Cabet

Cabet, Etienne (1788-1856), founder of a French sect of communists, was born at Dijon, the son of a cooper. He became an advocate, and obtained a legal appointment in Corsica, which he lost owing to the expression of views which were too democratic for the government. He was elected to the chamber of representatives, but in 1834 his attacks on the government led to his prosecution and flight to England. Here he read More's Utopia, and after his return to France in 1837, he wrote his Voyage en Icarie, a Utopian romance, that became the textbook of the communist sect of "Icarians." In 1848 he sent out a communistic colony to Red River, Texas, and the next year went out himself. Finding his new colony at sixes and sevens, he left them to themselves, and went with a few followers to Nauvoo, from which the Mormons had been expelled, only returning to France when some of his former colonists accused him of fraud. When acquitted, he returned to America, and remained at his new colony till in consequence of dissensions he was removed from the command of it, and visited with a kind of ostracism. He then retired to St. Louis, where he soon died broken-hearted.