image id: ps_prn_cd38_552
James Akin (1773–1846)
A Downwright Gabbler, or a Goose That Deserves to Be Hissed
Lithograph, hand-colored
Philadelphia: J. Akin, 1830s
NYPL, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, Print
Collection
Frances Wright, a philanthropist of Scottish birth, founded Nashoba, in Tennessee,
as a utopian community to educate slaves in preparation for freedom. Lacking
proper planning, it became a large mud puddle full of tree stumps and only
a few half-finished buildings. Wright’s friend, the writer Frances Trollope,
who had hoped to teach there, later described it: “Desolation was the
only feeling—the only word that presented itself.” Nashoba was
abandoned, but Frances Wright persevered with a speaking tour promoting her
utopian ideals; although she was a marvelous public speaker, her ideas prompted
caricatures such as this one.
