Warren Chase was a spiritualist, social reformer, and politician. Orphaned at an early age and raised as a ward of the village of Pittsfield, N.H., Chase moved to Monroe, Michigan in 1834 and to Southport (Kenosha), Wisconsin in 1838. Interested in Fourier's theories, in 1843-1844 he became a leader of the Southport discussion group which developed into the Wisconsin Phalanx. Chase remained one of its leaders from its move to Ceresco (near Ripon) in 1844 until its dissolution in 1850. Warren Chase carried his reform ideas into politics, serving as a member of the 1846 and 1847-1848 Wisconsin State Constitutional Conventions, as a state senator from 1848-1849, and as an unsuccessful Free Soil gubernatorial candidate in 1849. He opposed political inequalities based on race, sex, or religion, and argued against capital punishment and the alienation of public lands. He was active in the abolitionist, feminist, and temperance movements and earned his living lecturing on spiritualism. After the Phalanx was dissolved, Chase helped found the lyceum of Ripon (1850) and Brockway College (1851) before leaving Wisconsin in 1853 for Michigan, Illinois, Missouri, and California. He served as a presidential elector for Horace Greeley in 1872 and in the California Senate from 1879-1882.
