Among the many Americans in the nineteenth century who searched for more control and order in their lives were some who chose to create selfcontained communities where they experimented with entirely remaking society to create the perfect world on earth. Utopianists challenged the existing social and economic order and introduced their own ideas about religion, marriage, family, sexual practices, distribution of property, and wage labor. Between 1787 and 1919, approximately 270 utopian communities existed in the United States. Because of geographic, political, and economic opportunities, the...

Among the many Americans in the nineteenth century who searched for more control and order in their lives were some who chose to create selfcontained communities where they experimented with entirely remaking society to create the perfect world on earth. Utopianists challenged the existing social and economic order and introduced their own ideas about religion, marriage, family, sexual practices, distribution of property, and wage labor. Between 1787 and 1919, approximately 270 utopian communities existed in the United States. Because of geographic, political, and economic opportunities, the...

Catherine M. Rokicky explores this abolitionist politician's years at Oberlin during the antebellum period, as well as his travels that would put him in contact with important men such as Frederick Douglass; his election to the Ohio House or Representatives from 1856 to 1859 and the Ohio Senate from 1859 to 1862; his work with Jacob D. Cox and James A. Garfield on behalf of black rights (they became known as the Radical Triumvirate); his term as president pro tem of the Ohio Senate; and his appointment by President Lincoln as U.S. consul at Rio deJaneiro. Monroe was later elected to the...