(from 'Freedom's Ferment' by Alice Felt Tyler,
copyright 1944 by the University of Minnesota:)

Foreword

Any period of history, any era of man's endeavor to make this world a better place for 
himself and his children, has a right to be known for its highest aspirations, its 
loftiest moments, as well as for its failures and futilities, its fads, and its crackpots.
The exuberance and optimism of the young American republic and its willingness to listen 
to every new idea--to believe that because it was new it might be better--made it 
susceptible to imposture and charlatanry.  Holding fast to certain truths, it could not 
refuse a hearing to half-truths.  When science, too, was young and its methods and 
disciplines were little understood, much that was pseudo-scientific or not scientific at 
all became glamorous if embellished with the terms of science.
  For too long we have paid amused attention to the fads and fancies of the early 
nineteenth century.  Phrenology, hydropathy, mesmerism, health and diet notions, free love, 
spiritual affinities, and all the other eccentricities of the era have had more than their
due share of the limelight.  Alongside them were fundamentals of faith, crusades, reforms,
and reformers whose effect on American civilization was profound and permanent.  The bases 
of our social history were well laid and deep; there is more than froth in our heritage 
from the past.  The religious movements and the adventures in reform of the early years of 
the republic were the truly significant activities of the men and women of the age, and they 
contributed much to the way of life of twentieth-century America.

                                               A.F.T.


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