A. J. MacDonald. “Nashoba.” Manuscript notes, 1840-1865.

MacDonald emphasizes Wright’s plan to educate Negroes to the level of whites “and to set an example, which, if carried out, would eventually abolish slavery in the Southern States.”

NASHOBA
A well-born English woman and close friend of General Lafayette, Frances Wright founded Nashoba in Shelby County, Tennessee, in 1825 to form a community in which slaves would be prepared for freedom through education in letters and farming. Wright enjoyed the friendship of Robert Owen and modeled her commune on New Harmony. When it failed, she arranged for the thirty-one Negroes still at Nashoba to move to Haiti and, with Lafayette’s assistance, to be assured of their freedom.

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