William
Greene,
the son of Nathaniel Greene, the postmaster of Boston,
was born in Haverhill in 1819. After attending West
Point Greene took part in the Florida War against the Seminoles.
He left the army and studied at Harvard Divinity
School before serving as pastor of the Unitarian Church in West
Brookfield, Massachusetts.
After reading the work of Pierre Joseph
Proudhon, Greene became a socialist
and published the influential work, Mutual
Banking. Greene also became a strong advocate of women's
suffrage and the abolition of slavery.
In 1853 Greene moved to France and remained there until the outbreak
of the Civil War. Returning to America
he joined the Union Army and was appointed colonel of the Fourteenth
Massachusetts Infantry and had the responsibility of defending Washington
against the Confederate Army.
After the war Greene became increasingly involved in the struggle
for trade union rights. Greene was president
of the Massachusetts Labor Union. He also worked closely with Benjamin
Tucker, the editor of the anarchist
journal, Liberty. Both men were
leading figures in the New England Labor Reform League, an organization
that campaigned for: "the abolition of class laws and false customs,
whereby legitimate enterprise is defrauded by speculative monopoly,
and the reconstruction of government on the basis of justice and reciprocity."
William Greene died in 1878.
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