Background
Brownson was born on September 16, 1803 to Sylvester Augustus Brownson and Relief Metcalf, who were farmers in Stockbridge, Vermont.
clergyman labor organizer author
Brownson was born on September 16, 1803 to Sylvester Augustus Brownson and Relief Metcalf, who were farmers in Stockbridge, Vermont.
He was self-educated.
In 1822 he joined the Presbyterian Church and in 1824 the Universalist, becoming a minister of the latter denomination in 1826 and preaching in Vermont, New Hampshire, and northern New York. Brownson hoped to aid the laboring class by moral, not political, means. He advocated the socialistic ideas of Robert Owen, was a corresponding editor of the Free Enquirer, and in 1828 helped found the Workingmen's Party. In 1828 he edited the Gospel Advocate, published in Auburn, N. Y. His increasingly liberal views estranged the Universalists, so he withdrew from the denomination. In 1832 he became a Unitarian and acted as minister at Walpole, N. H. , from 1832 to 1834 and at Canton, Massachussets, from 1834 to 1836. In 1836 he formed his own church, the Society for Christian Union and Progress, and published his first book, New Views of Christianity, Society, and the Church, which condemned both Catholicism and Protestantism. In 1838 Brownson founded the Boston Quarterly Review, which was merged with the New York Democratic Review from 1842 to 1844. In 1844 Brownson resumed its publication in Boston under the name of Brownson's Quarterly Review, which continued until 1865 and from 1873 to 1875. Following his return to Boston in 1844, Brownson was closely associated with William Henry Channing, Henry David Thoreau, George Bancroft, and George Ripley, the founder of Brook Farm. His conversion to Roman Catholicism in October 1844 astonished the public, who identified him with New England liberalism, and cost his Review many subscribers. On the other hand, his immoderate pro-Catholic zeal made the Catholics distrust him, and an invitation to become professor of philosophy at Dublin University was withdrawn. His publications included Charles Elwood, or the Infidel Converted (1840) and The Spirit-Rapper: An Autobiography (1854), both novels; The Convert: or, Leaves from My Experience (1857), his autobiography; The Mediatorial Life of Jesus (1842); and The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies and Destiny (1865). Brownson died at Detroit, on April 17, 1876.