This is a collection of numerous historians contributing to the history of both charity and philanthropy in the United States. When it comes to the US, Alexis de Toqueville's Democracy in America (Penguin Classics) (1835) is often a good start on how Americans were prone to be religious, charitable, and made numerous voluntary associations to help out others by the 1830s - seeing themselves as cooperative members of groups instead of isolated individuals. Such collective activities made Americans distinct from Europeans at the time and de Toqueville made it a major point in his work. There are differences between charity and philanthropy, but there is much overlap as well. Philanthropy is based on desires of individuals to impose their visions of the "Good Society" on others, while listening or failing to listen to the beneficiaries. In other words, like Ch. 1 says, Philanthropy focuses more on social reform than aiding the individual and Charity, on the other hand, expresses an impulse to personal service and engages individuals in concrete, direct actions of compassion in connection to other people. One of the highlights of the book is how much religion played a role in reforms in health, human rights, visions of universalism, poverty, emergency relief, minorities, and many other issues including the secularization of charity and laying down the foundations for nonprofit organizations and nongovernmental organizations. Simply put, people have been very busy trying to help others in widespread, complex and continuous ways. For modern studies on American charity, with European comparisons, one can check out Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism to see where we are at. So far America is doing incredibly well as a pioneer of altruism around the world. Hospitals have an incredible global history of philanthropy and charity so I will just mention Mending Bodies, Saving Souls: A History of Hospitals. Of interest to those who want to know about benevolence in terms of slavery and women's rights in history one can check out Women's Rights Emerges within the Anti-Slavery Movement, 1830-1870: A Brief History with Documents (The Bedford Series in History and Culture). Religious folk like William Lloyd Garison and his abolitionist newspaper in the 1930s, The Liberator, offered a platform for women to become a force for social change. Women's rights began with two religious women in the 1930s - Angelina and Sarah Grimke. These Quaker sisters fought for the end of slavery and equality for women along with Lucretia Mott who was also a Quaker. The Second Great Awakening set up a mood for progress which aided the movement. Mott was later a key organizer of the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 and was one of the authors of the "Declaration of Sentiments", along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Stanton looked up to Mott as an inspiration. Later on, Susan B Anthony, an agnostic Quaker would play a strong role in women's rights along with Stanton.
The following is a list of all the chapters in the book and some of the contents to be found therein. This list is not exhaustive:
Philanthropy in America: Historicism and Its Discontents
Reviews historians views of philanthropy; dissents from Bremner and other postwar historians who saw the US as a special nation who brought hope and democracy to foreign nations - "The United States may have had stronger "private" and "voluntary" sectors than many other countries and a more constricted central government; however, this has been so only in degrees, and with profound changes over time in the public-private-voluntary mixes." (16)
Part I. Giving and Caring in Early America, 1601-1861
1. Giving in America: From Charity to Philanthropy
Alexis de Toqueville put the "voluntary association" at the center of "Democracy in America" (1835), but the institutions he named were not prominent in the Colonial period - "The French visitor was actually witness to a new phenomenon that was remaking life, especially in the northern states, in the wake of the American Revolution: the rise of formal, voluntary associations, organized by people in towns, counties, and states to meet an extraordinary array of social, educational, religious, and cultural needs. The period from 1790 to 1840 was, as contemporaries put it, "an Age of Benevolence", which gave a distinctive form to the charitable purposes that had motivated people from the very beginning of English settlement. Toqueville arrived just in time to record the transformation. "Democracy in America" capture the decisive moment when an older tradition of charity gave way before a new mode of philanthropy, with enduring consequences for how we carry on our lives today. The split between these two traditions - charity and philanthropy - form my central theme." (30); historical outline: first there was charity (e.g. the Puritans), then later on was the rise of benevolent organizations and the spirit of reform (e.g. anti-slavery, temperance, and missionary movements), then later was pragmatic organizations (e.g. Andrew Carnegie and John Rockefeller foundations), then later it culminated in the welfare state (e.g. government + nonprofit organizations); the history of charity is often missed in light of later philanthropic institutions so this chapter re-emphasizes the history of charity; "How do I define these terms? The first in time is charity, a complex of ideas and practices rooted in Christianity, particularly in the reformed Protestantism of the English settlers,; it was later reinforced by the heritage of Catholicism and Judaism brought by immigrants in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Charity expresses an impulse to personal service; it engages individuals in concrete, direct acts of compassion and connection to other people. To some, such as Robert Payton, the founder of the Center for Philanthropy at Indiana University, such action is synonymous with "philanthropy". But, historically, as Daniel Boorstin has noted, philanthropy represents a second mode of social service. Coined as a term in late seventeenth-century England, it became associated with the Enlightenment, for it sought to apply reason to the solution of social ills and needs. Philanthropy can take secular and religious forms. Either way, it aspires not so much to aid individuals as to reform society. Its object is the promotion of progress through the advance of knowledge. By eliminating the problems of society that beset particular reasons, philanthropy aims to usher in a world where charity is uncommon - and perhaps unnecessary. Such are the two traditions of American humanitarianism. As I have sketched them, charity and philanthropy stand at opposite poles: one concrete and individual, the other abstract and institutional. But they need not be at odds. As dual impulses, they are equivalent of the two commitments taken by physicians in the Hippocratic oath: One vow is to relieve pain and suffering, the other is to cure disease." (31); John Winthrop's famous sermon called "A Model of Christian Charity" discussed how many could support each other in an egalitarian way; Puritans exemplified charity as each took care of each other (friends, neighbors, etc) especially since there were no institutions to segregate the normal from the deviant (hospitals, asylums, etc) and families took care of the poor, widows, orphans while the town helped out with expenses for these accommodations; there was a dislike of idle and lazy beggars; because towns immediately supported their inhabitants, neighbors and strangers were seen with some suspicion since other towns were supposed to be in charge of them; there was a strong public commitment to education in New England (e.g. Harvard, Yale), schools were supported by taxes, and elsewhere churches and tutors provided instruction; aside from a few large towns, private enterprise had yet to emerge as a cultural force; Philadelphia was the birth place of the "second tradition of benevolence" - philanthropy (the first tradition was charity, of course) and acquired a distinction in the middle decades of the 18th century; Benjamin Franklin; associations began to spring up and "Two features distinguished benevolence in the early republic from its colonial antecedents. The first was the leading part played by religious groups, and in particular, evangelicals; the second, closely connected, was the active participation of women." (40); politics became one way to do organized philanthropy; incarceration was both charity and philanthropy in the late 1700s since many opposed harsh and humiliating punishments and hoped that by separating the deviant, they could repent and rectify their lives; philanthropy reduced charity a bit due to the specialization and segregation of care - "Nonetheless, the new philanthropic institutions reduced charity to a token act. Now, an individual could contribute funds to a house of industry for the poor or to a refuge for unwed mothers, secure that he or she would never come into contact with any of the inmates." (44); Reform could become a full-time job; "It was in the name of charity that critics objected to the new philanthropy, Humanitarianism, it appeared, had succumbed to the very ills of modern life it hoped to cure. It was becoming an abstract, specialized affair, at odds with the personalized ethos of the small-scale community most white Americans still claimed to value. This development did not happen everywhere or all at once." (44); "Giving money never eliminated direct acts of charity. But a tension arose between the two strains of benevolence - traditional charity and modern philanthropy - that runs through American history to the present. That tension is reflected in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when Christian reformers such as Jane Addams - appalled by the dire conditions of the industrial cities - established settlement houses, and the so-called Robber Barons Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller employed their vast wealth to create great philanthropic foundations that carry their names." (47); Rockefeller was a devout Baptist and tithed since the beginning of his business career but he saw the purpose of philanthropy as a way to spare him the overwhelming burden of overseeing donations to worthy causes; Rockefeller hired a Baptist minister named Fredrick Gates as a professional advisor for the and Gates was the first professional advisor of planned giving
2. Protestant Missionaries: Pioneers of Early American Philanthropy
"As this chapter will show, American protestant missionary work provided the organizational and intellectual context out of which many other forms of American philanthropy have emerged. This chapter will also show that, gender has figured importantly in this history, with men's priorities dominating - and men's urge `to' dominate - defining missionary work until the nineteenth century. Women's increasing involvement in missionary work during the nineteenth century provided justification and support for major advances in women's education, both at home and abroad. As a result, New England women emerged as donors as well as recipients of missionary benevolence, imposing their vision of good society on others as part of the process dedicating themselves to a lifetime of service to others. Beyond the considerations of the gendered aspects of this dynamic, this chapter will show that American Protestant missionary work exemplifies the reciprocity between the donor and recipient at the heart of philanthropy." (50); "This kind of reciprocity is characteristic not only of American missionary work, but also of American philanthropy more generally. Donors require recipients. The more appreciative and grateful that recipients are, the more successful donors feel. And the more visible the success, the more the donor's own status is advanced in the eyes of both peers and beneficiaries. Like philanthropists, more generally, missionaries have shown various degrees of self-consciousness about the dynamic of reciprocity. And they have shown various degrees of hesitancy about imposing their own worldview as a gift to others and requiring recipients to give up, or at least modify, their own worldview as part of the exchange. In many cases, missionaries (and philanthropists more generally) have not seemed fully aware that their service to others was dependent on and repaid by the transformation that others underwent and by the gratitude, recognition, and elevation in status that they themselves received. In many cases, missionaries and philanthropists have shown few qualms about the hierarchical relationship involved in gifts of ideas, attitudes, and behaviors that established the donor's dominance and the recipient's respectful submission." (50); "In fact, awareness of the dynamic of reciprocity figured importantly in the growth of American protestant missions in the early nineteenth century and con tribute to an egalitarian idealism about universal brother and sisterhood that inspired many missionaries and converts. Concern about imposing one's own cultural values on others altered the course of American Protestant missions in the early twentieth century." (51); Calvinist view of commonwealth has been influential; Puritans raised the bar in used strenuous self-sacrificing for missionary work to live up to those standards; in the 16th century Jesuits and Franciscan missionaries interacted with Native Americans and Jesuits tended to integrate with the cultures they interacted with; Catholics formed other charitable institutions like hospitals, schools, religious orders, etc; self-sufficiency and interdependence among early colonial communities made caring for the sick and disabled very visible and personal; Puritan missionaries had self-critical and egalitarian tendencies which made them see themselves as equal to others, including Indians, in the eyes of God; Jonathan Edwards in the Great Awakening preached his vision of the Kingdom of God and benevolence to others; Samuel Hopkins (Jonathan Edward's disciple) had strong sentiments and argued that no slave owner could be a Christian; missionary work allowed women to advance in education and instill the love of learning to their children and converts; Mount Holyoke was one school that was started by Mary Lyon; missionaries in India inspired progressive women's education reform but very little converts; some missionaries focused more on social reform than changing worldviews (social gospel); "For more than a century, missionary work had served as one of the principal arenas in which American investment in education, women's and children's rights, and other forms of humanitarian social reform developed. To be sure, missionary involvement in these issues was always accompanied, justified, or compromised, by commitment to conversion." (67); liberal missionaries decreased in time and went into other philanthropic works and more conservative ones remained; "In many respects, the impact of these endeavors has been even greater than that of American missionary boards. The "green revolution" sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation in Mexico and India; the cultural interchange programs sponsored by the Ford Foundation in China; and the Marshall Plan, Peace Corps, and numerous USAID programs sponsored by the U.S. Government all had roots in the liberal side of American Protestant tradition of missionary outreach." & "As Judith Sealander's article later in this volume discusses, the new form of philanthropy, that developed in the United States during the early twentieth century involved strategic giving based on scientifically informed efforts to improve society. This new form of scientific philanthropy played an important role in shaping American society in the twentieth century. It was rooted, to a considerable extent, in the American Protestant tradition of missionary service. The American pioneers of scientific philanthropy came out of a culture saturated with an energetic commitment to world reform that had its roots in Calvinism and Protestant Christianity. Several of these pioneers belonged to American Protestant denominations characterized by investment in missionary service as a principal means of carrying forward that commitment." (68)
3. The Origins of Anglo-American Sensibility
Prisoner reform; insights from early research on the nervous system (e.g. Isaac Newton) and psychology (e.g. John Locke); overlaps between religious and psychological development; "Sentimental novels were among the most effective of written popularizations of sensibility, often addressed by women authors to an increasingly literate female audience, and expressing the same wishes for reform as sermons." (77); slavery narratives are another example of sensibility, whereby preachers and the laity participated in equalizing blacks with the rest of humanity; "Women of all denominations wrote religious tracts, pamphlets, missionary letters, and hymns, all promulgating sensibility. A few of them were preachers. Minsters on both sides of the Atlantic, particular those dependent on their congregations in unestablished denominations, tailored their theology to women's interests - as women came to be the majority in their congregations - a theology that increasingly was emotional rather than intellectual. Historians have referred to "the feminization of religion" at this time and in the nineteenth century, when sentimentalism became a kind of religion regardless of denominational differences. We can link such developments to middle-class women's increasing power at home as wives and mothers, and to their related claim to moral power - even moral superiority - to men. Sensibility was itself personified and satirized as a goddess. Ultimately, the conflicts over the sexual potential for women in the culture of sensibility (which, after all, aggrandized physical responsiveness) were repressed, at least ostensibly, by the 1790s, leaving middle-class women as powerful actors in that myriad of virtuous philanthropic efforts. Yet, sexual repression could serve their interests, confirming their moral superiority and justifying their useful distancing from men." (80-81); narratives of captivity of whites by Indians and the benevolence they experienced prompted sensitivity; by the middle of the 18th century middle-class children in America and Britain were getting "sentimentalized" by their parents and elders; the rise of the culture of sensibility coincided with the rise of the consumer revolution (capitalism) and entrepreneurship and women played a major role in both
4. The Dartmouth College Case and the Legal Design of Civil Society
On the eve of the American Revolution, 9 out of the 13 colonies recognized churches supported by public tax dollars and "Christian leaders in all colonies contributed to the design of laws reflecting theological influences, and the churches assumed major roles in providing education, care for the needy, and the maintenance of community records. The separation of church and state involved the removal of the churches from the performance of these social functions. Moreover, as Americans came to think of themselves as a unified people, public institutions were required to reflect American values. Ultimately, law required churches - as private institutions - to divorce themselves from serving public needs." (92); republicanism dominated American political consciousness (as exemplified by George Washington); the Supreme Court's 1819 decision was a result of conflicts on goals in higher education in terms of secular moral decline and religious revivals; some schools in New England changed their charters to transform private institutions to public ones; Dartmouth College tried to change their name and charter to a University - "The distinction between a college and a university at that time was more significant than subsequent usage of these terms may indicate. The term `university' implied a school devoted to a modern curriculum designed to prepare students for diverse roles in business, government, and the secular needs of the state. The term `college' usually referred to a cloistered academic community intended to train ministers. The name change to Dartmouth University implied substantial changes in the school's goals and methods." (98); the 1769 Dartmouth charter prohibited discrimination of a person "of any religious denomination" (atheists, agnostics, and Jews and other non-Christians were not covered in this clause) and in 1816 a law reversed this by allowing "perfect freedom of religious opinion"; "The case of Trustees of Dartmouth College vs Woodward is often credited with "creating" a legal right of corporations to be free from state government control, thereby enabling private enterprises to pursue charitable and business goals. Yet, the law of contracts - on which protection of corporation was premised - was rooted in both domestic and English precedent prior to 1819, and was expressed in the Constitution." (99); "The Court's decision confirms the constitutional separation of church and state, which implicitly recognizes the status of churches in America as private voluntary institutions able to pursue their own vision of society." (100); after the Dartmouth decision, the government could no longer rely on private philanthropic organizations for major social needs; "Protestant churches were the prime beneficiaries of the Supreme Court's Dartmouth doctrine. As voluntary organizations protected by corporate law, their attention to societal reform after 1819 through the social gospel represented an alternative vision of American society to that presented by secular or governmental policy." & "The actions of individuals to form organizations and raise funds on behalf of temperance, prison reform, abolition, women's rights, and education were protected by law. The Court ensured the rights of organizations to support minority positions that might one day become acceptable to the larger society." (103); the Dartmouth case produced 2 immediate consequences: "1) the decision by state governments to question their financial support of institutions clearly no longer subject to public control; and 2) proliferation of denominationally controlled private colleges, each representing a unique alternative to both state schools and it various denominational competitors." (103-104); "The public model of higher education expressed the American republic's adoption of an Enlightenment secularism that embodied its own form of religion. This "religion of the republic" reduced Christian doctrine to its lowest common denominator - essentially a code of moral behavior expressed in The Golden Rule - and positioned God as a benevolent but uninvolved creator of natural laws." (104)
5. Rethinking Assimilation: American Indians and the Practice of Christianity, 1800-1861
The Shakers built strong spiritual and mundane relationships with the Indians; assimilation; missionary interactions with Indians; exile to reservations
6. Antebellum Reform: Salvation, Self-Control, and Social Transformation
Many Americans acted on Christian principles many decades before the civil war on ending poverty, drunkenness, enforcing the Sunday Sabbath, abolish slavery, emancipate women, rehabilitate criminals, cure insanity, and ensure world peace (129); history textbooks usually describe the moral crusades of the early 19th century as "reforms" but they really were seen as "philanthropic" by contemporaries; this chapter focuses on insane asylums, utopian communities, temperance, and abolitionism; the Second Great Awakening was a catalyst for 19th century reform; the Christian doctrine of Millennialism played both a secular and religious purpose in reform; many abolitionists got their inspiration from the Second Great Awakening; "Colonizationists" wanted slaves to be freed gradually, slave owners to be compensated for their loss, and slaves to be sent back to Africa and "Abolitionists" wanted slaves immediately freed with no compensation for slave owners; the first abolitionists were black, not white people and of the whites William Lloyd Garrison is often credited as the founder of abolitionism; "like Garrison, many radical white abolitionists came from evangelical and reform backgrounds; like Garrison, many took the "ultra" side in debates over total abstinence and Sunday mails. Like Garrison, many self-consciously rejected conventional careers, worried about the morality of succeeding according to the "world's common standard."" (149); many sympathized with black women since slavery tore apart black and white families; women abolitionist activity had a significant impact; abolitionist sometimes disagreed with each other
Part II: The Nationalization and Internationalization of American Philanthropy, 1861-1930
7. Law, Reconstruction, and African American Education in the Post-Emancipation South
After the Civil War racial integration was difficult; "By the 1880s, the federal government had abandoned its attempts to integrate freed African Americans into a reconstructed South. In abdicating responsibility to charities such as the Slater Fund, the country allowed the private sector to address what had been, from 1865 to 1877, the nation's primary concern." (162); at the end of 1865, Congress created the Freedman's Bureau which worked assiduously with missionaries and black parents to generate schools for African Americans among other goals; Civil Rights Act of 1866; numerous distractions deviated interest in helping former slaves to other issues; missionary organizations stepped in to support higher education for African Americans; segregation allowed some African Americans to develop without interference of whites to avoid tensions; many black schools had to seek donors in the North to keep their institutions alive with funding; the General Education Board (GEB) was a trust backed up by John D. Rockefeller and many funds worked under it including the first fund focused on education for blacks, Slater fund; happenings in the Slater fund; "America's economic and intellectual elite were to assume the responsibility for social growth and economic prosperity. Social progress was believed to result from scientists, merchants, and bankers pursuing responsible private agendas and could only be imposed by the federal government. People in commerce, law, agriculture, and industry sought to apply the new science of the late nineteenth century to their own fields to produce greater efficiencies. Herbert Spencer's articulation of Social Darwinism, the rise of Christian missions, and the pioneering studies of cultural anthropologists combined to promote an intellectual justification for a new model of paternalism, expressed in private philanthropic organizations representing a social and business elite." (175-176); "The schools and colleges sustained by the missionary organizations and African American denominations, despite paternalism and poverty, provided meaningful training in the liberal arts for several generations of black leaders - most notably W.E.B. Du Bois, Carter G. Woodson, Thurgood Marshall, and Martin Luther King Jr. - who challenged the existing racial prejudices and worked fervently for a more egalitarian future." (178)
8. Women and Political Culture
Even without direct political participation at the federal level, women made massive contributions to society; from 1790-1860 the infrastructure of female associations emerged and from 1860-1930, women's organizations laid the groundwork for the national welfare test; politically, women may have been invisible, but reality was usually very different; the emergence of the government after the Revolution as a limited authority, left a void where citizens and associations dealt with many grievances; "Beyond severing specific denominations from states support, disestablishment created a level playing field in which all churches became voluntary associations, competing for congregants, converts, and backers on a equal basis. Far from stilling the course of religion, Jefferson's legislation spawned a kaleidoscope of sects - trends that had profound implications for the growth of American philanthropy - including the spectrum of social reform movements detailed by Gamber." (181); "Indeed, women's legal dependency on their husbands was one of the arguments used to deny them the vote because wives were deemed incapable of acting independently from their spouses. However, once they gathered together to form a legally chartered charitable corporation, even married women assumed a part of a collective identity that imbued them with legal prerogatives that they lacked as individuals, including the right to buy, sell, and invest property and to sign binding contracts. They gained a voice in public policy-making as well. Despite their political invisibility, the women who ran urban charities were often quite adept at lobbying for municipal appointments for the organizations. They also exercised significant economic roles under the mantle of what would now be termed `nonprofit entrepreneurship'. As the combined forces of industrialization and marketization gathered momentum, many middle class white women were eased out of the paid workforce. Although opinions vary about the degree of leisure this created for them, by 1830 some of these women began to have more surplus time to contribute to voluntary activities than either their spouses or working-class women or men...The end result was a social context in which policy-making was decentralized, philanthropy was encouraged, and different groups felt entitled to contend for recognition and authority in the public arena - even women." (182); by the 1790s women charities and asylums for children appeared in seacoast cities which provided some employment to women; women increased in churches and contributed heavily to religious charities and services; "Participation in voluntary associations ultimately gave women a voice in local, state, and national legislative debates, as well as the distribution of charitable resources. Women - especially (but not exclusively) middle and upper-class white women - used the parallel power structures that they created through their charities to influence legislation in three ways: publicity, lobbying, and the collection and filing of petitions. Through activities such as these, female auxiliaries and groups such as the American Antislavery Society, the Women's Christian Temperance Union, and the National American Women's Suffrage Association spearheaded the passage of constitutional amendments to extend the rights of citizenship to formerly enslaved black males, outlaw liquor sales, and win the vote for themselves - and they did so without direct access to the polls." (190); African American women also made impressive contributions to their causes;...
Rest of Ch. 8 - Ch. 17 in Comments 1 & 2
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