Edward Atkinson (February 10, 1827 – December 11, 1905) was a founder of the
Anti-Imperialist League.
He was born in
Brookline, Massachusetts. In the decade before the Civil War, Atkinson was a successful entrepreneur as an executive of some of the leading cotton mills of New England. Later, he was head of the
Boston Insurance Company.
He also fought against slavery by supporting the
Free-Soil Party and a Boston committee to aid escaped slaves. Growing weary of compromise, he soon began raising money to pay for rifles and ammunition to support the insurgent guerrilla force of
John Brown. In 1866 he was chosen a delegate to the national union convention, held in Philadelphia, but he took no part in its deliberations. He was elected a Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1879.
Inspired by the ideas of
Adam Smith,
Richard Cobden, and
John Bright, Atkinson became a leading publicist for free trade. In many ways, he can be described as the American counterpart to
Frédéric Bastiat. He spoke out against the inflationist ideas of
William Jennings Bryan and others but, unlike some, favored the total denationalization, or privatization, of money..
He campaigned for
Grover Cleveland and participated in the formation of the Clevelandite
National Democratic Party third party in 1896. Atkinson was appalled by the colonialist and...
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