The Japanese Journal of American Studies, No. 34 (2023)

Copyright © 2023 The Japanese Association for American Studies. All rights reserved.

“What a Quickening It Was to My Soul”:
The Emergence of Women’s Autonomy in
the New York Religious Tract Society, 1812–1826
Hiro MATSUBARA*Historians have portrayed the New York Religious Tract Society(1812–1826) as one of the many elite-led 19th-century institutions
functioning to discipline lower-class people of New York to conform to thenorms and power structures of existing American Society. In the decades
following the American Revolution, men from the respectable classencountered a growing number of newcomers who were rebelling against
those norms and the structures of conventional authority. The Christian
mission association elites who ran the Society embraced religious tracts as
an aﬀordable method to reach and re-educate poor and unchurched New
Yorkers. However, a close examination of the Society’s operation reveals amore complex story. While the Society leadership used annual reports andother publications to mobilize a broad range of its members, those members,
who included non-elite people, also took advantage of the printed media.
Women members in particular found unprecedented opportunities. Not
content with ﬁlling supportive roles in the Society, some women began toclaim autonomous authority to take care of public matters. Reporting on
their own tireless eﬀorts, unique approaches, and creativity, these womencompelled the male leadership to acknowledge their valuable contributions to
the Society, and thereby gained partial access to the public sphere. No matter
how elitist the Tract Society was in the beginning, its success depended on
its members’ support and consent. The documents of the Tract Society revealthat the women of the auxiliary associations skillfully persuaded the Tract
Society’s male leaders to admit and accept women’s voices and demands.

* Rikkyo University

45

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HIRO MATSUBARA

On January 30, 1812, wealthy citizens of New York City convened ata room of the Presbyterian church on Nassau Street. With “a desire ofextending the knowledge of evangelical truth,” they established the New
York Religious Tract Society (NYRTS).1 The Tract Society hoped to reachthe growing number of people who did not attend churches by distributing
religious tracts and short pamphlets containing moral stories, particularly tothe lower-class residents of the city and its vicinity. Fourteen years later, in
1826, cooperating with their counterpart in Boston, the NYRTS went on tolaunch a national organization named the American Tract Society (ATS) to
lead one of the most flourishing social reform movements of the early 19th
century United States.2
The backdrop of this campaign was New York in the turbulent Early
Republic era. Independence from Britain in the late 18th century had not
produced national unity. Creating and running a republic remained anexperiment, even in the early 19th century.
While traditional social elites and church leaders in New York retainedmuch of the power they possessed at the time of the American Revolution,
various classes of people began challenging them after the revolution. A
new breed of businessmen demanded to join the once closed-door “publicsphere,” the societal forum in which participants engaged in deliberationthat identified social problems and influenced political action, which
had previously been reserved just for wealthy landlords and establishedclerics. Moreover, the concept of republicanism, wherein a small numberof respectable men should be responsible in leading the society, was being
challenged by the ideal of democracy which embraced the engagement andvoices of multitudes of diverse people in society. Bachelors, propertylessmen, women, evangelicals, and even free blacks and runaway slaves
questioned the boundaries of citizenship, civic engagement, and access tothe public sphere.3
The state of New York and New York City were both becoming
increasingly diverse at the time, and their populations were rising rapidly.
Since independence, the state population nearly tripled to about one million
in 1810, with development of the inner part of the state proceeding at afast pace. New York City also experienced a drastic increase in population,changing the formerly walkable city where people knew each other into acity of strangers. Elite New Yorkers believed they needed to address andresolve divisions arising within the newly diverse population and calm
potential tensions between groups.4
For these traditional elite men, religious tracts appeared a promising way

“WHAT A QUICKENING IT WAS TO MY SOUL”

47

to achieve their goals. After the dissolution of the church-state system in theearly nineteenth century, Christian denominations were racing to reorganize
their congregations. However, churches found themselves unable to reachmany people given the rapid societal changes and increases in population.
Believing that “thousands who live within our reach are in need of
instruction, exhortation, and reproof,” the Tract Society founders looked for
new ways to reach those who might live in small towns without adequate
religious resources.5 Three years after the formation of the New York Bible
Society in 1809 which published and distributed Bibles, tracts appeared
to be a powerful means to teach Christianity to the growing number of
low-income people who did not attend churches. Printing tracts was muchcheaper and easier than Bibles.
Historians have depicted civil organizations such as the Tract Society
as agents of social control. Just as the Bible was for the New York Bible
Society and the Sabbath School was for the Sunday School movement,
religious tracts were understood to be the tool the Tract Society used to“discipline” or train newly diverse populations and members of the lower
class to conform to elite expectations of moral and social behavior, thereby
integrating these groups of people into existing society.6
However, a new generation of scholars has recently questioned thisthesis. The critical backdrop for this reassessment is the long postRevolutionary period in the first half of the nineteenth century when thesemore diverse types of people began to enter and redefine the public sphere.7
Although the Bible Society, Sunday School movement, and Tract Society
were founded by elites from the city, these civil organizations now appear
to have been places where much more contentious discourse and debate
between elites and new participants occurred than scholars had previously
understood or acknowledged.
Unlike closed associations like the freemasons, these new voluntary
associations were open to anyone who could pay their affordable
membership fees. Riding the wave of the Second Great Awakening,a large Protestant religious revival movement of the early nineteenth
century, women, non-wealthy men, and young clerics found opportunities
unavailable to them before the Revolution. They could now participate in
the public sphere through membership in these organizations that elites had
established to further the public good. Informed by periodically printed
materials such as annual reports, individual citizens were able to familiarize
themselves with what was going on in these organizations and in the broader
causes of which they were engaged. Moreover, through reading such

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HIRO MATSUBARA

publications and through their own activities, these people who were notelites conceived and implemented their own agendas pertaining to needs
which had been previously unaddressed. Indeed, some people ventured into
more radical movements for causes such as abolition, women’s suffrage, andtemperance that threatened the existing well-established power of elite men.8
To fully understand this process, one must dive deeper into the original
source materials than historians have done before. Increased capacity
for mass publication of printed matter in the early nineteenth century
made it possible for civil associations to operate as public forums forunprecedentedly diverse groups of people. But those shared printed
materials that broad numbers of people received did not necessarily dictate
what kind of public forums these publications would become. Criticalanalysis of organizations’ daily operations is needed to fully understand thenature of these communities.
For this examination, the New York Religious Tract Society offers aparticularly intriguing set of documents. While many organizations ofthat age left plenty of records, the Tract Society was a unique associationthat documented the activities of various classes of tract workers in detail.
Publishing letters and reports from branch organizations and their members,
the NYRTS’s annual reports recorded how the Tract Societies’ activities
unfolded.9 These documents reveal internal tensions and maneuvering
within the organization, as well as potential overstepping of authority on thepart of some people of lower status involved in the tract campaign. In thispaper, I devote particular attention to the voices and activities of women,
who in early nineteenth-century America were supposed to have very
limited access to the public sphere. These women took strategic advantage
of opportunities that participating in the Tract Society afforded to them tobecome more visible and have an impact on matters of public concern.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE TRACT SOCIETY: TRACTS TO DISCIPLINE PEOPLE
A campaign to distribute religious tracts might seem old-fashioned today.
But that was far from being the case 200 years ago. The NYRTS was partof the larger wave of reform movements equipped with the early nineteenth
century’s cutting-edge technology.
What made the tract movement possible was highly advanced print
technologies for the time, which helped tract workers compete with theburgeoning publishing industry in antebellum America. The Bible Societyof Philadelphia was the first to invest in stereo-type printing, a new

“WHAT A QUICKENING IT WAS TO MY SOUL”

49

technology that had emerged only a few years earlier in England. Using
plates of type metal created out of plaster of paris molds, the technology
enabled printing and reprinting of entire books without the need to preserve
the original type or reset the type for each edition. This technology
drastically reduced the cost of publication. With relatively affordable copiesof the Bible, the Bible Society of Philadelphia played the leading role
among many similar associations in the United States in distributing theBible. Its success inspired other religious societies as well.
But Bible associations still struggled financially even with stereotypography, and some leaders recognized that printing religious tracts
containing fewer pages than the Bible was a more affordable way to reachpeople. Hence, three years after the formation of the New York Bible
Society in 1809, civil and ecclesiastical leaders in Manhattan gathered in1812 to launch the Tract Society to distribute religious tracts to people in
New York State.10
Such foresighted investment was not a coincidence. Those who led theBible societies, the Sunday School movement, and the tract societies oftencame from the same wealthy, so-called “respectable” class of people. They
continued to assume their respectability and entitlement to retaining theirleading social role even after losing the exclusive power they wielded
before the revolution. This first generation of the moral reform movement
leaders came from the same elite class who actively promoted new financial
institutions, such as banks and insurance companies, developed various
infrastructure projects like the Erie Canal, and ventured into massive
foreign and domestic trade. Savvy in business, they were keen on looking
for novel technologies.11
For these wealthy men, who often were born prior to and grew up during
the American Revolution, their interest in business did not contradict their
devotion to what they considered the public good. They took it for granted as
men of the so-called respectable class that they were responsible for caring
for the broader community.12 Even after the Jeffersonian Revolution pushedthese elite Federalist men away from their political positions, they did not lose
their sense of obligation to manage their communities. To fulfill what they
considered to be their public responsibility, they began to gravitate toward
civil associations as a means to influence society. The abandonment of thestate-sponsored church system also motivated clerics to try to reorganize theircongregations. Believing in the role of Christianity to unify and harmonize
a society, they began to launch religious reform movements through Bible
societies, Sunday schools, and tract associations to reach people.

50

HIRO MATSUBARAThe New York Religious Tract Society was established in 1812 as apart of this wave of mission campaigns. The founders of the Tract Society
were men from prominent early-Republic New York City families andreligious leaders of New York City. Reverends Philip Milledoler, Alexander
McLeod, and John B. Romeyn were the active managers of the NYRTS.
Businessmen Divie Bethune, John E. Caldwell, Henry Rutgers, andZecharia Lewis were laymen who joined the cause. Leonard Bleecker
was another leader who came from an elite family. They were respectablemen of early Republic New York City who presumed themselves to be theleaders of the city.13
In their view, too many people in the growing Republic were religiously
unprepared. According to the Tract Society, since the “country [was] large;
the population far scattered; the means of religious instruction inadequate
and uncertain,” an unprecedented number of people were without churches
or a moral compass. To address this daunting situation, the society believed
its members and followers should use religious tracts to “be diligent in
diffusing the light of the knowledge of the Lord” to the distant villages
across the state.14 Furthermore, within New York City, the “markets,
hospitals, alms-house, prisons, and Sabbath Schools were in nearly thesame condition; … many thousands of [the city’s] inhabitants … frompoverty or disinclination attend[ed] no place of public worship, [and] werewholly unsupplied.” Accordingly, the NYRTS worked in Manhattan aswell.15
The primary activities of the Tract Society were sales and distributionof tracts. “[C]ommunication of religious instruction through the mediumof the press” appeared to be a helpful tool for integrating and disciplining
non-pious, unchurched populations who lived alongside what the Society
considered to be the decent constituents of the emerging Republic.16
Churches were not always available to newcomers in new communities.
In such circumstances, written tracts had “peculiar advantages.” Pointing
out that “[w]ords spoken are transient, but a written discourse is apermanent possession,” the tract society strongly promoted distributing
religious tracts across New York State. The Society also handed out
catechisms to try to ensure that it conveyed the right messages to readers.17
NYRTS leaders were well aware that they were competing with secularconsumer culture. They decried “History and Romance, Philosophy andPoetry—every species of composition, whether grave or ludicrous …
employed by the foes of religion” via the emerging publishing industry,
and they tried to counter this literary trend by producing their own reading

“WHAT A QUICKENING IT WAS TO MY SOUL”

51

materials. They expected ready access to religious tracts with curious
stories would awaken people attracted to the literature of secular culture.18
Members of the Tract Society were confident that printed tracts would
reveal Christian truth to all readers. Believing that the religious tracts they
distributed were “thankfully received, and read with apparent attention,”
leaders and tract workers never tired of reporting their successes in theannual reports of the NYRTS.19
In the interior of this State, where the people, although destitute of thestated preaching of the Gospel, have assembled on the sabbath to unite
in prayer, and in hearing, a portion of Scripture or a printed discourse,
some of our Tracts have been read, addressing a monitory voice to theimpenitent and the thoughtless, and communicating to the pious both
instruction and fort.20
The annual reports paid special attention to cases of successful
conversion. No matter how “heedless and inattentive to the concerns of hersoul” a non-believer had been, NYRTS members believed that tracts could
compel her to discover God’s messages.21
In the first years after its inception, the Tract Society began to rapidly
accelerate its pace of distributing materials. In its first year, the Society
distributed 12,000 tracts. By its fifth year, the 1816–1817 fiscal year, it sold
100,000 tracts in addition to giving 35,000 copies away.22 The Tenth Annual
Report proudly announced the distribution of 300,000 tracts in fiscal year
1821–1822.23 The NYRTS then further expanded its scope by adding
French and Spanish versions. The organization, filled with exuberance,
joined the international movement, sharing tracts, information, and methods
with its London counterpart.24
The founders of the NYRTS, its nationalized successor organization theAmerican Tract Society, and the Manhattan-based branch, the New York
City Tract Society (founded in 1827) considered their organizations to beformidable institutions of the early 19th century for converting the masses.
They celebrated stories of people happily receiving tracts and expressing
gratitude. In their view, those people were the poor who deserved to be
saved. Leaders of these tract societies hoped that more and more people
would follow their example, accept the tracts, and follow the teachingsand moral codes they propounded. In this sense, as many historians havedescribed, the tract movement was a means to discipline and unify nonpious people in the age of the Early Republic.

52

HIRO MATSUBARAORDINARY WOMEN WHO JOINED THE TRACT SOCIETY
However, a closer examination of the daily operations of the tract
campaign reveals a much more complex picture. It was not only therespectable class of New York but also broader groups of men and women
who joined the movement. The Tract Society had to be inclusive by its very
nature as an organization dedicated to broad evangelism. Among otherthings, the tract campaign required a supporting cast of non-leader members
to reach out to multitudes of different people.
The Tract Society needed subscribers, donors who bought tracts, andactive members who were fired up for the cause. Every annual report of
the NYRTS recorded evidence of subscriber enthusiasm. Members of theSociety were eager to report that distributed tracts were “read with attention
and interest,” and the editor of annual reports welcomed that news as proofof the tract movement’s success.25
The development of auxiliary organizations was even more criticalfor amplifying enthusiasm for religious tracts. Although the NYRTS had
approximately 350 subscribers by its tenth year, nearly double the number
it started with in its first year, that number was insufficient to fulfill the
broader goals of the movement.26 In order to increase tract circulation, the
NYRTS needed local organizations across and beyond New York State.
The 1817 Fifth Annual Report explicitly called for the creation of local
branches:
The Managers of “The New-York Religious Tract Society,” deeply
impressed with the importance of disseminating Divine Truth throughthe medium of small Religious Tracts, feel desirous that their Christian
Brethren, in various parts of the country, should aid them in theiruseful labours.27
Every subsequent annual report included template bylaws for auxiliaryorganizations. Inclusion of these templates reveals how crucial theseauxiliary branches were to the society.
Men and women in local communities favorably responded to the call.
Auxiliary associations across New York State and beyond purchased
tracts and aggressively distributed them to their neighbors. The NYRTS
leaders always appreciated and admired that “these Auxiliaries [went]
into operation without any effort on the part of this Board, and almost
without the knowledge of any of its managers.”28 Beyond the control of the“WHAT A QUICKENING IT WAS TO MY SOUL”

53

headquarters, local bodies independently expanded the tract movement.
Ordinary men and women pursued the opportunity to launch branchorganizations. For many of them, the Tract Society’s activities presented
an unprecedented chance to get involved in one of the most important andinteresting public issues of the age. The annual membership fee of two
dollars was affordable enough for broad classes of citizens to be able tojoin. And as members of the organization who read the society’s literature,they shared public concerns with the so-called respectable class of people
through correspondence with them, some of which was published in annual
reports.
Some members even wrote content for the Society documents. Authoring
local branch reports and describing episodes of giving out tracts was a
way for men and women to actively participate in the Society.29 Although
they inhabited a different socio-economic sphere from their wealthy
counterparts, these people who were not wealthy could raise their relative
status and the perception of their moral character in the eyes of others by
criticizing the non-pious population in cities.30
Women’s organizations were especially energetic. Women welcomed
the mission and willingly joined the movement with “sensations of delightand gratitude to Him who is the author and conductor of all good.”31
Women were often mentioned as capable workers in the field to convince
both young men and women as well as their parents of the value of tracts
and Christianity.32 The NYRTS annual reports expressed gratitude for thefemale auxiliaries that were instrumental in distributing tracts, and praised
the creation of female organizations in Brooklyn, New York; Providence,
Rhode Island; Trenton, New Jersey; Camden, North Carolina, andelsewhere. The secretaries of these newly launched women’s organizations
became almost regular writers in the annual reports. Sending news of
the successful development of the tract work, these women upheld the
movement nationwide.33
As if being pushed by these female associations across the United States,
the long-awaited Female Branch of New York Religious Tract Society
was founded in Manhattan in 1822. While its officers were the wives
and daughters of the male leaders of the NYRTS, the fact they had 600
subscribers suggests that the Female Branch had a broader reach than justmembers of the so-called respectable class. It attracted women from various
classes in the city.34

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HIRO MATSUBARANEGOTIATIONS WITHIN THE ANNUAL REPORTS:
AUTONOMY OF WOMEN TRACT WORKERS
These men and women who participated in the NYRTS and came from a
broad range of classes in American society, did not necessarily share fullycommon values. Ironically, the more they tried to develop the movement
together, the more differences among themselves became apparent. I
focus here on interactions and subtle negotiations taking place between
elite men who ran the Tract Society from New York and women fromdiverse parts of the country who were active members and distributorsof tracts. Importantly, some women as part of their work carrying out theorganization’s mission began to gain various types of autonomy in the tract
campaigns.
Leaders of the NYRTS clearly welcomed the rise of female auxiliary
associations and their female members. Male founders of the Society knew
it was critical to reach out to people beyond the elite class and establishedchurches. Broader classes of people and both men and women joining the
movement would increase the influence of the Tract Society.
For the Society leadership, annual reports were indispensable media.
While religious tracts offered model stories to be shared and acceptedby the poor and other subscribers, annual reports helped the leaders set
the Society’s course. Widely circulated and read, these reports were theprimary vehicles for leaders to inform members and supporters of theSociety’s principles, goals, achievements, and decisions made at the annual
conferences. Sharing this information with subscribers was a way tomobilize and solidify the Tract Society’s membership.
Understandably, Zecharia H. Lewis, secretary of the Society,enthusiastically listed the achievements of foreign tract societies anddomestic auxiliary associations in these annual communications. Under
his editorship, the yearly reports sought to convince members and possible
subscribers of the worldwide success of the tract movement. Especially inearlier issues, Lewis emphasized the close relationship between NYRTS andthe Tract Society in London and other international counterparts. When the
yearly reports began to include lengthy appendix pages in the Third Annual
Report, all reports except one letter from New York were from tract societies
and their members in foreign nations.35 Since the NYRTS was still in its
formative period, Lewis attempted to impress his readers with the growth of
the tract movement by including a list of international achievements.
Annual reports were not the only form of one-way media the Tract

“WHAT A QUICKENING IT WAS TO MY SOUL”

55

Society employed to disseminate this type of information. The organization
also published letters and reports written by its local members, indeed
to a greater extent than other contemporary New York civil associations.
Foreign and domestic reports in earlier annual reports provided models forwriters to follow in subsequent years. And those printed reports solicited
additional reports by auxiliary associations and their members, whichfurther assured the success of the Tract Society. In fact, the annual reports
became the forum for members to communicate with each other andleaders.
Recording the voices of auxiliary association members was an important
strategy for the NYRTS leaders to integrate those supporters into the larger
organization. News of another association’s launch was tangible evidenceof the Society’s expansion. Stories of successful tract-giving demonstrated
the effectiveness of the tract movement. Moreover, publishing their voices
showed public approval of the work of these supporting members of theTract Society.
In this context, repeated publication of women’s voices in the annual
reports signified that Lewis and the founding men of the Society approvedof women’s participation in the movement. Happy reports of the growing
number of auxiliary associations every year encouraged readers to launchmore associations. Frequent and particular mention of women’s auxiliaries
suggested that the men at the headquarters recognized the usefulness of
women, who had more time, energy, and numbers of people to distributetracts. Lewis never denounced women’s active participation or reports fromwomen. Through the media of annual reports, male leaders attempted tocreate a harmonious association of both men and women who were devoted
to the cause.
For women, it was an invaluable opportunity. At a time when women did
not otherwise have a secure pathway into the public sphere, the religious
campaign of the Tract Society afforded them a possible gateway. A femaleorganization’s annual report, published in part in an NYRTS annual report,
expressed and justified their commitment to the cause:
In our passage through life to eternity, it should be our chief concern
to fill up our days with usefulness, and to act in that manner which
will best fit us for appearing with acceptance in the presence ofGod. To have performed acts of benevolence and piety, to have been
instrumental in making our fellow creatures holier and happier, will
give more real pleasure in life, and more solid satisfaction in death,

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HIRO MATSUBARA

than all that earthly grandeur, honour, and power can afford, andinfinitely better fit us for eternity which lies before us.36
The report further stated that women participants gained their senseof “usefulness by joining the tract distribution.” Given their convictionthat the NYRTS and God needed capable hands to help and educate thenon-pious poor, women joined the movement to do their part in “acts ofbenevolence and piety.” Declaring that being “instrumental in making our
fellow creatures holier and happier” gave women “real pleasure,” the author
from this female auxiliary club secured a channel to participate in the publicsphere. And by citing this particular part of the report, Lewis also appeared
to be communicating to readers his approval of how these women from this
auxiliary society were fully cooperating with and furthering the goals of thelarger Tract Society.
However, women’s participation in the Tract Society did not mean thatthey were always conforming to the expectations and unspoken rulesof the elite class. Documents of the NYRTS reveal hidden yet complex
negotiations taking place among the Tract Society members. In short,
women managed to create and maintain a certain degree of autonomy
through the tract movement.
For example, in the 1816 Fourth Annual Report, editor Lewis shared a“very interesting letter, from an elderly and pious Lady in Hanover, NewJersey” sent to a male friend of hers who was a member of the Society
in New York City. The letter was valuable to Lewis because it illustrated
local women’s enthusiastic acceptance of the tract business. The letter
reported not only that tracts were “circulated in that neighborhood, andread with great avidity and attention,” but that the bundle of tracts “hadproved the means of exciting [women] to the immediate establishment of an
AUXILIARY TRACT SOCIETY in that village” (emphasis in the original).
Lewis happily included the witness of this elderly lady, who promised towork for the Society, saying: “We are willing to be Agents, or Assistants, or
any thing, if we can only aid in buying and distributing these little precious
Messengers.”37
A closer look at the letter reveals that not only Lewis but also “an elderly
and pious Lady” commanded the discourse. After reading the Third Annual
Report, and probably many similar publications in other campaigns, the woman
must have known that her letter might get published by the Tract Society.
Indeed, Lewis not only summarized her well-written letter in his report, he also
published a lengthy excerpt at the beginning of the report’s appendix, most of

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57

which contained reports from foreign tract societies. By skillfully dramatizing
her experience, the author succeeded in expressing herself and having her voiceheard in the public sphere through the annual report.
In her letter, the woman did not present herself as a passive receiver oftracts from the Tract Society. While expressing gratitude for being given
tracts and God’s blessing, she claimed her readiness to do something:
I know of no words to express my thanks to God, and to that Society,for sending to us these Reports and Tracts. Oh, sir, how shall I tell
you the exercises of my heart, on reading the Report! It was indeed amessage from God to my poor soul. I began to read it, and my tears
began to flow, under a sense of the goodness of God, in what he isdoing in his world, among miserable sinners. I found I could not keep
my seat. I longed to be in a private room, where I could remain low
in the dust, praising God for his goodness. Oh, what a quickening it
was to my soul! [I]t was the means of my weeping, and praying, andpraising, in my poor manner, for two days.38
In her lengthy praise of God, she carefully emphasized that she first
retreated to her “private room” for two days. Yet, she did not forget tomention the “quickening” of her soul. Stimulated by the tracts the Society
sent out to her neighbor pastor, she confessed that she was going to create
something of her own.
Later in the same paragraph, she described how she immediately foundlike-minded women in her midst and started to lend and distribute tracts topeople in neighboring communities as well. Declaring “Here is now a door
open to do much with it, for every one seems desirous to get hold of Tracts
to read,” the author was no longer hesitant to act because she had a holy
mission that she perceived everyone was eager to join.
Before Lewis introduced her to the report’s many readers as a willing
divine agent, the letter writer had already started her own work as anautonomous actor in the name of God. She took the initiative herself
in her own New Jersey community by “immediately request[ing] [her]pastor to write articles for a Society.” Having already recruited many new
subscribers, she sent her letter to a member of the Tract Society in New
York. In fact, in her letter she demanded that the Society entrust her withresponsibility:
I want you, sir, to go to the Society, or the Managers, and request them

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HIRO MATSUBARA

to trust me for one hundred Tracts, some or all sorts, as cheap as they
can afford: and ask them to send me a few copies of their Report that I
may lend them, as the one I had gone on to another congregation; and I
believe that the Lord is with it, and that it will do wonders.
Send tracts to me, she demanded—not to a pastor in her community,
but directly to her. She was confident that she was the person who
would actually deliver them to her network of people. The letter was her
declaration of initiative, in which she insisted upon support and approval
from the headquarters.
It is unclear whether Lewis entirely embraced the woman’s assertivenessin wholeheartedly seizing the initiative herself. Stressing her cooperative
nature in his summary of the letter, Lewis did not necessarily communicate
her passionate tone. Nonetheless, the woman’s fervor and tangible
achievements seemed to have convinced Lewis to include a lengthy excerptof her letter at the beginning of the annual report appendix. Because Lewis
was trying to weave together letters from a broad community of Society
members, he appeared to feel compelled to publish a substantial portionof the elderly woman’s letter in the important widely circulated annual
report. In this way, the annual report was becoming a public arena for every
member of the Tract Society.
BEYOND THE TRACT GIVING, BEYOND THE MIDDLE-CLASSThis type of letter offered yet another model for other ambitious women.
Learning from and responding to the letter, people expressed their own
creativity. Indeed, overstepping the control of male leaders’ direction, many
women in auxiliary associations quickly moved beyond tract distribution.
The annual reports became the incubator for nurturing the autonomy of
women tract workers.
The 1817 Fifth Annual Report included a column about a particular“Miss Kingman,” who was secretary of the Female Tract Society in
Providence, Rhode Island, congratulating her on her splendid effort in her
neighborhood. Noteworthy to the Society headquarters was the volunteer
work of Kingman and her colleagues in both tract distribution and inspiring
creation of new affiliated groups. The column stated that in “addition totheir ordinary labour of procuring and distributing Tracts, the pious andenterprising Managers of that Institution have contributed their influence tothe establishment of Auxiliary Societies in several of the adjacent towns.”39

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59

The excerpts of Kingman’s original letter contained in the annual reportillustrate more. While the Society in New York City was satisfied withsimply giving tracts and catechisms to people, Kingman and women in
Providence did not believe such distribution work was enough. Preferringa more aggressive campaign, they ran four Sunday Schools by themselves,
sent out teachers to distant parts of Rhode Island during the winter break,
set up ad hoc schools, and taught children, all while managing the budget.
In a quiet manner, Kingman offered NYRTS leaders a model they could
learn from and follow. In fact, collaboration with Sunday schools came tobe the norm for many tract societies.40
Moreover, middle-class women were not the only ones who took
advantage of the tract movement. A “female servant” jumped at the chance
to join the campaign and sent a letter to headquarters that was published in
the Tenth Annual Report. The letter read in part:I know not in what way I can best apologize for this intrusion, as I am
but a servant, and entirely unknown to you. But I trust you will not be
displeased with the following short and simple statement of an attempt
at doing good.41
Seemingly to apologize for her bold approach, the woman in factappeared to be demanding in an understated way that the editor accept her
letter. She likely knew that the Tract Society needed broader help. And
her writing to the headquarters as other women had done provides strong
evidence that she had learned how women in the higher socio-economic
classes approached and used the Society to enlarge their spheres. Throughthe publication of her letter, she aimed to make use of the state-level
organization’s authority to empower herself and other women in domestic
service as they attempted to organize their own versions of tract circulationand create their own auxiliary society in their village.42
For these servant women, participation in the tract distribution wasa means to expand their sphere of life. While presenting themselves as
humble women, they simultaneously claimed their membership in the
public service of the tract campaign. They dared to found their own
auxiliary association, the type of organization that had been available only
to propertied men before American Revolution. Moreover, this woman
also explained in her letter of “the greatest difficulty” mere servant women
faced in finding a place to meet, and pressed for their right to gather for thispublic cause. Additionally in the letter, she proudly reported the women’s

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capability to manage their budget and collect donations, thereby presenting
themselves as responsible Christians. Through joining the tract movement,these servant women secured a platform to prove and demonstrate theircompetence as public citizens.43
A very short extract of a letter from another woman in the next year’s
annual paper illustrates a complicated chain reaction that took place bymeans of this media. That woman described an incident in which her young
domestic servant asked her to get tracts for distribution. According to thisauthor, her servant read the published letter from the “female servant” in theprevious year’s annual paper and hoped to replicate what she had done.44
The actions of her domestic servant obviously caught the author’s
attention. But beyond that we cannot know for sure what was actually goingon. It is important to analyze the content of the letter, the fact the author
wrote it and submitted it to the society, and the NYRTS’s publication of theletter from three different perspectives: that of the servant, the author, andthe annual report editor.
As an initial matter, it is possible that something straightforward wastaking place. The servant may simply have been pious and wished tocontribute to the cause of the tract movement. But the servant may also
have seen a path to raising her own status by taking the initiative to express
her desire to participate actively in the tract campaign. She may have beentacitly challenging her subordinate position in the author’s house and theircommunity. Learning from the “female servant” in the Tenth Annual Report,
this domestic servant may have been attempting to move beyond herinferior status as a servant through public and religious service.
With respect to the author, the excerpt tells us nothing explicit about her
reaction as her employer to the servant’s request, but the fact that the author
wrote and submitted the letter to the headquarters appears to demonstrate
clearly that she had agreed to help her domestic servant get tracts. The
author indeed may have happily found a comrade among her domestic
workers and wanted to report the inspirational story of humble piety to theheadquarters, who could then also share it with others through the annual
report.
But conversely, the author may have submitted the letter to the Society ina self-serving attempt either to show off her kindness to the Tract Society’s
large readership or even falsely represent herself as extraordinarily kindto the ambitious servant, implicitly declaring herself a better class of
person than this brazen young servant who had almost forgotten her status.
The author presumably knew the incident was unusual or noteworthy;

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61

otherwise, she would not have reported it. Perhaps unconsciously the author
felt obliged to share her experience with her fellow upper-class women who
might face similar social challenges.
At the editor’s office, Lewis might have been pleased to hear about thedepth and breadth of the development of this movement of which he wasa leader and the impact of the annual reports which he edited: one humble
servant had inspired another to volunteer to distribute the organization’s
tracts. Perhaps, Lewis shared the excitement the author expressed andappreciated her apparent care for her employee.
Yet did Lewis not notice any of the subtle negotiations taking place
regarding social status? It was well known at the time that women hadvery limited access to the public sphere. That is why in almost all of their
letters and reports, women expended some effort to justify their actions. It is
possible that as Lewis realized the value of reaching out to women, he wasalso forced to acknowledge here the validity of the servant women’s claims
to responsibility and authority.
In all likelihood, many of these elements were intertwined in manydifferent operations and activities of the Tract Society and its membership.
The annual reports were no longer functioning as a one-way media formen in the NYRTS leadership to communicate with others. They had
become an arena for both men and women who were joining, working
with, and participating in the Tract Society to engage in public discourse.
And in subtle ways, these grassroots tract workers had begun to gain someautonomy in the movement. Especially for women, who had had limitedaccess to the public sphere, service to the Tract Society was an entry way tobroader arenas in which they could be visible. Because of the indispensable
help these women provided the organization, leaders of the Society had nochoice but to acknowledge the women’s contributions.
As discussed above, New York leaders of the Tract Society in 1826
agreed with their Bostonian counterparts to forge the nationwide American
Tract Society. Because it was a nationwide campaign, they decided toconsolidate their budget and publication repertory. And indeed, the ATS
successfully distributed tracts beyond New York and New England to theSouth and expanding Midwest.45
However, for grassroots tract workers, nationwide tract distribution
was only one small part of the business. Local distribution, launching
auxiliary organizations, and running Sunday Schools were the operations
that truly excited them. Holding roles and positions in local associations
was especially valuable for ordinary women members. These elements of

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HIRO MATSUBARA

tract work were essential for new members, both to help the cause and to
uplift themselves. Not surprisingly, members of the Female Branch of the
New York Religious Tract Society insisted on keeping a New York-basedorganization and launched the New York City Tract Society in 1827.46 Since
its establishment, the NYCTS’s Annual Report always included its Female
Branch’s annual paper. The annual conference was always packed withenthusiastic men—and women—committed to the campaign on the ground.
No leaders could dismiss the vital force of these ordinary men and women
to maintain the tract movement.
CONCLUSION
The NYRTS was one of many civil associations founded to help unify
disparate communities both in New York State and in other fast-growing
parts of the United States in the years following the American Revolution.
The established church leaders and prominent citizens who launched theSociety attempted to create social order by organizing massive distributionof tracts and reports. Utilizing cutting-edge technology of stereotypography, the Tract Society sold and distributed affordable religious
tracts. In the absence of churches and clerics in the frontier communities,
Society leaders believed stories published in tracts would be powerful tools
to teach Christianity.
However, to successfully run the campaign, the Society had to open up
their public forum to a much broader set of participants. They needed toinclude men and women, who were not part of the elites of society.
Women in particular, who previously had had no such access to the
public sphere, did not squander this opportunity. Leveraging the authorityof the Tract Society, women from a broad range of classes raised their
voices and sought significant reforms of the existing society to help theunchurched poor. This paper’s analysis of the NYRTS’s annual reports
demonstrates that these female workers were not satisfied with merely
agreeing with and supporting the male leadership. Evidence suggests thatwomen of auxiliary associations broke through to open up a particular space
for themselves. The series of annual reports suggests that the men leading
the NYRTS had no choice but to concede to these assertive women in orderto develop the tract movement further. These women’s diverse voices wereindispensable parts of the NYRTS’s effort to reunify New York, as well as
rest of the United States, during the Early Republic period.
The NYRTS was a small organization in New York City, but it helped

“WHAT A QUICKENING IT WAS TO MY SOUL”

63

inspire larger movements across the northern United States. As cooperation
between auxiliary associations and neighboring Sunday schools suggests,
mission societies also required the involvement of ordinary people. And in
addition to the tract societies in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, andtheir many auxiliary bodies, Sunday schools and Bible associations were
founded.
Structurally speaking, these mission organizations shared a common
operating mechanism. No matter how elitist they were in the beginning,
the success of their movements depended on the support and consent of
the broader public. Moreover, during the early Republic, many ordinary
men and women from various classes were ready to seize this opportunity
to enter the public sphere in the new nation. The original source materialsof the NYRTS suggest that those men and women often used the language
and rhetoric of conformity to find their place in the movement for the public
good. Appealing to the grace of God, they promised to do their part to help
unify the fragmented American society.
But sometimes women gained autonomy and tacitly challenged themainstream norm of male leadership. In the age of the Second Great
Awakening, men and women from a broader social range pronounced
their liberty and equality in front of God. Historians have narrated thepeak of the reform movement in the 1830s and its breakdown, stagnation,and eventual decline after the 1840s. However, does such a narrative fully
capture the internal dynamics of mission associations during the long postRevolutionary period and the Second Great Awakening and their impact
thereafter?
The mission societies had to open up their public forums to much broader
sets of participants, that included both men and women who were not elites.
The elite founders of these organizations had intended them to help settle
divisions emerging in American society, but instead they ended up bringing
more diverse voices into the public sphere. In American history, unity,
division, and diversity were not always contradictory.
NOTE
1

The Second Annual Report of the New York Religious Tract Society, 1814, 8.
Paul Romita, New York City Mission Society, ed. Society New York City Mission(Portsmouth, NH: Arcadia, 2003); Kenneth D. Miller, The People Are the City: 150 Yearsof Social and Religious Concern in New York City, ed. Ethel Prince Miller (New York:
Macmillan, 1962); New York City Mission Society, New York City Mission Society (NewYork: New York City Mission Society, 1918).
2

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HIRO MATSUBARA

3
Woody Holton, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution (New York: Hilland Wang, 2008); Terry Bouton, Taming Democracy: “The People,” the Founders, andthe Troubled Ending of the American Revolution (Oxford; New York: Oxford University
Press, 2007); David Waldstreicher and Van Gosse, eds., Revolutions and Reconstructions:Black Politics in the Long Nineteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2020); Christopher James Bonner, Remaking the Republic: Black Politics and theCreation of American Citizenship (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020).
4
Robert Greenhalgh Albion, The Rise of New York Port, 1815–1860, Classics ed.
(Boston; New York: Northeastern University Press; South Street Seaport Museum, 1984
[1939]); Sidney Irving Pomerantz, New York, an American City, 1783–1803: A Study ofUrban Life, vol. no. 442 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1938); Elizabeth Blackmar,
Manhattan for Rent, 1785–1850 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989).
5
The First Annual Report of the New York Religious Tract Society, 1813, 4.
6
Cliﬀord S. Griﬃn, Their Brothers’ Keepers; Moral Stewardship in the United States,
1800–1865 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1960); Paul S. Boyer, Urban
Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820–1920 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University
Press, 1978); Raymond A. Mohl, Poverty in New York, 1783–1825 (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1971).
7
John L. Brooke, “Consent, Civil Society, and Public Sphere,” in Beyond the Founders:
New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic, ed. Jeﬀrey L.
Pasley, Andrew W. Robertson, and David Waldstreicher eds (Chapel Hill: University ofNorth Carolina Press, 2004); John L. Brooke, Columbia Rising: Civil Life on the Upper
Hudson from the Revolution to the Age of Jackson (Chapel Hill, N.C: University of North
Carolina Press, 2010); Jack P. Greene, “Colonial History and National History: Reﬂections
on a Continuing Problem,” The William and Mary Quarterly 64, no. 2 (2007).
8
Johann N. Neem, Creating a Nation of Joiners: Democracy and Civil Society in Early
National Massachusetts (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2008); Albrecht
Koschnik, “Let a Common Interest Bind Us Together”: Associations, Partisanship, andCulture in Philadelphia, 1775–1840, Jeﬀersonian America (Charlottesville: University ofVirginia Press, 2007); Peter J. Wosh, Spreading the Word: The Bible Business in NineteenthCentury America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994); Michael P. Young, Bearing
Witness against Sin: The Evangelical Birth of the American Social Movement (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2006); David Paul Nord, Faith in Reading: Religious
Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America (Oxford; New York: Oxford University
Press, 2004).
9
Except for printed documents such as the annual reports and some tracts, most of theTract Society’s archival records are now non-accessible. A valuable exception is a brieftranscript of the minutes of the New York City Tract Society, the inheriting body, now stored
at the Community Service Society records at the Rare Book Manuscript Library of Columbia
University.
10
Nord, Faith in Reading: Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America,
45–56; John William Tebbel. The Expansion of an Industry, 1865–1919. Vol. v. 2, A History
of Book Publishing in the United States (New York: R.R. Bowker Co, 1975).
11
Wosh, Spreading the Word: The Bible Business in Nineteenth-Century America, chap. 1.
12
Barbara M. Tucker and Kenneth H. Tucker, “The Limits of Homo Economicus: An
Appraisal of Early American Entrepreneurship,” Journal of the Early Republic 24, no. 2(2004).
13
The First Annual Report of the New York Religious Tract Society, 1813. Griﬃn, Their
Brothers’ Keepers; Moral Stewardship in the United States, 1800–1865; M. J. Heale, “FromCity Fathers to Social Critics: Humanitarianism and Government in New York, 1790–1860,”

“WHAT A QUICKENING IT WAS TO MY SOUL”

65

The Journal of American History 63, no. 1 (1976); M. J. Heale, “Humanitarianism in the
Early Republic: The Moral Reformers of New York, 1776–1825,” Journal of American
Studies 2, no. 2 (1968).
14
The Second Annual Report of the New York Religious Tract Society, 1814, 3.
15
The First Annual Report of the New York Religious Tract Society, 1813, 10
16
Ibid, 3.
17
Ibid, 3; The Third Annual Report of the New York Religious Tract Society, 1815, 3.
When people were able to buy tracts, tract workers preferred to sell the tracts.
18
The First Annual Report of the New York Religious Tract Society, 1813, 4.
19
The Fifth Annual Report of the New York Religious Tract Society, 1816, 12.
20
The Third Annual Report of the New York Religious Tract Society, 1815, 6.
21
Ibid, 6–7.
22
The Fifth Annual Report of the New York Religious Tract Society, 1816, 4–5.
23
The Tenth Annual Report of the New York Religious Tract Society. 1822, 4.
24
The Religious Tract Society in London was founded in 1799. Religious Tract Society.
Annual Report of the Religious Tract Society ... With Interesting Extracts of Correspondence,
British and Foreign and a List of Subscribers and Benefactors. London: Published for theSociety, 1799.
25
The Fifth Annual Report of the New York Religious Tract Society, 1816, 14.
26
The Tenth Annual Report of the New York Religious Tract Society. 1822, 27–29.
27
The Fifth Annual Report of the New York Religious Tract Society, 1816, 29.
28
The Tenth Annual Report of the New York Religious Tract Society. 1822, 10.
29
Nord, Faith in Reading: Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America;
Wosh, Spreading the Word: The Bible Business in Nineteenth-Century America.
30
Boyer, Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820–1920; Christine Stansell, Cityof Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789–1860, 1st ed. (New York: Knopf: Distributedby Random House, 1986); Bruce Dorsey, Reforming Men and Women: Gender in the
Antebellum City, Reforming Men & Women (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2002).
31“Extract from the First Report of Managers of the Female Tract Society of Camden, (N.
C.)” Eighth Annual Report of the New York Religious Tract Society. New York, 1820, 43.
32“Letter from the Secretary of the Providence Sunday School and Tract Society,” The
Tenth Annual Report of the New York Religious Tract Society. New York, 1822, 32.
33
Female Religious Tract Society in Brooklyn distributed 14,000 tracts. The Fifth Annual
Report of the New York Religious Tract Society, 1816, 13
34
The Tenth Annual Report of the New York Religious Tract Society. New York, 1822,
10–11, 30–34.
35
The Third Annual Report of The New York Religious Tract Society, 1814, 13–40.
36”Extract from the Third Annual Report of the Trenton Female Tract Society,” The Eighth
Annual Report of the New York Religious Tract Society, 1820, 40.
37
The Fourth Annual Report of the New York Religious Tract Society, 1815, 11–12
38
Ibid, 26.
39
The Fifth Annual Report of the New York Religious Tract Society, 1816, 13–15. Anotherannual paper was amazed at the dynamic development that occurred “almost without theknowledge of any of its managers.” The Tenth Annual Report of the New York Religious
Tract Society, 1822, 10.
40“Extract of a letter from Miss Kingman, Secretary of the Female Tract Society ofProvidence, Rhode Island, dated April 15, 1816,” The Fifth Annual Report of the New York
Religious Tract Society, 1816, 31–32; “The following additional information is just received
from the Secretary of that Society, January 25, 1817,” Ibid, 32. Also see The Sixth Annual
Report of the New York Religious Tract Society, 1818, 36–39.

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41

HIRO MATSUBARAThe Tenth Annual Report of the New York Religious Tract Society, 1822, 58.
Ibid, 58–61.
43
Ibid.
44
The Eleventh Annual Report of the New York Religious Tract Society, 1823, 45–46.
45
Nord, Faith in Reading: Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America,ch. 4.
46
The Thirteenth Annual Report of the New York Religious Tract Society and the First
Annual Report of the Female Branch. New York, 1825, 24
42