" Today we use the word cult to describe a small group of extremists cut off from contact with the outside world by an all-controlling leader. People in antebellum America, however, struggled to find language for the phenomenon, largely because they had never seen anything quite like it before. As recent scholars have attested, “The historical record indicates that utopian and apocalyptic cults and communes first appeared as a major form in the United States during this epoch. "

― Miles Harvey , The King of Confidence: A Tale of Utopian Dreamers, Frontier Schemers, True Believers, False Prophets, and the Murder of an American Monarch