Frances Wright

Frances Wright was Scotland-born, and eventual U.S. Citizen, and noted for her involvement in feminist and abolitionist issues. Regarding slavery she has said, of the purported humanity of Virginian slave holders, that it is “better to break the chains than to gild them”; of gender, she has said that “the mind has no sex but what habit and education give it.” She is well known for her Independence Day speech, which is considered by some to have been the “first major public address by a woman” in the United States. She influenced many important people, such as “Thomas Jefferson, Mary Shelley, and Walt Whitman. Walt used to frequent anti-slavery halls, met her, and in retrospect called her “one of the best (characters) in history.” Walt loved to listen to her weekly talk of broad reforms in New York. He calls her “one of the sweetest of sweet memories,” and was “enthralled” by her “very appearance.” He also said she was “never satisfied unless she was doing good.” We see the influence in Whitman's work of civil reform, of slaves and women as equal to all and constitutive of a great American whole. Frances Wright's tombstone reads “I have wedded the cause of human improvement, staked on it my fortune, my reputation and my life.”