Frances Wright was a scottish-born immigrant to America who advocated feminism, abolitionism, as well as the working man's rights. Her ideas weren't based in simplicity though, and much like Walt Whitman, were grounded in basis of American ideology: opportunity. For example, Franny believed one couldn't just free the slaves for it would illegitimize the slave owner's right to property. Whitman also felt slaves couldn't be freed simply for it would uproot the very foundations of America. One needs to think of the good of the whole rather than the part as these two seemed to believe.
How they are more directly connected is through the influences of Franny's ideologies had specifically on Walt and his father. Walter Whitman Sr. was a member of the Locofoco Party, a radical wing of the Democratic Party localized mainly in New York that backed the workingman and state banks, monopolies, paper money etc. They distrusted any small organizations that had large control over the masses. This makes me understand Walt Whitman a little more because it seems to me that it didn't really matter WHAT people wanted for him... as long as the wishes of the larger population were granted that was okay, and I think that's what Franny was trying to say as well. And this matches the culture of America for it's not necessarily equality in content but equality in opinion. It's okay that the President and the Prostitute have their unequal places in the hierarchal society, but they are equal in the sense of being a person and having opinions, the only difference comes from how they got to where they ended up, it doesn't make them any less or more of a person.
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