Utopian Communities

Sources

Ideal Societies. For some Americans who felt that the new nation’s promise to make a better life for all was not being realized quickly enough, the answer was to withdraw from society and form Utopian communities, safe from the depravity and corruption of the rest of the world. These people were perfectionists, meaning that they believed it was possible to create an ideal society here on earth rather than having to wait until the next life. They held many different visions of the perfect society, almost as many as there were Utopian communities, but they can be divided into two types: those who withdrew from society to live in a more traditional, religious world safe from contamination; and those who hoped to reform (not escape) society by creating experimental communities that would serve as models for the rest of the world. While these communities varied in size and duration, they all shared the hope that through an experiment in communal living they could create a paradise here on earth, be it secular or religious.

Transcendentalist Utopias. There were two wellknown transcendentalist utopias, the first of which was Brook Farm, started by George Ripley in 1841 near Boston. The idea behind the community. Ripley wrote, was “to substitute a system of brotherly cooperation for one of selfish competition; …and thus to impart a greater freedom, simplicity, truthfulness, refinement, and moral dignity to our mode of life.” Among the famous writers associated with Brook Farm were Margaret Fuller and Nathaniel Hawthorne, who both lived there for a while, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, who made frequent visits. The community was a joint-stock venture and subsisted on communal labor, manufacturing items such as sashes, doors, and blinds. But the jewel of the community was its school, which attracted many students preparing for Harvard. When in 1846 a fire consumed a new (uninsured) building, members decided to dissolve Brook Farm due to financial troubles. A less successful transcendentalist community was Fruitlands, started by Bronson Alcott and Charles Lane in 1843 near Harvard, Massachusetts. Lane dictated that all members practice celibacy and follow a vegetarian diet and that their farm not utilize animal labor, which he considered as bad as enslaving human beings. If it had not been for the women and children, who brought in the crop while “some call of the Oversoul wafted all the men away, ’’ Louisa May Alcott wrote, the community would have starved. Within the year Lane left, withdrawing his money and leaving Fruitlands to dissolve.

New Harmony. This secular Utopian community, the first of its kind in America, was founded in 1825 by Robert Owen, a British industrialist who had seen the degradation and poverty of the working class in England. Without a specific plan but a general faith in perfectionism, he hoped to create a society where workers labored together instead of viewing themselves as individuals, thus providing the inhabitants with economic security and a more satisfying social life. Intrigued by claims Owen made about the future of his society, nine hundred people appeared at New Harmony, Indiana, to undertake the experiment. To begin, Owen owned all of the land and equipment, intending eventually to ease the society into communal living. He and his sons were in charge, but Owen was absent for long periods of time and did not provide a clear, concrete vision for the community or precise rules for governing it in his absence. The community prospered economically, producing candles, soap, hats, and boots and operating saw- and gristmills, but housing was inadequate, and the town was overcrowded. Lacking leadership, the community had a difficult time solving these problems. And when in 1826 Owen broadcast his radical views denouncing private property, the institution of marriage, and organized religion, he was roundly attacked in the American press, weakening public support for the community. Many inhabitants, dissatisfied with Owen’s views or desiring a religious emphasis in their everyday lives, left New Harmony to create their own offshoot communities. In 1828 Owen sold the land and property to community members and withdrew from the experiment. Many lived on in New Harmony as small-time farmers or artisans.

TRANSCENDENTAL WILD OATS

Louisa May Alcott’s satirical account of what it was like to live in her father’s experimental utopian community, Fruitlands, describes the founders’ intentions and reveals the stark differences between the spiritual concerns of her idealistic father and the more practical concerns of her mother:

This prospective Eden at present consisted of an old red farm-house, a dilapidated barn, many acres of meadowland, and a grove. Ten ancient apple trees were all the “chaste supply” which the place offered as yet; but, in the firm belief that plenteous orchards were soon to be evoked from their inner consciousness, these sanguine founders had christened their domain Fruitlands.

Here Timon Lion (Charles Lane) intended to found a colony of Latter Day Saints, who, under his patriarchal sway, should regenerate the world and glorify his name for ever. Here Abel Lamb (Bronson Alcott), with the devoutest faith in the high ideal which was to him a living truth, desired to plant a Paradise, where Beauty, Virtue, Justice, and Love might live happily together, without the possibility of a serpent entering in. And here his wife, unconverted but faithful to the end, hoped, after many wanderings over the face of the earth, to find rest for herself and a home for her children.

Source: Louisa May Alcott, “Transcendental Wild Oats,” in Alternative Alcott, edited by Elaine Showalter (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1988).

Nashoba. Frances Wright, a Scottish reformer, was inspired by the New Harmony experiment to form her own community in 1826. She had a plan to end slavery in the South without negative repercussions for slaveholders

by creating communities where slaves could work the land, learn skills they could use to support themselves, and eventually buy their freedom. After they were free, Wright intended that they would be sent to Haiti or Africa. In addition, she hoped to create a cooperative community where people of both races could live together based on the Owenite model. She bought 640 acres in western Tennessee, called Nashoba, where she implemented a pilot program. She bought fifteen slaves who worked under an overseer, but the land was difficult to farm, and little was accomplished. Owen, who visited Nashoba in 1827, described what he saw: “Three or four squared log houses and a few small cabins for the slaves the only buildings. Slaves released from the fear of the lash worked indolently under the management of Whitby (the overseer), whose education in an easy-going Shaker village had not at all fitted him for the post of plantation overseer.” Eventually Wright had to accept that her dreams of an interracial community that allowed all of its inhabitants to reach their greatest potential were not being realized. She spent most of her time away from Nashoba, either at New Harmony or promoting her ideas, which included free love, sexual equality, and interracial relationships, all of which drew intense censure from an American public that branded her “a female monster whom all decent people ought to avoid” and made her plan untenable. In 1828 she returned to Nashoba to find it bankrupt. She had the slaves freed, transported to Haiti, and set up in their own homes.

Sources

Seymour R. Kesten, Episodes: Daily Life in Experimental Colonies Dedicated to Changing the World (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1993);

Alice Felt Tyler, Freedom’s Ferment: Phases of American Social History from the Colonial Period to the Outbreak of the Civil War (New York: Harper & Row, 1944).