Major Causes Embraced by the Burleighs 

1. Abolition

2. Equal Civil Rights across all races (including suffrage for Black men)

3. Women's Rights (including suffrage for women)

4. Temperance

5. Peace/Non-Violence/Non-Resistance

The boundaries of the "Benevolent Empire" of 19th-century America did not stop at these issues!

Other causes for which there is evidence of support or interest from the Burleigh family include:

1. Humane Treatment of Children
2. Humane Treatment of the Mentally Ill
3. Humane Treatment of Animals
4. Opposition to Capital Punishment
5. Opposition to Masons (Anti-Masonry)
6. Orthographic Reform/Phonography
7. Labor Rights
8. Opposition to Gambling
9. Opposition to Tobacco Use
10. Opposition to the War with Mexico and the Annexation of Texas
11. Opposition to Dueling
12. Native American Rights

The latter half of the 19th century brought out some new causes, including

1. Aid to Freedmen in the South
2. Support for immigration and the civil rights of immigrants, especially from Asia
3. Single Tax/Henry George-ism
4. Anti-imperialism

In addition to these specific moral and political causes, the Burleigh family saga touches on some noted cultural developments of the time, and anticipates some of concern to our own time.

1. Transcendentalism
2. The History of Technology
3. Developments in Print Technology and Visual Arts
4. Religious Tolerance and Co-Existence
5. Utopian Communal Living Experiments (Northampton; Vineland)
6. LGBTQ Lives in an Era of Silence (Mary Grew, Margaret Jones [Burleigh] and Cyrus Burleigh)