William Batchelder Greene
Encyclopedia
Unitarianism
Unitarianism is a Christian theological movement, named for its understanding of God as one person, in direct contrast to Trinitarianism which defines God as three persons coexisting consubstantially as one in being....
minister, soldier and promotor of free banking
Free banking
Free banking refers to a monetary arrangement in which banks are subject to no special regulations beyond those applicable to most enterprises, and in which they also are free to issue their own paper currency...
in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
Biography
Greene was born in Haverhill, MassachusettsHaverhill, Massachusetts
Haverhill is a city in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 60,879 at the 2010 census.Located on the Merrimack River, it began as a farming community that would evolve into an important industrial center, beginning with sawmills and gristmills run by water power. In the...
, the son of Democratic
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
and Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
postmaster
Postmaster
A postmaster is the head of an individual post office. Postmistress is not used anymore in the United States, as the "master" component of the word refers to a person of authority and has no gender quality...
Nathaniel Greene
Nathaniel Greene (journalist)
-Biography:He was born in Boscawen, New Hampshire, became an apprentice in the office of the New Hampshire Patriot in 1809 and in 1812 edited the Concord Gazette. In 1814 moved to Portsmouth, where he had charge of the New Hampshire Gazette. After this he settled in Haverhill, Massachusetts, and...
. He was appointed to the U. S. Military Academy from Massachusetts in 1835, but left before graduation. He was made 2nd lieutenant in the 7th infantry in July, 1839, and, after serving in the second Seminole War
Second Seminole War
The Second Seminole War, also known as the Florida War, was a conflict from 1835 to 1842 in Florida between various groups of Native Americans collectively known as Seminoles and the United States, part of a series of conflicts called the Seminole Wars...
, resigned in November 1841. Subsequently, he was connected with the Brook Farm
Brook Farm
Brook Farm, also called the Brook Farm Institute of Agriculture and Education or the Brook Farm Association for Industry and Education, was a utopian experiment in communal living in the United States in the 1840s...
movement, after which he studied theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
at Harvard Divinity School
Harvard Divinity School
Harvard Divinity School is one of the constituent schools of Harvard University, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States. The School's mission is to train and educate its students either in the academic study of religion, or for the practice of a religious ministry or other public...
, graduating in 1845. He was a pastor at a Unitarian church in Brookfield, Massachusetts
Brookfield, Massachusetts
Brookfield is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 3,390 at the 2010 census.-History:Brookfield was first settled in 1660 and was officially incorporated in 1718...
before leaving to Europe.
Greene returned in 1861 to serve in the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
. Although a Democrat, he was a strong abolitionist, and at the beginning of the Civil War became colonel of the 14th Massachusetts Infantry, afterward the 1st Massachusetts Heavy Artillery. In 1862, while stationed with his regiment in Fairfax, Virginia
Fairfax, Virginia
The City of Fairfax is an independent city forming an enclave within the confines of Fairfax County, in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. Although politically independent of the surrounding county, the City is nevertheless the county seat....
, he was recalled and assigned by Gen. George McClellan
George McClellan
George B. McClellan was an American Civil War military leader, Presidential candidate and Governor of New Jersey.George McClellan may also refer to:*George McClellan , American physician who founded medical schools...
to the command of an artillery brigade in Gen. Whipple
Amiel Weeks Whipple
Amiel Weeks Whipple was an American military engineer and surveyor. He served as a brigadier general in the American Civil War, where he was killed in action. Fort Whipple, now Fort Myer, was named in his honor.-Biography:...
's division. He resigned his commission in October 1862, to continue his travels and writings.
Greene is best known for the works Mutual Banking, which proposed an interest-free banking system, and Transcendentalism, a critique of the New England philosophical school. In 1850 and 1851, he organized citizens of Brookfield, Warren and Ware, Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
to petition the state's General Court for a charter to establish a mutual bank
Mutual bank
Mutual bank or mutual banking may refer to*Mutual savings bank*Cooperative banking*Mutualism...
. "Upon all the petitions, the Committee on Banks and Banking, after hearing the arguments of the petitioners, reported simply, "Leave to withdraw!" (The Radical Deficiency of the Existing Circulating Medium 1857). Similar attempts by the New England Labor Reform League in the 1870s met with similar results. Greene's mutualist banking ideas resembled those of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was a French politician, mutualist philosopher and socialist. He was a member of the French Parliament, and he was the first person to call himself an "anarchist". He is considered among the most influential theorists and organisers of anarchism...
, as well as the "land banks" of the colonial period. He had an important influence on Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
, the editor of the anarchist
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
journal Liberty
Liberty (1881-1908)
Liberty was a nineteenth century anarchist periodical published in the United States by Benjamin Tucker, from August 1881 to April 1908. The periodical was instrumental in developing and formalizing the individualist anarchist philosophy through publishing essays and serving as a format for...
.
According to James J. Martin
James J. Martin
James J. Martin was an American historian. He was educated at the University of New Hampshire and the University of Michigan, earning a Ph.D. in history in 1949....
, in Men Against the State, Greene did not become a "full-fledged anarchist" until the last decade of his life, but his writings show that he had by 1850 articulated a Christian mutualism, drawing heavily on the writings of Proudhon's sometimes-antagonist Pierre Leroux
Pierre Leroux
Pierre Henri Leroux , French philosopher and political economist, was born at Bercy, now a part of Paris, the son of an artisan.- Life :...
. (see Equality 1849, Mutual Banking 1850)
The existing organization of credit is the daughter of hard money, begotten upon it incestuously by that insufficiency of circulating medium which results from laws making specie the sole legal tender.The immediate consequences of confused credit are want of confidence, loss of time, commercial frauds, fruitless and repeated applications for payment, complicated with irregular and ruinous expanses. The ultimate consequences are compositions, bad debts, expensive accommodation-loans, law-suits, insolvency, bankruptcy, separation of classes, hostility, hunger, extravagance, distress, riots, civil war, and, finally, revolution. The natural consequences of mutual banking are, first of all, the creation of order, and the definitive establishment of due organization in the social body, and, ultimately, the cure of all the evils. which flow from the present incoherence and disruption in the relations of production and commerce. (The Radical Deficiency of the Existing Circulating Medium 1857).
Greene was a fine mathematician, and was versed in Hebrew literature and in Hebrew and Egyptian antiquities.
Noted works
- Mutual Banking. Boston: New England Labor Reform League, 1870.
- on the Science of History, followed by an a priori Autobiography (1849)
- Equality. West Brookfield, Mass.: O.S. Cooke, 1849.
- Mutual Banking. West Brookfield, Mass.: O.S. Cooke, 1850.
- Sovereignty of the People, pamphlet (Boston, 1863)
- Explanations of the Theory of the Calculus, pamphlet (1870)
- Transcendentalism, pamphlet (1870)
- Theory of the Calculus (1870)
- The Facts of Consciousness and the Philosophy of Mr. Herbert Spencer, pamphlet (1871)
- The Blazing Star: With an Appendix Treating of the Jewish Kabbala. Also, a Tract on the Philosophy of Mr. Herbert Spencer and One on New-England Transcendentalism. Boston: A. William and Co., 1872.
- Socialistic, Communistic, Mutualistic, and Financial Fragments (1875)
See also
- Individualist anarchism in the United StatesIndividualist anarchism in the United StatesIndividualist anarchism in the United States was strongly influenced by Josiah Warren, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lysander Spooner, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Max Stirner, Herbert SpencerHenry David Thoreau...
- MutualismMutualism (economic theory)Mutualism is an anarchist school of thought that originates in the writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who envisioned a society where each person might possess a means of production, either individually or collectively, with trade representing equivalent amounts of labor in the free market...
- Free bankingFree bankingFree banking refers to a monetary arrangement in which banks are subject to no special regulations beyond those applicable to most enterprises, and in which they also are free to issue their own paper currency...
External links
- William Batchelder Greene on Libertarian Labyrinth
- Ruch, John. Anarchy in JP: Greene was early local radical. Jamaica Plain Gazette, August 2007.
- In Memoriam (1878). A tribute by the Massachusetts MasonFreemasonryFreemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around six million, including approximately 150,000 under the jurisdictions of the Grand Lodge...
s.