Ezra Hervey Heywood (; September 29, 1829 – May 22, 1893) was an American

individualist anarchist Individualist anarchism is the branch of anarchism that emphasizes the individual and their will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions and ideological systems."What do I mean by individualism? I mean by individualism t ...

, slavery

abolitionist Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people. The British ...

, and advocate of equal rights for women.

Philosophy

Heywood saw what he believed to be a disproportionate concentration of capital in the hands of a few as the result of a selective extension of government-backed privileges to certain individuals and organizations. He believed that there should be no profit in rent of buildings. He did not oppose rent, but believed that if the building was fully paid for that it was improper to charge more than what is necessary for transfer costs, insurance, and repair of deterioration that occurs during the occupation by the tenant. He even asserted that it may be incumbent on the owner of the building to pay rent to the tenant if the tenant keeps his residency in such a condition that saved it from deterioration if it were otherwise unoccupied. Heywood believed that title to unused land was a great evil.

Activism

Heywood's philosophy was instrumental in furthering individualist anarchist ideas through his extensive pamphleteering and reprinting of works of

Josiah Warren Josiah Warren (; 1798–1874) was an American utopian socialist, American individualist anarchist, individualist philosopher, polymath, social reformer, inventor, musician, printer and author. He is regarded by anarchist historians like Jam ...

, author of ''True Civilization'' (1869), and William B. Greene. In 1872, at a convention of the New England Labor Reform League in Boston, Heywood introduced Greene and Warren to eventual ''

Liberty Liberty is the ability to do as one pleases, or a right or immunity enjoyed by prescription or by grant (i.e. privilege). It is a synonym for the word freedom. In modern politics, liberty is understood as the state of being free within society fr ...

'' publisher

Benjamin Tucker Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (; April 17, 1854 – June 22, 1939) was an American individualist anarchist and libertarian socialist.Martin, James J. (1953)''Men Against the State: The Expositers of Individualist Anarchism in America, 1827–1908''< ...

. Heywood co-founded the New England Labor Reform League in 1869 with individualist anarchist

William Batchelder Greene William Batchelder Greene (April 4, 1819 – May 30, 1878) was a 19th-century individualist anarchist, Unitarian minister, soldier, and promoter of free banking in the United States. Greene was a member of the First International. Biography ...

. The league advocated for the "abolition of class laws and false customs, whereby legitimate enterprise is defrauded by speculative monopoly." and favored " ee contracts, free money, free markets, free transit, and free land". In May, 1872 Heywood, a supporter of

women's suffrage Women's suffrage is the right of women to vote in elections. Beginning in the start of the 18th century, some people sought to change voting laws to allow women to vote. Liberal political parties would go on to grant women the right to vot ...

and

free love Free love is a social movement that accepts all forms of love. The movement's initial goal was to separate the state from sexual and romantic matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery. It stated that such issues were the concern ...

activist

Victoria Woodhull Victoria Claflin Woodhull, later Victoria Woodhull Martin (September 23, 1838 – June 9, 1927), was an American leader of the women's suffrage movement who ran for President of the United States in the 1872 election. While many historians ...

's free speech rights, began editing individualist anarchist magazine '' The Word'' from his home in Princeton, Massachusetts.The Free Love Movement and Radical Individualism
by

Wendy McElroy Wendy McElroy (born 1951) is a Canadian individualist feminist and voluntaryist writer. She was a co-founder along with Carl Watner and George H. Smith of ''The Voluntaryist'' magazine in 1982 and is the author of a number of books. McElroy ...

. He was tried in 1878 for mailing "obscene material", his pamphlet ''Cupid's Yokes: or, The Binding Forces of Conjugal Life: An Essay to Consider Some Moral and Physiological Phases of Love and Marriage, Wherein is Asserted the Natural Right and Necessity of Sexual Self-Government'', which attacked traditional notions of marriageat the instigation of postal inspector

Anthony Comstock Anthony Comstock (March 7, 1844 – September 21, 1915) was an anti-vice activist, United States Postal Inspector, and secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (NYSSV), who was dedicated to upholding Christian morality. He ...

, who also had ''Truth Seeker'' editor

D. M. Bennett DeRobigne Mortimer Bennett (December 23, 1818 – December 6, 1882), best known as D. M. Bennett, was the founder and publisher of ''Truth Seeker'', a radical freethought and reform American periodical. Biography Shaker Life Derobigne M. Benn ...

arrested. Convicted of violating the 1873

Comstock Act The Comstock laws were a set of federal acts passed by the United States Congress under the Grant administration along with related state laws.Dennett p.9 The "parent" act (Sect. 211) was passed on March 3, 1873, as the Act for the Suppression o ...

, he was sentenced to two years' hard labor. Unlike Bennett, Heywood was pardoned after six months by President

Rutherford B. Hayes Rutherford Birchard Hayes (; October 4, 1822 – January 17, 1893) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 19th president of the United States from 1877 to 1881, after serving in the U.S. House of Representatives and as governo ...

in response to massive protests by sympathizers and free speech advocates. Arrested four more times following his release, Heywood died of tuberculosis within a year of his final release from prison.

Temporal notation

Heywood developed his own notation for years to be used in place of B. C. and A. D., namely B. L. and Y. L. respectively. He developed this notation on 2 July 1878 (Y. L. 6) because the A. D. notation "recognizes a mythical God in the , puts Christian collars marked 'J. C.' on naturally free necks, and registers us subjects of the lascivio-religious despotism which the male-sexual origin and history of the cross impose".E. H. Heywood,
Cupid's Yokes
' (Princeton, Mass.: Co-operative Publishing Co.)

He assigned 1873 'Y. L. 1' as that was the year of "the formation of the New England Free Love League in Boston". Y. L. is notation for 'Year of Love'. Thereafter, Heywood dated all of his correspondence and all issues of ''The Word'' with his new notation."Heywood, Ezra H." in ''The New Encyclopedia of UNBELIEF'' (Amherst, N. Y.: Prometheus Books, 2007)
p. 389

Personal life

Heywood met his wife

Angela Heywood Angela Fiducia Heywood (1840–1935) was a radical writer and activist, known as a free love advocate, suffragist, socialist, spiritualist, labor reformer, and abolitionist. Early life Angela Heywood was born in Deerfield, New Hampshire, arou ...

through her work in the abolitionist movement. They had four children together named Psyche, Angelo, Vesta, and Hermes.

Works

''Uncivil Liberty: An Essay to Show the Injustice and Impolicy of Ruling Woman Without Her Consent'' (1873) by Ezra Heywood
– one of the first individualist feminist essays, by Ezra Heywood (with an introduction by

James J. Martin James J. Martin (1916–2004) was an American historian and author known for espousing Holocaust denial in his works. He is known for his book, ''American Liberalism and World Politics, 1931–1941'' (1964). Fellow Holocaust denier Harry Elmer B ...

)
''Cupid's Yokes: or, The Binding Forces of Conjugal Life: An Essay to Consider some Moral and Physiological Phases of Love and Marriage'' by Ezra Heywood
– a free-love essay defending the natural right of "sexual self-government" as opposed to marriage

References

External links

Chapter V of James J. Martin's ''Men Against the State''
contains a large section called ''Ezra Heywood, Pamphleteer''

by Martin Blatt
A biography of Heywood on the anniversary of a protest at his arrest

A chronology of Emma Goldman's life and the anarchist movement
{{DEFAULTSORT:Heywood, Ezra 1829 births 1893 deaths Activists from Massachusetts American abolitionists American anarchists American anti-capitalists American feminists American male essayists American male non-fiction writers American political writers American suffragists Anarcha-feminists Anarchist writers Free love advocates Individualist anarchists Individualist feminists Jewish anarchists Jewish suffragists Male feminists People convicted under the Comstock laws People from Princeton, Massachusetts Recipients of American presidential pardons Sex-positive feminists 19th-century American Jews Jewish American activists