Evangelical Male Friendships in America’s First Age of Reform

To read the current literature on nineteenth-century friendships is to walk away with the impression that they were far more demonstrative, emotionally as well as physically, than is the case today. This impression can be traced back to a seminal article by Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, and it repeats, with variants and caveats, in the literature on the same-sex friendships of nineteenth-century men. A closer look at the sources reveals that almost all of the people in question were Unitarian or Unitarian-leaning, and as such well outside the American mainstream. In this article I explore the phenomenon of evangelical male friendships, and come to three basic conclusions: (1) the conscientious evangelical placed his relationship with God above those with friends and family; (2) that relationship constrained his behavior, encouraging a reserve in all of his interactions; and (3) there is no reason to assume that his relationships with other men were emotionally more intense-and more fulfilling-than his relationship with his wife. The article questions asks whether romantic friendships were in fact a fleeting and isolated phenomenon in nineteenth-century America, and suggests that the reticence evangelicals observed in their friendships lent itself to a growing mistrust of nonfamilial relationships.