Forty Years Of American Life 1821-1861

FORTY YEARS OF AMERICAN LIFE 1821 - 1861 BY Thomas Low Nichols, MJX NEW YOKE Stackpole Sons PUBLISHERS PUBLISHERS 9 NOTE The vigorous, endlessly hopeful America before the Civil War is a constant challenge to our writers. Some of the best of them have worked to recreate the age. It seemed, therefore, almost like magic to stumble upon Forty Years of American Life not a recreation, but the real thing, written on the spot. Dr. Nichols book arises, not to bring history to us, but to bring us almost bodily face to face with history. Dr. Thomas Low Nichols himself was not the least interesting figure in the age he depicts. Good New Hampshirematx that he was, he entered Dartmouth in 1834 as a medical student, but soon became converted to the food-reform ideas of Sylvester Graham the inventor of graham bread. In 1835 he dropped college for journalism. After a turn with Bennett on the New York Herald, he advanced to the brawling frontier town of Buffalo. Here, for attacking the political ring in power, he served a four months term in jail. A benefit at the local theatre cele brated his release. The next few years were filled with journalistic and literary enterprises, As a Democrat despite his New Hampshire origin Nichols campaigned for Polk in 1844. From then on however, he turned more and more to the social-reform theories of Fourier, John Humphrey Noyes of Oneida, and Josiah Warren, the first American anarchist. Nichols believed in perfectibility, and to perfection belonged food reform he had not abandoned Graham. In 1847 he met his future wife, Mrs. Mary Neal Gove-a per son as remarkable as himself. She too was a New-Hampshire-born reformer her specialties were the water cure hydropathy andwomens hygiene. Her writing, furthermore, commanded the approval of Poe, who remarked editorially on her interest in mesmerism and spiritualism. To Nichols, who believed in the individual sovereignty of women and the iniquity of Christian marriage, she was a true soul mate. After their marriage the two joined in promoting hydropathy, mesmerism, vegetarianism, and womens rights. Nichols in 1850 took from New York University the M. D. he had neglected to get from Dartmouth. The couple published magazines, wrote novels, and finally in 1856 were able to give shape to their ideals in the Memnonia Institute. This community they established at Yellow Springs, Ohio, the home of Antioch College. Horace Mann, Antiochs greatest presi dent, was horrified that a free-love colony should pollute the town, and he almost succeeded in preventing the Nichols establishment there. When at last they began, the free love 1 proved to be a rule of asceticism, fasting, and spiritual penance. The group grew less and less Fourierite, more and more religious. In 1857 eight members of the Memnonia Institute, including Dr. and Mrs. Nichols, joined the Roman Catholic Church. Mrs. Nichols continued to be both a devout Catholic and Spiritualist to the end of her days. After two years spent promoting hygiene among the Western convents, the Nicholses were about to start another reform periodical when the Civil War brought their world about their ears. Brotherhood by force of arms they abhorred Nichols days in Buffalo had left a sore feeling toward Seward in 1861 they stole out of New York harbor, never to return. London received them willingly, and with the help of their Catholic connections they were soon establishedjournalists. But by 1867 they found their way back to health reform, and to this they stuck until they died Mrs. Nichols in 1884, Dr. Nichols in 1901. Thus closed the career of an American libertarian who luckily for the readers of this, his book went everywhere, re membered everything, and dipped his pen in electric fluid. PREFACE The first edition of FORTY YEARS OF AMERICAN LIFE was published in 1864, in two octavo volumes. The civil war began in the Spring of 1861, and in the Autumn of the same year I came to England...