American Tract Society

City: New York

County: New York

State: New York

The American Tract Society, also known as the ATS, was founded in New York in 1825 as a cooperative effort on the part of various Protestant denominations and institutions in the United States to use the publication of tracts to spread the Protestant faith and Protestant reform ideas. The ATS donated funds toward international tract societies and mission presses, but focused most of its work on the U.S. It began including the states and territories of the American frontier in its efforts starting in 1828, after realizing how rapidly the frontier was developing. In 1834, the organization also increased its efforts to distribute religious literature throughout the South after southern members of the organization complained that the South had been neglected in its missionary and reform work. The ATS survived the schisms that divided the Presbyterian Church, the economic impact of the Panic of 1837, and increasing denominationalism in the U.S., but was greatly challenged by the rise of political tensions and sectionalism in the U.S. caused by slavery. The ATS refused to engage with the anti-slavery movement or abolitionism directly, claiming it could avoid sectionalism, retain broad appeal, and better advance its mission that way. Anti-slavery Puritans, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and others withdrew their support from the ATS as a result. In 1858, the ATS branch in Boston split from the national organization over its approach to the issue of slavery. The ATS nevertheless remained an influential force in American Protestantism through the Civil War.

Elizabeth Twaddell, “The American Tract Society, 1814-1860,” Church History 15 (June 1946), 116, 120, 123-25, 129-32; Annual Report of the American Tract Society (Boston: American Tract Society, 1855), 62-63.