 Fuller embraces in this article both Romantic and Enlightenment ideals of democracy and scorns America’s cant about democracy while betraying it in practice. “I need not speak of what has been done towards the red man, the black man” (1843: 8; 1845: 14), she comments in disgust. Now she views feminism as expressing a parallel objective with the abolition of slavery: both causes labor on behalf of the individual seeking to realize personal potential (as do other reform causes like temperance and public education for children and the mentally retarded). Only after her move to Europe, however, would her commitment to radical social change become complete.