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• 1 media/iamavegetable!.jpg 2018-10-16T17:13:52-07:00 Introduction 25 Vegetarianism in 19th century America image_header 2018-12-03T17:34:31-08:00 The "opening" of the American West from the hands of the native inhabitants brought with it new ideas about individualism, religion, and moral duty. Vegetarianism was a feature of post-Jacksonian, 19th-century America political thought, and in certain spheres, it became intermixed with other moral ideals such as the ethics of slavery, alcohol consumption, female equality, and Protestantism. These ideas blended with Fourierism, a form of early socialism. Charles Fourier idealized labor sharing communities, organized into "phalanges" of citizens. His ideas were quite popular among settlers in the era prior to the Civil War. Vegetarians were no exception, and they used the tenants of Fourierism to create new communal settlements in America which focused on the moral duty of citizens.
  
  A number of new townships and colonies were established along the east coast and in the newly "opened" western territories, with communal living and vegetarianism as main features of the new towns. These colonies maintained that their citizens be in upright social standing and self-reliant. They were required to abstain from alcohol, to not hold slaves, and to practice a vegetarian diet. The Protestant Christians who packaged these diverse ideals into a singly-prescribed moral vision largely followed the methods of itinerant preachers and others who capitalized off the new individualism of the Great Awakening. Leaders of the vegetarian movement such as Rev. Metcalfe, Sylvester Graham, and Horace Greeley, utilized the adult-education lecture format, the newspapers appearing all across the nation and territories, and the popularity of pamphlets to disseminate their world view. In this way, the written message of Vegetarians was carried further, and their message expanded over vast tracts of land in the West.
  
  The founders of these communities of vegetarian morality used the energy of westward expansion, new-Protestantism, and French proto-socialism to idealize utopian communities, mobilize dozens of followers, create a media machine for vegetarianism, and attempt a revolution of society that never could be. As Louisa May Alcott wrote years after the failure of her father's vegetarian Fruilands colony:

  "The world was not ready for Utopia yet, and those who attempted to found it only got laughed at for their pains.”

   
  
  Many of the most notable founders of vegetarianism knew each other directly through sharing political and philosophical space in the mid-1800s. Eventually these thinkers created the American Vegetarian Society in 1850. Some of the communities which embraced these dietary tenants were implicated in even more radical ideas, such as phrenology and transcendentalism, while others had more of a focus on Republicanism, individual liberty, and self-sufficiency. Each community forged its own path, with varying attempts at regulating individual members' diets. This book will look at a number of vegetarian communities and religions that practiced the diet, eventually tracing the trajectory of idealist communities in post-Civil War America.