Col. Wm. B. Greene

Col. William B(atchelder). Greene was one of the most important figures of the American libertarian movement of the 1800's. Greene was, along with Lysander Spooner, Josiah Warren and Stephen P. Andrews, one of the leading activists of the civil war and post-civil war periods. I want to recommend the great effort that Shawn P. Wilbur is doing to put Greene's writings online. Wilbur is in the process of completing a biography, provisionally entitled A Special Answer to a Special Prayer: William B. Greene, An American Mutualist. Greene was insightful, and helped to focus the direction of American libertarianism from the mid to late 1800's on such matters as mutualism, transcendentalism, cooperative banking theory, equality and socialism and was instrumental in forging individualist-anarchism into a coherent system.

When I began studying 19th century American libertarianism years ago, Greene was one of the first that I researched and read. His life and writings are classically American in his viewpoint and writings. There are many of his writings at the Labadie Collection at the Rare Books Room in the Special Collections Library of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Michigan and the Working Men's Institute in New Harmony, Indiana, both of which I heartily recommend.

Just a thought.
Just Ken
CLASSical Liberalism