The Hoosiers

by Meredith Nicholson

The educational features of the community were, from all testimony, a great failure and disappointment. It was one thing to assemble distinguished scientists, and quite another to organize them into an effective teaching corps. The school taught by d’Arusmont lasted but a short time, and Robert Dale Owen, who was himself a teacher in one of the community schools, while admitting the man’s good qualities, described him as “a wrong-headed genius, whose extravagance and wilfulness and inordinate self-conceit destroyed his usefulness.” Neef had been an officer under Napoleon, and his rough military habits had not been wholly corrected by his subsequent association with Pestalozzi. The Duke of Saxe-Weimar gives a lively picture of him, drilling his boy pupils in military tactics as he led them to the performance of certain labors in the village. Maclure, Say, and Troost did not engage actively in teaching. Paul Brown stated, in a pamphlet assailing the society, that he began teaching in the boarding-school in September, 1826; but from his own story Brown was chiefly employed with meditations on the evils of the place, and his manifestations of temper argue against his value as a teacher. Madame Fretageot was associated with Neef, and the two had charge of the boarding-school. Madame Neef was not regularly employed as a teacher, but sometimes assisted her husband.

Robert Owen’s unfriendly attitude toward religion had awakened hostility in England before he came to the United States. Packard, one of his biographers, expresses no doubt as to Owen’s disbelief in the inspiration of the Bible and in the divine origin of Christianity. Lloyd Jones, the writer of another life of Owen, seeks to mitigate the effect of some of the statements in Owen’s “New Moral World”; but it is sufficiently clear that when he was at the height of his fame and usefulness in England, Owen estranged many of his most influential friends and admirers by his flings at religion, which were serious enough to arouse the wrath of an occasional heresy-hunting bishop. Sargent, the author of “Robert Owen and his Philosophy,” says that Owen suffered for his religious opinions “neglect, hatred, contempt, calumny, and all the evils that follow the excommunicated man.” In his “Declaration of Mental Independence” at New Harmony, July 4, 1826, Owen inveighed against “a trinity of the most monstrous evils that could be combined to inflict mental and physical evil upon the whole race. I refer to private or individual property, absurd and irrational systems of religion, and marriage founded on individual property combined with some of these irrational systems of religion”—a statement that was somewhat advanced for the Wabash Valley of that period. He seemed to ignore the spiritual element in man, though, according to Sargent, he expressed in his old age his belief that a Divine Providence had guided him through his long career; and late in life he became a convert to spiritualism. There is no evidence that Owen ever held loose ideas of the relations of the sexes, though such opinions were attributed to him. He believed that marriage should be founded on mutual sympathy and congeniality, and he wished the imagination to be excluded and judgment made the sole guide in such matters. This, like many of his teachings, seems equivocal; but he believed that where these prerequisites ceased to exist it should be possible to terminate a marriage. Owen and Maclure both believed fully in the equality of the sexes. New Harmony schools were co-educational, and women were admitted to all the councils of the society. It is not clear that they were always permitted to vote, though widows succeeded to the suffrages of their husbands. A woman’s society was organized, and is supposed to have been similar to literary clubs as now known, though there is but one reference to the organization in the Gazette—a notice of the postponement of a meeting in November, 1825.

Owen’s refusal to make a formal transfer of his property to the community continued to be a cause of dissatisfaction. The founder spoke hopefully of the future, but he took care that his enthusiasm should not run away with his judgment, so he continued to hold his little principality in fee simple. When questioned as to his intentions in this particular, he replied, as officially reported in the Gazette of August 30, 1826: “I shall be ready to form such a community whenever you are ready for it.... But progress must be made in community education before all parties can be prepared for a community of common property.” The assembly thereupon adopted a resolution that they meet three evenings in the week for community education, but this was evidently regarded by the members as a severe penalty to pay for the cause of socialism. Robert Dale Owen wrote that the meetings continued “with gradually lessening numbers.”

Troubles came thick and fast in the fall of 1826. Several adventurers openly tried to defraud Owen, and an era of suspicion began. A man named Taylor joined the community, at Owen’s invitation, to take charge of the industries, but after getting possession of a tract of land he started a distillery, greatly to the founder’s annoyance. Brown describes with great particularity the unhappy condition that prevailed during the fall and winter of 1826. He complains that Owen was living in luxury at the tavern, while the laborers in the large boarding-houses fared badly. Although there were several professional gardeners in the community, there was a lack of vegetables, and the necessities were doled out sparingly. Brown believed that the founder was trying to retrieve his fortunes, and he speaks of him as “willing to shift into the character of a retailer and tavern keeper.” The Gazette was, in Brown’s belief, the personal organ of Owen, whom he calls “the lord proprietor of the press”; but this may be merely the wail of the rejected, for Brown admits that his own contributions were repeatedly scorned, so that to gain publicity he was obliged to post them on the gateway of the educational society, taking them in at night for safety. He says that in spite of the balls and promenade concerts the people remained strangers, and he deplores the amount of time and candles wasted in these frivolities. As to the educational features of the place, Brown expresses his opinion that there was no other place in the United States where a like number of children in the same compass “were of so harsh, insolent, rash, boisterous, and barbarous dispositions.” Brown deals drastically with the auditing department of the community. He intimates that when a debit balance appeared against a member on the books, credit was immediately stopped at the store. He gives the instance of a gardener named Gilbert, who was suddenly served with his discharge in December, when his family were ill, because he was performing no labor and had fallen in arrears. Gilbert asked for an investigation, which was held, and the court found in his favor.

Twenty heads of families were notified to quit February 1, 1827; March 21 there was an exodus of about eighty persons, who took a steamboat for the upper Ohio, and March 28 the Gazette contained an editorial admitting the failure of New Harmony, the central community, but maintaining that the auxiliary societies were successful. The reason assigned for the collapse was that “the members were too various in their feelings, and too dissimilar in their habits, to govern themselves harmoniously as one community.” Owen delivered a farewell address to the citizens, May 26. He spoke with patient forbearance of the element that had joined the community merely to become a burden upon him; but he was severe upon his associates who had undertaken the educational work of the society but had failed to organize such schools as he had expected. He had wished the children to be “educated in similar habits, dispositions, and feelings, and be brought up truly as members of one large family, without a single discordant feeling.” If the schools had not proved ineffectual, he believed that even with the heterogeneous mass that had collected on his lands a successful society could have been founded. However, turning from these unpleasant reflections, with characteristic optimism, he declared that “the social system is now firmly established; the natural and easy means of forming communities have been developed by your past experience.... New Harmony is now, therefore, literally surrounded by independent communities, and applications are made almost daily by persons who come from far and near to be permitted to establish themselves in a similar manner.” The eight communities referred to were probably little more than tentative colonies, planted on Owen’s lands under lease. There is no evidence that a community organization was maintained for any length of time at Macluria or Feiba Peveli after the collapse at New Harmony village, and of the remainder of the eight to which Owen referred there is no further record. They vanished with the others, and presently passed to individual owners or lessees. Brown summarizes the disappearance of communism and the return of the old order in these words: “The greater part of the town was now resolved into individual lots; a grocery was established opposite the tavern; painted sign boards began to be stuck up on the buildings, pointing out places of manufacture and trade; a sort of wax figure and puppet show was opened at one of the boarding-houses, charging twenty-five cents for adults and twelve and a half for children; and everything went on in the old style.”

Owen’s teachings and example led to other experiments in America besides those he personally conducted on the Wabash; but American socialism of the Owen period was most fully expressed at New Harmony. Owen’s ardor for social reforms continued unabated. He visited Mexico shortly after the New Harmony failure, to secure a concession of land for further experiments. The negotiations failed, and he is next heard of at Cincinnati, in April, 1829, debating religious questions with Alexander Campbell. He did not appear in America again until the fall of 1844, when he spent a short time on his New Harmony lands, lectured in many cities, established friendly relations with Brisbane and other Fourierites, and, in the spring of 1845, visited Brook Farm. He was last at New Harmony in the fall of 1846.

It could hardly be expected that a village which had been the home of two orders of exiles could descend at once to the commonplace, and the subsequent history of New Harmony is not disappointing. Through many years scientists of distinction and radicals of all degrees visited the place; Maclure made it his headquarters; Say lived and died there; the sons of Robert Owen became residents and gained honorable distinction in science and politics; books that still have value were written and published in the village. Robert Dale Owen (1801-1877) turned from communism to politics and literature, and few citizens of Indiana have lived lives more useful or memorable. He was educated at Hofwyl, under Fellenberg, and after a few years of commercial experience at New Lanark, he joined the New Harmony community. He shared, in large measure, his father’s interests in social and economic matters, and after the fall of New Harmony he and Frances Wright conducted a radical paper called the Free Enquirer at New York. In 1833 he returned to New Harmony and was soon launched upon a brilliant career. He was elected a representative to the Indiana General Assembly and to the National Congress, and he was an influential and active member of the convention that revised the Indiana constitution. The Indiana laws granting independent property rights to women were largely due to his efforts, and he introduced in Congress, in December, 1845, the bill under which the Smithsonian Institute was organized. He was appointed chargé d’affaires at Naples in 1853, and when the grade of the post was raised he was continued as minister until 1858. In 1863, he was chairman of a commission appointed by the Secretary of War to examine the condition of the freedmen. He had written to the President, urging emancipation before this step had been determined upon, and Secretary Chase said that Owen’s letter to Lincoln had greatly influenced the President to make his proclamation. Mr. Owen wrote often and well, and with a facility and force that gave him wide reputation for learning and literary accomplishment. His books include “Pocahontas: A Dream” (1837); “Hints on Architecture” (1849); “Footprints on the Boundary of Another World” (1859); “Beyond the Breakers: A Novel” (1870); “Debatable Land Between this World and the Next” (1872); and “Threading my Way” (1874). He became deeply interested in spiritualism, and two of his books, as the titles indicate, are devoted to this subject. He travelled much and knew many of the men and women eminent in the early years of the nineteenth century, including La Fayette and Mrs. Shelley. His daughter Rosamund married Laurence Oliphant.

David Dale, another son of Robert (1807-1860), was educated at Hofwyl and Glasgow, and reached New Harmony in the year of the community’s failure. He was employed by the Indiana legislature to make a geological survey of the State, and in 1839 the general government engaged him to examine Western mineral lands. He explored Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin under this appointment. Ten years later he made similar surveys in Minnesota. During all this time New Harmony was his home and headquarters, and the rendezvous of his associates, and his collections of specimens were assembled there. He was State geologist of Kentucky from 1854 to 1857, and then turned to Arkansas, of which he made thorough geological surveys. In 1859 he was appointed State geologist of Indiana, and held the office until his death. He was a skilled chemist and a doctor of medicine as well as a trained natural scientist and geologist. He knew the use of pencil and brush, and illustrated his reports with sketches that greatly enhanced their value.

Military talent expressed itself in the Owen family in Richard, still another of Robert’s sons (1810-1890), who was also a graduate of Hofwyl. He came to America and engaged in business until the Mexican War, in which he served as captain, and later assisted his brother, David Dale, in his surveys of the Northwest. He taught the natural sciences in the Military Institute of Kentucky, and when it was merged in the University of Nashville he continued in the same capacity with the new institution. Meanwhile he had, with the energy and ambition characteristic of his family, earned the degree of Doctor of Medicine, though he never practised. He served in the Civil War as colonel of the Sixtieth Indiana Regiment, principally in the Southwest, and was once taken prisoner. After the war he taught in the University of Indiana for fifteen years, retiring finally to New Harmony, where, in the old Rapp mansion, he continued his studies, writing constantly for the scientific periodicals. He married a daughter of Neef. William Owen, who had reached New Harmony in time to aid his brother, Robert Dale, in editing the Gazette, continued to live in Indiana, and became a successful financier. Descendants of Robert Owen still live at New Harmony, and the name is one to conjure within all the lower Wabash Valley.

The excellent work of the New Harmony press proves that good craftsmanship was encouraged and appreciated in the early days. The Gazette, and its successor, the Disseminator, are models of accurate and tasteful typography, and the books published from this isolated village are even more creditable. Say’s “American Conchology” was wholly printed at New Harmony, the title page bearing date 1830. Its copious illustrations are the work of New Harmony lithographers, and the tinting of the engravings, which was done by Mrs. Say, reproduces accurately the delicate shadings of the shells. Her colors are still fresh and true in copies of this work. Parts of Say’s “American Entomology,” which he had begun at Philadelphia, were finished at New Harmony. Maclure was an industrious writer, and the imprint of the New Harmony press is found in two substantial volumes, one dated 1831, the other 1837, in which he collected short essays on innumerable topics. Josiah Warren was for a time at least the New Harmony publisher, and Michaux’s “North American Sylva” was reprinted by him from plates brought from Paris by Maclure, though the unbound sheets of the New Harmony edition were consumed by fire.