CHAPTER XV.
THE SKANEATELES COMMUNITY.[ToC]
A wonderful year was 1843. Father Miller's prophetic calculations had created a vast expectation that it would be the year of the final conflagration. His confident followers had their ascension-robes ready; and outside multitudes saw the approach of that year with an uneasy impression that the advent of Christ, or something equally awful, was about to make an end of the world.
And indeed tremendous events did come in 1843. If Father Miller and his followers had been discerning and humble enough to have accepted a spiritual fulfillment of their prophecies, they might have escaped the mortification of a total mistake as to the time. The events that came were these:
The Anti-slavery movement, which for twelve years had been gathering into itself all minor reforms and firing the northern heart for revolution, came to its climax in the summer of 1843, in a rush of one hundred National Conventions! At the same time Brisbane had every thing ready for his great socialistic movement, and in the autumn of 1843 the flood of Fourierism broke upon the country. Anti-slavery was destructive; Fourierism professed to be constructive. Both were rampant against existing civilization. Perhaps it will be found that in the junction and triumphant sweep of these forces, the old world, in an important sense, did come to an end.
In 1843 Massachusetts, the great mother of notions, threw out in the face of impending Fourierism her fourth and last socialistic experiment. There was a mania abroad, that made common Yankees as confident of their ability to achieve new social machinery and save the world, as though they were Owens or Fouriers. The Unitarians at Brook Farm, the Universalists at Hopedale, and the Nothingarians at Northampton, had tried their hands at Community-building in 1841—2, and were in the full glory of success. It was time for Anti-slavery, the last and most vigorous of Massachusetts nurslings, to enter the socialistic field. This time, as if to make sure of out-flanking the French invasion, the post for the experiment was taken at Skaneateles (a town forty miles west of the present site of the Oneida Community), thus extending the Massachusetts line from Boston to Central New York.
John A. Collins, the founder of the Skaneateles Community, was a Boston man, and had been a working Abolitionist up to the summer of 1843. He was in fact the General Agent of the Massachusetts Anti-slavery Society, and in that capacity had superintended the one hundred National Conventions ordered by the Society for that year. During the latter part of this service he had turned his own attention and that of the Conventions he managed, so much toward his private schemes of Association, that he had not the face to claim his salary as Anti-slavery agent. His way was to get up a rousing Anti-slavery Convention, and conclude it by calling a socialistic Convention, to be held on the spot immediately after it. At the close of the campaign he resigned, and the Anti-slavery Board gave him the following certificate of character:
"Voted, That the Board, in accepting the resignation of John A. Collins, tender him their sincerest thanks, and take this occasion to bear the most cordial testimony to the zeal and disinterestedness with which, at a great crisis, he threw himself a willing offering on the altar of the Anti-slavery cause, as well as to the energy and rare ability with which for four years he has discharged the duties of their General Agent; and in parting, offer him their best wishes for his future happiness and success."