CHAPTER XIV.
THE NORTHAMPTON ASSOCIATION.[ToC]
This Community, though its site was in a region where Jonathan Edwards and Revivalism reigned a hundred years before, could hardly be called religious. It seems to have represented a class sometimes called "Nothingarians." But like Brook Farm and Hopedale, it was an independent Yankee attempt to regenerate society, and a forerunner of Fourierism.
Massachusetts, the center of New England, the mother of school systems and factory systems, of Faneuil Hall revolutions and Anti-Slavery revolutions, of Liberalism, Literature, and Social Science, appears to have anticipated the advent of Fourierism, and to have prepared herself for or against the rush of French ideas, by throwing out three experiments of her own on her three avenues of approach:—Unitarianism, Universalism, and Nothingarianism.
The following neat account of the Northampton Community, is copied from a feminine manuscript in Macdonald's collection, on which he wrote in pencil:
"By Mrs. Judson, for me, through G.W. Benson, Williamsburg, February 14 1853."
MEMOIR.
"The Northampton Association of Education and Industry had its origin in the aspiration of a few individuals for a better and purer state of society—for freedom from the trammels of sect and bigotry, and an opportunity of carrying out their principles, socially, religiously, and otherwise, without restraint from the prevailing practices of the world around.
"The projectors of this enterprise were Messrs. David Mack, Samuel L. Hill, George W. Benson and William Adam. These, with several others who were induced to unite with them, in all ten persons, held their first meeting April 8 1842, organized the Association, and adopted a preamble, constitution and by-laws.