Joseph Palmer (1791–1874) was a member of the Fruitlands commune and an associate of Louisa May Alcott and other Transcendentalists.
Palmer was a veteran of the War of 1812.[1]
Few men in the territory that became the United States wore beards after about 1720. Palmer wore a full beard when he moved to Fitchburg, Massachusetts in 1830 and was abused for it and told he "should be prosecuted for wearing such a monstrosity." One day a minister refused him communion, so he took a drink of the communion wine himself. A few days later, a group of men seized him and tried to shave his beard. He cut two of them with a knife while preventing them from shaving him. He publicized his case by writing letters from jail that were widely published after first appearing in the Worcester Spy. He refused to leave when the authorities tried to release him and they ultimately had to evict him from the jail. When he later visited Boston in 1840, crowds on the street mocked him.[1][2]
Palmer joined the short-lived Fruitlands commune in Harvard, Massachusetts, where he proved one of the more practical farmers.[3] He bought the group's property when it dissolved as a social experiment. Emerson and Thoreau visited him there.[1] Palmer briefly tried to established a second communal enterprise, founding the Leominster and Harvard Benevolent Association with Charles Lane.[4]
He appears as the character Moses White in Louisa May Alcott's Transcendental Wild Oats.[1]
He supported the abolition of slavery.[1]
Palmer died in 1875, by which time beards had become widely fashionable. He is buried in Evergreen Cemetery in North Leominster and his grave marker bears a portrait of him bearded with the inscription "Persecuted for Wearing the Beard".[1]
Harvard Law School's Zechariah Chafee cited Palmer's case in his classic Freedom of Speech (1920). In the context of World War I restrictions on free speech, he called Palmer's case the reductio ad abusurdam that refuted attempts to justify the imprisonment of those whose words or behavior arouse violent reactions in others.[5]