WEBVTT - S2 – 9: Wounds 0:00:01.000 --> 0:00:04.240 Welcomed Unobscured, a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky. 0:00:10.680 --> 0:00:14.880 Colonel Crosby died on April second of eighteen sixty. He 0:00:14.960 --> 0:00:16.880 had been one of the first to march out from 0:00:16.880 --> 0:00:19.560 Philadelphia with the volunteers at the start of the war. 0:00:20.079 --> 0:00:22.800 He took fire throughout the fighting, and at one point 0:00:22.880 --> 0:00:25.920 was shot in the head. After he went back into combat, 0:00:25.960 --> 0:00:28.920 a bullet shattered his arm, which was then amputated in 0:00:28.960 --> 0:00:32.240 a war hospital. Still, he was promoted through the ranks 0:00:32.640 --> 0:00:36.280 as his fearlessness made him a strange figure on the battlefield. 0:00:37.840 --> 0:00:40.400 Crosby got to know one of the doctors who treated him, 0:00:40.440 --> 0:00:43.559 and they started writing letters to each other. His willingness 0:00:43.640 --> 0:00:46.839 to face fire after such dire injuries must have puzzled 0:00:46.880 --> 0:00:49.519 the doctor as much as it impressed his fellow soldiers. 0:00:50.320 --> 0:00:54.480 Crosby explained his daring. You see, he was a spiritualist. 0:00:54.960 --> 0:00:57.680 Every time he stepped onto the battlefield, he said, he 0:00:57.760 --> 0:01:01.080 felt the presence of his spirit friends all around him. 0:01:01.120 --> 0:01:04.280 Their guidance was so real that he lost all awareness 0:01:04.360 --> 0:01:08.080 of fear. In his own words, the whizzing of musket 0:01:08.120 --> 0:01:13.120 balls produced no more trepidation than the falling rain and 0:01:13.200 --> 0:01:17.319 Crosby wasn't the only soldier to say so. Other spiritualists 0:01:17.319 --> 0:01:19.840 in the Union Army claimed that spirits had led them 0:01:19.880 --> 0:01:23.760 through tremendous fire as well. If his faith was shaken 0:01:23.800 --> 0:01:26.480 by the wounds that shattered him, he didn't let on 0:01:27.080 --> 0:01:29.800 when he died. The Doctors published a note on Colonel 0:01:29.840 --> 0:01:32.560 Crosby's life in the Banner of Light. It was a 0:01:32.560 --> 0:01:35.760 testament to spiritualists that the dead leaders who met them 0:01:35.800 --> 0:01:39.280 at the seance table also steered them through the battlefield. 0:01:39.760 --> 0:01:42.399 Like Crosby, they had led the nation to the end 0:01:42.400 --> 0:01:46.280 of the war, covered in scars, yes, but still fighting 0:01:46.280 --> 0:01:49.360 to the last. He died in the final confrontations of 0:01:49.400 --> 0:01:54.640 the war that forced the surrender at Appomattox. Perhaps he 0:01:54.720 --> 0:01:57.240 shared the same feeling that Lincoln expressed to one of 0:01:57.320 --> 0:02:01.600 Nettie Colburn's dire yet vague warnings about his own coming death. 0:02:02.080 --> 0:02:04.800 In her memoir, Nettie wrote that the President told her, 0:02:05.400 --> 0:02:08.000 I shall live till my work is done, and no 0:02:08.120 --> 0:02:12.080 earthly power can prevent it, and then it doesn't matter. 0:02:13.240 --> 0:02:16.799 But it didn't matter. It mattered to the spiritualists. When 0:02:16.800 --> 0:02:21.079 news of Lincoln's assassination reached New York, the community railed 0:02:21.160 --> 0:02:24.080 in shared grief. They asked Emma Harding to give a 0:02:24.160 --> 0:02:27.480 lecture at the Cooper Institute and address their shocked hearts, 0:02:27.960 --> 0:02:31.160 and spiritualists across the country met in their local groups 0:02:31.160 --> 0:02:34.680 to grieve their loss, although maybe they grieved less than 0:02:34.720 --> 0:02:37.400 others who didn't share their beliefs about life in the 0:02:37.440 --> 0:02:42.280 spirit land. While most members of the New Republican Party 0:02:42.360 --> 0:02:46.000 mourned Lincoln's death, the Republicans of the Sirk Harmonique in 0:02:46.040 --> 0:02:49.240 New Orleans didn't feel the pain of his loss so deeply. 0:02:49.720 --> 0:02:52.280 In fact, he was closer to their fellowship than he'd 0:02:52.280 --> 0:02:55.800 ever been before. At the end of that year, when 0:02:55.919 --> 0:02:59.760 President Andrew Johnson declared a national Day of Thanksgiving, the 0:03:00.080 --> 0:03:03.919 er Harmonique hell the seance. They've been meeting again for 0:03:03.960 --> 0:03:07.320 a year ever since. On re resigned his commission, but 0:03:07.480 --> 0:03:11.320 he wasn't just holding seances. He was also holding office. 0:03:12.760 --> 0:03:15.880 In eighteen sixty five, On rehelped create the Friends of 0:03:15.960 --> 0:03:20.359 Universal Suffrage. Their political vision was filled with the fire 0:03:20.520 --> 0:03:26.440 of the idea universal education, black male suffrage, and distribution 0:03:26.520 --> 0:03:29.000 of land by the states to the heads of families. 0:03:29.560 --> 0:03:33.160 So when Lincoln spirit appeared to the Sir Carmonique. Of course, 0:03:33.240 --> 0:03:37.960 he gave their political vision his blessing. Here's historian Emily Clark. 0:03:39.240 --> 0:03:43.360 Abraham Lincoln's first appearance to the Sir Carmenique is on 0:03:43.440 --> 0:03:47.880 December seven, sixty five, about seven months after his assassination. 0:03:48.640 --> 0:03:51.040 His spirit noted how he was glad that they had 0:03:51.120 --> 0:03:54.680 broken the chains of slavery, but he also recognized that 0:03:54.720 --> 0:03:57.440 there was a lot of work still to be done. Um. 0:03:57.520 --> 0:03:59.440 You know, we shouldn't start patting ourselves on the back, 0:03:59.560 --> 0:04:05.920 Justine at He also talks about how those who tried 0:04:05.960 --> 0:04:10.200 to stop the progress of freedom would regret those decisions 0:04:10.200 --> 0:04:14.120 after death, where you know, those who had suffered for 0:04:14.320 --> 0:04:17.120 righteous causes would be blessed by God and happy in 0:04:17.160 --> 0:04:19.719 the spirit world. You know, freedom was something that was 0:04:19.800 --> 0:04:24.880 created and ordained by God, and while freedom originated in heaven. 0:04:25.520 --> 0:04:28.720 His spirit talks about how it's intended to reign on 0:04:28.760 --> 0:04:31.920 earth to um and then he signs off the message 0:04:32.000 --> 0:04:36.560 like he does many of them. With your brother and friend, 0:04:37.000 --> 0:04:46.640 Abraham Lincoln. The work of making sure that a nation 0:04:46.760 --> 0:04:50.040 conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all 0:04:50.080 --> 0:04:53.880 men and women are created equal would endure the blood 0:04:53.920 --> 0:04:57.120 spent to perfect the nation would not be wasted, The 0:04:57.200 --> 0:05:00.960 unfinished work of freedom would advance further than ever, the 0:05:01.080 --> 0:05:05.360 new birth of liberty would grow to maturity. It was 0:05:05.400 --> 0:05:08.360 an assurance that the Sir Carmonique would need to help 0:05:08.400 --> 0:05:11.239 them reshape the nation in the mold of the idea, 0:05:11.960 --> 0:05:14.560 and it was the fuel they needed to empower the 0:05:14.680 --> 0:05:40.840 next step forward reconstruction. This is unobscured. I'm Aaron Mankey. 0:05:52.440 --> 0:05:56.640 Lincoln was dead, and yet he was everywhere. In fact, 0:05:56.680 --> 0:06:00.279 Abraham Lincoln visited far more seances after his death than 0:06:00.320 --> 0:06:03.440 he ever could have in life. He was, after all, 0:06:03.600 --> 0:06:07.240 the representative of justice and liberty to many, but he 0:06:07.279 --> 0:06:09.960 was also a man with a family, and could anyone 0:06:10.040 --> 0:06:13.560 have been more devastated by his loss than Mary Todd Lincoln. 0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:21.320 Here's historian John Busher. I looked in detail at the 0:06:21.440 --> 0:06:26.240 last moments of Lincoln's life before he passed away and 0:06:26.320 --> 0:06:33.119 the following moments, and discovered descriptions of the physicians being 0:06:34.400 --> 0:06:38.560 asked by Mary Todd Lincoln too cut her a lock 0:06:38.680 --> 0:06:43.960 of hair from Lincoln's head. Mary didn't keep the hair, 0:06:44.040 --> 0:06:47.480 though she passed it on. She hadn't taken it for herself, 0:06:47.480 --> 0:06:49.480 but rather so that she could give it to her 0:06:49.520 --> 0:06:53.839 spiritualist friends Cranston, Laurie's wife and daughter. They must have 0:06:53.880 --> 0:06:56.119 told Mary that they could use it to hold open 0:06:56.200 --> 0:06:59.000 a channel to Old Abe. With the lock of his hair, 0:06:59.080 --> 0:07:01.640 they could reach across the border to the spirit world, 0:07:01.680 --> 0:07:04.159 just as they had done for Mary after she lost 0:07:04.200 --> 0:07:08.839 Willie in eighteen sixty two. Even more, the lock of 0:07:08.960 --> 0:07:12.360 hair that they got was gruesome. Today. It's kept safe 0:07:12.360 --> 0:07:15.440 by the Chicago Historical Society with a label that reads 0:07:15.800 --> 0:07:19.520 taken from President Lincoln's head after he was shot, cut 0:07:19.560 --> 0:07:23.040 from the spot where the ball passed through Washington, d c. 0:07:23.720 --> 0:07:29.320 April eighteen sixty five. You can find the Historical Society's 0:07:29.360 --> 0:07:33.280 image online too, clearly showing the hair still clotted with blood. 0:07:33.800 --> 0:07:36.400 But for many spiritualists this would mean that it's still 0:07:36.440 --> 0:07:39.600 was charged with the mental energy that left Lincoln's body 0:07:39.680 --> 0:07:44.160 on his death. Like so many of the mysteries of spiritualism, 0:07:44.200 --> 0:07:48.320 Lincoln's murder was immediately put under the scrutiny of investigation. 0:07:48.800 --> 0:07:52.160 A new unit of intelligence agents was responsible for solving 0:07:52.200 --> 0:07:56.840 the case. The Secret Service, formed from Alan Pinkerton's National 0:07:56.920 --> 0:08:00.280 Detective Agency. They had served as spies for the Union 0:08:00.400 --> 0:08:04.600 Army during the Civil War, and surprise surprise, Pinkerton's home 0:08:04.720 --> 0:08:07.440 had served as a stop on the underground railroad in 0:08:07.480 --> 0:08:12.920 Illinois through the eighteen fifties. Born in a Scottish slum, 0:08:12.920 --> 0:08:16.520 Pinkerton had abandoned his efforts to reform Britain and started 0:08:16.520 --> 0:08:20.280 over in America. After he established his detective agency, he 0:08:20.360 --> 0:08:22.680 set them to work in the service of helping people 0:08:22.840 --> 0:08:27.200 escaped slavery, but he assisted powerful interest too, including the 0:08:27.240 --> 0:08:30.920 Illinois Central Railroad, and that work put him in touch 0:08:30.960 --> 0:08:34.840 with the railroad's attorney, a man named Abraham Lincoln. So 0:08:34.960 --> 0:08:37.920 when Pinkerton was brought into the war, he started by 0:08:37.960 --> 0:08:41.079 foiling an early attempt on the President's life in eighteen 0:08:41.160 --> 0:08:44.880 sixty one. Now, though he had a new and more 0:08:44.960 --> 0:08:49.560 sobering task, tips and evidence began flooding his office, so 0:08:49.640 --> 0:08:52.600 he recruited an investigator with a talent for sorting through 0:08:52.679 --> 0:08:55.839 mountains of paper. This man began his career as a 0:08:55.920 --> 0:08:58.800 journalist for the New York Tribune and was the very 0:08:58.880 --> 0:09:02.880 same reporter who'd knocked south against Virginia's embargo to report 0:09:02.960 --> 0:09:06.280 on the hanging of John Brown. His name was Henry 0:09:06.320 --> 0:09:10.240 Steele Allcott, It seems that after his turn as an 0:09:10.320 --> 0:09:13.720 undercover reporter, Alcott had enlisted in the signal core of 0:09:13.760 --> 0:09:17.000 the Union Army. When illness sent him home from the front, 0:09:17.240 --> 0:09:20.200 he ended up sitting behind a desk, tracking the profiteers 0:09:20.200 --> 0:09:23.560 who were siphoning money away from the war effort. Now 0:09:23.679 --> 0:09:26.480 he was facing the task of sifting through the confessions 0:09:26.480 --> 0:09:30.600 and leads regarding Lincoln's murder. He would only be a 0:09:30.640 --> 0:09:33.400 part of the investigation for a short time and returned 0:09:33.400 --> 0:09:37.600 to New York soon afterward, but he wasn't done investigating frauds. 0:09:37.720 --> 0:09:40.120 His keen eye for detail might have made him the 0:09:40.200 --> 0:09:42.959 right man to follow a paper trail for the Secret Service, 0:09:43.280 --> 0:09:46.280 but he was also a veteran mesmerist from his younger days. 0:09:47.360 --> 0:09:49.520 It was a skill that made him the perfect candidate 0:09:49.559 --> 0:09:52.280 for a job in the eighteen seventies when a newspaper 0:09:52.360 --> 0:09:55.800 sent him north to investigate something unusual, and it would 0:09:55.840 --> 0:09:57.600 be a case that would draw him back into the 0:09:57.600 --> 0:10:00.600 world of the occult. A story will pick up again 0:10:00.720 --> 0:10:05.480 later as Alcott and the Pinkerton's investigated Lincoln's murder. There 0:10:05.480 --> 0:10:08.720 were bodyguards assigned to stay with Mary Lincoln in the 0:10:08.760 --> 0:10:11.720 midst of her raw suffering. One of those bodyguards later 0:10:11.760 --> 0:10:16.040 wrote women spiritualists in some way gained access to her 0:10:16.280 --> 0:10:20.400 and poured into her ear pretend messages from her dead husband. 0:10:21.760 --> 0:10:24.520 But now she was so weakened, he said that she 0:10:24.640 --> 0:10:28.440 wasn't able to resist the cruel cheat. The sittings nearly 0:10:28.520 --> 0:10:31.760 drove her mad. At least that was her son Robert's opinion. 0:10:32.120 --> 0:10:35.040 He threw the spiritualists out of the house. He hated 0:10:35.080 --> 0:10:37.880 their beliefs with a passion, and must have always been 0:10:37.920 --> 0:10:40.959 disgusted by his mother's attempts to talk to his dead brothers. 0:10:41.400 --> 0:10:43.680 In the following days, he went so far as to 0:10:43.720 --> 0:10:47.839 have his grieving mother committed to an insane asylum. Of course, 0:10:48.520 --> 0:10:51.240 Mary wasn't the only one to carry on speaking with 0:10:51.320 --> 0:10:54.640 the spirit of Lincoln after he died, But then again, 0:10:55.440 --> 0:11:06.000 she wasn't the only one grieving either. She kept a 0:11:06.040 --> 0:11:10.760 shrine in her closet. Maggie's period of hopeless morning, alongside 0:11:10.760 --> 0:11:14.440 her descent into desperate poverty, had started before the war 0:11:14.720 --> 0:11:18.040 with Elisha Kine's death. The chaos of the Civil War 0:11:18.080 --> 0:11:21.240 had done nothing to lift her spirits either. Every day 0:11:21.320 --> 0:11:24.080 she would step into her closet and pull back a 0:11:24.120 --> 0:11:29.079 set of black drapes. There sat an engraving of Elisha's face, 0:11:29.320 --> 0:11:33.320 surrounded by his gifts to her, the jewels, the handkerchiefs, 0:11:33.320 --> 0:11:36.000 the letters, even a map that showed his route of 0:11:36.080 --> 0:11:39.800 his journey north. But despite her work as a medium, 0:11:39.840 --> 0:11:42.840 Maggie had no map or chart that traced his journey 0:11:42.840 --> 0:11:45.560 into death. So she would light a candle in his 0:11:45.640 --> 0:11:48.360 memory and weep for him as long as she could 0:11:48.400 --> 0:11:52.560 stand it. When she couldn't stand it anymore, she would 0:11:52.600 --> 0:11:56.240 drink Brandy was Maggie's companion during the dark years of 0:11:56.280 --> 0:11:59.640 the Civil War. As her long legal battles with Elisha's 0:11:59.679 --> 0:12:03.720 relative have stretched on. They never relented either. The Canes 0:12:03.920 --> 0:12:07.280 never acknowledged his relationship with her, let alone that she 0:12:07.480 --> 0:12:10.280 was his wife. But in the midst of her grief, 0:12:10.480 --> 0:12:13.240 Maggie did make friends who were willing to find her help. 0:12:13.760 --> 0:12:17.400 They initiated a lawsuit against the Canes, arguing that Maggie 0:12:17.440 --> 0:12:19.920 was entitled to at least half of a licious estate. 0:12:20.240 --> 0:12:22.960 It didn't bring any kind of a swift resolution, though, 0:12:23.000 --> 0:12:25.640 and it added another layer to the quarrel that had 0:12:25.679 --> 0:12:31.040 already dragged on for years. Here's author Nancy Stewart. Now 0:12:31.200 --> 0:12:35.200 the lawsuit takes place in yes where Philadelphia, of course, 0:12:35.440 --> 0:12:38.760 where he's from, and his father had been a district 0:12:38.840 --> 0:12:44.000 court judge. And the family keeps making these bargains as 0:12:44.040 --> 0:12:46.160 they don't want anyone to know he was married to, 0:12:46.280 --> 0:12:49.760 quotes the Rapper. Then they'll provide for her for a 0:12:49.920 --> 0:12:53.679 nuity out of this five thousand dollars and as a 0:12:53.760 --> 0:12:58.000 struggle that goes on for a long long time. In 0:12:58.080 --> 0:13:01.160 her boldest gambit, Maggie worked with an author to write 0:13:01.160 --> 0:13:04.120 a book that told the story of her relationship with Elisha, 0:13:04.320 --> 0:13:07.600 including one hundred and thirty four of their letters. When 0:13:07.600 --> 0:13:10.960 the manuscript was sent to the printer, Elisha's brother suddenly 0:13:11.000 --> 0:13:14.240 appeared and offered to pay her off with two thousand dollars, 0:13:14.480 --> 0:13:17.599 as well as smaller quarterly payments drawn from the mysterious 0:13:17.640 --> 0:13:22.280 trust that Elisha had established. When Maggie agreed, she received 0:13:22.280 --> 0:13:27.440 the first quarterly payment, but the rest never came. During 0:13:27.480 --> 0:13:29.920 the war, Kate was the only medium of the three 0:13:29.960 --> 0:13:33.560 Fox sisters who was still holding public seances, Maggie was 0:13:33.640 --> 0:13:37.000 submerged in her personal battles, and Leah was floating above 0:13:37.040 --> 0:13:40.520 the fray in her newcastle. So as Maggie descended further 0:13:40.600 --> 0:13:44.480 into the darkness of alcoholism, Kate extended her earnings to 0:13:44.559 --> 0:13:47.720 her sister and supported both of them. But it wasn't 0:13:47.840 --> 0:13:54.240 just Maggie who was drinking. Here's more from Nancy Stewart. Maggie, 0:13:54.640 --> 0:13:58.199 in midst her breakdowns and so on, after Elisha's death, 0:13:58.440 --> 0:14:03.760 finally actually becomes a Catholic, which is interesting. She does 0:14:03.840 --> 0:14:06.800 drinking more and more, and by the way, her sister 0:14:06.920 --> 0:14:10.960 has become quite a famous and now beautiful, lovely young 0:14:11.000 --> 0:14:14.280 woman also is drinking. The two of them are drinking, 0:14:14.400 --> 0:14:17.480 and there are various efforts to put them on the wagon, 0:14:17.559 --> 0:14:22.960 so to speak. Maggie's case eventually went back to the courts. 0:14:23.000 --> 0:14:27.080 When Confederate forces were nearing the Canes estates outside Philadelphia 0:14:27.360 --> 0:14:30.320 just before the Battle of Gettysburg, he gave the Canes 0:14:30.360 --> 0:14:34.200 more excuses to avoid court dates and payments. Elisha had 0:14:34.240 --> 0:14:36.960 been dead for seven years at that point, and yet 0:14:37.040 --> 0:14:42.000 she continued to fight and to drink as well. One 0:14:42.080 --> 0:14:45.520 night in December of eighteen sixty four, the sister's old friend, 0:14:45.600 --> 0:14:50.200 Horace Greeley, who long advocated temperance in his newspapers, found 0:14:50.240 --> 0:14:53.960 Maggie wandering drunkenly in the snowy New York street. A 0:14:54.000 --> 0:14:57.680 biography published in the nineteen forties recorded that when Horace 0:14:57.800 --> 0:15:01.160 asked her what she was doing, she replied, I'm looking 0:15:01.200 --> 0:15:05.160 for Elisha. He is somewhere in this awful storm. I 0:15:05.240 --> 0:15:09.400 always find him in the snow. When he led her home, 0:15:09.520 --> 0:15:12.800 Horace found that Kate was also wrapped in an alcohol addiction. 0:15:13.280 --> 0:15:15.440 He put his head together with Leah and the rest 0:15:15.440 --> 0:15:17.640 of their family, and they decided to pay for the 0:15:17.680 --> 0:15:20.520 sisters to begin a course at a small hospital nearby 0:15:20.600 --> 0:15:24.720 called the Swedish Movement Cure Hospital. The founders there practiced 0:15:24.760 --> 0:15:27.360 one of the many new attempts at medical treatment that 0:15:27.440 --> 0:15:32.040 had sprung up alongside magnetic healing. Here's Nancy Stewarts once again. 0:15:34.960 --> 0:15:37.520 Now the Swedish Movement. It was one of those many 0:15:37.560 --> 0:15:41.040 And there were many health reform movements going on at 0:15:41.040 --> 0:15:43.920 that point of the beginning of the sanitarium movements, or 0:15:43.920 --> 0:15:47.880 at least the acceleration of them, and water cures and 0:15:47.920 --> 0:15:51.440 diet cures were very popular in the mid nine century. 0:15:51.520 --> 0:15:55.520 But anyway, yes, so the Swedish Movement Cure was run 0:15:55.520 --> 0:15:58.440 by this doctor George Taylor and his wife Sarah in 0:15:58.480 --> 0:16:02.880 New York City end they care for Katie and they 0:16:02.920 --> 0:16:07.360 try to keep her sober. The tailor's work focused on 0:16:07.400 --> 0:16:11.200 a combination of massage and other techniques for releasing nervous 0:16:11.200 --> 0:16:14.280 tension in the body. But even as they worked on Kate, 0:16:14.680 --> 0:16:17.360 she worked on them as well. Soon they were calling 0:16:17.400 --> 0:16:21.440 her powers of mediumship extraordinary. While Kate was sitting for 0:16:21.480 --> 0:16:25.840 their cures, they were sitting for her seances, still clinging 0:16:25.840 --> 0:16:30.480 to her dark path. Though Maggie refused both, She was 0:16:30.520 --> 0:16:33.520 single minded in her fight with the Canes. That is 0:16:33.600 --> 0:16:36.240 until the summer of eighteen sixty five, when her case 0:16:36.400 --> 0:16:41.000 was finally decided. The Philadelphia court, where Elisha's family was 0:16:41.080 --> 0:16:44.160 deeply involved, came down on the side of the Canes 0:16:44.280 --> 0:16:47.600 by throwing out the case altogether. It was the last 0:16:47.600 --> 0:16:50.960 thing Maggie and her family needed to hear. In January 0:16:50.960 --> 0:16:53.160 of that year, the Fox sisters had lost their father, 0:16:53.640 --> 0:16:56.640 then in August their mother had passed away. As you 0:16:56.720 --> 0:16:59.640 might imagine, it was difficult for Maggie to find light 0:16:59.800 --> 0:17:03.800 in those dark times, but she did brighten a bit 0:17:03.840 --> 0:17:07.280 when her book finally reached Prince. At least now people 0:17:07.359 --> 0:17:10.320 could read The Love Life of Dr Kane and know 0:17:10.520 --> 0:17:14.240 her side of the story. Leah and Daniel Underhill even 0:17:14.280 --> 0:17:17.239 decided to fund an apartment for their sisters just a 0:17:17.240 --> 0:17:20.240 few blocks away from the Movement Cure Hospital so that 0:17:20.359 --> 0:17:23.520 Kate and Maggie could stay together, and it seemed that 0:17:23.720 --> 0:17:27.520 maybe things were starting to look up. But when Leah 0:17:27.640 --> 0:17:30.720 visited her sisters one morning that summer, she found them 0:17:30.720 --> 0:17:33.720 in the midst of a disastrous relapse. Not only had 0:17:33.760 --> 0:17:37.840 Maggie resumed holding seances with Kate, finally throwing aside the 0:17:37.880 --> 0:17:41.080 religious obedience that had restrained her for so long, but 0:17:41.200 --> 0:17:45.440 the pair were also consumed with the destructive spirit of Brandy. 0:17:46.119 --> 0:17:50.200 Leah exploded in anger at her sisters. The resulting fight 0:17:50.560 --> 0:17:55.040 one where disappointments and resentments were laid bare permanently severed. 0:17:55.080 --> 0:17:58.520 The bond between Leah and Maggie and Kate didn't fare 0:17:58.560 --> 0:18:02.400 any better either. Her journey from recovery at the hospital 0:18:02.560 --> 0:18:05.560 to relapse with Maggie, and then back to the hospital 0:18:05.600 --> 0:18:10.159 again would play on repeat for years to come. But 0:18:10.200 --> 0:18:13.960 there was something familiar about their struggles. While the Fox 0:18:14.000 --> 0:18:17.440 family wrestled with their own demons and failures, an entire 0:18:17.560 --> 0:18:20.719 nation was doing the same, and all of them seemed 0:18:20.720 --> 0:18:25.920 to be focused on the same three things, promises, betrayal, 0:18:26.720 --> 0:18:40.040 and reconciliation. The nation had been reunited, but it was 0:18:40.119 --> 0:18:44.200 hardly unified. For some, spirit of liberation, like the figure 0:18:44.240 --> 0:18:47.240 of Lincoln was what they needed to lift their downcast eyes. 0:18:47.760 --> 0:18:50.800 For others, the loss was far more personal and raw. 0:18:51.359 --> 0:18:56.359 They grieved dead sons, nephews, brothers, fathers, and friends. The 0:18:56.359 --> 0:19:00.680 war had left many wounds, both the personal and the political. 0:19:02.160 --> 0:19:05.200 As it was before the war, the social obligation to 0:19:05.359 --> 0:19:08.800 mourn publicly seemed to fall on white, middle class women. 0:19:09.200 --> 0:19:12.359 There were expectations about how a grieving woman with some 0:19:12.520 --> 0:19:15.280 social clout and some money to her name should act. 0:19:15.680 --> 0:19:17.720 At the same time, the whole idea of what a 0:19:17.760 --> 0:19:23.359 woman's sphere ought to be was continually changing. Thousands of families, 0:19:23.480 --> 0:19:26.400 but especially women, were looking for some kind of guidance 0:19:26.440 --> 0:19:29.199 to bring peace to their hearts, and many found that 0:19:29.240 --> 0:19:32.359 in spiritualism. So it was only natural that when the 0:19:32.400 --> 0:19:36.040 scale of death became unbelievable, it became more and more 0:19:36.080 --> 0:19:39.520 possible to see a life beyond death as a reality. 0:19:39.640 --> 0:19:43.359 Too many, the spiritualist slogan there is no Death was 0:19:43.400 --> 0:19:47.840 a welcome relief. One writer in eighteen sixty seven noted 0:19:47.880 --> 0:19:51.879 with surprise that rather than shattering spiritualism and its optimism 0:19:51.960 --> 0:19:55.040 for a better world, the number of spiritualists was growing 0:19:55.160 --> 0:19:59.360 with each passing day. He wrote, Mothers are losing their 0:19:59.440 --> 0:20:03.520 children by death. Fond fathers unwillingly give up their only 0:20:03.640 --> 0:20:06.840 son of their name to the grave. Each day, how 0:20:06.880 --> 0:20:09.639 many die, some of whom are long and some of 0:20:09.680 --> 0:20:13.720 whom are bitterly mourned by the survivors, mourned with blind 0:20:13.800 --> 0:20:18.000 longing and passionate pain. And this being so, it is 0:20:18.080 --> 0:20:20.840 vain to look for a speedy ending to a belief 0:20:20.920 --> 0:20:24.520 that offers the living one more opportunity to speak with 0:20:24.560 --> 0:20:29.280 the beloved dead. In fact, the desire was so strong 0:20:29.400 --> 0:20:33.520 that the spiritualist newspapers started publishing a new kind of advertisement. 0:20:34.040 --> 0:20:36.680 In the years before the war, their pages were full 0:20:36.680 --> 0:20:40.040 of notices from mediums offering their services to anyone who 0:20:40.080 --> 0:20:43.159 wanted them. In the years after the war, though, we 0:20:43.200 --> 0:20:47.200 started to see the reverse letters from grieving families who 0:20:47.240 --> 0:20:52.360 wanted help contacting those they've lost. Here's historian Molly McGarry 0:20:55.320 --> 0:20:58.680 the spiritualist press. I think that the Schekna is one 0:20:58.720 --> 0:21:02.040 of the first spirituals public patients to include pages of 0:21:02.160 --> 0:21:06.800 letters from readers to the editor man in Samuel Britten 0:21:07.600 --> 0:21:11.919 asking for comfort, asking for consolation, and sometimes asking for 0:21:11.960 --> 0:21:16.720 assistance in contacting dead loved ones. So their letters of mourning, 0:21:16.720 --> 0:21:19.199 their letters of loss, and there's sometimes letters asking for 0:21:19.240 --> 0:21:24.520 help and making his connections. For mediums like Victoria Woodhall, 0:21:24.600 --> 0:21:28.360 who had established themselves as spiritual healers, relieving the pain 0:21:28.440 --> 0:21:31.879 of wounds opened by massive violence was business and a 0:21:31.960 --> 0:21:36.120 lucrative one. When Victoria returned from San Francisco to Ohio 0:21:36.200 --> 0:21:38.840 in the years before the war and reunited with her 0:21:38.880 --> 0:21:41.679 sister and mother, she was also pulled back into the 0:21:41.720 --> 0:21:45.399 surreal world of perpetual cons and frauds that her father, 0:21:45.520 --> 0:21:49.560 Buck Claflin, built around his family. She and her sister 0:21:49.680 --> 0:21:52.879 Tenny were selling their services as mediums for the cure 0:21:52.880 --> 0:21:55.480 of disease, but as far as Victoria could see, there 0:21:55.520 --> 0:21:58.439 was a big difference between her approach and what her 0:21:58.440 --> 0:22:02.040 father wanted. She laid of wrote, I believe that Tenny 0:22:02.080 --> 0:22:04.439 ought to use the gift God has given her, but 0:22:04.600 --> 0:22:07.480 not in the mercenary way. She was forced to use it, 0:22:08.160 --> 0:22:11.920 and it's easy to understand what she meant. Mary Gabriel 0:22:12.000 --> 0:22:15.159 writes that Claflin crew picked the bones of the border 0:22:15.240 --> 0:22:18.800 states after waves of violence from the war. They sold 0:22:18.880 --> 0:22:21.840 hope to the hopeless so often that even though Victoria 0:22:21.920 --> 0:22:24.160 had come back from the West to be with them, 0:22:24.200 --> 0:22:26.440 she couldn't always stand to be around them for long, 0:22:27.520 --> 0:22:30.360 which is why Victoria wasn't with her family for one 0:22:30.359 --> 0:22:33.600 of their most egregious crimes. That was when Buck arrived 0:22:33.640 --> 0:22:36.600 in Ottawa, Illinois, not far from where I grew up 0:22:36.640 --> 0:22:40.720 in fact, and announced himself as Dr. RB Claflin, King 0:22:41.240 --> 0:22:44.840 of Cancers. He rented out the entire Fox River House, 0:22:45.080 --> 0:22:50.639 the town's oldest hotel, to establish an infirmary there. Buck 0:22:50.720 --> 0:22:54.199 and Tenny dosed patients with their classic life elixir, just 0:22:54.320 --> 0:22:57.119 as they've done before, but of course it did nothing 0:22:57.240 --> 0:23:00.719 for their dying victims. In fact, the mixture of sheep's fats, 0:23:00.840 --> 0:23:06.640 lie and perfumes actually deepened their suffering. Once, when Victoria 0:23:06.680 --> 0:23:09.080 came to visit her family, she heard the screams of 0:23:09.080 --> 0:23:12.720 a patient and examine their wounds under the bedclothes. She 0:23:12.760 --> 0:23:16.560 saw ragged flesh dissolved away from limbs covered in blood 0:23:16.600 --> 0:23:21.119 and puss. They were essentially being chemically melted by Buck's poisons. 0:23:21.520 --> 0:23:25.080 When Victoria confronted him about what he was doing, he said, 0:23:25.520 --> 0:23:28.600 there are only three cures for cancer. Cut it out, 0:23:29.000 --> 0:23:32.119 poison it with arsenic or burn it out, and I 0:23:32.280 --> 0:23:36.520 burn it. Despite the horrors of the life elixir that 0:23:36.560 --> 0:23:39.679 Bucks sold in her name, stories of Tenny's ability to 0:23:39.760 --> 0:23:43.720 diagnose wounds, cure illnesses, and even relay the details of 0:23:43.720 --> 0:23:47.280 how they occurred continued to be spread by local newspapers. 0:23:47.760 --> 0:23:50.280 As Ever, the claim was that the spirits poured their 0:23:50.320 --> 0:23:55.440 power through the young woman. Bucks advertisements made it clear 0:23:55.480 --> 0:23:58.160 that Tenny was the only one who administered the elixir, 0:23:58.640 --> 0:24:01.280 which is why when their patient died in June of 0:24:01.320 --> 0:24:04.480 eighteen sixty four, word reached the Claflands that it was 0:24:04.560 --> 0:24:08.320 Tenny who would face charges for manslaughter. It wasn't the 0:24:08.359 --> 0:24:10.560 first time the law came down on Buck, and he 0:24:10.680 --> 0:24:12.840 knew how to slip away from the consequences of a 0:24:12.920 --> 0:24:16.520 serious crime. Before the authorities could arrive, he bundled the 0:24:16.520 --> 0:24:19.960 family back onto the road and fled towards the horizon. 0:24:21.000 --> 0:24:25.399 They were headed east towards Cincinnati, but Victoria was about 0:24:25.400 --> 0:24:28.119 to face her own challenges to the west. In the 0:24:28.200 --> 0:24:32.600 city of St. Louis. In fact, her life was about 0:24:32.640 --> 0:24:46.600 to change forever. Whatever power was inside Victoria, it could 0:24:46.600 --> 0:24:49.600 defeat death. She had seen it save her own son. 0:24:50.640 --> 0:24:52.600 As she told the story, there was a day when 0:24:52.680 --> 0:24:55.919 Victoria had left her son, Byron, with his father, but 0:24:56.119 --> 0:24:58.640 when she came home, she found that Canning had vanished 0:24:58.640 --> 0:25:01.960 from the house. In his place, she found her mother there, 0:25:01.960 --> 0:25:05.800 deeply upset. She told Victoria that Byron had suffered a sudden, 0:25:05.920 --> 0:25:08.760 intense fever. It had burned the boy up from the 0:25:08.800 --> 0:25:12.560 inside and killed him two hours before Victoria came home. 0:25:14.119 --> 0:25:18.600 Victoria remembered screaming, I will not permit his death. But 0:25:18.640 --> 0:25:21.240 then she grabbed Byron and held him in her arms, 0:25:21.600 --> 0:25:24.760 and then she fell into a trance. The ceiling of 0:25:24.760 --> 0:25:27.879 the room disappeared from view, she later wrote, and the 0:25:27.920 --> 0:25:32.679 form of the Savior descended. Victoria and her son were 0:25:32.720 --> 0:25:35.720 frozen in place for seven hours. When she finally came 0:25:35.760 --> 0:25:39.800 back to herself, Byron was breathing again. Whatever disease had 0:25:39.840 --> 0:25:42.600 pulled him into death and had given him up again. 0:25:43.960 --> 0:25:46.480 From that day on, Victoria said she was convinced that 0:25:46.560 --> 0:25:49.720 divine favor was on her side. A divine power that 0:25:49.760 --> 0:25:52.359