Although many management scholars and ethicists have written about corporate social responsibility (CSR), few have attempted to view the subject through a historical lens (Carroll et al. [2012] is a notable exception; but that book does not go as far back in history as this paper does.). In particular, few scholars have examined what we can learn from the historical record about the nature of CSR, its possibilities, and its limits. This oversight is unfortunate for several reasons. First, the history is in some respects rather surprising. Corporations as such, particularly early American business corporations, had social responsibilities from the beginning. American political bodies (colonies and municipalities), which have public/social responsibilities by definition, were themselves corporations. Chartering of corporations by the Crown and later by the states was an act that imposed social responsibilities on every corporation. Corporations’ social orientation was not something grafted upon them at some later stage by governments. It was part and parcel of their being or ontology. I explore early business corporations by sector, examining a their social, “ontological” responsibilities; consider challenges faced by corporations and the sorts of threats to public welfare that emerged early on in connection with American business corporations; and document the public response to these threats. I conclude with the ways in which ontological CSR differs from modern understandings of CSR.