SOURCE: An introduction to The Brownson Reader, edited by Alvan S. Ryan, P. J. Kenedy & Sons, 1955, pp. 1-27.

In the following excerpt, Ryan provides an overview of Brownson's Career as a journalist, examining the influence of his religious conversions on his writing and on his political beliefs.

Brownson was born in Stockbridge, Vermont, September 16, 1803. He and his twin sister, Daphne, were the youngest among six children of Sylvester and Relief Metcalf Brownson. His father had come to Stockbridge from Hartford Country, Connecticut, where the Brownsons were among the earliest settlers, his mother from Keene, New Hampshire. Stockbridge was then a frontier town, having been first settled only twenty years before Orestes' birth, and had less than one hundred inhabitants. Orestes' father died when the boy was very young, and poverty forced his mother to send Orestes to live with foster parents in nearby Royalton, Vermont. Religious sects flourished...