"The Steady Growth of Knowledge": Free Debate at the New York Liberal Club

This paper explores debate at the New York Liberal Club (1869-1877) and how Club members conceptualized liberalism as a system of thought in which the free exchange of ideas and intellectual freedom were core values. The New York Liberal Club was a lecture and debate group founded in New York City in 1869 by prominent New York City intellectuals. The Club included individuals like Horace Greeley, Stephen Pearl Andrews, and James Parton. Victoria Woodhull and David and Jane Croly also counted themselves as friends of the Club. In Club meetings, members and guests lectured on and debated important topics of the day focusing on religion, science, and social reform. During these discussions, Club members and other participants consistently articulated their commitment to intellectual tolerance and the free exchange of ideas. No ideas or ideologies were shunned or banned from the Club, and all participants had an opportunity to voice their perspectives. For a time, this atmosphere of free debate was seen as an ideal by many New York area intellectuals who were committed to the free exchange of knowledge. By the 1890s, the Club, which itself had experienced a decline, had influenced—directly or indirectly—the establishment of a number of other similar clubs and organizations including the Manhattan Liberal Club, the Colloquium,  the Nineteenth Century Club and even the Free Speech League. The Liberal Club, therefore, reveals that a commitment to free and open debate was an important part of Gilded Age liberal thought.