Editing Frances Wright (section)

==Views==
Wright believed in many foundational tenets of [[feminism]], including equality in education between the sexes.<ref name=Exploring1103/> She opposed [[organized religion]], marriage, and capitalism.<ref name=Bowman/> Educational opportunities were a particular interest. Along with [[Robert Owen]], Wright demanded that the government offer free public education for all children after the age of twelve or eighteen months of age{{explain|date=April 2020}} in federal government-supported
[[boarding school]]s.<ref>{{cite book | author=Brownson, Orestes | author-link=Orestes Brownson |title=An Oration on Liberal Studies, Delivered Before the Philomathian society, of Mount Saint Mary's College, Md., June 29th, 1853 |publisher=Hedian and O'Brien|year=1853|url=https://archive.org/stream/orationonliberal00brow#page/n1/mode/2up 
|access-date=May 30, 2019|location=Baltimore, Maryland|page=19 }} "It is not without design that I have mentioned the name of Frances Wright, the favorite pupil of [[Jeremy Bentham]], and famous infidel lecturer through our country, some twenty years ago; for I happen to know, what may not be known to you all, that she and her friends were the great movers in the scheme of godless education, now the fashion in our country. I knew this remarkable woman well, and it was my shame to share, for a time, many of her views, for which I ask pardon of God and of my countrymen. I was for a brief time in her confidence, and one of those selected to carry into execution her plans. The great object was to get rid of Christianity, and to convert our Churches into Halls of science. The plan was not to make open attacks on religion, although we might belabor the clergy and bring them into contempt where we could; but to establish a system of state, we said, ''national'' schools, from which all religion was to be excluded, in which nothing was to be taught but such knowledge as is verifiable by the senses, and to which all parents were to be compelled by law to send their children. Our complete plan was to take the children from their parents at the age of twelve or eighteen months, and to have them nursed, fed, clothed and trained in these schools at the public expense; but at any rate, we were to have godless schools for all the children of the country, to which the parents would be compelled by law to send them."</ref>

Wright was a vocal advocate of [[birth control]], equal rights, [[sexual freedom]], legal rights for married women, liberal divorce laws, the [[emancipation]] of [[slaves]], and the controversial idea of interracial marriages.<ref name=C-P236/><ref>{{cite journal |author=Schlereth, Eric R. 
|year=2007|title=Fits of Political Religion: Stalking Infidelity and the Politics of Moral Reform in Antebellum America|journal=Early American Studies |volume=5 |issue=2 |pages=288–323 |doi=10.1353/eam.2007.0014|s2cid=143855049}} Also: {{cite journal| author=Ginzberg, Lori D. |year=1994|title='The Hearts of Your Readers will Shudder': Fanny Wright, Infidelity, and American Freethought|journal=American Quarterly|volume=46|issue=2|pages=195–226 |doi=10.2307/2713338|jstor=2713338}}</ref> She tried to demonstrate through her experiment project in Tennessee what the [[utopian]] socialist [[Charles Fourier]] had said in France, "that the progress of civilization depended on the progress of women."<ref>{{cite book | author=Zinn, Howard 
|year=1980|title=A Peoples History of the United States|publisher=Harper and Row |page=123 }}</ref> Wright's opposition to slavery contrasted with the views of many other [[United States Democratic Party|Democrats]] of the era, especially those of the South. Her activism on behalf of working men also distanced her from the leading abolitionists of the day.<ref>{{cite book |author=Lott, Eric |year=1993 |title=Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class |publisher=Oxford University Press |page=129 }}</ref>