Albert Brisbane

Brisbane developed an affection for knowledge at an early age and as an inquisitive youth he learned various mechanical skills in the small carpentry, blacksmith, and saddle shops of Batavia.[7] Unsatisfied with the quality of education in Batavia and with visions of an illustrious future for his son, Brisbane's father sent him to a boarding school in Long Island, New York at the age of fifteen.[8] He briefly stayed at the school before moving to New York City and studying with tutors, including Jean Manesca.[9] His New York schooling would ultimately be followed by six years of education abroad,[10] with Brisbane studying philosophy in Paris and Berlin. He made the acquaintance of a number of prominent European intellectuals and political figures during the course of his studies.[3]

Searching for new ideas, Brisbane read a newly published short work by the philosopher Charles Fourier (1772–1837) entitled Treatise on Domestic and Agricultural Association and was immediately converted to the writer's ideas. Fourier, a French philosopher and writer, spent the greater part of his life attempting to uncover universal laws which he believed governed society so that productive enterprise could be reorganized on a rational basis, production expanded, and human needs more readily fulfilled.[13] Fourier believed in a fundamental harmony of the universe and a preordained series of periods through which societies needed to necessarily travel from their primitive to their advanced state, and he considered himself a scientific discoverer akin to Isaac Newton.[14]

In 1832 Brisbane left for Paris, where he would stay two years studying Fourier's system, including obtaining direct tutelage from the 60-year-old theorist himself[11] He made the acquaintance of other devotees of Fourier's ideas during this initial phase of the Fourierist movement.[11] He would return to the United States a committed believer and proselytizer of Fourier's idea of association and began work on a book to expound the ideas of his late master.[11] Brisbane's first and most famous book, Social Destiny of Man, would see print in 1840.[11]

Brisbane accepted Fourier's ideas as a matter of faith, believing that the "social destiny of man" was an immutable force of nature; once the laws of this development were identified and publicized, he believed, the regeneration and transformation of the world would be rapid and effective.[15] On the heels of his first successful book, in 1843 Brisbane published another adaptation of Fourier to American conditions, a book entitled Association: Or, A Concise Exposition of the Practical Part of Fourier's Social Science.[15]

Brisbane argued that the remedy to society's ills lay in the adoption of more efficient forms of production, based upon the principle of harmony of the owners of capital and those employed by them.[16] He did not envision the elimination of the role of the capitalist, but rather the regulation of distribution of the product of labor between capitalist and worker on a more equitable basis.[17] Paramount to increasing production, Brisbane believed, was a reorganization of society into various subdivisions called "groups," "series," and "sacred legions," based upon the natural affinities of their participants.[17] This reorganization would boost production by building enthusiasm for labor, gathering individuals of like proclivities for common tasks.[17]

Following Fourier, Brisbane also sought the revolutionization of the family unit, proclaiming the individual home to be possessed of "monotony," "anti-social spirit," and the "absence of emulation," through which, he felt, it "debilitates the energies of the soul, and produces apathy and intellectual death."[17] In opposition to this "selfishness," Brisbane opposed the communal ideal of association, living in collective dwellings and sharing the common table.[18]

Brisbane cast the adoption of Fourier's system in millennial terms, asserting that

"Association will establish Christianity practically upon Earth. It will make the love of God and the love of the neighbor the greatest desire, and the practice of all men. Temptation to wrong will be taken from the paths of men, and a thousand perverting and degrading circumstances and influences will be purged from the social world."[19]

Albert Brisbane in 1840

Brisbane's 1840 book was well-received and it enjoyed immediate success, gaining a broad readership among those concerned with the problems of society and helping to launch the Fourierist movement in the United States.[20] Among those who read Brisbane's book and was thereby converted to the ideas of socialism was a young New York newspaper publisher, Horace Greeley, later elected to the US House of Representatives.[20] Greeley would provide valuable service to the Fourierist movement by advancing its ideas in the pages of his newspaper of that day, The New Yorker, throughout 1840 and 1841, and offering Brisbane a column in his successor publication, the New York Tribune, from the time of its establishment in March 1842.[21]

A groundswell of enthusiasm resulted from coverage of the ideas of Association in the New York Tribune, and from 1843 to 1845 more than 30 Fourierian "Phalanxes" were established in a number of northern and midwestern states. In 1844, Brook Farm, already an established Transcendentalist agrarian community in Massachusetts, formally declared itself a Fourierist community based on Brisbane's teachings.

A national movement of "Associationists' began to take form in 1843 and 1844, with a founding convention of the General Association for the Friends of Association in the United States held in New York City from April 4–6, 1844, attended by delegates from as far away as Maine and Virginia.[22] The convention made a point of renouncing the fanciful, conjectural aspects of Fourier's writings, instead endorsing the concrete plan of association derived from his writings, in addition to its underlying philosophical framework.[22] Work was done to create a formal "Union of Associations" to help coordinate the efforts of the myriad of small phalanxes coming into existence, and a meeting of such a group was planned for the following October.[23]

At this critical juncture in the emergence of a practical movement, with 10 phalanxes already in existence and others at the planning stage, Albert Brisbane, the uncontested leader of Fourierism in America, made the fateful decision to depart for France to study Fourier's manuscripts there and to speak with French Associationists about their experiences.[23] The 8-month trip effectively removed the commanding general of the Fourierist army from the campaign at its most critical juncture and is characterized by Carl J. Guarneri, a leading historian of the movement, as a reflection of Brisbane's "lifelong inability to cope with power and responsibility."[23] With no energetic leader to replace Brisbane, the movement's momentum quickly dissipated.[24]

In 1877, after his new marriage to Redelia Bates, they relocated to Europe with his children with a view towards the education of the latter.[25] The family traveled the continent for two years before taking up resident in Paris.[26] His health in decline and suffering from epilepsy, Brisbane pursued personal intellectual pursuits and tried his hand as an inventor, concentrating in particular on an effort to create an oven which cooked in a vacuum, thereby allowing the baking of bread and pastry without the use of yeast.[27]

In 1889, the family returned to New York state, ostensibly so that Brisbane could build a prototype of the vacuum oven which he had been attempting to perfect.[28]

The United States Census of 1850 indicates that Albert was living in Bergen County, New Jersey with Lodoiska. However, the Census of 1860 reports Albert living in Westchester County, New York with Sarah. In the next Census of 1870, Albert was living in Union County, New Jersey, again with Lodoiska. Historians conclude that because of overlapping births of children in the two relationships and the corresponding census records, Albert was simultaneously maintaining two separate households with each woman.[30]

After his 1877 marriage to Bates, Albert's brother, George, was so outraged that he wrote an angry letter, which later became public, accusing the couple of bigamy because Lodoiska was still alive and had never obtained a divorce dissolving their common-law marriage. In return, Redelia filed a libel suit against George, requesting $50,000 in damages. At the same time, Lodoiska filed her own lawsuit requesting a divorce and alimony payments from Albert, of which she eventually prevailed,[30] receiving $25 a week.[32][44]

Brisbane towards the end of his life

After his return to the United States in 1889, Brisbane soon became ill and was forced to seek a change of climate to improve his health, traveling to North Carolina, before heading south to Florida, that winter.[45] Together with Bates, Brisbane again moved north to Richmond, Virginia early in the spring of the following year.[45] Good health did not return, however, and late in April Brisbane became bedridden and began to await his inevitable death.[46]

Albert Brisbane died in Richmond early in the morning on May 1, 1890.[47] His body was transported home to Western New York and where he was buried in the Batavia Cemetery in Batavia, alongside his parents and previous wife Sarah.[48]

Brisbane's son, Arthur Brisbane, became one of the best-known American newspaper editors of the 20th century.[49] The papers of father and son are held together as Brisbane Family Papers collection by the Special Collections Research Center of Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York.[50] The Albert Brisbane material is housed in one archival box and includes biographical material, correspondence, microfilm of his diaries from the 1830s, and a 56-page autobiography dated London, 1881.[50]

Albert's great-grandson, Arthur S. Brisbane, was appointed Public Editor of The New York Times in June 2010.[51]

• Brisbane, Albert (2005). Mellen, Abigail; Stallsmith, Allaire Brisbane (eds.). the European Travel Diaries of Albert Brisbane, 1830-1832: Discovering Fourierism for America. Lewiston, NY: Mellen. ISBN 9780773460706. OCLC 60590148.
• Brisbane, Redelia (1893). Albert Brisbane: A Mental Biography with a Character Study by his Wife. Boston, MA, US: Arena Publishing Co. OCLC 558039428 – via Internet Archive.
• Guarneri, Carl J. (1991). The Utopian Alternative: Fourierism in Nineteenth-century America. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. ISBN 9781501725289. OCLC 645707565 – via Internet Archive.
• Hillquit, Morris (1910) [1900]. "Chapter III: The Fourierist Period". History of socialism in the United States (5th ed.). New York: Funk & Wagnalls. pp. 70–91. OCLC 697792708 – via Internet Archive.
• Hoagland, Henry E. (1918). "Part IV Humanitarianism (1840 1860), Chapter II Association and Co-operation". In Commons, John R.; et al. (eds.). History of Labour in the United States. Vol. v. 1. New York: The Macmillan Company. pp. 493–521. OCLC 761856568.