Backwoods Utopias: The Sectarian Origins and the Owenite Phase of Communitarian Socialism in America, 1663-1829

The new society that the world awaited might yet be born in the humble guise of a backwoods village. This was the belief shared by the many groups which moved into the American frontier to create experimental communities—communities which they hoped would be models for revolutionary changes in religion, politics, economics, and education in American society. For, as James Madison wrote, the American Republic was "useful in proving things before held impossible."

The communitarian ideal had i...