Her plan in brief was, to take slaves in large numbers from time to time (either by purchase, or by inducing benevolent planters to donate their negroes to the institution), and to prepare them for liberty by education, giving them half of what they produced, and making them pay their way and purchase their emancipation, if necessary, by their labor. The working of the negroes and the general management of the Community was to be in the hands of the philanthropic and wealthy whites associated with the lady-founder. The theory was benevolent; but practically the institution must have been a two-story commonwealth, somewhat like the old Grecian States which founded liberty on Helotism. Or we might define it as a Brook Farm plus a negro basis. The trouble at Brook Farm, according to Hawthorne, was, that the amateurs who took part in that 'pic-nic,' did not like to serve as 'chambermaids to the cows.' This difficulty was provided against at Nashoba.
"We are informed that Frances Wright found in her new occupation intense and ever-increasing interest. But ere long she was seized by severe and reïterated sickness, which compelled her to make a voyage to Europe for the recovery of her health. 'During her absence,' says her biographer, 'an intriguing individual had disorganized every thing on the estate, and effected the removal of persons of confidence. All her serious difficulties proceeded from her white assistants, and not from the blacks.'"
In December of the following year, she made over the Nashoba estate to a board of trustees, by a deed commencing thus:
"I, Frances Wright, do give the lands after specified, to General Lafayette, William Maclure, Robert Owen, Cadwallader Colden, Richardson Whitby, Robert Jennings, Robert Dale Owen, George Flower, Camilla Wright, and James Richardson, to be held by them and their associates and their successors in perpetual trust for the benefit of the negro race."
By another deed she gave the slaves of Nashoba to the before-mentioned trustees: and by still another she gave them all her personal property.
In her appeal to the public in connection with this transfer, she explains at length her views of reform, and her reasons for choosing the above-named trustees instead of the Emancipation or Colonization Societies; and in respect to education says: 'No difference will be made in the schools between the white children and the children of color, whether in education or any other advantage.' After further explanation of her plans she goes on to say:
"'It will be seen that this establishment is founded on the principle of community property and labor: preserving every advantage to those desirous, not of accumulating money but of enjoying life and rendering services to their fellow-creatures; these fellow-creatures, that is, the blacks here admitted, requiting these services by services equal or greater, by filling occupations which their habits render easy, and which, to their guides and assistants, might be difficult or unpleasing.' [Here is the 'negro basis.']
"'No life of idleness, however, is proposed to the whites. Those who cannot work must give an equivalent in property. Gardening or other cultivation of the soil, useful trades practiced in the society or taught in the school, the teaching of every branch of knowledge, tending the children, and nursing the sick, will present a choice of employment sufficiently extensive.'"
In the course of another year trouble had come and Disorganization had begun.
"In March, 1828, the trustees published a communication in the Nashoba Gazette, explaining the difficulties they had to contend with, and the causes why the experience of two years had modified the original plan of Frances Wright. They show the impossibility of a co-operative Community succeeding without the members composing it are superior beings; 'for,' say they, 'if there be introduced into such a society thoughts of evil and unkindness, feelings of intolerance and words of dissension, it can not prosper. That which produces in the world only common-place jealousies and every-day squabbles, is sufficient to destroy a Community.'