the merchant princes of Boston...

Today marks the anniversary of the death of Nathan Appleton (1779-1861)enrtrepreneur, industrialist, philanthropist, and dedicated Unitarian. This is how Daniel Walker Howe described him in his "The Political Culture of the American Whigs."

"The class of which Appleton was a representative has often been loosely called 'aristocratic' by contemporaries as well as by historians. It would seem more accurate to term it a bourgeois patriciate, not only because of its urban base and commercial origins, but also because of certain typically bourgeois values it endorsed, like sexual restraint, education, and self-improvement in general...

Appleton lived up to the ideals of his class, He did not merely patronize religion and learning with money; he devoteed effort to them himself. He was a faithful parishioner of William Ellery Channing's church on Federal Street and took his religion seriously enough to engage an Anglican clergyman in public theological debate...

Appleton came to typify the Boston patriciate in the minds of friend and foe. Francis Bowen, an admiring Harvard economist and moral philosopher, called Appleton 'one of the most eminent living representatives of a highly honored class, the merchant princes of Boston...

Blessings