Throughout his adult life, Robert Dale Owen wrote and published numerous pamphlets, speeches, books, and articles that described his personal and political views, including his belief in spiritualism.

Owen is also noted for a series of open letters he wrote in 1862 that favored the abolition of slavery and supported general emancipation, as well as a suggestion that the federal government should provide assistance to freedmen.

[4] Owen grew up in Braxfield, Scotland, and was privately tutored before he was sent at the age of sixteen to Philipp Emanuel von Fellenberg's school at Hofwyl, Switzerland.

Owen's three surviving brothers (William, David, and Richard) and his sister, Jane, also immigrated to the United States and became residents of New Harmony.

[8][9] Between 1825 and 1828, Owen managed the day-to-day operations of the socialistic community at New Harmony, Indiana, while his father returned to Britain to resume his social reform and philanthropic work in Europe.

[10] In addition to his other work, Owen and Frances Wright, a wealthy, Scottish philanthropist and radical reformer, published articles in the New-Harmony Gazette, the town's liberal weekly newspaper, and served as its co-editors.

In contrast to Democratic Presidents Andrew Jackson and James K. Polk, Owen was opposed to slavery, although his partisanship distanced him from other leading abolitionists of the era.

[6] He distinguished himself as an influential member of the Indiana General Assembly during his first term by securing appropriations for the state's tax-supported public school system.

[17] In addition, Owen was instrumental in introducing legislation and argued in support of widows and married women's property rights, but the bill was defeated.

[28][29] Owen was defeated in his bid for re-election to Congress in 1846; however, he remained active in public service and was once again elected to serve in the Indiana General Assembly.

[30] Owen served in the diplomatic post until 20 September 1858, and then retired from political life, although he remained actively interested in public affairs and social reform issues.

[17][31] In 1862 Owen wrote a series of open letters to U.S. government officials, including President Abraham Lincoln and U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, to encourage them to support general emancipation.

In The Wrong of Slavery, the Right of Emancipation, and the Future of the African Race in the United States, a report that Owen wrote in 1864, he also suggested that the Union should provide assistance to freedmen.

However, Article XIV, Section 2, in the final version of the Amendment, which became part of the U.S. Constitution in 1868, was modified to limit suffrage to males who were U.S. citizens over the age of twenty-one.

[35] In The authenticity of the Bible (1833), Owen remarked : For a century and a half, then, after Jesus' death, we have no means whatever of substantiating even the existence of the Gospels, as now bound up in the New Testament.

[37] Although he retired from active public service at the conclusion of his work as a member of the Freedman's commission on 15 May 1864, Owen continued his writing career.

[38] Major writing projects in retirement included Beyond the Breakers (1870), a novel;[39] The Debatable Land Between this World and the Next (1871), one of his two books on spiritualism;[39] and Threading My Way (1874), his autobiography.

His vision for the Smithsonian Institution Building, along with the preliminary plans and suggestions made by his brother, David Dale Owen, and architect Robert Mills, influenced architect James Renwick Jr.'s design for the Romanesque Revival-style building in Washington, D.C.[27] Owen's impact on the issues of slavery and emancipation is less direct.

In a series of open letters he wrote in 1862 and in publications that followed, Owen encouraged the abolition of slavery on moral grounds, supported general emancipation, and suggested that the federal government should provide assistance to freedmen.

[16] Some historians have concluded that these open letters and Civil War-era pamphlets "helped immeasurably to solidify public opinion" in favor of emancipation.