Saturday, June 9, 2007 1:10 AM CDT
Icarians in America: Utopian Socialists Couldn't Get Along
By HAL MALEHORN
Just west of the town of Nauvoo, Illinois, lies the broad bottomland that separates the community from the Mississippi River. Upon this expanse there existed in the 1840s a community peopled by Mormons.
When the Mormons were urged out of Hancock County in 1846, they left behind a land agent in charge of selling off the members’ property. One of the principal buyers in 1849 was the Icarian socialist commune founded by a Frenchman, Etienne Cabet.
Nauvoo would be only one of several American sites to be settled by Icarians. However, for all their idealism, the Icarians there, as well as wherever else they settled, always found it difficult to get along.
Etienne Cabet was born in Dijon, France, in 1788. He was amply schooled, and then as an adult chose to study the law. This led him into politics.
Elected to France’s Chamber of Deputies, Cabet helped foment the second French Revolution, in 1830. For his troubles, he was charged with treason and threatened with death. Cabet took refuge for a while in England, where he began formulating an ideal political democracy, depicting his ideas in a novel, “Voyage in Icaria.” In this book (which took its title from the mythic Greek, Icarus) he described a perfect society in which all property was held in common.
Workers in his fictitious Icaria contributed according to their abilities, and received according to their needs. In a land of political equality and economic equity, both poverty and crime disappeared.
In a time when socialism was on the rise in Europe, Cabet’s novel attained a vast readership, and he, a considerable following.
Impressed by his concept’s popularity, Cabet in 1847 announced the organization of a colony named “Icaria.” This colony was to be in America, in northeastern Texas, where the “climate was heavenly and the soil fruitful.” Cabet was certain that millions of Frenchmen would eventually join his throng.
As it happened, though, only 69 men constituted the advance guard, departing Le Havre in 1848, bound for New Orleans.
As the party disembarked in Louisiana, problems immediately arose. First, they found that the million acres they thought they had reserved turned out to be only 10,000. Then, too, the land had been marked off in plots that were not contiguous, thereby making communal living impossible. More to the point: most of the Frenchmen were vintners, knowing nothing of farming prairies.
To compound their miseries, few of the men understood English; the trek was made on foot; some of the men sickened; and all of them went hungry.
Nonetheless, the men set to work, and some 38 cabins were erected. By August a ten-yoke team of oxen had broken the ground to make it ready to plant; unhappily, August was too late in the year to produce a sufficient crop.
Distressed by fevers and the sun, most members abandoned their venture and straggled in by threes and fours back to Louisiana. Some members returned to France.
After learning of the misadventures, Cabet raised funds to purchase a different site. He borrowed money on the promise it would be “augmented in value ten, fifty, and even a hundred-fold.” In early 1849 some 480 souls embarked for the newly-bought Nauvoo site.
Here again, hardships abounded: 20 members succumbed to cholera en route up-river from New Orleans. Moreover, most of this second wave were artisans, experienced only in city life. None knew anything of agriculture or of America’s language, customs or laws.
Still, a constitution was drawn up, and a board of directors and president were elected. Not surprisingly, Cabet (now upon the scene) was chosen as leader. Unhappily, the aging Cabet was not always wise; for example, he proposed junking the constitution and naming himself dictator.
At the next election a rival was elected president, whereupon Cabet and 180 faithful moved to site near St. Louis, where they took over a village called Cheltenham.
There the artisans thrived, as most were tailors, shoemakers, smiths, or other craftsmen. There it was easy for them to find employment, making goods for city sale. There schools and workshops opened. But, there, too, in 1856, Cabet suddenly died of apoplexy.
Notwithstanding their loss, the St. Louis Icarians soldiered on. But they still couldn’t get along, and two factions developed. A majority, adhering to Cabet’s belief in a dictatorship, remained in Missouri, while a minority, inclined toward a democracy, left for property purchased in southwestern Iowa. Ultimately, the Missouri commune broke apart.
The Iowa branch attracted disaffected members from Nauvoo, where crops had failed and debts had mounted. The Iowa commune swelled to 239 persons, and, for a time, all seemed well, as the commune’s crops helped feed Union troops during the Civil War.
And then, the inevitable happened: controversy again erupted and factions developed. A more youthful group were chafing for change: expanding the commune’s industries; increasing their numbers, improving agricultural methods, extending the local vote to women. However, the elders preferred the status quo.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was a minor matter: whether each private residence could have its own garden. Old-timers insisted that their motto (“All for each, each for all“) forbade private cultivation. In the end, the more youthful members withdrew in 1877 and established their own farm elsewhere on the Iowa acreage.
But that move still didn’t resolve differences. The intellectuals living in that commune eventually tired of heavy farming and sought their own community. In 1881 several of intellectuals journeyed to California, settling near San Francisco, where they undertook a vineyard. Alas, that experiment, too, failed.
Discord and disillusionment continued to plague the Icarians, and by 1898 all colonies in the United States had disbanded.
Today an organization, the Descendants of the Icarians, is devoted to memorializing their ancestors’ ideals. And in southwestern Iowa, a restoration of the French Icarian Colony is underway.
Now that the Icarians’ descendants no longer live together in a commune, presumably there are no difficulties about getting along. Perhaps the problem all the while was this: having donned their wings of idealism, the Icarians, like Icarus of old, flew much too close to reality’s sun.
Hal Malehorn portrays Alfred Balch at Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site.
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