A Paper Puritan of Puritans: The Liberator’s Protestant Spirit the Antebellum Public Sphere

Abstract

This essay argues that the anti-slavery periodical The Liberator cast itself as heir to a revolutionary tradition of Puritan print to sanction its critiques of the American church and state. This reimagination of Puritanism spoke to readers by tapping into desires for spiritual revival within a secularizing public sphere and a print culture shifting from Protestant scarcity to Victorian abundance. By tracking how The Liberator both utilized these new print technologies and imagined their reclamation of Puritanism, this essay ultimately reveals a more ambiguous negotiation between the sacred and the secular in the emergent public sphere than is often supposed.