For “The Cause of Civil and Religious Liberty”: Abner Cole and the Palmyra, New York, Reflector

Abstract

The Reflector of Palmyra, New York, was an important contributor to the American Freethought Movement, a philosophical viewpoint informed by science, facts, and reason. The editor and publisher, Abner Cole, used the Reflector to promote the movement and its principles of mental improvement, equality of all citizens, and moral values informed by learning and a respect for life and nature. In so doing, he also advocated free speech, freedom of the press, and civil and religious liberty. Cole and other Freethought Movement editors tested and refined the limits of free-speech theory in its earliest American stages as they enhanced their local marketplace of ideas with alternative perspectives.

Notes

George W. Cowles, ed., Landmarks of Wayne County, New York (Syracuse: D. Mason, 1895), 167; Encyclopædia Britannica Online, s.v. “Palmyra,” accessed February 25, 2015, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/440255/Palmyra; Wayne County (NY) Government, “Brief History & Historical Sites: Palmyra,” accessed February 25, 2015, http://www.co.wayne.ny.us/departments/historian/HistPalmyra.htm.

US Census Bureau, 2010 Census of Population and Housing, Population and Housing Unit Counts, CPH-2-34, New York (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 2012), 44; and official logo of the Town and Village of Palmyra, New York, accessed February 25, 2015, http://www.palmyrany.com/.

Visit Palmyra, New York, “Palmyra, NY—The Four Corner Churches,” accessed February 25, 2015, http://www.visitpalmyrany.com/attractions/four_churches.html.

Wayne County (NY) Government; and Bonnie Hays, “Palmyra Helps Lead the Movement for the Underground Railroad,” Wayne Post, March 3, 2011, WaynePost.com, accessed February 25, 2015, http://www.waynepost.com/article/20110303/News/303039954.

Hill Cumorah Visitors Centers and Historic Sites of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “Book of Mormon Historic Publication Site,” accessed February 25, 2015, http://www.hillcumorah.org/grandin.php.

Donald L. Enders, “Two Significant Sites of the Restoration,” Ensign, September 1998, 34.

A. G. Dauby, “Gentlemen, Fellow Craftsmen, Brethren,” in History of the Press of Western New-York, ed. Frederick Follett (Rochester: Jerome & Brother, Daily American Office, 1847), 3.

Lucy Mack Smith, Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith the Prophet and His Progenitors for Many Generations (Liverpool: S. W. Richards, 1853), 66, 70; Orsamus Turner, History of the Pioneer Settlement of Phelps & Gorham's Purchase, and Morris’ Reserve (Rochester: William Alling, 1852), iii–iv; and advertisements, Reflector, February 13, 1830; March 8, 1830; June 12, 1830; June 22, 1830; October 25, 1830; November 19, 1830; and January 6, 1831.

Follett, History of the Press of Western New-York, 63–64.

Albert Post, Popular Freethought in America, 1825–1850 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943), 34–74. The majority of such newspapers were published in New York City. Titles included the Correspondent (1827–1829) and Age of Reason (1848). Post writes that the movement lasted just twenty-five years; Jacoby argues that it began with the American Revolution and that the “golden age of freethought” lasted from about 1875 to 1914. Susan Jacoby, Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism (New York: Henry Holt, 2004), 151.

“About Boston Investigator,” Chronicling America, accessed February 25, 2015, http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/ca10000607/.

Samuel P. Putnam, 400 Years of Freethought (New York: Truth Seeker, 1894), 11–15; and Marshall G. Brown and Gordon Stein, Freethought in the United States: A Descriptive Bibliography (Westport: Greenwood, 1978), 51.

Putnam, 400 Years of Freethought, 12.

Ibid., 14.

The confrontation has been described in works including Andrew H. Hedges, “The Refractory Abner Cole,” in Revelation, Reason, and Faith: Essays in Honor of Truman G. Madsen, ed. Truman G. Madsen et al. (Provo: Foundation for Ancient Research & Mormon Studies, 2002), 447–475; Russell B. Rich, “The Dogberry Papers and the Book of Mormon,” BYU Studies 10, no. 3 (Spring 1970): 315–320; and Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1984).

Nathaniel Hinckley Wadsworth, “Copyright Laws in the 1830s Book of Mormon,” BYU Studies 45, no. 3 (2006): 87–90; and Smith, Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith, 148–149. There is no record of the arbitration.

Post, Popular Freethought in America, 34–74, especially 59.

Ibid., 232. He notes that few newspapers survived more than two years.

Individual newspapers also have been overlooked, but for one study of Fanny Wright's Free Enquirer, see Margaret Lane, Frances Wright and the “Great Experiment” (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1972). A book about George Henry Evans, who published several freethought newspapers, focuses more on Evans's labor and political campaigns in New York than on his work as a publisher. Jeffrey J. Pilz, The Life, Work and Times of George Henry Evans, Newspaperman, Activist and Reformer (1829–1849) (New York: Edwin Mellen, 2001).

Brown and Stein, Freethought in the United States, viii.

See, for example, William David Sloan, “The Party Press, 1783–1833,” in The Media in America: A History, 9th ed., ed. William David Sloan (Northport: Vision Press, 2014), 69–94.

“Our Paper,” Reflector, February 27, 1830. Cole's observation regarding the press as a “palladium” can be traced to ideas articulated in the early 1800s and reprinted in Report of the Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention of the State of New York Held in 1867 and 1868, in the City of Albany, vol. III (Albany: Weed, Parsons, 1868), 1692.

Putnam, 400 Years of Freethought, 655.

The newspaper began as a weekly, but sometimes twelve days elapsed between issues. By the end of 1829, Cole was publishing at will. See “To the Public,” Reflector, December 22, 1829; “This Paper,” January 22, 1830; and “To Our Patrons,” November 27, 1830.

“Cole, Abner,” Joseph Smith Papers, accessed March 2, 2015, http://josephsmithpapers.org/person?name=Abner+Cole.

Turner, History of the Pioneer Settlement of Phelps & Gorham's Purchase, 186.

Ibid.; Smith, Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith, 148; “Cole, Abner”; and Hedges, “The Refractory Abner Cole,” 450.

Brown and Stein, Freethought in the United States, 13. Also see Lester R. Kurtz, Gods in the Global Village: The World's Religions in Sociological Perspective (Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge, 2007), 178.

Brown and Stein, Freethought in the United States, vii.

Jacoby, Freethinkers, 4.

Ibid., 5.

Post, Popular Freethought in America, 24 and 25–26. Palmer, called “the most active of the militant Deists” who lived during the 1790s, wrote for two magazines and founded a Deistical Society in New York City. Brown and Stein, Freethought in the United States, 19; and Jacoby, Freethinkers, 52–56.

Kenneth W. Burchell, “Birthday Party Politics: The Thomas Paine Birthday Celebrations and the Origins of American Democratic Reform,” in Thomas Paine: Common Sense for the Modern Era, ed. Ronald F. King and Elsie Begler (San Diego: San Diego State University Press, 2007), 177. Also see Jacoby, Freethinkers, 64–65; and Brown and Stein, Freethought in the United States, 34–35.

Post, Popular Freethought in America, 76; “Prospectus,” Correspondent (New York), January 20, 1827, quoted with italics in Post, Popular Freethought in America, 45.

Correspondent (New York), February 17, 1827, quoted in ibid., 76.

Helen L. Sumner, “Causes of the Awakening,” in History of Labour in the United States, vol. 1, ed. John Rogers Commons et al. (New York: Macmillan, 1921), 170.

Horace Greeley, The Autobiography of Horace Greeley, or Recollections of a Busy Life (New York: E. B. Treat, 1872), 87; and New-York Commercial Advertiser, quoted in ibid., 170–171.

Jacoby, Freethinkers, 96.

The Obadiah Dogberry Society, “Who.”

Upstate New York was known as the “burned-over district.” Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 173. The Rev. Charles G. Finney was one of the earliest to use a like term, calling it the “burnt district.” Charles G. Finney, Memoirs of Rev. Charles G. Finney (New York: A. S. Barnes, 1876), 78.

David M. Kennedy, “Editor's Introduction,” in What Hath God Wrought, xiv.

Finney, Memoirs of Rev. Charles G. Finney, 78.

Reflector, January 2, 1830.

“To the Public,” Reflector, December 22, 1829.

“To the Young—No. 2,” Reflector, June 22, 1830.

See, for example, Reflector, December 22, 1829.

“Anatomy,” Reflector, December 22, 1829.

“To the Public,” Reflector, December 22, 1829.

“The History of Painting” and untitled notice, Reflector, January 6, 1831; and George Crabb, A Dictionary of General Knowledge; or, An Explanation of Words and Things Connected with All the Arts and Sciences (London: Printed for Thomas Tegg, 1830).

Cole first used the pseudonym Obadiah Dogberry, Junior, but later changed the spelling to Obediah and replaced “Junior” with “Esquire.” Reflector, September 2, 1829. See Hedges for speculation on Cole's pen name. Hedges, “The Refractory Abner Cole,” 459–460.

“Squire Dogberry's Reflections on Education,” Reflector, January 13, 1830.

Ibid. Emphasis in the original. Cole frequently italicized words in the newspaper and their use has been noted accordingly.

“Education,” Reflector, February 27, 1830. Emphasis in the original.

“Prospectus of ‘The Reflector,’” Reflector, February 6, 1830. Emphasis in the original.

Reflector, January 1, 1831.

“Our Closet,” Reflector, February 1, 1831. Copies were delivered to local subscribers and mailed to readers living in Rochester, Syracuse, and other New York towns and cities.

Ibid. Emphasis in the original.

L. H. Redfield, address of the second vice-president, Printers’ Festival, in Follett, History of the Press of Western New-York, 7, 8.

“The March of Intellect,” Reflector, January 22, 1830.

Ibid. More than 218 newspapers were being published in New York, with forty-seven alone being printed in New York City. “Newspapers,” February 13, 1830.

Reflector, January 2, 1830.

“The March of Intellect.” Emphasis in the original.

“The Press,” Reflector, October 4, 1830.

The idea of truth's ability to overcome error was extant in Cole's day, but the origin of the metaphor and term “marketplace of ideas” is found in the cases of Abrams v. United States, 250 US 616, 630 (1919) and United States v. Rumely, 345 US 41 (1953).

“To Our Patrons,” Reflector, May 1, 1830. Emphasis in the original.

J., “For the Reflector,” Reflector, May 1, 1830.

L. K. Washburn, in Freethought: Is It Destructive or Constructive? A Symposium (New York: Truth Seeker, 1890), 23–24.

“To the Public,” Reflector, December 22, 1829. Emphasis in the original.

Celia Morris Eckhardt, Fanny Wright: Rebel in America, rev. ed. (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 194, 195.

Rodger Streitmatter, “Origins of the American Labor Press,” Journalism History 25, no. 3 (Autumn 1999): 99, 100.

Letter from “A Working Man” to the editor of the Wayne County (NY) Patriot, reprinted in the New York City Workingman's Advocate (New York), June 5, 1830.

“The Working Classes,” Reflector, February 6, 1830. Emphasis in the original.

“The Working Classes—No. 2,” Reflector, February 13, 1830; and “Working Classes No. 5,” Reflector, March 2, 1830.

Sumner, “Causes of the Awakening,” 170.

Ibid., 181.

“To the Young—No. 9,” Reflector, August 28, 1830.

“Working Classes No. 5”; and “Apprentices,” Reflector, January 1, 1831.

“To the Young—No. 9.”

“Apprentices.”

“Working Classes No. VIII,” Reflector, June 1, 1830. Emphasis in the original.

Sumner, “Causes of the Awakening,” 170.

“To the Young—No. 2,” Reflector, June 22, 1830.

“Our Closet,” Reflector, September 4, 1830.

“To the Young—No. 9.”

“Our Closet,” Reflector, October 16, 1830.

Jacoby, Freethinkers, 1; and Robert G. Ingersoll, in Freethought: Is It Destructive or Constructive?, 3. The Truth Seeker, founded in September 1873, was based in New York City.

Ralph L. Towne and Frederick J. Speckeen, “Robert Green Ingersoll: A Case Study of Free Speech,” Today's Speech 10, no. 4 (November 1962): 10–12, 29.

“What Is a Freethinker?,” http://files.meetup.com/391323/FreeThinkingPamphlet.pdf.

L. K. Washburn, in Freethought: Is It Destructive or Constructive?, 23–24. He was editor of the Investigator.

“Our Own Affairs,” Reflector, October 4, 1830.

Reflector, July 16, 1830.

Reflector, January 1, 1831.

“Look out for a Villain,” Reflector, December 23, 1830.

“Beware of a Rogue,” Reflector, February 6, 1830. Emphasis in the original.

“The Press.”

Reflector, June 1, 1830. Emphasis in the original.

Poor Memory, Reflector, March 23, 1830. Emphasis in the original.

A Subscriber, Reflector, March 23, 1830. Emphasis in the original.

NEPA Freethought Society, “FAQ”; and Reflector, December 6, 1830. “Together by the ears” means fighting and scratching. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, s.v. “Fall Together by the Ears (To),” by E. Cobham Brewer, accessed February 25, 2015, http://www.bartleby.com/81/6185.html.

Reflector, January 1, 1831.

“What Is a Freethinker?,” http://files.meetup.com/391323/FreeThinkingPamphlet.pdf.

C. B. Reynolds, in Freethought: Is It Destructive or Constructive?, 58.

One observer wrote that there “has always been a considerable fringe of ascetics in the Freethought ranks—foes of rum, tobacco, corsets, sex, meat, and white bread.” George E. Macdonald, Fifty Years of Freethought, vol. 1 (New York: Truth Seeker, 1929), 276.

A Sister, Reflector, February 6, 1830. Emphasis in the original.

See The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, originally published as Memoires De La Vie Privee in Paris in March 1791.

Paul Pry, Mother Pry, Reflector, March 16, 1830.

Collecting Pry, Reflector, March 16, 1830. Emphasis in the original.

Putnam, in Freethought: Is It Destructive or Constructive?, 40.

Reynolds, ibid., 58–59.

Looker-on, Reflector, March 16, 1830. The town was not identified.

Mentor, Reflector, March 23, 1830; Karl Pearson, “The Ethic of Freethought,” in The Ethic of Freethought and Other Addresses and Essays (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1901), 305. Emphasis in the original.

5 miles east, Reflector, March 16, 1830. Emphasis in the original. The town was Canandaigua.

Reflector, June 1, 1830. Emphasis in the original. The “hand-with-pointing-finger symbol” called attention to noteworthy information and passages. William H. Sherman, Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).

Reflector, July 16, 1830. Emphasis in the original.

“Night Meetings,” Reflector, December 23, 1830.

Spectator, Reflector, July 27, 1830. The writer lived in nearby Geneva.

Reynolds, in Freethought: Is It Destructive or Constructive?, 59.

“Proclamation,” Reflector, September 13, 1830.

“The Passing Year,” Reflector, January 1, 1831. Emphasis in the original.

Reflector, March 19, 1831.

“Our Closet,” Reflector, March 9, 1831. Cole's age is based on estimations of his year of birth, as noted previously.

“Our Closet,” Reflector, March 19, 1831. Emphasis in the original.

“To Our Patrons,” Liberal Advocate (Rochester, NY), July 3, 1832. Emphasis in the original.

Cole had started publishing a “Black List” that named delinquent subscribers and amounts they owed. “Black List,” Liberal Advocate, June 14, 1834.

Hedges, “The Refractory Abner Cole,” 469.

“Defining Critical Thinking,” Critical Thinking Community, accessed February 25, 2015, http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/defining-critical-thinking/766.

“Our Own Affairs.”

“To Our Patrons,” Reflector, September 13, 1830. Emphasis in the original.

See Gitlow v. New York, 268 US 652 (1925).

“Our Closet,” Reflector, March 19, 1831. Emphasis in the original.

“The Press,” Reflector, October 4, 1830.

See, for example, Ashtabula (OH) Journal, February 26, 1831; and Painesville (OH) Telegraph, March 22, 1831, and March 29, 1831.

Victoria Smith Ekstrand and Cassandra Imfeld Jeyaram, “Our Founding Anonymity: Anonymous Speech during the Constitutional Debate,” American Journalism 28, no. 3 (Summer 2011): 37.

Jacoby, Freethinkers, 5.

Ibid., 156.

Philo, Reflector, November 18, 1829; Achates, December 2, 1829; and Reflector, January 13, 1830. Emphasis in the original.