Progressive Era Repression and persecution Anti-war and civil rights movements Contemporary Albert Brisbane (August 22, 1809 – May 1, 1890)[1] was an American utopian socialist and is remembered as the chief popularizer of the theories of Charles Fourier in the United States.

[5] In 1798, James Brisbane, along with Joseph Ellicott (1760–1826) and three others, had traveled to Western New York to survey the 4,000,000 acres (1,600,000 ha) that had been purchased by the Holland Land Company from Robert Morris (1734–1806), one of the first Senators from Pennsylvania.

[6] Brisbane developed an affection for knowledge at an early age and as an inquisitive youth he learned various mechanical skills in the small carpentry, blacksmith, and saddle shops of Batavia.

[7] Unsatisfied with the quality of education in Batavia and with visions of an illustrious future for his son, Brisbane's father sent him to a boarding school in Long Island, New York at the age of fifteen.

[13] Fourier believed in a fundamental harmony of the universe and a preordained series of periods through which societies needed to necessarily travel from their primitive to their advanced state, and he considered himself a scientific discoverer akin to Isaac Newton.

[15] Brisbane argued that the remedy to society's ills lay in the adoption of more efficient forms of production, based upon the principle of harmony of the owners of capital and those employed by them.

[17] Paramount to increasing production, Brisbane believed, was a reorganization of society into various subdivisions called "groups," "series," and "sacred legions," based upon the natural affinities of their participants.

[17] Following Fourier, Brisbane also sought the revolutionization of the family unit, proclaiming the individual home to be possessed of "monotony," "anti-social spirit," and the "absence of emulation," through which, he felt, it "debilitates the energies of the soul, and produces apathy and intellectual death.

"[19]Brisbane's 1840 book was well-received and it enjoyed immediate success, gaining a broad readership among those concerned with the problems of society and helping to launch the Fourierist movement in the United States.

[20] Greeley would provide valuable service to the Fourierist movement by advancing its ideas in the pages of his newspaper of that day, The New Yorker, throughout 1840 and 1841, and offering Brisbane a column in his successor publication, the New York Tribune, from the time of its establishment in March 1842.

[22] Work was done to create a formal "Union of Associations" to help coordinate the efforts of the myriad of small phalanxes coming into existence, and a meeting of such a group was planned for the following October.

[23] The 8-month trip effectively removed the commanding general of the Fourierist army from the campaign at its most critical juncture and is characterized by Carl J. Guarneri, a leading historian of the movement, as a reflection of Brisbane's "lifelong inability to cope with power and responsibility.

[26] His health in decline and suffering from epilepsy, Brisbane pursued personal intellectual pursuits and tried his hand as an inventor, concentrating in particular on an effort to create an oven which cooked in a vacuum, thereby allowing the baking of bread and pastry without the use of yeast.

LeBrun was Catholic, which reportedly bothered his parents,[30] and five years later, she moved back to Italy with their two young children, who historians conclude were probably Albert's; however, no record of marriage between the two has been located.

[32][44] After his return to the United States in 1889, Brisbane soon became ill and was forced to seek a change of climate to improve his health, traveling to North Carolina, before heading south to Florida, that winter.