Robert Dale Owen

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Robert Dale Owen

Robert Dale Owen (November 7, 1801–June 24, 1877) was a longtime exponent in his adopted United States

United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
of the socialist

Socialism

Socialism refers to a broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating public or state ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods, and a society characterized by equality for all individuals, with a fair or Egalitarianism method of compensation....
doctrines of his father, the Welshman Robert Owen

Robert Owen

Robert Owen , born in Newtown, Powys, Montgomeryshire, Wales was a social reformer and one of the founders of socialism and the cooperative movement....
, as well as a politician

Politician

A politician is an individual who is involved in influencing public decision making through the influence of politics or a person who influences the way a society is governed....
in the Democratic Party.

Born in Glasgow

Glasgow

Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and List of largest United Kingdom settlements by population in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's Scottish Lowlands....
, Scotland

Scotland

conventional_long_name = ScotlandAlba|common_name= Scotland|image_flag = Flag of Scotland.svg|flag_width = 130px...
, Owen emigrated to the United States in 1825, and helped his father create the Utopia

Utopia

Utopia is a name for an ideal community or society, taken from the Utopia written in 1516 by Sir Thomas More describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean, possessing a seemingly perfect social system-politics-legal system....
n community of New Harmony, Indiana

New Harmony, Indiana

New Harmony is a historic town in Harmony Township, Posey County, Indiana, Posey County, Indiana, Indiana, 15 miles north of Mount Vernon, Indiana, the county seat, on the Wabash River....
. After the community failed, Owen returned briefly to Europe

Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
, then moved to New York City

New York City

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Robert Dale Owen (November 7, 1801–June 24, 1877) was a longtime exponent in his adopted United States

United States

Socialism

Robert Owen

Robert Owen , born in Newtown, Powys, Montgomeryshire, Wales was a social reformer and one of the founders of socialism and the cooperative movement....
, as well as a politician

Politician

Glasgow

Scotland

Utopia

New Harmony, Indiana

Europe

New York City

The City of New York is the List of United States cities by population in the United States, while the New York metropolitan area ranks among the List of urban areas by population....
and became the editor of the Free Enquirer, which he ran from 1828 to 1832. Owen's Moral Physiology, published in 1830 or 1831, was the first book to advocate birth control in the United States (specifically, coitus interruptus

Coitus interruptus

Coitus interruptus, also known as withdrawal or the pull-out method, is a method of contraception in which a couple has sexual intercourse, but semen is ejaculation outside of and away from the vagina....
). Along with Fanny Wright

Frances Wright

Frances Wright also widely known as Fanny Wright, was a Scotland-born lecturer, writer, freethinker, feminist, abolitionist, and social reformer, who became a United States Citizenship in 1825....
, he was an intellectual leader of the radical Democratic faction, the Locofocos

Locofocos

The Locofocos were a radical faction of the United States Democratic Party that existed from 1835 until the mid-1840s.The faction was originally named Equal Rights Party , and was created in New York City as a protest against that city's regular Democratic organization ....
. In contrast to many other Democrats of the era, Owen and Wright were opposed to slavery

Slavery

Slavery is a form of forced labor where a person is compelled to Labor for another . Slaves are held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase, or birth, and are deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to receive Remuneration in return for their labor....
, though their artisan radicalism distanced them from the leading abolitionists

Abolitionism

File:BLAKE10.JPGAbolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and emancipate slaves in western Europe and the Americas. The slave system aroused little protest until the 18th century, when rationalist thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment criticized it for violating the rights of man, and Quaker and other evangelical religious groups con...
of the time. (Lott, 129)

He returned 1833 to New Harmony, Indiana, and served in the Indiana House of Representatives

Indiana House of Representatives

The Indiana House of Representatives is the lower house of the Indiana General Assembly, the state legislature of the U.S. state of Indiana. The House is composed of 100 members representing 100 distinct districts....
twice (1835–1838; 1851–1853). After two unsuccessful campaigns, he was elected to the United States House of Representatives

United States House of Representatives

The United States House of Representatives, commonly referred to as "the House", is one of the bicameralism of the United States Congress; the other is the United States Senate....
in 1842, and served from 1843 to 1847. While in Washington, he drafted the bill

Bill (proposed law)

A bill is a proposed new law introduced within a legislature that has not been ratification, adopted, or received royal assent. Once a bill has become law, it is thereafter an Statute; but in popular usage the two terms are often treated interchangeably....
for the founding of the Smithsonian Institution

Smithsonian Institution

The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its Financial endowment, contributions, and profits from its shops and its magazine....
.

Owen was elected a member of the Indiana Constitutional Convention in 1850, and was instrumental in securing to widows and married women control of their property, and the adoption of a common free school system. He later succeeded in passing a state law giving greater freedom in divorce

Divorce

Divorce or dissolution of marriage is a legal process in which a judge or other authority dissolves the bonds of matrimony existing between two persons, thus restoring them to the marital status of being single....
.

In 1853, Franklin Pierce

Franklin Pierce

Franklin Pierce was the List of Presidents of the United States President of the United States, serving from 1853 to 1857, an Politics of the United States and lawyer....
appointed Owen as United States minister at Naples. After leaving that post in 1858, Owen retired from political life, but remained an active intellectual.

He to President Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was the List of Presidents of the United States President of the United States. He successfully led the country through its greatest internal crisis, the American Civil War, preserving the Union and ending slavery....
on September 7, 1862, urging him to end slavery

Slavery

Slavery is a form of forced labor where a person is compelled to Labor for another . Slaves are held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase, or birth, and are deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to receive Remuneration in return for their labor....
on moral grounds. A few days later the Emancipation Proclamation

Emancipation Proclamation

The Emancipation Proclamation consists of two Executive order s issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War....
was read to the Cabinet.

In March 1865, he submitted a radical initial draft of the Fourteenth Amendment

Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is one of the post-American Civil War Reconstruction Amendments that was first intended to secure the rights of former Slavery in the United States....
that was eventually modified into the final draft.

He was a strong believer in Spiritualism (despite admitting having been duped into believing in a spirit named "Katie King"

Katie King (spirit)

Katie King was the name given by Spiritualists in the 1870s to what they believed to be a materialized spirit. The question of whether the spirit was real or a fraud was a notable public controversy of the mid-1870s....
) and was the author of two well-known books on the subject: Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World (1859) and The Debatable Land Between this World and the Next (1872).

Owen died at his summer home in Lake George, New York

Lake George, New York

Lake George, New York may refer to:*Lake George , a lake*Lake George , New York, a town*Lake George , New York, a village...
, and was buried in New Harmony, Indiana. The town of Dale, Indiana

Dale, Indiana

Dale is a town in Carter Township, Spencer County, Indiana, Spencer County, Indiana, Indiana, United States. The population was 1,568 at the 2000 census....
was named after him.

Books authored

Moral Physiology; or, A Brief and Plain Treatise on the Population Question (1830/1)
The Policy of Emancipation (1863)
The Wrong of Slavery (1864)
Beyond the Breakers (1870)
Threading My Way (1874)