City Readers Digital Historic Collections at the New York Society Library

Founded by Elihu Hubbard Smith in 1793, the Friendly Club met "once a week for the next five years" in its members' "private lodgings or in taverns to discuss literature, science, philosophy, and politics. As inhabitants of what Smith liked to call the 'republic of intellect,' they avidly explored the most progressive ideas of the age." (Wallace, 376)