivity and the local
availability of food were not only compromised by the floods; farmers used
to planting without fertilizer found their soil exhausted. What could be
grown was prey to the blights that occurred after 1824 and to the grasshop-
pers in 1826. The once plentiful fish and game began to disappear from
streams and forests and “were all but extinct by the mid-1830s.”'?
These events were bracketed by much larger catastrophes at either end
of the period—the climatic disturbance of 1816, with its sudden and dev-
astating freezes, and the cholera epidemic of 1832. Both were among the
most significant natural disasters of the period. ‘“‘The spring and summer
months of 1816 registered mean seasonal temperatures which were among
the lowest in the recorded meterological history of the Western world.” Un-
like abnormally cold winters, the 1816 phenomenon was made especially
dramatic by the injection of winter cold into what would normally be high ©
summer, so that snow and ice remained present in parts of New England for
twelve consecutive months.*” The outbreak of cholera sixteen years later
confronted the Western world with an international medical problem.
“Cholera was the classic epidemic disease of the nineteenth century, as
plague had been of the fourteenth.’’2!
The weather of 1816 became enshrined in folklore as “‘Eighteen-
hundred and froze to death” and “‘the year without a summer.” The reasons
are not far to seek. Abnormally cold temperatures, especially during June,
July, and August, occurred all over western Europe, eastern Canada, and the
northeastern United States. A cold wave covered all of New England from
June 6 until June 11, accompanied in northern areas by up to six inches of
snow. The snow line ran from a point just north of Troy, New York, diago-
 NATURAL DISASTERS 109

nally northeastward to Brunswick, Maine, encompassing almost all of Ver-

mont and New Hampshire and most of Maine. More frosts were to come,
on July 9 and on August 21 and 30.” As a result, attempts to replant crops
by farmers with access to additional seeds failed.
The bizarre cold waves had a devastating effect upon Indian corn,
New England’s staple crop. Already planted near the northern limits of its
climatic zone, it was virtually destroyed by the frosts. The hill farms on
which it grew were, as has already been seen, far too fragile to absorb the
losses, unlike the more southerly areas where, abnormal cold left the fruit
and vegetable crops relatively intact.?? Failure of corn and hay crops de-
prived farmers of feed for their stock, which now had to be sent to market
at depressed prices.”4 At the same time, grain prices rose sharply, not simply
because of the reduced supplies, but because western Europe, also hard hit,
imported unusually large quantities.”°
The cause of the climatic anomalies was as baffling as the effects were
damaging. It was attributed variously to lightening rods and other disrup-
ters of the flow of natural electricity and to sunspots so prominent they
could be seen with the naked eye.?* None of the speculation appears to have
identified the true cause: the extraordinary quantity of volcanic dust
thrown into the upper atmosphere by the eruption of Mount Tambora in
Indonesia that began April 5, 1815. The volume of debris, some 25 cubic
miles, was sufficient to reduce incoming sunlight over some areas.’’ Failure
to guess the cause is perplexing in light of Benjamin Franklin’s earlier sug-
gestion of a volcanic hypothesis as an explanation of temperature fluctua-
tions.28 Thus, the freezes of 1816 combined attributes of destructiveness,
surprise, and incomprehensibility. The sunspot explanation, while it ap-
peared to offer some understanding, was itself a source of anxiety, since the
conspicuous solar disturbance suggested a fundamental instability in the
universe.
The severity of the suffering that accompanied the crop failures is dif-
ficult to determine with any exactitude. There is consensus that the most
serious consequences occurred in northern New England, both because it
lay above the snow line and because its farmers were already struggling to
stay above the subsistence level. Stephen Marini calls the situation a ““fa-
mine,” while Henry and Elizabeth Stommel suggest that the ability of
America to maintain large-scale exports to Europe argues for at least mini-
mally adequate food supplies.” America certainly did not experience the
hunger-induced civil violence that occurred in Europe,* perhaps because
by 1817 crops had returned to normal levels.
However, by the growing season of 1817 many New Englanders had
already left their hardscrabble farms. “When this cold season piled itself on
 110 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM
~

top of all the preceding afflictions, a good many Vermonters were ready to
quit. And who could blame them?”?! Between 1810 and 1820 Vermont alone
lost 10—15,000 people, many because of the summer of 1816, and many to
the Burned-over District.>? Ironically, upstate New York’s weather had been
almost as bad. It does not figure in most accounts only because regular re-
liable temperature readings were limited to a few New England colleges.
However, newspapers and travellers’ reports suggest that frost also covered
much of New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.*5 In any case, in a time when
information flows were partial and inefficient, it is not at all clear that per-
sons sitting dejectedly in freezing farmhouses had reliable information
about conditions elsewhere.
"The same irony reappeared in the case of cholera, which struck both
New York and New England almost simultaneously, yet does not seem to
have reduced the westward migratory flow. The arrival of cholera in 1832
was a shock, but it was not a surprise. The epidemic began in India in 1817,
then moved slowly westward, principally carried by British troops and ships
and Muslim pilgrims. It reached Europe by 1831 and England by 1832. Irish
immigrants who landed at Grosse Ile on the St. Lawrence, near Quebec
City, brought it to North America the same year. Cholera reached Platts-
burgh, New York, on June 11, Burlington, Vermont, June 13, and New York
City on June 26. Thence the disease moved along the Erie Canal, reaching
Rochester July 12 and Buffalo on July 15. Although data is fragmentary, ex-
isting reports suggest the disease was of epidemic proportions through the
eastern seaboard, interior New England, and interior New York.34 The rel-
atively leisurely transit of the disease across the Middle East, Europe, and
the Atlantic made its appearance in America predictable; indeed, elaborate
though unsuccessful measures were taken to establish quarantine points on
the U.S.—Canadian border. However, the forewarning, coupled with lurid
reports of the disease elsewhere, heightened rather than reduced alarm. The ©
dramatic onset of symptoms, their frightening character, and the rapidity
with which death often followed seemed to magnify the threat. Death oc-
curred in about half of those who contracted the disease.
The total failure of physicians to either adequately treat or understand
it amplified public apprehension.* As late as 1849, when cholera struck
again, physicians remained convinced that it was not a contagious disease.
Most identified its cause as some ill-understood peculiarity of the atmos-
phere in areas of its occurrence, although some suggested electrical or mag-
netic origins, as had been done with climatic disturbances.3¢ Thus one con-
tributor to a serious medical journal suggested that ‘‘the electric fluid,
within the crust of the earth, alter(s) and affect(s) the exhalants forming the
atmosphere in the routes.” This led him to the novel hypothesis that the
 NATURAL DISASTERS 111

Asiatic cholera and the Irish potato blight stemmed from the same causes,
and that therefore ‘“‘the cholera has existed as a disease in the potato.’’’” Al-
though this surely stands as one of the more bizarre attempts to identify the
origins of either disease, it indicates the depth of incomprehension with
which physicians greeted the cholera outbreaks.
In the absence of secular remedies, resort was made to religion. Al-
though Andrew Jackson refused to sanction a day of public fasting in 1832,
many clergymen viewed the epidemic as punishment for human sins. As ev-
idence, they pointed to the disproportionate death rate among blacks and
immigrants, assumed to be among the least worthy elements of the popu-
lation.3* Richard Carwardine, paraphrasing Dr. Johnson, observes that
“the very real fear of death ... concentrated the mind wonderfully on the
evangelical message of repentance and escape from sin,” resulting in the so-
called cholera revivals to purge sin and appease an angry God.°?
The epidemic dealt its heaviest blows in urban areas, where poor san-
itation and population density allowed the disease to spread rapidly. Since
cholera was carried from place to place along transportation arteries, and
since those arteries (such as the Erie Canal) generally connected the larger
and more commercially active centers, the disease moved naturally from
one city to another.* Although cities bore the brunt, the epidemic had seri-
ous effects in the countryside as well. The immediate rural hinterland of
cities was vulnerable. Moreover, cholera first made its appearance in the
Champlain Valley astride the New York—Vermont border, whence it moved
down the Hudson Valley toward New York. Hence Northern New England
lay almost directly along its route from Canada into the United States.
The consequences of the manifold natural hazards between about
1810 and 1832 were threefold: First, the precariously situated hill farms be-
came even less tenable than they had previously been. Second, the rural pop-
ulation was pushed westward, and in the process a substantial number were
deposited in the Burned-over District, this despite the fact that some of the
same hazards had extended into the District as well. By the 1850s, scarcely
any self-sufficient farms remained in interior New England.*! Third, the dis-
asters produced a disquieting impression about the spiritual state of the
world. People schooled to view nature as God’s slate found it difficult to be-
lieve the disasters were random events or the outcome of impersonal pro-
cesses for which naturalistic explanations could be given. The conception of
suffering as divine punishment died hard, particularly in rural areas, and
among people who took their religion seriously, suffering had to be under-
stood in religious terms, for the less merited it appeared, the more it called
into question conceptions of moral order. If one function of disasters was to
punish wrongdoing, another was to prepare the way for the millennium.
112 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

The greater the tumult in the natural world, the less persuasive postmillen-
arian optimism seemed, and the more plausible the premillenarian argu-
ment became. Since the “‘latter days”’ had traditionally been viewed as a
time of tribulation, the worse conditions became, the more imminent the
millennial time.
Consequently, these natural calamities created conditions highly fa-
vorable to the rise of a movement such as Millerism. The natural hazards
dislodged a devout population from the precarious and physically isolated
farms and settlements of the New England hills. From there, already well-
defined routes funneled them into the Burned-over District, an area which
was at once compact but equipped with excellent internal communications.
In addition, the stresses of the twenty-year period of natural disasters fitted
the premillenarian model far better than it fitted postmillenarian explana-
tions. The adequacy of postmillennialism was called into question, since in-
cremental improvement was now less evident, and at the same time, the un-
fashionable premillenial view of history now appeared more compatible
with events.
Postmillennialism might have survived this encounter with calamity if
the displaced Yankee populations could have resumed their lives in a more
secure environment. New York State appeared to offer precisely such secu-
rity with its fertile, rock-free soil and its absence of internal communica-
tions barriers. Nonetheless, the tranquility of this “Second New England”
was to be abruptly shaken, and by causes very different from the earlier
catastrophes.
 SOCIOECONOMIC DISASTERS
AND THE MILLENNIUM
‘
uN

gop. THE POPULATION of the Burned-over District was signifi-

[79% cantly augmented by western and northern New Englanders
driven from marginal farmland by a series of natural disas-
ters in the early decades of the century. Having arrived in upstate New York
as victims, they assumed that their troubles were behind them, and they
quickly became integrated into the clone of New England society already
established in the region. The fertility of such areas as the Genesee Valley
and the stimulation given commerce by the completion of the Erie Canal
suggested a locale that was prosperous and buffered against natural haz-
ards. Storms, epidemics, and the like had always drawn from premillenni-
alists a delicious apprehension, fear mingled with the quiet satisfaction that
one knew the direction of God’s plan. They thus survived earlier calamity
confident of its meaning but hopeful that rich land in New York would pro-
tect them from recurrence.
By the late 1830s, however, the national economy suffered a major col-
lapse. The depression which followed the Panic of 1837 and lasted until
about 1844 was no less devastating in its own way than the natural disasters
of earlier years. It was also even more puzzling, for it could not be easily fit-
ted into traditional religious explanations of suffering. The boom and bust
economy was set against an increasingly troubled social background. Old
verities about the stability of family life did not survive the transplantation
of New England society. The economy that produced depression also pro-
duced changes in the relationships between men and women and between
parents and children. The promise of the Burned-over District proved to be
a bitter illusion.
113
114 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

CALAMITY RETURNS: Panic and Depression, 1837—44

The period preceding 1837 was “‘an era of economic growth unparalleled
before that time.”! The boom was especially evident in the towns and farm-
lands of the Burned-over District. The commerce of New York State in-
creased tenfold between 1791 and 1831, and the population quadrupled be-
tween 1790 and 1820. In Ontario County, it more than doubled between
1810 and 1820 alone. Mills sprang up along the downward rushing streams,
and land-poor New Englanders turned the fertile soil of the Genesee Valley
to wheat production. The completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 dropped
Great Lakes-to-the-Atlantic freight rates from $100 a ton to $25 or even
S152
The onrushing prosperity of the Jacksonian years suffered an abrupt
interruption in the Panic of 1837. Although the banking upheaval appeared
temporary, a second, more fundamental economic contraction in 1839 be-
gan a four-year depression, continuing, with only brief interruption, until
1843—44. The murky origins of the panic lay in massive speculation per-
mitted by the unbridled extension of credit and in the vicissitudes of the
Anglo-American cotton trade. Speculation in cotton and public land peaked
in November 1836. Questionable banking practices had been used to fi-
nance internal improvements, notably the expansion of transportation ar-
teries, and in any case, many banks had catered to a clientele with neither
credit nor capital.? In July 1836, the national government sought to curb
western land speculation by requiring that public lands be purchased only
for specie (gold or silver coins) rather than with banknotes. In early 1837,
the Bank of England refused to accept paper from American banks in cot-
ton transactions. Peter Temin challenges the belief that the requirement for
specie to buy western land contributed significantly to the panic by draining
specie from the East. While acknowledging the psychological role played by
the change in land purchasing, he places greater economic weight on the fall
in prices paid in England for American cotton, which resulted in defaults on
American debts secured by cotton.* Whatever the balance among causal
factors, credit contracted with shuddering abruptness, with only specie ac-
cepted in payment for both domestic and international debts. As confidence
in banknotes fell, a run on the limited supply of specie became inevitable.’
Cotton firms in coastal cities began to collapse. Holders of banknotes
quickly found that banks first limited and then suspended the exchange of
notes for specie. The suspensions began in the south in May 1837, reflecting
the depressed price of cotton. However, the overextension of credit domes-
tically and the change in land purchase policy were sufficient to spread
alarm in the north and west. Specie conversions ceased in New York City on
 SOCIOECONOMIC DISASTERS 115

May 10. The panic then spread up the Hudson River and along the Erie
Canal in a manner not unlike the diffusion of cholera five years before, until
by May 12 the Burned-over District was well encompassed. Most of the
country east of the Mississippi had experienced the suspensions by May
ze
The panic had mixed effects. The suspension of specie payments did
not cause a total halt in banking. Rather, individuals reverted to the pre-
vious practice of utilizing banknotes and checks, since neither silver nor
gold coins were available.” On the other hand, the withdrawal of credit in a
credit-hungry economy was not without consequences, and descriptions of
the panic’s effect on business run to the hyperbolic—whether in Albert
Brisbane’s assertion cited earlier that only a dozen men between Albany and
Buffalo avoided bankruptcy, or in the observation that “‘in the fall of 1837,
nine-tenths of the factories in the Eastern states were said to be closed.’’*
Since the early casualties were overextended businessmen, their financial
collapse led to high urban unemployment.
The stagnation of 1837 initially appeared to be a transient phenome-
non, for specie payments were resumed in 1838. The recovery, however, was
shortlived. The price of cotton once again fell in late 1839, producing a par-
tial specie suspension. While temporary, its end did not signal a return to
prosperity. Rather, it introduced four years of skidding prices. It is perhaps
a moot point whether the period from 1839 to 1844 was a contraction com-
parable in magnitude to the Great Depression of the 1930s, or merely a de-
flation in which prices fell but production did not. Prices fell farther between
1839 and 1843 than between 1929 and 1933—42 percent as against 31 per-
cent. Temin infers from consumption data that production in all likelihood
was little changed, and that agricultural production in particular was not
greatly affected, if only because the large rural population had little alter-
native but to continue growing crops while selling them for less.°
Although production may have been sustained, depressed prices were
not a trivial concern. This was particularly so because of contemporaneous
changes in the character of agriculture and the vulnerability of farmers to
market conditions. The period 1800—40 was marked by a transition from
an agriculture of local self-sufficiency, insulated from larger economic fluc-
tuations, to commercial agriculture, in which crops were raised for distant
sale. The farm improvements necessitated by market competition in turn
produced a need for capital. Additional cash was required to pay store bills
and to speculate in land. Consequently, by 1830 a substantial number of
eastern farms had been mortgaged.'? The opening of transportation arteries
such as the Erie Canal brought formerly distant markets within reach and
stimulated more specialized production. In central and western New York
116 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

State, this meant the cultivation of wheat for western markets, although by
1840—60, the same transportation system permitted large amounts of com-
peting western wheat to move east as well."!
Wholesale agricultural prices fell sharply from late 1841, through
1842, into 1843. They reached bottom in March of that year. At the 1843
trough, prices were lower than at any other point in the pre-Civil War pe-
riod.'? Although prices were generally higher in eastern than in western
markets, prices dropped in Cincinnati as well as in New York City. The
drop, however, was proportionately greater in the east, exacerbated perhaps
by the appearance of grain from the midwest.'? In short, a major agricul-
tural depression was in progress. The economic promise of upstate New
York, symbolized by the Canal, had with relative suddenness turned to
ashes. Already overextended, farmers found themselves unable to generate
the cash they required.
The depression that struck the Burned-over District was part of a
much larger economic decline throughout the Western world. The depres-
sion of the early 1840s occurred at the trough of the economic cycle com-
monly referred to as the ‘“‘Kondratieff wave” or “long wave.” This forty-to-
sixty-year periodicity is linked to the name of N. D. Kondratieff, the Soviet
economist whose writings in the 1920s asserted that capitalist economies
exhibit rhythmic expansions and contractions.'* Kondratieff’s work re-
ceived its first substantial attention in the United States during the Great
Depression, which it appeared uncannily to foresee.'*
Kondratieff examined numerous statistical series for France, En-
gland, and the United States between about 1780 and 1920. This period of
140 years yielded two and a half cycles, most clearly evident in price data.
He was far better able to describe the cycles, however, than to account for
their occurrence. His critics charged him with advancing a deterministic
scheme rather than an explanation of economic behavior.'* The debate
about causality between long-wave theorists and their adversaries is less
germane to present purposes than the regularities Kondratieff and those
who followed him discerned, for the Kondratieff wave closely parallels well-
known periods of economic vigor and slackness. Of particular interest here
is the relationship between the Kondratieff cycle and the events of the early
1840s.
Kondratieff argued that the cycle rose from a trough in the late 1780s
and early 1790s to a peak from 1810 to 1817, and fell to a trough in 1844—
51. This first Kondratieff downswing corresponds closely to turning points
in wholesale prices, which bottomed out in 1851 in France, 1849 in England,
but as early as 1843 in the United States.'? W. W. Rostow, re-examining
Kondratieff’s formulation, places the bottom of the downturn at 1848.'8 In
 SOCIOECONOMIC DISASTERS 117

any case, there remains agreement that the economic decline neared or
touched bottom in the mid-to-late 1840s.'°
Thus in ways that remain to be fully explained, the decline of the
American economy after 1837 seems to have been a particularly serious
manifestation of a larger economic crisis. In an era before the full develop-
ment of industrial production, the drop in wholesale commodity prices fell
with particular force on the population of agricultural districts. In the past
such market fluctuations had been buffered by the subsistence character of
many farms. As long as production had been oriented to local consumption,
larger economic forces were of limited importance. By the 1840s, however,
farming had lost its subsistence character and was now directed at produc-
tion for distant markets, which made it hostage to forces farmers could
not control.
Loss of control was exacerbated by the mysterious character of a
boom and bust economy, for one’s fate now seemed determined by incom-
prehensible forces. National economies made distant localities both the
beneficiaries and the victims of uncounted anonymous decisions taken in
distant commercial centers. Economic decisions were peculiarly impersonal
and invisible; they could neither be seen nor identified, yet they had the
power to determine the quality of individual and community life.?° Thus,
like natural calamities, economic disasters had to be confronted on two lev-
els. Their effects had to be mastered, and their position in the moral order
had to be understood.

THE INSTABILITY OF FAMILY LIFE

The effects of economic stress were exacerbated by the perceived instability

of the central social unit, the family. This paralleled the situation in the ear-
lier period of natural disasters when vulnerability increased because the
central economic unit, the family farm, was too precariously situated to
shield individuals from natural hazards. Now that the hazards were non-
natural, their weight fell upon the web of interpersonal relationships, but
the family and the structure of social roles within it were themselves under-
going stress.
Family crisis was, ironically, the child of prosperity. The boom years
of the Second New England, instead of strengthening family ties, weakened
them by creating incentives for behavioral change. A traditional agricultural
way of life could not be sustained under the multiple influences of popula-
tion growth, orientation to market demands, and the growth of opportu-
118 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

nities in commerce and industry. The sense of family instability rose

through the 1820s and by the 1830s had engendered a feeling of crisis. The
rise after 1830 of a practical literature for the guidance of family life serves
as an unobtrusive measure of loss of confidence.?!
By the time the second generation in the Burned-over District came of
age, population was beginning to press against the supply of cheap, fertile
land. While a falling birthrate provided partial adjustment to resource lim-
itations, the more immediate consequence was the drift of male children
away from the farm family. Some moved to the towns with their growing
commercial and industrial employment opportunities, while still others
moved toward the frontier.?? In either case, the consequence was the loss of
parental control. Sons in distant places, their future no longer directly tied
to the family farm, necessarily made their own way. At the same time, the
family unit ceased to be as formidable a concentration of common labor.
Daughters, far less free to choose alternative styles of life, remained to pro-
duce a surplus of females over males.?3
More remote economic forces also compelled changes in family struc-
ture. As we have already seen, farmers had ceased to produce for their own
and their neighbors’ use and were instead growing for distant markets. The
demise of the self-sufficient farm had two significant consequences. First, it
made rural families dependent rather than independent. They needed others
for what they themselves could not produce, and they required customers to
purchase what they grew. Second, the end of self-sufficiency drastically di-
minished the economic significance of women, whose labor was no longer
required to make at home what now had to be bought. The reduced eco-
nomic role for women resulted in the division of life into a male sphere of
work outside the home and a female sphere of domesticity within it. Foster
suggests that because of the division of economic functions, “the gap be-
tween the worlds of men and women became wider than possibly at any:
other time in American history.””4
As a result of the division between male and female spheres, the pre-
vailing surplus of females, and the growing independence of older children,
women became progressively more isolated from the world around them.25
Deprived of productive economic activities and no longer intimately sharing
in the work roles of their spouses, women found compensations in revival
religion. Women assumed disproportionately important roles both as con-
verts during revivals and as workers in the benevolent societies the revivals
spawned.*6 Millenarian movements held particular appeal for women who
already centered their lives around emotional religion.
The economic upheavals after 1837 thus fell upon families straining
to redefine male and female roles, the proper relationship between parents
 SOCIOECONOMIC DISASTERS 119

and children, and the extent to which the family should be linked to the ex-
ternal world. Neither the resources families could command nor their sense
of cohesiveness prepared them for the strains of economic depression.

THE MILLENARIAN RESPONSE TO DISASTER

The timing of millenarian activity suggests the potential significance of the

economic tumult. The most important period of Shaker revivalism began
August 16, 1837, a few months after the panic.?” John Humphrey Noyes be-
gan the organization of the Putney community in the early 1840s, and it
reached a formal state of organization by 1844. Although revivalism had
been at a low ebb in 1837, it surged after the panic and reached a peak of
activity in 1843. Millerism itself crested as the economy hit bottom.?*
These may appear to be parallel responses, but in fact Second Adven-
tists and utopians understood economic collapse in very different terms.
Further, there is little direct evidence that the actions of any single group re-
flected personal deprivations suffered by its members, although given the
scope of the depression and the population from which the movements
drew, many who joined may have been victims. The movements are best
understood not as instances of relative deprivation—the poor organizing
against the rich—but as attempts to introduce alternative conceptions of
moral order. For whether or not conditions adversely affected a particular
individual, the pervasiveness of stress and suffering raised fundamental
questions concerning the nature of good and evil. Individuals reared in a
culture that had made the religious revival into an institution could scarcely
ignore these questions regardless of their personal situations. Events sug-
gested a world unhinged, while orthodox beliefs continued to proclaim a
dogma of progressive improvement.
Millerism revived a traditional premillennialism of signs and por-
tents. According to it, the condition of earthly life varied inversely with the
nearness of the Second Coming: the worse the state of the world, the closer
the millennium. In this “the worse, the better”’ perspective, the accumulat-
ing misery of the early 1840s merely added to natural calamities of prior
decades. Yet Second Adventists could not easily bridge the gap between nat-
ural disasters and economic breakdown, for in addition to the general re-
quirement that the millennium be preceded by escalating tumult, premillen-
nialists were locked into the traditional vocabulary of signs and portents. As
we have seen, not all events fitted equally well within this structure, de-
signed to accommodate wars and acts of nature.
120 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

The Millerites were trapped within this analytic framework. On the

one hand, the economic dislocations contributed to the general decline ex-
pected of the “‘latter days,” with its sensé of the world running down like a
faltering machine. The experience of everyday life appeared to validate the
predictions of an imminent end. However, while Second Adventism could
accommodate the general characteristics of growing misery, it could not
readily deal with the details. For unlike the natural disasters in the early
years of the century, the depression was difficult to incorporate within the
stylized language of portent analysis. The abrupt fluctuations of boom and
bust were too novel to have found their way into the vocabulary of signs.
Consequently, the Millerites were beneficiaries of the pervasive sense of
unease but had nothing specific to say about the state of the economy and
its consequences. The Millerite press, it will be recalled, exhaustively re-
ported the wars of the Ottoman Empire and the Dorr Rebellion, yet failed
to address the deteriorating economic conditions. Since this resulted from
the rigidity of their categories rather than callousness or ignorance, it gave
to Second Adventist literature a peculiarly detached, almost surreal char-
acter. Trapped by the limitations of their rhetoric, Millerites were never able
to directly discuss the malaise around them. The peculiar shape of pre-Civil
War calamities, mixing the natural and artificial, provided Millerism with
its opportunities but also established limits to its growth, since Second Ad-
ventism was unable to encompass more than a part of it.
The utopian communities were in a more favorable position, for in
two respects they spoke to issues of economic inequality and insecurity.
First, their very ways of life exemplified values of equality and security. The
provision of basic needs—food, clothing and shelter—was a community
function. The individual did not have to rely upon personal resources; in-
deed, those resources were often forfeited to the community as a condition
of membership. Requirements for the redistribution of property acted as a.
social leveller, since the elimination of differences in personal wealth greatly
reduced distinctions of rank. Second, some of the communities explicitly
sought to eliminate poverty forever. Their efforts took the form of both in-
stitutional innovations and the development of belief systems directed at ex-
plaining and preventing social and economic problems.
The emphasis on the communal provision of basic needs theoretically
freed the individual from the quest for the necessities of life. In practice,
however, not all communities exhibited the well-organized prosperity of the
Shakers or the growing bourgeois comforts of Oneida. Frequently under-
capitalized, sometimes lacking members with the necessary agricultural
skills, communities often provided a standard of living inferior to that en-
joyed outside, yet even in these cases the principle of joint responsibility for
 SOCIOECONOMIC DISASTERS 121

material well-being differentiated utopias from the laissez-faire world

around them.
Communitarians were self-consciously aware of economic evils and
of the need to recast conceptions of work and property. Their ideas ration-
alized social arrangements entered into spontaneously and pragmatically,
while at the same time providing guidelines for the further redesign of insti-
tutions. Economic innovatiop was as much a part of religious as of secular
communities. The Shakers rejected the belief that work was part of the curse
of Adam, and imbued it with a special dignity.At the same time, they re-
jected the prevailing ethic of individual self-s¢eking in favor of communal
effort.??
Utopians’ interest in economic forces often predated their communal
ventures. Throughout his life Albert Brisbane had a quasi-Populist fascina-
tion with the mysteries of finance. As a young man of twenty-six, he may
already have been an implacable foe of bankers, and a monetary reformer
who advocated a national currency and the demonetization of gold and sil-
ver.°° If so, he returned to it in later life as a supporter of the Greenback
cause in the 1870s.3! As early as 1835, John Humphrey Noyes had attacked
the uncontrolled pursuit of economic gain which two years later produced
the panic: “speculation, after devouring its rations, is made to prey upon
itself.’’32 He subsequently saw the panic as an example of the dangers of re-
form, which separated social problems from one another. The temperance
movement, he argued, had unknowingly contributed to economic collapse
by holding out financial gain as the reward for sobriety. The result was “the
raving madness of aMONEY-MANIA, produced in a great measure by the
conversion of drunkards into a nation of swindlers.”*
Fourierists’ analyses tended to be more restrained. Their agenda cen-
tered on the sufferings of the working poor, “ground to death by the op-
pressiveness of ... society.’”* Profits needed to be redistributed to benefit
those whose labor had produced the goods. These were not people among
whom depressions passed unnoticed. Brisbane himself attributed the suc-
cesses of Associationism to the bad times of the early 1840s, “well calcu-
lated to awaken the poor farmers to the hardships of their condition and to
lead them to catch eagerly at any scheme for their relief.’
The split among utopians was over the proper response to the social
crisis. John Collins, an Owenite, differed significantly with Fourierism over
remedies, yet “I cannot but rejoice in the able expositions of the rottenness
and inhumanity of our present social condition.”’** For Noyes, the Fourierist
diagnosis did not go far enough. The elements of the social organism were
not simply ‘“‘dislocated’’; they were “vitally diseased” and consequently re-
quired the most fundamental of remedies.°”
122 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

What, then, was the proper response? Brisbane, like Noyes, had little
use for conventional politics: ‘Politicians and legislators are engaged in su-
perficial controversies and quarrels, which lead to no practical results.’”3*
Fourierism offered a deeper understanding, which its partisans sought to
demonstrate was identical to Christianity. If that were the case, then creat-
ing social and economic change became a religious duty. They attacked
Owen for his efforts to sever social improvements from a Christian basis,°?
but it was precisely Brisbane’s identification of the two that Noyes found un-
palatable. Fourierism was directed toward the praiseworthy goal of “‘per-
fecting social machinery,” but neglected the cardinal necessity of producing
“good men” as a vital precondition for good institutions.*° In this, Noyes
réturned to a theme he had enunciated in his youth, when in a letter to Wil-
liam Lloyd Garrison he flirted with revolution against a government that
protected slaveholding (“Is it not high time for abolitionists to abandon a
government whose President has declared war upon them?”), only to tran-
scend “‘mere”’ social improvement:

All the abhorrence which now falls upon slavery, intemperance, lewd-
ness, and every other specific vice, will in due time be gathered in one
volume of victorious wrath against unbelief. I wait for that time as for
the day of battle, regarding all the previous movements as only fencing-
schools and manoevres of military discipline—or at best as the prelim-
inary skirmishes which precede a general engagement.*!

Thus the utopians, whether in religious or secular garb, maintained a

lively curiosity about the workings of the economy. They were equally re-
pelled by the injustices inflicted on the poor and by the selfishness exhibited
by the rich and ambitious. Their preoccupation with family structure
flowed directly from this revulsion. They saw the nuclear family as an
agency for encouraging and legitimating selfishness. The instability of the
family did not so much signal its collapse as it indicated its contraction,
from an extended family that reached out to others, to the minimal unit nec-
essary to acquire wealth. They were not so much anti-familial as they were
advocates of radical family expansion, creating environments where the
family and the community would be coterminous.*”
The message of the decade was garbled to the Millerites, filled with the
appropriate foreboding, yet made confusing by unfamiliar signs. They tried
to clarify the message by emphasizing the occasional comet or troubles in
the Levant, yet they did so at the expense of more far-reaching turmoil in
American society. The intellectual system of Millerite millennialism dis-
 SOCIOECONOMIC DISASTERS ws

played formidable internal cohesion but sacrificed empirical relevance. The

utopians, whose belief systems were rarely so tight-knit, were far more
atuned to the new anxieties. They looked to the portents of a modern age—
financial panics rather than earthquakes and disrupted family structure in-
stead of far-off battles. Thus the 1840s did not take utopians unaware. In-
deed, it stimulated their most impassioned outbursts. The depression, far
from constituting an embarrassing exception to their view of society and
history, seemed the most convincing validation of their efforts.
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 ORGANIZING FOR THE MILLENNIUM

Pas SECOND ADVENTISM was at least as much the victim of its

rhetoric as it was of disconfirmed predictions. Its apparatus
of Biblical interpretation forced it to ignore precisely those social issues on
which the utopians were free to concentrate.
If one part of Millerism’s dilemma was intellectual, another was or-
ganizational. Commitment to an imminent millennium demands more of
individuals than adherence to more limited causes. If the belief is not shared
by most members of the society, which is particularly the case in western
chiliasm, then millenarians must be able to defend themselves against the
taunts, ridicule, and even physical hostility of their more orthodox fellow-
citizens. If the end-time is only a few years, months, or weeks away, then
conventional obligations seem trivial and eschatological yearnings begin to
preempt the ordinary business of life. Millenarians consequently live in sus-
pension between the mundane world which is about to be destroyed and the
sacred world about to be revealed. Normally accepted routines of work, lei-
sure, and domesticity seem ill-adapted for the frustrations of anticipation.
In short, the organizational attachments of normal life appear inappro-
priate to an abnormal time. Family, political party, church, and business en-
terprise depend upon the indefinite continuity of life, while the millennium
demands discontinuity. How, then, ought chiliasts organize themselves in
the awkward interlude between imperfection and redemption?
The 1840s provided a striking juxtaposition of two organizational
models. The Millerites employed a strategy of confrontation. Utilizing the
most sophisticated forms of mass communication available, they took their
123
126 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

message into the most densely populated urban centers. The utopians
adopted an almost diametrically opposed approach. While eager to propa-
gandize, they were equally anxious to avoid unnecessary physical contact
with others. Instead of confronting non-believers, they withdrew into their
communal enclaves. Instead of moving aggressively into the cities, they elab-
orated miniature societies in the countryside.

THE ORGANIZATION OF TRADITIONAL MILLENNIALISM

~

Millerism inherited the beliefs of a millenarian tradition that extended into

the Middle Ages. Hence it may be useful to begin by examining the structure
of pre-modern chiliastic groups.
Before the nineteenth century, millenarian movements can scarcely be
called “‘organized”’ at all in the sense of possessing role specialization, chain
of command, and the delegation of authority. They were customarily small,
cohesive, and grouped about a prophetic leader. Indeed, millennialists were
if anything anti-organizational, contrasting their own intimacy with the
coldness of orthodox religion. Christian groups often consciously sought a
return to the practices of the early church, which they regarded as more au-
thentic than the bureaucratization of ecclesiastical institutions.
The romanticization of spontaneous behavior and the rejection of in-
stitutionalized authority manifested themselves in the deliberate rule-break-
ing of antinomianism and in charismatic leadership. The tendency of mil-
lennialists to see themselves as perfect and the rest of the world as sinful
implied that behavioral restraints appropriate to others were not binding
upon them. Indeed, among some groups such as the Jewish followers of the
false messiah Sabbatai Zevi and (more arguably) the Brethren of the Free
Spirit in the Low Countries, breaking religious taboos demonstrated the vi-
olators’ sense of special virtue.' “‘Law” was for others—the evil, the unre-
deemed, the imperfect. Those who already felt themselves to be living in the
new time had no need for these expedients and felt compelled to manifest
their superior virtue by dabbling in the forbidden.
The antipathy toward law was integrally related to the dependence
upon charismatic authority. Most millenarian groups were led by individ-
uals whose followers believed them to be endowed with extraordinary ca-
pacities. The attribution of special talents had the effect of superceding more
mundane forms of authority. The pronouncements of governmental officials
or conventional religious leaders could not match the quasi-revelational au-
 ORGANIZING FOR THE MILLENNIUM 127

thority of charisma. Just as charismatic leaders are not bound by the norms
of past or present, so they are not obliged to remain consistent. The line be-
tween the forbidden and the permitted may be redrawn as the whims and
intuitions of the leader dictate.
Both antinomianism and charisma worked against complex organi-
zation by emphasizing change over continuity. The past lost its normative
legitimacy. No rule was inherently unbreakable, both because rule-breaking
validated spiritual superiority and because charismatically generated pro-
nouncements superceded other norms. Such groups produced an anti-or-
ganizational milieu, making it difficult to delegate authority, draw up long-
range plans, or divide different functions among specialized office-holders.
The major difficulty for millenarian groups has always been growth,
since commitment tends to decline with distance from the leader and from
the reinforcement that fellow members could offer. Personalistic leadership
might change goals so rapidly that systematic recruiting became difficult.
Even where the group appears to spread, the danger is that it may do so
by drawing upon persons who affiliate for opportunistic reasons. Open
recruitment of untested outsiders implies a dilution of the group’s elite
character.
In practice, these dangers were not often apparent, for the environ-
ment of pre-modern millenarianism reinforced the bias toward smallness
and compactness. Movements usually occurred in relatively remote rural
areas. Eruptions in urban areas, such as late—fifteenth-century Minster,
while widely reported, were in fact uncommon until modern times.? Given
their back-country locales, opportunities for expansion were often limited
by rudimentary transportation and communication. The typical pattern
was for a group to expand within a well-defined region until challenged by
religious or civil authorities, to be defeated, and to retreat into a clandestine
and even smaller form. Premodern groups were hardly ever able to control
large territories, and even when able to fully invest the region of their origin,
were highly vulnerable to outside pressure.
The agrarian character of premodern movements was reinforced by
the vulnerability of rural life. Subject to the recurrent stress of natural dis-
asters, remote regions held disproportionately victimized populations, for
whom the promised millennium appeared both plausible and inviting. Ad-
ditionally, governmental and religious authority moved slowly and ineffi-
ciently in such areas. Neglect arising from administrative inefficiency per-
mitted movements to grow and solidify, as they could not have in regions
adjacent to urban centers. This pattern survived in the politically uninte-
grated parts of southern Europe into the early twentieth century and in the
non-Western world into the present.
128 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

The Millerites departed from this pattern in several respects. In the

first place, they were politically quiescent, offering neither overt nor rhetor-
ical opposition to civil authority. Millerism recruited successfully from
among social and political reformers, but once affiliated, they abandoned
their former causes. Miller himself advocated scrupulous attentiveness to
the requirements of the existing order even as he anticipated its demise.
There is no reason to doubt his post-Disappointment irtsistence that “I have
never taught a neglect of any of the duties of life, which make us good par-
ents, children, neighbors, or citizens. ... Those who have taught the neglect
of these... acted in opposition to my uniform teachings.’
Miller’s insistence upon fidelity to duty suggests that in a second re-
spect he differed from other millenarian leaders: he was not charismatic.
His autobiographical writings appraise his own efforts with a modesty
wholly untypical of charismatic authority: ‘““That I have been mistaken in
the time [of the Second Advent], I freely confess; and I have no desire to de-
fend my course any further than I have been actuated by pure motives.’’* The
major thrust of his enterprise lay in the construction of an apparatus of Bib-
lical interpretation, pursued with a zeal that verged on pedantry. Perhaps
because of this plodding quality, and because Miller insisted upon the ab-
solute authority of Biblical texts, Adventists rarely engaged in antinomian
acts.>
Finally, Millerism proselytized on a massive scale. Under Joshua
Himes’s shrewd direction, the Adventists imitated and elaborated upon the
already impressive propagandistic techniques developed by the revivalists of
the Second Great Awakening. As Ernest Sandeen observes, “‘the one distinc-
tive feature of Millerite Adventism was its uniquely successfully system of
popularization, comprising a network of fugitive newspapers, adman’s pos-
ters, and the moveable tent.” The movement thrust outward with an ex-
pansionism that set it apart from the purely local millennialism of previous
times. These behavioral and organizational departures from conventional
millenarian practice contrast dramatically with the Millerites’ ideological
traditionalism. Millerism was among the first chiliastic movements to move
aggressively into highly urbanized areas and to seek converts by systemati-
cally employing a combination of face-to-face persuasion techniques bor-
rowed from revivalism and printed propaganda appropriate to an era of
mass literacy. Thus, any explanation of Millerism’s failure must account not
only for its ideological archaism but for its organizational modernity.
 ORGANIZING FOR THE MILLENNIUM 129

THE GROWTH OF URBAN AMERICA

In 1840, America was still primarily an agricultural society whose popula-

tion was 89.2 percent rural, but at the threshold of urban growth. The
smallness of the urban sector reflected two factors—the non-urban location
of early industry and the absence of large pre-industrial cities. Self-sustain-
ing industrial growth began simultaneously with the burgeoning of Mill-
erism,’ but much of the early industrial activity occurred at waterpower
sites in rural or semi-rural settings. Much early, factory production thus oc-
curred where energy sources could be tapped, rather than in already densely
populated regions.® Although many mill sites became nuclei for later urban
growth, the initial effect was to disperse rather than concentrate industrial-
ization. In the second place, no American city possessed a substantial pre-
modern history, not even Boston. In the early 1700s, New York, Philadel-
phia, and Boston were scarcely more than large villages and remained small
by English standards for decades thereafter. The mid—eighteenth-century
population of Philadelphia was about 20,000, while such seaports as Bos-
ton, New York, Newport, and Charleston held fewer than 15,000 each—
this at a time when “‘one Englishman in every six had at some time lived in
[London].”? By 1775, Philadelphia had grown, but only to 40,000; London
was well in excess of half a million. Since half of all American city dwellers
were divided among Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, no
community seized a dominant administrative or cultural position.
The growth of cities was severely retarded by the Revolutionary War,
even if one employs the census’ relatively permissive definition of a city as
any community in excess of 8,000. Since the existing cities were mainly
ports, they bore the brunt of the conflict, and many inhabitants fled. In the
early 1800s, moreover, westward migration was a further drain. Conse-
quently, in the late 1700s urban areas had to make good the deficit caused
by wartime population shifts and the outflow that would be caused by west-
ern expansion. Notwithstanding these factors, the share of total population
in cities did indeed rise, whether in the census’ figures or the more conserv-
ative statistics collected by Adna Weber, as shown in Table 8.1. The magni-
tude of urban increase is clearly evident in the growth rates in the decades
between censuses. The decade of the 1840s manifested an unusually high
rate of urban growth, closely followed by the decade 1820-30, during
which the Burned-over District absorbed its new population."
With its historic roots in agrarian areas, millennialism now sought to
penetrate the novel yet alluring territory of the city. In a general way, the
problem was that of establishing intense but unorthodox commitments
among a large, diverse population, in which every point of view was subject
130 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

TABLE 8.1
Urbanization Before the Civil War
% Share of population in cities Decennial percentage rates of increase in proportion
of population living in communities over 8000!
Census!” Weber!!

1790 5.13 3.35) = N

1800 6.07 Sy) 60
1810 7.26 4.93 69
1820 PAD 4.93 53
SSO 8.76 6.72 82
1840 10.76 8.52 68
1850 — 12.49 2)

to critical examination. The dilemma of commitment in an urban setting

was notably acute in the pre-Civil War period, for the urban population was
itself constantly on the move. Cities gained population by in-migration
from rural areas, but also through city-to-city movement. The work of Ste-
phen Thernstrom and Peter R. Knights demonstrates that many residents of
any given city lived there briefly, only to leave when economic opportunity
beckoned. That meant not only neighborhood to neighborhood moves
within cities but often leap-frogging to distant towns. The most mobile
were not the middle-class, possessed of the means to go elsewhere, but
rather the poor, who instead of being anchored to their place of residence,
shifted from city to city in search of the main chance.'* Thus the more de-
prived contributed not only their poverty to the urban environment but
their rootlessness and lack of established social affiliations.
Urban population movement was a function not only of the desire for
new opportunities but of the availability of movement itself. In this respect,
the circulation of persons and ideas were joined, for in an era in which all
messages were of necessity physically carried by human beings from place
to place, “the movement of news and information was synonymous with hu-
man spatial interaction.”'> Just as Millerism stood at the threshold of ex-
plosive urban growth, so it stood at the boundary separating distinct eras
in communication, defined by the opening of the first telegraph line between
Baltimore and Washington on May 24, 1844. The telegraph destroyed the
spatial bias of communication, the differential speed at which information
could be carried over given areas.'¢
 ORGANIZING FOR THE MILLENNIUM 131

While a qualitative change'occurred with telegraphy, communication

and transportation had advanced considerably in the two decades that pre-
ceded it. These advances included both increases in speed, by which the spa-
tial bias was reduced, and increases in channel capacity, increasing the num-
ber of persons and the quantity of information diffused. These changes
were particularly pronounced in the northeast, where railroad construc-
tion, canal building, the exploitation of natural waterways, and the capacity
to exploit new printing technology could all be found.
The Burned-over District was a particular beneficiary of these
changes. The opening of the Erie Canal connected western New York with
New York City via Hudson River steamships and with Boston through
stagecoach to Albany. The link to New England was further strengthened
with the completion of a Boston-Albany rail link in 1841.'7 The New York
City—Albany ships had carried nearly 200,000 passengers by the early
1830s, many of whom connected to or from the Erie Canal. William Miller
himself traveled by this means to New York City in the Spring of 1833. Al-
though extremely early in his public career, his identity became known, and
he delivered an impromptu lecture and distributed pamphlets (presumably
the Brandon, Vermont, articles) to the passengers.'® In the winter, when the
river froze and canals were closed to navigation, stagecoaches allowed at
least a fraction of the traffic—perhaps 8 or 10 percent—to continue. Given
the competitive advantages of canals, railroads did not significantly pene-
trate the district until the 1850s, but fifteen years earlier were already an im-
portant element in coastal New England and the Middle Atlantic states.
Similarly, coastal shipping, a consequence of economic expansion, moved
commodities, persons, and information among the Atlantic and Gulf
ports.'?
The position of New York City became central, for stagecoaches, relay
express riders, and rivers and canals connected it with the interior, while
merchant shipping and railroads tied it to other coastal cities. This network
of personal, postal, journalistic, and commercial contacts had by the early
1840s made New York the dominant point for the transmission of public in-
formation.2° Information on religious enthusiasms in the Burned-over Dis-
trict became rapidly available in other parts of the country as information
passing through New York was relayed over land or water. The informa-
tional centrality of New York was also a partial consequence of and an im-
portant stimulus to a new type of popular journalism.
News of Millerite activities was especially widely reported in the pop-
ular press, a function of Himes’s campaigns on the outskirts of large cities,
and of the fact that Millerism made good copy at a time when newspaper
circulation wars were beginning. The centrality of New York in inter-city
132 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

communications meant that news from elsewhere found its way into New
York papers, and the anti-Millerite campaigns mounted by the New York
press diffused along transportation arteries.

THE FATE OF URBAN MILLERISM

The decision to appeal to city dwellers seemed at first well founded. Cheap
printing techniques were as available to the Millerites as to their adversaries.
During a four-year period, the Second Adventists distributed an estimated
four million pieces of literature—nearly one for every five men, women, and
children in the United States. The Millerites developed their own mass
press, although the distribution figures may be inflated: 50,000 copies of
Signs of the Times during 1840, not a peak Adventist year; 600,000 copies
of Midnight Cry during five months in 1842.2! The famous tent meetings
drew as many as 10,000 people. These meetings created temporary com-
munities in which controlled information was received by an audience al-
ready predisposed toward it.
The difficulty did not lie in the meetings per se but in what happened
once the audience left. Its members returned to principally urban places of
residence in which the message of Millerism was diluted and challenged by
other doctrines; in which the social support received from co-religionists
had to compete with the apathy, not to say the hostility, of the general pop-
ulation; and in which the ultimate concerns of a millennial vision were con-
tradicted by the mundane and often frivolous activities of daily life. The
Millerites could draw a social boundary around themselves for the period
of a revival meeting but could not sustain that separation once the revival
ended. The result was a sequence of spectacular but short-lived successes.
The problems inherent in the maintenance of high commitment in an
urban environment had already been grasped by more conventional reviv-
alists who had begun to penetrate urban areas by the early 1830s. They
quickly found that the rapidly growing cities lacked those conditions that
had contributed to the early growth of the Second Great Awakening in small
towns:

Of crucial importance in producing revivals of this kind was the cul-

tural and ethnic homogeneity of a relatively tightly knit community
such as a New England township, with its common religious traditions,
its experience and expectation of periodic revivals, and a population
small enough for all the families to be acquainted. In this environment,
 ORGANIZING FOR THE MILLENNIUM 133

once a revival had broken out in the churches themselves ... and had
soon become common knowledge, it was often possible to bring the rest
of the community into the revival’s embrace.”

Effective urban revivalism depended upon the creation of a stable network

of support organizations—Sunday schools, Bible and tract societies, and
missions. It soon became clear that pressures to maintain regular business
hours and the competition of new, specifically urban leisure-time activities
(taverns, theatres, and political rallies, for example) made protracted reli-
gious activities far more difficult. Day-long and even week-long religious
services, which had been a staple of rural and small-town evangelism, met
strong resistance in most cities.?> Millerism occurred at a time when cities
were entering an era of high growth, in which their already diverse compo-
sition was being further intensified by high rates of intra- and inter-city
mobility.
In retrospect, it is easy to understand why Millerism was drawn to the
city: Improvement in transportation made access easier. Cities were grow-
ing rapidly and hence held the prospect for mass proselytizing. The cultural
cliché of the city as a place of vice and debauchery perversely reinforced its
religious attractiveness; these were people in dire need of salvation. Finally,
well-developed techniques for itinerant revivalism suggested a way of reach-
ing this tempting reservoir. Himes and his colleagues made fundamentally
erroneous judgments, however. While they correctly assessed the ability of
new transportation and communications channels to spread their message,
they failed to foresee the ability of these same channels to carry the messages
of their opponents with equal or greater effectiveness. Similarly, they accu-
rately perceived in the camp meeting a potent social invention, but they did
not accurately perceive its limitations. In rural and small-town settings,
camp meetings and similarly structured revivals could directly reach nearly
the entire community population. Thus, the social boundaries of the revival
and the boundaries of the natural community were virtually coextensive.
But no tent, however enormous, could enclose more than a fraction of an
urban population, so that all urban revivals had to confront populations the
majority of which were not directly involved in it.
The freedom to desist from normal economic behavior and to adopt a
theocentric style of life were severely circumscribed in the cities. Signifi-
cantly, the extant stories of Millerite abstention from routine activities in
fact come from rural areas, rather than from cities where they would be ex-
pected to draw greater notice.” In the presence of a population that was ei-
ther disinterested or scoffing, Millerites quickly backslid. In the absence of
an institutional apparatus to provide social support for believers, Millerism
134 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

had difficulty competing in an urban environment. Not until early 1844 did
large numbers of Millerites systematically break with the churches, and
then the lateness of the hour and Millers own ambivalence about organi-
zational separation prevented the establishment of an effective organiza-
tional network.?5
In the end, Millerism remained strongest in those upstate areas where
the insularity of village life prevailed. The westward shift of the movement
in 1843 returned it to an environment in which entire communities might
effectively be proselytized and in which self-contained coteries of believers
were better protected against outside hostility. These populations, drawn
by adversity from western New England, strongly resembled the commu-
nities in which the First and Second Great Awakenings had originated.
It is questionable whether any mass millenarian movement could have
consolidated its membership under these conditions. The organizational
problems of the Millerites were paralleled by those which confronted secu-
lar millenarians such as Socialists in Europe and America. The history of
radical political organization in the 1800s suggests that at least until mid-
century the unpalatable choice lay between secret societies so small as to be
political innocuous and mass organizations whose beliefs were so diluted as
to be trivial.*° Like them, the Second Adventists found it impossible to com-
bine large numbers with high commitment to a deviant ideology.

UTOPIAN COMMUNITIES AS AN ORGANIZATIONAL ALTERNATIVE

One of Millerism’s major difficulties was its failure to maintain boundaries

in urban areas and thus separate itself from non-believers. The better de-
fined the boundary, the less the opportunities to convert others. Since
spreading the Adventist message was the overriding goal, Millerism was
forced into the uncomfortable trade-off of gaining access to potential mem-
bers at the cost of jeopardizing the following it already had.
The utopian communities foreswore the goal of mass followerships.
The creation of a largely self-sufficient rural community precluded a group
of more than several hundred. The land-population ratio ranged from
slightly more than five acres per capita to somewhat more than eleven.”
Taking the midpoint of eight acres per inhabitant, a community of 200
would have required 1,600 acres of land, at a time when the average farm
size was only 200 acres. Even taking account of the generous supply of land
at the time, these requirements placed a relatively low ceiling upon the pop-
ulation of individual communities. This, rather than ideology, may explain
the tendency of some of the more successful communities such as the Shak-
 ORGANIZING FOR THE MILLENNIUM 185

ers and Oneida to hive off new communities rather than simply to expand
the original settlement. Thus the segmentation of utopian communities was
at least as much an ecological response as it was the result of introspection
on the nature of the ideal community.
Utopians recognized the link between loyalty and physical separation,
which perhaps explains why there were virtually no urban communities un-
til the 1960s. The utopians’ problem, however, was in identifying how much
separation was required.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter, working with a modified version of Bestor’s
inventory of communities, measured the longevity of ninety groups founded
between 1790 and 1860. Only eleven lasted twenty-five years or more, while
seventy-nine dissolved before they had been in existence a quarter of a cen-
tury. Indeed, when she intensively studied a third of the original set, she
found that most lasted fewer than two years, including all the Fourierist ex-
periments.** Longevity was closely related to the members’ commitment to
the enterprise, and commitment in turn was the product of two processes.
Communitarians had to be detached from their pre-communal life and
simultaneously provided with a new sense of identity. Groups that allowed
ties with old lives to persist were destined to dissolve quickly, while those
that demanded renunciation of former status, wealth, family connections,
and beliefs fared much better, provided that the inner vacuum created by the
acts of renunciation was filled by a new identity deemed more precious than
the old.”?
Fourierists, who awkwardly straddled the external world of social re-
form and the internal world of their separate communities, could not resolve
factional struggles any more than the Owenites twenty years earlier. The So-
dus Bay Phalanx, near Rochester, N.Y., for example, experienced in addi-
tion to its economic problems an unresolvable dispute about Sabbath ob-
servance.*° The Shaker communities and Oneida, by contrast, required the
full investment of members’ energies and resources. The psychological pres-
sures systematically exerted on members who deviated from communal
norms were usually sufficient to either drive out the unadaptable or modify
their behavior.?!
Most communities were independent ventures. They were influenced
by one another, with individuals migrating among them, but most were sep-
arate corporate entities. This principle of segmentation partially insulated
them from each other’s failures. Marginal differentiation in beliefs and
practices meant that one group’s misfortunes did not necessarily presage
disaster for others. The closer the organizational links among communities,
the greater the interdependence of their fates. The results of intercommunal
linkage were sometimes positive, as in the Shakers’ case. Often, however,
the result was negative, as it was for the Fourierists. Albert Brisbane’s tire-
136 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

less organizational work gave Fourierism a federative structure that ironi-

cally contributed to communal vulnerability. In 1844, for example, four up-
state New York communities, including Sodus Bay, formed the American
Industrial Union “for the purpose of counteracting inducements to compet-
itive rivalry among themselves, as individuals or institutions; and to the end
that the advantages of location, climate and facilities of production peculiar
to one shall enure to the benefit of all.’>* Instead of contributing to the
“benefit of all,” this and other efforts to make Associationism a cohesive
movement implicated all in the difficulties of some.
Fourierist leaders tried to immunize surviving communities by pub-
licly dissociating themselves from the failures. However, the Fourierist pen-
chant for federation made it impossible to fully abandon sinking ships, for
in the public mind all Associationist ventures were linked together.
Apart from such cases, American utopians were sufficiently seg-
mented so that the damage caused by any single community’s demise could
often be contained. Segmentation was reinforced by the spatial location of
the communities. All were rural. Most were at least five miles from a town
and were not on a waterway or railroad.*? Settlement and social organiza-
tion did not exhaust or even unduly restrict the availability of cheap land
prior to the Civil War, so that compact blocs were available for purchase
throughout the period. Given the tendency of utopians to work land some-
what more intensively than their neighbors, recourse to the frontier was
unnecessary.*4
The locational pattern confronted utopians with an organizational
dilemma. On the one hand, there was little incentive to establish communi-
ties in remote areas. Considerations of practicality hence led utopians to
generally remain where they were, forsaking towns and cities for the im-
mediate rural hinterland. On the other hand, the avoidance of frontier treks
carried its own risk, for if one remained in settled regions, old life-patterns
might never be broken and the new society that was envisioned might re-
main contaminated by the environment. The tension between engagement
and separation was greater than it might have been had the communities
been established in unpopulated areas.
Most communities wanted both separation and engagement, the sep-
aration to ensure a different way of life and the engagement in order to in-
fluence the behavior of others. Where separation predominated, as in the
German-language communities, long-term survival was possible but with
minimal impact upon the larger society. Where engagement predominated,
as at Brook Farm, quick dissolution was predictable, for members never
fully detached themselves from old patterns of behavior. The Shakers and
the Oneida Community were far more successful in achieving a balance, as
 ORGANIZING FOR THE MILLENNIUM 137

the result of highly developed systems of internal social control to detect and
purge the ways of the world.
Physical boundaries were insufficient unless they also marked social
boundaries. A community’s landholding was significant to the extent that
behavior changed within it. Social boundaries were more easily maintained
when they coincided with physical boundaries. When spatial location was
a metaphor for social difference, the transactions that occurred across the
physical boundary provided a precise indicator of the distinctiveness
within. Utopians recognized that the possession of territory is the most ef-
fective way of maintaining social difference. But utopians did not always
recognize that territory confers autonomy only if there is the will and ca-
pacity to control cross-boundary transactions—who comes and goes and
for what purposes, what is read and heard and how much trade is required.
At a less-conscious level, utopian experimentation manifested long-
standing American cultural bias against urban life. The Jeffersonian anti-
urban tradition identified the city with selfishness and immorality. This tra-
dition assumed increasing relevance during the rapid urban growth of the
1830s and 40s, with its rising problems of urban poverty and disorder.*°
Those committed to beginning society on a new foundation could only have
seen in the city a peculiarly unhealthy and unpropitious setting for their ef-
forts. Rather than become trapped in the morass of urban problems, the
utopians chose to begin in the putatively unspoiled and positively valued
countryside. In this respect, utopians and Millerites were mirror images of
one another, for the Millerites were attracted to the city precisely because its
inhabitants were wretched; their souls were more in need of saving.

COMPARING MILLERITE AND UTOPIAN ORGANIZATION

Neither the Millerite proselytizers nor the utopian community-builders

could resolve the organizational question of the nineteenth century: How
could high commitment to a deviant belief system be maintained in cities?
Proselytizing could marshal numbers, but it could not keep them. Com-
munities could maintain high commitment, but only among small groups.
Second Adventism, however, was inherently unstable, while utopian com-
munities could potentially, and in many cases actually, stabilize themselves
for significant periods.
Millerism’s instability was as much a consequence of its organiza-
tional aspirations as of its failed predictions. Since it did not supply ade-
quate social reinforcement to its urban followers, they quickly fell away. In
138 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

the absence of membership data, one can only speculate that in addition to
the sharp drop that followed predictive failures, significant numbers also
left during the period of most conspicuous growth. Thus the size of the fol-
lowership—accepting Miller’s own figure of 50,000 highly committed ad-
herents—may have masked significant movement in and out. The move-
ment’s contraction appears closely related to a retreat out of large cities,
back to small towns, principally in the Burned-over District. There, much
diminished in size, it could stabilize sufficiently to preserve a core of Adven-
tists against the day when the movement took conventional denominational
form. Its days as a mass movement over, Adventism could retain the loyalty
of the small numbers able to provide one another with social support.
~ Utopian communities required no such metamorphosis, since most
were small, bounded, and intimate by design. Stabilization required effec-
tive boundary maintenance and a recruiting system sufficiently rigorous to
weed out the frivolous. Stabilization, however, meant reduced expectations
of world transformation. Except insofar as communities remained exem-
plars, they directly touched relatively few lives.
These organizational considerations may appear irrelevant to the con-
cerns of people who desperately desired the imminent perfection of life on
earth. A stable organization, after all, presumes the continuation of the sta-
tus quo. Yet for several reasons organizational requirements were impor-
tant even for chiliasts whose eyes were set on the last days. The most evident
reason is that the provision of a stable social framework permits more suc-
cessful adjustment to prophetic failure. We cannot know how long Miller-
ism might have persisted or how large it would have been if its members
could have endured their disappointments within a more formal structure.
Although the millennium can be thought of as an absolute, the concept is
malleable enough to fit a number of forms of rationalization. The postmil-
lennialists had already installed one such form, in which the millennium
came in increments over a long period of time. Adventists who soldiered on
experimented with other rationalizations, such as recalculations of the date
or the spiritualization of physical events. When events became invisible,
predictions became nonfalsifiable. The utopians were rationalizers as well,
for they believed something very like the millennium could be attained
within their own spatial limits. The utopian way of life consequently be-
came a surrogate for the more far-reaching transformations which were be-
yond the capacities of the communities. Life in the communities thus pre-
figured changes which at some distant time would encompass the world. In
the meantime it provided compensatory satisfactions to the communities’
members, who could, as it were, live the millennium in advance of its
arrival.
 THE MILLENARIAN PROCESS

caEXPECTATIONS for a transformed future in the 1840s were expressed

/ in two distinct styles. Millerism stayed within the stylized framework
of portent analysis, even as it adopted the most modern forms of mass
communications. Utopian communities displayed greater sensitivity
to social and economic issues even as they withdrew from the public
arena. The curious character of the decade lies not simply in the inten-
sity of its eschatological longings but in the diverse forms they took. The
stresses that played upon the inhabitants of the Burned-over District ac-
count for the millenarian hopes, but one must probe deeper to account for
the dispersion of energies into such different forms—one avoiding all as-
sociation with social and economic issues despite its intense pursuit of ur-
ban support, the other cultivating an acute sensitivity to the anxieties pro-
duced by social and economic upheaval, yet content to remain within its
communal settlements.
This bifurcation of the millenarian impulse was in large part attrib-
utable to changes that had occurred in the nature of disaster itself.

DISASTER IN HISTORY

The survival of human life has always depended upon a balance between the
severity of collective stress and the vulnerability of populations. Premillen-
nialism developed in the traditional societies of western and central Europe
139
140 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

beginning in about the eleventh century. In this agrarian social order, dis-
aster came principally from nature. The low level of technological develop-
ment limited the capacity of human beings to inflict suffering and injury
upon one another. The limits lay neither in human virtue nor self-restraint
but in the restrictions inherent in an age of animal and human energy, primi-
tive transportation, and face-to-face personal combat.
Traditional millennialism was, like most of the rest of life, an affair of
the countryside. Norman Cohn, in his influential work, The Pursuit of the
Millennium, argued a very different position, that millennialism in the Mid-
dle Ages (and by extension subsequently) was quintessentially urban, the re-
sult of the interplay among unemployment, anomie, and overcrowding in
the expanding textile towns of western Europe.' The anxieties of their ur-
ban proletariats were discharged through the demagogic chiliasm of un-
scrupulous charismatic prophets. The initial plausibility of this urban thesis
lies in its reinforcement of two strong cultural predispositions, the belief in
the corruption and disorderliness of cities, and the presumption that urban
crowds are necessarily irrational.* Since neither is self-evidently true, any
argument premised upon them must be examined with care.
Although a fuller critique appears elsewhere,’ four points suggest that
Cohn’s thesis requires substantial reservations. First, documentary evi-
dence almost invariably overrepresents events in urban areas, the location
of most institutions that compile retrievable records. Second, the preindus-
trial city was far smaller and structurally different than those of the nine-
teenth and twentieth centuries; the Miinster of the Anabaptist millenarians
held fewer than 20,000. All such cities combined contained only a fraction
of the total population, which remained overwhelmingly rural through the
eighteenth century. Third, the cyclical unemployment affecting small num-
bers of textile workers was a far less important threat than epidemic disease
or famine, each of which was capable of rapidly reducing population by as
much as one-third. Finally, even taking account of the urban bias in the his-
torical record, there is ample evidence of significant rural millennialism.
Peasant uprisings, often tinged with messianic hopes, accounted for a far
higher proportion of collective unrest than the conspicuous but atypical ur-
ban movements.4
It seems reasonable to conclude, therefore, that millenarian move-
ments were not notably urban phenomena, and that stresses to which tra-
ditional societies were most likely to respond were those enshrined in por-
tent analysis, natural aberrations, and, to a lesser extent, wars. Indeed, the
tenacity of traditional premillennialism resulted from the close match be-
tween its categories and the significant forms of harmdoing. Since these
categories included most sources of collective suffering, they and their re-
 MILLENARIAN PROCESS 141

lated millenarian ideas might be effectively deployed in order to give moral

significance to otherwise inexplicable events.
However, this fit between millenarian conceptualizations and sources
of human misfortune became decidedly less harmonious by the late eigh-
teenth century.’ Their growing incongruity was the result of two develop-
ments: the declining perceived significance of traditional forms of harm-
doing and the rising perceived significance of novel forms. The decline of
traditional modes resulted from both intellectual and material causes. Keith
Thomas points out, for example, that magic began to decline in seventeenth-
century England even before there was any objettive increase in the degree
of physical security: ‘““The change... was thus not so much technological as
mental.” This growing feeling of human mastery reduced the sense of im-
potence in the face of natural perils. These sentiments were initially more
evident among elites than among masses, and in cities more than in rural
areas. Even where the commitment to mastery over nature existed, its prac-
tical exercise was often constrained. The constraints were in part technolog-
ical, but they were also social, for relatively rigid social stratification, with
its implied duties that inferiors owed to superiors, necessarily limited op-
portunities to manipulate the physical world.
The social fragmentation in America that was so prominent a part of
the period between 1830 and the Civil War played a dual role in the process
of asserting mastery. On the one hand, as social controls weakened and op-
portunities for social mobility grew, chances for unfettered inventive and
entrepreneurial activity increased as well.’ The release of productive ener-
gies and the liberation of individual ambition required the taming of the
natural world. If its forces could not always be controlled, human impotence
was at worst temporary, a deficit of knowledge and technical skill rather
than a limitation in principle. A thoroughly manipulative attitude toward
nature necessarily eroded the older link between natural phenomena and di-
vine providence. Given the confidence in human enterprise, it was more dif-
ficult to view natural anomalies and disasters as divine messages for the ed-
ification of an errant humanity.
Social change, however, was not simply a liberator of energies, for so-
cial transformations could themselves be disasters. The same developments
that liberated some profoundly unnerved others. Disaster was no longer a
condition inflicted by nature or the prerogative of warmaking rulers. A cul-
ture newly imbued with belief in the efficacy of human action created con-
ditions that rewarded some but victimized others. The new victims were as-
sociated with these new, anthropogenic stresses* that arose out of industrial
production, with its emphasis upon repetitive unskilled work; out of the na-
tionalization of the economy that both reduced local self-sufficiency and
142 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

imposed the perceived tyranny of supply and demand; and, finally, out of
the wrenching fluctuations of boom-and-bust that made each economic im-
provement hostage to mysterious, ill-understood forces.
The early and mid-nineteenth century was the watershed dividing a
time of traditional calamities from a period of qualitatively different catas-
trophes.’ In the past lay the disasters identified as apocalyptic portents—
earthquakes, floods, famines, epidemics, and traditional warfare. Such ca-
lamities were becoming rarer because they could be controlled and pre-
dicted, as in the case of floods and diseases, or because general mastery over
nature made them appear less threatening, as in the case of earthquakes. But
the time ahead was in fact not necessarily more peaceful or secure, for new
disasters that had been inconceivable before in time became common-
place—mechanized warfare, economic depression, and genocide among
them. By and large, the waning destructive capacity of nature was more than
matched by the rising destructive capacity of human beings.
Since there are no definitive boundary lines in history, it belabors the
obvious to say that the two eras merged into one another. One can assign
no precise date to the shift in the balance. Clearly, appalling acts of human
cruelty preceded the nineteenth century, just as devastating natural catas-
trophes have followed it. Nonetheless, one may generally discern a shift
around the pivot of the first five or six decades of the 1800s. Events in New
England and New York between 1810 and about 1844 constitute a striking
microcosm of the process, with their dramatic grouping of natural disasters
at the beginning and humanly caused catastrophes at the close.
As so often occurs at times of fundamental change, the ideas available
to organize experience lagged seriously behind the experience that needed
to be understood. In a condition of perceived disorder, however, old ideas
seemed better than none. The initial appeal of Millerism lay in its claim to
narrow the gap between beliefs in justice and an apparently capricious real-,
ity. The vulnerability of Millerism lay in the fact that it failed to directly ad-
dress the most novel and disturbing aspects of experience, and hence offered
only generalized solace. At the same time, the utopians groped toward a
new understanding of the conditions for moral order. Their barely disguised
millenarian speculations, because they were not constrained by traditional
scriptural interpretations, could take account of events the Millerites were
compelled to minimize. The changes in the sources and types of collective
stress engendered a search for ways to reconcile these stresses with beliefs
about a benign and ordered universe. Although Millerites and utopians uti-
lized different resources in attempting to effect this reconciliation, both
sought routes to moral order that distinguished them from the accepted be-
 MILLENARIAN PROCESS 143

lief systems of their times. Second Adventism and utopian community-

building may be conceived as the end stage of a process through which hu-
man groups seek to accommodate collective stress.

A MODEL OF THE MILLENARIAN PROCESS

When the environment prevents individuals from readily meeting their

needs and satisfying their desires, they are said to be “under stress.” Small
amounts of environmental resistance have a tonic effect, stimulating the
senses and drawing forth reserves of energy. As levels of environmental re-
sistance rise, however, the effects become unpleasant to more and more peo-
ple, who attempt to eliminate the stress or escape from the stressful situa-
tion. Except for a minority of stress-seekers attracted by challenges and
obstacles, ‘“‘stress, anxiety, and fear are considered unwanted states im-
posed by a cruel environment—by our corrupt fellows, by a harsh natural
world, and by a devilish internal legacy of our formative years.”’!°
High stress may not only be unpleasant, it may endanger survival it-
self, as when disease exceeds our ability to provide effective therapies. The
result may not only be individual suffering but death.
Just as stress varies in intensity —producing stimulation, discomfort,
or death—so it afflicts groups as well as individuals. A human community
exists to meet the needs of its members, and when it can no longer do so for
substantial numbers, the result is collective rather than individual stress.
When segments of a community cannot sustain their conditions of life, the
consequence is more than multiplied instances of individual suffering and
frustration, for the failure of a social system to sustain its members may
make the very existence of acommunity problematic. An ongoing social sys-
tem must provide minimum levels of food, shelter, security, and health.!'!
Every community consequently must develop social coping mecha-
nisms for the management of collective stress. Since the vicissitudes of na-
ture, human aggressiveness, disease, and economic instabilities can all jeop-
ardize group survival, collective ingenuity has historically been devoted to
keeping stress at bay, preventing it where possible and limiting it when pre-
vention is impossible. Social coping mechanisms handle stress at three lev-
els. The levels are commonly activated in sequence, later mechanisms com-
ing into full play only as predecessors fail. The three levels, to which we shall
shortly turn, are: damage control systems, which attempt to prevent stress
or repair its consequences; theories of mistakes, which seek to explain those
144 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

instances in which damage control systems fail to operate effectively; and,

finally, alternative worldviews, which may take hold when theories of mis-
takes are perceived to be insufficiently persuasive.
When a community undergoes traumatic stress, the restoration of sta-
ble social life depends upon more than merely making good the material
losses. If the community is to survive in anything like its prior form, the
community’s beliefs must be interpreted in ways that are compatible with
the disaster. At the individual level, victims attempt to make sense out of
what has happened and confront the inability of existing institutions to pro-
tect them. At the collective level, the society’s institutions respond by offer-
ing a theory of mistakes'*—a set of propositions that explain the inability
of the community to fully meet its members’ needs.
Stresses are sometimes so intense and prolonged that theories of mis-
takes become discredited, hollow rationalizations that no longer convince.
As adjuncts to the community’s fundamental values, they are implicated in
the failure of communal institutions. When theories of mistakes have been
discredited, the world is perceived as a moral anarchy which can be neither
controlled nor understood. Since perceptions of moral disorder are incom-
patible with stable group life, the only alternative to demoralization and dis-
integration is an alternative world view.'> In this manner, heterodox concep-
tions of reality stigmatized in normal times are sometimes adopted willingly
in times of crisis.
Thus the coping mechanisms stand in a hierarchical relationship.
Damage control systems usually function well enough to maintain stress at
levels which, if not tolerable for all individuals, at least permit the commu-
nity to maintain itself. When damage control temporarily fails, theories of
mistakes seek to explain the failure, and when they can no longer do so per-
suasively, the way lies open for competitive conceptions of reality.
All ongoing communities devise techniques that insulate their mem-
bers from harmful stress. This array can include elements as diverse as law
enforcement and military defense; weather prediction; medicine and sani-
tation; and food production, storage, and distribution. These elements
of damage control are fundamentally protective, for they strive to erect a
wall between the individual and uncontrolled human passions or natural
disasters.
However, even societies at high levels of technological and social com-
plexity can only partially attain this goal. They must therefore be capable of
handling the effects of unpreventable stress. When preventive damage con-
trol fails, resort is made to compensatory damage control. In order to re-
store the status quo, remaining resources are directed to the survivors. The
mechanisms for doing so include traditional forms of self-help, by families,
 MILLENARIAN PROCESS 145

neighborhoods, or villages, together with such complex institutional forms

of compensation as private insurance and public and private social welfare
organizations.
The sense of vulnerability felt by Americans of the 1830s and 40s re-
flected fundamental social and economic changes which were altering the
ethnic and class composition of the population, the deference inferiors had
habitually paid to superiors, and the stability of family life. The transition
from social rigidity to at least relative mobility implied invigorating oppor-
tunity, but also bespoke the fragility of familiar social arrangements. As a
result, “the theme of decline and doom remained a constant one throughout
the first half of the nineteenth century,” both despite and because of prolif-
erating opportunities.'* One expression of this anxiety was the growth of
protective and compensatory institutions. The asylum, almshouse, peniten-
tiary, and orphanage attempted to isolate and rehabilitate the ominous so-
cial deviants thrown up by immigration, internal migration, and a boom-
and-bust economy.'> In much the same manner, evangelical Protestants
translated their postmillennial aspirations into organizations directed at
social betterment. Temperance, abolition, and poor relief associations
sought ultimate goals of spiritual growth, but they were also barricades
thrown up against forces of danger and evil.
The growing system of damage control was primarily urban, for in the
urban centers poverty, crime, and immorality were most visible and
feared.'* The smaller the community, the less likely that it could support or
have ready access to the new institutions of vigilance and good works. This
web woven of alternate strands of fear and benevolence addressed concerns
that appeared endemic—alcoholism, crime, poverty —the stigmata of
what later periods would refer to as the “‘underclass.”’ Consequently, signif-
icant numbers of people lay outside the protective embrace of pre-Civil War
damage control systems, even though those systems had greatly expanded.
Rural inhabitants especially could not expect to enjoy the same measure of
security afforded city dwellers.
Given the limited capabilities of all systems of damage control, events
can occur for which these systems offer little or no protection. Failures of
protection and compensation have obvious material consequences, in the
form of deaths, injuries, property destruction, and lost productivity. Signif-
icant as these may be, however, there are intangible losses of comparable sig-
nificance. We wish not only to be physically protected from sickness, pov-
erty, and like afflictions; we also wish to live in a morally ordered universe
free of what we perceive as unmerited suffering. The suffering may be un-
avoidable but it should at least not appear to be capricious. As Melvin Ler-
ner has expressed it: “‘We want to believe we live in a [just] world where peo-
146 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

ple get what they deserve, or, rather deserve what they get.’’'” Events that
cannot be directly controlled can appear indirectly controllable if they can
be assimilated to a conception of moral-purpose.
Damage control systems may not be able to prevent first-order effects
of collective stress, such as death and injury. If failures occur, it becomes
critical to preserve conceptions of moral order, for if the universe is con-
ceived to be purposeful, life may gradually resume its course following ca-
lamitous events. Since every instance of human suffering implicitly calls
moral order into question, it falls to theories of mistakes to meet these chal-
lenges by rationalizing the failure of damage control.
Traditionally, religion has been the principal custodian of theories of
mistakes. These theories have assumed some of their most complex forms
in theological speculation on sin and suffering interpreted or justified as
punishment for misdeeds, testing of faith, or preparation for life after death.
These beliefs have often been intermingled with strictures concerning the in-
scrutability of God’s purposes and the expectation of a heavenly reward for
earthly misery.
Since the late eighteenth century, however, theories of mistakes have
also included prominent secular elements. They have incorporated folk
ideas about chance, luck, or fate, seeking to make intelligible the intrusion
of uncertainty into human life. There are also conceptions of risk-taking
implicit in ideas about economic competition and entrepreneurship, which
both justify success and rationalize failure. Like their religious predecessors
and counterparts, secular theories of mistakes often include a strong em-
phasis upon a benign future. Confidence in the inevitability of progress en-
ables current unpleasantness to be endured in the expectation of its eventual
extinction. Closely allied to this has been faith in science as the instrument
for the future alleviation of present ills.
The 1830s and 40s constituted a period in which religious theories of
mistakes remained extremely strong even as these new, secular theories were
on the rise. It was thus not uncommon to express general confidence in the
existence of a providential design while simultaneously accepting laissez-
faire economics. Individuals sometimes subscribed to elements of more
than one theory; different social groups were sometimes exposed or recep-
tive to particular kinds of explanations. Thus religiously derived theories
generally retained prestige in rural areas at times when secular theories
were making inroads among urbanites.
The inconsistent application of religious theories reflected their meta-
morphoses over the previous two centuries. Seventeenth-century theolo-
gians, as well as most believers, assumed that all events, whether in nature
or human affairs, constituted a moral unity, such that the resulting advan-
 MILLENARIAN PROCESS 147

tages and deprivations constituted a providential judgment on individuals.

“Behind such ideas lay the universal reluctance to recognize that the re-
wards and punishments of this world did not always go to those who de-
served them. The doctrine of providences was a conscientious attempt
to impose order on the apparent randomness of the human fortunes by
proving that, in the long run, virtue was rewarded and vice did not go
unpunished.”’!*
The disposition to regard worldly events in providential terms began
to wane in the late seventeenth century, but continued to exert influence as
late as the nineteenth, particularly in evangelical Protestant circles. Despite
the rising prestige of science, “‘nineteenth-century Evangelicals and sectari-
ans had as literal a faith in the doctrine of divine providence as any to be
found in the age of Cromwell or Baxter.”!”
Nonetheless, the ascription of moral meanings to events became more
difficult as those events came to be understood as the outcome of natural
processes, and as techniques developed, in medicine for example, for more
effective human intervention. If the afflictions of the natural order could be
controlled or manipulated by human beings, they could not as readily be
regarded as divine judgments. A tension consequently developed between
providentialism and a more manipulative and naturalistic outlook. The sur-
vival of providentialism into the nineteenth century resulted both from the
fact that not all social groups were equally acquainted with natural science
and also from the fact that a naturalistic position only incompletely ad-
dressed the anxieties and guilt of victims. The desire to live in a just world,
characterized by deservingness and moral order, was not adequately met by
the view that suffering was the result of accident.
Postmillennialism, which was rapidly achieving the status of an ortho-
doxy, insisted upon the primacy of the human will, working in harmony
with divine grace. If there were problems, injustices, and suffering, then
they would be solved, rectified, and alleviated by renewed human exertions.
Individuals could change themselves, and people acting in concert could
change society. While God was presumed to be the ultimate source from
which these energies were drawn, initiative and implementation now lay in
the hands of human beings. With its robust confidence and optimism, post-
millennialism flourished when success begat success, each new advance
building on past achievements and pointing toward future triumphs. Reviv-
als and organizations for social and religious reform rolled forward in a
seemingly unstoppable wave. As a theory of mistakes, postmillennialism
had the advantage of being a partially self-fulfilling prophecy. Where pre-
millennialism lingered over evidence of destruction and decline, postmillen-
nialism looked to more optimistic signs: the numbers of converts, the fre-
148 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

quency of revivals, and the spread of organizations dedicated to moral

edification and uplift. All of the postmillennialist indicators could in fact be
created, assuming that there was a will+to do so, and inasmuch as the mil-
lennium was to arrive bit by bit instead of all at once, partial fulfillment was
all that was required at any given moment.
The incremental view of millennial attainment supported a powerful
conception of moral order, for if suffering was still the human lot, it was also
given to human beings to progressively end it. However difficult to bear, the
ills of the moment could be tolerated in the realization that at some future
time, they would be dissolved. The vulnerability of the conception lay in the
fact that it was hostage to events. Although postmillennialism was partially
self-fulfilling, incomplete control over external forces limited the degree to
which its goals might be willed into existence.
Consequently, the disasters of 1810—44 created conditions in which
theories of mistakes were required. The more intense the stress, the more
those subjected to it required confirmation that events followed a meaning-
ful pattern. Initially, postmillennialism seemed to provide this assurance.
The conviction of inevitable improvement made the unpleasantness of the
moment appear merely a temporary setback. Postmillennialism provided a
viable theory of mistakes when applied to intermittent calamities, but fal-
tered under the added stress of the post-1837 depression.
A theory of mistakes can withstand profound contradictions while re-
taining the loyalties of those socialized to it, but there may be stresses for
which it cannot offer convincing explanations. Such sweeping catastrophes
occur infrequently, but when neither damage control systems nor theories
of mistakes shield against them, there may be recourse to the third level of
social coping mechanisms, the formation of alternative worldviews.
Few societies are in fact so homogeneous that all their members per-
ceive the world similarly. Theories of mistakes do not command universal
assent, even in the most stable times. While such theories offer “‘official”’ ex-
planations for misfortune, they coexist uneasily with a substratum of de-
viant beliefs. This subterranean realm of deviant ideas may include religious
heterodoxy, political radicalism, or magic and the occult. In any case, it is
likely to be publicly stigmatized and may be officially repressed, for it offers
ways of organizing experience that challenge normative conceptions. Al-
though deviant belief systems often have little public visibility —indeed, vis-
ibility may mean ridicule or worse—they have a stubborn survival capacity
within popular culture. In periods when stress can be readily accommo-
dated, they persist among small coteries of believers.
In times of high collective stress, deviant belief systems confront a
markedly more sympathetic audience. Their official adversaries having been
 MILLENARIAN PROCESS 149

at least partially discredited, these maverick ideologies benefit from a tem-

porarily open marketplace of ideas. Once ignored, scorned, or suppressed,
they now may be perceived in a new and favorable light, not only because of
an insupportable vacuum that develops when theories of mistakes are in-
validated, but also because the alternatives appear to possess a greater abil-
ity to address the crisis of meaning. They assert moral order where none
may appear to exist, typically by claiming access to previously untapped
sources of power, identified with some body of hidden knowledge, and often
promulgated by a charismatic figure. This knowledge purports to contain
principles for the classification of phenomena'into good and evil, pure and
impure. The world becomes a Manichean battleground upon which cosmic
forces contend. The outcome of the struggle is to be a millennium, in which
the corrupt existing order will be replaced by a new and flawless form of
social organization.
During the 1840s, alternative world views were available in abun-
dance, from the Millerites through secular and religious utopians. The at-
tention they received was out of proportion to the numbers of their follow-
ers, suggesting intense interest even among skeptics. They were perceived as
part of the general societal tendency toward extreme or deviant beliefs, to
which contemporaries attached the label “‘ultraism.”” While a suggestion of
irrationality still clung to the term (linked, perhaps, to the English abhor-
rence for religious ‘‘enthusiasm’’), the tendency to group these movements
together indicates an awareness that they presented a competing version of
reality. Irrespective of their numerous doctrinal differences, from the stand-
point of nominally orthodox onlookers they represented a concerted chal-
lenge to received ideas about justice and morality.
The conspicuous attention paid ultraism was in part a tribute to the
organizational and propagandistic talents of such men as Himes and Bris-
bane. But it also suggested the presence of an audience large enough to sup-
port sectarian publications, attend meetings, and read the equally volumi-
nous attacks in more mainstream newspapers and periodicals. The
visibility of millenarians was a product of their own commitment, the cur-
iosity of some non-members, and the hostility of others. The tension among
them typifies an era when the upholders of orthodoxy lack the self-confi-
dence to ignore challenges at the intellectual margins, and where skepticism
has grown to the point where even highly deviant belief systems might be
heard by a mass audience.
Millerites and utopians advanced different world views. The Second
Adventists argued that disasters should be thought of as intimations of di-
vine judgment. Since the greatest cataclysms were still to come, the task was
not to protect against the comparatively minor dangers of flood and earth-
150 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

quake but to gather the righteous remnant that would outlast the “burning
up of the world.” By this measure, contemporary ills could be both given a
function in a divine plan and reduced tothe status of warnings. In any case,
direct divine judgment would quickly replace the ambiguities of communi-
cation by natural disaster. The utopians offered a very different account.
They located the causes of suffering in the human will and institutions
rather than in the wildness of nature. These institutions were so far beyond
repair that they had to be abandoned in favor of a new society constructed
on moral principles. The principles invoked generally included equality of
wealth, equality of social position (although not necessarily of spiritual at-
tainment), and relative equality between the sexes. These might best be re-
alized by making it impossible for any individuals or select groups to place
their own interests above those of the community.
Millerites and utopians had different capacities for expressing their al-
ternative world views in social forms. Second Adventism was disdainful of
the need for cohesive organization. Its absence could be rationalized by in-
sisting that the imminence of the Second Coming made human organization
superfluous. Nonetheless, as we have seen, Millerism’s organizational dif-
fuseness contributed to its rapid contraction. Utopians not only judged ex-
isting institutions to have failed, they insisted as an organizational corollary
that substitute institutions be created. Communalists’ sensitivity to eco-
nomic disasters gave them an advantage over Millerism in confronting the
fragmented society of the 1840s. Their insistence upon organizational re-
construction gave concrete form to this ideological advantage. Not only
could they provide a more incisive critique of social problems; they could
also offer a way of life in which those problems would presumably disap-
pear. The communities were thus supposed to functioned as counter-soci-
eties with more effective damage control than the larger society beyond
their boundaries. (In fact, this goal was not always attainable, because com-.
munities were insufficiently insulated from their environment and because
internal fractures reduced their cohesion.)
The factors that created this open marketplace in world views were
transient. The economic difficulties passed. Organizational failures among
Millerites and some utopians increased public skepticism. The festering is-
sue of slavery and union pre-empted all others. It was no longer possible, as
it had been earlier for Miller and Noyes, to set abolition aside in favor of
allegedly more fundamental spiritual issues. Millenarian energies were ei-
ther redirected into the sectional battle”® or drained away.
Yet if the history of millennialism teaches any lesson, it is that the chili-
astic expectations of one era erupt in another. Eschatological themes lie dor-
mant but do not disappear. Although the post—Civil War period lies outside
 MILLENARIAN PROCESS 151

the immediate confines of our discussion, it may be useful to conclude by

sketching the directions millennialism Gola in the century that followed the
Civil War.

MILLENNIALISM 1865-1940

Post-bellum millennialism was episodic and diverse. It ebbed and flowed in

three wavelike movements. Its diversity lay in the increasingly dramatic con-
trasts between the religious and secular. After the 1840s, millennialism
reached notable peaks in the 1890s, 1930s, 1960s, and 1970s. In each era,
utopian communities coexisted with mass movements, but the mass move-
ments were as likely to advance political and economic ideologies as reli-
gious creeds. Not until the 1970s did traditional religious millennialism re-
gain some of the lost ground, a phenomenon to which attention will be
directed later.
By the end of the nineteenth century, millennialism was dominated by
secularizing tendencies. This occurred despite the partial recovery of reli-
gious chiliasm after the Millerite debacle. Adventist theologians, together
with other evangelical Protestants touched by millenarian speculation from
England, exerted increasing influence within the Baptist and Presbyterian
churches. Yet notwithstanding chiliasm’s renewed legitimacy, its supporters
were primarily urban clergy, without the upsurge of popular interest shown
in the 1840s.2! Fin-de-siécle millennialism belonged to secularists who con-
ceptualized salvation in terms of economic panaceas. The dominant millen-
nialism at the turn of the century was Populist, with its associated varieties
of radical economic reform.
Populism, Richard Hofstadter wrote, “looked backward with longing
to the lost agrarian Eden.” At the same time, it saw the road to redemption
blocked by “‘a sustained conspiracy of the international money power.’’2
This emotionally charged Manichean vision, although not held by all who
called themselves Populists,?> brought an essentially millenarian vision into
the national political arena by the time of the election of 1892. Cognate
themes of a millennium achieved through economic restructuring appear in
the writings and public careers of Henry George and Edward Bellamy.
George’s Progress and Poverty (1879) became the largest-selling economic
tract of all time, promising to eliminate social ills at one stroke by deriving
all public revenue from the taxation of land. Although George narrowly lost
the New York mayoral election of 1886, he remained a major focus of radi-
cal social change until his death in 1897.74 Bellamy’s 1886 utopian novel
152 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

Looking Backward, with its call for the nationalization of industry, became
the basis for a network of Nationalist Clubs, which, if not as large or vocal
as George’s single tax movement, nonetheless constituted a mass movement
in its own right. In addition, between 1894 and 1900, thirty-six new uto-
pian communities were founded (including two single tax and two Bella-
myite communities), the largest number since the foundings of the 1840s.
The next major peak occurred in the 1930s. In this case, too, secular
themes predominated, although the influence of militant fundamentalism,
notable since the 20s, could also be felt. Like the Populists of thirty years
earlier, figures such as Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and Dr. Frances Town-
send projected a millennium brought into being by some uniquely effica-
cious economic nostrum.*5 Long’s share-the-wealth plan, Coughlin’s mon-
etary proposals, and Dr. Townsend’s revolving-old-age-pension plan
elevated economic tinkering to the position of master-lever in the attain-
ment of a virtuous society. In addition, all evoked potent images of a rural
arcadia from which humanity had been expelled by conspiratorial greed,
but to which Americans could now return.
The New Deal itself became the vehicle through which others
launched sweeping communitarian experiments. Between 1933 and 1937,
a variety of government agencies established ninety-nine new communities,
with almost 11,000 units of housing, at a cost exceeding $100,000,000.7¢
Convinced that full industrial employment would never return, advocates
of subsistence homesteads, such as M. L. Wilson and Rexford Guy Tugwell,
sought to build a new society in the countryside. Other as yet uninventoried
private utopian initiatives attempted to return urbanites to the land.”
Both the millenarian wave of the 1890s and that of the 1930s occurred
during depressions comparable to the downturn of the 1840s. Although
space does not permit an examination of these cases as detailed as that al-
ready provided for the 1840s, the dynamics appear strikingly similar: Se-
vere collective stress called forth millenarianism in the form of both mass
movements and utopian communities. Ideas previously dismissed as crank
found eager followings after traditional conceptions of moral order ap-
peared to lose validity. Laissez-faire economics had sanctified as part of the
natural order a condition in which individuals were expected to reap the
gains and bear the burdens of economic decisions, yet as the ratio of win-
ners and losers shifted, this no longer provided solace. The losers’ funda-
mental problem was less their material interests (although this was surely
important) than their perceptions of injustice. Hence the emerging visions
of the millennium not only promised immediate future benefits; they incor-
porated the victims’ suffering within a vision of moral order.
 MILLENARIAN PROCESS 153

THE APOCALYPTIC MOOD 1960-85

No period in recent American history has seen as rich a growth of eschato-

logical groups and writings as the quarter-century since 1960. One national
magazine has characterized it as ‘‘apocalypse chic,” while another devoted
a cover story to explaining millenarian theology to a sophisticated and sec-
ularized readership.** The range of millenarian activity possesses a breadth
that invites comparison with the 1840s—urban and rural communes, cults
(many of a millenarian character), intellectual and academic considerations
of the end of the world, radical political groups’ofboth rebellious and rev-
olutionary varieties, and expansive fundamentalist religious organizations
encouraging millenarian interpretations of political events.
The complexity of the period does not lie simply in the variety of ideas
and organizations. In at least three significant respects, the chiliasm of the
post-1960 period overturned conventional expectations: It was not a period
of pronounced economic stress. Indeed, it was for the most part a period of
prosperity, and many of those associated with the apocalyptic mood were
members of favored groups, such as college students and fundamentalists in
the high-growth areas of the southeast. Second, the political millennialism
of radicals in the 1960s came only a few years after the apparent triumph of
political consensus in the 1950s. Finally, for the first time since the pre-Civil
War period, religious millenarianism was sufficiently vigorous to compete
effectively with its secular counterparts. A resurgent fundamentalism
brought a heightened anticipation of the last days.
This most recent period of millenarian ferment— William
McLoughlin calls it a new Great Awakening??—was not an era of natural
disasters or of economic depression, yet neither was it a time of stability. In-
deed, Americans perceived it as a period of almost unprecedented political
and social turbulence. The decade between the assassination of John Ken-
nedy and the resignation of Richard Nixon threatened symbols of political
legitimacy and order more directly than any period since the 1930s. Political
assassinations, racial and political rioting, the most unpopular war in
American history, and perceived misuse of government power implied to
many that political institutions were undeserving of support, morally
tainted, or incapable of governing effectively. At the center of that decade of
disorder lay the events of 1968, including the riots at the Democratic Na-
tional Convention and the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Dr. Mar-
tin Luther King, Jr.
The traumatic character of these years was measured not only in the
magnitude of civil unrest but in the sense of anxiety, malaise, and loss of
confidence. Such events suggest that “disaster” functions as a mental con-
154 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

struct which can be linked not only to observable death and destruction but
to events that symbolize loss of control and meaning. Highly destructive
events are not always classified as disasters. World War I overshadowed the
simultaneous world influenza epidemic, even though more lives were lost in
the epidemic. Relatively non-destructive events can be characterized as dis-
asters when onlookers regard them as confirming the existence of far greater
future dangers. The Haymarket Riot (1886) resulted in few deaths, yet was
‘apparent evidence of impending disasters” to Americans already appre-
hensive about political radicalism and urban immigrants.*° In like manner,
Americans in the 1960s grew to expect calamity, seeing in each new act of
violence further indications of its imminence.
~ The ten years that followed John Kennedy’s assassination were expe-
rienced as a sequence of disasters, even though the routines of daily life and
the other forms of institutions remained intact. “Disaster” became a con-
struction placed upon ambiguous events. The more frequent such untoward
events became, the greater the disposition to view them as defining Ameri-
can experience rather than as aberrations. As the subjective experience of
disorder grew, theories of mistakes functioned less well. The psychopath-
ology of assassins, the relative deprivation of ghetto rioters, and the inepti-
tude of officials were less convincing explanations than suggestions of con-
spiracy, a comforting if inaccurate way of reintroducing moral order. An
evil cabal, whose minions must be defeated by the forces of righteousness,
must surely lie at the center of such disorder.*!
The unexpected growth of political radicalism was both a cause of the
anxiety and a response to it. In 1960, Daniel Bell had offered his ‘‘end of
ideology” thesis, asserting that the traumatic economic and political events
between 1930 and 1950 had left ideologies of both Left and Right ex-
hausted: ‘‘For the radical intellectual who had articulated the revolutionary
impulses of the past century and a half, all this had meant an end to chilias- .
tic hopes, to millenarianism, to apocalyptic thinking—and to ideology. For
ideology, which once was a road to action, has come to a dead end.”
The exhaustion was compounded by disillusionment over ideologies
in power abroad and the rise of a political consensus in the United States.
On the one hand, European totalitarianism had demonstrated the conse-
quences of millenarians in power, while, on the other, the prosperous wel-
fare state of the 1950s seemed to command almost unanimous assent. The
old struggles, with their quest for ‘‘a new utopia of social harmony,” ap-
peared neither desirable nor necessary.
Bell’s essay reflected the political blandness of the 50s, yet Bell saw in
the interrupted polemic the potential for a climactic new discharge of mil-
lenarian energies: ““The new generation, with no meaningful memory of the
 MILLENARIAN PROCESS 155

old debates, and no secure tradition to build upon, finds itself seeking new
purposes within a framework of a political society that has rejected, intel-
lectually speaking, the old apocalyptic and chiliastic visions. In the search
for a ‘cause,’ there is a deep, desperate, almost pathetic anger.”*? The End
of Ideology described the muted political discourse of the 1950s but its de-
tection of “deep, desperate ... anger’? pointed forward to the New Left
eruption in the 1960s. The New Left appeared to contradict the argument
that ideology was moribund; ideological rhetoric reached an intensity un-
seen since the 1930s. But in fact the existence of the New Left confirmed the
end of ideology thesis. For the New Left was td:post—Civil War secular mil-
lennialism as Millerism had been to traditional religious millennialism—
the final, dramatic burst that precedes senescence, the penultimate attempt
to extract meaning from a belief system at the end of its capacity to speak to
present circumstances.
This terminal ideological exhaustion was confirmed by the tendency
of many in the New Left to migrate into non-political activities.

The journey out of politics was gradual. First came collectives as a base
for conventional radical political activity. Then came collectives as lab-
oratories where radicals could learn about how people interacted so
that the lessons might be used for the revolution. Then, finally, came the
commune purely for self-discovery. In the end, it seems, many radicals
totally surrendered to the dropout, subjective ethic that they had pro-
fessed to despise.**

Where the utopian communities of the 1840s, 1890s, and 1930s offered
economic equality, those of the 1960s offered personal growth, a demater-
ialized and psychologized millennium.*’ A millennium of revolutionary lib-
eration was swallowed up in a millennium of Maslowian self-fulfillment.
The communes grew rapidly beginning about 1965 and went into equally
rapid decline by the early and mid-1970s.** Their decline coincided with the
return of traditional premillennialism, a development as unforeseen in reli-
gion as the New Left had been in politics.
The heady days of countercultural radicalism had profoundly unset-
tled traditionalists, threatened by what they regarded as assaults upon pa-
triotism, family structure, and the work ethic. Quite apart from the more
dramatic events of the 60s, a number of social and legal changes helped pre-
pare the way for a new millenarian ambiance: the women’s movement, with
its challenge to traditional gender roles; the increasing frequency of sex be-
fore and outside of marriage; the visibility and activism of the gay commu-
156 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

nity; and Supreme Court decisions banning school prayer and permitting
abortion. While many viewed these developments as long overdue, others
saw them as the march of sin and immorality that validated a Manichean
view of the world: just as the U.S.—Soviet rivalry was the international
expression of the battle between light and darkness, so the confrontation
between traditional and innovative conceptions of right behavior was the
domestic expression of the struggle.
The premillennialism of modern fundamentalists, such as the Rever-
end Jerry Falwell, arose out of a system of Biblical interpretation developed
by the English evangelical, John Nelson Darby. Darby, a contemporary of
William Miller’s, taught a different approach to unlocking scriptural se-
crets, “‘dispensationalism.”’ Dispensationalism was a complex system for
dividing world history into religiously significant periods or ‘“‘dispensa-
tions.” The effect of these new historical divisions was to push the fulfill-
ment of Biblical prophecies into the future. Where Miller and those like him
insisted that prophecies had been progressively fulfilled throughout history,
the dispensationalists placed most prophetic fulfillment in the future. The
attractiveness of dispensationalism became immediately evident following
the Great Disappointment, for such traumas were far less likely where few
promises were made concerning immediate events. Dispensationalists were
able to combine Biblical literalism with deferred prophecies largely because
of their insistence the prophecies concerned the Jewish people rather than
the church.”
Dispensationalism was modestly influential until the post—World
War II period. Then, with the founding of Israel in 1948, and more partic-
ularly with Israeli consolidation of control over Jerusalem in 1967, the influ-
ence of dispensationalism rose dramatically, for its adherents could now ar-
gue that prophecies were in process of fulfillment and that the millennial
clock was running. The New Apocalypticism, grounded in dispensational-
ist theology, has produced a literature of its own, epitomized by Hal Lind-
sey’s The Late Great Planet Earth, which sold 7,500,000 copies, to make it
the largest selling non-fiction book of the decade.** It was only the most con-
spicuous of a mass-market genre which saw eschatological signs in the vi-
cissitudes of world politics. As we have already seen, mastery over nature
made the search for natural portents less productive. However, the new po-
litical constellation made it possible to salvage part of portent analysis by
concentrating upon the other major category of premonitory events, wars
and the overturning of nations. Events in the Middle East occurred within
the context of conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. Pro-
tracted political tension without the promise of early resolution also made
the use of political portents attractive. The seemingly unending East-West
 MILLENARIAN PROCESS 157,

crises increased the likelihood that at least some dire predictions would be
confirmed. At the same time, fear of nuclear weapons cast doubt on the
inevitability of progress through scientific discoveries.°”
The prominence of eschatological speculation is novel, but its visibil-
ity may not reflect increased numbers of millenarians. The battle between
fundamentalists and liberals, so often noted in the 1920s, may have led ac-
ademic observers to misjudge fundamentalist numbers, assuming that the
side with the less compelling argument must necessarily be smaller. In fact,
the size of fundamentalism may well have remained constant, even in peri-
ods when it was subjected to the harshest ridicule.*°
Whether or not there are more fundamentalists, apocalyptic argu-
ments have an enhanced ability to be heard. Five factors appear to account
for this. First, church memberships (as distinct from numbers believing par-
ticular doctrines) have changed dramatically since the 1950s. Liberal de-
nominations, inhospitable to premillennialism, have shrunk or barely main-
tained themselves, while more doctrinally conservative groups, such as the
Southern Baptists, have achieved notable membership increases. While the
expanding denominations have not necessarily been overtly millenarian,
their emphasis on Biblical literalism makes them more receptive to premil-
lennial arguments.
Second, the change in denominational growth patterns, with greater
resources available to evangelical Protestants, has given millenarians access
to a broad range of communications media. The systematic use of publica-
tions and television has diffused millenarianism beyond its core of commit-
ted adherents. This new communications capability has often fused with a
third factor, the shift in political attitudes toward the right. If the New
Right’s membership is disproportionately fundamentalist, taking apoca-
lyptic ideas seriously may be politically prudent.
Fourth, the region most often identified as the fundamentalist heart-
land—the South from Texas and Oklahoma eastward—has experienced a
dramatic increase in population and economic productivity. This too has
indirectly increased the prestige attaching to fundamentalist views by iden-
tifying their followers with an area of growth and wealth rather than with
economic backwardness and cultural marginality. The “‘Bible Belt,”’ in
H. L. Mencken’s derisive phrase, loosely referred to rural areas of the South
and Middle West in which individuals read the Bible in literal terms.*' If the
criterion is denominational membership, Mencken’s identification remains
valid. Counties in which 25 percent or more of the population belong to fun-
damentalist denominations lie overwhelmingly in the nonurban South, with
a scattering in the upper Middle West and north central states. Because de-
nominational identification only imperfectly measures belief, however, it is
158 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

useful to apply less formal measures. Thus Stephen Tweedie’s analysis of

viewing patterns for fundamentalist television programs indicates that in
addition to the traditional Bible Belt, fundamentalism is also important in
the urban South (with the exception of Miami and Washington), as well as
in small cities in Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, lower Michigan, Indiana,
Iowa, Nebraska, and the Dakotas.*2
The immediate audience for the New Apocalypticism is consequently
more diverse than stereotypes of fundamentalism suggest. Migration from
rural to urban areas, together with aggressive religious broadcasting and
publications programs, has established a potentially millenarian audience
outside farms and small towns, almost certainly larger than church mem-
bership data might suggest.
The fifth and final factor is perhaps the most complex, but it may well
be the most potent. At virtually the same time that the literature of the New
Apocalypticism was achieving popularity, a parallel secular literature was
rising to a position of influence among intellectuals, government officials,
and business leaders. This secular apocalyptic literature contended that be-
cause of the failure of individuals and nations to act wisely, decisions were
being taken or were about to be taken which would destroy “civilization as
we know it.” The genre began with Barry Commoner’s The Closing Circle
(1971) and the report for the Club of Rome, The Limits to Growth (1972).
A string of likeminded books followed, among them Robert Heilbroner’s
An Inquiry into the Human Prospect (1974), L. S. Stavrianos’ The Promise
of the Coming Dark Age (1976), and Jonathan Schell’s The Fate of the
Earth (1982).
The secular literature, divorced from religious traditions of portent
identification, attribute the future calamity to a wide range of causes: nu-
clear war, spiritual exhaustion, environmental degradation, overpopula-
tion, and the depletion of basic resources. The secular apocalypticists insist
upon the interrelatedness of the human and natural worlds; events in one
produce consequences in the other, such as the nuclear winter predicted as
the result of an exchange of missiles or the greenhouse effect produced by
the burning of fossil fuels. This link between the human and natural recalls
the unity presumed by the premillennialists. Premillennialists, however, ex-
pected events in the natural world to occur first, as warnings of what was in
store for humanity. Recent secular writers insist that human actions are
more significant, for they can drastically effect the quality and even the sur-
vival of the natural world.
The emphasis in this literature upon the imminence of destruction
conceals a more optimistic millenarian component, just as premillennial
cataclysms were intended to usher in a period of peace and plenty. Stavri-
 MILLENARIAN PROCESS 159

anos regards crises as the birthpangs that announce a new epoch of “‘the
transcendence of Homo sapiens to Homo humanus.”’* Alexander Solzhe-
nitsyn, although writing out of the Russian Orthodox tradition, was per-
ceived as a political dissident when he told a Harvard audience that the crisis
of the West “‘will demand from us a new spiritual blaze; we shall have to rise
to a new height of vision, to a new level of life.”’*+ Even the most pessimistic
claim to discern grounds for other than total despair. The Limits to Growth
was followed by a second report to the Club of Rome which promised that
it was still possible to turn from the “path of cancerous undifferentiated
growth ... to... the path of organic growth.”* The nuclear threat that
preoccupies Jonathan Schell may well produce “‘a republic of insects and
grass,” but “‘if it is possible to speak of a benefit of the nuclear peril, it would
be that it invites us to become more deeply aware of the miracle of birth, and
of the world’s renewal. ‘For unto us a child is born.’ This is indeed ‘good
news.’ °26
Notwithstanding these expressions of hope, nowhere can one detect
the robust confidence of the Millerites, for whom the consummation was
inevitable rather than merely probable or likely. Nor is there the more mea-
sured optimism of utopians, who had profound doubts about the world’s
capacities for improvement but did not doubt their own ability to redeem
small segments of it. The micro-millennial alternative is clearly not available
under conditions in which the coming calamity permits neither defense nor
escape. Only Robert Heilbroner approaches the utopian option, and only if
it is adopted by entire nations. Whole societies, he suggests, must choose
quasimonastic ways of life, with diminished emphasis on material goods
and the compensatory cultivation of ritual and aesthetic pleasures. ““The
struggle for individual achievement, especially for material ends, is likely to
give way to the acceptance of communally organized and ordained roles,”
sentiments of which Noyes or Brisbane would have approved, yet which here
can be effective only if adopted by millions rather than hundreds.
Although this literature can clearly be distinguished from the reli-
gious, its seriousness of purpose and the intellectual audience to which it is
directed have legitimized apocalyptic themes. These ideas of sudden trans-
formation are no longer dismissed as the product of a regional religious sub-
culture. Thus the secular writers have inadvertently buttressed the authority
of their less sophisticated premillennial counterparts. The two groups are
divided by matters of style and nuance rather than by fundamentally differ-
ent views of the world. Indeed, the religious and secular apocalyptic writers
have far more in common than pre- and postmillennialists did in the nine-
teenth century. They identify different agents of disaster but both predict a
final conflagration.
160 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

Yet one must be careful not to overdraw the parallels with the 1840s.
While millennial themes grow in profusion, they possess as yet no dominant
organizational expression. The New Lef¢ radical politics of the 60s is mor-
ibund. The countercultural communes have withered away. Cult move-
ments have stabilized and show no evidence of further expansion. The New
Apocalypticism continues in fundamentalist circles, but its followers do not
seem disposed to the acts of withdrawal and renunciation that distin-
guished Millerism. Secular doom-sayers, although they ‘claim an influential
audience, concentrate on propagandizing rather than organization. Only
the small groups of survivalists, living in wilderness areas with their stores
of food, have actually organized for Armageddon.
~ Larger movements may yet appear. Just as ideas sometimes are after
the fact rationalizations of behavior, so behavior often follows ideas. The
movements of the 1840s followed a decade when millennialists and utopians
spoke primarily to those already convinced. This phenomenon of speaking
to the converted often precedes an expansionist phase, for it provides an op-
portunity for ideas to incubate and develop, for a core of committed follow-
ers to gradually assemble, and for ideas to slowly diffuse. As long as dam-
age-control systems and theories of mistakes can manage the effects of
stress, alternative world views will not take hold beyond these small follow-
ings. However, they lie prepared, waiting only for damage control to fail and
for theories of mistakes to be discredited. Then, as they touch a newly re-
ceptive audience, fringe millennialist ideas suddenly acquire the capacity to
drive people to action. The catalyzing effect of disaster transforms specu-
lative ideas into militant creeds, and disaster, unfortunately, is usually only
a matter of time.
The immediate future provides an additional cultural trigger in the
proximity of the millennial year, 2000. Once the symbol of a technological
consummation, where human ills would yield to scientific solutions, the |
year 2000 is certain to revert to its ancient chiliastic function, a signpost on
the road to some cosmic overturning. For those attuned to a catastrophist
vision of history, such symbols fuse powerful metaphors of birth and death
in their insistence that one world must die before another can be born. The
magnetism of such images lies in their capacity to link the terminal events of
the individual life cycle with beliefs about universal generation and decay.
Their danger, however, lies in their ability to induce self-fulfilling prophe-
cies, for the millennial vision entails a struggle between normal desires for
safety and routine and an anticipation of the climactic disasters to come. In
a nuclear world, where human beings themselves possess the means for
world destruction, fascination with the end time may introduce a poten-
tially fatal passivity into precisely those areas of political life most in need
of decisive control.
 NOTES

INTRODUCTION

1. Alan R. Pred, Urban Growth and the Circulation of Information, pp. 48-49.
2. Charles G. Finney, Memoirs, p. 78. For a general discussion of the Burned-over Dis-
trict, see Whitney R. Cross, The Burned-over District.
3. Dolores Hayden, Seven American Utopias, pp. 199-202.
4. Whitney R. Cross, The Burned-over District, p. 173.
5. J.EC. Harrison, The Second Coming, p. 231.
6. Arthur Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, pp. vii—viii.

CHAPTER 1—THE MILLENARIAN STREAM

1. Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism, pp. 6-8.

2. Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, rev. ed., p. 24.
3. Ihave developed the themes in this and succeeding sections much more fully in an
earlier work, Disaster and the Millennium.
4. Anthony EC. Wallace, The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca. James Mooney, The
Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890.
5. On Brazilian movements, see for example, Maria De Queiroz, ““On materials for a
History of Studies of Crisis Cults.” For a discussion of Inca concepts of history, see Freidhelm
Hardy, “Despair and Hope of the Defeated.” As De Queiroz demonstrates, there have also
been numerous millenarian movements among Brazilian peasants. These, however, have Ibero-
Catholic rather than Indian roots.
6. Michael Adas, Prophets of Rebellion. T. O. Ranger, “Connexions between ‘Pri-
mary Resistance’ Movements and Modern Mass Nationalism in East and Central Africa.”
7. Guenther Lewy, Religion and Revolution, pp. 176-93.

161
162 NOTES

8. Kitsiri Malalgoda, ‘‘Millennialism in Relation to Buddhism.” Jean Chesneaux, Se-

cret Societies in China in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Jean Chesneaux, Popular
Movements and Secret Societies in China, 1840—1950. Eugene P. Boardman, ‘“‘Millenary As-
pects of the Taiping Rebellion (1851—64),” in Sylvia Thrupp, Millennial Dreams in Action, pp.
70-79.
9. The most systematic survey of this vast literature is I. C. Jarvie, The Revolution in
Anthropology. See also, Peter Worsley, The Trumpet Shall Sound, and D. Glynn Cochrane, Big
Men and Cargo Cults.
10. James Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men. -
11. The conference papers were published as Thrupp, Millennial Dreams of Action.
12. The literature has grown at a pace that has outrun bibliographies. The best review
remains, despite the passage of time, Weston La Barre, “Materials for the History and Studies
of Crisis Cults.”
~ 13. Norman Cohn, “Medieval Millenarism,” in Thrupp, Millennial Dreams in Ac-
tion, p. 31. Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, rev. ed., p. 15.
14. This material appears in the 1961 edition of Cohn’s The Pursuit of the Millen-
nium, pp. xili—xvi, 307-15, but not in his revised edition.
15. Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, rev. ed., pp. 59, 60.
16. E. J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels.
17. Anthony EF C. Wallace, “Revitalization Movements.”
18. The stigmatization of ‘‘enthusiasm”’ is discussed in Michael Heyd, “The Reaction
to Enthusiasm in the Seventeenth Century”; George Rosen, ‘‘Enthusiasm”’; and Susie Tucker,
Enthusiasm.
19. Harrison, The Second Coming, p. 13.
20. Alan Heimert, Religion and the American Mind, pp. 84-85.
21. Nathan O. Hatch, “The Origins of Civil Millennialism in America,” p. 427.
22. Ibid., p. 409.
23. James W. Davidson, The Logic of Millennial Thought, p. 259.
24, James W. Davidson, “Searching for the Millennium,” p. 258. In certain respects,
although not in this one, Davidson takes different positions in The Logic of Millennial
Thought, published five years after this article.
25. Heimert, Religion and the American Mind, p. 548.
26. William G. McLoughlin, “Revivalism,” in Edwin S. Gaustad, The Rise of Adven-
tism, p. 134. Roland Berthoff, An Unsettled People, p. 243.
27. Winthrop S. Hudson, “A Time of Religious Ferment,” in The Rise of Adventism,
p. 16.
28. John L. Hammond, The Politics of Benevolence, pp. 48—49.
29. Cross, The Burned-over District, pp. 5—6.
30. Finney, Memoirs, pp. 370—71.
31. Timothy L. Smith, “Righteousness and Hope,” p. 39. James H. Moorehead, “‘The
Erosion of Postmillenialism.”
32. Smith, “Righteousness and Hope,” p. 39.
33. Hammond, The Politics of Benevolence, p. 28.
34. Jean B. Quandt, ‘‘Religion and Social Thought,” p. 396.
35. Moorehead, “The Erosion of Postmillennialism,” pp. 76—77.
36. Ibid., p. 74.
37. Ernest L. Tuveson, Redeemer Nation.
38. Quandt, “Religion and Social Thought.”
39. Will Herberg, Protestant— Catholic—Jew.
 NOTES 163

CHAPTER 2—THE RISE OF THE MILLERITES

1. Richard Carwardine, Trans-Atlantic Revivalism, pp. 49-53.

2. E.g., David Ludlum, Social Ferment in Vermont, pp. 238, 253.
3. Robert Bruce Flanders, ““The Succession Crisis in Mormon History.”
4. Ernest D. Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism, p. 44.
5. William Miller, “Apology and Defence,” p. 22.
6 . Jonathan M. Butler, “‘Adventism and the American Experience,” in the Rise of Ad-
ventism, p. 175. Cross, The Burned-over District, p. 287.
Ths David Rowe, “The Millerites: A Shadow Portrait,” in Ronald L. Numbers and Jon-
athan M. Butler, eds., The Disappointed.
8. Historical Statistics of the United States, p. 13, )
9. Miller’s genealogy appears in Francis D. Nichol, The Midnight Cry, p. 477.
10. Aleine Austin, Matthew Lyon, pp. 13, 81.
11. Miller, ““Apology and Defence,” p. 3. ‘“The Second Advent. No. I,” The Liberator
13 (February 10, 1843): 23.
12. Joshua V. Himes, “Memoir of William Miller,” pp. 7—8.
13. Miller, “‘Apology and Defence,” pp. 6, 11.
14. Louis Billington, “The Millerite Adventists in Great Britain, 1840—1850.”
15: Clarke Garrett, Respectable Folly.
16. Ludlum, Social Ferment in Vermont, p. 15.
ee Miller, “Apology and Defence,” pp. 20, 22.
18. Sylvester Bliss, Memoirs of William Miller, passim.
19. Cross, The Burned-over District, pp. 68, 289.
20. Miller, “Apology and Defence,” p. 19. Nichol, The Midnight Cry, pp. 51, 57-58.
2a The Liberator 13 (February 10, 1843): 23.
22% Letter to Henry C. Wright, March 1, 1843, Walter M. Merrill, The Letters of Wil-
liam Lloyd Garrison Ill: 135.
Dey. Charles Johnson, The Frontier Camp Meeting, p. 79.
24. Nichol, The Midnight Cry, p. 100.
25% David Rowe, Thunder and Trumpets (1985), p. 36.
26. Nichol, The Midnight Cry, pp. 105—106, 121.
Dis Miller, “Apology and Defence,” pp. 24-25. Cross, The Burned-over District,
p. 304.
28. Le Roy Edwin Froom, The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers \V: 738-47. Ira V.
Brown, “The Millerites and the Boston Press.”
29. The New York Daily Tribune, March 2, 1843. Ira V. Brown, “The Millerites and
the Boston Press.”’ Jan Kobeski, ““The Millerites: An Examination of Press Attitudes.”
30. Charles Fitch, “Come out of her, my people,” pp. 17, 19.
. Ibid.
. Nichol, The Midnight Cry, p. 495.
. “Millerism,”’ American Journal ofInsanity 1 (1845): 250.
34. Ronald Numbers and Janet Numbers, “Millerism and Madness,” in Numbers and
Butler, eds., The Disappointed.
ky Cross, The Burned-over District, p. 288.
36. David Rowe, “A New Perspective on the Burned-over District,” p. 44. Thunder
and Trumpets (1985), p. 47.
37 Rowe, in Numbers and Butler, eds., The Disappointed.
38. Cross, The Burned-over District, p. 303.
164 NOTES

39. Barkun, Disaster and the Millennium, pp. 68—74.

40. David Rowe, “Thunder and Trumpets” (1974), pp. 285-355. Cross, The Burned-
over District, p. 303.
41. Cross, The Burned-over District, pp: 4-6. Hammond, The Politics of Benevo-
lence, p. 2.
42. Paul Johnson, A Shopkeeper’s Millennium.
43. Rowe, in Numbers and Butler, The Disappointed.
44, Marvin Hill, “Quest for Refuge” and “‘The Rise of Mormonism in the Burned-over
District.” t
45. Jonathan M. Butler, ““Millerism to Seventh-Day Adventism,” in Numbers and But-
ler, eds., The Disappointed.
46. Otohiko Okugawa, “‘Appendix A: Annotated List of Communal and Utopian So-
cieties, 1787—1919,” in Robert S. Fogarty, Dictionary of Communal and Utopian History, pp.
200-202.
47. William Hinds papers.
48. Day Star of Zion, July 1864, August 1864, Hinds papers.
49. Ibid., July 1864, December 1864.
50. Okugawa, “Appendix A: Annotated List of Communal and Utopian Societies,” in
Fogarty, Dictionary, p. 200. “The Germania Co. and Neighbors,” Wisconsin Pioneer and
Century Farms manuscripts, The State Historical Society of Wisconsin. | am grateful to Oto-
hiko Okugawa for bringing these materials to my notice.
51. Herbert W. Schneider and George Lawton, A Prophet and a Pilgrim, pp. 13-14.

CHAPTER 3—THE IMAGERY OF APOCALYPSE

1. William Miller, Evidence from Scripture and History of the Second Coming of
Christ, about the year 1843: Exhibited in a Course of Lectures. The few “modern” references
may be found on pp. 218-21.
2. Signs of the Times, May 1, 1840, p. 22.
3. Ibid., March 1, 1841, p. 182.
4. Ibid., August 9, 1843, p. 184.
5. The Midnight Cry, February 8, 1844.
6. Stanford J. Shaw and Ezel Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Moa-,
ern Turkey Il: 56—58.
7. Signs of the Times, August 1, 1840, p. 70.
8. Ibid., November 1, 1840, p. 117 (emphasis in original)
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid., February 1, 1841, p. 162 (emphasis in original)
11. Eric Anderson, “Signs of the Times,” in Numbers and Butler, eds., The Disap-
pointed.
12. Ibid., July 26, 1843, p. 168.
13. The Midnight Cry, June 15, 1843.
14. Ibid., April 27, 1843.
15. Ibid., December 5, 1842.
16. Signs of the Times, October 11, 1843, p. 64.
17. The Midnight Cry, July 6, 1843.
18. Signs of the Times, October 15, 1841, p. 109.
 NOTES 165

19. Ibid., July 6, 1842, p. 110.

20. Ibid., August 17, 1842, p. 166.
21. Signs of the Times, February 15, 1841, p. 170.
22. Ibid., November 1, 1843, p. 90 (emphasis in original). November 22, 1843, p. 123.
23. The Midnight Cry, November 25, 1842; April 20, 1843. Ray Allen Billington, The
Protestant Crusade, pp. 118-30.
24. David Rowe, “‘Comets and Eclipses,” pp. 15-16.
25. Ibid., p. 18.
26. Signs of the Times, March 22, 1843, p. 19 (emphasis in original).
27. Ibid., October 12, 1842, p. 28; February 22, 1843, p. 178.
28. Quoted in Stephen Marini, Radical Sects of Reyolutionary New England, p. 47;
see also p. 183. "
29. Ibid., p. 78.
30. The Midnight Cry, December 14, 1843.
31. Ibid., February 1, 1844.
32. Signs of the Times, June 15, 1842, p. 85.
33. The Midnight Cry, March 10, 1843.
34. Ibid., December 3, 1842.
35. Signs of the Times, October 11, 1843, p. 64.
36. Garrett, Respectable Folly, pp. 153-54.
37. The Midnight Cry, March 10, 1843.
38. The Liberator, February 17, 1843, p. 27 (emphasis in original)
39. Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down, p. 13.
40. Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter, When Prophecy Fails,
p23.
41. Ibid., p. 28.

CHAPTER 4—THE GROWTH OF UTOPIAN COMMUNITIES

1. Stow Persons, “Christian Communitarianism in America,” in Donald Egbert and

Stow Persons, Socialism and American Life 1: 134-35, 140-41.
. Lawrence Foster, Religion and Sexuality, p. 22.
. Ibid., p. 28.
wibidsp.32-
. The Perfectionist and Theocratic Watchman, March 22, 1845.
. Robert Thomas, “The Development of a Utopian Mind,” p. 110.
. Inthe
AWN
NNN “ ‘The Wind Sweeping over the Country’ ”’ I discuss Noyes’ convoluted mil-
lennialist theories at greater length, in Numbers and Butler, eds., The Disappointed.
8. The Perfectionist, August 31, 1835, p. 5.
9. Ibid., March 20, 1835, pp. 30—31 (emphasis in original).
10. John Humphrey Noyes to Alexander Wilder, October 31, 1840. George Walling-
ford Noyes papers, box 1. The GWF papers contain typescripts of correspondence and other
materials subsequently lost or destroyed.
11. John Humphrey Noyes, Confessions of John H. Noyes, p. 39 (emphasis in origi-
nal).
12. John Humphrey Noyes to his mother, May 1835. George Wallingford Noyes pa-
pers, box 1.
166 NOTES

13. Joanna Noyes Hayes to her family, June 23, 1835. George Wallingford Noyes pa-
pers, box 1. This letter appears in George Wallingford Noyes, The Religious Experience ofJohn
Humphrey Noyes, pp. 226—27. However, the reference to vicarious suffering and immortality
is omitted from the published version.
14. Noyes was given to the use of marine metaphors. Barkun, in Numbers and Butler,
eds., The Disappointed.
15. Carl J. Guarneri, “Importing Fourierism to America.”
16. Ibid., p. 582.
17. Quoted ibid., p. 586.
18. H.H. van Amringe, Nature and Revelation, pp. 115, 160- él.
19. Redelia Brisbane, Albert Brisbane, p. 208. This work was largely dictated by Bris-
bane to his wife. For an extended discussion of its credibility, see Arthur Bestor, “Albert Bris-
ses ” pp. 154-58.
20. Albert Brisbane, Social Destiny of Man, pp. 239—40 (emphasis in original).
21. Ibid., pp. 457, 480.
22. New York Daily Tribune, March 15, 1843.
23. Arthur Bestor, “Patent Office Models of Society,” in Backwoods Utopias, pp.
230-52.
24. Jeffrey B. Russell, Dissent and Reform in the Early Middle Ages, pp. 241—47. The
same area is discussed at greater length in Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium.
25. Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, p. 23.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid., pp. 277, 283-84.
28. Henri Desroche, The American Shakers, p. 56.
29. Foster, Religion and Sexuality, pp. 23~24, 267. Hillel Schwartz, The French
Prophets, pp. 211-12.
30. BernardJ. Siegel, “Defensive Structuring and Environmental Stress.”
31. The major exception is, of course, the Mormons. Their large numbers, compared
to the utopian communities, and their active political participation deprived them of the pro-
tections granted to groups whose beliefs and practices represented comparable deviations from
orthodoxy. For an insightful comparison of the politico-legal problems of Mormonism with
those of the Shakers, Oneidans, and other utopians, see Carol Weisbrod, The Boundaries of
Utopia, pp. 16-33.
32. Desroche, The American Shakers, p. 293. J. FE C. Harrison, Quest for the New
Moral World, p. 219.
33. Ibid., pp. 56, 152-53.
34. Quoted in E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, p. 788.
35. Harrison, Quest for the New Moral World, p. 68.
36. Robert Owen, The Life of Robert Owen, p. 212.
37. Ibid., pp. 212—13.
38. Harrison, Quest for the New Moral World, p. 99. Foster, Religion and Sexuality,
p. 266.
39. Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, pp. 253-54.
40. Desroche, The American Shakers, p. 279. Harrison, Quest for the New Moral
World, p. 107. Foster, Religion and Sexuality, p. 90.
41. Quoted in ibid., p. 81 (emphasis in original). Noyes’s reckless candor occurred
during a time of frustrated romantic attachment to Abigail Merwin, news of whose marriage
to another Noyes received immediately before writing the letter. Robert Thomas, The Man
Who Would Be Perfect, pp. 85ff.
 NOTES 167

42. George Wallingford Noyes, John Humphrey Noyes, p. 123.

43. Ibid., pp. 68—72, 116. Thomas, The Man Who Would Be Perfect, p. 105.
44. Ibid., pp. 109—10.
45. M.L. Carden, Oneida, pp. 40—41.
46. Foster, Religion and Sexuality, p. 94.
47. Ibid., p. 16. Beginning in 1868, Noyes introduced stirpiculture, an experiment in
selective breeding in which reproductive pairs were approved on the basis of the participants’
personal characters. Ibid., pp. 118-119. The tensions introduced by complex marriage and
stirpiculture were substantially controlled by a process of regular semi-public criticism and
confession, for which a manual (published anonymously but almost certainly written by
Noyes) was eventually printed under the title Mutual Criticism.
48. Favorite Hymns for Community-Singing, p. 6.1
49. Foster, Religion and Sexuality, pp. 237-38.
50. The Perfectionist, July 15, 1843, p. 42 (emphasis in original).
51. Ibid., July 13, 1844, p. 34.
52. Ibid., August 10, 1844, p. 44.
53. Ibid., April 20, 1844, p. 11.
54. Ibid., September 7, 1844, p. 51.
55. The Spiritual Magazine, May 15, 1846, p. 39.
56. Ibid., March 15, 1846, p. 5.
57. Ibid., p. 6 (emphasis in original). °
58. Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, pp. 280—81. Okugawa, “Appendix A: Annotated
List of Communal and Utopian Societies,” in Fogarty, Dictionary.
59. Michael McCrary, “Albert Brisbane (1809—1890),” p. 13. This school composi-
tion, written by Brisbane’s grandson, is annotated by his mother, Sarah Brisbane Mellen. Bris-
bane papers.
60. R. Brisbane, Albert Brisbane, p. 50.
61. Bestor, “Albert Brisbane,” pp. 132-33.
62. Quoted in Daniel Bell, ‘““Charles Fourier,” p. 53.
63. Bestor, ‘Albert Brisbane,” p. 146, reflecting the judgment of Frank Luther Mott.
64. Arthur Bestor, ““American Phalanxes” I: 263.
65. Ibid., pp. 274—76.
66. R. Brisbane, Albert Brisbane, p. 246. On the preferred economic basis for pha-
lanxes, see Hayden, Seven American Utopias, pp. 155-56.
67. Foster, Religion and Sexuality, pp. 22-23.
68. The Oneida Community experienced natural increase through both stirpiculture
and accidental conceptions, but like some other long-lived communities, encountered rebel-
liousness among the second generation.
69. Foster, Religion and Sexuality, p. 22.
70. Marini, Radical Sects, p. 94. The 1823 figure is cited in William Sims Bainbridge,
“Shaker Demographics 1840-1900,” p. 353.
71. Andrews’ estimate appears in Foster, Religion and Sexuality, p. 23.
72. Bainbridge, “Shaker Demographics.”
Jae lbideipnsss-
74. Otohiko Okugawa, ‘‘Defining a Population of the Communal Societies in 19th-
Century America.”’ Okugawa, “Appendix A,” in Fogarty, Dictionary, Bestor, Backwoods
Utopias, pp. 273-85. Although listings of communities have been undertaken ever since the
unpublished research of A. J. Macdonald in the 1850s, the two most recent and complete tab-
ulations have been those of Bestor (1970) and Okugawa (1980). The enumerations differ
 168 NOTES

slightly due to slightly different judgments about projected communities that may never have
been fully established and the status to be accorded branches of communities. Nonetheless, the
lists are strikingly similar.
75. The most extensive listing of post-World War I communities is Robert Fogarty’s in
his Dictionary of Communal and Utopian History. The subject will be treated more fully by
him in a forthcoming work.
76. Michael Barkun, ‘““Communal Societies as a Cyclical Phenomenon.”
77. Okugawa, “Appendix A,” in Fogarty, Dictionary. Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, p.
285. Interestingly, while there are clear concentrations of community foundings, there are no
comparably clear waves of dissolutions. The appearance of such a bunching about the time of
World War I can be explained largely by the migration of the pacifist Hutterites from the Upper
Midwest to Canada.
78. Okugawa, “Appendix A.”
-£ 79. Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, p. 235.
; 80. Ronald Abler, ‘““The Geography of Nowhere.”
81. Ibid.
82. Table 2 and see maps in Hayden, Seven American Utopias, pp. 8-13.
83. The Phalanx, December 5, 1843, p. 34.
84. Seymour Ronald Kesten, “Utopian Episodes.”
85. Anne C. Rose, Transcendentalism as a Social Movement, pp. 132, 152-53.
86. Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, pp. 133-34. Hyman Mariampolski, “New Harmony
as a Voluntary Community.”
87. Weisbrod, Boundaries of Utopia.
88. Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Commitment and Community, chapt. 4, passim.
89. Edward Deming Andrews, The People Galled Shakers, p. 108.
90. Foster, Religion and Sexuality, p. 49. Bainbridge, “Shaker Demographics,”’ pp.
358-59. Andrews, The American Shakers, p. 328.
91. Foster, Religion and Sexuality, pp. 54, 56.
92. Bainbridge, “Shaker Demographics,” p. 360.
93. Rose, Transcendentalism as a Social Movement, pp. 153, 239-40.
94. Hayden, Seven American Utopias, p. 157.
95. Cross, The Burned-over District, p. 332.
96. Bestor, “American Phalanxes,” v. i, pp. 54, 217-218.
97. Robert S. Fogarty, “Oneida,” p. 206.
98. Carden, Cneida, p. 25.
99. Fogarty, “Oneida,” p. 206.

CHAPTER 5—MILLERISM AND THE UTOPIANS

1. Hayden, Seven American Utopias, pp. 42-43.

2. Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, p. 58.
3. For a discussion of an analogous contemporary phenomenon, see Kenneth Keni-
ston, “Heads and Seekers.”
4. Cross, The Burned-over District, pp. 56ff. Hill, “Quest for Refuge.”
5. Pred, Urban Growth, p. 166.
6. Nathan Hatch, “Spreading the Millerite Message.”
 NOTES 169

7. For an inventory of Owenite publications, see Harrison, Quest for the New Moral
World, pp. 347-54.
8. G. W. Noyes, John Humphrey Noyes, p. 60. Thomas, The Man Who Would Be
Perfect, p. 136.
9. Quoted in G. W. Noyes, John Humphrey Noyes, p. 60.
10. The Perfectionist, June 15, 1844, p. 26.
11. Bestor, ‘Albert Brisbane,” pp. 149—50. For an inventory of American Fourierist
publications, see Bestor, “American Phalanxes,” II: passim. On the history of Phalanx and
The Harbinger, see II: 17-22.
12. Desroche, The American Shakers, pp. 258-63.
13. Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, pp. 53-54.
14. The Phalanx, December 9, 1844, p. 297. vey
15. W.H.G. Armytage, “Owen and America,” in Sidney Pollard and John Salt, Robert
Owen, pp. 228-29. Harrison, Quest for the New Moral World, p. 245.
16. Hayden, Seven American Utopias, pp. 181, 191.
17. Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, pp. 53-54.
18. Hayden, Seven American Utopias, pp. 181, 191.
19. Rowe, Thunder and Trumpets (1985), p. 24.
20. Hayden, Seven American Utopias, p. 65. Desroche, The American Shakers, pp.

21. Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, p. 55.

22. Otohiko Okugawa, “Intercommunal Relationships Among Nineteenth-Century
Communal Societies.”
23. Bestor, Backwoods Utopias, p. 55.
24. Desroche, The American Shakers, p. 271. Harrison, Quest for the New Moral
World, p. 166.
25. Cross, The Burned-over District, p. 311. Andrews, The People Called Shakers, p.
223. Foster, Religion and Sexuality, p. 97.
26. Hayden, Seven American Utopias, p. 65. Andrews, The People Called Shakers,
p. 223.
27. Lawrence Foster, “‘Had Prophecy Failed?” in Numbers and Butler, eds., The Dis-
appointed.
28. “Henry B. Bear’s Advent Experience.” I am indebted to Lawrence Foster for bring-
ing Bear’s account to my attention.
29. Desroche, The American Shakers, p. 268.
30. G. W. Noyes, John Humphrey Noyes, p. 123. The Witness, Dec. 10, 1842, p. 184.
31. Letter to William Hinds. Hinds papers.
32. Quoted in Cross, The Burned-over District, p. 321.
33. The Perfectionist, May 1, 1843, p. 15.
34. The Witness, December 10, 1842, p. 184.
35. The Communitist, December 11, 1844, p. 54.
36. Letter to Elizabeth Pease, April 4, 1843, The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison,
Ill: 150.
37. The Liberator, February 10, 1843, p. 23.
38. The Witness published one article on Millerism in 1840, 2 in 1841, 5 in 1842, and
2 in 1843. The Perfectionist published 3 in 1843, 4 in 1844, and 1 in 1845.
39. The Witness, June 6, 1840, p. 152 (emphasis in original).
40. Ibid., October 9, 1841, p. 47.
41. The Communitist, December 11, 1844, p. 54.
170 NOTES

42. The Perfectionist, November 2, 1844, p. 64; November 16, 1844, p. 66.
43. The Communitist, December 11, 1844, p. 54.
44. The New York Daily Tribune, October 21, 1844.
45. Letter to Henry C. Wright, March 1, 1843, The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison
Ike 135;
46. The Liberator, February 10, 1843, p. 23.
47. Rowe, Thunder and Trumpets (1985), p. 92..Nichol, The Midnight Cry, p. 54.
48. Ronald Graybill, ““The Abolitionist-Millerite Connection,” in Numbers and But-
ler, eds., The Disappointed. ‘
49. The Perfectionist, January 11, 1845, p. 84.
50. The New York Daily Tribune, September 27, 1842; September 30, 1842; October
4, 1842; February 10, 1843; February 14, 1843; March 31, 1843; April 5, 1843; and April 13,
1843.
Si. The Witness, June 6, 1840, p. 152. The Perfectionist, May 1, 1843, p. 15.
52. The Communitist, December 11, 1844, p. 54.
53. The Phalanx, January 5, 1844, p. 55 (emphasis in original).

CHAPTER 6—NATURAL DISASTERS AND THE MILLENNIUM

. Mary P. Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class, pp. 24, 47.

. Marini, Radical Sects of Revolutionary New England, pp. 29-30.
. Roland Berthoff, An Unsettled People, p. 166.
. Ruth L. Higgins, Expansion in New York, pp. 103—107.
. Ibid., pp. 114, 148.
. Lois Kimball Mathews, The Expansion of New England, p. 153.
. Cross, The Burned-over District, p. 6. Lewis Stilwell, Migration from Vermont,
NNDON
DWN
p. 120.
8. D. W. Meinig, “Geography of Expansion,” in John H. Thompson, ed., Geography
of New York State, pp. 140—71.
9. Stilwell, Migration from Vermont, p. 120. Harold F. Wilson, ‘Population Trends
in North-Western New England, 1790-1930.”
10. Cross, The Burned-over District, pp. 9—10.
11. Wilson, “Population Trends in North-Western New England 1790-1930.”
12. Stillwell, Migration from Vermont, pp. 118—20, 139-40.
13. Ludlum, Social Ferment in Vermont, pp. 8—14.
14. Marini, Radical Sects of Revolutionary New England, pp. 27-28.
15. Ibid., pp. 5, 38.
16. Nathan O. Hatch, The Sacred Cause of Liberty, p. 24. Robert D. Rossel, ‘The
Great Awakening.”
17. H.N. Miller, III, and John J. Duffy, “‘Jedidiah Burchard and Vermont’s ‘New Mea-
sure’ Revivals,” p. 5.
18. Stilwell, Migration from Vermont, pp. 95, 128—29. Ludlum, Social Ferment in
Vermont, p. 49.
19. Miller and Duffy, “Jedidiah Burchard and Vermont’s ‘New Measure’ Revivals,” p.
6. Stilwell, Migration from Vermont, pp. 152—54.
20. John D. Post, The Last Great Subsistence Crisis, p. 1.
21. Charles E. Rosenberg, The Cholera Years, p. 1.
 NOTES 171

22. Henry and Elizabeth Stommel, Volcano Weather, pp. 25, 28—29. Although the
scholarly usefulness of the Stommels’ book is limited by the absence of citations, it remains the
most thorough description and analysis of the climatic irregularities of 1816.
23. Ibid., pp. 69—70, 75.
24. Ibid., pp. 67, 84.
254 ‘bids ipa 79)
26. Ibid., pp. 116, 118.
27. Ibid., p. 11.
28. Post, The Last Great Subsistence Crisis, pp. 4—6, 11-12, 24-25.
29. Marini, Radical Sects of Revolutionary New England, p. 30. Stommel and Stom-
mel, Volcano Weather, pp. 153-54.
'
30. Post, The Last Great Subsistence Crisis. hy
31. Stilwell, Migration from Vermont, p. 130.
32. Ibid., pp. 134-35. Stommel and Stommel, Volcano Weather, p. 94. Wilson, “Pop-
ulation Trends...” Post, The Last Great Subsistence Crisis, pp. 105—07.
33. Stommel and Stommel, Volcano Weather, pp. 19—23. Joseph B. Hoyt, “The Cold
Summer of 1816.”
34. G.E Pyle, “The Diffusion of Cholera.” The perception of the epidemic by contem-
porary physicians may be found in the publication issued by doctors in New York City during
the epidemic, Cholera Bulletin.
35. William H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples, pp. 262—64. André Siegfried, Routes
of Contagion, pp. 42—46. Rosenberg, The Cholera Years, pp. 2—3, 24.
36. Ibid., pp. 165-66.
37. The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal (1849): 354, 356.
38. Rosenberg, The Cholera Years, pp. 45, 47, 55.
39. Carwardine, Trans-Atlantic Revivalism, p. 64. For Charles Finney’s brief but vivid
description of the epidemic in New York City (he himself contracted the disease), see his Mem-
oirs, p. 320.
40. Pred, Urban Growth ..., pp. 245—46.
41. Wilson, “Population Trends...”

CHAPTER 7—SOCIOECONOMIC DISASTERS AND THE MILLENNIUM

1. James Roger Sharp, The Jacksonians versus the Banks, p. 27.

2. Percy Wells Bidwell and John I. Falconer, History of Agriculture in the Northern
United States 1620-1860, p. 306.
3. Sharp, The Jacksonians versus the Banks, p. 27. Charles P. Kindleberger, Manias,
Panics, and Crashes, p. 255. Reginald Charles McGrane, The Panic of 1837, passim.
4. Peter Temin, The Jacksonian Economy, pp. 141, 147.
. McGrane, The Panic of 1837, pp. 41—42. Pred, Urban Growth, p. 247.
. Ibid., pp. 248-52.
. Temin, The Jacksonian Economy, p. 116.
. Samuel Rezneck, “The Social History of an American Depression, 1837-1843,”
CONNN
p. 665.
9. Temin, The Jacksonian Economy, pp. 148, 154, 156—60. For the parallel between
the depression of 1839—43 and the 1930s, see also Milton Friedman and Anna Jacobson
Schwartz, A Monetary History of the United States 1867-1960, p. 299.
172. NOTES

10. Bidwell and Falconer, History of Agriculture in the Northern United States 1620—
1860, pp. 247-48.
11. Ibid., p. 181. Sharp, The Jacksonians versus the Banks, p. 308.
12. Arthur Harrison Cole, Wholesale Commodity Prices in the United States 1700—
1861, pp. 111-14.
13. Bidwell and Falconer, History of Agriculture in the Northern United States, pp.
312-15. Patricia E. McGee, “Issues and Factions,” pp. 6—7.
14. The long-wave literature is large and in recent years has grown rapidly. For an in-
troduction intended for non-economists, see the August 1981 issue of Futures, entirely devoted
to the subject. In addition, an unusually full bibliography appears in Joshua S. Goldstein,
“Kondratieff Waves as War Cycles.”
15. N. D. Kondratieff, “The Long Waves in Economic Life.”
16. G. Garvey, ““Kondratieff’s Theory of Long Cycles.”
3 17. A. van der Zwan, “On the Assessment of the Kondratieff Cycles and Related Is-
sues,” in S. K. Kuipers and G. J. Lanjouw, Prospects of Economic Growth, pp. 183—222.
18. W. W. Rostow, Why the Rich Get Richer, pp. 86—97.
19. Attempts have been made to chart later cycles using data on industrial production
in addition to prices. One example, which shows an upswing in the United States beginning in
1847, is J. J. van Duijn, “Comment on van der Zwan’s Paper,” in Kuipers and Lanjouw, Pros-
pects of Economic Growth, pp. 223-33.
20. Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order 1877-1920, p. 97.
21. Thomas, The Man Who Would be Perfect, p. 121.
22. Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class, pp. 56—57. Foster, Religion and Sexuality, pp.
12-13.
23. Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class, p. 62:
24. Foster, Religion and Sexuality, pp. 12, 231.
25. Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class, p. 76.
26. Ibid., pp. 79-81. For an extended discussion of religion as an outlet for women in
a small industrial community, see Anthony EF. C. Wallace, Rockdale.
27. Foster, Religion and Sexuality, p. 64. Desroche, The American Shakers, p. 104.
28. Carwardine, Trans-Atlantic Revivalism, pp. 49—53. Cross, The Burned-over Dis-
trict, p. 269. Although it has severe evidentiary weaknesses, one of the first attempts to link
Millerism with the Panic of 1837 was Reuben E. E. Harkness’ 1927 doctoral dissertation, ‘“So-
cial Origins of the Millerite Movement.”
29. Foster, Religion and Sexuality, p. 39.
30. R. Brisbane, Albert Brisbane, pp. 198ff. Given the uneven reliability of the wore
it is possible that this characterization of Brisbane’s early views in fact constitutes a reading
back into youth of the monetary theories he held in later life.
31. Irwin Unger, The Greenback Era, p. 110.
32. The Perfectionist, August 31, 1835.
33. John Humphrey Noyes, “A Sketch of the Remarks Made by J. H. Noyes...’ Em-
phasis in original.
34. The Phalanx, Oct. 7, 1844.
35. R. Brisbane, Albert Brisbane, p. 206.
36. The Communitist, April 23, 1845.
37. The Spiritual Magazine, May 15, 1846 (emphasis in original).
38. A. Brisbane, Social Destiny of Man, p. viii.
39. The Phalanx, Oct. 7, 1844.
40. The Perfectionist, Sept. 7, 1844.
 NOTES 173

41. Quoted in Wendell Phillips Garrison and Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd
Garrison 1805-1879 Il: 145—48 (emphasis in original).
42. Foster, Religion and Sexuality, pp. 239—40.

CHAPTER 8—ORGANIZING FOR THE MILLENNIUM

1. Antinomianism among the Sabbatians is discussed in Scholem, The Messianic Idea

in Judaism, particularly the essay “Redemption Through Sin,” pp. 78—141. Sabbatian anti-
nomianism was often associated with a breach of sexual tabops. Similar claims concerning the
Brethren of the Free Spirit are made in Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, p. 180, and in
Jeffrey Burton Russell, Witchcraft in the Middle Ages, pp. 140—41. For a more skeptical
view of Free Spirit practices, see Robert Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later
Middle Ages.
2. Barkun, Disaster and the Millennium, pp. 68—74.
. Miller, “Apology and Defence,” p. 28.
» Ibids ps 32:
Rowe, Thunder and Trumpets (1985), pp. 146—47.
. Ernest R. Sandeen, ““End Games,” p. 9.
. Herbert G. Guttman, Work, Culture and Society, p. 13. Pred, Urban Growth, p. 7.
. Robert G. Leblanc, Location of Manufacturing in New England in the 19th
Century.
9. George Rudé, Paris and London in the Eighteenth Century, p. 38. David Rothman,
The Discovery of the Asylum, p. 13.
10. George Rogers Taylor, “American Urban Growth Preceding the Railway Age,” pp.
316, 322.
11. Adna Weber, The Growth ofthe City, p. 22.
12. Ibid.
IS ibidhipy25:
14. Stephen Thernstrom and Peter R. Knights, ‘“‘Men in Motion.”
15. Pred, Urban Growth, p. 12.
16. Ibid., p. 16.
17. Bidwell and Falconer, History of Agriculture in the Northern United States, p. 307.
18. Bliss, Memoirs of William Miller, p. 106.
19. Cross, The Burned-over District, p. 63. Pred, Urban Growth, pp. 49, 166.
20. Ibid., p. 49.
21. Hatch, “Spreading the Millerite Message.”
22. Carwardine, Trans-Atlantic Revivalism, p. 25.
23. Ibid., p. 20. Rochester, New York, appears to have been an exception. See Johnson,
A Shopkeeper’s Millennium. One of Charles Finney’s greatest triumphs, the Rochester cam-
paign, receives chapter-length treatment in his Memoirs.
24. Rowe, “Thunder and Trumpets” (1974), pp. 237-38.
25. Rowe, Thunder and Trumpets (1985), pp. 115-18.
26. Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men.
27. Abler, “The Geography of Nowhere.”
28. Kanter, Commitment and Community, p. 24S.
29. Ibid., pp. 72—125 passim.
30. Bestor, ‘““American Phalanxes,” v. i, pp. 221—23.
174 NOTES

31. For Oneida the most detailed description of this process appears in Mutual
Criticism.
32. Quoted in Bestor, “American Phalanxes,” v. ii, p. 336. The entire text of the Un-
ion’s constitutive document may be found on pp*336—45. Kanter, Commitment and Com-
munity, p. 245.
33. Ibid., p. 83.
34. Abler, “The Geography of Nowhere.”
35. Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum. Raymond Mohl, ‘Poverty, Pauperism,
and Social Order.”
.

~ CHAPTER 9—THE MILLENARIAN PROCESS

1. Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, pp. 53-60.

2. George Steiner, “The City Under Attack.’ Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd is the clas-
sic sociological statement of this position. For its cultural and intellectual context, see Leon
Bramson, The Political Context of Sociology, pp. 47-72.
3. Barkun, Disaster and the Millennium, especially pp. 68—74.
4. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels. Rodney Hilton, Bond Men Made Free, pp. 98-99.
5. Michael Barkun, “‘Disaster in History.”
6. Keith V. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 661.
7. Richard D. Brown, “Modernization and the Modern Personality in Early America,
1600-1865,” p. 222. :
8. William I. Torry, “Anthropological Studies in Hazardous Environments,” p. 528.
9. For a more extended presentation of this argument, see Barkun, “‘Disaster in
History.”
10. Samuel Z. Klausner, Why Man Takes Chances, p. v.
11. Allen H. Barton, Communities in Disaster, p. 38.
12. I have borrowed the phrase ‘“‘theory of mistakes” from Ronald Dworkin, who,
however, employs it in a context utterly different from the present one, since his concern is to
sketch a theory of judicial decisionmaking. Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously, pul22-
13. Wallace, “Revitalization Movements.”
14. Fred Somkin, Unquiet Eagle, p. 45.
15. Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum.
16. Mohl, “Poverty, Pauperism, and Social Order.”
17. Melvin J. Lerner, “The Desire for Justice and Reactions to Victims,” in J. Macaulay
and L. Berkowitz, Altruism and Helping Behavior, p. 207.
18. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, p. 107.
19. Ibid., p. 110.
20. James H. Moorehead, American Apocalypse.
21. Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism, pp. 163—64. Timothy Weber, Living in
the Shadow of the Second Coming, pp. 85-88. As both Sandeen and Weber demonstrate,
premillennialists continued to write, argue, and organize in the century that followed the
“Great Disappointment.” In response to the Millerite episode, they also avoided date-setting
as much as possible, opting instead for a “‘dispensationalist” model that pushed most prophetic
fuffillment into the future. Despite the flexibility of premillennialists, however, they failed dur-
ing this period to achieve the breakthrough that Millerism exemplified, when the millenarian
 NOTES 175

agenda briefly dominated the awareness of the country’s elites. Not until the 1970s and 80s
would religious millenarians be taken with comparable seriousness.
22. Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform, pp. 62, 70.
23. The interpretation of American Populism has been unusually contentious. A sam-
pling of opposing views appears in the exchange between Norman Pollack, ‘Fear of Man,” and
Irwin Unger, “Critique.”
24. Charles Albro Barker, Henry George. John L. Thomas, Alternative America.
25. The millenarian aspect of these figures is presented in David H. Bennett, Dema-
gogues in the Depression. For an instrumentalist view, see Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest.
26. Paul K. Conkin, Tomorrow a New World, pp. 332—37. Russell Lord and Paul H.
Johnstone, A Place on Earth, p. 3.
27. Some of the private groups are listed in Ralph Albertson, ‘A Survey of Mutualistic
Communities.”
28. William Martin, “Waiting for the End.”
29. William G. McLoughlin, Revivals, Awakenings and Reform.
30. Frederic C. Jaher, Doubters and Dissenters, p. 4.
31. Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style.
32. Daniel Bell, The End ofIdeology, p. 393.
33. Ibid., p. 398.
34. Irwin Unger, The Movement, pp. 205-26.
35. Kanter, Commitment and Community, p. 167.
36. Ibid., p. 66. Benjamin Zablocki, Alienation and Charisma, pp. 48—57.
37. Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism, pp. 63—64. On dispensationalism gen-
erally, see Weber, Living in the Shadow.
38. New York Times Book Review, April 6, 1980, p. 27.
39. Michael Barkun, ‘“‘Divided Apocalypse.”
40. R. Laurence Moore, “Insiders and Outsiders.”
41. Charles A. Heatwole, ‘“‘The Bible Belt.”
42. Stephen W. Tweedie, “Viewing the Bible Belt.”
43. L.S.Stavrianos, The Promise of the Coming Dark Age, p. 196.
44. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, ““A World Split Apart,” in Ronald Berman, Solzhenitsyn
at Harvard, p. 20.
45. Mihajlo Mesarovic and Eduard Pestel, Mankind at the Turning Point, p. 9.
46. Jonathan Schell, The Fate of the Earth, p. 174.
47. Robert Heilbroner, An Inquiry into the Human Prospect, p. 140.
 HeedBneem uiix rd
>" j
mit 98
y co ‘e 7

Pie ovtee irks 7"Pree

 BIBLIOGRAPHY

PRIMARY SOURCES

Books and Pamphlets

Henry B. Bear’s Advent Experience. Harrison, Ohio: Whitewater [Shaker] Village,

n.d.
Bliss, Sylvester. Memoirs of William Miller, Generally Known as a Lecturer on the
Prophecies and the Second Coming of Christ. Boston: Joshua V. Himes, 1853.
Brisbane, Albert. Social Destiny of Man: or, Association and Reorganization of In-
dustry. Philadelphia: C. FE. Stollmeyer, 1840.
Favorite Hymns for Community-Singing. Sherrill, N.Y.: Oneida Community, 1855.
Fitch, Charles. “Come out of her, my people.” Rochester, N.Y.: J. V. Himes, 1843.
Garrison, Wendell Phillips and Garrison, Francis Jackson. William Lloyd Garrison
1805-1879. The Story of His Life Told by His Children. London: Unwin,
1889; reprinted New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969.
Himes, Joshua V. Views of the Prophecies and Prophetic Chronology, Selected from
Manuscripts of William Miller with a Memoir of his Life. Boston: Joshua V.
Himes, 1842.
The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, edited by Walter M. Merrill. Cambridge,
Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1973.
Miller, William, “Apology and Defense.” Reprinted in Advent Tracts, v. ii. Boston:
Joshua V. Himes, n.d.
. Evidence from Scripture and History of the Second Coming of Christ, about
the year 1843: Exhibited in a Course of Lectures. Troy, N.Y.: Kemble &
Hooper, 1836.

177
178 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Mutual Criticism. Oneida, N.Y.: Office of the American Socialist, 1876; reprinted
Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1975.
Noyes, John Humphrey. Confessions of John H. Noyes. Part I. Confessions of Reli-
gious Experience: Including a History of Modern Perfectionism. Oneida Re-
serve: Leonard & Company, Printers, 1849.
. A Sketch of the Remarks Made by J. H. ee at a Meeting Held in Putney,
January 31, 1839.
Owen, Robert. The Life of Robert Owen. London: G. Bell and Son, reprinted 1920.
van Amringe, H. H. Nature and Revelation, Showing the Present Condition of the
Churches, and the Change Now to Come Upon the World, By the Second Ad-
vent, in Spirit, of the Messiah, with Interpretations of Prophecies in Daniel,
and the Book ofRevelation. New York: R. P. Bixby & Co., 1843.

Newspapers and Periodicals

American Journal of Insanity, 1845.

Boston Medical and Surgical Journal. Boston, Mass., 1849.
Cholera Bulletin, New York. Reprinted, New York: Arno Press, 1972.
The Communitist. Mottville, N.Y., 1844—45.
Day Star of Zion. Celesta, Sullivan County, Pa., 1864.
The Liberator. Boston, 1843.
The Midnight Cry. New York, 1842—45. .
New York Daily Tribune, 1842—44.
The Perfectionist. New Haven, Ct., 1834-35.
The Perfectionist, Putney, Vt., 1843—45.
The Perfectionist and Theocratic Watchman. Putney, Vt., 1844—45.
The Phalanx. New York, 1843-45.
Signs of the Times. Boston, 1840—44.
The Spiritual Magazine. Putney, Vt., 1846.
The Witness, Putney, Vt., 1840—42.

Manuscripts

William Hinds papers and George Wallingford Noyes papers, Oneida Community
collection, Syracuse University.
Albert Brisbane papers, Syracuse University.
Wisconsin Pioneer and Century Farms papers, The State Historical Society of
Wisconsin.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 179

SECONDARY SOURCES CHIEFLY CONCERNED WITH MILLENNIALISM,

UTOPIAN EXPERIMENTATION, AND PRE-CIVIL WAR SOCIETY

Books

Andrews, Edward Deming. The People Called Shakers: A Search for the Perfect So-
ciety. New York: Dover, 1963.
Austin, Aleine. Matthew Lyon: “New Man’ of the Democratic Revolution, 1749—
1822. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1981.
Berthoff, Roland. An Unsettled People: Social Order and Disorder in American
History. New York: Harper & Row, 1971.5
Bestor, Arthur. Backwoods Utopias: The Sectarian Origins and the Owenite Phase
of Communitarian Socialism in America: 1663-1829, 2nd ed. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970.
Bidwell, Percy Wells, and John I. Falconer. History of Agriculture in the Northern
United States 1620-1860. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution, 1925.
Billington, James. Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith.
New York: Basic Books, 1980.
Billington, Ray Allen. The Protestant Crusade 1800-1860: A Study of the Origins
of American Nativism. New York: Macmillan, 1938.
Carden, Maren Lockwood. Oneida: Utopian Community to Modern Corporation.
New York: Harper & Row, 1971.
Carwardine, Richard. Trans-Atlantic Revivalism: Popular Evangelicalism in Britain
and America, 1790—1865. Westport, Ct.: Greenwood Press, 1978.
Cole, Arthur Harrison. Wholesale Commodity Prices in the United States 1700—
1861. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1938.
Cross, Whitney R. The Burned-over District: The Social and Intellectual History of
Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800-1850. New York: Harper
Torchbooks, 1965.
Davidson, James West. The Logic of Millennial Thought: Eighteenth Century New
England. New Haven, Ct.: Yale University Press, 1977.
Desroche, Henri. The American Shakers: From Neo-Christianity to Presocialism.
Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1971.
Fogarty, Robert S. Dictionary of Communal and Utopian History. Westport, Ct.:
Greenwood Press, 1980.
Foster, Lawrence. Religion and Sexuality: The Shakers, the Mormons, and the
Oneida Community. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1984.
Froom, Le Roy Edwin. The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers: The Historical Devel-
opment of Prophetic Interpretation. Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald,
1954.
Garrett, Clarke. Respectable Folly: Millenarians and the French Revolution in
France and England. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975.
Gaustad, Edwin D., ed. The Rise of Adventism: Religion and Society in Mid-
Nineteenth Century America. New York: Harper & Row, 1974.
180 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hammond, John L. The Politics of Benevolence: Revival Religion and Voting Be-
havior. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex, 1979.
Harrison, J. EFC. Quest for the New Moral World: Robert Owen and the Owenites
in Britain and America. New York: Scribner’s, 1969.
. The Second Coming: Popular Millenarianism 1780-1850. New Bruns-
wick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1979.
Hatch, Nathan O. The Sacred Cause of Liberty: Republican Thought and the Mil-
lennium in Revolutionary New England. New Haven, Ct.: Yale University
Press, 1977. ,
Hayden, Dolores. Seven American Utopias: The Architecture of Communitarian
Socialism, 1790-1975. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1976.
Heimert, Alan. Religion and the American Mind: From the Great Awakening to the
. Revolution. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966.
Higgins, Ruth L. Expansion in New York, with Especial Reference to the Eighteenth
Century. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University, 1931. Contributions in His-
tory and Political Science, no. 14.
Johnson, Charles A. The Frontier Camp Meeting: Religion’s Harvest Time. Dallas,
Tex.: Southern Methodist University Press, 1955.
Johnson, Paul E. A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester,
New York, 1815-1837. New York: Hill and Wang, 1978.
Kanter, Rosabeth Moss. Commitment and Community: Communes and Utopias in
Sociological Perspective. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972.
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184 BIBLIOGRAPHY

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the Millenarian Mind in Nineteenth-century America,” Killington, Vermont,
1984.
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Century America.” Prepared for Historical Communal Societies Conference,
Hancock Shaker Village. Pittsfield, Mass., 1980.
Sandeen, Ernest R. “End Games: The ‘Little Tradition’ and the Form of Modern
Millenarianism.” Prepared for Annual Meeting of the International Society of.
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 INDEX

Abolitionism, 26, 37, 122 Bennett, James Gordon, 39, 99

Adams, John Quincy, 72 Bestor, Arthur, 11, 68, 79, 82, 83, 90, 135
Advent Christians, 41 Bible: Book of Daniel, 14, 21, 47
Agriculture, 115—16 Book of Revelation, 14, 21, 44, 47, 49,
New England, 105, 109 50, 51
Albany, N.Y., 36, 115, 131 “Bible Belt,” 157
Allen, Ethan, 35 Bliss, Sylvester, 36
Alternative worldviews, 144, 148—49 Boston, Mass., 37, 40, 84, 129, 131
American Journal of Insanity, 41 Brandon, Vt., 37, 91, 131
American Revolution, 22, 129 Brisbane, Albert, 1, 77, 79—80, 84, 92, 93,
Anderson, Eric, 52 100, 115, 135, 149
Andrews, Edward Deming, 81 Beliefs about millennium, 67—68
Anti-Christ, 22, 40, 54 Economic views, 121
Antinomianism, 126—27 Political views, 122
Armageddon, Battle of, 160 Social Destiny of Man, 67
Armstrong, Peter, 44—45 Brunswick, Me., 109
Associationists. See Utopian communities Buffalo, N. Y., 42, 110, 115
(individual), Fourierists Burned-over District, 2—3, 23-24, 32, 40,
Auburn, N.Y., 45 42-43, 77, 87, 91, 115
Settlement and population
characteristics, 104—106, 111, 114,
118, 129
Bainbridge, William Sims, 81 Transportation within, 42, 131
Baltimore, Md., 129
Baptists, 2, 3, 151
Bates, Joseph, 44
Bear, Henry, 96 Calvinism, 24
Bell, Daniel, 10, 95, 154 Camisards, 69
Bellamy, Edward, 151-52 Cane Ridge, Ky., 38
190 INDEX

Carwardine, Richard, 111 “End of ideology,” 10, 154—55

Channing, William Henry, 67 Engels, Friedrich, 70
Charismatic authority, 32, 126-28 English Civil War, 21
Charleston, $.C., 129 <Enthusiasm,” 21, 149
Chiliasm. See Millennialism Erie Canal, 3, 91, 110, 111, 114, 115-16,
Cholera epidemic (1832), 110—11 131
Christian Palladium, 91 Evangelical Protestants, 28, 157
Cincinnati, Ohio, 39, 116, 139—40 Evans, Frederick, 73, 96
Cities, 10, 127
Growth of, 128—30 ‘

Movement among, 130

Closing Circle, The, 158 Falwell, Jerry, 10, 156
Club of Rome, 158, 159 Family structure, 117—19
Cognitive dissonance, 59 Fate of the Earth, The, 158
Cohn, Norman, 18, 19, 140 Festinger, Leon, 59
Collins, John, 1, 93, 121 Finney, Charles Grandison, 3, 24, 25, 94
Attitude toward Millerism, 98, 99, Fitch, Charles, 40, 100
100—101 Foster, Lawrence, 77, 80, 118
Commoner, Barry, 158 Fourier, Charles, 1, 67, 79—80
Communes, 8, 11, 153, 155 Franklin, Benjamin, 109
Coughlin, Charles E., 152 “French prophets,” 69—70
Counterculture, 155 Fundamentalism, 28, 29, 156—58
Cragin, George, 92
Cromwell, Oliver, 32
Cross, Whitney, 96
“Cults,” 153, 160 Galusha, Elon, 100
Cycles, 10, 116 Garrison, William Lloyd, 1, 35, 37
Attitude toward Millerism, 57, 98, 99,
100, 122
George, Henry, 151
Damage control systems, 143-46 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, 79
Dana, Charles, 67 Great Awakening (First), 21, 25, 35, 36,
Darby, John Nelson, 156 106—107, 134
“Dark Day” (1780), 55 Great Awakening (Second), 23, 28, 31,
Day-Star, The, 96 132, 134
Day Star of Zion, 45 Greeley, Horace, 1, 39—40, 80, 92
Defensive structuring, 70 Greenback Party, 121
Depression of 1840s, 113—16 Groton, Mass., 44
Depression of 1930s, 115
Dispensationalism, 156
Dorr Rebellion, 53—54, 120
Hale, Apollos, 40
Hammond, John, 26
Harbinger, The, 92
East Kingston, N.H., 38 Harris, Thomas Lake, 45
Edict of Nantes (1598), 69 Harrison,J.E C., 11
Edwards, Jonathan, 21, 24 Haymarket Riot (1886), 154
1816, summer of, 108-109 Hegel, Georg, 79
End of Ideology, The, 155 Heilbroner, Robert, 158, 159
 INDEX 191

Heine, Heinrich, 79 Mahdi, 15

Heresy, European, 68—69 Marini, Stephen, 81, 109
Hill, Christopher, 59 Maslow, Abraham, 155
Himes, Joshua V., 32, 35, 37, 39, 42, 60, McLoughlin, William G., 153
94, 100, 128, 133, 149 Mencken, H. L., 157
Hinds, William, 44 Mennonites, 69
Hobsbawm, E. J., 19 Midnight Cry, The, 47, 52, 53, 54, 57, 91
Hofstadter, Richard, 151 Millennialism, 9, 10
Huguenots, 69 African, 15
Hung Hsiu-Ch’uan, 15 Andean, 15
Brazilian, 15
British, 59
Buddhist, 15
Inquiry into the Human Prospect, An, 158 Christian, 14, 126
Contemporary, 153-60
Defined, 11—12, 18
European, 31, 139-40
Jackson, Andrew, 111 Interdisciplinary study of, 17—18
Jacob, Enoch, 96 Islamic, 15
Jewish, 13-14, 126
Organization of, 126—27
Role of portents in, 49
Kanter, Rosabeth Moss, 135 Secular, 16—17
Kennedy, John, 153, 154 Millennialist movements (individual):
Kennedy, Robert, 153 Cargo cults, 16
King, Martin Luther, Jr., 153 Diggers, 21
Knights, Peter R., 130 Fifth Monarchists, 21, 32
Kondratieff, N. D., 116 Free Spirit, Brethren of the, 126
““Kondratieff wave,”’ 116 Ghost Dance, 15
Handsome Lake, 15
Millerism. See separate entry
Minster Anabaptists, 69, 127, 140
Late Great Planet Earth, The, 156 Taborites, 32
Lerner, Melvin, 145 Taiping Rebellion, 15, 16
Lewiston, N. Y., 42 Miller, William, 25, 32, 128
Liberator, The, 37 Abolitionist views, 100, 150
Limits to Growth, The, 158, 159 After “Great Disappointment,” 60
Lindsey, Hal, 11, 156 Chapel, 3
Litch, Josiah, 51 Deism, 35
Literacy, 91 Early life, 34—35
Lockport, N.Y., 42 Education, 35
Long, Huey, 152 Evidence from Scripture and History of
“Long wave.”’ See ““Kondratieff wave” the Second Coming of Christ About
Looking Backward, 152 the Year 1843, 47
Louisbourg, Fort, 22 Preaching, 36—37, 131
Low Hampton, N.Y., 35 Predictions, 39, 59
Lyon, Matthew, 35 Writings, 33, 37, 47, 91, 131
192 INDEX

Millerism, 1—2, 159 “New Lights,” 106

After “Great Disappointment,” 44—45, Newport, R.I., 129
96, 137-38 “New religious right,” 8, 155—56
“Closed Door” theory, 40 New York City, 37, 38, 114, 116, 129
““Come-outer”’ phase, 33, 40 New York Herald, 39, 99
Economic distress and, 119—20 New York Tribune, 1, 39, 80, 92, 99
“Great Disappointment,” 32, 40 Nichol, Francis, 41, 100
“Great Tent,” 38, 42, 132 Nixon, Richard, 153
Phases, 32 Northampton, Mass., |
Publications, 47, 91, 120, 132 Noyes, Joanna, 66
Rural areas and, 42—43, 133-34 Noyes, John Humphrey, 3, 73, 100, 119
Size, 33, 40, 137-38 Attitude toward Fourierists, 77—79, 93
Urban areas and, 42—43, 132-34 Attitude toward Millerism, 92, 97-98
Millerites: Attitude toward Shakers, 77
* Abolitionist views, 100 “‘Battle-axe Letter,” 73
Attitude toward Catholics, 50, 54—55 Beliefs about millennium, 65
Attitude toward natural disasters, 49, Beliefs about Second Coming, 65, 98
56—57, 149—S0 Breakdowns, 65—66
Attitude toward economic problems, Communal property ownership and, 73
49-50, 52—53, 60 Confessions of John H. Noyes, 65-66
Attitude toward political instability, 50 Economic views, 121
Attitude toward war, 49, 50—52 **Perfectionism,”’ 73
Communal settlements, 44—45 Political views, 121—22, 150
Interest in astronomical anomalies, 55 Publications, 98
Mental illness and, 20, 41 Views on marriage and sexuality,
Recruitment methods, 59—60, 94, 132— 73-75
338) Views on press and printing, 92
Social backgrounds, 43 Numbers, Janet, 41
Monroe, James, 72 Numbers, Ronald, 41
Montreal, 39
Moravian Brethren, 68
Moorehead, James, 27
Moral order, 145—46 Okugawa, Otohiko, 79, 84, 95
Mormonism, 33, 43 Ottoman Empire, 50—52, 120
Mother Ann Lee, 64, 66, 70, 80, 94 Owen, Robert, 1, 70—73, 75, 83, 84, 86
Mount Tambora, 109 Activities in New Lanark, 71
Muhammed Ali, 51 Beliefs about millennium, 71—72
Founding of New Harmony, 70, 72
Relationship with Fourierists, 93
Relationship with Shakers, 93, 96
Natural disasters: Owen, Robert Dale: views on sexuality, 75
Consequences, 111, 141-42 Owenites: publications, 91—92
In New England, 104—105, 107—109
Millerism and, 56—58, 112
Nature and Revelation, 101
Nativism, 54—55 Panic of 1837, 80, 114
Newark, N.J., 39 Specie suspensions, 114—15
New Deal, 152 Perfectionist, The, 77, 98, 100
New Left, 10, 155, 160 Phalanx, The, 92, 101
 INDEX 193

Philadelphia, Pa., 37, 129 Socialism, 11

Pittsfield, Mass., 35 Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, 159
Pope, 22, 54 Southcott, Joanna, 36
Populism, 8, 151 Southern Baptists, 157
Portland, Me., 37 Springfield, Mass., 35
Postmillennialism, 24—29, 64, 112, 144 Stavrianos, L. S., 158—59
Moral order and, 147—48 Stommel, Elizabeth, 109
Poultney, Vt., 35 Stommel, Henry, 109
Premillennialism, 24, 27-28, 31, 64, 112, Stress, 143
119, 139, 156-57
Presbyterians, 151
Press, 9, 99 i
/
Progress and Poverty, 151 Telegraph, 130-31
Promise of the Coming Dark Age, The, Temin, Peter, 114, 115
158 Temperance, 26, 121
Puritans, 21 Theories of mistakes, 143—44, 146-47
Thernstrom, Stephen, 130
Thomas, Keith, 141
Tolstoy, Leo, 73
Quakers, 69—70 Townsend, Frances, 8, 152
Transcendentalists, 84
Troy, N. Y., 108
Tugwell, Rexford Guy, 152
Radical Reformation, 69, 70 Turner, Joseph, 40
Rapp, George, 83, 93 Tweedie, Stephen, 158
Rathbun, Valentine, 65 2000, Year, 160
Revivals, 28, 43, 128, 132-33 Tyler, John, 53
Ripley, George, 67
Robertson, Pat, 10
Rochester, N. Y., 42, 45, 104, 110
Rome, N.Y., 36 “Ultraism,” 149
Rostow, W. W., 116 Utica, N.Y., 42, 45
Rowe, David, 33, 43, 100 Utopian communities, 9, 64
Defined, 11
Boundaries, 89, 136—37
Economic distress and, 120—21
Sandeen, Ernest, 128 Founding, 82—83
Schell, Jonathan, 158, 159 Geographical distribution, 83-86, 136
Scott, James L., 45 Longevity, 135
Second Advent, 24—25, 65—66, 107 Relationships among, 90—96
Second Adventism. See Millerism Size, 134-35
Seventh Day Adventists, 41, 44 Utopian communities (individual):
Siegel, Bernard, 70 Adonai Shomo, 44
Signs of the Times, 47, 50, 51, 52, 53, 55, Amana, 84
SH Brook Farm, 84, 87, 93, 136
Smith, D. Edson, 97 Celesta, 44—45, 97
Snow, Samuel S., 39 Community of Fullerites, 44
Social coping mechanisms, 144 Ebenezar, 84
Social reform, 26 Ephrata Cloister, 69
194 INDEX

Fourierists, 67, 73, 79-80, 92, 97, 101, Skaneateles Community, 1, 84

121, 135—36 Sodus Bay Phalanx:
American Industrial Union, 136 Social background of members, 87,
Size, 79, 80, 84 > 135, 136
Germania Company, 44—45 Zoar, 69
Harmonie Society. See Rappites Utopians, social background of, 86—88
Mountain Cove, 45
New Harmony, 70, 72, 93, 96
North American Phalanx, 93
Social background of members, 87 Van Amringe, H. H., 67, 93, 101
Ohio Phalanx, 93 Vermont, religion in, 106-107
Oneida Community, 64, 66, 84, 89, 93, Vermont Telegraph, 91
97, 120, 135, 136
_ Branches, 75
Complex marriage, 74—75
Mansion House, 3 Wallace, Anthony FE C., 19—20
Social background of members, 88 War of 1812, 35
Townerite faction, 97 Washington, D. C., 39
Perfectionists. See Oneida Community Weber, Adna, 129, 130
Putney Community, 66, 73—75, Western Midnight Cry, The, 96
78—79, 97, 119 White, Ellen G., 44
Complex marriage, 73—74 White, James, 44
Rappites, 69, 72, 83, 93 “Wilson, M. L., 152
Shakers, 64, 69—71, 73, 89, 119, 120, Witness, The, 98
134, 135, 136 Women, role of, 118
Age composition, 86—87 World War I, 154
Beliefs about Mother Ann Lee, 65
Celibacy, 64, 94
Growth phases, 80—81
Recruitment methods, 84, 94-96 Zevi, Sabbatai, 126
Sex distribution, 87
Size, 81

THEOL OGY LIBRA:

CLAREMONT, CALIF.
 CRUCIBLE OF THE MILLENNIUM

was composed in 10-point Mergenthaler Linotron 202 Sabon and leaded 2 points
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Crucible of the millennium $: the
burned-over district of New York in the
1986 1840s / by Michael Barkune -- ist ede
-- Syracuse, NeY» =: Syracuse University
Press, 1986.
xi,» 194 pe 3 ille $ 24 cme -—- (A New
York State study)
Bibliography: pe 177-188.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-8156-2371-2 (alke paper)
1. Millennialism--New York ( State)--
History--19th centurye 2. Utopias--
Histor y--19th century. 32 Christian
communities--New York (State)-—-History
--19th centurye 4. New York (State)--
Church histor Ve Ie Title
IIe Title: Mi Llennium.

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