Frances Wright

Frances Wright was a Scotland-born lecturer, writer, and abolitionist. She was the co-founder of the "Free Inquirer" newspaper and founded the Nashoba Commune where she wanted to educate slaves to prepare them for freedom.  She wanted to create a community in which it was multi-racial, a community of free blacks and whites.  Unfortunately, Wright became ill and the managers who took over during her illness and move back to Europe, had a stricter approach to the Commune and when she came back to Tennessee, the community had collapsed.

Her anti-slavery beliefs were interesting to Walt.  He went to see her speak at the anti-slavery halls in New York.  He spoke of her as, "a woman of the noblest make-up whose orbit was a great deal larger than theirs - too large to be tolerated for long by them...she touched the widest range of themes - spoke informally, colloquially.  She has always been to me one of the sweetest of sweet memories: we all loved her."  It seems he looked up to her.  He also says of her, "She was a brilliant woman, of beauty and estate, who was never satisfied unless she was busy doing good - public good, private good."  This speaks to Walt's beliefs on work which I have talked about in my past two posts!  The work she was doing was for the good of the people as well as herself.  She was learning more and teaching more and I think that was something that Walt was drawn to by her.