WEBVTT - S2 – INTERVIEW 2: Margaret Washington 0:00:01.000 --> 0:00:04.200 Welcomed. Unobscured, a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky. 0:00:08.520 --> 0:00:12.440 Our guest today is historian Margaret Washington. She's professor of 0:00:12.520 --> 0:00:16.239 History and American Studies at Cornell University. Her work on 0:00:16.280 --> 0:00:20.000 the cultural, intellectual, and religious history of Black Americans has 0:00:20.000 --> 0:00:24.240 earned her awards and fellowships from Cornell University, Wesleyan University, 0:00:24.400 --> 0:00:28.040 and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Besides speaking at 0:00:28.080 --> 0:00:32.360 high school, summer institutes, museums, parks, and local libraries, Dr 0:00:32.400 --> 0:00:37.040 Washington has contributed to numerous documentaries for PBS, the Discovery Channel, 0:00:37.240 --> 0:00:41.559 and the History Channel. Her book Sojourner Truths America was 0:00:41.600 --> 0:00:44.840 a guide for us not only in following Sojourner truth story, 0:00:45.200 --> 0:00:48.800 but in seeing spiritualism within the big picture of American life. 0:00:50.080 --> 0:00:53.320 Researcher Karl Nellis talked with Dr Washington for this season 0:00:53.360 --> 0:00:56.760 of Unobscured. They began their conversation with her perspective on 0:00:56.840 --> 0:01:00.200 what it meant to be a spiritualist in nineteenth century America. Guy, 0:01:01.200 --> 0:01:05.319 this is the Unobscured interview series for season two. I'm 0:01:05.360 --> 0:01:29.280 Aaron Manky. If you were spiritualist in the nineteenth century, 0:01:29.959 --> 0:01:36.480 you looked upon life after death as a continuation of 0:01:36.560 --> 0:01:42.520 contact with humans, especially your loved ones. It was a 0:01:42.600 --> 0:01:48.040 situation where your contact with people who had passed beyond 0:01:48.640 --> 0:01:53.680 the veil could be instructive, it could be warnings. But 0:01:53.800 --> 0:01:57.680 there was this contact with people who had gone on. 0:01:57.920 --> 0:02:01.559 It wasn't a break with earth life and then life 0:02:01.640 --> 0:02:05.240 in the beyond. So the first important aspect of spiritualism 0:02:05.320 --> 0:02:10.320 was this contact between humans who had been left two 0:02:10.360 --> 0:02:15.440 mourn and people who had passed on into the spirit world. 0:02:16.080 --> 0:02:21.720 Sometimes those contacts were loving, sometimes they were foreboding. But 0:02:21.840 --> 0:02:24.840 the most important thing is that there was this contact, 0:02:24.919 --> 0:02:28.800 and it took all kinds of forms depending on who 0:02:28.960 --> 0:02:33.400 the person was or people you were maintaining your contact 0:02:33.440 --> 0:02:36.120 with who had passed on. When people were coming to 0:02:36.160 --> 0:02:39.519 a seance, they weren't a medium, say, but they wanted 0:02:39.560 --> 0:02:42.880 to take part in the spiritualist practices. What kinds of 0:02:42.919 --> 0:02:45.120 things were they looking for? What kind of variety or 0:02:45.160 --> 0:02:48.800 there was there In motivations to attend to seance, everyone 0:02:48.880 --> 0:02:54.639 had different motivations. Some people went for curiosity, other people 0:02:54.720 --> 0:02:59.560 went for a specific goal. There was someone in particular 0:02:59.600 --> 0:03:03.480 whom they wanted to have contact with, and so they 0:03:03.480 --> 0:03:08.960 were hoping that the medium could channel that individual who 0:03:09.040 --> 0:03:13.280 had passed on into some kind of consciousness so that 0:03:13.520 --> 0:03:16.680 the living person could communicate with them. And that was 0:03:16.760 --> 0:03:20.359 what the majority of people wanted. They wanted contact with, 0:03:21.240 --> 0:03:23.920 mostly a loved one, but sometimes it wasn't even a 0:03:23.960 --> 0:03:28.080 loved one, it was politician. A lot of spiritualists, especially 0:03:28.120 --> 0:03:32.800 the more radical ones, for example, had seances in which 0:03:32.919 --> 0:03:38.160 John Quincy Adams, who in the Late Antebellum era which 0:03:38.240 --> 0:03:41.720 ends in eighteen sixty one, John Quincy Adams was sort 0:03:41.760 --> 0:03:46.840 of the champion from a political perspective of abolitionism, so 0:03:46.920 --> 0:03:53.040 when he died a lot of spiritualists would recall him 0:03:54.080 --> 0:03:58.400 and get his advice on what was happening in the 0:03:58.480 --> 0:04:02.240 world politically. So when you think about it like that, 0:04:02.560 --> 0:04:06.080 spiritualism is not so much about faith as it is 0:04:06.160 --> 0:04:09.160 about politics. But those were the kinds of positions that 0:04:09.280 --> 0:04:12.760 people took. And even with Abraham Lincoln, after he passed away, 0:04:13.000 --> 0:04:17.560 people channeled him. Then the radical, the white radical John Brown, 0:04:17.960 --> 0:04:22.119 the person who inspired Harper's Ferry, was also channeled after 0:04:22.200 --> 0:04:26.520 he was executed. So it took a lot of forms. 0:04:27.200 --> 0:04:30.680 So that's interesting. When spiritualists were channeling these kinds of 0:04:30.720 --> 0:04:34.839 these statesmen political figures. What does that tell us about 0:04:34.880 --> 0:04:40.440 the way that spiritualists related to the past or to history. Well, 0:04:40.680 --> 0:04:47.120 spiritualists were radicals. They were people aside from their faiths, 0:04:48.080 --> 0:04:50.240 and in many cases, I think this is important. In 0:04:50.279 --> 0:04:54.440 many cases, even though they were I don't want to 0:04:54.480 --> 0:04:57.640 call them religious because they sort of avoided doctrine, but 0:04:57.680 --> 0:05:00.800 they were very spiritually oriented. He Even though that was 0:05:00.880 --> 0:05:04.719 the case, many of them were not affiliated with any 0:05:04.720 --> 0:05:08.520 particular church because they felt the churches were corrupt and 0:05:08.560 --> 0:05:13.120 the churches promoted evil practices such as the practice of slavery. 0:05:13.160 --> 0:05:18.680 So a lot of people did not see spiritualism specifically 0:05:18.720 --> 0:05:23.159 as something that was associated with their faith as much 0:05:23.200 --> 0:05:27.960 as it was associated with social life. One of the 0:05:28.000 --> 0:05:31.800 most important aspects of having a successful social life was 0:05:31.839 --> 0:05:35.560 to have free will. For example, if you were enslaved, 0:05:35.920 --> 0:05:39.159 you had no free will. You didn't have the free 0:05:39.200 --> 0:05:42.760 will to go to church, and you didn't have the 0:05:42.800 --> 0:05:46.760 free will to raise your own children. You didn't have 0:05:46.839 --> 0:05:50.719 the free will to be with a husband. Indeed, you 0:05:50.760 --> 0:05:53.280 didn't have the free will to have a legal husband 0:05:53.400 --> 0:05:58.400 or wife. These were the kinds of issues that spiritualism opposed. 0:05:58.480 --> 0:06:00.360 With the churches. I guess you would say they were 0:06:00.400 --> 0:06:04.960 not religious people, even though they were very upright people 0:06:05.080 --> 0:06:08.760 and very spiritual people. One of the movements that kind 0:06:08.760 --> 0:06:13.120 of seated the ground for spiritualism was kind of a 0:06:13.200 --> 0:06:17.360 utopian or a collectivist impulse among many of these radicals 0:06:17.400 --> 0:06:22.040 to for model communities or kind of sanctuary communities over 0:06:22.080 --> 0:06:25.960 the course of her life. So journal is involved in Northampton, Hopedale, 0:06:26.480 --> 0:06:30.000 and there are others fruit Lands, the United Community, brook Farm. 0:06:30.240 --> 0:06:32.320 Could you talk a little bit about what was going 0:06:32.400 --> 0:06:36.359 on with these utopian or communalists kind of impulses that 0:06:36.400 --> 0:06:39.640 were bringing people to these places. There were I think 0:06:39.680 --> 0:06:43.800 a myriad of differences between the utopian communities. Not all 0:06:43.839 --> 0:06:47.039 of them were spiritualists. Fruit Lands, the one that was 0:06:47.200 --> 0:06:52.560 founded by Bronson Alcott was not spiritualist, the Shaker communities were, 0:06:53.480 --> 0:06:56.839 and the ones that Sojourn or Truth became involved in 0:06:56.960 --> 0:07:01.120 were except as you mentioned. You mentioned Northampton, but Northampton 0:07:01.520 --> 0:07:05.000 had many spiritualists in it, but it was not a 0:07:05.040 --> 0:07:08.800 spiritualist community. It was more of a I guess you'd 0:07:08.800 --> 0:07:12.920 say it was basically an abolitionist commune, is what it was. 0:07:13.840 --> 0:07:18.520 One of the things that united these utopian communities was 0:07:18.600 --> 0:07:23.720 a belief in the power of spiritualism, even if they 0:07:23.720 --> 0:07:28.880 weren't founded for that particular purpose. The Sojourner when she 0:07:28.920 --> 0:07:33.000 went to Northampton, she found a home for her spiritualism there, 0:07:33.560 --> 0:07:36.440 even though it was an abolitionist community. When she moved 0:07:36.800 --> 0:07:40.760 to Michigan, and I believe it was eighteen fifty seven, 0:07:41.240 --> 0:07:46.000 she actually settled in a spiritualist community. And so there 0:07:46.040 --> 0:07:49.360 were spiritualist community especially in the West or what we 0:07:49.440 --> 0:07:52.600 call today the Midwest. At that point she did want 0:07:53.240 --> 0:07:57.680 the spiritual connection in terms of her daily life. So Harmonia, 0:07:57.720 --> 0:08:01.640 which was outside of Battle Creek, Michigan, was spiritualist community. 0:08:01.760 --> 0:08:05.160 They all weren't founded on the basis of spiritualism, but 0:08:05.200 --> 0:08:10.160 they all embraced the ideas of spiritual contact with the 0:08:10.160 --> 0:08:12.720 other world. At that point in the eighteen forties and 0:08:12.760 --> 0:08:17.640 fifties were pretty well into Sojourner's life. Um, let's go 0:08:17.680 --> 0:08:22.360 back to the beginning with her. She's she's not born Surjourner. 0:08:22.440 --> 0:08:25.160 Truth of course, taking on both parts of that name 0:08:25.360 --> 0:08:28.080 is really significant to her life story. But let's start 0:08:28.120 --> 0:08:30.000 at the beginning. She was born into slavery in New 0:08:30.080 --> 0:08:33.080 York before the nineteenth century downed. So she's a generation 0:08:33.160 --> 0:08:35.520 or two older than many of the other women that 0:08:35.559 --> 0:08:38.280 were going to be following for this series talking about spiritualism, 0:08:38.360 --> 0:08:40.800 the Fox Sisters corp A hatched Victoria wood Hall and 0:08:40.920 --> 0:08:45.600 of Britain. How was the New York of her childhood 0:08:45.760 --> 0:08:48.800 different from the New York of the eighteen forties and fifties, 0:08:49.800 --> 0:08:52.280 she would say, And actually she did say that when 0:08:52.320 --> 0:08:56.120 she was born, there were no ships, there were no steamboats. 0:08:56.520 --> 0:08:59.520 It was a whole different world. She pointed out in 0:08:59.600 --> 0:09:04.679 her talks in the eighteen forties and fifties that she 0:09:04.760 --> 0:09:07.400 was now living in what she called the modern world, 0:09:08.160 --> 0:09:11.160 but she had been born and raised in a world 0:09:11.200 --> 0:09:14.400 that in many ways was not even connected to what 0:09:14.559 --> 0:09:18.679 she considered modernity in the anti Bellum era. So it 0:09:18.760 --> 0:09:21.280 was very backward in a lot of ways. So during 0:09:21.280 --> 0:09:25.040 the truth grew up not wearing shoes. You can imagine 0:09:25.360 --> 0:09:29.960 living in rural Hudson Valley, New York in the wintertime 0:09:30.160 --> 0:09:34.040 and not having shoes. But that was the fate of 0:09:34.200 --> 0:09:37.440 the enslaved African Dutch people where she grew up, and 0:09:37.480 --> 0:09:41.000 that was pretty much her fate until she became a 0:09:41.120 --> 0:09:44.760 Christian and obtained her freedom. She was born in seventeen nine, 0:09:45.800 --> 0:09:50.240 so basically she's kind of an eighteenth century woman in 0:09:50.280 --> 0:09:53.200 that sense, and so that makes her quite different from 0:09:53.320 --> 0:09:56.480 the people who were going to become her comrades in 0:09:56.720 --> 0:10:00.280 the movements that she became involved in. Also, I it's 0:10:00.320 --> 0:10:05.280 important to note that her background is Dutch as opposed 0:10:05.280 --> 0:10:09.560 to English. That made a difference. At that point, there 0:10:09.559 --> 0:10:11.960 weren't that many Dutch. Most of the Dutch were centered 0:10:12.000 --> 0:10:14.320 in New York in the Hudson Valley, but it was 0:10:14.400 --> 0:10:17.520 a group of people. It was an ethnicity that they 0:10:17.559 --> 0:10:22.160 kept to themselves, and um they spoke Dutch. She spoke 0:10:22.240 --> 0:10:25.080 Dutch until she was in her late twenties, and it 0:10:25.240 --> 0:10:30.480 was quite a different culture. She was not given religious 0:10:30.520 --> 0:10:33.760 instruction as a child or even as a young woman, 0:10:34.520 --> 0:10:37.840 so she didn't have the religious background that a lot 0:10:37.880 --> 0:10:43.240 of African Americans, even enslaved ones who had English mistresses 0:10:43.400 --> 0:10:47.240 and masters, had, So in some ways that made her 0:10:47.360 --> 0:10:51.040 kind of like a vessel for Christianity. But on the 0:10:51.080 --> 0:10:53.839 other hand, it gave her a kind of a circumspection 0:10:53.960 --> 0:10:59.160 about accepting everything, and that along with the we think 0:10:59.200 --> 0:11:03.160 that at least she said that her grandmother was born 0:11:03.160 --> 0:11:06.920 in Africa and her husband's grandmother was born in Africa, 0:11:07.240 --> 0:11:12.880 and spiritualism has interesting connections to what we call africanity. 0:11:13.120 --> 0:11:17.160 The idea of people connecting to the other world was 0:11:17.240 --> 0:11:21.640 something that Africans took as just common. It's just the 0:11:21.679 --> 0:11:25.800 way it was. There really was no break between the 0:11:25.800 --> 0:11:28.840 earthly life and the life of the beyond. That made 0:11:28.880 --> 0:11:33.520 spiritualism something that she essentially gravitated toward. And as she 0:11:33.559 --> 0:11:37.520 would say, she was practicing it before she even knew 0:11:37.559 --> 0:11:41.280 that there was something called spiritualism. You write so beautifully 0:11:41.280 --> 0:11:44.800 in the book about West African traditions that weren't broken 0:11:44.840 --> 0:11:48.560 by the introduction of Christianity into West Africa, and that 0:11:48.679 --> 0:11:50.719 Bell drew on in her early life. Can you talk 0:11:50.720 --> 0:11:54.679 about them, maybe in particular in relationship to when Belle, 0:11:54.880 --> 0:11:58.440 because she was born Isabella right m when she lost 0:11:58.480 --> 0:12:01.960 her father, how did his death shape her life and 0:12:02.000 --> 0:12:05.680 her spiritual perspective. She was very close to her father, 0:12:05.920 --> 0:12:11.120 who was the headman for this massive landowning family who 0:12:11.320 --> 0:12:13.959 at one point in their history, if you can believe this, 0:12:14.200 --> 0:12:18.079 owned two million acres of New York Land. Her father 0:12:18.200 --> 0:12:21.800 was the headman. He was highly respected, he was half 0:12:21.920 --> 0:12:25.040 mohawk in spite of the fact that he was highly 0:12:25.080 --> 0:12:28.280 respected by his owners. And as a matter of fact, 0:12:28.320 --> 0:12:31.040 after his owner died, he wrote that he was called 0:12:31.040 --> 0:12:33.800 bomb free, which was a combination of the Dutch a 0:12:33.880 --> 0:12:38.400 word bomb and the English word free free tree bomb 0:12:38.480 --> 0:12:41.760 meaning tree. So he was supposed to be taken care 0:12:41.840 --> 0:12:45.760 of once his owner passed away, and he left instructions 0:12:45.800 --> 0:12:49.080 for that, and the record shows that for three or 0:12:49.120 --> 0:12:55.200 four years after the owner passed away, the owner's sons 0:12:55.480 --> 0:12:59.280 did take care of him. Then it's pretty clear that 0:12:59.320 --> 0:13:01.280 they're not to get care of him, and then he 0:13:01.600 --> 0:13:04.920 his wife has died. Belle's mother has passed away, so 0:13:05.000 --> 0:13:09.840 he's basically being led around from pillar to post. He 0:13:09.920 --> 0:13:14.720 loses his eyesight, and she is enslaved by other people 0:13:15.160 --> 0:13:19.760 and she has to go from one place to another 0:13:19.920 --> 0:13:23.160 to find him. This goes on for a number of years, 0:13:23.440 --> 0:13:26.720 and they were very close. She and her younger brother 0:13:26.760 --> 0:13:29.680 were the only two remaining children that they were allowed 0:13:29.720 --> 0:13:33.120 to keep, and the others ten or twelve had been 0:13:33.160 --> 0:13:36.640 sold away. She was very close to her father. When 0:13:36.679 --> 0:13:40.960 he was sort of left to offend for himself, she 0:13:41.000 --> 0:13:46.559 would find him in various places and he would bemoan 0:13:47.120 --> 0:13:51.440 his fate, and she told him that this was her 0:13:51.679 --> 0:13:54.200 prediction that they were going to get their freedom pretty 0:13:54.240 --> 0:13:56.520 soon and she would take care of him. And of 0:13:56.559 --> 0:14:02.240 course he died before that happened, and she was devastated 0:14:02.280 --> 0:14:08.040 by his death. He froze to death alone, and the family, 0:14:08.200 --> 0:14:12.920 the Dutch family called the Hardenburgh's, wanted to recognize his 0:14:13.040 --> 0:14:17.920 faithful service. They didn't recognize his service when he was 0:14:18.000 --> 0:14:20.840 alive and it could have helped him, but after he 0:14:21.360 --> 0:14:25.240 died they wanted to have a funeral, which was highly unusual. 0:14:25.360 --> 0:14:28.240 Dutch people didn't have funerals for former slaves, but in 0:14:28.360 --> 0:14:32.240 recognition of old bomb free service to the family, they 0:14:32.280 --> 0:14:36.320 wanted to have a funeral. They invited all of the 0:14:36.360 --> 0:14:39.800 African dues people into the area for the funeral and 0:14:39.920 --> 0:14:43.000 they had He got a box, that is to say, 0:14:43.080 --> 0:14:46.800 he was buried in a coffin a pine box. The 0:14:46.920 --> 0:14:50.880 funeral consisted of this pine box and lots of rum. 0:14:50.920 --> 0:14:54.560 And that was sort of a high falutint funeral for 0:14:54.680 --> 0:14:59.280 a slave. For Bell, it was so disgusting. She remembered 0:14:59.320 --> 0:15:02.920 that she always said that throughout her life, she and 0:15:02.960 --> 0:15:07.680 her father talked to each other. She maintained that she 0:15:08.360 --> 0:15:12.720 was channeling her father on many occasions. She actually when 0:15:12.720 --> 0:15:16.760 she went to the utopian community. She visited utopian communities 0:15:16.800 --> 0:15:19.720 in the West, and she gave a talk about her 0:15:19.720 --> 0:15:24.000 father at one of them. I believe it was in Wisconsin. Yes, 0:15:24.040 --> 0:15:27.600 it was a Wisconsin Utopian community where she spoke about 0:15:27.640 --> 0:15:29.640 what had happened. That's where she gave the story of 0:15:29.680 --> 0:15:34.080 old Bomfree and how she channeled him when everything's got 0:15:34.120 --> 0:15:38.080 really difficult for her. It's an interesting story because with 0:15:38.440 --> 0:15:42.520 her father, according to her, being half Mohawk, then you've 0:15:42.560 --> 0:15:46.560 got the indigenous spiritualism involved in it too. But that 0:15:46.640 --> 0:15:49.320 was very important to her. He was her shining light. 0:15:50.120 --> 0:15:53.120 She makes this very clear in her narrative of how 0:15:53.160 --> 0:15:55.720 important he was to her. Would you tell the story 0:15:55.960 --> 0:16:00.600 of Belle emancipating herself and walking to freedom. She was 0:16:00.680 --> 0:16:05.760 a hard working young woman. She worked in the house, 0:16:06.440 --> 0:16:09.720 She worked in the yard, She worked in the fields. 0:16:10.040 --> 0:16:15.480 She milked cows, she fed the chickens, she cooked, she cleaned. 0:16:15.880 --> 0:16:18.520 According to her owners, the man who owned her for 0:16:18.600 --> 0:16:23.000 eighteen years, John Dumont. According to his daughter, she was 0:16:23.040 --> 0:16:27.840 the champion cradler wheat cradler in their neighborhood. She could 0:16:27.840 --> 0:16:30.440 throw the weed up in the air and have it 0:16:30.520 --> 0:16:34.280 wrapped before it hit the ground. That was Belle, and 0:16:34.320 --> 0:16:38.200 we get a sense of that from her famous Akron 0:16:38.440 --> 0:16:41.520 Ohio speech where she talks about all the works she 0:16:41.560 --> 0:16:45.320 did that was very important. She was a hard working 0:16:45.760 --> 0:16:49.200 person and her owner used to say that she was 0:16:49.320 --> 0:16:52.320 better to him than a man, and he promised her 0:16:52.320 --> 0:16:55.720 her freedom early because she worked so hard. In her 0:16:55.840 --> 0:17:01.640 zeal to continue to work hard under this promise of freedom, 0:17:01.720 --> 0:17:08.680 she cut off her index finger with a scythe while 0:17:08.760 --> 0:17:11.880 she was working. That meant that she couldn't work as hard, 0:17:12.080 --> 0:17:18.040 but she continued to work. The time came for her owner, Dumont, 0:17:18.560 --> 0:17:22.320 to honor his promise of freedom to her. The state 0:17:22.359 --> 0:17:26.360 of New York had decreed that in eighteen seven, all 0:17:26.400 --> 0:17:30.200 adults enslaved people would be free. He had promised to 0:17:30.240 --> 0:17:34.080 free her early a year early before that. So she 0:17:34.160 --> 0:17:40.040 went to him in to claim her promise, and he said, oh, no, 0:17:40.160 --> 0:17:44.240 I can't do that because you didn't work as hard 0:17:44.320 --> 0:17:47.000 as you were supposed to. She said, well, I had 0:17:47.040 --> 0:17:50.040 a diseased hand I couldn't as well. You still didn't 0:17:50.080 --> 0:17:51.920 do it, so I'm not going to honor my promise. 0:17:52.560 --> 0:17:56.879 So Belle was distressed, and she had created a little 0:17:56.960 --> 0:18:00.439 island in the middle of the river, and that was 0:18:00.440 --> 0:18:02.720 where she would go and talk to God. She had 0:18:02.760 --> 0:18:06.280 no religious instruction except what her mother gave her, and 0:18:06.359 --> 0:18:10.800 her mother's religious instruction was a kind of mysticism, where 0:18:10.800 --> 0:18:13.720 you speak to God and God speaks back to you. 0:18:14.080 --> 0:18:17.159 She went to her little island area and she asked 0:18:17.200 --> 0:18:21.600 God what she should do because he had broken his promise, 0:18:21.960 --> 0:18:25.639 and God told her she should leave. She said, well, 0:18:26.040 --> 0:18:28.960 how can I leave? They'll see me, and God told 0:18:28.960 --> 0:18:34.320 her to leave. Just before daybreak, when everyone was still asleep. 0:18:34.640 --> 0:18:37.639 She did. She had an infant, a nursing infant. She 0:18:37.760 --> 0:18:40.800 took her infant and she fled. She went to the 0:18:40.920 --> 0:18:44.440 home of a Quaker who was unable to help her, 0:18:44.440 --> 0:18:46.680 but he sent her to someone who did help her, 0:18:47.000 --> 0:18:50.040 who was also a Dutchman. He said that he would 0:18:50.480 --> 0:18:54.000 intercede on her behalf. And so when Dumont came for 0:18:54.080 --> 0:18:57.000 her and told her that she had to come back, 0:18:57.080 --> 0:19:00.280 she said, I'm not going because you broke your mus 0:19:00.359 --> 0:19:04.280 and you owe me this year of service. He threatened 0:19:04.280 --> 0:19:07.160 to take her to jail, and she said, okay, I'll 0:19:07.200 --> 0:19:09.720 go to jail, but I will not go back with you. 0:19:09.880 --> 0:19:14.320 And then the Dutchman who had offered her sanctuary, whose 0:19:14.400 --> 0:19:18.760 name was Isaac van Wagenen, interceded and he said, how 0:19:18.880 --> 0:19:24.040 much does Bell owe you? He gave him twenty dollars 0:19:24.480 --> 0:19:28.159 for the remainder of Bell's year and five dollars for 0:19:28.280 --> 0:19:31.960 Bell's baby. That is how she got her freedom, and 0:19:32.040 --> 0:19:35.679 she took the name of van Wagenen, and so she 0:19:35.760 --> 0:19:40.240 became Isabella van wagon and until she became so journal truth. 0:19:40.520 --> 0:19:44.240 Can you describe how the role in her life, that 0:19:44.400 --> 0:19:48.160 her faith, that her talking with God, that her following, 0:19:48.320 --> 0:19:52.000 her guiding light, her father. What role did that faith, 0:19:52.080 --> 0:19:56.600 that spirituality, that special practice play in the course of 0:19:56.600 --> 0:19:58.560 the next year or two when she was fighting to 0:19:58.640 --> 0:20:03.400 get her son back. That was probably she would call 0:20:03.560 --> 0:20:10.480 that her moment of sanctification. She had been converted. After 0:20:10.560 --> 0:20:13.520 she left Dumont and she went to live with the 0:20:13.600 --> 0:20:19.080 van wagon Ins, she had, uh, well what what we 0:20:19.200 --> 0:20:23.440 call in the Baptist church. She backslid. God had helped 0:20:23.440 --> 0:20:27.080 her obtain her freedom, and she was very thankful, but 0:20:27.240 --> 0:20:32.440 now she wanted to go back to bondage to basically 0:20:32.440 --> 0:20:36.560 participate in a festival called the Pinkster Festival. She was 0:20:36.600 --> 0:20:41.480 willing to go back to her former owner's farm to 0:20:41.640 --> 0:20:46.840 participate in this revelry. The very very Uh important festival 0:20:46.880 --> 0:20:49.560 among the African Dutch people actually comes out of Dutch 0:20:49.560 --> 0:20:52.600 religious culture, but the African Dutch made it their own. 0:20:53.400 --> 0:20:58.240 This was essentially her not being thankful for what God 0:20:58.280 --> 0:21:00.560 had done for her, and so at that point when 0:21:00.640 --> 0:21:04.480 she was trying to go away to celebrate with her 0:21:04.520 --> 0:21:07.919 friends and drink and party and have a good time, 0:21:08.280 --> 0:21:12.080 that's when she had her first epiphany and her first conversion, 0:21:12.640 --> 0:21:16.359 when God struck her as she said, God burnt me 0:21:16.440 --> 0:21:19.600 and made me wilt like a cabbage leaf. She didn't go, 0:21:20.240 --> 0:21:24.760 but she did realize that her conversion meant that there 0:21:24.800 --> 0:21:30.240 were certain activities that she no longer engaged in. So 0:21:30.320 --> 0:21:37.440 that was her conversion. Her sanctification came after the conversion 0:21:37.600 --> 0:21:41.000 when Uh, the man she was staying with, Mr van 0:21:41.119 --> 0:21:44.040 Wagen and came home and told her that he had 0:21:44.080 --> 0:21:47.200 heard that her child, her son, five year old son, 0:21:47.240 --> 0:21:50.720 who was still in bondage, had been sold. And this 0:21:50.800 --> 0:21:53.360 was something that was very common in New York. New 0:21:53.440 --> 0:21:57.560 York children were still enslaved and so New York slave 0:21:57.600 --> 0:22:02.800 owners so that they wouldn't who's their profit, We're selling 0:22:03.240 --> 0:22:07.120 these children to the South, which was illegal, and that's 0:22:07.160 --> 0:22:10.320 what had happened to her boy. And she was outraged. 0:22:10.440 --> 0:22:15.080 And this is this is our second sense of what 0:22:15.240 --> 0:22:17.639 a powerhouse this woman is going to be. The first 0:22:17.640 --> 0:22:20.760 one is when she challenges her owner and flees. The 0:22:20.840 --> 0:22:25.720 second one is when she will not accept the fact 0:22:25.720 --> 0:22:30.240 that her son has been sold and and she basically 0:22:30.400 --> 0:22:35.520 campaigns all over the neighborhood of Ulster County, rilling people 0:22:35.600 --> 0:22:39.040 about this, and especially the Quakers because it is against 0:22:39.040 --> 0:22:43.840 the law. Um. But what enslaved woman has the wherewithal 0:22:44.200 --> 0:22:49.119 to challenge the slave power? Well Bell did and um, 0:22:49.480 --> 0:22:54.240 and she got help from the Quakers, and she eventually 0:22:55.240 --> 0:22:58.440 was able to get her son back. But she raised 0:22:58.480 --> 0:23:01.400 a huge ruck buss. A lot of the slaveholders were 0:23:01.440 --> 0:23:05.159 angry with her for having done this, and so she 0:23:05.280 --> 0:23:11.439 felt very she felt very compromised, very vulnerable. Um. But 0:23:11.600 --> 0:23:14.120 she had told them that she was going to get 0:23:14.160 --> 0:23:17.760 her son back, and um, the owners had said, you 0:23:17.840 --> 0:23:20.359 can't get him back. But she with the help of 0:23:20.359 --> 0:23:23.439 the Quakers. So it's a very convoluted story. But the 0:23:23.480 --> 0:23:29.560 Quakers were adamantly anti slavery, and they helped her get 0:23:29.560 --> 0:23:33.359 a lawyer and eventually get this boy back. Within a 0:23:33.440 --> 0:23:37.240 year he was back, and when she got him back, 0:23:37.880 --> 0:23:40.000 she went to court and got him back. He was 0:23:40.080 --> 0:23:43.920 covered with bruises. He told her that the man who 0:23:43.960 --> 0:23:46.640 had purchased him, who was also a New Yorker who 0:23:46.640 --> 0:23:52.399 had moved to Alabama, had had had his horse hoof 0:23:52.480 --> 0:23:54.840 the boy. The boy her son's name was Peter. In 0:23:54.920 --> 0:23:57.800 the face, he had a big gash in his forehead 0:23:57.880 --> 0:24:02.919 where the man's horse had hoofed him, and and he 0:24:02.960 --> 0:24:06.199 showed her all the bruises on him, and she was 0:24:06.280 --> 0:24:10.679 so angry that she asked God for retribution, and she 0:24:10.800 --> 0:24:15.280 told him to render unto them double for everything they 0:24:15.320 --> 0:24:19.320 had done to her son. That was, as far as 0:24:19.320 --> 0:24:23.000 she was concerned, that was her curse that she was 0:24:23.119 --> 0:24:30.320 leveling against this family. And within a few months, this 0:24:30.400 --> 0:24:34.440 is this was her sanctification, as far as she was concerned, 0:24:34.800 --> 0:24:37.520 She had asked God to curse this family. But in 0:24:37.600 --> 0:24:41.639 a few months, the woman who was married to the 0:24:41.680 --> 0:24:44.840 man who had sold her son and brutalized him, was 0:24:44.960 --> 0:24:48.560 killed by her husband and in a very brutal way 0:24:48.560 --> 0:24:54.520 he Basically, according to uh the narrative, he had cut 0:24:54.560 --> 0:24:58.520 her wind pipe out in a drunken fit. He was 0:24:58.560 --> 0:25:03.760 an alcoholic. It was a double whammy because her son, 0:25:03.920 --> 0:25:07.119 Peter Bell's son, had told her that the only person 0:25:07.480 --> 0:25:10.439 who was nice to him while he was there in 0:25:10.520 --> 0:25:15.760 Alabama was this young woman, miss Eliza, who was also 0:25:15.840 --> 0:25:20.199 a New Yorker, But she had tried to help the 0:25:20.240 --> 0:25:24.560 little boy and had said she wished that he could 0:25:24.680 --> 0:25:27.320 go back to his mother. In a way, you know, 0:25:27.480 --> 0:25:31.240 she was innocent. I mean, she had married a New 0:25:31.320 --> 0:25:34.480 Yorker who had become a slaveholder, and they were living 0:25:34.480 --> 0:25:39.640 in Alabama, but she was trying to help Peter. Nonetheless, 0:25:39.720 --> 0:25:44.480 when Peter was brought back to New York, the owner, 0:25:45.240 --> 0:25:48.600 the the former owner, her husband was so angry, and 0:25:48.680 --> 0:25:50.760 he was an alcoholic anyway, that he took it out 0:25:50.760 --> 0:25:55.600 on her and killed her. And when Isabella, when Belle 0:25:55.720 --> 0:26:00.560 heard this, she said, this is what God is doing 0:26:00.720 --> 0:26:03.520 on my behest. But I didn't mean for good to 0:26:03.520 --> 0:26:08.720 go that far. And the fact that this young woman 0:26:08.800 --> 0:26:13.320 had died and that Belle had asked God to curse 0:26:13.400 --> 0:26:19.200 the family to her was God's way of I guess 0:26:19.280 --> 0:26:24.760 giving her a a special dispensation, even though she said, 0:26:25.160 --> 0:26:27.959 the language of my heart was I didn't mean for 0:26:28.000 --> 0:26:31.760 you to do so much, God, but I couldn't question God. 0:26:32.080 --> 0:26:35.919 So for her, that put her in a higher state 0:26:36.720 --> 0:26:42.200 of spirituality. So she went from being converted to being sanctified. 0:26:43.000 --> 0:26:46.960 And she told this story on the lecture circuit in 0:26:47.000 --> 0:26:51.280 New York City where she she she left uh Ulster County, 0:26:51.520 --> 0:26:54.280 UM the Hudson Valley within a year after her son 0:26:54.680 --> 0:26:58.680 was returned, and she told that story over and over again, 0:26:58.760 --> 0:27:02.320 and it made her a pot pular preacher in New 0:27:02.400 --> 0:27:06.879 York City, a revival preacher. So even before she became 0:27:06.960 --> 0:27:10.320 so journal truth is Isabella van Wagon, and she was 0:27:10.400 --> 0:27:14.359 preaching in New York City and telling her experience of 0:27:14.880 --> 0:27:20.040 conversion and sanctification. So that was her her background before 0:27:20.080 --> 0:27:23.840 she became the woman whom we would come to know well. 0:27:23.840 --> 0:27:27.000