The Picket Line Has a Possibly-Unique Chronological Search Engine

The Chronoscope is now live, and The Picket Line is fully chronologically indexed so you can try out this strange new feature. Find out

• what was going on 100 years ago next month, or
• 50 years ago next year, or
• learn that the same year that Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience was published, Victor Hugo was presiding over the Second General Peace Congress in Paris, Zerah Colburn Whipple was born, and Karl Marx was defending himself against charges of inciting tax rebellion in Germany.

Hours of fun. Fun for the whole family. I guess my next step will be to make it a little speedier; it’s not too efficiently-coded just yet.

The Nazarenes are another pacifist Christian sect that apparently preached tax resistance, at least in its Hungarian incarnation.

On this date in 1875, the Friends’ Intelligencer published the following (which it sourced to Voice of Peace):

A new variety of the Mennonite, or continental Quaker sect, is gaining ground in Hungary to an extent that threatens considerable embarrassment to the Administration. These so-called Nazarines not only disown all clerical organization and refuse to take any oath or enter any military service, but they dispute the lawfulness of taxes that go to support a State Church or army. All assessments made on them are therefore levied under protest. They are said to be an offshoot of Calvinism, but have of late been largely recruited from among the working Catholic population, so that their numbers, estimated a few years since at 6,000 only, are now officially stated at 30,000, and said to be really much larger.