Speaker 1: Welcomed Unobscured, a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky.
Speaker 1: Colonel Crosby died on April second of eighteen sixty. He
Speaker 1: had been one of the first to march out from
Speaker 1: Philadelphia with the volunteers at the start of the war.
Speaker 1: He took fire throughout the fighting, and at one point
Speaker 1: was shot in the head. After he went back into combat,
Speaker 1: a bullet shattered his arm, which was then amputated in
Speaker 1: a war hospital. Still, he was promoted through the ranks
Speaker 1: as his fearlessness made him a strange figure on the battlefield.
Speaker 1: Crosby got to know one of the doctors who treated him,
Speaker 1: and they started writing letters to each other. His willingness
Speaker 1: to face fire after such dire injuries must have puzzled
Speaker 1: the doctor as much as it impressed his fellow soldiers.
Speaker 1: Crosby explained his daring. You see, he was a spiritualist.
Speaker 1: Every time he stepped onto the battlefield, he said, he
Speaker 1: felt the presence of his spirit friends all around him.
Speaker 1: Their guidance was so real that he lost all awareness
Speaker 1: of fear. In his own words, the whizzing of musket
Speaker 1: balls produced no more trepidation than the falling rain and
Speaker 1: Crosby wasn't the only soldier to say so. Other spiritualists
Speaker 1: in the Union Army claimed that spirits had led them
Speaker 1: through tremendous fire as well. If his faith was shaken
Speaker 1: by the wounds that shattered him, he didn't let on
Speaker 1: when he died. The Doctors published a note on Colonel
Speaker 1: Crosby's life in the Banner of Light. It was a
Speaker 1: testament to spiritualists that the dead leaders who met them
Speaker 1: at the seance table also steered them through the battlefield.
Speaker 1: Like Crosby, they had led the nation to the end
Speaker 1: of the war, covered in scars, yes, but still fighting
Speaker 1: to the last. He died in the final confrontations of
Speaker 1: the war that forced the surrender at Appomattox. Perhaps he
Speaker 1: shared the same feeling that Lincoln expressed to one of
Speaker 1: Nettie Colburn's dire yet vague warnings about his own coming death.
Speaker 1: In her memoir, Nettie wrote that the President told her,
Speaker 1: I shall live till my work is done, and no
Speaker 1: earthly power can prevent it, and then it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: But it didn't matter. It mattered to the spiritualists. When
Speaker 1: news of Lincoln's assassination reached New York, the community railed
Speaker 1: in shared grief. They asked Emma Harding to give a
Speaker 1: lecture at the Cooper Institute and address their shocked hearts,
Speaker 1: and spiritualists across the country met in their local groups
Speaker 1: to grieve their loss, although maybe they grieved less than
Speaker 1: others who didn't share their beliefs about life in the
Speaker 1: spirit land. While most members of the New Republican Party
Speaker 1: mourned Lincoln's death, the Republicans of the Sirk Harmonique in
Speaker 1: New Orleans didn't feel the pain of his loss so deeply.
Speaker 1: In fact, he was closer to their fellowship than he'd
Speaker 1: ever been before. At the end of that year, when
Speaker 1: President Andrew Johnson declared a national Day of Thanksgiving, the
Speaker 1: er Harmonique hell the seance. They've been meeting again for
Speaker 1: a year ever since. On re resigned his commission, but
Speaker 1: he wasn't just holding seances. He was also holding office.
Speaker 1: In eighteen sixty five, On rehelped create the Friends of
Speaker 1: Universal Suffrage. Their political vision was filled with the fire
Speaker 1: of the idea universal education, black male suffrage, and distribution
Speaker 1: of land by the states to the heads of families.
Speaker 1: So when Lincoln spirit appeared to the Sir Carmonique. Of course,
Speaker 1: he gave their political vision his blessing. Here's historian Emily Clark.
Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln's first appearance to the Sir Carmenique is on
Speaker 1: December seven, sixty five, about seven months after his assassination.
Speaker 1: His spirit noted how he was glad that they had
Speaker 1: broken the chains of slavery, but he also recognized that
Speaker 1: there was a lot of work still to be done. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, we shouldn't start patting ourselves on the back,
Speaker 1: Justine at He also talks about how those who tried
Speaker 1: to stop the progress of freedom would regret those decisions
Speaker 1: after death, where you know, those who had suffered for
Speaker 1: righteous causes would be blessed by God and happy in
Speaker 1: the spirit world. You know, freedom was something that was
Speaker 1: created and ordained by God, and while freedom originated in heaven.
Speaker 1: His spirit talks about how it's intended to reign on
Speaker 1: earth to um and then he signs off the message
Speaker 1: like he does many of them. With your brother and friend,
Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln. The work of making sure that a nation
Speaker 1: conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all
Speaker 1: men and women are created equal would endure the blood
Speaker 1: spent to perfect the nation would not be wasted, The
Speaker 1: unfinished work of freedom would advance further than ever, the
Speaker 1: new birth of liberty would grow to maturity. It was
Speaker 1: an assurance that the Sir Carmonique would need to help
Speaker 1: them reshape the nation in the mold of the idea,
Speaker 1: and it was the fuel they needed to empower the
Speaker 1: next step forward reconstruction. This is unobscured. I'm Aaron Mankey.
Speaker 1: Lincoln was dead, and yet he was everywhere. In fact,
Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln visited far more seances after his death than
Speaker 1: he ever could have in life. He was, after all,
Speaker 1: the representative of justice and liberty to many, but he
Speaker 1: was also a man with a family, and could anyone
Speaker 1: have been more devastated by his loss than Mary Todd Lincoln.
Speaker 1: Here's historian John Busher. I looked in detail at the
Speaker 1: last moments of Lincoln's life before he passed away and
Speaker 1: the following moments, and discovered descriptions of the physicians being
Speaker 1: asked by Mary Todd Lincoln too cut her a lock
Speaker 1: of hair from Lincoln's head. Mary didn't keep the hair,
Speaker 1: though she passed it on. She hadn't taken it for herself,
Speaker 1: but rather so that she could give it to her
Speaker 1: spiritualist friends Cranston, Laurie's wife and daughter. They must have
Speaker 1: told Mary that they could use it to hold open
Speaker 1: a channel to Old Abe. With the lock of his hair,
Speaker 1: they could reach across the border to the spirit world,
Speaker 1: just as they had done for Mary after she lost
Speaker 1: Willie in eighteen sixty two. Even more, the lock of
Speaker 1: hair that they got was gruesome. Today. It's kept safe
Speaker 1: by the Chicago Historical Society with a label that reads
Speaker 1: taken from President Lincoln's head after he was shot, cut
Speaker 1: from the spot where the ball passed through Washington, d c.
Speaker 1: April eighteen sixty five. You can find the Historical Society's
Speaker 1: image online too, clearly showing the hair still clotted with blood.
Speaker 1: But for many spiritualists this would mean that it's still
Speaker 1: was charged with the mental energy that left Lincoln's body
Speaker 1: on his death. Like so many of the mysteries of spiritualism,
Speaker 1: Lincoln's murder was immediately put under the scrutiny of investigation.
Speaker 1: A new unit of intelligence agents was responsible for solving
Speaker 1: the case. The Secret Service, formed from Alan Pinkerton's National
Speaker 1: Detective Agency. They had served as spies for the Union
Speaker 1: Army during the Civil War, and surprise surprise, Pinkerton's home
Speaker 1: had served as a stop on the underground railroad in
Speaker 1: Illinois through the eighteen fifties. Born in a Scottish slum,
Speaker 1: Pinkerton had abandoned his efforts to reform Britain and started
Speaker 1: over in America. After he established his detective agency, he
Speaker 1: set them to work in the service of helping people
Speaker 1: escaped slavery, but he assisted powerful interest too, including the
Speaker 1: Illinois Central Railroad, and that work put him in touch
Speaker 1: with the railroad's attorney, a man named Abraham Lincoln. So
Speaker 1: when Pinkerton was brought into the war, he started by
Speaker 1: foiling an early attempt on the President's life in eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty one. Now, though he had a new and more
Speaker 1: sobering task, tips and evidence began flooding his office, so
Speaker 1: he recruited an investigator with a talent for sorting through
Speaker 1: mountains of paper. This man began his career as a
Speaker 1: journalist for the New York Tribune and was the very
Speaker 1: same reporter who'd knocked south against Virginia's embargo to report
Speaker 1: on the hanging of John Brown. His name was Henry
Speaker 1: Steele Allcott, It seems that after his turn as an
Speaker 1: undercover reporter, Alcott had enlisted in the signal core of
Speaker 1: the Union Army. When illness sent him home from the front,
Speaker 1: he ended up sitting behind a desk, tracking the profiteers
Speaker 1: who were siphoning money away from the war effort. Now
Speaker 1: he was facing the task of sifting through the confessions
Speaker 1: and leads regarding Lincoln's murder. He would only be a
Speaker 1: part of the investigation for a short time and returned
Speaker 1: to New York soon afterward, but he wasn't done investigating frauds.
Speaker 1: His keen eye for detail might have made him the
Speaker 1: right man to follow a paper trail for the Secret Service,
Speaker 1: but he was also a veteran mesmerist from his younger days.
Speaker 1: It was a skill that made him the perfect candidate
Speaker 1: for a job in the eighteen seventies when a newspaper
Speaker 1: sent him north to investigate something unusual, and it would
Speaker 1: be a case that would draw him back into the
Speaker 1: world of the occult. A story will pick up again
Speaker 1: later as Alcott and the Pinkerton's investigated Lincoln's murder. There
Speaker 1: were bodyguards assigned to stay with Mary Lincoln in the
Speaker 1: midst of her raw suffering. One of those bodyguards later
Speaker 1: wrote women spiritualists in some way gained access to her
Speaker 1: and poured into her ear pretend messages from her dead husband.
Speaker 1: But now she was so weakened, he said that she
Speaker 1: wasn't able to resist the cruel cheat. The sittings nearly
Speaker 1: drove her mad. At least that was her son Robert's opinion.
Speaker 1: He threw the spiritualists out of the house. He hated
Speaker 1: their beliefs with a passion, and must have always been
Speaker 1: disgusted by his mother's attempts to talk to his dead brothers.
Speaker 1: In the following days, he went so far as to
Speaker 1: have his grieving mother committed to an insane asylum. Of course,
Speaker 1: Mary wasn't the only one to carry on speaking with
Speaker 1: the spirit of Lincoln after he died, But then again,
Speaker 1: she wasn't the only one grieving either. She kept a
Speaker 1: shrine in her closet. Maggie's period of hopeless morning, alongside
Speaker 1: her descent into desperate poverty, had started before the war
Speaker 1: with Elisha Kine's death. The chaos of the Civil War
Speaker 1: had done nothing to lift her spirits either. Every day
Speaker 1: she would step into her closet and pull back a
Speaker 1: set of black drapes. There sat an engraving of Elisha's face,
Speaker 1: surrounded by his gifts to her, the jewels, the handkerchiefs,
Speaker 1: the letters, even a map that showed his route of
Speaker 1: his journey north. But despite her work as a medium,
Speaker 1: Maggie had no map or chart that traced his journey
Speaker 1: into death. So she would light a candle in his
Speaker 1: memory and weep for him as long as she could
Speaker 1: stand it. When she couldn't stand it anymore, she would
Speaker 1: drink Brandy was Maggie's companion during the dark years of
Speaker 1: the Civil War. As her long legal battles with Elisha's
Speaker 1: relative have stretched on. They never relented either. The Canes
Speaker 1: never acknowledged his relationship with her, let alone that she
Speaker 1: was his wife. But in the midst of her grief,
Speaker 1: Maggie did make friends who were willing to find her help.
Speaker 1: They initiated a lawsuit against the Canes, arguing that Maggie
Speaker 1: was entitled to at least half of a licious estate.
Speaker 1: It didn't bring any kind of a swift resolution, though,
Speaker 1: and it added another layer to the quarrel that had
Speaker 1: already dragged on for years. Here's author Nancy Stewart. Now
Speaker 1: the lawsuit takes place in yes where Philadelphia, of course,
Speaker 1: where he's from, and his father had been a district
Speaker 1: court judge. And the family keeps making these bargains as
Speaker 1: they don't want anyone to know he was married to,
Speaker 1: quotes the Rapper. Then they'll provide for her for a
Speaker 1: nuity out of this five thousand dollars and as a
Speaker 1: struggle that goes on for a long long time. In
Speaker 1: her boldest gambit, Maggie worked with an author to write
Speaker 1: a book that told the story of her relationship with Elisha,
Speaker 1: including one hundred and thirty four of their letters. When
Speaker 1: the manuscript was sent to the printer, Elisha's brother suddenly
Speaker 1: appeared and offered to pay her off with two thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: as well as smaller quarterly payments drawn from the mysterious
Speaker 1: trust that Elisha had established. When Maggie agreed, she received
Speaker 1: the first quarterly payment, but the rest never came. During
Speaker 1: the war, Kate was the only medium of the three
Speaker 1: Fox sisters who was still holding public seances, Maggie was
Speaker 1: submerged in her personal battles, and Leah was floating above
Speaker 1: the fray in her newcastle. So as Maggie descended further
Speaker 1: into the darkness of alcoholism, Kate extended her earnings to
Speaker 1: her sister and supported both of them. But it wasn't
Speaker 1: just Maggie who was drinking. Here's more from Nancy Stewart. Maggie,
Speaker 1: in midst her breakdowns and so on, after Elisha's death,
Speaker 1: finally actually becomes a Catholic, which is interesting. She does
Speaker 1: drinking more and more, and by the way, her sister
Speaker 1: has become quite a famous and now beautiful, lovely young
Speaker 1: woman also is drinking. The two of them are drinking,
Speaker 1: and there are various efforts to put them on the wagon,
Speaker 1: so to speak. Maggie's case eventually went back to the courts.
Speaker 1: When Confederate forces were nearing the Canes estates outside Philadelphia
Speaker 1: just before the Battle of Gettysburg, he gave the Canes
Speaker 1: more excuses to avoid court dates and payments. Elisha had
Speaker 1: been dead for seven years at that point, and yet
Speaker 1: she continued to fight and to drink as well. One
Speaker 1: night in December of eighteen sixty four, the sister's old friend,
Speaker 1: Horace Greeley, who long advocated temperance in his newspapers, found
Speaker 1: Maggie wandering drunkenly in the snowy New York street. A
Speaker 1: biography published in the nineteen forties recorded that when Horace
Speaker 1: asked her what she was doing, she replied, I'm looking
Speaker 1: for Elisha. He is somewhere in this awful storm. I
Speaker 1: always find him in the snow. When he led her home,
Speaker 1: Horace found that Kate was also wrapped in an alcohol addiction.
Speaker 1: He put his head together with Leah and the rest
Speaker 1: of their family, and they decided to pay for the
Speaker 1: sisters to begin a course at a small hospital nearby
Speaker 1: called the Swedish Movement Cure Hospital. The founders there practiced
Speaker 1: one of the many new attempts at medical treatment that
Speaker 1: had sprung up alongside magnetic healing. Here's Nancy Stewarts once again.
Speaker 1: Now the Swedish Movement. It was one of those many
Speaker 1: And there were many health reform movements going on at
Speaker 1: that point of the beginning of the sanitarium movements, or
Speaker 1: at least the acceleration of them, and water cures and
Speaker 1: diet cures were very popular in the mid nine century.
Speaker 1: But anyway, yes, so the Swedish Movement Cure was run
Speaker 1: by this doctor George Taylor and his wife Sarah in
Speaker 1: New York City end they care for Katie and they
Speaker 1: try to keep her sober. The tailor's work focused on
Speaker 1: a combination of massage and other techniques for releasing nervous
Speaker 1: tension in the body. But even as they worked on Kate,
Speaker 1: she worked on them as well. Soon they were calling
Speaker 1: her powers of mediumship extraordinary. While Kate was sitting for
Speaker 1: their cures, they were sitting for her seances, still clinging
Speaker 1: to her dark path. Though Maggie refused both, She was
Speaker 1: single minded in her fight with the Canes. That is
Speaker 1: until the summer of eighteen sixty five, when her case
Speaker 1: was finally decided. The Philadelphia court, where Elisha's family was
Speaker 1: deeply involved, came down on the side of the Canes
Speaker 1: by throwing out the case altogether. It was the last
Speaker 1: thing Maggie and her family needed to hear. In January
Speaker 1: of that year, the Fox sisters had lost their father,
Speaker 1: then in August their mother had passed away. As you
Speaker 1: might imagine, it was difficult for Maggie to find light
Speaker 1: in those dark times, but she did brighten a bit
Speaker 1: when her book finally reached Prince. At least now people
Speaker 1: could read The Love Life of Dr Kane and know
Speaker 1: her side of the story. Leah and Daniel Underhill even
Speaker 1: decided to fund an apartment for their sisters just a
Speaker 1: few blocks away from the Movement Cure Hospital so that
Speaker 1: Kate and Maggie could stay together, and it seemed that
Speaker 1: maybe things were starting to look up. But when Leah
Speaker 1: visited her sisters one morning that summer, she found them
Speaker 1: in the midst of a disastrous relapse. Not only had
Speaker 1: Maggie resumed holding seances with Kate, finally throwing aside the
Speaker 1: religious obedience that had restrained her for so long, but
Speaker 1: the pair were also consumed with the destructive spirit of Brandy.
Speaker 1: Leah exploded in anger at her sisters. The resulting fight
Speaker 1: one where disappointments and resentments were laid bare permanently severed.
Speaker 1: The bond between Leah and Maggie and Kate didn't fare
Speaker 1: any better either. Her journey from recovery at the hospital
Speaker 1: to relapse with Maggie, and then back to the hospital
Speaker 1: again would play on repeat for years to come. But
Speaker 1: there was something familiar about their struggles. While the Fox
Speaker 1: family wrestled with their own demons and failures, an entire
Speaker 1: nation was doing the same, and all of them seemed
Speaker 1: to be focused on the same three things, promises, betrayal,
Speaker 1: and reconciliation. The nation had been reunited, but it was
Speaker 1: hardly unified. For some, spirit of liberation, like the figure
Speaker 1: of Lincoln was what they needed to lift their downcast eyes.
Speaker 1: For others, the loss was far more personal and raw.
Speaker 1: They grieved dead sons, nephews, brothers, fathers, and friends. The
Speaker 1: war had left many wounds, both the personal and the political.
Speaker 1: As it was before the war, the social obligation to
Speaker 1: mourn publicly seemed to fall on white, middle class women.
Speaker 1: There were expectations about how a grieving woman with some
Speaker 1: social clout and some money to her name should act.
Speaker 1: At the same time, the whole idea of what a
Speaker 1: woman's sphere ought to be was continually changing. Thousands of families,
Speaker 1: but especially women, were looking for some kind of guidance
Speaker 1: to bring peace to their hearts, and many found that
Speaker 1: in spiritualism. So it was only natural that when the
Speaker 1: scale of death became unbelievable, it became more and more
Speaker 1: possible to see a life beyond death as a reality.
Speaker 1: Too many, the spiritualist slogan there is no Death was
Speaker 1: a welcome relief. One writer in eighteen sixty seven noted
Speaker 1: with surprise that rather than shattering spiritualism and its optimism
Speaker 1: for a better world, the number of spiritualists was growing
Speaker 1: with each passing day. He wrote, Mothers are losing their
Speaker 1: children by death. Fond fathers unwillingly give up their only
Speaker 1: son of their name to the grave. Each day, how
Speaker 1: many die, some of whom are long and some of
Speaker 1: whom are bitterly mourned by the survivors, mourned with blind
Speaker 1: longing and passionate pain. And this being so, it is
Speaker 1: vain to look for a speedy ending to a belief
Speaker 1: that offers the living one more opportunity to speak with
Speaker 1: the beloved dead. In fact, the desire was so strong
Speaker 1: that the spiritualist newspapers started publishing a new kind of advertisement.
Speaker 1: In the years before the war, their pages were full
Speaker 1: of notices from mediums offering their services to anyone who
Speaker 1: wanted them. In the years after the war, though, we
Speaker 1: started to see the reverse letters from grieving families who
Speaker 1: wanted help contacting those they've lost. Here's historian Molly McGarry
Speaker 1: the spiritualist press. I think that the Schekna is one
Speaker 1: of the first spirituals public patients to include pages of
Speaker 1: letters from readers to the editor man in Samuel Britten
Speaker 1: asking for comfort, asking for consolation, and sometimes asking for
Speaker 1: assistance in contacting dead loved ones. So their letters of mourning,
Speaker 1: their letters of loss, and there's sometimes letters asking for
Speaker 1: help and making his connections. For mediums like Victoria Woodhall,
Speaker 1: who had established themselves as spiritual healers, relieving the pain
Speaker 1: of wounds opened by massive violence was business and a
Speaker 1: lucrative one. When Victoria returned from San Francisco to Ohio
Speaker 1: in the years before the war and reunited with her
Speaker 1: sister and mother, she was also pulled back into the
Speaker 1: surreal world of perpetual cons and frauds that her father,
Speaker 1: Buck Claflin, built around his family. She and her sister
Speaker 1: Tenny were selling their services as mediums for the cure
Speaker 1: of disease, but as far as Victoria could see, there
Speaker 1: was a big difference between her approach and what her
Speaker 1: father wanted. She laid of wrote, I believe that Tenny
Speaker 1: ought to use the gift God has given her, but
Speaker 1: not in the mercenary way. She was forced to use it,
Speaker 1: and it's easy to understand what she meant. Mary Gabriel
Speaker 1: writes that Claflin crew picked the bones of the border
Speaker 1: states after waves of violence from the war. They sold
Speaker 1: hope to the hopeless so often that even though Victoria
Speaker 1: had come back from the West to be with them,
Speaker 1: she couldn't always stand to be around them for long,
Speaker 1: which is why Victoria wasn't with her family for one
Speaker 1: of their most egregious crimes. That was when Buck arrived
Speaker 1: in Ottawa, Illinois, not far from where I grew up
Speaker 1: in fact, and announced himself as Dr. RB Claflin, King
Speaker 1: of Cancers. He rented out the entire Fox River House,
Speaker 1: the town's oldest hotel, to establish an infirmary there. Buck
Speaker 1: and Tenny dosed patients with their classic life elixir, just
Speaker 1: as they've done before, but of course it did nothing
Speaker 1: for their dying victims. In fact, the mixture of sheep's fats,
Speaker 1: lie and perfumes actually deepened their suffering. Once, when Victoria
Speaker 1: came to visit her family, she heard the screams of
Speaker 1: a patient and examine their wounds under the bedclothes. She
Speaker 1: saw ragged flesh dissolved away from limbs covered in blood
Speaker 1: and puss. They were essentially being chemically melted by Buck's poisons.
Speaker 1: When Victoria confronted him about what he was doing, he said,
Speaker 1: there are only three cures for cancer. Cut it out,
Speaker 1: poison it with arsenic or burn it out, and I
Speaker 1: burn it. Despite the horrors of the life elixir that
Speaker 1: Bucks sold in her name, stories of Tenny's ability to
Speaker 1: diagnose wounds, cure illnesses, and even relay the details of
Speaker 1: how they occurred continued to be spread by local newspapers.
Speaker 1: As Ever, the claim was that the spirits poured their
Speaker 1: power through the young woman. Bucks advertisements made it clear
Speaker 1: that Tenny was the only one who administered the elixir,
Speaker 1: which is why when their patient died in June of
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty four, word reached the Claflands that it was
Speaker 1: Tenny who would face charges for manslaughter. It wasn't the
Speaker 1: first time the law came down on Buck, and he
Speaker 1: knew how to slip away from the consequences of a
Speaker 1: serious crime. Before the authorities could arrive, he bundled the
Speaker 1: family back onto the road and fled towards the horizon.
Speaker 1: They were headed east towards Cincinnati, but Victoria was about
Speaker 1: to face her own challenges to the west. In the
Speaker 1: city of St. Louis. In fact, her life was about
Speaker 1: to change forever. Whatever power was inside Victoria, it could
Speaker 1: defeat death. She had seen it save her own son.
Speaker 1: As she told the story, there was a day when
Speaker 1: Victoria had left her son, Byron, with his father, but
Speaker 1: when she came home, she found that Canning had vanished
Speaker 1: from the house. In his place, she found her mother there,
Speaker 1: deeply upset. She told Victoria that Byron had suffered a sudden,
Speaker 1: intense fever. It had burned the boy up from the
Speaker 1: inside and killed him two hours before Victoria came home.
Speaker 1: Victoria remembered screaming, I will not permit his death. But
Speaker 1: then she grabbed Byron and held him in her arms,
Speaker 1: and then she fell into a trance. The ceiling of
Speaker 1: the room disappeared from view, she later wrote, and the
Speaker 1: form of the Savior descended. Victoria and her son were
Speaker 1: frozen in place for seven hours. When she finally came
Speaker 1: back to herself, Byron was breathing again. Whatever disease had
Speaker 1: pulled him into death and had given him up again.
Speaker 1: From that day on, Victoria said she was convinced that
Speaker 1: divine favor was on her side. A divine power that
Speaker 1: could work through her to heal and comfort others with
Speaker 1: hopeless wounds. If she could heal where others could only despair,
Speaker 1: then it was her responsibility to share those gifts with others.
Speaker 1: And it was the trail of that healing work that
Speaker 1: brought her to St. Louis. Here's author Mary Gabrielle So.
Speaker 1: In the years after the civil or, Victoria was found
Speaker 1: herself in St. Louis at one period, which was a
Speaker 1: really interesting place for her to be because it was
Speaker 1: kind of a hub of spiritualism, but it was also
Speaker 1: a hub of radicalism. There were a lot of German immigrants,
Speaker 1: and one of the things that happened after was that
Speaker 1: a lot of the people who fled the conflicts in
Speaker 1: Europe landed in the United States, and a lot of
Speaker 1: the German radicals surprisingly went to St. Louis. So Victoria
Speaker 1: found herself in this kind of stew of people who
Speaker 1: were engaged in spiritualism but also political reform, and she
Speaker 1: got her first kind of introduction to revolutionary politics there.
Speaker 1: But at Victoria had started to absorb the attitudes of liberation,
Speaker 1: they took on a less abstract face. When a charming
Speaker 1: man with a military bearing and piercing black eyes walked
Speaker 1: into the hotel room where she was holding seances. From
Speaker 1: the moment they met, it was clear that he had
Speaker 1: everything Victoria's husband, Canning lacked. His name was James Harvey Blood.
Speaker 1: At just twenty nine, he was an ambitious man. He
Speaker 1: was the city auditor, the president of the St. Louis Railroad,
Speaker 1: and the founding secretary of the St. Louis Society of Spiritualists.
Speaker 1: Victoria would soon learn just how well connected James was too.
Speaker 1: He came from an old family whose history on American
Speaker 1: soil ran back to a Massachusetts landing in sixteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: and in the previous decade his St. Louis circle had
Speaker 1: hosted the most prominent spiritualists in the nation, including Emma Harding,
Speaker 1: Cora Hatch, and Andrew Jackson Davis. But she learned that
Speaker 1: his beautiful body carried the scars of bullet wounds that
Speaker 1: would plague him for the rest of his life. His
Speaker 1: stepson would later say that he saw five scars on
Speaker 1: james body, although his military record only mentioned one, and
Speaker 1: ever since returning from the war, James had suffered from
Speaker 1: intense headaches, shooting pain in his chest, and partial paralysis
Speaker 1: in one arm from the mini ball that had burrowed
Speaker 1: into his left shoulder. Over time, James would learn Victoria's
Speaker 1: story as well, but he knew from their first meeting
Speaker 1: that he had found a great talent, as he wrote,
Speaker 1: and in him, Victoria had finally met her match. By
Speaker 1: the end of their first seance, the spirit spoke through
Speaker 1: Victoria and told James Harvey Blood that the two of
Speaker 1: them were going to get married. The trouble was they
Speaker 1: were both already married to other people, and they both
Speaker 1: had children. But many spiritualists believed that everyone had natural
Speaker 1: mates and sympathetic souls waiting for them, and that those
Speaker 1: spiritual affinities mattered much more than any other kind of agreement, personal, legal,
Speaker 1: or otherwise. And then there was Victoria's view that marriage
Speaker 1: was little more than a prison. Here's Mary Gabriel once again.
Speaker 1: She thought that all social problems were rooted in bad marriages,
Speaker 1: and so Blood. Luckily for Victoria, who probably blood was
Speaker 1: probably kind of swept away by her as she was
Speaker 1: by him, left the room and agreed it was. In
Speaker 1: a very short time they had each left their respective
Speaker 1: spouses and went traveling together in a caravan which was
Speaker 1: basically kind of a getting to know each other trip.
Speaker 1: Following the spirit's encouragement, Victoria and James discovered they were
Speaker 1: a match made in heaven, so they continued Victoria's trade
Speaker 1: as a traveling medium, adding James to the mix. His spirits,
Speaker 1: though spoken, the voice of reform, just as they had
Speaker 1: to sojourn her truth Amy Post and the Sir Harmonique
Speaker 1: in New Orleans. One writer called him an extreme radical
Speaker 1: of the most uncompromising type. He was a zealous advocate
Speaker 1: of women's rights, abolition, and labor reform. She worked as
Speaker 1: a spiritualist, but it was it was a completely different
Speaker 1: environment from anything she had experienced before. There was a
Speaker 1: freedom to their relationship and an intellectual change that she
Speaker 1: had never had with anyone. And I think that this
Speaker 1: was the moment when Victoria Woodhall as we came to
Speaker 1: know her, as as the world came to know her,
Speaker 1: was born and and actually Blood was her first teacher.
Speaker 1: When Victoria stepped out with James Blood, she was still
Speaker 1: calling herself a healer, and this time it was maybe
Speaker 1: more true than at any other point in the past
Speaker 1: five years. Without her father's schemes, placebos and outright poisons
Speaker 1: rattling on the margins of every seance. Victoria was able
Speaker 1: to give her full attention to her clients and the spirits,
Speaker 1: and those clients paid for nothing but her time, her words,
Speaker 1: and her sympathetic ear. From our vantage point today, it's
Speaker 1: easy to see her work as something like psychotherapy. But
Speaker 1: while the physical wounds of war were terrible, Victoria was
Speaker 1: most haunted by the stories she heard from women whose
Speaker 1: lives sounded so much like her own. Victoria would go
Speaker 1: on to spend the coming decades writing down accounts of
Speaker 1: abuse of marriages and terrorized wise women who hated their
Speaker 1: husbands but were forced into sex and motherhood. They didn't
Speaker 1: want young women who were abandoned to fend for themselves,
Speaker 1: And in all these dark mirrors Victoria saw the suffering
Speaker 1: of her own life reflected back. Perhaps that's why it
Speaker 1: didn't take much encouragement from James for Victoria to turn
Speaker 1: her talents away from personal consultations. She had started thinking
Speaker 1: about how a larger platform as a spiritualist might give
Speaker 1: her the chance to fight for the rights of all women.
Speaker 1: As a former army officer, James could see it too.
Speaker 1: The fight for reform would indeed be a battle necessary
Speaker 1: but difficult, and Victoria, he believed, would lead the charge.
Speaker 1: Sojourner Truth didn't need introductions. The fight for liberation had
Speaker 1: and her life's work for decades. In eighteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: she had returned home to Michigan after a brutal tour
Speaker 1: through Indiana in which her rallies for abolition were opposed
Speaker 1: at every step by increasingly vigorous mobs. But at the
Speaker 1: age of sixty five, the tour had taken its toll,
Speaker 1: and she was spent. By the end of the year,
Speaker 1: she was dangerously ill, and worrying about the possible outcomes
Speaker 1: of the war left her in a constant state of anxiety.
Speaker 1: She knew the stakes, of course, she had spent her
Speaker 1: life in a spiritual battle that had now crossed over
Speaker 1: into the world of flesh and blood. Her family and
Speaker 1: friends feared that she would die before the end of
Speaker 1: the year. In the wake of the Emancipation Proclamation in
Speaker 1: January of eighteen sixty three, some of Sojourners friends, especially
Speaker 1: among the Quakers, started a campaign of support for her.
Speaker 1: Letters and packages started to arrive at her home in
Speaker 1: Battle Creek, Michigan, Some from as far away as Ireland.
Speaker 1: The encouragement brought by the Emancipation Nation was a wind
Speaker 1: under her wings. As she rallied out of her sickness,
Speaker 1: Sojourner began to send her own gifts in return. Cards
Speaker 1: with her photograph were mailed to people who would otherwise
Speaker 1: never have the chance to meet her face to face.
Speaker 1: But the Emancipation Proclamation was also met with a fierce backlash,
Speaker 1: including waves of violence in Detroit that targeted the city's
Speaker 1: black community and well known abolitionists. In response, Sojourner's grandson, James,
Speaker 1: joined up with two sons of Frederick Douglas, along with
Speaker 1: many other young men, to join the First Northern Black Regiment.
Speaker 1: Newspapers that had previously reported on Sojourner and Truth were
Speaker 1: now also including stories about Harriet Tubman and other black abolitionists.
Speaker 1: But if this newfound interest among white media raised sojourners spirits,
Speaker 1: word that James had been lost in combat would have
Speaker 1: dashed them to pieces. And then there were the reports
Speaker 1: that racist violence was devastating the black community in New
Speaker 1: York City, in the very same neighbor hood where Sojourner
Speaker 1: had once lived and worked. Some city leaders had shifted
Speaker 1: from calls for a secession to outrighte permission for white
Speaker 1: people to attack their black neighbors. So Journer knew that
Speaker 1: she needed to get back in the fight. She gathered
Speaker 1: her strength and left Michigan behind, taking to the road again.
Speaker 1: Despite her recent illness about that journey, she wrote, I
Speaker 1: mean to live till I am a hundred years old
Speaker 1: if it please God, and see my people all free,
Speaker 1: rather than join a black regiment. Though she set out
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty four for Washington. On the way, she
Speaker 1: stopped in Rochester and stayed with Amy and Isaac post.
Speaker 1: Amy organized the lecture during her visit, and Sojourner and
Speaker 1: Frederick Douglas spoke together from the same platform once again.
Speaker 1: When she reached the capital, Sojourner met Lincoln and spoke
Speaker 1: in churches throughout the city. Before she traveled to the
Speaker 1: refugee camps. She found that the people who had freed
Speaker 1: themselves from captivity and come north were now subject to
Speaker 1: the whims of employers who would all for them jobs
Speaker 1: but then refused to pay. When they weren't fighting bad bosses,
Speaker 1: they were taking government projects that paid months late. So
Speaker 1: so a journal came up with a plan. She started
Speaker 1: writing to Amy Post to coordinate deliveries of clothes, betting,
Speaker 1: and medicine to the Freedman's Village and asked for Amy
Speaker 1: to send back word for opportunities for schooling and jobs
Speaker 1: across her network. Here's historian Margaret Washington. She was a
Speaker 1: counselor Freedman's Village for about a year and a half
Speaker 1: and that was important. That was when Freedman's Village they
Speaker 1: built homes. Sojourn her truth set up a church. She
Speaker 1: asked people congressmen to come when they had celebrations, and
Speaker 1: they would they would come and uh and see the
Speaker 1: progress that the freed people were making. In fact, Sojourner
Speaker 1: received an official appointment as counselor to the freed people
Speaker 1: at Freedman's Village when it was established on land that
Speaker 1: had been part of Robert Elise Arlington estate. She stayed
Speaker 1: there until eighteen sixty five, when bills forming the Freedman's
Speaker 1: Bureau and the Freedman Savings Bank seemed to secure the
Speaker 1: new status of freedom for black Americans. Here's Margaret Washington
Speaker 1: once again. So she stayed there for a year and
Speaker 1: a half and then she went to help with Josephine
Speaker 1: in the city in Washington City. I think that's where
Speaker 1: she really thrived because she taught sewing and other domestic
Speaker 1: arts to the women. Then she went to Freedman's Hospital
Speaker 1: and worked at Freedman's Hospital, which was going to become
Speaker 1: Howard University's medical school. She did that for a year
Speaker 1: and a half. At the same time she is along
Speaker 1: with Josephine, setting up this employment office. I just found
Speaker 1: that was that was just so fascinating. All that while
Speaker 1: she stayed in touch with her network of spiritualist friends,
Speaker 1: Man continued to work together with a Post. Amy and Isaac,
Speaker 1: for their part, kept their arms open in Rochester. So
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty six, when Sojourner traveled with over one
Speaker 1: forty freed people to western New York, Amy and the
Speaker 1: community in Rochester were waiting for them, and she was
Speaker 1: occasionally joined at the Relief Association headquarters by other spiritualists
Speaker 1: who traveled to Washington to assist in the work in
Speaker 1: the years after the Civil War that included Cora Hatch.
Speaker 1: In fact, her mutual friendship with Amy Post was only
Speaker 1: one of the connections that formed a bond between her
Speaker 1: and Sojourner truth. They met in the eighteen fifties. In
Speaker 1: the book, I talked about this abolitionist singing group, the Hutchinson's.
Speaker 1: The Hutchinsons were the most popular folk singers in America,
Speaker 1: but they were also radical abolitionists. They were good friends
Speaker 1: of Sojourners. They spent a lot of time at Northampton.
Speaker 1: There's one abbey. Abbey was a spiritualist, and Abby had
Speaker 1: Cora Hatch at her house a lot. Cora and so
Speaker 1: Journer met at Abby Hudginson's home. They met there several
Speaker 1: times that I've found because when so Journer was after
Speaker 1: she got well and she said, I'm determined to go
Speaker 1: to Washington and see the freedom of my people. She
Speaker 1: stayed with Abby Hutchinson and Cora was also there. Then
Speaker 1: Cora went to Washington until Journer was there. While she
Speaker 1: worked alongside so Journer in Washington, Cora also stayed in
Speaker 1: touch with Amy Post. She wrote a letter to Rochester
Speaker 1: saying that important things are happening here at the Freedman's Village,
Speaker 1: laboring together to bring a new world into being. Both
Speaker 1: women would eventually move from the Freedman's Hospital to the
Speaker 1: black churches growing around Washington, and in doing so they
Speaker 1: would weave together the ultimate spiritualist vision, making the world
Speaker 1: new again. A familiar figure stepped onto the New Orleans docks.
Speaker 1: She had once been Cora Scott, and then for a
Speaker 1: long while Cora Hatch. All along she had won praise
Speaker 1: for her beautiful curls and the power and intellect of
Speaker 1: the spirits who spoke through her. Now, in May of
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty seven, she was Cora Daniels. No longer the
Speaker 1: little girl from Wisconsin, or even the unfortunate young wife
Speaker 1: of a selfish promoter. Cora now stood in New Orleans
Speaker 1: as the wife of Nathan W. Daniels. He was the
Speaker 1: man who had served as the commanding officer for the
Speaker 1: Louisiana Native Guards during the war before being discharged for
Speaker 1: defending them against racist white officers, and he'd sat for
Speaker 1: seances with Henri and the members of his Sir Carmonique
Speaker 1: when he returned to the North. Nathan was among those
Speaker 1: spiritualists who had been invited to the White House to
Speaker 1: attend a seance with Mary Lincoln, even though he had
Speaker 1: never met the president. But it was all worth it
Speaker 1: because he met someone better, a beautiful spiritualist medium who
Speaker 1: was working with her friends to build the world of
Speaker 1: radical equality that the spirits cried out for Cora. Their
Speaker 1: record of sciences held during their time in Washington shows
Speaker 1: just how close Cora had become to the capital's spiritualists,
Speaker 1: including Neddie Colburn, Giles Stebbins, who had been converted by
Speaker 1: sojourn or truth at Northampton, and a nurse named Clara Barton,
Speaker 1: whose experiences during the war would lead her to create
Speaker 1: the American Red Cross. When Cora and Nathan arrived in
Speaker 1: New Orleans, they carried new life with them. Their infant daughter, Henrietta,
Speaker 1: and Nathan had been appointed to a government post in
Speaker 1: the city. Together, they believed they would bring hope to
Speaker 1: a place Nathan loved. He was eager to do some good.
Speaker 1: Just like James Blood, Nathan was a man ready to
Speaker 1: put his courage and vigor toward the cause of rebuild
Speaker 1: holding a just and equitable society, this time with his
Speaker 1: wife and daughter beside him. Cora spent most of her
Speaker 1: time caring for Henrietta, but her experience as a spiritualist
Speaker 1: and connection to the former members of the Native Guard
Speaker 1: eventually earned her an invitation to speak. In response, she
Speaker 1: set pen to paper to write a memorial poem. It
Speaker 1: was meant to be a spirit inspired accompaniment for the
Speaker 1: ringing of funeral bells, a harsh reality for so many
Speaker 1: people after the war. But those funeral bells would soon
Speaker 1: be ringing much louder than she expected, louder and far
Speaker 1: too close to home. That's it for this week's episode
Speaker 1: of Unobscured. Stick around after this short sponsor break for
Speaker 1: a preview of what's in store for next week. Next
Speaker 1: time on Unobscured. If the early seances portrayed Native spirits
Speaker 1: as guides and healers for white spiritualists, the tone changed
Speaker 1: as reports of more violence reached seance circles in the East.
Speaker 1: When murdered leaders arrived to speak at seance tables. During
Speaker 1: the reports of genocide and dispossession of the eighteen sixties
Speaker 1: and seventies, Indian blessings on spiritualists were replaced by Indian curses,
Speaker 1: curses on a nation whose soldiers and citizens had murdered them.
Speaker 1: But as other newspapers fell in line with the white
Speaker 1: supremacist rhetoric of writers who pushed the idea of manifest destiny,
Speaker 1: the Banner of Light continued to print criticisms of that message.
Speaker 1: It was their responsibility to heed the voices of the spirits,
Speaker 1: after all, and report their messages to the reading public.
Speaker 1: Something was happening. Spiritualists who had viewed slavery as a
Speaker 1: sin that left a stain on the nation had begun
Speaker 1: to see America's westward advancement into the territory of the
Speaker 1: Native Americans as just more of the same. Their editorials
Speaker 1: called u S policy a fraud and a swindle at
Speaker 1: a time when few other voices would. As violence piled
Speaker 1: on violence. Cora and the radical politicians who heeded her
Speaker 1: spirits were sure that this was just one more way
Speaker 1: that the nation needed to be knocked down and made
Speaker 1: new again. But to take those stains away, they needed
Speaker 1: more than hope. Unobscured was created by me Aaron Manky
Speaker 1: and produced by Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Josh Thane
Speaker 1: in partnership with I Heart Radio. Research and writing for
Speaker 1: this season is all the work of my right hand man,
Speaker 1: Carl Nellis and the brilliant Chad Lawson composed the brand
Speaker 1: new soundtrack. Learn more about our contributing historians. Source materi
Speaker 1: a real and links to our other shows over at
Speaker 1: history unobscured dot com and until next time, thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: Unobscured is a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Menkey.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit I heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.