Journalist, editor, and man of letters, Parke Godwin played a key role in many economic, social, and political reform movements in nineteenth-century America, from the Age of Andrew Jackson to Reconstruction. As a contributor or editor affiliated with such influential publications as The New York Evening Post, the United States Magazine and Democratic Review, and Putnam's Monthly Magazine, Godwin sought to formulate a new social compact for the nation amid the dramatic socioeconomic changes of the antebellum era. In the 1840s, in response to the severe depression following the Panic of 1837, he was one of the leading advocates of "utopian" socialism based on the writings of the French theorist Charles Fourier. In the 1850s, like many Northern intellectuals, Godwin allied himself with the antislavery cause, eventually playing a significant role in the creation of the Republican Party and the election of Abraham Lincoln. During the Civil War, Godwin...