was forbidden because it exploited slave labor and wool was banned because it came from sheep. As they believed that animals should not be exploited, Fruitlands would not use animals though, eventually, they allowed an ox and a cow. The land that Lane purchased for Fruitlands proved to be not sufficiently arable. Fruitlands ultimately failed the winter after it opened, largely due to food shortages and accompanying unrest in the inhabitants. Lane blamed the community's failure on Alcott, who he believed misled him with his optimism. Alcott and Lane also disagreed on definitions of the consociate family. Lane believed in the renunciation of marriage in exchange for a universal or communal family. Shakers In January 1844, Lane left Fruitlands with his son to join a local community of Shakers. Lane admired the Shaker commitment to celibacy and it was one of the points that drew him there. Lane continued his work and joined the Shaker community; but could not settle there. He attempted another communal venture at Red Bank, New Jersey. He was only there for a short time. In 1846 he returned to England, remarried, and fathered five children. Voluntaryist leanings Charles Lane was probably the most consistent voluntaryist of the abolitionist era. He was friendly with Amos Bronson Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Thoreau. Between January and June 1843 a series of nine letters he penned were published in such abolitionist's papers as The Liberator and The Herald of Freedom. The title under which they were published was "A Voluntary Political Government," and in them Lane described the state in terms of institutionalized violence and referred to its "club law, its mere brigand right of a strong arm, [supported] by guns and bayonets." He saw the coercive state on par with "forced" Christianity. "Everyone can see that the church is wrong when it comes to men with the [B]ible in one hand, and the sword in the other." "Is it not equally diabolical for the state to do so?" Lane believed that governmental rule was only tolerated by public opinion because the fact was not yet recognized that all the true purposes of the state could be carried out on the voluntary principle, just as churches could be sustained voluntarily. Reliance on the voluntary principle could only come about through "kind, orderly, and moral means" that were consistent with the totally voluntary society he was advocating. "Let us