The Icarians were a 19th-century French utopian movement which had established a number of egalitarian communes in the United States.

On February 15, 1858, the remaining 151 Icarians had chosen a site west of St. Louis and settled on a few hundred acres in Cheltenham.

Two radical distinct parties developed, where the majority adhered faithfully to the ideas entertained by the community's deceased founder Etienne Cabet, and believed in investing very large if not absolutely dictatorial authority in some chosen leader called a "Gérance" or "Gérant unique", who would direct the moral and material affairs of the community.

The minority, however, who were led by a man named Vogel, a cap maker from Comar, France, were unalterably opposed to such an undemocratic system of government.

On February 17, 1859, the majority of the General Assembly, backing Mercadier, voted to reenact what they referred to as the "Engagement of October 13, 1856" which were the strict pledges that Cabet had demanded of his followers before leaving Navoo, Illinois.

[7] Differences of opinion degenerated into party strife; and the vanquished minority, numbering forty-two persons, left the community.

The depleted society struggled heroically for five years longer in spite of a series of events which otherwise would have brought them down.

The Louis Gillet and Arsene Sauva families later joined the Icarian Community in Adams County, Iowa.