42 Facts About Orestes Brownson

Orestes Brownson was born on September 16,1803, to Sylvester Augustus Orestes Brownson and Relief Metcalf, who were farmers in Stockbridge, Vermont.

Sylvester Brownson died when Orestes was young and Relief decided to give her son up to a nearby adoptive family when he was six years old.

Orestes Brownson did not receive much schooling but enjoyed reading books.

In 1817, when he was fourteen, Orestes Brownson attended an academy briefly in New York.

In 1822, Orestes Brownson was baptized in the Presbyterian Church in Ballston, New York, but he quickly complained that Presbyterians associated only with themselves, and that the Reformed doctrines of predestination and eternal sin were too harsh.

Orestes Brownson became the editor of a Universalist journal, Gospel Advocate and Impartial Investigator, in which he wrote about his own religious doubt and criticized organized faiths and mysticism in religion.

Later, rejecting Universalism, Orestes Brownson became associated with Robert Dale Owen and Fanny Wright in New York City and supported the Working Men's Party of New York.

In 1830, for a few months, Orestes Brownson was editor of the Genesee Republican in Batavia, New York.

In 1831, Orestes Brownson moved to Ithaca, New York, where he became the pastor of a Unitarian community.

Orestes Brownson read in English Romanticism and English and French reports on German Idealist philosophy, and was passionate about the work of Victor Cousin and Pierre Leroux.

In 1836, Orestes Brownson participated in the founding of the Transcendental Club.

Also in 1836, Orestes Brownson moved to Chelsea, Massachusetts, to set up his own church, calling it "The Society for Christian Union and Progress", he published his first book, New Views of Christianity, Society, and the Church.

In 1838, Orestes Brownson founded the Boston Quarterly Review, and served as its editor and main contributor for four years.

Orestes Brownson originally offered use of the Boston Quarterly Review as a literary vehicle for the Transcendentalists; they declined and instead created The Dial.

In 1840 Orestes Brownson published his semi-autobiographical work, Charles Elwood; Or, The Infidel Converted.

In 1842, Orestes Brownson ceased separate publication of the Boston Quarterly Review, and it was merged into The United States Magazine and Democratic Review.

Orestes Brownson found it necessary to break with the Review after a series of his essays created new scandal.

Orestes Brownson began to believe, in contrast to his Transcendentalist colleagues, in the inherent sinfulness of humanity.

Orestes Brownson soon renounced what he now considered the errors of his past, including Transcendentalism and liberalism, and devoted himself to writing articles dedicated to converting America to Catholicism.

Orestes Brownson used his articles to strike out against his former friends in the Transcendental movement, who, he wrote, would be damned unless they converted as well.

Orestes Brownson succeeded in persuading Sophia Ripley, wife of George Ripley, to convert, but few others.

Orestes Brownson's stance had much in common with the liberal Catholicism of Charles de Montalembert, with whom he corresponded, and he published articles in French liberal Catholic publications such as Le Correspondant, taking the side of the liberals against the conservative Catholics such as Louis Veuillot.

Orestes Brownson had been writing many articles for the Paulist Fathers' Catholic World publication.

Orestes Brownson now saw Catholicism as the only religion that could restrain the undisciplined American citizens and thus ensure the success of democracy.

Orestes Brownson repudiated his earlier Fourierist and Owenite ideas, now criticizing socialism and utopianism as vigorously as he had once promoted them.

Orestes Brownson avidly supported emancipation and even made several trips to Washington to discuss the importance and urgency of emancipation with President Lincoln.

Orestes Brownson encouraged all Americans, especially Catholics, to be patriots in the country's time of turmoil.

From 1844 to 1864, Orestes Brownson maintained the Review as a Catholic journal of opinion, including many reviews of "inspirational novels" meant to encourage Catholic belief.

In 1853, Orestes Brownson wrote a series of articles that claimed that the Church was supreme over the State.

Orestes Brownson became increasingly lonely as a result of his being shunned from Boston communities, so he moved the Review and his family to New York in 1855, where he revived his interest in Catholic political philosophy.

In 1860, Orestes Brownson announced that the Catholic Church must progress towards a welcoming intellectual environment.

Orestes Brownson thus adopted a new form of liberalism that remained with him until his death, although his enthusiasm for such a liberalism must be balanced by a near simultaneous and unambiguous repudiation of liberalism which he expressed in the resuscitated Quarterly Review in 1873.

In 1864, John Fremont, whom Orestes Brownson strongly supported, withdrew from the Presidential race.

In 1857, Orestes Brownson wrote a memoir, The Convert; or, Leaves from My Experience.

Orestes Brownson died on April 17,1876, in Detroit, Michigan, aged 72.

Orestes Brownson's remains were subsequently transferred to the crypt of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart at the University of Notre Dame, where his personal papers are archived.

Orestes Brownson was invited to New Orleans in 1855 by the publication Le Propagateur, because he was viewed as a figure whom both Protestants and Catholics might enjoy hearing from, because of his multiple political and religious associations during his life.

In 1850s, among his many intellectual contributions, in the midst of Irish and German immigration debate and related nativist moral panic, Orestes Brownson introduced the term "Americanization" into the public discourse while delivering a lecture, "Church and the Republic", at St John's College, future Fordham University.

Orestes Brownson is often incorrectly credited with being the person to coin the term Odinism, referring to his 1848 "Letter to Protestants".

Orestes Brownson was summed up by poet and critic James Russell Lowell in his satirical A Fable for Critics as someone trying to bite off more than he could chew: "his mouth very full with attempting to gulp a Gregorian bull".

Brownson's brother, Oran, joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints about the same time Orestes became a Roman Catholic.

Orestes Brownson's daughter Sarah Orestes Brownson was an author and poet whose writings supported the war effort.