Ordained in the summer of 1826, Wright found a congregation in West Newbury, Massachusetts, where he first encountered William Lloyd Garrison’s radical anti‐​slavery periodical The Liberator. His initial reaction to Garrison, thought he knew Garrison was right, was one of disapproval; he regarded Garrison’s denunciations of the church and the clergy as “rash, imprudent, and bitter in spirit.” Though it would be several years before the two would meet, Garrison words left their mark, as we shall see. Wright, though, was not yet finished with the ministry. Known for his love of children, Wright became both an agent of the Sunday School Union and a children’s minister; he had, by all accounts, a unique passion and aptitude for communicating with children, and he even wrote a children’s book, A Kiss for a Blow, composed of a series of morality tales teaching the principles of non‐​resistance. 7

Wright urged strict adherence to the doctrine of non‐​resistance, thus counseling meek, “passive submission to enemies.” His non‐​resistance was based on a radical interpretation of Jesus calling on Christians to “resist not evil,” to abandon force even to defend themselves. Wright lived his convictions unyieldingly, adamant that one must meet evil by turning the other cheek. In a personal journal entry, dated March 1835, he recounts his being struck in a Philadelphia hotel, whereafter he invited his assailant to his home and assured him that he had no ill feelings toward him. The next morning, the man who had attacked him visited his room to ask for forgiveness. 8

Wright’s non‐​resistance philosophy often very nearly approximates contemporary libertarianism in its principled renunciation of coercive force, its emphasis on the importance of the individual, and its defense of voluntary cooperation. 9 On the question of slavery, these views led Wright to immediatism, which held that the peculiar institution must be abolished forthwith—no concessions or compromises. Wright was steadfast in the conviction that the Christian, as such, could abide no accommodation of any kind to slavery. Reacting to the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, he wrote to Garrison objecting strongly to its apparent suggestion that Christianity’s effect on the slaveholder is “to make him kind, just, humane, as a slaveholder.” For Wright, “the first, and last, and only effect of the Christian spirit on such a character is, to cause him to cease, at once and forever, to be a slaveholder.” As a non‐​resistant, Wright sees all government as, in principle, a species of slavery, for all existing governments are predicated on the invalid, usurpative claim of “a right to control the will of a fellow being by physical force.” So radical were his opinions that the American Anti‐​Slavery Society discontinued his agency in 1837, 10 citing the fact that he refused to “cease[] interweaving his ‘no government’ views with abolitionism.” 11 For Wright, the issues to which he devoted himself were all necessarily and inextricably connected to one another; he felt that he could not be true to himself or to these causes if he pledged, as was the Anti‐​Slavery Society’s request, “to confine himself to the discussion of abolitionism.” 12 Every issue must be on the table—the woman question, the slavery question, the peace question, etc.—for all were related to one another and to the non‐​resistants’ repudiation of violence.

Wright and other radicals in what came to be called the “ultra” camp, believed that to be a consistent advocate of peace meant not only opposing wars between nations, but condemning all acts and institutions of violence, even (or perhaps especially) one’s own government. Many in both the abolitionist and peace movements believed that by wedding these causes to other more radical views, perceived as unrelated, they would alienate potential allies and fracture existing support. “Wright was probably the most ultra of the peace ultraists,” 13 extending his underlying philosophical commitment to non‐​resistance across the board and seeing the logical relationships between the pressing issues of his day. Historian Marc‐​William Palen has made important contributions in considering the connection between various liberal (and indeed proto‐​libertarian) currents of the Victorian era, including the opposition to war and heralding of world peace, the promotion of global free trade against protectionism, the advancement of women’s rights (particularly suffrage), and the support for the abolition of slavery. 14 One of many Garrisonian abolitionists to become closely affiliated with Manchester school free‐​traders and members of the Anti‐​Corn Law League, Wright attended league meetings during an 1843 visit to England and “even addressed a large free‐​trade banquet in Manchester.” 15 And throughout his life, Wright frequently used his platform to attack traditional gender roles. 16 He was given occasion to voice his commitment to equality for women when, in 1840, a number of the American Anti‐​Slavery Society’s prominent members seceded to form a new organization after one Abby Kelley, a woman, was appointed to one of the Society’s committees. In his letter to The Liberator, Wright wondered how this new organization could carry on calling itself an anti‐​slavery society when the assertion underlying opposition to slavery is “the equality of human rights,” the recognition of “every human being, without regard to complexion, sex, or condition, as being the image and representative of God on earth.” In this exclusion of women Wright saw “the spirit of despotism,” which sequesters them and makes them a second class, “the uncomplaining, suffering slave[s] of man.” It was unclear to Wright why people who would relegate women in such a way would even maintain the pretense of principled anti‐​slavery sentiment.

Though he served as an agent of the American Peace Society for a brief period in 1836, philosophical differences predictably led Wright to part ways with the Society. The Society’s leadership had urged Wright to adopt a more measured approach, one adapted perhaps to the views and prejudices of his audiences, for whom his uncompromising pacifism, rejecting even defensive war, was simply too extreme, impeding a more ecumenical approach to the cause. 17 Even in the characterization of his views, Wright had to challenge the orthodoxy of the movement’s leaders, preferring “anti‐​war” to “peace,” believing the former to be more “aggressive.” 18 It is interesting to observe the similarities between the internal debates and divergences of the peace activists, abolitionists, and other nineteenth century social reformers and those that divide today’s libertarians, who frequently disagree on both tactics and first principles. Is electoral politics, for example, a vital and necessary medium for the communication of libertarian ideas and the most direct path to effecting practical change? Or does it require endorsing violence and man’s evil domination of man? Ever the firebrand, Wright was sure of his answer to that question, convinced that his approach was the right and true one, and was so fervently anti‐​political that he would not vote even “if his single ballot could abolish slavery.” 19 “A bullet,” he said, “is in every ballot,” the practical political process leading inevitably to “the gallows or the battlefield,” with “no consistent or honest stopping place between them.” 20

Wright, Garrison, and other ultras at last resolved to inaugurate a new organization, committed to “the principle of the Inviolability of Human Life,” to “the anti‐​man‐​killing principle,” 21 founding the New England Non‐​Resistance Society born in 1838. Wright’s picture of mankind as a single race and brotherhood, each individual a child of God, translated into principled and explicit cosmopolitan, anti‐​nationalistic views. Wright, in point of fact, condemned “nationalism” at a time when use of the term was itself quite rare. 22 The masthead of The Liberator famously bears the words, “Our country is the world—our countrymen are all mankind,” and the Non‐​Resistance Society’s Declaration of Sentiments elaborated this message of universal, worldwide brotherhood, announcing: