WEBVTT - S2 – 11: The Sheep and the Ghosts 0:00:00.960 --> 0:00:04.200 Welcomed, unobscured a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky. 0:00:09.320 --> 0:00:12.760 Kate Fox was in London in love and the first 0:00:12.760 --> 0:00:17.640 in line. The brilliant chemist William Crooks was investigating spiritualism, 0:00:17.680 --> 0:00:20.400 and where better to begin than with a girl who 0:00:20.440 --> 0:00:24.680 started it all. After Leah's celebrity appearance at the London 0:00:24.800 --> 0:00:27.639 Art Gathery, her wealthy friends put their heads together and 0:00:27.720 --> 0:00:31.160 determined that Kate needed to be pulled away from Maggie's influence. 0:00:31.520 --> 0:00:34.479 They agreed there could be no better change of scene 0:00:34.520 --> 0:00:39.440 for her than British high society. Their money rolled out 0:00:39.479 --> 0:00:43.200 the red carpet for Kate. Traveling companions and pocket money 0:00:43.240 --> 0:00:46.720 were hers to command. She arrived dressed in fine new clothing. 0:00:47.120 --> 0:00:49.760 Her parting from Maggie might have been painful, but the 0:00:49.800 --> 0:00:53.960 optimism of her friends lifted Kate's spirits, and the sensation 0:00:54.040 --> 0:00:58.640 that greeted her only raised them higher. Society receptions brought 0:00:58.720 --> 0:01:02.440 with them some very welcome attention. Foremost among Kate's new 0:01:02.480 --> 0:01:06.720 admirers was the British lawyer Henry Yunkan strikingly handsome and 0:01:06.760 --> 0:01:10.319 an accomplished spiritualist writer. He had a magnetism that Kate 0:01:10.360 --> 0:01:13.800 couldn't deny. But even as she held seances, appeared in 0:01:13.840 --> 0:01:18.199 London spiritualist newspapers and saw more of Henry Well. Kate 0:01:18.400 --> 0:01:21.399 also found a glass back in her hand. That was 0:01:21.440 --> 0:01:26.040 the brandy. There was always the brandy, but there was 0:01:26.080 --> 0:01:28.960 no time to fight it. Kate began a series of 0:01:28.959 --> 0:01:32.399 tests with the scientist William Crooks. He had once hired 0:01:32.440 --> 0:01:35.520 Henry for legal advice on some of his business ventures, 0:01:35.560 --> 0:01:38.399 and the two men were friends. Now William Crooks was 0:01:38.440 --> 0:01:42.120 on a hunt to identify the spectral energies that flowed 0:01:42.160 --> 0:01:46.880 through a seance. Soon enough, Kate was navigating not only 0:01:46.959 --> 0:01:51.280 Henry Yunkin's overtures but also William's prime. The scientist tried 0:01:51.320 --> 0:01:54.560 to stop her from giving any seances without him. He 0:01:54.600 --> 0:01:57.480 didn't mind that she was an alcoholic. He may have 0:01:57.680 --> 0:02:00.600 even agreed with her opinion that when the alcohol shattered 0:02:00.640 --> 0:02:03.680 her conscious mind, it made her more open to the spirits. 0:02:04.600 --> 0:02:08.560 The results, as he would record them, were astounding for 0:02:08.760 --> 0:02:11.840 power and certainty. I have met with no one who 0:02:11.880 --> 0:02:14.919 at all approached Miss Kate Fox, he wrote, in a 0:02:15.040 --> 0:02:18.920 rush of enthusiasm. It seems only necessary for her to 0:02:18.960 --> 0:02:21.880 place her hand on any substance for loud thuds to 0:02:21.880 --> 0:02:24.600 be heard. I have heard them in a living tree, 0:02:24.960 --> 0:02:28.280 on a sheet of glass, on stretched iron wire, on 0:02:28.320 --> 0:02:31.760 a stretched membrane, a tambourine, on the roof of a cab, 0:02:32.080 --> 0:02:34.400 and on the floor of a theater. I have heard 0:02:34.440 --> 0:02:37.360 them on a glass harmonicon. I have felt them on 0:02:37.440 --> 0:02:42.160 my shoulder and under my own hands. Things came to 0:02:42.200 --> 0:02:44.959 a head though, when Crooks tried to push Henry away 0:02:45.000 --> 0:02:48.440 from Kate, because it forced her to choose. Did she 0:02:48.520 --> 0:02:52.280 want to continue submitting to the chemist's badgering and drink 0:02:52.320 --> 0:02:55.359 away her frustrations, or did she want to choose a 0:02:55.440 --> 0:02:58.360 life with Henry, who offered her his arms and his 0:02:58.440 --> 0:03:04.240 opulent townhouse as refuge. One spring afternoon, Kate and Henry 0:03:04.240 --> 0:03:08.000 were walking together through a friend's manicured gardens. He dropped 0:03:08.000 --> 0:03:10.560 to a knee and took her hand. He asked her 0:03:10.639 --> 0:03:14.680 to marry him. In response, Kate burst into tears. She 0:03:14.760 --> 0:03:18.400 confessed her addiction and the cycles of recovery and relapse 0:03:18.480 --> 0:03:20.800 that had kept her going back to the Swedish Movement 0:03:20.840 --> 0:03:23.400 Cure Hospital for as long as she had lived in 0:03:23.440 --> 0:03:30.160 New York. But Henry was insistent Kate followed in Leah's footsteps. 0:03:30.520 --> 0:03:33.480 The New York Herald reported that at Kate's wedding, joyful 0:03:33.560 --> 0:03:36.920 spirits raised the banquet table from the floor in salute. 0:03:37.400 --> 0:03:40.040 Kate sat with William Crooks for a few more tests, 0:03:40.040 --> 0:03:42.960 but not long after her marriage, Kate had a good 0:03:43.000 --> 0:03:46.640 reason to finally cut them all off together. She was pregnant, 0:03:48.360 --> 0:03:51.400 so William Crooks had to turn his investigations to others. 0:03:51.960 --> 0:03:54.640 Fortunately for him, there were plenty of other mediums with 0:03:54.680 --> 0:03:59.120 wealthy benefactors willing to fund his experiments. In eighteen seventy three, 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:01.960 Cora a fived in England and she began to appear 0:04:02.000 --> 0:04:07.480 in the chemist records assisting with his experiments. Assisting, that is, 0:04:07.560 --> 0:04:11.720 because William Crooks had already focused his attentions on another medium, 0:04:11.840 --> 0:04:15.040 Daniel Hume. He had been the favorite of the wealthy 0:04:15.080 --> 0:04:18.400 and powerful for years, and his displays had gone from 0:04:18.440 --> 0:04:23.479 eye catching the downright astonishing. Daniel had been examined by 0:04:23.520 --> 0:04:26.960 a slew of professionals. He had lost court cases and 0:04:27.080 --> 0:04:30.760 fortunes with them. He'd been ridiculed by the poet Robert Browning, 0:04:31.040 --> 0:04:34.680 and performed seances in France for Napoleon the Third. He 0:04:34.760 --> 0:04:37.800 had even married into the Russian nobility before losing his 0:04:37.839 --> 0:04:42.520 wife to tuberculosis. In eighteen seventy three. The Earl of 0:04:42.600 --> 0:04:46.920 Dunraven had just published a celebration of Daniel's mediumship. Now 0:04:47.080 --> 0:04:51.880 Crooks was publishing astonishing reports about measuring Daniel's psychic force. 0:04:52.600 --> 0:04:57.039 Claims and counterclaims that rose up in response kept London buzzing. 0:04:57.640 --> 0:05:00.719 Those debates went on even after Daniel Hume left England. 0:05:01.080 --> 0:05:04.240 He returned to Russia, where he married a second heiress, and, 0:05:04.480 --> 0:05:09.520 like so many others, he retired from mediumship. Storms, contests, 0:05:09.760 --> 0:05:13.719 arguments and investigations would go on, stirring the public interest. 0:05:14.120 --> 0:05:17.799 But Daniel had risen into the upper echelons of European nobility. 0:05:18.279 --> 0:05:29.040 Now he considered himself above spiritualism as well. His last 0:05:29.120 --> 0:05:33.640 years in Russia, France and Italy were spent in comfort, 0:05:34.160 --> 0:05:37.520 and that final retirement into a life of ease was 0:05:37.560 --> 0:05:44.480 just one more reason that Daniel Hume was remarkable. This 0:05:45.000 --> 0:06:23.440 is unobscured. I'm Aaron manky H. New York City was 0:06:23.560 --> 0:06:27.159 a boiling cauldron. Victoria Woodhall had beaten the Wall Street 0:06:27.200 --> 0:06:29.440 casino when she made her run on Gold at the 0:06:29.520 --> 0:06:32.360 end of eighteen sixty nine, but she didn't take her 0:06:32.400 --> 0:06:35.840 fortune and withdraw from the public debate. The public had 0:06:35.880 --> 0:06:39.599 tested spiritualist mediums for decades now, she wanted to turn 0:06:39.640 --> 0:06:43.400 the tables. So when the New York Herald, excited by 0:06:43.400 --> 0:06:47.359 the novelty of the first woman stockbroker, offered Victoria a 0:06:47.400 --> 0:06:51.359 weekly column, she accepted. In her first article, she wrote, 0:06:51.800 --> 0:06:55.320 while others of my sex devoted themselves to crusade against 0:06:55.320 --> 0:06:58.760 the laws that shackle women in this country, I asserted 0:06:58.800 --> 0:07:02.320 my individual into pendance, believing as I do, that the 0:07:02.360 --> 0:07:05.800 prejudices which still exist against women in public life will 0:07:05.839 --> 0:07:11.520 soon disappear. I now announced myself as candidate for the presidency. 0:07:12.320 --> 0:07:17.760 That's right, Victoria Woodhull was running for president. She decided 0:07:17.800 --> 0:07:20.840 to live the part too. Victoria left the house where 0:07:20.840 --> 0:07:23.600 the spirit of Demosthenes has sent her. She took her 0:07:23.640 --> 0:07:26.840 family and moved into a mansion in New York's Murray Hill, 0:07:27.080 --> 0:07:30.600 just off Fifth Avenue. It was a massive and luxurious 0:07:30.640 --> 0:07:33.880 home with columns and high windows. But if it all 0:07:33.920 --> 0:07:37.360 made Victoria feel more legitimate, it didn't sway the opinion 0:07:37.400 --> 0:07:40.840 of New Yorker's most still thought. Her announcement was only 0:07:40.880 --> 0:07:44.520 a joke, as the pages of the New York newspapers testified. 0:07:46.000 --> 0:07:48.680 Soon Victoria realized she needed to do more than just 0:07:48.840 --> 0:07:52.480 make money and make pronouncements. She needed to make friends 0:07:52.560 --> 0:07:55.760 and build power, and she needed a newspaper of her 0:07:55.760 --> 0:07:58.760 own to do that. So in May, Victoria and her 0:07:58.800 --> 0:08:02.760 sister Tenny launched a new magazine. They called it wood 0:08:02.760 --> 0:08:07.640 Hole in Claughland's Weekly. Raising a banner like that brought allies. 0:08:08.120 --> 0:08:11.600 One in particular, whose wild writing was just victorious style. 0:08:12.040 --> 0:08:17.120 He considered himself a planetary grand master of all the Freemasons, 0:08:17.160 --> 0:08:19.880 his words, not mine. He wanted to bring down the 0:08:19.920 --> 0:08:24.160 powers that be and install himself as pantarch, benevolent ruler 0:08:24.280 --> 0:08:27.520 of the world. Most people, though, just called him Stephen 0:08:27.560 --> 0:08:32.880 Pearl Andrews. Here's author Mary Gabriel. He was one of 0:08:32.920 --> 0:08:36.280 these fringe figures in the United States who had dabbled 0:08:36.280 --> 0:08:41.040 in everything philosophy, journalism, academics, a bit of politics. And 0:08:41.080 --> 0:08:43.760 so he came to her as a journalist and said, 0:08:43.800 --> 0:08:46.160 you know, I can help you edit this paper. And 0:08:46.200 --> 0:08:49.360 in fact, she was so busy launching her political career 0:08:49.400 --> 0:08:51.720 and juggling so many things that she handed it off 0:08:51.760 --> 0:08:55.920 to him with Blood supervising and Stephen Pearl Andrews under 0:08:56.000 --> 0:08:59.800 his direction, the Woodhull and Claughland's Weekly became an incredible, 0:09:00.080 --> 0:09:04.480 creaking Oregon. He was afraid of no one. No one 0:09:04.520 --> 0:09:08.440 else was publishing articles attacking marriage as the shoals that 0:09:08.480 --> 0:09:11.920 wrecked American women. No one else in polite society was 0:09:11.920 --> 0:09:14.960 publishing articles about the New York Police working as hired 0:09:15.000 --> 0:09:19.240 guns for its brothels. No one else was perceptively exposing 0:09:19.280 --> 0:09:23.200 the frauds and hijinks of Wall Streets capitalists. After all, 0:09:23.520 --> 0:09:27.839 what other papers were helmed by Cornelius Vanderbilt's personal medium. 0:09:27.960 --> 0:09:31.160 Victoria had the inside scoop on the predatory schemes of 0:09:31.200 --> 0:09:35.520 the insurance company boardrooms and the railroad tycoons. So Stephen 0:09:35.600 --> 0:09:39.600 and Victoria came out swinging. By the fall of eighteen seventy, 0:09:39.640 --> 0:09:44.360 the paper was flying out to twenty thousand readers. Still, 0:09:44.440 --> 0:09:47.520 Victoria was a candidate without a party. She was an 0:09:47.520 --> 0:09:50.920 outsider to spiritualist circles and a newcomer to the cause 0:09:50.920 --> 0:09:54.640 of women's rights. But with Stephen Pearl Andrews guiding the magazine, 0:09:54.960 --> 0:09:58.280 Victoria could set her mind on Washington, and she finally 0:09:58.280 --> 0:10:02.800 found an ally there as well. Soon enough, Massachusetts Congressman 0:10:02.960 --> 0:10:07.400 Beast Butler strolled into Victoria's luxurious mansion to make her acquaintance. 0:10:08.080 --> 0:10:10.840 He had seized New Orleans with the Union Army, he 0:10:10.920 --> 0:10:14.520 had impeached a president with his radical congress. Now he'd 0:10:14.520 --> 0:10:17.720 heard a new call, one that demanded votes for women, 0:10:18.160 --> 0:10:22.000 and he came to lend his aid. Victoria and Butler 0:10:22.080 --> 0:10:24.559 plotted ways to put her in front of a Congressional 0:10:24.600 --> 0:10:28.160 committee to read an argument for women's suffrage. The newly 0:10:28.200 --> 0:10:31.520 past fourteenth Amendment recognized the rights of all people born 0:10:31.679 --> 0:10:35.160 or naturalized in the United States, and because women were people, 0:10:35.559 --> 0:10:37.720 they had the right to vote as well. It was 0:10:37.800 --> 0:10:41.880 that simple. When Butler introduced Victoria to the House Judiciary 0:10:41.920 --> 0:10:45.160 Committee in January of eighteen seventy one, she was joined 0:10:45.160 --> 0:10:48.120 by Susan B. Anthony, and she was the first woman 0:10:48.160 --> 0:10:52.480 to address a Congressional committee in American history, and that 0:10:52.640 --> 0:10:56.839 success brought others. The first invitations came from women's rights groups. 0:10:57.200 --> 0:11:01.040 Victoria started speaking to gatherings around New York. Soon some 0:11:01.160 --> 0:11:05.480 newspapers were calling women's rights activists wood holds women, much 0:11:05.520 --> 0:11:09.199 to the frustration of longtime leaders like Elizabeth Katie Stanton, 0:11:10.040 --> 0:11:14.360 but others wanted Victoria's novel and inspiring presence. She spoke 0:11:14.440 --> 0:11:17.320 at the Cooper Institute to a labor meeting in that spring, 0:11:17.679 --> 0:11:20.360 and as she made circuits through various reform groups who 0:11:20.400 --> 0:11:23.480 saw her new prominence as a sign of hope, Victoria 0:11:23.679 --> 0:11:26.840 started to imagine a new political party that could unite 0:11:26.840 --> 0:11:32.079 them into something real. In fact, Victoria was elected president 0:11:32.160 --> 0:11:34.280 that fall. When she arrived at a meeting of the 0:11:34.320 --> 0:11:37.760 American Association of Spiritualists, she found a group that was 0:11:37.800 --> 0:11:40.560 hardly as large as their name promised. It seemed that 0:11:40.600 --> 0:11:45.080 battles between trance speakers and materialization mediums throughout the eighteen 0:11:45.160 --> 0:11:50.559 sixties had whittled down their numbers, but Victoria spoke anyway. Eventually, 0:11:50.600 --> 0:11:53.800 her lecture brought her to her favorite subject, the toxic 0:11:53.880 --> 0:11:57.400 institution of marriage and the double standard that crushed women 0:11:57.480 --> 0:12:01.520 for things their husbands did without shame. A heated debate 0:12:01.600 --> 0:12:04.640 followed at the meeting, both over changing the meaning of 0:12:04.760 --> 0:12:09.400 marriage and about Victoria herself. Was she the spiritualist whispered 0:12:09.720 --> 0:12:14.400 a free lover? Still, despite the controversy, and despite Victoria's 0:12:14.480 --> 0:12:17.320 visit among them being her first, they decided she was 0:12:17.400 --> 0:12:19.920 now the right person to lead them. When their votes 0:12:20.000 --> 0:12:24.679 came in, Victoria was president of the American Association of Spiritualists. 0:12:26.120 --> 0:12:29.520 The choice sent ripples of concern through spirit circles around 0:12:29.559 --> 0:12:34.040 the country. Victoria traveled to speak across Pennsylvania, Ohio, and 0:12:34.160 --> 0:12:37.679 Michigan in the fall of eighte She was met with 0:12:37.840 --> 0:12:42.400 and trailed by hushed voices. She gained followers along the way, too, 0:12:42.640 --> 0:12:46.320 but the rumors also grew. The word had gone round 0:12:46.320 --> 0:12:48.880 that Victoria was living in her New York mansion with 0:12:48.960 --> 0:12:53.520 both of her husband's James Blood and Kenning Woodhall. A 0:12:53.600 --> 0:12:56.080 fight between James and her mother had reached the court, 0:12:56.440 --> 0:12:59.520 and the press had published the revelations of their unusual 0:12:59.600 --> 0:13:03.839 home life. For decades, concerns over free love ism had 0:13:03.920 --> 0:13:07.439 kept some women's rights activists from embracing spiritualism and its 0:13:07.520 --> 0:13:10.920 radical impulses. The fever came to a head that November 0:13:11.120 --> 0:13:14.040 when Victoria took the stage at New York's Steinway Hall 0:13:14.320 --> 0:13:19.199 and gave a talk she advertised as Principles of Social Freedom. 0:13:19.240 --> 0:13:23.960 The hall was packed, thousands more milled outside. Victoria took 0:13:23.960 --> 0:13:26.439 the stage and began to lay out in stark terms 0:13:26.440 --> 0:13:29.800 that women needed the same freedoms as men, the freedom 0:13:29.840 --> 0:13:32.440 to end a bad marriage, the freedom to start over 0:13:32.520 --> 0:13:36.560 without being condemned by society. In fact, she said marriages 0:13:36.600 --> 0:13:40.480 without love were adultery and marriage laws should be repealed. 0:13:41.559 --> 0:13:45.000 This message shocked the crowd into an angry upheaval, but 0:13:45.360 --> 0:13:48.640 that's because it wasn't direct enough. They wanted something more. 0:13:49.240 --> 0:13:52.480 Someone in the crowd shouted the question they all wanted, answered, 0:13:52.920 --> 0:13:57.199 are you a free lover? Here's Mary Gabriel. Once again, 0:13:58.880 --> 0:14:01.560 Victoria flat and read, Hi, Yes, I'm a free lover. 0:14:02.040 --> 0:14:05.840 I have an inalienable, constitutional, and natural right to love 0:14:05.840 --> 0:14:08.360 whom I may to love as long or short a 0:14:08.400 --> 0:14:11.480 period as I can, to change that love every day 0:14:11.520 --> 0:14:14.640 if I please, And with that right, neither you nor 0:14:14.760 --> 0:14:17.520 any law you can frame have any right to interfere. 0:14:18.080 --> 0:14:22.640 So with that statement, Victoria became, really, I would say, 0:14:22.720 --> 0:14:25.720 without doubt, the most notorious woman on the speaking circuit 0:14:25.760 --> 0:14:30.280 in the United States. Victoria's words dropped like a hammer 0:14:30.360 --> 0:14:33.760 on her political aspirations. The New York Herald called her 0:14:33.800 --> 0:14:37.960 speech the most astonishing doctrine to ever be heard in America. 0:14:38.560 --> 0:14:41.680 Victoria had admitted to being the thing her accusers shouted 0:14:41.680 --> 0:14:46.080 about the loudest. The president of the Spiritualists, who wanted 0:14:46.080 --> 0:14:48.960 to be the president of the nation, was a free 0:14:48.960 --> 0:14:51.680 lover for the women of her world. This was a 0:14:51.800 --> 0:14:55.120 radical liberty. But the question now hung in the air. 0:14:55.920 --> 0:15:01.000 Could Victoria continue building power or would this public confession 0:15:01.080 --> 0:15:12.160 of something so hated shatter her life into pieces. The 0:15:12.280 --> 0:15:16.080 land of the free, Sojourner Truth still saw that vision 0:15:16.200 --> 0:15:19.360 of a future held out to Black Americans. The political 0:15:19.520 --> 0:15:22.600 radicalism of the Spiritualists in New York was shaking its 0:15:22.680 --> 0:15:26.360 lecture halls and printing presses. That was Sojourner Truth style, 0:15:26.640 --> 0:15:30.160 just as she had done decades before. By now, though, 0:15:30.280 --> 0:15:33.560 Sojourner couldn't keep the same pace of lecturing and, as 0:15:33.560 --> 0:15:37.000 she called it, agitating. But she had lived long enough 0:15:37.040 --> 0:15:40.720 to see emancipation still following the voices of the spirits 0:15:40.960 --> 0:15:43.480 and the voice of God, she knew the work wasn't 0:15:43.520 --> 0:15:47.400 finished quite yet. Like so many Spiritualists, she supported the 0:15:47.400 --> 0:15:50.240 work now to get women the vote and something else 0:15:50.280 --> 0:15:52.760 that was just as close to her heart. She wanted 0:15:52.800 --> 0:15:55.080 to see a place in the United States where Black 0:15:55.080 --> 0:15:59.320 Americans could live in peace. Sojourner had found places for 0:15:59.360 --> 0:16:03.080 herself in the American landscape. She had purchased land in Rochester, 0:16:03.160 --> 0:16:06.280 New York, as well as in Battle Creek, Michigan. They 0:16:06.280 --> 0:16:09.000 were homes where her daughters now lived. Ever since the 0:16:09.080 --> 0:16:11.320 end of the Civil War, when she worked with Amy 0:16:11.360 --> 0:16:14.720 Post to shelter freed people around Rochester, she had kept 0:16:14.800 --> 0:16:18.520 up that search in the eighteen seventies, even as she 0:16:18.560 --> 0:16:21.520 approached the threshold of her own death. She pressed on 0:16:21.640 --> 0:16:26.200 in her work. Here's historian Margaret Washington. I think that 0:16:26.480 --> 0:16:30.880 is the culminating point of her life, although she continues 0:16:30.920 --> 0:16:33.880 to be active. She's very active in the anti capital 0:16:33.920 --> 0:16:38.640 punishment movement and the temperance movement. But I think that 0:16:38.720 --> 0:16:42.800 in terms of her service to African Americans, it is 0:16:42.880 --> 0:16:46.680 the petition movement to create a black homeland in the West, 0:16:47.040 --> 0:16:50.480 because black homeland is the mantra right. It first starts 0:16:50.480 --> 0:16:54.640 with trying to get them settled in the West. And 0:16:54.760 --> 0:16:57.320 there's no question that she saw the need. On a 0:16:57.400 --> 0:17:00.240 visit to Washington in eighteen seventies, she saw how many 0:17:00.320 --> 0:17:03.280 freed people were still without homes and jobs in the capital. 0:17:03.680 --> 0:17:07.240 Elsewhere across the country, the government was carving open land 0:17:07.280 --> 0:17:11.040 for the railroad magnates and offering ownership to white homesteaders. 0:17:11.960 --> 0:17:15.159 The government has given land to the railroads in the West, 0:17:15.320 --> 0:17:18.280 she told one audience, so why couldn't it do so 0:17:18.400 --> 0:17:21.240 much for the people whose labor had built the country's wealth. 0:17:21.960 --> 0:17:24.879 With that in mind, she traveled throughout New England, selling 0:17:24.920 --> 0:17:28.440 photographs of herself and asking her fellow reformers to add 0:17:28.480 --> 0:17:32.240 their names to her request that Congress should provide homes 0:17:32.240 --> 0:17:36.879 for black Americans on federal land. After being invited to 0:17:36.920 --> 0:17:40.280 a meeting of the American Women's Suffrage Association in Boston, 0:17:40.640 --> 0:17:44.080 Sojourner gave a fiery speech defending women's right to vote 0:17:44.359 --> 0:17:47.639 and included a call for land and education for the 0:17:47.680 --> 0:17:50.240 freed people. When one of the leaders of the meeting 0:17:50.320 --> 0:17:52.960 asked so journal to be brief, she shot back that 0:17:53.040 --> 0:17:55.680 she would speak when the spirit moved her, not when 0:17:55.680 --> 0:17:59.239 people moved her, which, in her defense, had always been 0:17:59.359 --> 0:18:03.560 so journals way. The spirit moved Sojourner into the halls 0:18:03.600 --> 0:18:06.600 of Congress to see her petition brought up for discussion, 0:18:07.040 --> 0:18:09.080 but despite the number of people who had signed it, 0:18:09.400 --> 0:18:13.480 she was let down. Benjamin beast Butler, her trusted radical, 0:18:13.840 --> 0:18:17.680 never even brought the motion to the floor, even without 0:18:17.720 --> 0:18:20.680 a bill to support them. Though black Southerners were leaving 0:18:20.720 --> 0:18:23.439 the South to settle in the Western States in the 0:18:23.520 --> 0:18:26.439 years that followed, Sojourner said she traveled to greet them 0:18:26.520 --> 0:18:29.159 in the Land of John Brown, as she called it, 0:18:29.600 --> 0:18:32.520 and it was in Topeka, Kansas, that Sojourner found a 0:18:32.560 --> 0:18:36.399 movement of people arriving to start over. They had begun 0:18:36.400 --> 0:18:40.240 their move in Louisiana. The years after the Mechanics Institute 0:18:40.280 --> 0:18:43.439 massacre in eighteen sixty six had not been easy in 0:18:43.480 --> 0:18:46.919 New Orleans. But while some Black Southerners marched north and 0:18:47.000 --> 0:18:49.359 west to settle at a distance from the trials of 0:18:49.400 --> 0:18:53.600 the city, others, like the Sir Carmonique, stayed put, and 0:18:53.640 --> 0:18:56.920 the spirit moved them as well, to continue remaking their 0:18:56.920 --> 0:19:00.880 city itself into the land of the free. When JB. 0:19:01.040 --> 0:19:04.399 Valmore died in eighteen sixty nine, the Sir Carmonique shrank 0:19:04.440 --> 0:19:07.639 by one member, but of course he didn't leave them. Henri, 0:19:08.040 --> 0:19:11.400 who brought the cirque together before the war and reunited 0:19:11.440 --> 0:19:14.879 it after it was over, recorded messages from his dead friend. 0:19:15.320 --> 0:19:18.120 He wrote that Valmore came back in part to forgive 0:19:18.160 --> 0:19:21.240 on re for any tensions in their partnership and to 0:19:21.440 --> 0:19:25.600 urge the circle to continue their work so no. Losing 0:19:25.680 --> 0:19:29.240 one of their leaders didn't slow the Sircarmonique down. In fact, 0:19:29.280 --> 0:19:31.600 it was in the first years of the eighteen seventies 0:19:31.640 --> 0:19:34.560 that Henri and the other spiritualists in the circle were 0:19:34.560 --> 0:19:36.960 at their most active. One of their members, who owned 0:19:36.960 --> 0:19:40.080 a cigar shop, began hosting their seances, and the fate 0:19:40.119 --> 0:19:42.320 of the city again came to the four in the 0:19:42.400 --> 0:19:46.760 messages they received from spirit visitors. While the spirits of 0:19:46.880 --> 0:19:50.600 loved ones like Henri's father and now JB. Valmore continued 0:19:50.640 --> 0:19:53.720 to visit their seance tables, it was the warnings against 0:19:53.720 --> 0:19:56.159 the greed of materialism that rose to the top of 0:19:56.200 --> 0:20:00.800 their concerns. Over and over, the spirits emphasized politics of 0:20:00.840 --> 0:20:04.080 greed created unfair divisions between the rich and the poor. 0:20:04.720 --> 0:20:07.879 As the spirit of JB. Valmore reminded the circle he 0:20:07.920 --> 0:20:11.200 had been a humble blacksmith, but in the Circle of Harmony, 0:20:11.520 --> 0:20:13.960 his love and charity paved the way for him to 0:20:14.000 --> 0:20:18.040 be a true apostle. He was a reminder that Henri 0:20:18.160 --> 0:20:20.520 would take to heart as his position in the city 0:20:20.560 --> 0:20:23.840 continued to rise in eighteen seventy, he was appointed to 0:20:23.840 --> 0:20:26.760 be the tax assessor for the city's third district and 0:20:26.800 --> 0:20:30.240 then director of a parish school board. While Sojourner worked 0:20:30.240 --> 0:20:32.919 a secure education for the freed people of the West, 0:20:33.320 --> 0:20:36.320 Henri did the same for the black community in New Orleans. 0:20:36.840 --> 0:20:42.280 Here's historian Emily Clark. He serves a term in the 0:20:42.400 --> 0:20:46.439 Louisiana legislature. He serves on a school board, not the 0:20:46.440 --> 0:20:49.280 school board of his father, but for public schools. They've 0:20:49.280 --> 0:20:53.400 got a pretty respectable home in the Tremain neighborhood, kind 0:20:53.440 --> 0:20:58.560 of living a New Orleans middle class what we might 0:20:58.560 --> 0:21:01.600 call middle class for the re contry Auction period life. 0:21:04.200 --> 0:21:07.480 As un resettled into the city's public life, the spirits 0:21:07.480 --> 0:21:10.040 continued to urge him and the other members of the 0:21:10.080 --> 0:21:13.560 cirque to remember the poor. The message came from them 0:21:13.600 --> 0:21:17.919 from the spirit of Senator Daniel Webster, who inspired Unrea's ambitions, 0:21:18.240 --> 0:21:21.920 but it also came from anonymous spirits who drew his sympathy. 0:21:22.160 --> 0:21:24.800 Once the spirit of a woman arrived at a seance 0:21:25.040 --> 0:21:28.399 and simply said that she was one who suffered. The 0:21:28.440 --> 0:21:32.400 explanation of that suffering could have been printed by Victoria Woodhall. 0:21:33.119 --> 0:21:35.840 This nameless woman was born to a wealthy family, she 0:21:35.960 --> 0:21:39.280 told the circle, but she married a predator. He scooped 0:21:39.359 --> 0:21:42.359 up her inheritance and then abandoned her. In the years 0:21:42.400 --> 0:21:45.240 that followed, she had supported herself through sex work, but 0:21:45.359 --> 0:21:48.240 found no one to help her until she crossed into death. 0:21:48.920 --> 0:21:52.080 Now she said she was comforted by Mary Magdalen the 0:21:52.160 --> 0:21:55.240 New Orleans at the seance table of men. Her radical 0:21:55.280 --> 0:21:58.840 message came across clearly. A society that would judge and 0:21:58.880 --> 0:22:05.760 punish women for reviving abuse was unjust. A society in harmony, however, 0:22:05.920 --> 0:22:09.280 would look like something new, Not a hierarchy, but a 0:22:09.320 --> 0:22:12.439 circle where the poor were lifted up and men and 0:22:12.480 --> 0:22:15.040 women joined hands to seek out the wisdom of the 0:22:15.080 --> 0:22:18.480 past and map out the future. And it was a 0:22:18.520 --> 0:22:22.600 future Henri and the others we're still willing to fight for. 0:22:30.359 --> 0:22:33.560 Theodore Tilton knew what the future looked like. He had 0:22:33.560 --> 0:22:36.600 fallen in love, first with the writings of Karl Marx, 0:22:36.720 --> 0:22:40.000 who inspired his belief in a democracy that could overthrow 0:22:40.040 --> 0:22:43.280 the rich and powerful, and second with a fierce woman 0:22:43.320 --> 0:22:46.399 who was determined to do the same, a woman by 0:22:46.440 --> 0:22:51.560 the name of Victoria Woodhull. Through seventy one, while Victoria 0:22:51.680 --> 0:22:54.719 was campaigning for president and publishing the dirt on her 0:22:54.840 --> 0:22:57.800 enemies among the rich and powerful, she was also spending 0:22:57.920 --> 0:23:00.600 a lot of time with Tilton. Still then had flown 0:23:00.600 --> 0:23:02.960 into the public eye as a journalist and as a 0:23:02.960 --> 0:23:06.600 protege of Henry Ward Beecher, New York City's celebrity pastor, 0:23:06.960 --> 0:23:09.920 and that year his journalistic eye turned toward a conflict 0:23:09.960 --> 0:23:13.159 that would grow more important over the coming decade. Here's 0:23:13.240 --> 0:23:17.600 Mary Gabriel once again. The kind of conversations that were 0:23:17.680 --> 0:23:21.840 murmured before the Civil War in the eighteen forties, and 0:23:21.880 --> 0:23:25.240 the kind of revolutions that occurred in eighteen forty eight, 0:23:25.240 --> 0:23:28.720 and the discussions and the political arguments that began to 0:23:28.840 --> 0:23:31.639 heat up erupted in the Civil War in the United States, 0:23:31.640 --> 0:23:35.320 But afterwards they didn't die down. In fact, groups coalesced, 0:23:35.320 --> 0:23:37.080 and two of the most powerful groups to call us 0:23:37.240 --> 0:23:40.119 were labor unions. And this was something that was happening 0:23:40.119 --> 0:23:41.719 in Europe. And in fact, once again, when we can 0:23:41.720 --> 0:23:44.600 talk about Carl Marks, because he had formed in eighteen 0:23:44.640 --> 0:23:49.159 sixty four something called the International working Men's Association, and 0:23:49.200 --> 0:23:52.720 the International working Men's Association had already made its mark 0:23:52.800 --> 0:23:55.800 on history. Mars was in London, but some of the 0:23:55.800 --> 0:23:59.040 group's French members had joined a revolution in France. They 0:23:59.040 --> 0:24:01.439 had seized Paris and ruled for two months in the 0:24:01.480 --> 0:24:05.200 spring of eighteen seventy one. They called their government the Commune. 0:24:06.320 --> 0:24:09.400 Anxiety about the same thing happening in the United States 0:24:09.400 --> 0:24:13.159 bubbled from the New York newspapers, but the Spiritualists weren't worried. 0:24:13.359 --> 0:24:15.680 In fact, the Banner of Light proclaimed to its readers 0:24:15.720 --> 0:24:18.040 that the principles of the Commune were the same as 0:24:18.080 --> 0:24:21.760 the principles of spiritualist seedbeds like Hopedale. To a reformer 0:24:21.840 --> 0:24:26.600 like Tilton, their argument was extremely convincing. With Tilton now 0:24:26.640 --> 0:24:29.120 on their team, Victoria and Tenny decided to make their 0:24:29.119 --> 0:24:33.360 newspaper a mouthpiece for the International. As their publicist, Victoria 0:24:33.520 --> 0:24:36.520 became an organizer for the International in New York. She 0:24:36.560 --> 0:24:39.280 gathered workers to her meetings and sent word to Marx 0:24:39.320 --> 0:24:42.120 that he had followers in New York City. Soon enough, 0:24:42.359 --> 0:24:46.320 Victoria's cohorts were recognized as Section twelve of the International 0:24:46.400 --> 0:24:50.240 working Men's Association. And if they were going to turn 0:24:50.280 --> 0:24:53.720 their weekly newspaper into the mouthpiece of the Working man's movement. 0:24:53.960 --> 0:24:56.520 They were going to go all the way. Victoria had 0:24:56.560 --> 0:25:00.080 never done anything less, So on December eighteen seven, he 0:25:00.200 --> 0:25:04.199 one Woodhall and Clafland's Weekly published the Communist Manifesto in 0:25:04.280 --> 0:25:08.040 English for the first time. At first, Tilton was introducing 0:25:08.119 --> 0:25:11.960 Victoria at lectures, then he was defending her in his articles, 0:25:12.000 --> 0:25:14.960 and he was there by her side when Victoria's kaleidoscope 0:25:14.960 --> 0:25:17.640 of radical allies announced that they were forming a new 0:25:17.680 --> 0:25:21.800 political movement, the Equal Rights Party. They took Victoria as 0:25:21.800 --> 0:25:25.400