New Republic, The.
1862 Weekly
Cleveland, OH.
Language: English.
Editor: Francis Barry, editor; Zerah Masters, C.M. Overton, Orson S. Murray, editorial contributors.
1/1, 1862. 16 pp. $1.00 a year.

The prospectus for the journal in Herald of Progress, July 26, 1862, proclaimed its goal as the combination of "an earnest and energetic radicalism with a wise conservatism," all aimed at the construction of a more perfect world after the freeing of the slaves. In actual practice, the journal was devoted to lengthy gloating screeds on why and how the South should be made to suffer after the imminent ending of the War, and bitter verbal debates over the details of radical reform. It was properly a radical journal but its brand of radicalism was so intertwined with the spiritualism of the day that it is impossible to separate them -- especially on their shared fixation on "free love." C.M. Overton, an editor of this journal and earlier editor of the Social Revolutionist (with Francis and Cordelia Barry), had said in the Revolutionist:

"Free Love is a doctrine of Spiritualism. I say of Spiritualism, not of Spiritualists. Many recognize the facts of Spiritualism who know little of its philosophy. But will any intelligent Spiritualist deny that the concurrent testimony of the spheres proves that their inhabitants are controlled in their love relations not by arbitrary outside authority but by the law of attraction, affinity or Free Love? Is it not a conceded fact that the angels do not have to be hauled up before a magistrate to legalize their marriages? How supremely ridiculous the idea that the men and women of Paradise live together on the cat and dog principle because it wouldn't be respectable to separate! They are not so generous there as to sacrifice their individual happiness for the good of the community. They are not so senseless there as to stay together and scratch and pull hair from a sense of duty to their children or other members of the community, when these other members are doing the same thing from the same laudable motive! The fact that they break up false relations there and form new ones is as well established and is just as much a part of the Spiritual or Harmonic Philosophy as the doctrine of Endless Progression."

This journal was one of the radical, reform, free-love, vaguely socialist, social-engineering journals centered around Berlin Heights and Cleveland, Ohio, all of which were connected: The Social Revolutionist had taken over the subscription list of Nichols Monthly after that journal was burned out by a mob. Francis and Cordelia Barry and Overton had then published Age of Freedom, and Overton went on to edit Good Time Coming and then this journal. Other journals in the same small circle were Thomas Cook's The Optimist, and Kingdom of Heaven (1869), John A. Lant's Toledo Sun (which published one of P.B. Randolph's books), The Vanguard, The Agitator, etc. The journal in each issue ran a quarter-page advertisement for Austin Kent's

"FREE LOVE" Or, a Philosophical Demonstration of the Non-Exclusive Nature of Connubial Love. To which is added A Review of the Exclusive Phase in the Writings of the Fowlers, Adin Ballou, H.C. Wright, and A.J. Davis, on ‘Marriage'"

This prompted a storm that continued throughout the life of the journal, with everyone involved acknowledging the truth and necessity of the doctrine while debating the details of what the doctrine actually entailed:

"The query is, whether Free Love and the non exclusive doctrine Kent are really one and the same thing. Free Love, so called, or real, has, doubtless, various phases, and almost all sorts of advocates, not to mention some who do not advocate it; but some of them, I imagine, would protest against the ‘non-exclusive' idea being associated with Free Love, endorsing, is they do, the latter, as they understand it, but being greatly repelled from the former."

The journal published contributions and letters from Kent, Warren Chase (and reviews of Chase's The Fugitive Wife), and others, and an on-going discussion of how to avoid the awful fate of Mary Gove Nichols and Thomas Nichols whose spirits led them into the Catholic Church. "Try the Spirits. Try them by your highest standard of rectitude and righteousness. Try them by the precepts of Jesus; for I am sure you can find nothing better. Remember there is no moral character in a telegraph wire. And you can only judge of the operator at the other end by the communications received. This and the purity of your own motives -- the sweetness of your own life, will ensure your safety. A clear head and a clean heart will ensure you a safe passage through all the mystic mazes of Spiritualism, and waft you finally into the peaceful haven of absolute truth and positive knowledge." The journal also carried half-page advertisements for the Banner of Light, and smaller advertisements for "S.L. McFadden & Lady, Clairvoyant Healing and Test Mediums" in Cleveland ("Charges in all cases moderate").