The Prairie State became a crucial testing ground for the grand American thought experiment on how a society should be constructed. Between 1839 and 1901, six different utopian communities chose Illinois as the laboratory and sanctuary to elevate their ideals into reality. The Mormons and the Icarians selected Nauvoo. The Janssonists picked Bishop Hill. The Fourierists settled on the north edge of Loami. The employees of the Pullman Railroad Car Company naturally resided in Pullman, and the Dowietes put down roots in Zion. Three were religious and the others secular. All possessed charismatic leaders and dramatic stories that drew attention from across the globe. Randy Soland examines the relationship between these havens and their legacies.

The Prairie State became a crucial testing ground for the grand American thought experiment on how a society should be constructed. Between 1839 and 1901, six different utopian communities chose Illinois as the laboratory and sanctuary to elevate their ideals into reality. The Mormons and the Icarians selected Nauvoo. The Janssonists picked Bishop Hill. The Fourierists settled on the north edge of Loami. The employees of the Pullman Railroad Car Company naturally resided in Pullman, and the Dowietes put down roots in Zion. Three were religious and the others secular. All possessed charismatic leaders and dramatic stories that drew attention from across the globe. Randy Soland examines the relationship between these havens and their legacies.

Utopian communities in American from 1680 to 1880, including the Shakers, New Harmony, Brook Farm, the Fourieristic phalanxes, and the Oneida communities, with accounts of the constitutions, revelations, beliefs, tenets, customs dictated by religious beliefs or social principle, and more.

Florida has long been viewed as a land of hope and endless possibilities. Visionaries seeking to establish new communities where they could escape the influences of society at large have turned to Florida to construct their utopias--from the vast plantations of British philanthropists and entrepreneurs in the eighteenth century to the more exotic Koreshan Unity and its theory that humans live in the center of a Hollow Earth. Some came to the Sunshine State seeking religious freedom, such as the settlers in Moses Levy's Jewish colony, while others settled in Florida to establish alternative lifestyles, like the spiritualists of Cassadaga. Still others created their communities to practice new agricultural techniques or political philosophies. Historians Joe Knetsch and Nick Wynne examine a number of these distinctive utopian communities and how they have contributed to Florida's unique social fabric.

This is a regional study of 19th century utopian movements, focusing on the Old Northwest Territory, the Dakotas, and Missouri, a region surpassed only by New England in the number of utopian settlements. It ranges from the first Shaker village near Dayton, Ohio, built in 1807, to the 1903 incorporation and ensuing stormy history of The House of David in Benton Harbor, Michigan. During these years, charismatic individuals built three different kinds of utopias : perfectionist, whose members thought they could achieve impeccancy almost immediately by living communally; cooperative, whose members believed that communalism would improve the moral and economic condition of its members and at the same time be the alternative to exploitative capitalism; and social and communist, whose members believed that democracy and equality could never be achieved without living in an ?association,? as with the socialists, or in a ?community of good,? as with the Icarians.

IllustrationsPreface1. Itineraries2. Chicago: Two Profiles3. Approaches: Discovery from a Distance4. First City: Form and Fantasy5. Second City: Our Town6. Third City: The Evangelical Metropolis7. Exit: The Gray CityNotesIndex Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.