Elihu Palmer

Elihu Palmer (1764 – April 7, 1806) was an author and advocate of deism in the early days of the United States.

Elihu Palmer
Elihu Palmer
Born	1764 Canterbury, Connecticut
Died	April 7, 1806(1806-04-07) (aged 41–42)
Occupation	Author
Nationality	American
Education	Dartmouth College
Literary movement	Deism
Notable works	The Principles of Nature, or A Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery among the Human Species

Life

Elihu Palmer was born in Canterbury, Connecticut in 1764. He studied to be a Presbyterian minister at Dartmouth College, where he graduated in 1787. Soon after his graduation, however, he became a deist. After rejecting the Calvinist doctrine of Presbyterianism, Palmer became a physical, spiritual, and intellectual wanderer, ultimately making his way to New York City, where he formed the Deistical Society of New York in 1796.

He resided for a time in Augusta, Georgia, where he collected materials for Jedediah Morse's Geography, and subsequently lived in Philadelphia and New York City. In 1793 he became totally blind from an attack of yellow fever but continued as a public speaker.

Palmer kept writing until the end of his life and published a number of different written works including "A Fourth of July Oration" (1797), and was also the author of The Principles of Nature, or A Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery among the Human Species. He also founded two newspapers, The Temple of Reason in 1800 and Prospect, or View of the Moral World in 1803.

Works

• Palmer, Elihu (1797). An Enquiry Relative to the Moral & Political Improvement of the Human Species: An Oration, Delivered in the City of New-York on the Fourth of July, Being the Twenty-first Anniversary of American Independence. New York: Printed by John Crookes. OCLC 2493791.
• Palmer, Elihu (1806) [1801]. Principles of Nature, or, A Development of the Moral Causes of Happiness and Misery among the Human Species (3rd ed.). New York: Printed for the author. OCLC 30496642.
• Palmer, Elihu, ed. (1803–1805). Prospect: or, View of the Moral World. New York: Printed for the editor. OCLC 2493791.
• Palmer, Elihu (1824). Posthumous Pieces. London: Richard Carlile. doi:10.1037/11700-000. OCLC 19110984.

Further reading

• Aponte, Ryan Nicholas (November 2012). Dharma of the Founders: Buddhism within the Philosophies of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Elihu Palmer (M.A. thesis). Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University. OCLC 867151120.
• Fischer, Kirsten (2020). American Freethinker: Elihu Palmer and the Struggle for Religious Freedom in the New Nation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. doi:10.9783/9780812297829. ISBN 978-0-8122-5271-2. JSTOR j.ctv19vbgvh. OCLC 1154125227.
• Fischer, Kirsten (July 2016). "Vitalism in America: Elihu Palmer's Radical Religion in the Early Republic". The William and Mary Quarterly. 73 (3): 501–530. doi:10.5309/willmaryquar.73.3.0501. S2CID 151596229.
• French, Roderick S. (1979). "Elihu Palmer, Radical Deist, Radical Republican: A Reconsideration of American Free Thought". Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture. 8 (1): 87–108. doi:10.1353/sec.1979.0005.
• Koch, G. Adolf (1933). "Elihu Palmer, Militant Deist". Republican Religion: The American Revolution and the Cult of Reason. Studies in Religion and Culture. American Religion Series. Vol. 7. New York: Henry Holt and Company. pp. 51–73. OCLC 2314834.
• Walters, Kerry S., ed. (2011) [1992]. "The Crusader for Deism: Elihu Palmer". Revolutionary Deists: Early America's Rational Infidels (Revised ed.). Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. pp. 179–211. ISBN 9781616141905. OCLC 466343545.