"Winner of the 1998 Distinguished Scholarship Award, Collective Behavior and Social Movement Section of the American Sociological Association" Nicola Beisel is Associate Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University. Moral reform movements claiming to protect children began to emerge in the United States over a century ago, most notably when Anthony Comstock and his supporters crusaded to restrict the circulation of contraception, information...

"In 1864, during the bloodiest days of the Civil War, two newspapers published a call, allegedly authored by President Lincoln, for the immediate conscription of 400,000 more Union soldiers. New York streets erupted in pandemonium. Wall Street markets went wild. When Lincoln sent troops to seize the newspaper presses and arrest the editors, it became clear: the proclamation was a lie. Who put out this fake news? Was it a Confederate spy hoping to...

A narrative history about Anthony Comstock, US Postal Inspector and vice hunter, and the remarkable women who opposed him. Anthony Comstock, special agent to the U.S. Post Office, was one of the most important men in the lives of nineteenth-century women. The Comstock law, passed in 1873, penalized the mailing of contraception and obscenity with long sentences and steep fines. Between 1873 and Comstock's death in 1915, eight women were charged with...