Frances Wright, the Marquis de Lafayette, and Visions of American Equality

This post is coauthored by Elizabeth A. Novara, Historian, Manuscript Division, and Erika Hope Spencer, Reference Specialist, French Collections, Latin American, Caribbean, and European Division.

In her early twenties, Frances “Fanny” Wright (1795-1852), a Scottish-born American social reformer, writer, abolitionist, and women’s rights advocate, became obsessed with the American democratic form of government and the possibilities of equality. Wright’s utopian socialist ideas and unconventional lifestyle greatly inspired later women’s rights advocates Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, who placed her portrait in their first volume of the History of Woman’s Suffrage. Likely one of the most well-traveled women of her time, Wright observed and commented on American society on two wide-ranging visits to the United States, first in 1818 and again in 1824. In 1825, Wright became a U.S. citizen and a participant, no longer just an observer, of American democracy. While visiting France between her first and second visits to the United States, she formed a close relationship with the Marquis de Lafayette, who had a lifelong influence on her. The Manuscript Division has recently acquired ten letters as an addition to the Frances Wright Papers. These letters, dating from the 1820s, shed further light on Wright’s relationship with Lafayette and the beginnings of her search for equality, while other resources available at the Library of Congress provide more details into Wright’s life and times.

Wright’s enduring friendship with the famous French general Marquis de Lafayette is remarkable not only for the unusual depths of their emotional devotion to one another, but because it was centered on a shared passion for American society. After her first visit to the United States in 1818 with her sister Camilla, Wright published Views of Society and Manners in America (1821). Indeed, it was by sending Lafayette a copy of her book that he was first made aware of this bright, young, liberal author, leading to her first visit to his home, Château de la Grange, in France. In several of the recently acquired letters, Wright mentions La Grange and the friendship she shared with Lafayette, whom she calls “ma père” (my father). The majority of the letters are addressed to Jean-Pierre Pagès, a French politician, lawyer, writer, and newspaper editor. Pagès was, like Wright, a friend of Lafayette and other members of their social circle. Lafayette appreciated Wright’s sympathetic treatment of American society, and this served as the basis for their life-long relationship. Although, unlike Lafayette, Wright became more critical of the United States in her later years.

Lafayette brought Wright’s works and her causes to the attention of his powerful circles of literary and political elites and never lost an opportunity to praise her ideas. Lafayette was instrumental in the translation of Wright’s book as Voyage aux États-Unis d’Amérique in 1822. It was also at the invitation of Lafayette that Wright and her sister followed him on his celebratory farewell tour of the United States in 1824 and 1825. Fanny and Camilla “followed” him instead of accompanying him on the tour because their presence caused tensions both for Lafayette’s family and for American social mores. Two young women travelling with a much older man would just not do. The intensity of Lafayette’s attachment to Wright was of great concern to his children and his family in France and elicited a strong resentment. At one point Lafayette even considered adopting Wright and her sister but was dissuaded by his family from doing so. While Wright was quite comfortable embracing unconventional manners, Lafayette was a man of a different generation, and despite his liberal political views, he struggled mightily to explain the somewhat unorthodox figure of Wright in his life.

In a letter to Thomas Jefferson dated October 1, 1824, Lafayette sought to justify the presence of his young female companions by calling Fanny and Camilla his “filial friends” and his “two adopted daughters.” Previously, Lafayette had encouraged Jefferson to read and comment on Wright’s works, sending a copy of her book when he did not hear back from Jefferson after his first prompt. In a previous letter to Jefferson, dated June 1, 1822, Lafayette had noted that “I Have Read in a letter of Jeremy Bentham this judgment on the author ‘She is the Sweetest and Strongest mind that Ever Was Cased in a female Body.’” Jefferson was already familiar with Wright’s works having corresponded with her since 1820. In 1824, Wright met Jefferson at Monticello and their conversations had a strong impact on her. In one of the letters recently acquired by the Manuscript Division, Wright describes her visit with Jefferson and Lafayette at Monticello in November 1824. She wrote to her friend Pagès in Paris,

[Translation of original text] “Your letter has come to find us in a sacred place [i.e., Monticello], and we say to ourselves what a pity that in the place of this precious letter the still more precious friend did not arrive. With what interest you would contemplate this old patriot who knew how to combine the two temperaments of a philosopher and a statesman and who, if not, secured the institutions of the country which owe their existence and consistency to the people themselves.… At the age of eighty-two Mr. Jefferson retains all the vigor of his mind, but violent and successive illnesses have taken away much of his physical strength. Nothing is more interesting than to see our respectable friend next to his old colleague [Lafayette] and to listen to their reminiscences of historical events and men. But how this pleasure is mingled with sadness! A few more years and you will no longer find on this mountain the author of the declaration of independence, the father of American freedom. – And there a more painful thought stops me, and fills my eyes with tears.”

[Transcription of original text] “Votre lettre est venue nous trouver dans un lieu sacré [Monticello], et nous nous disons quel dommage qu’à la place de cette precieuse lettre ne nous soit pas arrivé l’ami plus precieuse encore. Avec quel intérêt vous contempleriez ce vieux patriote qui a su réunir les deux caractères d’un philosophe et d’un homme d’état et qui fixa si non les institutions du pays qui doivent leur existence et consistance au peuple lui-même.… A l’âge de quatre vingt deux ans M. Jefferson conserve toute la vigueur de son esprit, mais des maladies violentes et successives lui ont ôté beaucoup de sa force physique. Rien de plus intéressant que de voir notre respectable ami à côté de son vieux confrère [Lafayette] et d’écouter leurs réminiscences d’évènements et d’hommes historiques. Mais que ce plaisir est mêlé de tristesse! Encore quelques d’années et on ne trouvera plus sur cette montagne l’auteur de la déclaration de l’indépendance, le père de la liberté américaine. – Et la une pensée plus douleureuse m’arrête, et me remplit les yeux de larmes.”

After her conversations with Jefferson on slavery, Wright was inspired by her utopian political ideals to experiment with the abolition of slavery at a Tennessee cooperative farm community that she named “Nashoba.” Her idealistic plan was to educate enslaved men and women and gradually emancipate them. While the experiment ultimately failed, it solidified Wright’s dedication to the abolitionist cause. She later published and lectured widely in the United States in support of abolition and women’s rights, demanding reforms to marriage and property laws. She is remembered as one of the first American women to speak in public to “conspicuous” (mixed gender) audiences, which drew criticism and ire, such as in an 1829 political cartoon that depicted Wright as “a downright gabbler.”

Lafayette was strongly opposed to slavery, but as Wright became more vocal in her criticism of other aspects of American society, she lost favor in the eyes of some of Lafayette’s close acquaintances. A newspaper article from Journal des femmes, dated February 1, 1835, indicates some of the negative views of her that were circulating in France. Still, ten years after they first met, Lafayette served as a witness to her marriage to Frenchman William Phiquepal d’Arusmont in 1831, evidence of their filial devotion and lasting affection.

Late 2024 and 2025 mark the bicentennial of the Marquis de Lafayette’s farewell tour of the United States with commemorative events occurring in many cities and towns, which included this concert, Lafayette: A Musical Depiction by David and Ginger Hildebrand at the French Embassy in Washington, D.C., earlier this year. On December 10, 2024, the Manuscript Division showcased Lafayette-related materials, including a Frances Wright letter, during a special congressional event commemorating Lafayette as the first foreign dignitary to address a joint session of Congress two hundred years earlier. 

Researchers can discover additional materials related to both Wright and Lafayette in the Library’s collections. Evidence that Frances Wright maintained her own correspondence with Thomas Jefferson and Martha Jefferson Randolph, as well as with James and Dolley Madison, can be found in the Manuscript Division’s presidential papers collections. Her letter to Martha Jefferson Randolph, the eldest daughter of Thomas and Martha Jefferson, in particular, relates to Wright’s 1824 visit to Monticello. In this letter, Wright remarks that she has returned safely to Washington, D.C., after her travels across the Blue Ridge mountains. Additional materials for Lafayette researchers are available in the Marquis de Lafayette Papers, the Marquis de Lafayette papers (microfilm), and Benjamin Thomas Hill, Lafayette in the United States, 1824-1825, Collection.

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Further Reading:

Bartlett, Elizabeth Ann. Liberty, Equality, Sorority: The Origins and Interpretations of American Feminist Thought. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Carlson Pub., 1994.

Dykeman, Therese Boos. Contributions by Women to Nineteenth Century American Philosophy: Frances Wright, Antoinette Brown-Blackwell, Marietta Kies. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2012.

Kramer, Lloyd S., ed. The French-American Connection: 200 Years of Cultural and Intellectual Interaction. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.

Kramer, Lloyd S. Lafayette in Two Worlds: Public Cultures and Personal Identities in an Age of Revolutions. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

Morris, Celia. Fanny Wright: Rebel in America. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984.