Knowlton Biography, Chapter 42
Forty-two: Infidel Convention
A man, indeed, may obtain his living by inculcating certain doctrines, and I may injure his calling by inculcating different ones; but he has no more right to live by preaching his doctrines than I have to live by preaching mine. Our rights are equal. I may injure his trade, but I do not infringe on his rights. If he cannot live by his trade without requiring me to refrain from exercising my just rights and privileges, it is a poor trade, and the sooner he takes to another, the better for all concerned.
In the first week of May, 1845, Charles attend a “Convention of the Infidels of the United States” in New York City. The convention was a three-day event held at the New York Coliseum on the west side of Columbus Circle. One hundred ninety-six delegates from as far away as Indiana and Alabama joined hundreds of local attendees. Knowlton had been invited as one of five delegates from Massachusetts.
The first—and most divisive—order of business at the convention was choosing a name for the newly-formed national association of freethinkers. Robert Owen, who had returned from retirement in England to give a keynote speech, praised the new society but objected to the name the convention’s planners had chosen. The term infidel, Owen said, was “too narrow, too negative,” and “implied hostility and condemnation.” It would be a better description of their actual agenda, Owen advised, to call the group “Friends of Mental Freedom and Unlimited Charity.”
Although Robert Owen was revered by all the attendees, many disagreed with his mild, charitable approach. Freethought organizations such as the United States Moral and Philosophical Society had hidden themselves behind vague names, delegates argued. These groups had failed to attract freethinkers, but enemies of freethought found them easily enough. Even in New York, the Moral Philanthropists operating out of Tammany Hall were attacked as a “little knot of ignorant blockheads…wishing to subvert the Christian system with the weapons of coarse ignorance.” And many of the freethinkers were tired of hiding. “Give us the name of Infidel,” one delegate demanded, “and we would soon deprive it of all odium and stigma—we could soon make it so honorable that other sects would seek to steal it from us.” After a long debate, the convention adopted the name The Infidel Society for the Promotion of Mental Liberty.
News of the convention was carried in The Tribune, in a column probably written by its editor, Horace Greeley. The Tribune approved of Robert Owen’s speech, but criticized some of the other speakers. European-born radical Ernestine Rose, for example, followed Owen with a passionate attack on the bible that drew enthusiastic applause. Greeley reported, “Her accent (Polish) is unfamiliar, and she speaks too oratorically and too rapidly, so that we have not retained a very distinct conception of her harangue.” The Tribune criticized the freethinkers for creating a “brotherhood founded on mere negation” and concluded by suggesting that they find “some better ground to stand upon than that of opposition to and denial of others’ faith.”
Although Greeley’s column deliberately misunderstood the freethinkers’ challenge to the authority of orthodox traditions, he had a point. In spite of wide agreement that religion was the enemy of social progress, the convention’s delegates were unable to decide what positive changes the Infidel Society should support. It’s not surprising that a group of extreme individualists would have a harder time agreeing on its priorities than organizations that trained people to follow their leaders with blind faith. Ironically, the spirit of inquiry that made freethought such a powerful liberator for individuals like Knowlton also made it difficult to build an organization that could act with unity and stand against its adversaries.
Charles Knowlton understood that the strength of freethought was individual and local, not collective and national. Charles attended the convention, and probably enjoyed spending time with younger radicals like Ernestine Rose and meeting the famous father of his friend, Robert Dale Owen. But when it was over, rather than involving himself in the national society and its disagreements over policy and precedence, Charles went back to Franklin County and started his own freethought society with a small group of local friends.