WEBVTT - S2 – 8: Open Graves 0:00:01.120 --> 0:00:09.600 Welcomed unobscured a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky. 0:00:10.560 --> 0:00:13.399 He rushed to embrace his father, but as he neared 0:00:13.400 --> 0:00:17.040 the figure, it faded and disappeared. All of it was 0:00:17.079 --> 0:00:21.119 a shock, of course, because Henri's father was dead. He 0:00:21.239 --> 0:00:24.960 collected himself and moved forward, but the experience left outs. 0:00:25.600 --> 0:00:29.600 You see, before this moment, Henri hadn't believed in spiritualism. 0:00:29.640 --> 0:00:32.559 He'd heard the stories and visited a seance once to 0:00:32.600 --> 0:00:35.159 see if there was anything to it. He, even so, 0:00:35.400 --> 0:00:38.960 his story goes, managed to levitate a table at that sitting, 0:00:39.440 --> 0:00:42.760 but he walked away unconvinced that there was something supernatural 0:00:42.840 --> 0:00:48.200 going on the madness of some people, he laughed. After 0:00:48.240 --> 0:00:51.159 his father's death, though, that encounter with the vanishing figure 0:00:51.200 --> 0:00:54.800 made him reconsider. It made him go back and start 0:00:54.880 --> 0:00:58.040 to think again about what he had experienced in that seance. 0:00:58.520 --> 0:01:02.440 It made him decide to turn to it. He scheduled 0:01:02.440 --> 0:01:05.000 an appointment with a New Orleans medium who called herself 0:01:05.080 --> 0:01:08.559 Sister Louise. When they finally sat down together and formed 0:01:08.560 --> 0:01:13.319 a harmonious circle, Sister Louise said she felt something. Ri's 0:01:13.400 --> 0:01:16.720 hand was trembling, so she handed him a pencil, then 0:01:16.840 --> 0:01:19.479 any other context to shaky hand might be a reason 0:01:19.560 --> 0:01:22.760 to stop writing. But sister Louise saw things with the 0:01:22.760 --> 0:01:26.880 eyes of a spiritualist. As soon as the pencil was 0:01:26.920 --> 0:01:30.240 in his fingers on reset and invisible hand wrapped around 0:01:30.319 --> 0:01:34.640 his own and then started to write. Here's historian Emily Clark, 0:01:36.360 --> 0:01:39.720 and at his first meeting with Louise, he just writes 0:01:39.840 --> 0:01:43.000 and writes and writes and writes and writes, all under 0:01:43.040 --> 0:01:45.959 the powerful influence of spirits. And as he starts to 0:01:45.959 --> 0:01:48.000 get tired, I mean, we don't do a lot of 0:01:48.040 --> 0:01:51.600 handwriting anymore. We're always on our computers. But handwriting pages 0:01:51.600 --> 0:01:54.320 and pages and pages, your arm gets tired. He begins 0:01:54.360 --> 0:01:56.760 to get tired. In the spirit of his father, Bartholomy 0:01:58.360 --> 0:02:01.200 comes to him and assures him, you can keep writing. 0:02:01.360 --> 0:02:04.560 You're not really tired. Me and the other spirits will 0:02:04.600 --> 0:02:08.120 sustain you. And so it's sort of this progression of 0:02:08.240 --> 0:02:15.200 experiences that convinced him Henri would follow the spirit's command 0:02:15.240 --> 0:02:17.799 to write for the rest of his life. At first, 0:02:17.880 --> 0:02:21.360 his seances were private. He started recording messages from the 0:02:21.400 --> 0:02:25.440 spirits in a registered book marked Soul or Solo, but 0:02:25.560 --> 0:02:29.120 he quickly received instructions to open his visitations to others. 0:02:30.000 --> 0:02:33.080 You see, Henri was part of the Afro Creole community 0:02:33.160 --> 0:02:37.160 in New Orleans. They spoke French, where Catholic educated, and 0:02:37.240 --> 0:02:40.200 came mostly from families who were freed from slavery during 0:02:40.200 --> 0:02:43.400 the colonial era. Both of Andre's parents had come from 0:02:43.400 --> 0:02:46.400 Haiti after the revolution and became some of the most 0:02:46.440 --> 0:02:51.080 respected among their Catholic neighbors in New Orleans. They found 0:02:51.080 --> 0:02:53.560 that they enjoyed some of the freedoms denied to other 0:02:53.600 --> 0:02:57.560 black neighbors, like owning property and serving as witnesses in court, 0:02:58.000 --> 0:02:59.840 but they were subject to many of the same disc 0:03:00.000 --> 0:03:04.680 dominations that made publishing black newspapers and organizing religious groups illegal. 0:03:06.360 --> 0:03:09.280 Even so, on Re followed the instructions of the spirits, 0:03:09.800 --> 0:03:12.720 obeying their voices. He held a series of seances with 0:03:12.800 --> 0:03:16.360 Sister Louise for members of his social circle, and soon 0:03:16.480 --> 0:03:23.720 enough spiritualism was bridging divides in New Orleans. Spiritualists around 0:03:23.720 --> 0:03:27.160 on reconnected with mediums like JB. Valmore, who had been 0:03:27.200 --> 0:03:30.519 holding seances in the city for years, and the spirits 0:03:30.960 --> 0:03:35.200 came to speak. But the entries and on Ree's registered 0:03:35.200 --> 0:03:37.920 book came to an end in April of eighteen sixty 0:03:38.560 --> 0:03:41.840 and we know why too. The voices of the spirits 0:03:41.880 --> 0:03:44.400 had been drowned out by the march of boots and 0:03:44.440 --> 0:03:48.480 the shouts of officers as the Southern States seceded. A 0:03:48.480 --> 0:03:52.360 battle for a different nation and a different world swept 0:03:52.400 --> 0:03:56.720 over them. In the opening clashes of conflict. The Civil 0:03:56.720 --> 0:04:28.160 War had begun. This is unobscured. I'm Aaron Manky. They 0:04:28.160 --> 0:04:30.720 were scattered to the winds of war. But the New 0:04:30.800 --> 0:04:33.719 Orleans Sean Circle was only one of many things that 0:04:33.800 --> 0:04:37.520 broke apart when shells fell on Fort Sumter in eighteen 0:04:37.600 --> 0:04:40.240 sixty one. When the fighting began, un Re walked into 0:04:40.240 --> 0:04:42.799 the crowded room at a school his father had founded. 0:04:43.160 --> 0:04:45.680 The other leaders there of the Afro Creole community had 0:04:45.720 --> 0:04:48.560 gathered to decide how to wield their resources in the 0:04:48.600 --> 0:04:52.839 coming conflict. They had also been teachers and administrators in 0:04:52.880 --> 0:04:57.719 the school. Now they would be soldiers. Henri and a 0:04:57.800 --> 0:05:00.599 thousand other free men of color joy into the Native 0:05:00.600 --> 0:05:04.000 guards for on Re. This brought him a captain's commission 0:05:04.320 --> 0:05:09.680 with the Confederacy. Here's Emily Clark once again. So on 0:05:09.880 --> 0:05:13.240 Re and his brother Octave and others, many other Afro 0:05:13.320 --> 0:05:15.760 Creole men in the city joined the war effort, but 0:05:15.839 --> 0:05:18.600 intel New Orleans was seized by the Union in eighteen 0:05:18.640 --> 0:05:22.440 sixty two. When they joined the Louisiana Native Guards the 0:05:22.520 --> 0:05:24.839 Black Regimen for the city, they had to muster for 0:05:24.880 --> 0:05:29.800 the Confederacy, which was not what they wanted. That much 0:05:29.960 --> 0:05:32.440 was clear when the officers and staff of the regiment 0:05:32.520 --> 0:05:34.800 gathered to celebrate Christmas at the end of the year, 0:05:35.279 --> 0:05:38.880 their service was compelled again to serve a social power 0:05:38.920 --> 0:05:42.560 built to exploit them. Their property, their families, and their 0:05:42.600 --> 0:05:46.440 lives were subject to violent retaliation if they didn't step 0:05:46.480 --> 0:05:50.159 forward for service. But when they gathered on re raised 0:05:50.200 --> 0:05:53.760 his glass and a toast to all revolutions. He said, 0:05:54.200 --> 0:05:57.240 for they give birth the progress of man and lead 0:05:57.360 --> 0:06:00.719 him on the way of true fraternity. It was a 0:06:00.720 --> 0:06:03.159 message that had come to him straight from beyond death, 0:06:03.600 --> 0:06:08.120 against the institution of slavery that structured Southern society. On 0:06:08.320 --> 0:06:11.560 ri and Valmore received from the spirits what they called 0:06:11.720 --> 0:06:16.320 the idea. They received so many messages that made mention 0:06:16.480 --> 0:06:19.600 of the idea, And when you put all these together, 0:06:20.080 --> 0:06:22.720 it becomes clear that this was a concept that meant 0:06:23.520 --> 0:06:30.920 humanitarian progress, brotherhood, egalitarianism, equality, harmony. It was similar to 0:06:31.040 --> 0:06:34.000 some other ideas that are going around nineteenth century America, 0:06:34.320 --> 0:06:38.120 ideas of millennial progress. This desire to build the Kingdom 0:06:38.160 --> 0:06:40.839 of God here on earth in the US, the idea 0:06:40.839 --> 0:06:44.320 would require work to make. The idea of reality on 0:06:44.560 --> 0:06:48.040 Earth would not just happen. The triumph of the idea 0:06:48.040 --> 0:06:53.480 would require free thought, democracy, equality, The progressive march of 0:06:53.560 --> 0:06:57.520 humanity is not going to happen on its own. Gathered 0:06:57.560 --> 0:07:00.840 around that revolutionary idea, they took an aim for themselves 0:07:00.920 --> 0:07:04.279 that represented the world they fought for. They became the 0:07:04.360 --> 0:07:08.159 Cirque Harmonique. To them, spiritualism was the key to making 0:07:08.200 --> 0:07:11.040 a fair and just world. It opened the doors to 0:07:11.080 --> 0:07:14.640 the revolutionary leaders and thinkers who had otherwise been lost 0:07:14.640 --> 0:07:20.160 to time. The idea, the revolutionary spark of the cirk Harmonique, 0:07:20.200 --> 0:07:23.080 was lit from the flame of the Haitian Revolution, but 0:07:23.200 --> 0:07:26.240 was smothered by the darkness of war. But it's still 0:07:26.280 --> 0:07:29.960 smoldered under the cloak of Confederate service. In the coming months, 0:07:30.280 --> 0:07:32.560 on Ri would publish a letter in the Afro Creole 0:07:32.600 --> 0:07:37.400 newspaper The Union that celebrated the Native Guards. He wrote 0:07:37.400 --> 0:07:39.840 that anyone watching his troops in parade, would see men 0:07:39.840 --> 0:07:43.119 of all races carrying the same bayonets, gleaming in the sun. 0:07:43.760 --> 0:07:47.120 Be informed. He wrote that we have no prejudice. We 0:07:47.240 --> 0:07:50.000 receive everyone in the camp, but that the sight of 0:07:50.040 --> 0:07:55.120 a human salesman of flesh makes us sick. Statements like 0:07:55.160 --> 0:07:58.360 that were clear challenges to the white supremacy of slave power, 0:07:58.800 --> 0:08:02.000 and once the Native Guards were armed and trained, those 0:08:02.080 --> 0:08:06.520 challenges became more frequent and more fierce. Their agenda was 0:08:06.560 --> 0:08:10.440 to defend their families and homes from whoever threatened them, 0:08:10.480 --> 0:08:14.600 once more from Emily Clark. They joined the war effort 0:08:14.600 --> 0:08:17.720 because they felt strongly about defending their home, but they 0:08:17.760 --> 0:08:21.320 disobeyed the Confederacy's orders. As the Union was approaching the 0:08:21.320 --> 0:08:23.960 city in eighteen sixty two, the Confederacy orders all of 0:08:23.960 --> 0:08:28.760 the troops out and the Black troops stay. They disobey, 0:08:28.800 --> 0:08:30.520 and they want to stay with their homes and protect 0:08:30.520 --> 0:08:33.480 their homes and protect their families. A committee of four 0:08:34.160 --> 0:08:37.920 in the Louisiana Native Guards, including Onri and his brother Octave, 0:08:38.920 --> 0:08:42.360 were the group that surrendered their weapons to the Union 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:45.120 when the Union comes into New Orleans. But then they 0:08:45.200 --> 0:08:47.200 quickly got them back because now they were able to 0:08:47.200 --> 0:08:50.959 serve on the side they wanted to, so Onri and 0:08:51.040 --> 0:08:53.960 the Louisiana Native Guards took up the work of supporting 0:08:53.960 --> 0:08:56.640 the Union army in their region, and that's when on 0:08:56.760 --> 0:09:00.240 Re met Colonel Nathan Daniels, the white Union officer given 0:09:00.280 --> 0:09:04.160 command of Henri's regiment. You see, Daniels was a spiritualist, 0:09:04.440 --> 0:09:07.160 and his diary includes the notes of his many sittings 0:09:07.160 --> 0:09:10.200 with mediums throughout the city. It's through Daniels that we 0:09:10.280 --> 0:09:13.200 learned that even though the Sir Carmonique wasn't meeting during 0:09:13.240 --> 0:09:16.040 the years of war service, that didn't stop on Ree's 0:09:16.080 --> 0:09:19.920 work as a medium, and an excellent one. In Nathan's words, 0:09:20.880 --> 0:09:23.840 the Native Guards worked as engineers for the Northern troops. 0:09:24.200 --> 0:09:29.400 They built fortifications, chopped wood, fetched and carried Daniels wasn't 0:09:29.440 --> 0:09:32.880 able to keep his command, though he was arrested and discharged. 0:09:33.200 --> 0:09:36.600 The official military record says it was for mishandling lumber 0:09:36.760 --> 0:09:40.520 used in construction. Daniels believed that was because he defended 0:09:40.559 --> 0:09:43.720 his black troops against the racism of their white officers. 0:09:45.000 --> 0:09:48.880 After his discharge, though Daniels continued to sit for seances 0:09:48.920 --> 0:09:51.920 with Henri and velmore while they waited to see if 0:09:51.920 --> 0:09:54.319 the Native guards would be used for anything other than 0:09:54.360 --> 0:09:58.880 manual labor by the Union Army. They were no killer angels, 0:09:59.280 --> 0:10:02.920 but the spirits continued to speak throughout the war, and 0:10:03.000 --> 0:10:14.559 as they did, thousands were added to their number. Nettie 0:10:14.640 --> 0:10:18.000 was close to spiritualism's beating heart. That is, she was 0:10:18.120 --> 0:10:21.240 in Albany, New York, when troops clashed at bull Run 0:10:21.280 --> 0:10:25.280 Creek near Manassas Junction. It was July of eighteen sixty one. 0:10:25.679 --> 0:10:28.560 As Nettie recalled it, The air in New York was 0:10:28.640 --> 0:10:32.120 full of heady optimism. The call had gone out for 0:10:32.160 --> 0:10:36.160 seventy troops to join the Union Army. Despite the previous 0:10:36.200 --> 0:10:39.280 efforts of New York City political and business leaders to 0:10:39.360 --> 0:10:42.920 oppose the war, they sent eight thousand volunteers to the front. 0:10:43.040 --> 0:10:46.760 Once the fighting began. Nettie wasn't far from those concerns. 0:10:46.960 --> 0:10:49.240 In fact, she was close to the Governor of Connecticut, 0:10:49.360 --> 0:10:52.520 Thomas Seymour. It was after sitting with him that Nettie 0:10:52.520 --> 0:10:56.320 received entry into the capital of New York State. Nettie 0:10:56.360 --> 0:10:59.000 Colburn was a twenty year old medium in the Fox 0:10:59.040 --> 0:11:02.680 Sisters Mold. Her story began as so many others did, 0:11:03.000 --> 0:11:06.559 with a spirit rattling through her family's house. It began 0:11:06.559 --> 0:11:08.880 when her grandmother died, and they guessed that it was 0:11:08.920 --> 0:11:12.560 the old woman's spirit, striking dead clocks and frightening Nettie's 0:11:12.600 --> 0:11:16.800 grandfather with ghostly whispers, inviting him to join her in death. 0:11:18.200 --> 0:11:20.960 Others answered that call as well, though, when the Civil 0:11:20.960 --> 0:11:24.160 War started, her father and all four brothers were enlisted. 0:11:24.600 --> 0:11:27.720 Soon enough, they were preparing to head south towards Virginia 0:11:27.840 --> 0:11:31.199 and the coming fight. By that time, Nettie had become 0:11:31.200 --> 0:11:33.960 well known. One of her first supporters was a local 0:11:34.000 --> 0:11:37.440 silver plater and merchant who put his money behind her mediumship. 0:11:37.960 --> 0:11:40.440 In that way, Nettie's rise looks a lot like that 0:11:40.480 --> 0:11:43.840 of Daniel Hume, when she found powerful, willing friends to 0:11:43.920 --> 0:11:46.720 lift her into the world of the upper crust, and 0:11:46.800 --> 0:11:49.560 once she was sitting with governors and their cohorts, she 0:11:49.600 --> 0:11:53.960 found herself controlled by prominent spirits to deliver lectures, give advice, 0:11:54.240 --> 0:11:57.160 and even make political predictions. She was the kind of 0:11:57.200 --> 0:12:02.319 spiritualist and elected official could love. But even though there 0:12:02.360 --> 0:12:05.640 was optimism in the air, the spirits wore Nettie against 0:12:05.640 --> 0:12:09.600 a sunny disposition. She didn't record which voices warned her 0:12:09.640 --> 0:12:12.880 away from celebrating the war's beginning, but she remembered them 0:12:12.880 --> 0:12:15.400 telling her that the war would last for four years. 0:12:15.800 --> 0:12:18.160 With her family at the front, this would have been 0:12:18.200 --> 0:12:22.439 a chilling thought. In the following months, Nettie started to 0:12:22.480 --> 0:12:26.920 get messages describing a congress of spirits. There were statesmen 0:12:27.040 --> 0:12:29.960 and public figures who wanted to return to the material 0:12:30.040 --> 0:12:32.880 world and offer their guidance over the affairs of a 0:12:32.960 --> 0:12:36.360 nation at war. Nettie started telling people in her Albany 0:12:36.400 --> 0:12:39.440 circle that the spirits were demanding she speaked directly with 0:12:39.520 --> 0:12:43.040 the President. The messages Nettie shared with her friends told 0:12:43.080 --> 0:12:46.520 her to arrange a trip to Washington. The instructions were 0:12:46.559 --> 0:12:50.160 too ridiculous to obey, though, so Nettie stayed in New York. 0:12:52.120 --> 0:12:54.400 It wasn't until she received a note from her brother 0:12:54.480 --> 0:12:57.719 the following November that she decided to go south. He 0:12:57.840 --> 0:13:00.320 was in a war hospital and the waves of injured 0:13:00.360 --> 0:13:02.680 soldiers coming back from the front meant that he was 0:13:02.720 --> 0:13:05.640 poorly cared for. He needed someone to help him get 0:13:05.679 --> 0:13:08.720 a military furlough, and that was the spur she needed. 0:13:09.160 --> 0:13:12.319 Nettie set out for Baltimore and then on to Washington. 0:13:13.920 --> 0:13:18.240 Through spiritualist connections, she met Thomas Gayle's Foster, a spiritualist 0:13:18.360 --> 0:13:20.840 lecturer who also happened to be a clerk in the 0:13:20.840 --> 0:13:24.920 War Department. Foster welcomed Nettie to Washington and hosted her 0:13:24.920 --> 0:13:28.080 in his home. He heard her case and her brother's position, 0:13:28.360 --> 0:13:30.880 and got to work turning the wheels of bureaucracy in 0:13:30.920 --> 0:13:34.120 their favor. Soon enough, Nettie was catching a train to 0:13:34.160 --> 0:13:36.360 the war hospital to pass along the good news to 0:13:36.400 --> 0:13:40.600 her brother in person. That night, when she returned to 0:13:40.640 --> 0:13:44.160 the Foster's house, Nettie joined a seance that included officials 0:13:44.200 --> 0:13:47.800 from across the government. During that session, Foster turned to 0:13:47.800 --> 0:13:50.720 her while in a trance. Through him, the voices of 0:13:50.760 --> 0:13:53.680 the spirits told Nettie that she would succeed in sending 0:13:53.679 --> 0:13:56.520 her brother home, but that she had other greater work 0:13:56.600 --> 0:14:00.160 to do in the capital. In the following days, he 0:14:00.240 --> 0:14:03.960 pressed the furlough order from official to official, while in 0:14:04.000 --> 0:14:08.440 the evening, the spirit messages became more insistent. During these sittings, 0:14:08.520 --> 0:14:11.520 Nettie said she met the most powerful physical mediums in 0:14:11.640 --> 0:14:16.240 Washington through introductions to Foster's friends, until finally Nettie herself 0:14:16.320 --> 0:14:19.760 was overcome During a seance, an unknown spirit announced to 0:14:19.800 --> 0:14:23.880 the circle that Nettie should go to Lincoln herself. The 0:14:23.920 --> 0:14:27.240 officials in the seance circle took this message seriously, as 0:14:27.280 --> 0:14:30.960 they had all the other lectures and communications. They urged 0:14:31.000 --> 0:14:33.600 Nettie to arrange a meeting with the presidents, and they 0:14:33.640 --> 0:14:36.840 even offered to help her. She's still declined, but they 0:14:36.840 --> 0:14:39.960 were convinced of the faded nature of the spirit's instructions. 0:14:40.320 --> 0:14:42.560 It was only a matter of time before the circle 0:14:42.680 --> 0:14:48.400 made the arrangements anyway. Among Nettie's new spiritualist acquaintances were 0:14:48.440 --> 0:14:51.840 the medium's Cranston Laurie and his daughter Belle Miller, who 0:14:51.920 --> 0:14:56.000 knew the Lincoln's personally through Kentucky friends. Cranston had worked 0:14:56.000 --> 0:14:58.880 in the Post Office when it was building experimental telegraph 0:14:58.960 --> 0:15:02.520 lines between baltim Or and Washington. By befriending Nettie, it 0:15:02.560 --> 0:15:05.040 seems that he also decided to open a depot in 0:15:05.040 --> 0:15:08.600 his own home for a spiritual telegraph between heaven and Earth, 0:15:09.400 --> 0:15:12.480 and it was through Cranston that Nettie finally received word 0:15:12.920 --> 0:15:16.360 Mary Todd Lincoln had asked to see a trance medium. 0:15:16.440 --> 0:15:19.560 Nettie could not be pushed. That much was clear, but 0:15:19.680 --> 0:15:22.760 this was a poll and one that she could not decline. 0:15:23.600 --> 0:15:27.360 As far as Cranston and Bell were concerned, Nettie Colburn's 0:15:27.400 --> 0:15:38.040 moment had arrived. Spiritualists had to keep up the fight 0:15:38.640 --> 0:15:42.520 even as the war raged on Ohio. Spiritualist author Hudson 0:15:42.560 --> 0:15:47.160 Tuttle wrote Reams of anti radical, anti reform articles in 0:15:47.200 --> 0:15:50.600 May of eighteen sixty two. He complained that the universal 0:15:50.720 --> 0:15:54.280 grasp of spiritualism has gathered the floating rubbish of the 0:15:54.320 --> 0:15:58.520 seas of mankind. This was his view on spirit messages 0:15:58.560 --> 0:16:01.920 that argued for liberty. The land reformer was sure the 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:05.560 spirits were land reformers, he wrote. The advocate of women's 0:16:05.640 --> 0:16:09.280 rights was equally sure that they advocated his hobby. And 0:16:09.440 --> 0:16:11.600 even in the midst of the conflict, The Banner of 0:16:11.720 --> 0:16:16.680 Light published Tuttle's opinions. He wasn't alone north or South 0:16:17.160 --> 0:16:20.640 on the matter of slavery and abolition. Reformers like Sojourn 0:16:20.760 --> 0:16:24.200 or Truth and the Posts faced comments from Christian spiritualists 0:16:24.240 --> 0:16:26.960 who believed that God permitted slavery and that it was 0:16:27.000 --> 0:16:29.960 part of a divine law. They were the kinds of 0:16:29.960 --> 0:16:32.840 positions that had pushed Isaac and Amy Post out of 0:16:32.880 --> 0:16:37.280 their religious tradition in the first place. The anti reform 0:16:37.360 --> 0:16:40.480 impulse of men like Tuttle was echoed and reinforced among 0:16:40.600 --> 0:16:43.800 many of the mediums we've already met. Cora, for example, 0:16:44.080 --> 0:16:47.400 hosted the spirit of Thomas Jefferson at One Spirit Lecture 0:16:47.400 --> 0:16:50.960 in May of eighteen sixty one. Through her, his voice 0:16:50.960 --> 0:16:55.240 criticized radicals and told them to stop fighting against slavery. 0:16:55.800 --> 0:16:58.480 When his persona argued that the war was the result 0:16:58.520 --> 0:17:03.320 of slaveholders bigotry clashing with the reformers fantasism, Cora's Thomas 0:17:03.400 --> 0:17:07.240 Jefferson offered listeners the sort of blame for both sides 0:17:07.400 --> 0:17:11.479 that's all too familiar and disheartening today. And just like 0:17:11.520 --> 0:17:14.640 the pulpits and public squares across the nation, the seance 0:17:14.680 --> 0:17:18.720 table and the Spiritualist lecture were battlegrounds. The grip of 0:17:18.760 --> 0:17:23.080 slaveholder power and white supremacy still choked out real condemnations 0:17:23.119 --> 0:17:26.040 of the expansion of slavery that came with the Kansas 0:17:26.080 --> 0:17:30.440 Nebraska Act, the Fugitive Slave Act, the Annexation of Texas, 0:17:30.480 --> 0:17:34.119 and the Mexican War, and everywhere it traveled. Both in 0:17:34.160 --> 0:17:38.240 the United States and across oceans. Spiritualism was deeply and 0:17:38.400 --> 0:17:42.600 inescapably political. As the question of slavery split the nation, 0:17:43.080 --> 0:17:47.240 so it split spiritualists as well. So it's not so strange, 0:17:47.240 --> 0:17:50.960 after all that spiritualist believers in positions of power would 0:17:51.000 --> 0:17:54.200 turn to the other world for guidance. In Washington, d c. 0:17:54.440 --> 0:17:58.600 Those spiritualists heard the voices of dead soldiers, dead presidents, 0:17:58.640 --> 0:18:02.879 and lamenting profits. But when Cranston Laurie pulled up to 0:18:02.920 --> 0:18:06.360 the Foster's house in an unusually elegant carriage to bring 0:18:06.400 --> 0:18:09.280 Nettie to a seance, it was a surprise to her. 0:18:09.760 --> 0:18:12.920 Cushioned by Crimson Satin on the road, Nettie would later 0:18:12.960 --> 0:18:15.520 write that she should have known what was coming, but 0:18:15.600 --> 0:18:17.800 she was so distracted by the trouble of getting her 0:18:17.800 --> 0:18:20.840 brother the proper travel papers that she barely noticed that 0:18:20.840 --> 0:18:23.080 the carriage door was opened for her by a well 0:18:23.200 --> 0:18:27.080 dressed footman. When she arrived at the Laurie's house, Nettie 0:18:27.119 --> 0:18:30.520 was greeted by a circle of new faces. The Secretary 0:18:30.600 --> 0:18:34.120 of Interior, the Chief Clerk of the Treasury, a Commissioner 0:18:34.160 --> 0:18:38.480 of Agriculture, a congressman from Maine, and of course Mary 0:18:38.560 --> 0:18:42.320 Todd Lincoln. From their very first meeting. The thing that 0:18:42.400 --> 0:18:46.399 Nettie remembered was Mary Lincoln's eagerness. She was determined to 0:18:46.480 --> 0:18:48.879 hear from the spirits. In fact, it made Nettie so 0:18:49.000 --> 0:18:51.879 nervous that Mrs Lincoln spent the first few minutes trying 0:18:51.880 --> 0:18:54.520 to calm the medium by assuring her that her family 0:18:54.600 --> 0:18:57.119 would be taken care of. Her brother was sure to 0:18:57.160 --> 0:19:01.320 get his furlough and travel home. When Nettie had settled 0:19:01.320 --> 0:19:04.159 into a seat and the believers gathered around her, a 0:19:04.280 --> 0:19:08.439 new and powerful influence took possession of her body. It spoke, 0:19:08.640 --> 0:19:12.680 she later wrote, with great clearness and force. When Nettie 0:19:12.720 --> 0:19:15.879 finally came back to herself, Missus Lincoln was exclaiming to 0:19:15.920 --> 0:19:18.719 the men in the room, this young lady must not 0:19:18.880 --> 0:19:22.800 leave Washington. She must stay here, and mister Lincoln must 0:19:22.800 --> 0:19:26.640 hear what we have heard. To keep Nettie in the capital, 0:19:26.760 --> 0:19:29.520 Mary Lincoln turned to the Commissioner of Agriculture and told 0:19:29.600 --> 0:19:32.600 him to find Nettie a position in his department, but 0:19:32.720 --> 0:19:35.480 she hardly had time to claim the role. Two days later, 0:19:35.560 --> 0:19:38.719 Nettie received a second invitation from the First Lady, this 0:19:38.800 --> 0:19:41.960 time to hold a seance inside the White House, if 0:19:42.000 --> 0:19:44.560 her memory was right. When she finally wrote her memoir, 0:19:44.920 --> 0:19:47.280 she arrived in the Red Parlor for the first time 0:19:47.320 --> 0:19:51.880 in December of eighteen sixty two. When the group filed in, 0:19:52.040 --> 0:19:55.800 Mary Lincoln met them. Cranston Laurie's daughter, Bell was with them, 0:19:55.880 --> 0:19:58.520 and while the group talked, she sat down at the piano. 0:19:59.040 --> 0:20:02.159 A march began to play, and soon, as the piano 0:20:02.359 --> 0:20:05.560 so often did under Bell's hands, the whole instrument began 0:20:05.600 --> 0:20:08.919 to rise from the floor, but everything fell silent, and 0:20:09.000 --> 0:20:12.320 the instrument landed back on the floor the moment Abraham 0:20:12.400 --> 0:20:17.320 Lincoln stepped into the doorway. One by one, the mediums 0:20:17.320 --> 0:20:20.600 were introduced to the President. As Nettie describes it, he 0:20:20.680 --> 0:20:23.520 laid his hands on her head, saying, so this is 0:20:23.560 --> 0:20:26.360 our little Nettie. Is it that we have heard so 0:20:26.440 --> 0:20:30.640 much about? The pair talked for a few minutes, Lincoln 0:20:30.680 --> 0:20:34.520 asking about Nettie's understanding of spiritualism, although she was hardly 0:20:34.560 --> 0:20:36.440 able to squeak out more than a yes or no. 0:20:37.119 --> 0:20:41.040 Cranston Laurie stepped forward to explain how they ordinarily conducted 0:20:41.040 --> 0:20:44.440 their seances, but even as he did, Nettie fell into 0:20:44.480 --> 0:20:47.040 a trance, it was time for the Congress of the 0:20:47.119 --> 0:20:51.560 Spirits to be heard. In her memoir, Nettie wrote that 0:20:51.600 --> 0:20:53.960 the spirits lectured through her for more than an hour, 0:20:54.400 --> 0:20:56.840 and they urged the President to go forward with something 0:20:56.840 --> 0:21:02.600 that he was already considering, the Emancipation Acclamation. He was charged, 0:21:02.760 --> 0:21:06.399 she later wrote, with the utmost solemnity and force of manner, 0:21:06.560 --> 0:21:09.199 not to abate the terms of its issue, and not 0:21:09.280 --> 0:21:12.320 to delay its enforcement as a law beyond the opening 0:21:12.359 --> 0:21:14.720 of the year, and he was assured that it was 0:21:14.760 --> 0:21:19.439 to be the crowning event of his administration and his life. 0:21:20.720 --> 0:21:23.200 Nettie never forgot what she saw when she came back 0:21:23.200 --> 0:21:26.360 to herself. She stood in front of the President, who 0:21:26.359 --> 0:21:28.680 was sitting back in his chair with his arms folded 0:21:28.720 --> 0:21:32.720 on his chest, looking intently at her. Silence had settled 0:21:32.760 --> 0:21:37.000 like a blanket over the room. Eventually the others began 0:21:37.040 --> 0:21:40.639 to question Lincoln. They circled him and muttered commentary that 0:21:40.720 --> 0:21:43.960 Nettie couldn't hear, but Lincoln said very little until the 0:21:44.000 --> 0:21:47.760 flurry died down. Then he approached Nettie and thanked her. 0:21:48.760 --> 0:21:52.600 He shook her hand, kindly, bowed to the rest, and 0:21:52.640 --> 0:22:05.680 then vanished from the room. It wasn't the last time 0:22:05.720 --> 0:22:08.680 Neddie would see Lincoln. Of course, there was no question 0:22:08.680 --> 0:22:11.320 that it was Mary Lincoln who was the most enthusiastic 0:22:11.359 --> 0:22:14.800 about spirit communication, but that impulse had been planted by 0:22:14.800 --> 0:22:20.919 her friend Elizabeth Keckley. Here's historian Margaret Washington. Abraham Lincoln, 0:22:20.960 --> 0:22:24.119 after his son Willie died, went to a spiritualist. His 0:22:24.240 --> 0:22:29.320 wife convinced him to go, and she became interested in 0:22:29.359 --> 0:22:34.000 spiritualism because her what would you call this woman dressmaker? 0:22:34.240 --> 0:22:36.760 She was more than a dressmaker. She was a confidance. 0:22:36.800 --> 0:22:39.919 She was a dressmaker. She dressed her hair. But she 0:22:40.040 --> 0:22:44.280 was a former slave. Her son had passed for white 0:22:45.119 --> 0:22:47.560 so he could join the Union Army at a time 0:22:47.560 --> 0:22:52.520 when they weren't taking black people, and and he was 0:22:52.600 --> 0:22:56.440 killed almost immediately. And that was her only child. So 0:22:56.760 --> 0:23:00.600 spiritualism was very important to her. And then after Willie 0:23:00.680 --> 0:23:05.640 Lincoln died, then she introduced Mary Todd Lincoln to spiritualism, 0:23:05.680 --> 0:23:10.600 and Mary Todd Lincoln took it very seriously. Lincoln, for 0:23:10.680 --> 0:23:14.440 his part, seems to have indulged his wife's enthusiasm at times. 0:23:14.440 --> 0:23:17.760 He even made playful examinations of the spirit manifestations in 0:23:17.840 --> 0:23:21.520 Cranston Laurie's circle. Most famously, in the winter of eighteen 0:23:21.560 --> 0:23:25.280 sixty three, he appeared with Mary unexpectedly at a seance 0:23:25.320 --> 0:23:28.960 circle that was being hosted at the Laurie's home. Neddie 0:23:29.040 --> 0:23:31.280 was there that night too, and she was controlled by 0:23:31.280 --> 0:23:33.840 the spirit of a doctor who recommended that Lincoln take 0:23:33.840 --> 0:23:36.440 a tour of the battle front to raise the dwindoline 0:23:36.440 --> 0:23:39.200 morale of the Union troops. But she wasn't the only 0:23:39.280 --> 0:23:43.440 medium working that night. Cranston's daughter Bell had once again 0:23:43.480 --> 0:23:46.080 sat down at the piano. As she played, under the 0:23:46.119 --> 0:23:49.160 control of the spirits, her piano began to rise and 0:23:49.200 --> 0:23:52.320 fall in time with the music. Then Bell stood up 0:23:52.400 --> 0:23:54.960 and rested an outstretched arm on the piano as it 0:23:54.960 --> 0:23:58.399 continued to move on its own. That's when Lincoln stepped 0:23:58.400 --> 0:24:01.680 toward it. He leaned down to see what he could 0:24:01.680 --> 0:24:04.680 detect beneath it. He swept his arm under the raised 0:24:04.760 --> 0:24:07.960 legs of the piano, but didn't find anything. Turning to 0:24:08.040 --> 0:24:10.680 the group with a mischievous smile, he said, I think 0:24:10.720 --> 0:24:13.800 we can hold down that instrument, and he turned and 0:24:13.920 --> 0:24:17.760 jumped on top of the piano. A congressman from Mayne 0:24:17.840 --> 0:24:20.760 followed his lead along with a few others, but even 0:24:20.800 --> 0:24:23.560 with the added weight, the piano kept rising and falling 0:24:23.600 --> 0:24:25.879 in time with the music. No one in the group 0:24:25.880 --> 0:24:28.919 could find a hidden device causing the motion either. The 0:24:29.000 --> 0:24:32.080 spiritualists there later remembered hearing Lincoln say that he was 0:24:32.400 --> 0:24:36.919 perfectly satisfied that the movement was caused by some invisible power. 0:24:38.040 --> 0:24:41.160 In a later conversation with Cranston Laurie, Lincoln would say 0:24:41.160 --> 0:24:44.560 that he could neither confirm nor deny the spiritual origin 0:24:44.680 --> 0:24:47.440 of the powers he had seen, whether they spoke through 0:24:47.520 --> 0:24:50.840