The Pantarch: A Biography of Stephen Pearl Andrews

Madeleine B. Stern

Published by University of Texas Press 1968

The Pantarch

A Biography of Stephen Pearl Andrews

Madeleine B. Stern

https://doi.org/10.7560/732100

Overview
Contents

About this book

An abolitionist and a champion of free love and women’s rights would seem decidedly out of place in nineteenth-century Texas, but such a man was Stephen Pearl Andrews (1812–1886), American reformer, civil rights proponent, pioneer in sociology, advocate of reformed spelling, lawyer, and eccentric philosopher. Since his life mirrored and often anticipated the various reform movements spawned not only in Texas but in the United States in the nineteenth century, this first biography of him sharply reflects and elucidates his times.

The extremely important role Andrews played in the abolition movement in this country has not heretofore been accorded him. After having witnessed slavery in Louisiana during the 1830s, Andrews came to Texas and began his career as an abolitionist with an audacious attempt to free the slaves there.

His singular career, however, comprised many more activities than abolitionism, and most have long been forgotten by historians. He introduced Pitman shorthand into the United States as a means of teaching the uneducated to read; his role in the community of Modern Times, Long Island, was as important as that of Josiah Warren, the “first American anarchist,” although Andrews’s participation in this communal venture, along with the significance of Modern Times itself, has been underestimated.

Other causes which Andrews supported included free love and the rights of women, dramatized by his journalistic debate with Horace Greeley and Henry James, Sr., and by his endorsement of Victoria Woodhull as the first woman candidate for the Presidency of the United States. These interests, together with his consequent involvement in the Beecher-Tilton Scandal, provide insight into some of the more colorful aspects of nineteenth-century American reform movements.

Andrews’s attacks upon whatever infringed on individual freedom brought him into diverse arenas—economic, sociological, and philosophical. The philosophical system he developed included among its tenets the sovereignty of the individual, a science of society, a universal language (his Alwato long preceded Esperanto), the unity of the sciences, and a “Pantarchal United States of the World.” His philosophy has never before been epitomized nor have its applications to later thought been considered.

“I have made it the business of my life to study social laws,” Andrews wrote. “I see now a new age beginning to appear.” This biography of the dynamic reformer examines those social laws and that still-unembodied new age. It reanimates a heretofore neglected American reformer and casts new light upon previously unexplored bypaths of nineteenth-century American social history. The biography is fully documented, based in part upon a corpus of unpublished material in the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.

Author / Editor information

Madeleine B. Stern (1912–2007) was a historian, biographer, and antiquarian book dealer.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
Introduction Louis Filler Publicly Available Download PDF	xv
I. NEW ENGLAND ROOTS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
II. LOUISIANA IN TRANSITION Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	13
III. LONE STAR Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	34
IV. DON QUIXOTE IN LONDON Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	47
V. POTHOOKS FOR FREEDOM Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	58
VI. MODERN TIMES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	73
VII. BROWNSTONE UTOPIA Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	87
VIII. MOUTHPIECE OF THE MILLENNIUM Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	103
IX. THE COURT OF THE PANTARCHY Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	122
X. "PROTAGONIST OF HUMANITY" Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	139
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	159
Works Cited Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	180
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	199

Language: English
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Copyright year: 1968
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 234

eBook

Published: December 15, 2014
ISBN: 9781477305133