Adin Ballou

Adin Ballou (Адин Баллу; 1803–1890) was an American minister who opposed negro slavery and preached “Christian non-resistance”.¹ He led the community at Hopedale, Massachusetts.

How Tolstoy found him

Tolstoy first heard of Ballou in June 1889, from a letter by Lewis G. Wilson, Ballou’s helper, who sent him Ballou’s Christian Non-Resistance and some smaller pamphlets.² The diary has the days: “From America about non-resistance, very interesting” (19 June); “Read Adin Ballou Non-resistance. Gave it to Lyova to translate. Excellent” (20 June).³ Writing to Wilson on 22 June (5 July NS), he disagreed that Ballou “will not go down to posterity among the immortals”: as “one of the first true apostles of the ‘New Time’” he would be acknowledged as one of the chief benefactors of humanity.⁴

The meeting had a strange side, which Tolstoy tells in chapter I of The Kingdom of God Is Within You. He had asked the son of [[William Lloyd Garrison|Garrison]] whether a society for non-resistance still existed, and was told it had broken up and had no followers, while at that very time Ballou, who had taken part in the elder Garrison’s work, was living at Hopedale and had spent fifty years preaching non-resistance (I.30).⁵ In a draft Tolstoy noted that Ballou had signed Garrison’s declaration of 1838.⁶

Where they differed

Tolstoy’s letter to Wilson praised Ballou’s tracts, in which “all the objections that are generally made against ‘non-resistance’” are “victoriously answered”. It then made three objections, in his own English:⁷

• Force against the drunk and the insane. “I cannot agree with the concession that he makes for employing violence against drunkards and insane people, the Master made no concessions, and we can make none… A true Christian will always prefer to be killed by a madman rather than to deprive him of his liberty.”
• Property. Ballou does not decide the question categorically enough: “for a true Christian not only cannot claim any rights of property, but the term ‘property’ cannot have any signification for him.” “Property has been Achilles heel for the Quakers, and also for the Hopedale Community.”
• Government. For a true Christian the term “government” (“very properly defined by Mr. Ballou”) can have no meaning: “Government is for a Christian only regulated violence.” And: “No compromise!”

Ballou answered on 14 January 1890 NS, defending his views.⁸ Tolstoy’s reply of 21–24 February would not argue the points again, but explained what he had meant by compromise: “compromise, inevitable in practice, cannot be admitted in theory.” No one draws a perfectly straight line, yet the definition of a straight line is not changed; “such a compromise in practice is not a sin, but a necessary condition of every Christian life. The great sin is the compromise in theory, is the plan to lower the ideal of Christ in view to make it attainable.” Admitting force over a madman, “be it even benevolent”, is such a compromise in theory. He set aside their dogmatic differences, about the words “Son of God”, personal life after death and the resurrection, as “of little consequence”.⁹

Ballou’s next letter, of 30 May 1890 NS, thanked him for the explanation about compromise and said he did not wish to quarrel over differences of words.¹⁰ Tolstoy told Vladimir Chertkov on 1 July: “a beautiful letter from old Ballou himself; he no longer argues, but writes so lovingly, like a brother, that the heart rejoices.”¹¹ Tolstoy’s answer of 30 June asked whether Ballou had been a member of Garrison’s society. The editors conclude it probably never reached him: Ballou’s autobiography does not mention it, and it is missing from Wilson’s published correspondence.¹²

The Catechism and the beginning of the book

Ballou sent Tolstoy his publications, among them the Catechism of Non-Resistance, which Nikolai Strakhov translated while staying at Yasnaya Polyana.¹³ Tolstoy corrected the translation on 27 and 28 June 1890 and decided to write a preface to it. On 8 July the diary says: “Wrote a preface to Ballou’s catechism.”¹⁴ In fact the draft preface was to both the Catechism and Garrison’s declaration, and it became the beginning of The Kingdom of God Is Within You.¹⁵ Writing to Pavel Biryukov on 17 September 1890, he called the planned conclusion to “the Garrison declaration and the Ballou catechism (he has died)” the work that drew him most.¹⁶

Tolstoy also had Christian Non-Resistance translated and tried to publish it in A. Gattsuk’s newspaper; the censorship stopped it. It came out in Moscow only in 1908, from Posrednik.¹⁷

In The Kingdom of God Is Within You

Chapter I gives Ballou more room than anyone else (I.30–37, I.86–90).

• The ironic extracts (I.31–36). Tolstoy introduces the first one as from an essay “exposing the inconsistency of Christians who allowed a right of self-defense and of warfare” (I.31).¹⁸ Ballou speaks there in the voice of the Christian citizen he is criticizing: he is sworn to Christ and sworn to the Constitution, and sees no difficulty in serving both. The voice builds to “War, too, is a Christian duty” and “nothing can be more Christian than such murder” (I.34). The words are that citizen’s, not Ballou’s own; the absurd ending is the point. A reader can easily take “says Ballou” at the start as Ballou stating his own view. The second extract, “How many Men are Necessary to Change a Crime into a Virtue?”, is in his own voice (I.35–36).
• The Catechism (I.37–85). Given “for his flock”, in questions and answers, ending “Non-resistance is Salvation; Resistance is Ruin.”
• The fifty years (I.86). His books treat the question “from every possible side”. One chapter deals with exceptional cases, and admits that if there were cases where the rule could not be applied, the law would not be universally binding.¹⁹
• Silence (I.87–90). Ballou died in August 1890. A laudatory obituary in the Religio-Philosophical Journal (23 August) counted eight to nine thousand sermons, a thousand marriages and about five hundred articles, but did not once use the word “non-resistance” (I.88–89).²⁰ His life’s work, like the Quakers’ and Garrison’s, “seems just as though it did not exist and never had existed” (I.90).²¹

Open questions

• The objection about drunkards and the insane comes from Tolstoy’s letters. Whether Christian Non-Resistance makes that allowance in its chapter on exceptional cases (I.86), and in what words, is not checked against Ballou’s text.
• Ballou’s own letters (14 January and 30 May 1890) are known here only through the PSS commentary.
• Whether Ballou signed the 1838 declaration rests on Tolstoy’s draft (manuscript АЧ 19/6); his 30 June question to Ballou suggests he was not sure.
• Birth and death dates are given by year and month only; the sources here do not give the days.

Dive provenance

• 1890-1893-the-kingdom-of-god-is-within-you: the text of chapter I (PSS 28:8–16), N. K. Gudzy’s history of the writing (PSS 28:333–371), and Tolstoy’s letters to L. G. Wilson (PSS 64, No. 391) and to Ballou (PSS 65, Nos. 26 and 100). Johan’s reader notes of 12 October 2026 asked for this page; his confusion at I.31–34 is why the extracts are explained above.