Background
He was born on April 23, 1803at Cumberland, Rhode Island, the son of Ariel and Edilda (Tower) Ballou.
He was born on April 23, 1803at Cumberland, Rhode Island, the son of Ariel and Edilda (Tower) Ballou.
Seventh of eight children, the boy received an elementary education in Cumberland and near-by schools and a farmer boy's training in hard work. The first excited an irrepressible eagerness for knowledge, the second developed personal responsibility, faithfulness, and self-reliance. Ariel Ballou disapproved his son's earnest desire to enter Brown University, and at seventeen the boy's schooling ceased; but he remained a life-long student.
His religious nature asserted itself when he was twelve, and he joined a church of the "Christian Connection" in Cumberland; when eighteen, following what he believed a supernatural call to the ministry, he announced at a religious service his intention to preach at the village church the following Sunday; this he did so acceptably that it led to similar efforts elsewhere, and to his acceptance into fellowship in September 1821. Soon afterward he published an attack on certain Universalist tenets, but further study brought about a change of views and his expulsion from the Christian Church. The Universalists received him gladly, and during 1823 he preached successively in Mendon, Bellingham, Medway, and Boston. In 1824 he was over the Universalist society in Milford, in 1827 over the Prince St. association in New York, and in 1828 back in Milford again. This was a period when the Universalists, although agreed on the central tenet of universal salvation, were much divided on the question whether there is no further punishment or punishment of a limited duration.
Ballou, believing strongly that the interests of morality were imperiled by the denial of all future punishment - in this opposing his more celebrated kinsman, Hosea Ballou, editor of the Universalist Magazine - and feeling that his coreligionists tended to neglect the practical moral problems of this life, decided to withdraw from the denomination. In 1831 he joined with seven other clergymen to form the "Massachusetts Association of Universal Restorationists, " whose doctrines he expounded in the Independent Messenger (1831 - 39). The organization never recruited more than thirty-one ministers and was dissolved in 1841, but Ballou's writings exercised considerable influence on both Universalist and Unitarian thought.
Meanwhile he began to seek a practical outlet for his increasingly radical social views. The outstanding evils of his age, he had come to believe, were war, slavery, and intemperance. The Hopedale Community was his definite protest. This was the first of the Utopian enterprises, such as Brook Farm, Fruitlands, and the Oneida Community, that marked the decade 1840-50. Independently of other movements, Ballou and thirty-one others banded themselves, January 1841, in a joint-stock organization whose object was "to establish an order of human society based on the sublime ideas of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, as taught and illustrated in the Gospel of Jesus Christ". The members bound themselves to abstain from murder, hatred, unchastity, use of liquor as a beverage, and all participation in military or civic activities, including the vote. Each pledged himself "through divine assistance, to promote the holiness and happiness of all mankind. " Hopedale Community, so called from its founders' sanguine expectations, began with a capital of $4, 000; 250 acres in the town of Milford were purchased. Despite some untoward circumstances, the Community prospered for a number of years. All sorts of "queer" persons flocked into it; many withdrew when they found their will could not be law; a few were expelled. With Ballou as president the saner minds held the organization within bounds. Farm work, road-making, building, and various industrial enterprises were carried on. The Practical Christian, edited by Ballou, was printed. Religious services were held regularly in the community chapel. A school and a considerable library were established. In 1852 Ebenezer D. Draper became the second Community president, Ballou desiring to devote himself to the organization of a "Practical Christian Republic" with constituent communities, and to elucidating his principles in Practical Christian Socialism (1854).
In 1856 Hopedale's membership had reached 110 and the Community joint-stock property $40, 000; but discovery that liabilities exceeded resources caused Ebenezer and George Draper, owning three-fourths of the Community stock, to withdraw this from the enterprise. They invested it instead in the Hopedale Manufacturing Company, attained wealth, and gradually transformed the town from a community of idealists into a modern manfacturing center. The Community lingered on as a moral association until 1868, when it was merged with the Hopedale Parish (Unitarian), of which Ballou remained pastor until 1880. Ballou believed the basic cause of Hopedale Community's failure to be moral rather than financial--a lack of whole-souled consecration. The germ of failure lay also in its material ambitions. Individual capacity for industry, after being encouraged, shrank from subjection to community supervision.
During the Civil War Ballou maintained his courageous stand of non-resistance. He spent his later years in pastoral and voluminous literary labors; a powerful and persuasive speaker, his writings, though vigorous, were heavy.
The more important of his works are: Memoir of Adin Augustus Ballou (1853); Practical Christian Socialism (1854); Primitive Christianity and its Corruptions (1870); History of the Town of Milford (1882); An Elaborate History and Genealogy of the Ballous in America (1888); Autobiography (1896) and History of the Hopedale Community (1897), both edited by his son-in-law, W. S. Heywood.
Ballou believed that Practical Christians were called to make their convictions a reality; they should begin to fashion a new civilization.
In 1837, Ballou publicly announced he was an abolitionist. He made anti-slavery lecture tours in Pennsylvania in 1846 and in New York in 1848.
Physically, Ballou is reported to have been a man of commanding bodily presence, with large, well-balanced head and radiant face.
Ballou married, 1822, Abigail Sayles of Smithfield, Rhode Island, who died at Milford, 1829; in 1830 he married Lucy Hunt of Milford.
