Full text of "Immigration of the Icarians to Illinois : proceedings of the Icarian Weekend in Nauvoo : Nauvoo, Illinois, July 19 & 20, 1986"

See other formats

IMMIGRATION OF
THE ICARIANS TO
ILLINOIS

LES COLONIES ICARIANNES AUX ETATS-UNIS

ilian M. Snyder
Robert P. Sutton
Editors

IMMIGRATION OF THE
ICARIANS TO ILLINOIS

Proceedings

of the

Icarian Weekend in Nauvoo

Lillian M. Snyder

Robert P. Sutton

Editors

Nauvoo, Illinois
July 19 & 20, 1986

The Symposium was made possible in part by a grant from the lUinois Humanities Council
in cooperation with the National Endowment for the Humanities and by the Western Illinois
University Foundation.

Etienne Cabet
(1788^1856)

No part of this book may be reproduced

in any form without written permission of the copyright holders.

The ideas expressed in this monograph do not necessarily represent the
view of either the Illinois Humanities Council or the National Endowment
for the Humanities.

1st Edition

The artwork on the cover was done by Jeanette Criglor

Printed in the United States of America by
Yeast Printing, Inc.
Macomb, Illinois 61455

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 1

Lillian M. Snyder

WHO WERE THE ICARIANS? 4

Charles T. Parish

WHY DID THE ICARIANS LEAVE FRANCE? 6

Jacques Ranciere

ICARIAN MIGRATIONS FROM EUROPE TO ILLINOIS 17

Jules Renaud

GLIMPSES OF THE IMMIGRATION OF FRENCH ICARIANS

TO AMERICA 23

Lloyd W. Gundy

DISCUSSANTS:

. THE ICARIAN ZION: NINETEENTH

CENTURY PURITANS 38

Robert P. Sutton

CABET'S DREAM, TOCQUEVILLE'S REALITY 41

Wayne Wheeler

ONE MAN'S VOYAGE TO ICARIA 43

Dale W. Ross

INTRODUCTION

Lillian M. Snyder

During the course of his genealogical research, Lloyd Gundy found a
journal of the voyage on which his ancestor, Jules Leon Cottet, traveled
from Le Havre, France, to Nauvoo, Illinois, to join the Icarian Colony.
The journal (author unknown) was published in French by Cabet and had
been translated by Lloyd and Wilma Gundy. Subsequently it appeared
in print in the 1986 issue of Western Illinois Regional Studies.^

The diary gave a detailed description of the daily life of a band of 51
Icarians who left France on September first and arrived in Nauvoo on
November sixth of that year. On board the ship the Icarians organized
themselves to share the work, to handle dissension, and to aid other
shipmates. Gundy's report of his research prompted the Descendants of
the Icarians and other interested groups such as the Center for Icarian
Studies at Western Illinois University to select the topic "Immigration of
the Icarians" for a Symposium to be offered in July, 1986 at the site of
the Icarian Colony at Nauvoo. The project also received the enthusiastic
support from the Center for Icarian Investigations at the University of
Nebraska, Omaha.

About the same time I received a brochure from Jane Hood, the Director
of Grants at the Illinois Humanities Council, in which she requested
proposals on the topic "The Peopling of Illinois." She explained that the
Council had adopted a six-year emphasis on the theme "Inventing Illinois"
to encourage IlUnoisans to look for the "interaction between peoples and
places emphasizing their different values, customs and histories." The
brochure pointed out, in Miss Hood's words, "that lUinois has been shaped
in rich and complicated ways by peoples who settled her land and
populated her cities— in ways that are truly characterized more accurately
as a 'cauldron of values' than as a 'melting pot.' " "While census figures,
demographic profiles, and population projections are important," she
explained, "an exploration of the values and cultural heritage of Illinois'
people is essential to understanding our state."

The Illinois Humanities Council recognized that the waves of some 500
mostly French-born emigrants who came at one time or another to Nauvoo
between 1848 and J 860 left a unique cultural contribution to the Prairie
State, a heritage with which more lUinoisans should be better acquainted
and should be more fully appreciative. The Council, accordingly, award-
ed a grant to cover partially the expenses of speakers and to publish an
account of the proceedings of the Symposium.

At the Symposium, held at Nauvoo on July 19 and 20, 1986, Charles
T. Parish, Moderator of the program, introduced the Symposium by
dealing with the topic "Who Were the Icarians?" His presentation was
followed by Professor Jacques Rancier of the University of Paris, France,
who spoke on "Why Did the Icarians Leave France?" Jules Renaud, a
native of Keokuk, Iowa and now living in Alexandria, Virginia, gave an
account of "Icarian Migrations from Europe to Illinois" based upon his
findings in the Ship Manifest Lists of the National Archives in Washington,
D.C. Gundy then read his report on "Glimpses of the Immigration of
the French Icarians to America, 1854." The three papers were critiqued
by Dr. Robert P. Sutton, Director of the Center for Icarian Studies, Dr.
Wayne Wheeler of the Institute for Icarian Investigations, and Dale W.
Ross, an Icarian Descendant, of Sunnyvale, California.

The French Counsul, Max De Calbiac, in commemoration of the 100th
anniversary of the gift of the Statue of Liberty to the United States,
concluded the Symposium that evening with a cogent summation of the
entire weekend. He noted that the Statue of Liberty was a symbol of
freedom and a remembrance of the binding American relations which go
back over 300 years. Both countries, he said, cherish the same values of
liberty. He pointed out that equality and fraternity symbolized in the logo
of the Descendants of the Icarians are symbols of the two nations. He
suggested that such a commemoration of Cabet and the Icarians was an
auspicious occasion to remember the importance of the goal of equality
in both of our societies. "It is not an easy task," he said "and it is far
easier to succeed in liberty." The challenges facing Cabet find his followers
almost a century and a half ago, he concluded, are the same challenges
facing us today.

ENDNOTES

' Lloyd Gundy, Wilma Gundy, and Robert P. Sutton, "An Icarian Embarkation: LeHavre
to Nauvoo, 1854 (Macomb, Illinois: Western Illinois Regional Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1, Spring,
1986), pages 19-33.

See also, Etienne Cabet, Prospectus de la Colonie Icarienne (Paris: by Cabet, 1855).

2 "Inventing Illinois, the IHC Program 1985-1991" Humanities A Publication of the Illinois
Humanities Council, Vol. 7, No. 1, Winter 1986.

WHO WERE THE ICARIANS?

Charles T. Parish

The founder of the Icarians was Etienne Cabet, author of the best selUng
Travels in Icaria, first pubhshed in France in 1840. Cabet himself, born
in 1788, was a precocious youth who taught mathematics in high school
and at the age of twenty-one earned a Doctor of Jurisprudence at the
University of Dijon. Throughout his Ufe he was involved with writings
and activities to bring about hberty, equahty, and fraternity.

After a study of the history of the French Revolution and the rise and
fall of nations, Cabet set forth his views of how a correct social organization
of a humanistic society could bring about peace, brotherhood and justice
for all mankind. His central idea was to build a society of complete equaUty
without either property or money. Every citizen in Icaria, in Cabet's plan,
had equal access to the performing arts, museums, and education. In Icaria
there were public hospitals, libraries, recreational facilities, and gardens.

Cabet's followers by 1848 finally insisted that his ideas be put into
practice not in his native France but in the United States. The First
Advance Party of Icarians left Le Havre on February third to establish
the first community in Texas. The initial location proved disastrous. So
they chose Nauvoo as the permanent site of their colony. A group of 180
Icarians arrived in Illinois on March 15, 1849. At Nauvoo they built a
model of their ideal society. Children both boys and girls, were given a
free education in science, mathematics, geography, history, literature, and
the arts. Every Sunday afternoon they gathered in their "cours Icarien"
to discuss matters of love, brotherhood, and beauty. Sunday evenings the
Icarian orchestra performed regular concerts. Each month, a theatrical
play was given in the dining hall. All members, young and old, borrowed
books from the Icarian library of over 5,000 volumes— the largest in the
state at the time.' Its newspaper, the Colonie Icarienne published detailed
accounts of their new life in Illinois. The Icarian community, first began
in the Prairie State, reestablished itself again and again over the next fifty
years— in St. Louis, in Corning, Iowa and in Cloverdale, California.

The Icarians were mostly French although a number of them were from
other European countries. Nevertheless, most were from the middle class.
Many were, by and large, educated. Some were craftsmen. A few were
rich, others quite poor. Each applicant, regardless of status or wealth, had
to have his "entry money" to join the community and his steerage money
to pay for the passage to America. Naturally there were factions, squables,
and differences of opinion but all embraced common goals.

What were these goals that caused the Icarians to emigrate to Illinois?
There were three goals. The first goal was liberty. They felt that each
person should be able to have individual freedom of thought and of
expression. The second goal was equality. They felt that each person was
equal, yet different, and could bring to the community according to their
own particular gifts (one a doctor, one a farmer, one a cabinetmaker, one
a tailor, for example) but that each stood equal as a person in the society.
The third, and perhaps most important, was fraternity. They felt that
people would receive according to their needs and give according to their
talents. This was the ultimate purpose of the "Community of Goods" as
they termed their Icaria.

We have a lot to learn from these Icarians. They developed a pure
repubhcan form of government. They endured tough economic and
political times. They survived internal difficulties and dissensions. They
championed education and the arts. At Nauvoo they laid the foundation
for the longest-lived, non-religious communal experiment in humanistic
living in American history.

ENDNOTE

Albert Shaw reported that "a library of five or 6,000 volumes, chiefly standard French
works, seems to be much patronized . . . ." Albert Shaw, Icaria (New York: G.P.
Putnam's— Sons, 1884) p. 51. See also Jules Prudhommeaux, Icarie et son Fondateur Etienne
Cabet (Philadelphic, reprint: Porcupine Press, 1972) p. 292.

WHY DID THE ICARIANS LEAVE FRANCE?

Jacques Ranciere

Why did they leave? At first the answer might seem obvious: they left
to found Icaria, to implement a plan of social organization about which
they had been amply instructed through the words and writings of Cabet.

However, the obviousness of this answer comes up against several
problems. What exactly does it mean to found Icaria? In Cabet' s view the
ideal proposed by the Voyage en Icarie is that of a communist country that
would take perhaps fifty years to build as the consequence of a democratic
revolution which would, after a long period of transition, result in
communism. Cabet is against the projects of partial colonization proposed
by the Fourierists and other schools. He accepts only those small
communities of "devotees" who join together for the purposes of
communist propaganda.

Now in 1847 the project for the departure for Icaria acquires a
completely different meaning. It is a question of going to found a people
and Cabet confides to a correspondent that he thinks he will be able to
count on 100,000 men. This project of massive emigration will itself be
ruined by the 1848 revolution in France. But the departure for Icaria then
takes on two contradictory aspects. On the one hand, it takes on the
character of an exodus of persecuted believers: ' 'As we can no longer live
here," wrote Cabet at the time, "let us leave for Icaria." But, on the other
hand, Icaria cannot be founded by a band of runaways, by men driven
solely by their material interest. Those who would go to found Icaria
should be "workers full of courage, intelligence and education," "an elite"
chosen as were the first Christians. Icaria is thus two things at once— a
land of exile for men whose situation has become unbearable in France
and a sacrifice to be realized by devoted men.

This ambiguity encounters an ambiguity concerning the moral and social
identity of the Icarians. In order that devotion and not self-interest should
be the motivating force for the departure for Icaria, Cabet especially fixed
high financial conditions. The contribution of 600 francs per person which

was required of each participant, represented, even for a skilled worker,
six months wages. The communist volunteer had therefore to be a worker
of some means. But the dividing line set out in this way is not a stable
one. As well as the fluctuations in work and the economic situation, the
social situation of the militant communists depended on the political
situation and on the very consequences of their involvement. Among
communists we fairly frequently come across workers who earn a good
living— shopkeepers, small businessmen. It is not poverty that drove them
to communism, but rather it was their communism which frequently
reduced them to poverty, by turning away their customers or their orders.
"In the past," writes an Icarian tailor from the provinces, "I employed
six workers, not counting my work and that of my wife. Today I have
hardly enough work for myself." Paradoxically, the Republic that everyone
had been yearning for reinforced this threat. Besides the loss of business
the communists would become the favorite scapegoats against whom the
popular demonstrations of Spring 1848 would be organized or directed.
Thus a worker of means and a disinterested militant of 1847 could in 1848
become a ruined and hunted man, driven by necessity towards a promised
land which was at the same time a land of exile.

This instability of social positions warns us against analyses which would
link the Icarian Utopia or other such doctrines to one particular material
condition, more or less disadvantaged or to a job sector, more or less
technically advanced or economically threatened. Undoubtedly
Christopher Johnson, in his book Utopian Communism in France, rightly
pointed out the preponderance amongst Icarians, as in all anti-
establishment movements of the time, of two trades— tailors and
shoemakers. He suggested that their commitment could be explained by
the conscientiousness of highly skilled workers, proud of their skills, but
threatened by modern methods of manufacturing. Personally I have a
different explanation. These are in fact the most common trades. That
is to say that one finds here the greatest number of people not having
been able to afford a more expensive apprenticeship and for whom it is
either a temporary, a secondary or a fall-back trade. The apprenticeship
is limited, the pay, for the most part mediocre and uncertain, the seasonal
unemployment and the turn-over very high. It can be said that the
circulation of ideas follows the mobiUty of the people. It is here that one
finds the greatest number of those whose intellectual aspirations cannot

be satisfied within the professional framework and who are looking for
something else. It is more a breeding ground for new ideas and strong
personalities than professional groups highly structured by an ideology
rooted in their professions.

Thus the Icarians are not first and foremost the representatives of a
particular social group but individuals who are looking for a way out of
the routine and repressiveness of the old society. Thus it was that the
shoemaker of Orsay, Pierre-Jean Vallet, started his militant career by
reforming his village carnival. He substituted the pranks and nasty games
which consisted of showering passersby with excrement with a superb
procession of carnival floats. To his shoemaking occupation he added all
kinds of activities which were at the same time lucrative, entertaining
and educative: rabbit breeding for the market, a bath house, cheap boat
rides on a small lake, an assortment of fancy dress costumes and a library
of 1,200 volimies, the care of which was added to the functions of postman
and town crier. It is as a result of this "moral reform" of his village that
he conceived the ideal of a moral and egalitarian republic, summed up
thus by his son: "Establish a society where reason and awareness reign.
Without kings or priests, the only 'nobility' that of the heart, without
poverty or riches." Like Vallet, but often in a more dramatic way, the
Icarians are generally individuals who suffer less from their material
condition than from their attitude towards a world corrupted by wealth
and inequality. "Though still young, I had been crushed by that selfish
society and I desired death as the only remedy for my torment," wrote
a typefounder from Lyon. This same theme is found in a respected
shopkeeper from Nancy: "Your idea to realize Icaria gives me new life,
for death is preferable to hfe in today's wretched society. Though my
establishment is well patronized and I have numerous customers, I long
for nothing more than the moment when we will leave for Icaria." And
a mirror manufacturer from Perigueux also states: "Many of us here are
not living. We are weary of seeing so much absurd prejudice in the 19th
century. But our courage revives us and gives us the certitude of a better
future. Not that we are unhappy; on the contrary, we consider ourselves
amongst the privileged." Almost everywhere, in Paris as in the provincal
towns, small or large, industrial or not, one finds those individuals who
have distanced themselves from the logic of economic reproduction and
the intellectual and moral attitudes that it engenders. They conceive the

community above all in the form of those small circles of brethren where
one comes together, amongst those who have "seen the light," in order
to share their opinions, to educate themselves or to sing out their faith:
a sort of Sunday communism that many would remember with nostalgia
when they found themselves at the plough in Icaria under the critical eye
of those whose ideas they had so recently shared.

It also means that the precision of the doctrines and the plans of
organization that they adopted counted for less than the means these
provided them with to begin a new way of life through ideas and actions.
Many of these emancipated workers can simultaneously or successively
claim to draw on several doctrines more or less hostile to each other. One
Icarian presents himself as a former St. Simonian, another a former
Phalansterian or disciple of Swedenborg. Many are former revolutionaries,
members of secret republican societies that Cabet converted to the way
of non-violence. In these diverse theories they are above all searching for
something which replies to their primary concern— that of a new moral
world founded on social equality— an equality that is neither mere poHtical
equality nor economic levelling out. The Icarians, like others who reject
the status quo of their time, complain less of economic exploitation than
of social discrimination, of the contempt in which they are held. They
wish to be recognized as men with a right to be full members of society,
in all the domains of social life, from work relations to the relations of
everyday life or of the intellectual world. They would have a society
without arrogance or servility. Equality is above all a question of
recognition which expresses itself in language, in behaviour and in
appearance. It is also for this reason that workers in the clothing trade
are often in the front line. Those trades where one works directly "for
the bourgeois" are contact areas bearing contradictory results: it is in this
way that the ideas and the issues which rock society from above reach
the working classes. It is here too that the question of appearance and
of dignity are most deeply experienced.

This means that behind the adhesion to the Icarian doctrine lies a more
fundamental Utopia which is none other than the Republic itself. For those
rebels and dreamers who are subjected to the bourgeois monarchy of
Louis-Philippe and the reign of what was then called "material interest,"
the Republic is not only a political form, it is an idea of the new humanity

freed from the selfish preoccupation of material interests and caste
differences. It identifies itself with what was then called emancipation;
the acknowledgment and the establishment of the rights and capacities
of every human being. These give to the different and rival socialist
theories the colours of that fundamental Utopia. Hence the paradox of the
Icarian emigration: it is in fact the Parisian Revolution of 1848 and the
blossoming of the republican Utopia which, as it were, nipped it in the
bud. The first vanguard left for Texas on February 3rd, 1848. On the 24th
the Parisian Revolution brutally revealed the fragihty of the Icarian
decision: for the majority, Icaria was only the dream which brightened
up the colourless nature of the monarchical society. It is the Republic at
hand rather than the far off lands of Texas which realizes the egalitarian
dream. Cabet himself declared at the time "I have often said that
Communism and Republic were one and the same thing." Naturally he
had never before pronounced such a heresy. But he was led to this point
by a public for whom this heresy perhaps had always been the deepest
conviction.

We know what the consequences were: Instead of the 100,000 men
hoped for in 1847, only a few groups of a dozen militants would leave,
taking the risk of going to distant parts in search of that union of dream
and reahty which was being reahzed in France itself . In what state of mind
did they nevertheless decide to leave? As an example, let us Hsten to the
farewell that the Icarians addressed to their brethren on leaving Bordeaux
on May 19th, 1848, those brethren who would continue the fight to
consolidate the Republic here in France. "We leave full of joy for we go
to estabhsh the kingdom of God on earth, to put into practice the three
regenerative principles of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity that the France
of the Republic inscribed on all its monuments; and full of hope because
we believe that the entente cordiale between all soldiers of the democracy,
the politicians, the socialists and the communists, will see to it that these
three liberating words will be engraved in all our hearts as they are on
our monuments. Then, and only then, will you have true social Republic,
that Republic beloved of the poor and of those who suffer. And we, in
establishing it in all its purity on the virgin soil of Texas, will help you
to prove to all classes and all races that the practical brotherhood which
our dear and venerated father, the successor to the works of Christ, always
preached, is not an empty ideal."

Thus a single idea, the social republic, defines a sharing of tasks between
the old and the new world. In France, most of the groups would, through
the impure struggle of the old society, look to consolidate that Republic
from which the universal communism of the future would establish itself.
In America the pioneers would establish an example of the pure Republic
of the future. They would help those continuing the struggle in the old
world by supporting their discourse and their action with practical
demonstration. They would show that communism is possible even with
men formed by— or rather deformed by— the old society. The Icarians of
Nantes, in response, explained to their comrades who were leaving France
what the nature of this demonstration should be: "You have to prove to
the world man's innate goodness, the absurdity of that terrible blasphemy
on which an entire religious system is constructed, man born to crime. You
have to prove that religion can exist without priests and without the
cancerous presence of prostitution; that ownership can and must exist
without being a cause of misery and ignorance . . . that finally good and
evil are social realities and not providential ones; that, from now on, man
can and must entirely do away with evil." Before smiling at this optimism,
it is necessary to point out the fact that these are the words of those who
are not leaving, of those who prefer to savour at home the days of the
Republic and the Icarian Sundays, to dream of the America of others.

Those who leave often have more divided opinions. We too often give
to naive enthusiasm the attribute of militant activism. This is to forget
that the most determined militant is also he who is the most weary of
a world in which he perceives less the material hardship than the moral
corruption; a man who dedicates himself with all the more obstinacy
because he is less sure of being rewarded in return; who would provoke
a moral revolution in men made slaves to material interests, but who
knows that the promise of tangible material results is often the only way
of advancing the diffusion of his ideal. This pessimism can be felt in the
motivations that the Icarians of Lyon expose to those who criticize their
departure: "The time when the apostles converted entire towns by their
words is passed. Our century, like Saint Thomas, asks for miracles; Well!
at our risk and peril we are going to prepare one." This sentiment is taken
to its climax by the man who would be in turn the most demanding of
Cabet's Heutenants and the architect of his downfall, the jeweler Jules
Prudent. In 1851, while he was managing the colony in Cabet's absence,

he wrote to Beluze, the head of the Icarian bureau in Paris which organized
the departures for Icaria: "It is a fact that dominates our epoch: everything
has become material: faith, hope, Hberty, equahty, fraternity or love of
one's neighbour .... The attitudes of Society are formulated in the mind
as coldly as a mathematical question, we have arrived at a state of
individual, sensual happiness while waiting for the inoculation of collective
happiness .... The task that we have taken upon ourselves is immense."
This pessimistic report to a world waiting for material miracles is reflected
in a mistrust of those coming to join the Icarian colony, always suspected
in Prudent's eyes and by purists like himself of coming to enjoy the
benefits of Icaria and not to found it. Thus he never ceases in his attempt
to make admissions more difficult, to put the determination of new arrivals
to the test, and to hasten the departure of the Nauvoo Colony for the virgin
lands of Iowa, to a place where the settlers would be obliged to "burn
their boats," a place which would no longer hold out the possibility of
travelling between the Old World and the New, but also, within the new
American world, between communism and an individualism which
displays its seductions at the very gates of the colony.

For the ambiguity of the Icarian dream which keeps with ease one foot
in each world is added to the ambiguity of the place where Icaria is to
be built. The America of 1850 is two things at the same time: the virgin
land where it is hoped to create a new moral world, but also the country
where land is to be taken, gold and fortune for the unassuaged greed of
the old European society. In 1850, ships set out from Le Havre in two
opposing directions. Those of the builders of Icaria and those of the
Californian gold diggers. An article in the Populaire dwells on this
coincidence of the opposing factors. There are two major types of men:
the Californians, that is, in general "men of arrogance and vanity," "brutes
with a human face," the "hungry pleasure seekers," persons "corrupted
and degraded by the influence of the privileged;" and the Icarians that
one finds "everywhere where all men as God's children and consequently
as workers are sovereign in the full sense of the term." But this opposition
contrasted by the Icarian journalist in Paris is immediately challenged by
the first lieutenant of Icaria. In contrast Prudent lays stress on the
ambiguity of the new world." This, he says attracts "all those irresolute
men who only consider the realization of communism from a single
standpoint, that of their future. Such men are constantly swayed by

uncertainty; their diseased imagination is always looking for a refuge
against misery, and as a result, they clutch at any straws, now one, now
another. "America," he continues, "lends itself wonderfully to this
deceptive illusion— like the wolf which leaves its prey for a shadow—
until the day when the sad reality awakens you more despairing than ever.
And so you resume your worker's chains and consider yourself fortunate."

This bitter judgment is without doubt a simplification. It is less a question
of an illusion of the weak minded as an ambiguous reahty which presents
itself to those whose attitudes are themselves ambiguous. In reading the
letters which were written by those newly arrived to their brethren in
France to encourage them to join them, one notices the superposing of
two arguments. On the one hand, they urge them to work for and to
sacrifice themselves to the foundation of Icaria in the desert: on the other
hand, they describe a country where the life is easy and where the earth
yields almost without effort. "The land," writes one, "is so fertile that
it is hardly even necessary to turn the soil." "The idle American, assures
a second, works barely three or four hours a day for six months of the
year and rests the other six." And yet another writes: "There are no
beggars in America; the Americans are almost all owners."

A strange argument from the pen of a communist writing to another
communist. Obviously there is a certain cunning in these naivities; the
Icarian settlers would like the Sunday communists to come and set their
hand to the plough. And with this end in mind they do not hesitate to
paint in glowing terms the marvels of the owner's paradise, even if it
means they will, on arrival, find the real Icarian labours somewhat rude
and will be accused of coming with intention of "enjoying themselves"
and not of founding the community. One often hears talk in the
community of pleasure seekers and of deserters, of traitors and of false
Icarians. It would be truer to say that the land where communism is to
be built strangely resembles the land of individualism and that the Icarian
emigrants have a double identity: they are workers and they are
communists. The real problem is to be communist workers. Here again,
the problem is easy to resolve in Paris and in Le Populaire. "In all
humanity" one reads, "one can only come across Workers, Brothers, or
Thieves. The Worker and the Brother will always agree amongst
themselves well enough to form but a single family; but the Thief will

always remain outside .... Our Brotherly community, in expulsing from
its midst the idlers, is only expulsing thieves." But those in America realize
that the denounciation of the "thieves" is a means of avoiding the
fundamental question: can one be certain that brothers and workers are
made to get on? Is it even certain, in the same individual, that the brotherly
communist is in harmony with the emigrant worker? Icarian communism
was for these men, above all a means of escape from the brutality of work
relationships, to get away from the selfish world of material survival. They
were brothers outside their work and the one identity helped them to put
up with the other. But it is another thing to be all day and every day,
workers and brothers at the same time. An old Icarian who decided, after
ten years hesitation, to rejoin the Cheltenham colony, sadly confided in
his friend Beluze: "My dear friend Beluze, a year ago we were together.
I was happy and at peace with myself, surrounded by friends who I loved,
sustained by the principle of love and fraternity for which I have sacrificed
everything." What he had found in the Community on the other hand
was the permanent division between the workers who accused the others
of being idlers and the brothers who accused the former of their lack of
brotherly love.

This mutual distrust exacerbated the dual motivations of each side. The
communists, pure and strict, who accused the others of being idlers come
to profit from the American way of life instead of to found Icaria, find
themselves justified by the moral weakness of the others which led them
to return to their individualist ways and to take their chance in the new
American world, without for all that giving up the communist dream. Thus
we see multiply, in New Orleans, Saint Louis and everywhere where the
Icarian group has left behind those combatants disappointed by the
community, what could be called solitary communists, Icarians who call
themselves "Communists but not from Nauvoo." Such was the case of
Bourgeois who had taken part in the disastrous undertaking of the first
Icarian colonization in Texas. He did not follow his brethren into their
retreat but stayed in Texas "waiting for the Community to firmly establish
itself somewhere." He had not the courage to begin again at Nauvoo
because he had "given of his best to receive only ingratitude." "But,"
he said "It is of no matter: It may be a feature of human nature that all
men are not made to Hve in a community. It is none the less true that
real happiness can only be found within the Community." While waiting

for this improbable community to become a reality, he describes,
undoubtedly somewhat romantically, his life in Texas: a sort of Robinson
Crusoe island where money had disappeared, where at the same time one
could enjoy the most unrestricted liberty, the advantages of solidarity and
the beautiful Icarian dream. "Here payments are mostly made in kind.
Grains, pigs, cows, chickens, butter, eggs etc. are exchanged .... which
means that I am more often paid in goods than in money .... I am not
a hunter, but my nearest neighbour satisfies my needs in meat and game
.... Fishing also provides me with abundant resources. I have not to go
farther than half a league and then a couple of hours fishing with my line
in order to provide myself with a good provision of fish at each time ....
Such is my position, such is the life that I lead. I come and go when and
where it pleases me. The httle work that I have does not prevent me from
being free: all things considered, in one year I have only two days work
per week." I could be said that this is a strange ideal for a communist.
But forty years later, Bougeois, having become a shopkeeper in Dallas,
would still be a communist, corresponding with his brethren of the
Corning community and promising to go and visit them in Icaria.

Why did they leave France? It could be answered that they never
completely left. They took with them all the complexity of the democratic
and French socialist dream of the time. Their communism was an ideology
of emancipated workers, of men who rebelled against a world where the
egoism of the rich and the disdain of the powerful would not recognize
the individual rights of the proletariat to enjoy an individual life to the
full. This desire for emancipation, this desire for complete individuaUty
for all, was paradoxically sought after through the form of the ideal of
the community of work and brotherhood. More or less obscurely they
felt that the world of work forceably led to egoism, but that this was
compensated for by the dream of brotherly love. They carried this
contradiction with them. It was not entirely an illusion. In Icaria the work
was rude and often not very brotherly. But in the Icarian assembly, each
man had the right to speak and to take part in the legislative process. Cabet
is, I believe, the only leader of a Utopian community whom we have ever
seen overthrown by universal suffrage. The foundation of communism
was also that access to the public platform which goes hand in hand with
the modern development of the life of the individual. Their dream is
diametrically opposed to the rules that made a success of certain emigrant

communities; religious faith, absolute obedience, and sexual restriction.
Their communism was a dream of men who wanted to keep a foot in each
world. Even in the midst of defeat, they succeeded rather well.

ICARIAN MIGRATIONS FROM EUROPE TO ILLINOIS

Jules Renaud

My search for information about the Icarian migrations resuhed from
the habit of my father, Emile F. Renaud of saving photographs, news
clippings and other records of our family history. He was born and lived
for 76 years at 103 High Street in Keokuk, Iowa. He continued as an
optometrist until he retired in 1947 and, with my mother Eleanor Renaud,
moved to Fort CoUins, Colorado, where my family and I were living.

With their furniture and other belongings, my parents brought to
Colorado two trunks full of photographs, clippings and other items of
family interest.

My father died a few years later in Fort Collins. We moved to
Albuquerque, New Mexico and in 1953 I was transferred to Washington,
D.C. and the trunks of photos went along with us. Finally, in the past
five years, since I retired, I have been able to go through the material and
learn more about the Icarians. I mention this because I think it illustrates
one of the problems we have these days when so many of us are on the
move so much that many of our family records get lost. Ours could have,
but I am glad we were able to hold on to them as my wife and I lived
in over 20 different homes.

It was not until the nineteen fifties that I learned more about the Icarians
from our daughter. One of her high school assignments, in Virginia, was
to prepare a report on her family history, back to the first emigrant from
overseas. Fortunately, we were living just 12 miles from the Library of
Congress in Washington, so we were soon able to find out more about
the Icarians.

After my retirement, I began a more detailed search.

I am not a professional genealogist, but I am curious about my ancestors,
and being located close to the National Archives, the Library of Congress
and the DAR libraries, it seemed a shame not to search out new material

and prepare a short family history.

One of the first things I found was my lack of knowledge about the
migration of the Icarians from Europe to Nauvoo. How did it happen?
How did they get here, by train, by boat, or ox team, or did they walk?

A faded newsclipping told me of an interview in 1901 by a Keokuk
newspaper reporter with my grandfather, Jules Renaud and my
grandmother, Amanda Couloy Renaud.

The mention of Texas in this clipping gave me the first clue that the
Icarians emigrated to Nauvoo via Texas and New Orleans— at least the
first groups followed this route. I then visited the National Archives and
found that they have microfilm records of the passenger lists of all ships
arriving in New Orleans from 1820 to 1900. However, I did not know
the exact dates of the Icarian emigration except that it was around 1848,
and I found that during that year nearly two hundred thousand British
alone emigrated to the United States.

In looking through my father's trunk, I found the Jules Prudhommeaux's
book about the Icarians, all in French, of which I understand very little.
However, on page 238 I found a listing of the Icarian migrations with the
dates of the departures from France, usually from LeHavre. Also, a list
of the number of emigrants on each ship and name of the leader of each
group. This list totaled 485 including 259 men, 125 women and 101
children.'

Departs pour le Texas (1847-1848)

DATES

DESIGNATION
Des Departs

NUMBRE

DES
PARTANTS

DELEGUES

2 dec. 1847

Premiere Commission

Sully

3 fevr. 1848

Premiere Avant-garde

Gouhenant

3 hyub 1848

Deuxieme Avant-garde

Farvart jeune

12 aout, 1848

Commission des Cinq

Caudron aine

28 sept. 1848

Troisieme Avant-garde

Mazet

25 oct. 1848

Depart par Bordeaux

Pepin

2 nov. 1848

Premier grand depart

Prudent

12 nov. 1848

Deuxieme grand depart

Witzig

21 nov. 1848

Troisieme grand depart

114

Berthier

18 dec. 1848

Quatrieme grand depart . . .

Coutellier
259 hommes

TOTAL

485

125 femmes

Admis a la Nouvelle-Orleans

101 enfants

TOTAL GENERAL

496

However, having the departure date did not give me the date of their
arrival in New Orleans or the name of the ship. A little scanning of the
Archives microfilms showed there to be— in some cases— as many as ten
ships per day arriving in New Orleans from Europe with up to 3,000
passengers. Also, weather and wind delayed some ships so the passage
time varied widely. However, I did learn that the first Icarian group of
69 young men, led by M. Gouhenant, left LeHavre February 3, 1848, after
a trip of 52 days from LeHavre and the captain had listed 69 mens names
in a group and indicated they were Icarians— "Followers of Cabet." So
I had a nucleus of Icarian family names, but to my sad concern, no mention
of my grandfather. I thought this was strange. He had told the Keokuk
newspaper reporter that he was with the first group in Texas. So, I went
back and reread the clipping. What it actually said was the first settlement'
was in northern Texas. He did not actually say he was with them. But,
further on he did say "We went back to New Orleans." This sent me back
to the Icarian book and I noticed there were two "avant guarde partes" —
two advance parties— with the second having left LeHavre on June 3 1848,
and, there in perfect alphabetical order in the Captain's own handwriting

was the name of Jules Renaud. Also, to further confirm it, the Icarian
leader was Pierre Favard, who I know was a close personal friend of my
grandfather. There were also other well known names of Icarian families.

I decided to continue my search for additional ships and passenger lists.
But I did not have enough names of Icarian emigrants to be able to select
them from the ship's passenger lists which usually totaled two to three
hundred names. Which were Icarians? And which were not? I was pretty
well stymied. I was able to pin down the names of most of the first ten
ships, but on these I could not pick out the Icarians. A list of 276 names
of Icarians Hving in Nauvoo on June 1, 1850 from the federal census was
useful but there was no information about when they had arrived. ^

However, a second list prepared by Mary H. Siegfried in 1961 gave the
names of members of the Icarian commune as listed in the naturalization
application records of Hancock County, Illinois. After each name was the
birthdate, where born, when the person had applied for U.S. citizenship,
but most important to me, the dates of emigration from Europe and the
arrival date in New Orleans or in New York City.^ This gave me two dates,
leaving and arriving, which made it easier to find the names of the ships
matching these dates.

This still did not tell me who were the Icarians on board, but again, the
habits of sea captains helped. In his report for customs purposes, the
Captain would almost always list groups of passengers alphabetically. If
there were no groups traveling together, all passengers would be listed
alphabetically. By knowing many of the prominent Icarian names from
the naturalization Ust, I could usually backtrack and find the Icarian group
on each ship. This is not an absolutely accurate method, but it worked
well for me. By marking the names of the ships alongside families on the
census list of 1850, I found another interesting thing. All but one of the
first ten houses in Nauvoo visited by the census taker were occupied by
men and their families who came over on the ship "ROME." Then the
next few houses by those who traveled on the "HANNIBAL." These
included the single men's bunkhouse where my grandfather and 25 other
men lived, plus a few from the ship "VICTORIA" which arrived in New
Orleans November 24, 1848.

Later on, for example, two houses on the census list included 30 names
found on the passenger list for the "BRUNSWICK" which arrived
December 7, 1848. Going back and forth between these lists and spending
considerable time reading microfilms at the National Archives, I have
located many of the Icarian emigrants who arrived in 1848-49 and 1850.
But not all, as some came through New York City.

You may be interested to know that those who came through New York
City would usually go across New York State to Lake Erie, take a boat
down the Ohio river to Cape Girardeau, then by packet up the river to
St. Louis and Nauvoo. Again, these listings are not absolutely accurate
as the data I have collected is not complete, but I believe it will give the
future Icarian history scholars a few more dates and other data with which
to work.

As a sidelight, we should remember that many emigrants did not make
it. A Nauvoo, paper printed during the Icarian occupation tells of the
steamboat, "JOHN ADAMS" which had sunk a week earlier near Cairo,
Illinois. The report said 120 emigrants drowned, but that no ships officers
or cabin passengers were lost.

After a while, I found I was developing too many different lists of
emigrees to keep them straight in my mind. So I started a card file
alphabetically by the name of the emigrant Icarian for the period 1848
to 18^6. I have put on the card only the information I have developed
about that name.

This is not a complete history of these emigrants, but may be useful
to future researchers.

So, to sum up what I have learned about our Icarian ancestors. In
comparison with the histories of other socialistic enterprises, the Icarian
story is a peculiarly romantic and interesting one. Icaria's illustrative value
is far out of proportion to its membership, wealth or success. Most of the
Utopian societies had a religious basis rather than a socialistic origin. Their
socialism was incidential to their religious creeds. They believed
themselves to be favored with a special or divine revelation. Their
governments were therefore theocratic. Icaria, however, was an attempt

to realize the rational, democratic beliefs of the Utopian philosophers.
Icaria's difficulties were political, not religious.

As Thomas Rees said, "Icaria in Illinois finally demonstrated that a truly
altruistic society, where man must work, not for his own advancement,
but for the common good of all, is destined to be a failure until man has
reached a much higher plane of self sacrifice than existed then, or now."'^

ENDNOTES

' Jules Prudhommeaux, Icarie et son Fondateur Etienne Cabet (Paris; Edouard Cornely et
Cie, 1907), page 238.

^ 1850 Federal Population Census Schedule of Hancock County, Illinois taken as of June
1, 1850 by Wesley Williams, Assistant Marshall.

3 Names of members of the Icarian Commune, listed in the naturalization records of
Hancock County, Illinois, Books 1, 2, and 3. Compiled for the Nauvoo Historial Society
by Mary H. Siegfried, 1961-62.

* Thomas Rees, "Nauvoo, Illinois Under Mormon and Icarian Occupation, ' ' Journal ofUlinois
State Historical Society, Vol. 21, No. 4 (January 1929) pp. 514-521. pp. 506-524.

GLIMPSES OF THE IMMIGRATION OF FRENCH ICARIANS

TO AMERICA

Lloyd W. Gundy

Why Did They Come?

The number of French immigrants to the United States historically has
been low compared to that from other European countries. One writer
accounts for this by suggesting there was less pressure from population
growth in the home country.

The revolution had changed the social organization of
agriculture; . . .' there was plenty of fertile land to which a free
peasantry could feel attached. Any surplus of country people
could be absorbed in industry, in towns, or in North Africa . . .
Few Frenchmen left French territory altogether . . . Evidently
the political upheavals of the century had little effect on
emigration: perhaps institutions offered the discontented
opportunities for change at home.^

The Icarians would have taken exception to that last sentence. They
saw the situation from an entirely different perspective as the masthead
on their newspaper, Le Populaire, whose editor was Etienne Cabet,
proclaimed:

Work diminishes and unemployment increases, salary
declines and the price of rents are raised. All careers are
obstructed; the struggle extends its ravages: families multiply
and solid firms collapse; bread is lacking for the lowest classes;
the future is uncertain and dreadful, in great disarray. That is
the evil.

What is the cause? It is the extension of industry, the
multiplication of machines, the vices of social organization
based on individualism or selfishness.

The remedy, according to us Icarians, cannot be found

without a better organization of work in . . . Fraternity,
Equality, Liberty and Unity. Although we seek nothing but
justice, order and the goodwill of all . . . some hinder us, some
slander us, so that the establishment of our Community will
always be more difficult and slow in France than in a new
country.

In this situation, to enjoy our natural rights and the benefits
of nature, we Icarians . . . emigrate to America in order to
establish our Icarian Community. ^

Parenthetically, we do not intend to indicate that Icarian immigration
was entirely French in nature. In July, 1854, 405 people resided in the
colonies at Nauvoo and in Iowa. There were 65 Germans, 6 Swiss, 3
Italians, 3 Spanish, 1 each from Sweden, England and the United States,
and 325 French.

Preparations For The Trip

Many preparations were necessary in order to leave one's country
forever. There was the past to clear up, the present to look after, and the
future to prepare for. A pamphlet was prepared to aid the Icarians in this
regard.

A prospective immigrant must know how to read and write and sign
his name since he would have forms and documents to read and sign along
the way. He also had to be familiar with Icarian literature.

A person wishing to go must be committed to the Icarian philosophy.
For example, he must renounce private ownership of property. Money,
jewels, clothing, tools, weapons, etc. must be surrendered to the Colony
as a whole. He must forego anger and resentment; be prepared for
privation and fatigue; be devoted to his wife, children and Humanity. He
must

consent to that which the Community completely arranges
for the children . . . from their birth, without doubt, the mother
will have the right to suckle her child; but all questions which
concern the physical, intellectual and moral education of the

child belong to the Community. ^

There were many tangible steps to be taken. He must have a clothing
outfit sufficient for two years. He must be able to pay for his voyage to
Nauvoo and contribute at least $60 to the Community per adult, and $30
for each child under ten. One must have a birth certificate, passport, record
of military discharge. If he was a worker he needed to have his written
record of employment, which all workers were required by the
government to keep, signed by his patron and witnessed by the police
commissioner or mayor.

Finally, all things being in readiness, there was a rendezvous at Paris
with other companions to be. The emigres signed a promise that their
intention was to go directly to Nauvoo, not stopping at New Orleans or
St. Louis; that they fulfilled all conditions for admission to the Colony;
that they had the necessary money and clothing outfit. If the departing
group was about 30 in number, or more, they organized a formal system
of management, otherwise they traveled as individuals, not segregated
on board ship and not having a contract with the Captain for certain group
benefits. They were to take along provisions for 70 days, purchasing at
Paris such things as prunes, jams, cheese and tea; at Le Havre, wine, salt,
sugar, coffee, meat and bread. At all times they had to be vigilant not to
get cheated; merchants were known to sell short weights and spoiled
commodities.

Final Moments In France

The first group sent to America left Paris for Le Havre on January 29,
1848, amid the cheers and well wishes of a crowd gathered at the railroad
station to bid them goodbye. Monsieur Cabet accompanied them as far
as the port of Le Havre, where they spent a few days in final preparations
for the voyage. During the night of February 2, Cabet, who was called
a forcible and eloquent orator by a contemporary, ■* addressed those who
would leave and led them in taking an Icarian vow.

Do you persist in declaring that you know perfectly the
system, doctrine and principles of the Icarian Community?
Do you adopt, above all, the principle of Fraternity and

Community?

Are you resolved to endure all weariness and privation, to
brave all danger, in the general and common interest?

Is your acceptance, in your eyes, a genuine choice?

Do you vow to put yourself under control of the Director,
as I vow to consecrate all my existence to the realization of the
Community based on Fraternity?^

In his account of the evening, Cabet says that "each question was
received with a religious silence, and responded to with unanimous cries
in the middle of raptures of enthusiasm." There must have been no sleep
for the people involved since it was two the next morning when this scene
took place. At 3 A.M. they went aboard the ship Rome, which took them
to America.

This first group of Icarians, all men, called the "Premiere Avant-Garde,"
arrived March 27, 1848. The next three departures were also composed
entirely of men, followed by five more that year with men, women and
children.

The Voyage

Thus began the flow of Icarian emigration from France. Other groups
followed, first to Nauvoo, later to Cheltenham; some by way of New York,
others through New Orleans. I have chosen to highlight four journeys,
the first being that of M. Cabet.

The trip of Cabet himself differed from that of most other Icarian
voyages.^ He apparently traveled with only one other person; he made
the crossing on a steam powered vessel; and he left in a hurry without
much advance planning. He set out from Paris precipitously on December
13, 1848, for two reasons. First, the Icarians already in America were in
dire straits and needed his help. Second, in late November the National
Guard raided the offices of his newspaper and found some guns deposited
there. Cabet was sentenced to prison for this and expected to be taken
any day. He had to forego the pleasure of having what he would have
said heard by twenty thousand Icarians. He hurried to Boulogne where,
on December 14, he missed a boat to England by three minutes. He

caught the next one at 3 A.M. the next day. Making his way through Dover
and across England to Liverpool, he embarked for New York on the 16th
aboard the steamship Europa.

Sidewheel paddle steamers had been making the Atlantic crossing since
1843 in a faster time than sailing vessels. These steamers were equipped
with masts on which sail could be hoisted to furnish additional power
in case of favorable winds. The Europa, 251 feet long, 1825 tons, was
equipped with two engines totaling 2000 horsepower. She was operated
by the Cunard Line as a mail packet with an average speed of 10.5 knots.
Second class passage cost seventy dollars.^

With contrary winds and rough seas all the way, the voyage was not
pleasant. As the ship wallowed through the waves, water was dashed
across the deck, and people going to the dining room, or to their bunks,
were in water up to the knees. Many passengers were understandably
seasick as the ship powered its way through rain, snow, sleet, hail, and
even a hurricane. Having been unable to make reservations in advance,
Cabet found himself installed in the bow, a most undesireable location,
"where the movements of the vessel are felt the most."

After passing by way of Hahfax, where mail was delivered, the Europa
arrived at New York, December 31, 1848, after a voyage of 15 days. The
city presented a spectacle of "snow, cold and sleds, as in a city of Russia."

The next day after Cabet had left Paris, the Paris office received some
important letters from America addressed to him. The letters were copied
and sent to him at Liverpool in care of "some vessel which is leaving for
New York." They were put in a sack with other mail at Liverpool and
made the crossing, as Cabet says, "beside me without my being able to
suspect it." The letters finally reached his hands in New York.

There was an unwelcome delay to the trip in New York caused by a
shortage of transportation. Gold fever had gripped the East and passenger
bookings for sailing ships, steamships, steamboats, railroads and
stagecoaches were not available. Cabet was finally able to leave on January
7, 1849, probably taking the railroad overland and boats on the Ohio and
Mississippi down to New Orleans.

One well documented voyage was that of the American sailing ship,
Ashland,'wh\ch departed Le Havre on September 1, 1854. It was a three-
masted vessel of 100 tons, commanded by Captain Edward Stone. Fifty-
one Icarians were among the 186 passengers on board together with a
cargo of 350 cases of sardines, 236 barrels of herring, and 300 baskets
of champagne.^

As the Ashland was preparing to leave, the wife of M. Mercadier, who
could not bear the thought of leaving, broke away from her husband and
disembarked. Mercadier himself, a lawyer and secretary of the departing
group, later wrote that his courage and resolution never left him and he
was more than ever convinced to be a good Icarian and a useful member
of the Colony. In 1856, he, and a minority of the members of Nauvoo,
went with Cabet to St. Louis where he became president of the
Cheltenham-Sulphur Springs Colony. He later became a successful
merchant of the city.^

While the ship was leaving, the Icarians left the top deck and descended
stairs into the between-decks where they were quartered for the next 54
days. Here they united in singing which helped them deal with the
emotions of departure. i°

In the between-decks— the deck between the top deck and the hold,
sometimes called "steerage,"— one side was lined with bunks for men and
boys; the other side had bunks for women and girls. The Icarians screened
off each area by the hanging of mattress ticking and sheets. Down the
middle ran a large table with benches to sit on. It was a forbidding prospect
to live here for most of two months, the only natural light coming through
a hatch for stairs to the top deck, and ventilation very poor at its best.
It was suffocating in tropical heat and must have had a terrible odor. Small
wonder that most immigrants mention seasickness as one of the first
experiences on board. We find this graphic description in the Journal of
Health kept by the Icarians on board the Ashland:

Seasickness proceeds from rolling of the ship, a rolling which
produces a void in the chest and stomach, and which renders
the head heavy, and the sick ones insensible to everything . . .
The women are not more subject to it than men; the nursing

mothers little or none; the small children not the least in the
world."

Generally speaking, the Icarians kept to themselves on these voyages.
On the Ashland they occupied the rear third of the between-decks and
were separated from the other passengers by a board railing. They had
their own kitchen, group administration, and their own activities. All the
passengers, however, mingled on the top deck and most were sympathetic
to the Icarians, but one man, a sort of tragi-comic figure, roused their ire.

... it is a Frenchman, a Parisian, a man having expansive
notions, although superficial, speaking several languages, and
discussing on every point. ^^

One Icarian, Vaudran, with whom this man was friendly, ultimately
deserted the group upon arrival, taking his family with him.

Early in the morning of October 24, following an expectant night, "the
hospitable soil of the American Republic" came into view. The ship halted
at a point called the "Balizes," at the mouth of the Mississippi, to take on
a customs agent and a doctor, then proceeded up the Mississippi with the
help of a steam tugboat to the "beautiful port of New Orleans."

This tugboat, the Mary Kingsland, had a greater claim to fame, however,
working the same waters in early November, 1847, she steamed north
to New Orleans with General Zachary Taylor on board who was returning
from the Mexican War. "Old Rough and Ready" went to his home in Baton
Rouge where he remained for more than a year until taking office as 12th
president of the United States. ^^

Sometime in late 1848, or early in 1849, then President-elect Taylor met
with the Icarians at New Orleans. He advised them not to pursue any
further efforts in Texas, but, instead, to settle in the North. ^^^

Immigration After 1856

That part of the Colony at Nauvoo which broke away and went to St.
Louis continued to encourage immigration. A party of seven men and two

women answering the call embarked at Le Havre, September 4, 1857,
aboard {he Johannisberg. They were 63 days enroute to New Orleans, a
somewhat slow passage. Being small in number, the group decided not
to elect a president, considering only a treasurer and secretary to be
necessary. They were unable to reserve a segregated area for themselves
and were intermingled with the other 300 passengers. They did, however,
manage their own kitchen.

Generally, on immigrant voyages, the ship's master provided water for
the passengers, but they had to supply their own provisions. On board
the Johannisberg, after 30 days at sea, potatoes that were stored in the
damp, dark hold began to rot. After 50 days, rationing was necessary, with
only ham, rice and biscuits being left in good supply to the Icarians. Their
cook must have been a genius for their journal says he found "the means
to reconcile our appetites with the exigencies of our situation." Biscuits
and flour were enough to permit selling some to other passengers who
ran out of food.

The weather enroute was changeable, alternating between storms and
dead calm. One such weather shift occurred in early October.

The evening of the 7th, we are surprised by a rather violent
squall, rain falls in torrents and the wind blows with a crash
in our sails. It is a veritable tempest. The cries of the officers
and of the sailors who pass each other in the darkness to work
the rigging, the roaring of the waves which break themselves
on the sides of the ship, all is tumult, and all the thundering
gives to the scene a solemn and majestic work. We contemplate
avidly that magnificent and terrible spectacle. But soon the sails
sails are taken in and after some hours, the tempest completely
subsides. ^^

Fire on board a wooden vessel at sea is terrifying. On the morning of
October 29, a cry of Fire! Fire! produced a scene of scrambling panic. A
potful of grease on the cookstove ignited, and the flames spread throughout
the kitchen area. Calm under stress (the word used is sang-froid], the sailors
ran to the pumps and soon extinguished the blaze.

Another scene of human interest occured three days later. The sea was
smooth, the wind mostly calm, when an American sailing ship pulled close
enough to permit the Captains to talk with each other by the use of
megaphones.

Finally, the Johannisberg came to the Balizes where she was taken in
tow, together with two other vessels, by the towboat, St. Charles. They
docked at New Orleans on the 6th of November.

In point of time, the next departure from France was on February 22,
1858.^^ Having received a royal sendoff by 400 people at the railroad
station in Paris, eight Icarians boarded the train for Le Havre, where they
went aboard the Kate Dyer, a three-masted vessel of 1300 tons, the master
being Captain Dyer. After a few days at sea the first storm hit, very violent
in nature, at four in the morning. As the crew swarmed into the rigging
to furl the sails, six sails were torn to shreds. One sailor was wound up
in the ropes and crushed against the frame of the foresail. People who
were not braced in position in the between-decks could not stay upright.
Trunks were thrown about. Pieces of pottery and glass were broken with
a crash. Afterward, some sails "resembled lint," and they had to be
manufactured anew, while others could be repaired.

A few days later, a French passenger was walking around the ship when
suddenly he was knocked down by the Captain. He did not speak English
so the Captain could not communicate to him the reason for this action.
Later, after discussion, the Icarians decided the incident was due to some
noise made by the Frenchman in front of the cabin where the injured sailor
lay. No ill will resulted because, later on, the Icarians were able to bake
bread in the Captain's cabin.

Thefts were numerous on these journeys and the voyage of the
Johannisberg was no exception. One passenger, who had lost two watches,
complained to the Captain. A subsequent search found them, but not the
culprit, in a hideaway in the stern of the ship, together with eight keys
belonging to one of the Icarians. Later, some trunks were stolen at New
Orleans, and three more trunks disappeared off the steamboat deck on
which the Icarians went to St. Louis.

Of course there were many other voyages, but we make one final
observation here. One reads of a group departing France in July, 1859,
that when they reached New York, they had a very poor meal at a hotel
for which they were "fleeced" of $1.40 each. This group traveled from
New York to St. Louis (and Cheltenham-Sulphur Springs) on several
railroads and boats. Having to pay a high transport cost, and being charged
$50.00 for excess baggage, they were forced to sell 30 gallons of wine and
a trunk of table service.'^

Health Care Enroute

Before departure, the Icarians would lay in a supply of medicines to
call upon to combat seasickness as well as dysentery, fever and
convulsions, contusions, burns, constipation and even yellow fever. These
therapeutic preparations belonged to one of three classes: the Raspail
system, the Leroy system and the homeopathis system. A passenger might
have experience along these lines and so would be put in charge.

To elaborate upon the first system. In the nineteenth century, Monsieur
Raspail, a French politician, scientist and pharmacologist, had developed
a pharmacopoeia based on the use of camphor and other medicinal herbs
and plants.'^ These were recommended for migraine, toothache, cough,
cold, asthma, whooping cough, heartburn, rheumatism and skin diseases.
He opened a clinic to treat the poor and made known some of his formulas
which any practitioner in the provinces could use. Even as late at 1968
there was a Pharmacie Raspail in Paris, and camphor, of course, is still
in use by modern medicine. Raspail also published a health manual which
was used by the Icarians. Coincidentally, in June, 1847, Etienne Cabet
sent an acquaintance to Raspail for consultation, and both Raspail and
Cabet were posed as candidates for President of France in 1848.

Many of the drugs used in the mid-nineteenth century had a scientific
foundation. For example, wintergreen oil for arthritis, witch-hazel, tincture
of Arnica for compresses and mustard plasters were known and used. The
practice of homeopathy, however, seemed to have no basis in scientific
fact. Part of the procedure involved mixing certain liquid preparations,
shaking them, and the molecules thus vibrated supposedly produced
material having magical properties.!^

To date, I have been unable to find information about the Leroy system.

The Icarian medical history produced some happy events, as well as
some abysmally dark moments. On the one hand, on board the Ashland,
an infant was restored to health whose lips were "already faded by the
icy countenance of death," and a case of dysentery was cured. At the end
of the journey, this entry appears in the Journal of Health:

Our health has been good, graced by the practice of
cleanliness, joined to it the hygenic prescriptions. We do not
have any death to regret. As to illnesses, the care and
medications given and distributed with devotion and
intelligence made them disappear without recurrence. ^o

On the other hand, there were the ravages of cholera. The 280 Icarians
who, with Cabet, made the 1300 mile trip up the Mississippi to Nauvoo
in March, 1849, traveled in the midst of a cholera epidemic which gripped
the entire trans-Mississippi basin. New Orleans reported many deaths,
200 on one day, 100 on another. Farther south, Brownsville, Texas was
said to have lost one half of its population. Boats on the inland waterways
were stopped by the illness of their crews. The disease unhappily made
its effects known among the Icarians. One is saddened to read the detailed
medical report of deaths which took 5 people on the river and 18 more
at Nauvoo prior to April 17. Cholera was the cause of death in at least
fifteen of the cases. ^i

The enlistment of professional medical people seemed to be a constant
problem. For example, when the first Avant-Garde arrived in New
Orleans, Dr. LeClerc promptly deserted it, taking his surgical tools and
four other Icarians with him. 22 Dr. Roveira, although incompetent,
remained with the group during the summer in Texas, only to die by his
own hand after they had been forced back to New Orleans. One doctor
in the colony at Nauvoo left after a term of one year, taking two orderlies
with him, and another doctor lasted only four months.

New Orleans and the Mississippi

We have already noted how New York appeared to Cabet like a city

in Russia. The immigrants' impression of New Orleans was mixed. The
Ashland group saw it as a "beautiful port." Another man, Pierre Roux,
thought it was a busy commercial city, where "one day one sank to the
eyes in mud, the next day one is blinded by dust."^^ Auguste Roine wrote
home that one December 10, 1848, he saw five ships arrive, each having
300-350 immigrant passengers, and a group of 1000 Irish milling about
on the quai.2'^ The city completely put off Monsieur Prudent who said
"New Orleans is the most disgusting and coarse city that it is possible
to see . . . imagine a large Bohemia where all is a resume of the word
'dollar.' "25

The Mississippi was admired. "Wide as an arm of the sea, profound
as the ocean, it justifies its reputation and one understands why the Indians
named it 'the Father of Waters.' "

In spite of some members being sick to the death on board the Marshal
Ney, Cabet, with the group of 280 in March, 1849, commented:

We took joy at the magnificient spectacle of the superb
Mississippi, always bordered by forests, and nearly always
flooded, . . . Many times we spent the evening in a vocal and
instrumental concert during which, by a fine moonlight, the
Mississippi could be surprised to hear our Icarian songs. ^^

There were painful moments on the river as well. The steamboat. City
of Memphis, carrying the 1858 group who came over on the Kate Dyer,
collided with another boat descending the river, apparently without serious
damage as they proceeded after a few hours. We have already mentioned
the terrible cholera deaths on the river in March, 1849.

"Je Suis Citoyen Americain"

Many of the Icarians, having established themselves in the United States,
and with the passing of the years, took steps to become naturalized citizens.
According to Cabet, sixty-three of those who arrived with the original
group declared their intention at Carthage, the county seat, on July 30,
1852. Twenty-nine received their citizenship papers in October of 1854,
including Cabet. 2''

An examination of the record leads one to speculate about loose
application of the naturalization procedure on the part of county officials.
Rule one was that the candidate must be three years in continuous
residence in the U.S. before declaring his intention to become naturalized.
On July 30, 1852, some were permitted to declare who had been residents
for only a few months. Indeed, Hancock county records of Cabet himself
show that he swore on his declaration that he had, ever since his first
arrival, remained within the limits of the United States. Two citizens, at
the time of his naturalization, October 9, 1854, swore that Cabet had been
a resident for at least five years. In point of fact, he left the United States
in May of 1851, and returned June 30, 1852, an absence of over a year.

But this is not to detract from the good intentions in the hearts and minds
of those who undertook to become American citizens. To lift a quotation
from Nordhoff, " 'Please deal gently and cautiously with Icaria ... It,
and it alone, represents in America a great idea— rational, democratic
communism.' "^s

ENDNOTES

1 Philip Taylor, The Distant Magnet: European Immigration to the U.S.A. (New York: Harper
and Row, 1971), page 47.

^ Le Populaire, September 2, 1849.

^ Cabet, Prospectus de la Colonie Icarienne (Paris: by the author, 1855), page 23.

* Emile Vallet, Communism: History of the Experiment at Nauvoo of the Icarian Settlement
(Nauvoo, Illinois: The Nauvoo Rustler, sans date), page 19.

5 For the complete version see "Celebration du lO'^ Anniversaire," Nouvelle Revue
Icarienne, February 15, 1858, page r.

* "Voyage de M. Cabet," Le Populaire, February 18, 1849, page 1.

' F. Lawrence Babcock, Spanning the Atlantic (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1931), page 90.

* Cabet, Prospectus, pages 47-63; U.S. National Archives, Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving
at New Orleans, 1820-1875; Nevi) Orleans Bee, October 25, 1854, classified section, "Marine
News."

^ Jules Prudhommeaux, Icarie et son Fondateur Etienne Cabet (Paris: Edouard Cornely et
Cie, 1907), page 469. Reprinted by Porcupine Press, Inc., Philadelphia, 1972.

'0 The Icarians had a repertoire of songs and during the Ashland voyage a singing teacher
gave lessons to occupy the children. A verse from one of these songs, called the Icarian
Departure Song, went as follows:

Rise O Worker stooped in the dust,

The hour of awakening has rung.
On the American shore watch the banner

of the holy Community wave.
No more depravity, no more suffering,

No more crimes, no more pains.
Majestic Equality marches forward;

Proletarian, dry your tears,
Let us found our Icaria,

Soldiers of the Brotherhood,
Let us found in Icaria

Humanity's happiness.

-from Prudhommeaux, page 611.

" Colony Icarienne, November 29, 1854, page 1, ff.

'^ Cabet, Prospectus, page 55.

'3 Brainerd Dyer, Zachary Taylor (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1946),
page 253.

'* Ou le Communisme peut-il s' etablir?, Le Populaire, April 15, 1849, page 3.

'5 "Journal de Voyage," Nouvelle Revue Icarienne, December 1, 1857, page 2.

'* "Depart du 22 Fevrier, ' ibid., June 1, 1858, page 1.

" "Depart de Juillet, 1859," ibid., October 1, 1859, page 3.

'* Dora B. Weiner, Raspail: Scientist and Reformer (New York: Columbia University Press,
1968), pages 135-163.

" For information in this paragraph I am indebted to Albert Kalisker, Ph.D., of Wheatridge,
Colorado.

^ Colonie Icarienne, November 29, 1854, page 1, ff.

^' "Etat des Icariens morts . . . etc.," Le Populaire, July 1, 1849, page 3. Some authors such
as Gallaher, Cohen and Shaw inaccurately say 20 died between New Orleans and Nauvoo.
Rees states the deaths were kept secret so prospective members would not be discouraged.
This does not seem to be the case, since the above reports of deaths were written up
on later than April 17 for publication.

" This defection left 64 people who made the trek into Texas, not 69 as sometimes stated.
See "Etat de la 1 Avant-Garde au 1 mars, 1849," ibid., page 2.

" Sherman B. Barnes, "An Icarian in Nauvoo," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society,
XXXIV (June, 1941), page 236.

2* "Extrait dune lettre de Roine Auguste," Le Populaire, February 18, 1849, page 2.

25 "Lettre de Prudent a son ami Ar-," ibid., February 18, 1849, page 2.

" "Lettre de M. Cabet," ibid.. May 20, 1849, page 1.

" "Naturalization des Icariens," colonic Icarienne, October 18, 1854, page 1.

28 Charles Nordhoff, The Communistic Societies of the United States (New York: Schocken
Books, 1875), second printing, 1966, page 339.

THE ICARIAN ZION: NINETEENTH CENTURY PURITANS

Robert P. Sutton

Each of the three fine papers read this afternoon stress, in their own
way, the unique circumstances which compelled Europeans in the 1850s
to settle at the Nauvoo Icaria. The reasons for the embarkation were
varied— economic, ideological, and political— but all of the immigrants,
being Icarian converts, had a common eschatology. Icarians, it seems,
believed that salvation lay in a community based upon the brotherhood
of man created in America. The initial feeling about the actual founding
of Icaria was intense and, like so many earlier expectations of a New
Jerusalem, was short lived.

Professor Ranciere's paper, evidence of thorough research in original
sources in European libraries, details the inescapable frustrations which
the Icarians felt toward life as it was. "Death is preferable to life," one
of them lamented, "in today's wretched society." And, since they
perceived their world as being so wretched it was, in fact, totally miserable
for them. In addition to being miserable, Ranciere sees the Icarians as
being torn, emotionally, by a series of contradictions within themselves
as Icarians versus Frenchmen. On one hand, they stressed middle class
"cohesiveness" yet were outlandish elitists in their perception of
themselves as Icarians: most of the middle class could not hope to qualify
for admission to their community. They condemned materialism (as
opposed to spiritual values) yet had to tackle the nuts and bolts problems
of running a new community in America. They embraced the community
based on the brotherhood of mankind but were, as it turned out, prideful
individualists. They were, as a group, urban idealists— even Cabet's Voyage
en Icahe was cast entirely in an urban setting— yet had to face the realities
of an agrarian environment in Illinois. They posed as Rationalists but at
the core, I believe, were emotional Romantics. Hence, because of these
dichotomies in their background and make-up Icarians were predestined,
in their community at Nauvoo, to failure.

Mr. Renaud shows, by exhaustive research in the National Archives
spanning a decade of continuous excavation, that indeed, Icarians

embarked from divergent geographical backgrounds and practiced
different occupations. The Manifest Lists are a gold mine of hard data
which reinforces, on this side of the Atlantic, Professor Ranciere's
investigations. Mr. Renaud is, in my opinion, a paragon of the historian
as detective. Here is a scholar who, bit by bit, painstakingly reconstructs
the picture of Icarian immigration. Moreover, Renaud's data, added to
some work I have done in the Illinois Census, add another insight into
the Icarians at Nauvoo. Despite their disparate origins, once in Illinois
they lived in an ethnic ghetto within the city of Nauvoo itself. During the
1850s the Icarians counted only 25 percent of the total Nauvoo population
and while they were there they kept to themselves politically, and above
all, culturally.

Mr. and Mrs. Gundy have focused upon the ship crossings to America.
The Gundys, too, see severe contradictions in the Icarians on the trans-
Atlantic steamers. Icarians insisted upon complete dedication to the needs
of the community yet at the same time stressed unquestioned obedience
to the leaders of the group. They felt themselves a model of universal
brotherhood but appeared reluctant to welcome with enthusiasm any new
members encountered on the trip. The Gundys' research provides new
glimpses into hitherto neglected aspects of the Icarian immigration: Cabet's
hasty departure from France and his frustrations in getting from New York
to New Orleans. The Gundy's investigations, like that of Ranciere and
Renaud, are thorough and accurate.

In all, the portrait of the Icarian immigration given by these three
scholars is one of latter-day Puritans. Like their seventeenth-century
predecessors to a New Zion in Massachusetts Bay, these nineteenth-
century dissenters from the orthodoxy of Industrial Capitalism set out on
a clearly defined series of steps to erect a model society on earth and,
by example, to show others divine will in human action. They believed
in a moral emancipation, first, in renouncing the sins of capitalism, money
and property. Then, through participation in an errand into the wilderness
of frontier America they expected from the start to find in their new life
a spiritual regeneration. Finally, there was salvation itself in living together
where each would give according to his ability and would receive
according to his needs. "In one word," Cabet wrote in the first chapter

of the Voyage en Icarie, "Icaria is truly a second Promised Land, an Eden,
and Elysium, a new Earthly Paradise." His followers believed him.

CABET'S DREAM, TOCQUEVILLE'S REALITY

Wayne Wheeler

America, the land of the future, was also the land of individual
materialism and egalitarian communalism.

These are basic truths that Cabet and the Icarians shared by vision and
experience with their contemporary, Alexis de Tocqueville. It was to
America that both Cabet and Tocqueville looked in their attempts to bring
intellectual and political order to the great upheavals of their time. It was
to America that both traveled, Cabet to construct what he hoped would
become a model for the future, Tocqueville to understand the great
democratic experiment from which the future would be constructed.

In their performance on the stage of history, the Icarians attempted to
enact a medieval script, written from the Christianity of St. Thomas More
but inappropriate except as it was to be re-written by events and
experience. Cabet's Icaria promised both a familiar, closed, and finite
community and its opposite, an opportunity for a new life of full belonging
and total access. His optimistic vision offered hope to those who were
dispossessed and declassed and seeking freedom from the uncertainty and
injury inflicted by the transition to the new era.

The vision was fraught with paradox. On the one hand, it promised the
destruction of the routines and repressions of community. On the other
hand, it promised the retention of community. It promised both the
belongingness of community and unrestricted opportunity for the
development of personal ambition.

Tocqueville recognized the irony. Democratic America was redefining
liberty and freedom in terms of material well-being, or the expectation
of it, for those who by ambition and talent would exploit nature and their
fellow man. This was the juncture at which the medieval world was
destroyed and the modern world was constructed. America, the land of
the future, would become the anti-utopian community in which all citizens
were at once alike in their thinking, behavior, and aspirations, equal

individuals unfree in their brotherhood.

Tocqueville's sense of the irony of history enabled him to foretell these
developments. Cabet's romantic ideology prevented him from coming to
terms with them. Tocqueville, the analyst, saw the inherent paradox in
a society whose orderliness depended on egaUtarian suppression of dissent
and the restriction of personal hberty. Cabet's Utopia depended on that
suppression and restriction.

The great upheavals of the early 19th century and the visions they
generated, properly understood, foreshadowed the future of humankind
in modern society. Tocqueville the scientific pessimist set down his
observations; Cabet the romantic optimist set down his dreams. It was
America, the great experiment in Utopian realism, that appealed to the
many levels and divisions in French society. Each group saw what it
needed to see.

In the end, in America, as Tocqueville anticipated, the social
republicanism of Cabet, like all gardens, contained the seeds of its own
distruction. Equality became personal action without personal
responsibility. The abundance of resources redefined liberty and
channeled personal talent and initiative into material well-being and
personal indulgence. Good will and moral community were not sufficient
to mitigate against new opportunities for greed in the mass society. The
latter years of the 20th century seem destined to prove both Cabet and
Tocqueville, the two 19th century visionaries, correct.

ONE MAN'S VOYAGE TO ICARIA

Dale W. Ross

Early Life Influences

Armel Alexis was born on December 15, 1813 into the family of the
blacksmith Claude Armel Marchand and his wife Helene (Le Gal) in the
small town of Ploermel in Brittany (see map, next page).^

It was a large family, with five other brothers and one sister. The
blacksmith father worked in the shop on the lower floor of the home. The
upper floor, where the family lived, consisted of only one room; all the
beds were arranged like those of a ship's forecastle (a portend of Armel's
later voyage from France on the ship, Rome?]. Most nights, the children
fell asleep to the song of their father's anvil— as he fashioned horseshoes,
nails and other hardware. Claude Armel was a man of small stature but
skilled in his craft to the point that plenty of work came his way, and
he even employed an assistant.

The family's life was spartan in every way. The home had barely enough
space for such a large family, and their meals were meager too. In fact,
the daily fare prepared by their mother Helene was usually buckwheat
cakes and clabbered milk.

In such simple surroundings, one can imagine a young Armel Alexis
frequently dreaming of other worlds far away to the worlds of— ideas and
literature, not hammers and anvils;— cities and civilization, not a small
country town.

Armel Alexis' mother Helene died while he was a boy, and his father
remarried. The hard blacksmith's life must also have taken an early toll
on his diminutive father, Claude Armel, for he died in 1829 at age 45.
Armel Alexis was only 16 years old when his father died. Both parents
had been lost before he was barely an adult; Armel Alexis would have
to make what he could of his own life.

Brest
BRITTANY • Rennes
• Ploermel

Paris

Vannes

Nantes'

lo/re

FRANCE

Armel's boyhood days from 1813 to 1830 coincided with France's
restoration of the Bourbon monarchy and France's return to conservatism.

The Bourbons (Louis XVIII during 1814-24 and Charles X during
1824-30) came back to power after the most tumultuous time in French
history. The 25-year period ending in 1814 included the French Revolution,

the Reign of Terror, and the Napoleonic empire.

Rising from the ashes of the Napoleonic wars, the Bourbon restoration
met with the acceptance of the allies who had fought Napoleon.
Consequently the 1814 Treaty of Paris allowed France to retain its natural
borders and to even recover some of her colonies.

However, Napoleon escaped from Elba in early 1815, pushed the
monarchy aside, and rallied the French for one last "Hundred Days" war
campaign. The Hundred Days ended in June when Napoleon was defeated
at Waterloo and later imprisoned by the British on the isle of St. Helena.
A second Peace of Paris in November of 1815 was harsher on France.
An indemnity was imposed and foreign troops were to occupy French
territory until it was paid.

Louis XVIII came back into rule under a constitutional monarchy.
However, the constitution was not a covenant between ruler and people;
it was a charter granted by the sovereign. In fact, the charter was dated
"the ninteenth year of our reign"— as if the years of the French Republic
and the Napoleonic Empire had never existed! France returned to rule
by a conservative government, one influenced heavily by royalists and
the Catholic church.

But these were times in which the political winds were blowing with
Hberalism, not conservatism. The industrial revolution was maturing in
France, and as it did, it created large classes of workers in cities such as
Paris. University students were also a force for liberalism.

Upon Louis XVIII's death in 1824, his brother came to the throne as
Charles X. During Charles' reign, the forces of liberalism and conservatism
collided. Liberals gained a majority in the Chamber, and between 1827
and 1830 the Chamber was constantly at odds with Charles X and his
ministers. Finally, in May of 1830 Charles dissolved the Chamber, muzzled
the press, and altered the electoral law to stretch his powers. These actions
were too much for gagged journalists, university students, and the
workingmen of Paris. In July, three days of street fighting in Paris toppled
Charles X's government and sent him into exile. Liberalism had prevailed.

The events of 1814-1830 had such an enormous effect on all of France
that Armel Alexis Marchand could hardly have been unaffected. The
events of the time showed that France had moved all over the political
spectrum in a single hfetime. He probably sensed early that almost any
political turnabout was possible. And, the fact that Armel Alexis came
from the working class must have had its imprint too. He had seen his
family's struggle and seen both parents die before he was 16 years old.
He knew, first hand, that the life of the French working class was not good.

In the early 1830's Armel Alexis finished his secondary education at
the College Royal-Communal de Vannes, at Vannes, a city in Brittany near
his hometown of Ploermel (see earlier map).

He was a good student. In particular, he excelled in mathematics; among
papers he carried with him (even to America) is one document signed by
the Principal of the College de Vannes awarding him "le Prix d' Excellence"
in mathematics for the 1st academic semester of 1834-35.

Armel Alexis' education must have stimulated a need to seek work other
than the hard manual labor that was the way of life in Brittany. So he
moved to Paris in the early 1840's. Brittany could support rural or seafaring
occupations; a city like Paris was the place for an eager young man.

Parisian Influences

Armel Alexis Marchand came to Paris sometime after completing his
education. There he worked as a legal clerk for barrister employers.

He was apparently a good employee; one barrister provided a written
commendation in January 1843, and another gave him one in January
1848.

That Armel Alexis worked for the legal profession may do much to
explain his later connections to the Icarian cause.

First of all, the founder of the Icarian movement himself, Etienne Cabet,
was a barrister and served in public legal capacities. In fact, in 1830 on
the threshold of the formulation of his Utopian concepts, Cabet was

Prosecutor-General for Corsica. Cabet had friends and associates in the
legal profession; undoubtedly this network of contacts later aided his
organization of the Icarian movement.

Secondly, the legal profession was one in which political independence
was possible. This independence allowed freedom of discussion about a
variety of political and legal systems— other than that of the ruling
monarchy.

Thirdly, because a liberal education at the university normally ended
with the study of law, thousands of university students had legal training.
The result was that the legal profession of France was vastly overcrowded
in the 1840's. Young barristers or would-be barristers without clients,
living from hand to mouth by private tutoring or literacy hack work, were
a principal ingredient of the "intellectual proletariat." Young legal
professionals espoused the causes of republicanism or even utopianism.
Many of these young men were probably friends and associates of Armel
Alexis.

In the late 1840's people could finally meet and form associations
without restrictions. Hundreds of clubs or associations formed in Paris.
Many young men's clubs were created— often around a political or social
theme. One can imagine dozens of young men, like Armel Alexis, crowding
small halls. The clamor of frenzied discussion and debate must have
heightened the exitement of their cause.

Perhaps Armel Alexis joined a club of Utopians. In this environment,
it's quite likely they debated the political and social implications of Cabet' s
Icaria.

The Unsuitable Reign of King Louis Phillipe

After the 1830 exile of Charles X, the last of the Bourbons, new
leadership was needed. Such senior statesmen as Lafayette and Tallyrand
lent their support to a new constitutional monarchy under the Orlean king,
Louis Phillipe. Louis Phillipe was installed not as king of France, but as
"king of the French." And the national flag once again became the tricolor
flag of the French Revolution.

The new government set about coming to terms with the problems of
developing French industry and the country's transport system. And, via
the diplomatic skills of Tallyrand, France cultivated cordial foreign
relations with its European neighbors— especially England. Domestic
reconcilation with the Bonapartists was fulfilled too; the statue of Napolean
was restored on top of the Vendome column, the Arch de Triumph was
completed, and Napolean was put to final rest in the domed tomb of the
Invalides.

But beneath these successes of the new regime, key issues remained
unaddressed— namely, the issues of parliamentary electoral reform and
male suffrage (voting rights were restricted to only heavy taxpayers).
Liberals, Utopians, and other factions all promoted their visions of a more
participative government.

In 1830, at the start of Louis Phillipe's regime, Etienne Cabet was
actually part of the regime! He had been appointed Prosecutor-General
of Corsica. But he quickly became disappointed with the regime and
became active in the liberal opposition. Because of his blind attacks on
powerful vested interests in Corsica, he was dismissed from his position.
But he went on to be elected a deputy for Dijon, and used his new position
to demand a true republic, with votes, educations, and a decent living
for the masses. His newspaper, Le Populaire, was distributed to the working
classes. His actions repeatedly got him arrested and finally, in 1835 he
was forced into exile in England. There, in 1840, he first published his
famous Utopian work. Voyage en Icarie.

1839 was the beginning of greater political strife in Paris. On May 12,
1839, a secret Society of the Seasons, which supported the working class,
seized portions of Paris in an attempted coup. But, by nightfall of the same
day, they were routed and the coup against Louis Phillipe failed. Armel
Alexis' brothers Gabriel and Julien and a comrade they called Citizen
Dorgal were arrested in the aftermath of the attempted coup. Although
there is no record of an arrest, it's likely that Armel Alexis also participated
in the attempted coup.

Throughout the 1840s, Cabet's vision of Icaria fired the imagination of
thousands of French. Armel Alexis Marchand was one of those people,
and he responded by helping to organize the Icarian movement in Paris.

By 1848, the calls for reform were taking the form of organized political
campaigns. The campaigns had spread to all parts of the country and to
all classes. But the government did not allow political meetings. Banquets
were allowed however, and a great banquet in Paris on February 2, 1848
served as the event that began the toppling of Louis Phillipe. Someone
panicked, shots were fired and the banquet turned into a riot. Barricades
were put up throughout Paris, and street fighting began. Within the week,
the National Guard had turned against Louis Phillipe and he fled to
England in exile.

To America

By the late 1840s thousands of French called themselves Icarians. So,
in 1847, Cabet had sufficient support to announce a plan to establish an
Icarian colony. Armel Alexis Marchand was one of the first Icarians to
volunteer to leave France to found the first Icarian colony, in America.
Because of its principles of personal and poHtical freedom, America would
be the ideal place to put Icarianism to work.

Armel Alexis and the other first Icarians were probably forced to hurry
their departure by certain events of January, 1848. By that time, the
government of Louis Phillipe was wary of all communist or socialist
movements— including that of the Icarians. Increasingly the government
looked upon them as a terrifying menace.

The catalyzing event for hastening the Icarians' departure from France
may have been the article carried in the liberal Journal des debats on
January 20, 1848. The article was headlined "The Communists are about
to Rise" and warned that 30,000 communists were ready to take arms
to overthrow the government. No doubt this article made both the Icarians
and the government of Louis Phillipe fearful of one another. It appears
that the Icarians waited no longer and immediately made way for Le
Havre, where they boarded the Rome for America.

The original group of Icarians had already set sail as the final events
of February 1848 ended the monarchy and sent Louise Phillipe into exile.

When Armel Alexis Marchand fled, with the other Icarians, for
America— he left two brothers, Gabriel and Julien, in Paris. They had been
involved in the attempted coup of 1839, and now they were to be involved
in another larger Parisian uprising. In June of 1848, 100,000 unemployed
workers and sympathizers barricaded the streets and workers fought the
bourgeoise. Workers fought shopkeepers and landlords. In the end, the
workers paid a price; 11,000 of them were imprisoned or deported and
another 1,500 shot without a trial. Civil liberties, such as the right to form
organizations, to strike, and freedom of speech were ended.

Armel Alexis' brother Julien and his comrade. Citizen Dorgal, were
among those deported. They were both deported to Africa (to a place called
Lambessa). It was not until 1855 that they were allowed to return to
France.

Armel Alexis had a long journey ahead of him, and an unsettled France
was left behind.

' Author's note: Armel Alexis Marchand was the author's great-great grandfather. He
was among the original group of Icarians who left Le Havre on February 3, 1848 for
America. He was active in the Icarian community in Nauvoo, and later was president
of the Iowa Icarian community for most of its existence. The information here is drawn
principally from a letter from Armel Alexis' brother Gabriel who, with the rest of Armel
Alexis' family, stayed in France. Gabriel Marchand's letter was headlined "Souvenirs,
Necrologique, Chronologique, Genealogique, Historique, etc. etc. etc. ..." dated le 1
Decembre 1881, and sent from Rue de Belleville 38, Paris. It updates Armel Alexis on
the family in France. In the process, it tells much about Armel Alexis' past. Information
in the letter was corroborated with family records and the author's correspondence and
conversations with his late cousin Ernest Marchand, a grandson of Armel Alexis Marchand.
Historical background material was obtained from: Albert Guerrard, France, a Modem
History, University of Michigan Press, 1959; and Theodore Zeldin, France 1848-1945, Vol.
1, Oxford University press, 1973.

Wm'

■mw

vJjSmB

■mGnS

"iMWfl

KjSLa

W^^imltWa

ImV/

KJ^M^"^

«^'

^H^^p

Bp-

^^fc

'^■M

I'M?

:^:^»'

&^v

Internet Archive Audio

Featured

Top

Images

Featured

Top

Software

Featured

Top

Books

Featured

Top

Video

Featured

Top

Mobile Apps

Browser Extensions

Archive-It Subscription

Save Page Now

Full text of "Immigration of the Icarians to Illinois : proceedings of the Icarian Weekend in Nauvoo : Nauvoo, Illinois, July 19 & 20, 1986"

See other formats