1 00:00:01,160 --> 00:00:04,360 Speaker 1: Welcomed, unobscured a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky. 2 00:00:12,520 --> 00:00:15,319 Speaker 1: There was a glow about her, at least that's what 3 00:00:15,360 --> 00:00:17,360 Speaker 1: they say when there is a suitor on the horizon. 4 00:00:17,560 --> 00:00:21,599 Speaker 1: Right in eighteen fifty seven, despite everything that had happened, 5 00:00:21,800 --> 00:00:24,639 Speaker 1: Leah was on the cusp of marriage again. This time, 6 00:00:24,680 --> 00:00:27,560 Speaker 1: though she was no teenage girl untried by the world. 7 00:00:27,960 --> 00:00:31,280 Speaker 1: She was a professional woman, a genuine celebrity. In fact, 8 00:00:32,360 --> 00:00:35,800 Speaker 1: while other mediums had been played for fools by predatory managers, 9 00:00:36,159 --> 00:00:38,599 Speaker 1: Leah had stepped in and taken control of things for 10 00:00:38,640 --> 00:00:42,120 Speaker 1: her family. She had fought Elisha Caine to a standstill 11 00:00:42,159 --> 00:00:45,239 Speaker 1: when he tried to take Maggie. Yes, he did convince 12 00:00:45,280 --> 00:00:48,920 Speaker 1: her sister to give up spiritualism, Bliah convinced him that 13 00:00:49,040 --> 00:00:53,160 Speaker 1: a stipend should come her way. Her experiences had taken 14 00:00:53,200 --> 00:00:55,400 Speaker 1: her to some of the greatest cities in the nation. 15 00:00:55,760 --> 00:00:59,840 Speaker 1: She had navigated unfriendly crowds at gunpoints, and held seances 16 00:01:00,120 --> 00:01:04,360 Speaker 1: sittings for some of America's most respected politicians and ministers. 17 00:01:04,360 --> 00:01:07,760 Speaker 1: She had even been married a second time, although that man, 18 00:01:07,840 --> 00:01:12,319 Speaker 1: Calvin Brown, had died four years earlier. So yes, Leah 19 00:01:12,319 --> 00:01:14,520 Speaker 1: seemed to have done it all, but when the Boston 20 00:01:14,560 --> 00:01:18,399 Speaker 1: Courier printed their rejection of spiritualism, their shots hit home. 21 00:01:19,080 --> 00:01:23,120 Speaker 1: They hurt, but Leah took comfort in finding friends on 22 00:01:23,160 --> 00:01:26,720 Speaker 1: her own side. If the Boston Courier used their investigations 23 00:01:26,760 --> 00:01:30,600 Speaker 1: to attack the Fox Sisters, well competing Boston newspaper, The 24 00:01:30,600 --> 00:01:34,039 Speaker 1: Traveler was there to defend them. The Traveler printed a 25 00:01:34,040 --> 00:01:37,400 Speaker 1: statement saying that the real sham was the investigation those 26 00:01:37,440 --> 00:01:40,920 Speaker 1: Harvard professors had refused to cooperate with the mediums. Even 27 00:01:40,959 --> 00:01:44,480 Speaker 1: the Cambridge Chronicle acknowledged that the professors were too biased. 28 00:01:45,640 --> 00:01:48,760 Speaker 1: Leah took some comfort in that, but even having friends 29 00:01:48,800 --> 00:01:51,680 Speaker 1: to return fire could only go so far towards getting 30 00:01:51,680 --> 00:01:54,480 Speaker 1: her back on her feet. She and Kate retreated to 31 00:01:54,560 --> 00:01:57,080 Speaker 1: New York, where they stayed with their mother at Horace 32 00:01:57,160 --> 00:02:01,080 Speaker 1: Greeley's house, and for a while Leah only gave seances 33 00:02:01,080 --> 00:02:06,120 Speaker 1: two familiar circles of friends around the city, until one evening, 34 00:02:06,280 --> 00:02:08,760 Speaker 1: when they accepted an invitation to hold the seance for 35 00:02:08,800 --> 00:02:11,880 Speaker 1: a small circle in Jersey City, New Jersey. A man 36 00:02:12,040 --> 00:02:14,520 Speaker 1: arrived to escort her, a little older than she was. 37 00:02:14,960 --> 00:02:17,600 Speaker 1: He was dressed in well tailored clothes and offered her 38 00:02:17,639 --> 00:02:20,560 Speaker 1: an umbrella to hold off the falling rain. He introduced 39 00:02:20,600 --> 00:02:25,520 Speaker 1: himself as Daniel. Underhill Talia's relief, the man was already 40 00:02:25,560 --> 00:02:28,760 Speaker 1: a spiritualist, to Leah's deep interest. The man was the 41 00:02:28,800 --> 00:02:31,800 Speaker 1: president of an insurance company and had managed to hold 42 00:02:31,800 --> 00:02:35,960 Speaker 1: onto his money through the recent crash. The seance that 43 00:02:36,080 --> 00:02:39,720 Speaker 1: night was something remarkable. You see, Lea's seances had recently 44 00:02:39,720 --> 00:02:42,480 Speaker 1: been accompanied by spirit lights, like the ones that had 45 00:02:42,520 --> 00:02:46,399 Speaker 1: been witnessed in seances by Daniel Hume, luminous clouds, sometimes 46 00:02:46,400 --> 00:02:49,200 Speaker 1: as small as a spark, that would flit and flicker 47 00:02:49,400 --> 00:02:52,919 Speaker 1: outside the seance circle. That night, they held a seance 48 00:02:52,960 --> 00:02:56,520 Speaker 1: around the table as usual and got the ordinary knocking sounds, 49 00:02:56,800 --> 00:02:59,440 Speaker 1: but Leah also pulled a few of the visitors aside, 50 00:02:59,560 --> 00:03:02,200 Speaker 1: one by one. She says, she picked the ones with 51 00:03:02,440 --> 00:03:07,040 Speaker 1: good sense, and Daniel was among them. They stepped together 52 00:03:07,120 --> 00:03:10,320 Speaker 1: into the complete darkness of a bathroom there as they 53 00:03:10,400 --> 00:03:13,800 Speaker 1: dared to hope, the spirit lights arrived. But these weren't 54 00:03:13,840 --> 00:03:17,680 Speaker 1: clouds on the edge of visibility. These lights blazed. They 55 00:03:17,720 --> 00:03:20,079 Speaker 1: were so bright they lit up the entire room, and 56 00:03:20,200 --> 00:03:24,360 Speaker 1: Leah and Daniel were dazed by them. Leah said the 57 00:03:24,440 --> 00:03:26,720 Speaker 1: lights were so bright that her hands started to burn 58 00:03:26,919 --> 00:03:29,640 Speaker 1: and she felt faint. She turned on the faucet and 59 00:03:29,720 --> 00:03:32,440 Speaker 1: ran her hands under the water, and then, together with 60 00:03:32,520 --> 00:03:35,480 Speaker 1: the hostess, ran out into the backyard, where she pushed 61 00:03:35,480 --> 00:03:39,160 Speaker 1: her hands into the rain wet ground. The spirit lights faded. 62 00:03:39,640 --> 00:03:43,880 Speaker 1: The seance concluded, and Leah made her way home. It 63 00:03:44,000 --> 00:03:46,240 Speaker 1: was only two days later that a letter arrived for 64 00:03:46,360 --> 00:03:49,840 Speaker 1: Leah with a curious question. The day after the seance, 65 00:03:49,880 --> 00:03:52,320 Speaker 1: it said, the hostess had looked out of her house 66 00:03:52,360 --> 00:03:55,360 Speaker 1: and witnessed lights coming from the ground where Leah's hands 67 00:03:55,360 --> 00:03:58,680 Speaker 1: had been. She examined the spot and found particles of 68 00:03:58,720 --> 00:04:03,160 Speaker 1: solid phosphorus smoking in the soil. A few of the 69 00:04:03,280 --> 00:04:05,680 Speaker 1: visitors that the seance had gathered to argue about what 70 00:04:05,720 --> 00:04:08,080 Speaker 1: it meant. Some of them believed that this was a 71 00:04:08,120 --> 00:04:11,640 Speaker 1: sign that the spirits had manifested their lights by manufacturing 72 00:04:11,680 --> 00:04:15,600 Speaker 1: phosphorus from the atmosphere. Others thought that the phosphorus had 73 00:04:15,640 --> 00:04:19,520 Speaker 1: been a tool used by Leah to artificially manufacture the lights. 74 00:04:20,080 --> 00:04:23,760 Speaker 1: Now they were asking Leah to explain it to them. 75 00:04:23,760 --> 00:04:27,000 Speaker 1: In her own words, she was painfully astonished by the 76 00:04:27,040 --> 00:04:30,279 Speaker 1: accusations that she could be faking the lights. It hurt 77 00:04:30,320 --> 00:04:33,000 Speaker 1: her so deeply that she didn't know how to respond. 78 00:04:33,600 --> 00:04:37,360 Speaker 1: But a champion appeared. Her new friend, Daniel Underhill, was 79 00:04:37,440 --> 00:04:40,680 Speaker 1: convinced of her innocence. As Leah would later put it, 80 00:04:41,000 --> 00:04:43,440 Speaker 1: he came to her rescue to fight for her reputation 81 00:04:43,560 --> 00:04:47,080 Speaker 1: and integrity, first among her friends and then in the 82 00:04:47,120 --> 00:04:50,400 Speaker 1: public forum. And as far as Leah was concerned, he 83 00:04:50,440 --> 00:04:53,720 Speaker 1: won those fights. But he also won her heart, and 84 00:04:53,760 --> 00:04:56,000 Speaker 1: it turns out that he was smitten with her too. 85 00:04:56,400 --> 00:04:58,440 Speaker 1: By the end of the month, they were married and 86 00:04:58,560 --> 00:05:00,840 Speaker 1: she was settling into his brow own stone on New 87 00:05:00,920 --> 00:05:04,520 Speaker 1: York's West thirty seven Street. Then she set about filling 88 00:05:04,520 --> 00:05:06,480 Speaker 1: it up with things that were very much to her, 89 00:05:06,520 --> 00:05:13,080 Speaker 1: liking gilded wallpaper, rosewood chairs, mahogany tables, new carpets, statuary, 90 00:05:13,240 --> 00:05:16,479 Speaker 1: and of course for her music, both at piano and 91 00:05:16,640 --> 00:05:20,600 Speaker 1: an organ. To this, Daniel added an aviary, which he 92 00:05:20,640 --> 00:05:23,360 Speaker 1: built off the dining room, filled with songbirds he bought 93 00:05:23,440 --> 00:05:26,839 Speaker 1: from distant places. Suddenly living the best life his money 94 00:05:26,839 --> 00:05:30,320 Speaker 1: could buy, Leah shocked her family and the interested public 95 00:05:30,440 --> 00:05:35,240 Speaker 1: with an announcement, no more investigations, no more public seances, 96 00:05:35,800 --> 00:05:40,160 Speaker 1: no more tests. Her career as a public medium was over. 97 00:05:45,760 --> 00:05:48,400 Speaker 1: The only people to pass the defenses of her newly 98 00:05:48,480 --> 00:05:51,760 Speaker 1: fortified life, she said, were those who already admired her. 99 00:05:52,279 --> 00:05:57,000 Speaker 1: As always. Family was an exception, family like Maggie, still 100 00:05:57,120 --> 00:06:00,600 Speaker 1: mourning the loss of Elisha Caine. Maggie often avoided her 101 00:06:00,640 --> 00:06:04,320 Speaker 1: older sister, but the newfound lap of luxury provoked her, 102 00:06:04,680 --> 00:06:08,200 Speaker 1: so she struck back. The next time the two sisters 103 00:06:08,279 --> 00:06:11,440 Speaker 1: faced off, Maggie looked Leah in the eye and said, 104 00:06:12,240 --> 00:06:15,239 Speaker 1: now that you're rich, why don't you save your soul? 105 00:06:16,480 --> 00:06:23,920 Speaker 1: The backlash of Leah's rage tore them apart. This is unobscured. 106 00:06:24,800 --> 00:06:52,200 Speaker 1: I'm Aaron Manky. Sojourn Her truth was no stranger to 107 00:06:52,320 --> 00:06:55,880 Speaker 1: a good fight. She was also no stranger to saving souls. 108 00:06:56,240 --> 00:06:59,640 Speaker 1: But after the lavish disaster in the Kingdom of Matthias, 109 00:07:00,040 --> 00:07:03,320 Speaker 1: Sojourner could never view wealth as a key to the afterlife, 110 00:07:03,480 --> 00:07:07,560 Speaker 1: or even to happiness. When she found her home base 111 00:07:07,680 --> 00:07:10,840 Speaker 1: at the Northampton Community, it did nothing to slow her down. 112 00:07:11,440 --> 00:07:13,680 Speaker 1: Years before, she had received a call from God to 113 00:07:13,720 --> 00:07:17,040 Speaker 1: be a traveler. Sojourner so, even with a place to 114 00:07:17,120 --> 00:07:19,800 Speaker 1: lay her head and a circle of friends who supported her, 115 00:07:20,200 --> 00:07:23,600 Speaker 1: she still had a mission, and that mission put Sojourner 116 00:07:23,640 --> 00:07:26,240 Speaker 1: in the line of fire. In her day, so called 117 00:07:26,360 --> 00:07:30,320 Speaker 1: circuit preaching was hardly safe work. Wherever camp meetings were 118 00:07:30,360 --> 00:07:33,120 Speaker 1: set up, they were followed by drunken, hostile men so 119 00:07:33,240 --> 00:07:36,760 Speaker 1: often that they got a nickname the rowdies, and they 120 00:07:36,760 --> 00:07:40,520 Speaker 1: deserved it too. Carrying clubs and bringing a taste for violence, 121 00:07:40,920 --> 00:07:44,600 Speaker 1: they became a regular menacing presence at revival tents, and 122 00:07:44,600 --> 00:07:48,000 Speaker 1: they threatened worshippers and speakers alike. It should come as 123 00:07:48,040 --> 00:07:53,480 Speaker 1: no surprise, then, that they often targeted black attendees. Sojourner 124 00:07:53,600 --> 00:07:56,239 Speaker 1: never lacked for courage, though, and she brought a power 125 00:07:56,280 --> 00:07:59,880 Speaker 1: to her lectures that moved audiences everywhere she went. Here's 126 00:08:00,040 --> 00:08:04,760 Speaker 1: historian Margaret Washington. To be a powerful speaker, first of all, 127 00:08:04,800 --> 00:08:08,720 Speaker 1: you had to have pathos, you had to have humor. 128 00:08:09,560 --> 00:08:12,560 Speaker 1: You had to sing. She had a beautiful singing voice, 129 00:08:12,560 --> 00:08:16,640 Speaker 1: and she would often begin with a song, then she'd 130 00:08:16,680 --> 00:08:20,880 Speaker 1: have a prayer, and then she would speak. Her speaking 131 00:08:21,080 --> 00:08:26,360 Speaker 1: was instructive. She would always talk about her life as 132 00:08:26,400 --> 00:08:33,320 Speaker 1: a slave and her experience. So Journer's messages from the 133 00:08:33,360 --> 00:08:36,760 Speaker 1: Spirits took some share of the credit. One young seminarian, 134 00:08:36,920 --> 00:08:40,400 Speaker 1: Giles Stebbins, joined some of his family at Northampton, despite 135 00:08:40,440 --> 00:08:43,200 Speaker 1: opposing their views at the time, and he was a 136 00:08:43,200 --> 00:08:46,360 Speaker 1: young hothead who loved to start trouble what sort of 137 00:08:46,400 --> 00:08:50,120 Speaker 1: trouble while he decided to start making public arguments in 138 00:08:50,240 --> 00:08:55,240 Speaker 1: support of slavery while living in an antislavery commune, but 139 00:08:55,320 --> 00:08:58,120 Speaker 1: he was surrounded by a community that interpreted the Bible 140 00:08:58,360 --> 00:09:01,360 Speaker 1: as they say, in the light of liberty, filled with 141 00:09:01,440 --> 00:09:04,679 Speaker 1: preachers and teachers like Sojourner Truth who had heard all 142 00:09:04,800 --> 00:09:08,240 Speaker 1: his arguments before, face to face with people who didn't 143 00:09:08,280 --> 00:09:11,240 Speaker 1: think he was all that convincing, his message fell with 144 00:09:11,280 --> 00:09:15,200 Speaker 1: a thud, but it gets better. Within a year of 145 00:09:15,200 --> 00:09:18,680 Speaker 1: settling in among the others at Northampton, he switched sides, 146 00:09:18,960 --> 00:09:23,240 Speaker 1: eventually preaching the message of radical abolition, and like Sojourner, 147 00:09:23,520 --> 00:09:26,680 Speaker 1: Giles would also go on to become a lifelong spiritualist. 148 00:09:28,320 --> 00:09:30,920 Speaker 1: But Northampton wasn't just a place for young bullies like 149 00:09:30,960 --> 00:09:33,680 Speaker 1: Giles Stebbins to visit their family. In fact, it was 150 00:09:33,720 --> 00:09:36,440 Speaker 1: there that so journal would reunite with her own family. 151 00:09:36,880 --> 00:09:40,480 Speaker 1: Hurt two daughters, Sophia and Elizabeth, arrived with so much 152 00:09:40,559 --> 00:09:43,440 Speaker 1: joy that others at Northampton compared the reunion to the 153 00:09:43,480 --> 00:09:48,520 Speaker 1: return of the biblical chronigal Son. So Journer had lost 154 00:09:48,559 --> 00:09:50,960 Speaker 1: touch with her daughters when Sophia had to fight her 155 00:09:51,000 --> 00:09:53,280 Speaker 1: mother and moved in with a man who took advantage 156 00:09:53,280 --> 00:09:57,160 Speaker 1: of her. Now just eighteen years old and pregnant, Sophia 157 00:09:57,280 --> 00:10:00,280 Speaker 1: sought refuge in her mother's company. As the bay Bes 158 00:10:00,320 --> 00:10:03,640 Speaker 1: birth approached, so Journer split her time between her travels 159 00:10:03,720 --> 00:10:06,160 Speaker 1: and her family. It was the only thing that could 160 00:10:06,280 --> 00:10:10,880 Speaker 1: keep her off the preaching circuit. In the following years, 161 00:10:10,920 --> 00:10:14,240 Speaker 1: the family grew into a close unit. Sojourner and her 162 00:10:14,320 --> 00:10:16,320 Speaker 1: daughters would care for each other for the rest of 163 00:10:16,360 --> 00:10:19,079 Speaker 1: their lives and always stay in touch when they couldn't 164 00:10:19,080 --> 00:10:22,920 Speaker 1: stay together. The pain of separation had been deep. Now 165 00:10:22,920 --> 00:10:25,640 Speaker 1: they were determined to hold onto each other through whatever 166 00:10:25,800 --> 00:10:28,959 Speaker 1: life tossed at them, and not all of it would 167 00:10:28,960 --> 00:10:32,720 Speaker 1: be easy. The community at Northampton began to slowly dissolve 168 00:10:32,840 --> 00:10:35,800 Speaker 1: as its various members with their own ways to new 169 00:10:35,840 --> 00:10:39,520 Speaker 1: homes and new missions. So Journer eventually bought a house 170 00:10:39,559 --> 00:10:42,400 Speaker 1: in town there for herself and her daughters, although she 171 00:10:42,559 --> 00:10:46,840 Speaker 1: continued to travel and teach. For a time, she made 172 00:10:46,840 --> 00:10:49,880 Speaker 1: her way to Rochester and lived with the posts their 173 00:10:49,920 --> 00:10:52,920 Speaker 1: home became her new lecturing base while she traveled to 174 00:10:52,920 --> 00:10:56,079 Speaker 1: the surrounding towns. She even held one of those gatherings 175 00:10:56,080 --> 00:10:59,560 Speaker 1: in Rochester's Corinthian Hall, where the Fox sisters had made 176 00:10:59,559 --> 00:11:02,959 Speaker 1: that first public spirit demonstration. When the Foxes next came 177 00:11:02,960 --> 00:11:06,520 Speaker 1: into town to visit the posts, they befriended Sojourner as well. 178 00:11:07,800 --> 00:11:11,000 Speaker 1: She grew in power over the years as she traveled, lectured, 179 00:11:11,080 --> 00:11:16,760 Speaker 1: and faced new challenges. Here's more from Margaret Washington. As 180 00:11:16,800 --> 00:11:20,400 Speaker 1: she became more and more experience, one thing we don't 181 00:11:20,440 --> 00:11:23,640 Speaker 1: have any record of her ever having talked about was Matthias. 182 00:11:24,480 --> 00:11:27,880 Speaker 1: But as she got more and more experience than her 183 00:11:27,920 --> 00:11:31,880 Speaker 1: speeches would often when she got into the meat of 184 00:11:31,920 --> 00:11:37,800 Speaker 1: it would reflect things she had heard other people say 185 00:11:37,840 --> 00:11:42,160 Speaker 1: that she would pull apart. She also because she knew 186 00:11:42,200 --> 00:11:44,280 Speaker 1: so much scripture. I mean, for a woman who couldn't 187 00:11:44,320 --> 00:11:49,280 Speaker 1: read and write, she could quote scripture. In one meeting 188 00:11:49,440 --> 00:11:53,000 Speaker 1: held by antislavery speakers, a minister stood up and shouted 189 00:11:53,040 --> 00:11:55,920 Speaker 1: that he hadn't heard anything convincing, just a lot of 190 00:11:55,960 --> 00:11:59,800 Speaker 1: noise in his words, from women and jackasses. In the 191 00:12:00,000 --> 00:12:03,840 Speaker 1: shocks silence that followed, Sojourner rose to her feet, and 192 00:12:03,880 --> 00:12:07,240 Speaker 1: reminded the man of a biblical story. In it, a 193 00:12:07,360 --> 00:12:10,200 Speaker 1: prophet was writing a donkey along the road when the 194 00:12:10,240 --> 00:12:13,680 Speaker 1: donkey suddenly stopped without warning, the prophet beat the animal, 195 00:12:14,200 --> 00:12:16,559 Speaker 1: But that's because the man was blind to what had 196 00:12:16,600 --> 00:12:19,960 Speaker 1: really happened, the presence of an angel that was blocking 197 00:12:19,960 --> 00:12:23,240 Speaker 1: the way she tells the story, and she says, so, 198 00:12:23,320 --> 00:12:26,320 Speaker 1: I just want to remind the man and the audience 199 00:12:27,160 --> 00:12:32,600 Speaker 1: that it was the ass and not the minister who 200 00:12:32,679 --> 00:12:38,880 Speaker 1: saw the angel, and the crowd just went wild. With 201 00:12:38,920 --> 00:12:41,520 Speaker 1: her knowledge of the Bible already at hand, it didn't 202 00:12:41,520 --> 00:12:45,120 Speaker 1: matter to audiences that Sojourner couldn't read. But there was 203 00:12:45,160 --> 00:12:48,800 Speaker 1: only one Sojourner truth to go around. The printing presses 204 00:12:48,840 --> 00:12:52,120 Speaker 1: in Rochester, Boston, and New York City, though, could send 205 00:12:52,120 --> 00:12:56,120 Speaker 1: out spiritualists and abolitionist papers by the thousands, and it 206 00:12:56,200 --> 00:12:59,359 Speaker 1: was their work in producing the public argument for abolition, 207 00:12:59,640 --> 00:13:03,520 Speaker 1: along side the circuit writing preachers and traveling lecturers that 208 00:13:03,559 --> 00:13:07,200 Speaker 1: fan the flames that she lit against the horrors of slavery. 209 00:13:07,480 --> 00:13:10,600 Speaker 1: Who would get burned, though, was still up for grabs. 210 00:13:19,360 --> 00:13:22,880 Speaker 1: So Journer went to Boston with fists clenched tight. It 211 00:13:23,000 --> 00:13:26,480 Speaker 1: was eighteen fifty four and thousands of reformers were converging 212 00:13:26,520 --> 00:13:29,479 Speaker 1: on the city for the New England Anti Slavery Convention 213 00:13:29,679 --> 00:13:32,520 Speaker 1: and for the Women's Convention. If that was all, it 214 00:13:32,559 --> 00:13:35,760 Speaker 1: would have been exciting news, but recent events had charged 215 00:13:35,800 --> 00:13:40,040 Speaker 1: the meetings with passion. You see, in May of that year, 216 00:13:40,240 --> 00:13:43,120 Speaker 1: a man named Anthony Burns had escaped from slavery in 217 00:13:43,240 --> 00:13:46,920 Speaker 1: Virginia before being arrested by the authorities in Boston. The 218 00:13:46,960 --> 00:13:49,920 Speaker 1: police there had decided to obey the Fugitive Slave Act 219 00:13:50,000 --> 00:13:53,800 Speaker 1: by sending him back to captivity, but Boston abolitionists wanted 220 00:13:53,840 --> 00:13:57,000 Speaker 1: to say in the matter too. Inspired by armed rescues 221 00:13:57,040 --> 00:14:00,360 Speaker 1: that had taken place elsewhere, they gathered weapons and marched 222 00:14:00,360 --> 00:14:05,120 Speaker 1: on the courthouse on the evening of May. The crowd 223 00:14:05,120 --> 00:14:08,160 Speaker 1: of both black and white abolitionists fought a pitched battle 224 00:14:08,160 --> 00:14:12,880 Speaker 1: in the streets with the Court's deputies wielding revolvers, axes, clubs, 225 00:14:12,920 --> 00:14:16,040 Speaker 1: and cleavers. They tried to ram down the courthouse door, 226 00:14:16,600 --> 00:14:20,520 Speaker 1: but were beaten back. Nine of the abolitionists were arrested, 227 00:14:20,640 --> 00:14:23,800 Speaker 1: and their attempt to save Anthony Burns had failed. President 228 00:14:23,840 --> 00:14:27,480 Speaker 1: Franklin Pierce eventually had to send military forces to escort 229 00:14:27,520 --> 00:14:29,920 Speaker 1: Burns to a ship in the harbor that would transport 230 00:14:30,000 --> 00:14:34,440 Speaker 1: him back south. So Journer was in the crowd that day, 231 00:14:34,480 --> 00:14:38,200 Speaker 1: held back by cavalry and marines. On July four, the 232 00:14:38,240 --> 00:14:42,880 Speaker 1: Massachusetts Antislavery Society held a meeting in Burns honor. When 233 00:14:42,880 --> 00:14:45,600 Speaker 1: so Journer stood to speak, it had been two years 234 00:14:45,680 --> 00:14:49,200 Speaker 1: since Frederick Douglas had delivered his famous lecture What to 235 00:14:49,280 --> 00:14:52,960 Speaker 1: the Slave is fourth of July. Now she stood before 236 00:14:53,000 --> 00:14:55,760 Speaker 1: them to remind her audience that every northern city and 237 00:14:55,840 --> 00:14:58,720 Speaker 1: town that followed the Fugitive Slave Act by sending their 238 00:14:58,720 --> 00:15:01,960 Speaker 1: neighbors south into bond it was working to uphold the 239 00:15:02,000 --> 00:15:06,000 Speaker 1: slave system. When Henry David Thureau followed her on the stage, 240 00:15:06,040 --> 00:15:09,360 Speaker 1: he addressed the issue from another angle. Many people in 241 00:15:09,440 --> 00:15:12,960 Speaker 1: Massachusetts had been very concerned about the expansion of slavery 242 00:15:13,040 --> 00:15:16,520 Speaker 1: into Kansas and Nebraska, but for years, he said, they 243 00:15:16,520 --> 00:15:20,280 Speaker 1: had talked about the problem as something big yet far away. 244 00:15:20,320 --> 00:15:23,200 Speaker 1: But when slaveholders could reach into the North and use 245 00:15:23,280 --> 00:15:26,680 Speaker 1: the Boston Police and US military as a tool, that 246 00:15:26,840 --> 00:15:30,800 Speaker 1: problem stopped being a faraway thing. As throw put it, 247 00:15:31,400 --> 00:15:34,280 Speaker 1: the whole military force of the state is at the 248 00:15:34,280 --> 00:15:37,720 Speaker 1: service of a slaveholder from Virginia to enable him to 249 00:15:37,760 --> 00:15:40,520 Speaker 1: catch a man whom he calls his property, but not 250 00:15:40,600 --> 00:15:43,560 Speaker 1: a soldier is offered to save a citizen of Massachusetts 251 00:15:43,560 --> 00:15:48,840 Speaker 1: from being kidnapped. In the past, th Row had mocked spiritualism. 252 00:15:48,880 --> 00:15:51,760 Speaker 1: He said he would prefer the revelation of hooting owls 253 00:15:51,800 --> 00:15:54,600 Speaker 1: and croaking frogs to the knocking sounds, and that if 254 00:15:54,600 --> 00:15:57,440 Speaker 1: the spirit messages that passed through mediums were a true 255 00:15:57,480 --> 00:16:00,120 Speaker 1: sign of what life would be like after death, he 256 00:16:00,160 --> 00:16:03,840 Speaker 1: would exchange immortality for a glass of beer. But he 257 00:16:03,880 --> 00:16:07,400 Speaker 1: stood side by side with those spiritualists in eighteen fifty four. 258 00:16:09,120 --> 00:16:12,360 Speaker 1: That was Boston, though in New York things continued to 259 00:16:12,440 --> 00:16:15,760 Speaker 1: roll forward in a tangle. In our previous episode, we 260 00:16:15,800 --> 00:16:19,040 Speaker 1: talked about how the Brooklyn poet Walt Whitman embraced white 261 00:16:19,080 --> 00:16:22,200 Speaker 1: supremacy as a means to conquer the land, but that's 262 00:16:22,240 --> 00:16:25,080 Speaker 1: not the only way he was. Unlike the Row. Born 263 00:16:25,120 --> 00:16:28,720 Speaker 1: to a Quaker family and a fan of Swedenborg's mysticism, 264 00:16:28,720 --> 00:16:32,320 Speaker 1: Whitman followed an interest in spiritualism throughout his whole life. 265 00:16:33,560 --> 00:16:36,040 Speaker 1: In fact, the older he got, the deeper he went. 266 00:16:36,520 --> 00:16:39,160 Speaker 1: He even began to see himself as a medium, and 267 00:16:39,240 --> 00:16:43,440 Speaker 1: even wrote that poets are divine mediums. Through them comes 268 00:16:43,520 --> 00:16:47,920 Speaker 1: spirits and materials to all the people. Whitman also sought 269 00:16:47,960 --> 00:16:50,760 Speaker 1: out the friendship of the Universalist minister in New York, 270 00:16:50,760 --> 00:16:53,720 Speaker 1: who had worked with Andrew Jackson Davis to transcribe his 271 00:16:53,800 --> 00:16:57,720 Speaker 1: spirit lectures in the eighteen forties. Together, they attended seances 272 00:16:57,800 --> 00:17:01,040 Speaker 1: by a spiritualist named Thomas Lake Harris, a medium who 273 00:17:01,040 --> 00:17:04,560 Speaker 1: wrote mystical poetry while in his trances it was just 274 00:17:04,800 --> 00:17:08,399 Speaker 1: what women liked, and when women attended a Cora Hatch 275 00:17:08,440 --> 00:17:11,040 Speaker 1: spirit lecture, he was so inspired by her that he 276 00:17:11,080 --> 00:17:14,720 Speaker 1: became determined to develop his own powers of spirit communication. 277 00:17:15,359 --> 00:17:17,840 Speaker 1: Put it all together, and it adds up to one 278 00:17:17,880 --> 00:17:21,359 Speaker 1: big mess. We'd like to believe that the connection between 279 00:17:21,400 --> 00:17:25,880 Speaker 1: spiritualism and social causes like abolition were simple, but we've 280 00:17:25,920 --> 00:17:28,320 Speaker 1: seen by now. Rather than being a neat and tidy 281 00:17:28,359 --> 00:17:32,560 Speaker 1: bundle of threads woven into a beautiful story, those connections 282 00:17:32,560 --> 00:17:35,399 Speaker 1: were more of a snorl knot the good and the 283 00:17:35,480 --> 00:17:39,800 Speaker 1: bad all mixed together. Judging by life in New York 284 00:17:39,840 --> 00:17:43,200 Speaker 1: at the time, though none of that should come as 285 00:17:43,240 --> 00:17:54,919 Speaker 1: a surprise. Slavery had been illegal in New York for years, 286 00:17:55,440 --> 00:17:58,320 Speaker 1: but the city had been built on slavery. That much 287 00:17:58,400 --> 00:18:01,280 Speaker 1: was clear in the view from Horace Really's house. It 288 00:18:01,400 --> 00:18:03,520 Speaker 1: was now the home to the Fox family, but whenever 289 00:18:03,560 --> 00:18:06,120 Speaker 1: Greeley returned to the city, they always had a room 290 00:18:06,160 --> 00:18:10,720 Speaker 1: open for him. In June of eighteen sixty, Greeley wrote 291 00:18:10,760 --> 00:18:13,560 Speaker 1: an editorial in his New York Tribune under the title 292 00:18:13,760 --> 00:18:17,920 Speaker 1: the slave Trade in New York It is a remarkable fact. 293 00:18:18,000 --> 00:18:21,040 Speaker 1: He wrote that the slave traders in this city almost 294 00:18:21,080 --> 00:18:24,840 Speaker 1: invariably managed to elude the meshes of the law. Now 295 00:18:24,880 --> 00:18:28,560 Speaker 1: they bribe a jury, another time their counsels or agents 296 00:18:28,640 --> 00:18:32,600 Speaker 1: spirit away a vital witness. Slave trading had been punishable 297 00:18:32,600 --> 00:18:34,960 Speaker 1: by death in New York since eighteen twenty, but the 298 00:18:35,000 --> 00:18:38,160 Speaker 1: brutal business carried on. In fact, not a single slave 299 00:18:38,200 --> 00:18:41,679 Speaker 1: trader had been executed by eighteen sixty. It made Horace 300 00:18:41,760 --> 00:18:44,679 Speaker 1: write that to break up the African slave trade, it 301 00:18:44,720 --> 00:18:47,960 Speaker 1: will be necessary to purge the courts and offices of 302 00:18:48,000 --> 00:18:51,120 Speaker 1: those pimps of piracy who are well known, and at 303 00:18:51,119 --> 00:18:55,440 Speaker 1: the proper time will receive their just desserts. It wasn't 304 00:18:55,440 --> 00:18:58,280 Speaker 1: clear how soon that time would be, though, so journ 305 00:18:58,359 --> 00:19:01,040 Speaker 1: or truth story, like her battles against her neighbors to 306 00:19:01,080 --> 00:19:03,920 Speaker 1: bring back her son from Alabama can help us see 307 00:19:03,960 --> 00:19:07,119 Speaker 1: how the riffs over support for slavery didn't just split 308 00:19:07,240 --> 00:19:11,119 Speaker 1: North from South. They split communities everywhere, even in the 309 00:19:11,160 --> 00:19:16,399 Speaker 1: anti slavery North. And it's no wonder. In seventeen ninety, 310 00:19:16,640 --> 00:19:19,960 Speaker 1: just before Sojourner was born, some counties in New York 311 00:19:20,000 --> 00:19:23,520 Speaker 1: had a higher proportion of slaveholding families than South Carolina. 312 00:19:24,000 --> 00:19:27,320 Speaker 1: Their way of thinking about the world didn't magically evaporate 313 00:19:27,400 --> 00:19:32,159 Speaker 1: when New York abolished slavery. It just went underground, and 314 00:19:32,200 --> 00:19:35,240 Speaker 1: the New Yorkers who profited from slavery didn't lose their 315 00:19:35,240 --> 00:19:38,440 Speaker 1: connections to the South either. Greeley tried to point out 316 00:19:38,480 --> 00:19:40,480 Speaker 1: that New York was still a major hub of the 317 00:19:40,520 --> 00:19:43,520 Speaker 1: Southern slave trade even though it was now illegal there, 318 00:19:43,840 --> 00:19:47,800 Speaker 1: whether as investors, ship owners, or captains and crew, New 319 00:19:47,880 --> 00:19:52,960 Speaker 1: Yorkers promoted and practiced human trafficking, and Greeley's Tribune wasn't 320 00:19:52,960 --> 00:19:55,520 Speaker 1: the only paper to publish this kind of report. The 321 00:19:55,600 --> 00:19:59,240 Speaker 1: Local Evening Post reported in eighteen sixty that the city 322 00:19:59,280 --> 00:20:02,320 Speaker 1: of New York belongs as much to the South as 323 00:20:02,359 --> 00:20:05,520 Speaker 1: to the North, and they made that clear. As the 324 00:20:05,600 --> 00:20:09,160 Speaker 1: nation's politics came to a boil in the presidential election 325 00:20:09,200 --> 00:20:13,320 Speaker 1: of eighteen sixty which pitted Abraham Lincoln against Stephen Douglas. 326 00:20:13,359 --> 00:20:17,840 Speaker 1: Every county around New York City voted for Douglas. Months later, 327 00:20:17,880 --> 00:20:21,600 Speaker 1: in January of eighteen sixty one, when South Carolina seceded 328 00:20:21,640 --> 00:20:24,400 Speaker 1: from the United States and protest, the mayor of New 329 00:20:24,480 --> 00:20:28,800 Speaker 1: York called a meeting of his allies. He suggested that 330 00:20:28,840 --> 00:20:32,159 Speaker 1: living under the federal government of the Lincoln administration was, 331 00:20:32,400 --> 00:20:36,440 Speaker 1: in his words, odious and oppressive. He suggested that New 332 00:20:36,520 --> 00:20:40,720 Speaker 1: York City follow South Carolina's example. They should succeed, he said, 333 00:20:41,000 --> 00:20:45,440 Speaker 1: and become a nation unto themselves. Taxes for businesses would 334 00:20:45,440 --> 00:20:48,639 Speaker 1: be low, and the slave trade could continue. And some 335 00:20:48,800 --> 00:20:51,399 Speaker 1: of the city's bankers and merchants were quick to sign 336 00:20:51,400 --> 00:20:54,240 Speaker 1: on to this new idea. A few newspapers through and 337 00:20:54,240 --> 00:20:57,600 Speaker 1: with them as well, the city's council even approved the idea. 338 00:20:58,920 --> 00:21:01,800 Speaker 1: It was exactly why writers like Frederick Douglas knew they 339 00:21:01,800 --> 00:21:05,440 Speaker 1: needed to start their own newspapers. There were others around him, too, 340 00:21:05,640 --> 00:21:08,240 Speaker 1: like David Ruggles, who had started as a free black 341 00:21:08,280 --> 00:21:12,920 Speaker 1: grocer in New York before becoming a newspaperman himself years 342 00:21:12,920 --> 00:21:16,000 Speaker 1: before on an early September day in the eighteen thirties, 343 00:21:16,240 --> 00:21:18,280 Speaker 1: Ruggles had opened his door to the knock of a 344 00:21:18,280 --> 00:21:21,399 Speaker 1: young Frederick Douglas, who had just escaped his captivity in 345 00:21:21,400 --> 00:21:25,120 Speaker 1: the Baltimore Shipyards. Ruggles had mentored Douglas there in New York, 346 00:21:25,320 --> 00:21:28,600 Speaker 1: even hosting the man's wedding in his living room. When 347 00:21:28,600 --> 00:21:30,800 Speaker 1: he moved from New York, Ruggles found a home in 348 00:21:30,800 --> 00:21:35,520 Speaker 1: a more welcoming community in Northampton, Massachusetts. There he edited 349 00:21:35,560 --> 00:21:38,880 Speaker 1: his own newspaper, The Mirror of Liberty. It served as 350 00:21:38,880 --> 00:21:42,240 Speaker 1: a powerful inspiration for Douglas, showing the younger man what 351 00:21:42,400 --> 00:21:46,200 Speaker 1: was possible with the printing press and a message. Here's 352 00:21:46,240 --> 00:21:52,800 Speaker 1: historian An Browdie. What periodicals provided for them was the 353 00:21:52,840 --> 00:21:58,840 Speaker 1: ability to form non geographic communities, communities of like minded 354 00:21:58,920 --> 00:22:02,040 Speaker 1: people who did not see each other face to face. 355 00:22:02,640 --> 00:22:06,119 Speaker 1: So you see the seeds of the virtual communities that 356 00:22:06,200 --> 00:22:10,280 Speaker 1: have become so important in the digital age. In the 357 00:22:10,359 --> 00:22:15,119 Speaker 1: periodical press of the ninete century, you could subscribe to 358 00:22:15,280 --> 00:22:20,600 Speaker 1: a periodical published in Chicago or Milwaukee or Boston, no 359 00:22:20,640 --> 00:22:23,040 Speaker 1: matter where you lived, and you would receive it through 360 00:22:23,080 --> 00:22:26,400 Speaker 1: the mail, and you would see on it the names 361 00:22:26,480 --> 00:22:31,159 Speaker 1: of other subscribers in your small town or in your state. 362 00:22:32,640 --> 00:22:38,560 Speaker 1: But there's more. Here's historian Mary Gabriel. It was really fascinating. 363 00:22:38,560 --> 00:22:40,399 Speaker 1: And it wasn't just in the United States. It was 364 00:22:40,440 --> 00:22:46,240 Speaker 1: in Europe as well. Every organization, every political party, every group, 365 00:22:46,320 --> 00:22:49,800 Speaker 1: the farmers groups, the coal group, you know, coal miners. 366 00:22:49,840 --> 00:22:55,040 Speaker 1: Everyone had a periodical when the spirit spoke from the 367 00:22:55,040 --> 00:22:58,320 Speaker 1: pages of black newspapers like The North Star. They offered 368 00:22:58,359 --> 00:23:01,439 Speaker 1: a vision of liberty and a quality for Black Americans 369 00:23:01,480 --> 00:23:05,080 Speaker 1: that was frequently repeated in the spiritualist press. And as 370 00:23:05,119 --> 00:23:09,280 Speaker 1: we've mentioned before, spiritualists were also launching newspapers of their own. 371 00:23:10,720 --> 00:23:14,080 Speaker 1: From the beginning, the treatment of spiritualism in Southern newspapers 372 00:23:14,280 --> 00:23:17,280 Speaker 1: was chilly at best. One paper in eighteen fifty one 373 00:23:17,400 --> 00:23:22,480 Speaker 1: railed against the buffooneries of the Foxes and the Fishes. Spiritualists, 374 00:23:22,520 --> 00:23:27,840 Speaker 1: they wrote, were ardent zealots, weak minded enthusiasts, and gullible dreamers. 375 00:23:28,760 --> 00:23:31,280 Speaker 1: The following year, in eighteen fifty two, the New Orleans 376 00:23:31,400 --> 00:23:35,280 Speaker 1: Daily Crescent reported that Thomas Lake Harris, the spiritualist poet 377 00:23:35,280 --> 00:23:38,359 Speaker 1: who Walt Whitman like so much, had arrived in their city. 378 00:23:38,760 --> 00:23:41,040 Speaker 1: He was staying at the Veranda hotel for the winter 379 00:23:41,440 --> 00:23:43,720 Speaker 1: and was willing to receive visitors in his room for 380 00:23:43,800 --> 00:23:48,520 Speaker 1: private seances, but it wasn't published as an advertisement. The 381 00:23:48,520 --> 00:23:50,680 Speaker 1: paper claimed that he was trying to raise an army 382 00:23:50,680 --> 00:23:53,480 Speaker 1: of converts to his new faith and warned that some 383 00:23:53,600 --> 00:23:57,520 Speaker 1: of the respectable citizens of New Orleans were leaning his way. 384 00:23:58,920 --> 00:24:02,719 Speaker 1: Years later, when Southern states started succeeding, they also started 385 00:24:02,760 --> 00:24:08,400 Speaker 1: rejecting shipments of spiritualist newspapers because they considered them abolitionist publications. 386 00:24:09,119 --> 00:24:11,879 Speaker 1: The war of words and ideas fought in the eighteen 387 00:24:12,000 --> 00:24:16,000 Speaker 1: fifties was leading towards something darker. The isms of the 388 00:24:16,040 --> 00:24:19,560 Speaker 1: North were scorned in the Southern press, viewed as attacks 389 00:24:19,640 --> 00:24:23,760 Speaker 1: that threatened the wealth and power of slaveholders. But those 390 00:24:23,800 --> 00:24:37,159 Speaker 1: attacks we're just beginning. New York was filled with conflict, 391 00:24:37,640 --> 00:24:40,399 Speaker 1: and it wasn't just struggling over questions of slavery and 392 00:24:40,440 --> 00:24:43,280 Speaker 1: abolition that put spiritualists at the center of the fight. 393 00:24:43,880 --> 00:24:46,680 Speaker 1: Even as the identity of the nation and its relationship 394 00:24:46,760 --> 00:24:50,200 Speaker 1: to the abuses of slavery fueled round after round fighting, 395 00:24:50,560 --> 00:24:55,000 Speaker 1: spiritualism itself was still on trial in New York. The 396 00:24:55,080 --> 00:24:58,840 Speaker 1: tests undergone by the movement's most prominent figures sometimes took 397 00:24:58,920 --> 00:25:02,200 Speaker 1: odd turns in the headwinds of history. That was clear 398 00:25:02,280 --> 00:25:05,800 Speaker 1: to see in eighteen sixty when Maggie Fox, now in 399 00:25:05,840 --> 00:25:09,040 Speaker 1: her late twenties, a Catholic and a veteran performer, but 400 00:25:09,160 --> 00:25:12,879 Speaker 1: also a reformed spiritualist, agreed once again to be party 401 00:25:12,920 --> 00:25:16,400 Speaker 1: to an investigation. Maybe it was Kate who convinced her. 402 00:25:16,720 --> 00:25:20,639 Speaker 1: Because they took this test together. They weren't alone either. 403 00:25:21,160 --> 00:25:23,680 Speaker 1: There was a huddle full of spiritualists floating out on 404 00:25:23,720 --> 00:25:26,639 Speaker 1: the water because it was a day for public spectacle. 405 00:25:27,160 --> 00:25:29,520 Speaker 1: The city of New York might not have executed any 406 00:25:29,560 --> 00:25:32,440 Speaker 1: slave traders, but they were still willing to execute people 407 00:25:32,480 --> 00:25:36,960 Speaker 1: like the notorious pirate John Hicks. A six day trial 408 00:25:37,040 --> 00:25:40,000 Speaker 1: had convicted him for murdering three men at sea, and 409 00:25:40,040 --> 00:25:43,159 Speaker 1: when his confession followed, he admitted to a wild story 410 00:25:43,240 --> 00:25:46,120 Speaker 1: of jumping ship to ship, leaving a trail of dead 411 00:25:46,160 --> 00:25:49,400 Speaker 1: behind him. His final crimes were described in action packed 412 00:25:49,480 --> 00:25:53,639 Speaker 1: detail and were published alongside a full phrenological diagnosis of 413 00:25:53,720 --> 00:25:57,600 Speaker 1: his mind. But for anology wasn't the only tool to 414 00:25:57,640 --> 00:26:00,280 Speaker 1: be used on him. There were also plenty of others 415 00:26:00,320 --> 00:26:02,600 Speaker 1: who wanted to see what would happen when he crossed 416 00:26:02,600 --> 00:26:06,080 Speaker 1: that boundary between life and death. For that, they decided 417 00:26:06,400 --> 00:26:10,520 Speaker 1: spiritualist mediums were just the people to call. On the 418 00:26:10,600 --> 00:26:13,439 Speaker 1: day set for his execution, crowds lined the streets to 419 00:26:13,480 --> 00:26:16,359 Speaker 1: watch him go by. He boarded the steamship called the 420 00:26:16,400 --> 00:26:19,280 Speaker 1: Red Jacket, accompanied by a core of marines and to 421 00:26:19,520 --> 00:26:23,200 Speaker 1: federal marshals. The spiritualists were already on board the ship. 422 00:26:23,680 --> 00:26:25,280 Speaker 1: They made for an island in the middle of the 423 00:26:25,280 --> 00:26:29,760 Speaker 1: harbor where the gallows waited for him. Here's historian Kathy Gutierrez. 424 00:26:31,760 --> 00:26:36,840 Speaker 1: So there's this floating seance basically that is surrounding this 425 00:26:37,000 --> 00:26:41,480 Speaker 1: island with the expectation that at the moment of this 426 00:26:41,560 --> 00:26:47,680 Speaker 1: guy's death that they would be able to communicate with him. 427 00:26:47,680 --> 00:26:50,640 Speaker 1: It was also something like a floating reception. In fact, 428 00:26:50,680 --> 00:26:53,600 Speaker 1: refreshments had been set out for the gathered mediums all 429 00:26:53,640 --> 00:26:57,440 Speaker 1: while the execution moved forward on his way to the noose. 430 00:26:57,600 --> 00:27:00,560 Speaker 1: Hicks didn't seem to show much interest in the spirit ritualists, 431 00:27:00,920 --> 00:27:02,879 Speaker 1: but they were hoping that in the presence of so 432 00:27:02,960 --> 00:27:06,160 Speaker 1: many powerful mediums like the Fox Sisters, who were so 433 00:27:06,280 --> 00:27:09,359 Speaker 1: attuned to the spirit world, his death would produce some 434 00:27:09,440 --> 00:27:13,760 Speaker 1: kind of amazing spiritual revelation as his soul departed his body, 435 00:27:14,840 --> 00:27:17,639 Speaker 1: but those hopes were dashed. In fact, Hicks was hanged 436 00:27:17,680 --> 00:27:21,560 Speaker 1: with hardly any notice or additional fanfare. Here's more from 437 00:27:21,680 --> 00:27:28,399 Speaker 1: Kathy Gutierrez. Well, embarrassingly enough of the spiritualists, much like 438 00:27:28,520 --> 00:27:32,119 Speaker 1: graduate students, were so excited about the free food and drink, 439 00:27:32,280 --> 00:27:36,480 Speaker 1: that they completely missed the hanging. And we're busily chowing 440 00:27:36,520 --> 00:27:41,320 Speaker 1: down on the cucumber sandwiches and new communication whatsoever took place. 441 00:27:43,520 --> 00:27:47,320 Speaker 1: It was another huge embarrassment for those who wanted spiritualism 442 00:27:47,320 --> 00:27:49,840 Speaker 1: to finally be proven in the light of day. The 443 00:27:49,960 --> 00:27:53,040 Speaker 1: critics decided to rub it into writing that the pirates 444 00:27:53,040 --> 00:27:56,080 Speaker 1: spirit had been dispatched so speedily that he flew right 445 00:27:56,119 --> 00:27:59,240 Speaker 1: past the watchful eyes of the mediums. The incident was 446 00:27:59,440 --> 00:28:02,040 Speaker 1: so embarras a scene that it simply was left out 447 00:28:02,080 --> 00:28:06,240 Speaker 1: of most spiritualist writings. But there was another hanging that 448 00:28:06,359 --> 00:28:09,400 Speaker 1: spiritualists and abolitionists were keen to get into the papers, 449 00:28:09,880 --> 00:28:13,560 Speaker 1: the execution of John Brown, or the raid on Harper's Ferry. 450 00:28:14,680 --> 00:28:17,560 Speaker 1: Brown had already been a hero of abolitionists before he 451 00:28:17,600 --> 00:28:20,320 Speaker 1: attacked the arsenal in the hope of arming a slave revolt. 452 00:28:20,640 --> 00:28:23,760 Speaker 1: He'd once liberated eleven people held in slavery in Missouri 453 00:28:24,080 --> 00:28:27,040 Speaker 1: and led them over eleven hundred miles through four states, 454 00:28:27,280 --> 00:28:32,080 Speaker 1: dodging federal troops and a volunteer militia along the way. Afterwards, 455 00:28:32,080 --> 00:28:34,720 Speaker 1: he met with Frederick Douglas and other leaders to recruit 456 00:28:34,760 --> 00:28:38,520 Speaker 1: them into his plan to fight slaveholders elsewhere. Captured later 457 00:28:38,560 --> 00:28:43,800 Speaker 1: in Virginia, John Brown was sentenced to hang. Oddly, the 458 00:28:43,880 --> 00:28:47,680 Speaker 1: Virginia state government forbid any journalist from a northern paper 459 00:28:47,760 --> 00:28:52,080 Speaker 1: from witnessing the execution. One man, Henry Steele Alcott, was 460 00:28:52,160 --> 00:28:55,320 Speaker 1: able to evade this prohibition, though, and sent his report 461 00:28:55,360 --> 00:28:59,040 Speaker 1: back to the New York Sun. Alcott would play a 462 00:28:59,160 --> 00:29:01,800 Speaker 1: later role in this Spiritualist history that will explore in 463 00:29:01,880 --> 00:29:05,000 Speaker 1: future episodes. For now, though, the important thing is that 464 00:29:05,040 --> 00:29:08,080 Speaker 1: he got his message out, and because of that the 465 00:29:08,120 --> 00:29:12,840 Speaker 1: news spread. Brown was mourned and celebrated. At the same time, 466 00:29:13,440 --> 00:29:16,719 Speaker 1: Harriet Tubman, who was at one point planning on joining 467 00:29:16,800 --> 00:29:20,360 Speaker 1: John Brown at Harper's Ferry, told one Spiritualist editor that 468 00:29:20,440 --> 00:29:23,480 Speaker 1: it wasn't really John Brown who had been executed, It 469 00:29:23,600 --> 00:29:27,000 Speaker 1: was christ from his exile in the English Channel. Victor 470 00:29:27,080 --> 00:29:30,040 Speaker 1: Hugo agreed. He wrote a letter to friends in Haiti, 471 00:29:30,200 --> 00:29:33,800 Speaker 1: stating that what the South slew was not John Brown 472 00:29:34,440 --> 00:29:40,960 Speaker 1: but slavery. Abolitionists and radical spiritualists agreed. John Brown's body 473 00:29:41,280 --> 00:29:44,400 Speaker 1: might have been rotting in the grave, but his soul 474 00:29:45,200 --> 00:29:58,440 Speaker 1: was marching on. It had always been about carrying messages, 475 00:29:59,080 --> 00:30:02,520 Speaker 1: whether we can count beginning of Spiritualism from the Shaker Girls, 476 00:30:02,680 --> 00:30:06,040 Speaker 1: or from Andrew Jackson Davis, or even further back from 477 00:30:06,120 --> 00:30:10,080 Speaker 1: Sojourn or Truth's messages from her father. Spiritualists had long 478 00:30:10,160 --> 00:30:13,160 Speaker 1: felt they had a responsibility to pass along the word 479 00:30:13,240 --> 00:30:18,120 Speaker 1: from beyond death. So in eighteen fifty seven, spiritualists in 480 00:30:18,160 --> 00:30:21,600 Speaker 1: Boston founded a newspaper that would do just that, print 481 00:30:21,640 --> 00:30:24,520 Speaker 1: messages from the spirit world. It would be one of 482 00:30:24,600 --> 00:30:28,160 Speaker 1: many spiritualist newspapers over the years, but whether they knew 483 00:30:28,160 --> 00:30:30,640 Speaker 1: it or not, it was a monumental moment in the 484 00:30:30,760 --> 00:30:34,520 Speaker 1: history of their movement. Their newspaper would tell the amazing 485 00:30:34,600 --> 00:30:37,760 Speaker 1: stories of the mediums who delivered all those messages to 486 00:30:37,840 --> 00:30:41,840 Speaker 1: their say once circles. They would become the foundational voice 487 00:30:41,880 --> 00:30:45,800 Speaker 1: of spiritualism for decades, and they called it the Banner 488 00:30:45,920 --> 00:30:51,080 Speaker 1: of Light. I don't think many historians would contradict me 489 00:30:51,240 --> 00:30:54,920 Speaker 1: if I said that the two most important periodicals were 490 00:30:54,960 --> 00:30:59,240 Speaker 1: The Banner of Light, published in Boston, the longest lived 491 00:30:59,240 --> 00:31:03,360 Speaker 1: and most wide we read of the spiritualist periodicals, followed 492 00:31:03,360 --> 00:31:08,360 Speaker 1: by the Religio Philosophical Journal in Chicago, which was really 493 00:31:08,400 --> 00:31:14,080 Speaker 1: the voice of the Midwest. For many in the North. 494 00:31:14,200 --> 00:31:17,560 Speaker 1: It was precisely the message of radical reform coming from 495 00:31:17,600 --> 00:31:21,600 Speaker 1: the spirits that attracted followers to spiritualism, even while its 496 00:31:21,640 --> 00:31:24,400 Speaker 1: claims to prove contact with the dead remained in doubt 497 00:31:24,920 --> 00:31:28,320 Speaker 1: below the Mason Dixon line, though that picture was often inverted. 498 00:31:28,640 --> 00:31:31,760 Speaker 1: Where we have evidence of spiritualism catching on among wealthy 499 00:31:31,760 --> 00:31:34,680 Speaker 1: white families, it was often achieved by cutting off the 500 00:31:34,720 --> 00:31:38,880 Speaker 1: idea of a reformation in the spirit world. Take Sarah Morgan, 501 00:31:39,000 --> 00:31:41,760 Speaker 1: for example. Her diary would make her one of the 502 00:31:41,800 --> 00:31:46,080 Speaker 1: most well known recorders of Southern life among Louisiana's prominent families. 503 00:31:46,400 --> 00:31:49,360 Speaker 1: Her father was a respected judge in Baton Rouge, her 504 00:31:49,360 --> 00:31:52,000 Speaker 1: brother was a judge in New Orleans, and her family 505 00:31:52,080 --> 00:31:56,800 Speaker 1: numbered among Louisiana's most wealthy. Sarah would read the newspapers 506 00:31:56,840 --> 00:31:59,200 Speaker 1: with her father, and they got word of the table 507 00:31:59,240 --> 00:32:03,560 Speaker 1: turning and spirit knocking in eighty eight. In the following years, 508 00:32:03,560 --> 00:32:07,440 Speaker 1: those spirits populated Sarah's world. When her brother Jimmy traveled 509 00:32:07,440 --> 00:32:10,320 Speaker 1: to England, he wrote home describing a seance he attended, 510 00:32:10,560 --> 00:32:13,800 Speaker 1: and Sarah herself tried to summon spirit knockings alone at 511 00:32:13,840 --> 00:32:19,320 Speaker 1: home without success. After her father, brother, and husband all 512 00:32:19,360 --> 00:32:22,800 Speaker 1: passed away, Sarah longed to communicate with them, so she 513 00:32:22,920 --> 00:32:26,000 Speaker 1: turned to spiritualism. It said that she would end each 514 00:32:26,040 --> 00:32:28,760 Speaker 1: of her daily deliveries of flowers to their grave sites 515 00:32:29,080 --> 00:32:32,920 Speaker 1: with a visit to a local medium. When rumors began 516 00:32:32,960 --> 00:32:35,120 Speaker 1: to surface that her late husband had slept with the 517 00:32:35,160 --> 00:32:38,600 Speaker 1: families governess, the medium delivered his spirit into the room, 518 00:32:38,640 --> 00:32:41,800 Speaker 1: where he assured her that he had been faithful. Despite 519 00:32:41,800 --> 00:32:45,040 Speaker 1: what other white Southerners might have said, Sarah never gave 520 00:32:45,120 --> 00:32:47,840 Speaker 1: up her enthusiasm for speaking with the spirits of her 521 00:32:47,880 --> 00:32:51,959 Speaker 1: dead family. As she got back on her feet and 522 00:32:52,000 --> 00:32:55,160 Speaker 1: began to travel, she made regular stops at seances around 523 00:32:55,160 --> 00:32:58,720 Speaker 1: the world. She sat with mediums in New York City, London, 524 00:32:58,880 --> 00:33:03,280 Speaker 1: and Rome, interpreted dreams, and talked about the personal prophecies 525 00:33:03,280 --> 00:33:06,680 Speaker 1: she had received from spirits, but their messages were rarely 526 00:33:06,720 --> 00:33:10,200 Speaker 1: more significant than news about her own life or people 527 00:33:10,240 --> 00:33:13,240 Speaker 1: in her family, and she carried a lifelong hatred for 528 00:33:13,280 --> 00:33:16,640 Speaker 1: the North and its radicalism, a hatred that would blossom 529 00:33:16,680 --> 00:33:19,520 Speaker 1: in the eighteen sixties when two more of her brothers 530 00:33:19,520 --> 00:33:23,720 Speaker 1: were killed during the Civil War. But a spiritualism that 531 00:33:23,800 --> 00:33:26,880 Speaker 1: ignored the call of liberty and freedom wouldn't have sat 532 00:33:26,920 --> 00:33:29,920 Speaker 1: well with Sojourner truth In fact, as she got older, 533 00:33:29,960 --> 00:33:32,280 Speaker 1: she turned her eyes to the west, and a tour 534 00:33:32,400 --> 00:33:35,479 Speaker 1: through Pennsylvania, she met white farmers who were laying plans 535 00:33:35,520 --> 00:33:38,680 Speaker 1: to move westward. They said they wanted good men and 536 00:33:38,720 --> 00:33:43,000 Speaker 1: women to work their farms on shares. Conversations like that 537 00:33:43,080 --> 00:33:45,920 Speaker 1: convinced her that if black families went west, they might 538 00:33:45,920 --> 00:33:48,240 Speaker 1: be able to find a place to become self sufficient. 539 00:33:48,720 --> 00:33:52,240 Speaker 1: Her dream of future prosperity was golden fields of grain, 540 00:33:52,520 --> 00:33:55,360 Speaker 1: rather than the gold mines of California or Colorado. That 541 00:33:55,480 --> 00:33:58,920 Speaker 1: seemed to be the most popular choice. But it wasn't 542 00:33:59,000 --> 00:34:02,080 Speaker 1: just future process verity that attracted her. It was also 543 00:34:02,160 --> 00:34:05,240 Speaker 1: the need for abolitionist voices raised among the settlers on 544 00:34:05,320 --> 00:34:08,400 Speaker 1: west Land. So Journer had preached social reform in the 545 00:34:08,520 --> 00:34:11,520 Speaker 1: rough and loud New York of the eighteen thirties. Now 546 00:34:11,560 --> 00:34:13,840 Speaker 1: she saw the need to bring a voice of liberation 547 00:34:13,960 --> 00:34:18,720 Speaker 1: to the lawlessness of the West. At the eighteen fifty 548 00:34:18,800 --> 00:34:22,799 Speaker 1: six Anti Slavery Convention, Sojourner laid plans with friends who 549 00:34:22,880 --> 00:34:27,239 Speaker 1: called themselves the Anti Slavery Apostles. They vowed to transform 550 00:34:27,320 --> 00:34:31,080 Speaker 1: the American West, and they wasted no time. Their mantra 551 00:34:31,360 --> 00:34:35,840 Speaker 1: was no union with slaveholders. So Journer set out immediately 552 00:34:35,880 --> 00:34:40,200 Speaker 1: to organize anti slavery meetings throughout Ohio and finally Michigan, 553 00:34:40,600 --> 00:34:42,200 Speaker 1: and it was there that she found a town that 554 00:34:42,280 --> 00:34:45,399 Speaker 1: was already a thriving spiritualist hub. They even had their 555 00:34:45,400 --> 00:34:49,120 Speaker 1: own commune there called Harmonia, founded by Quakers. It was 556 00:34:49,200 --> 00:34:52,920 Speaker 1: full of similar ideas to Northampton or Rochester, and so 557 00:34:53,040 --> 00:34:56,719 Speaker 1: Journer felt right at home. In eighteen fifty seven, she 558 00:34:56,800 --> 00:34:59,719 Speaker 1: bought a plot of land outside Harmonia and chose her 559 00:34:59,760 --> 00:35:02,759 Speaker 1: new home base. It didn't slow her mission down, though, 560 00:35:03,200 --> 00:35:06,680 Speaker 1: because there were souls to be won, but not everyone, 561 00:35:06,880 --> 00:35:17,480 Speaker 1: it seems, was heading west. Emma Harding was never shy, 562 00:35:17,760 --> 00:35:21,320 Speaker 1: and she was paying attention. After all, she read the newspaper. 563 00:35:21,840 --> 00:35:23,960 Speaker 1: It had only been in print for a year, but 564 00:35:24,040 --> 00:35:26,520 Speaker 1: the Banner of Lights had already claimed the top billing 565 00:35:26,560 --> 00:35:31,520 Speaker 1: amongst spiritualists across the nation, plus with mystics like Thomas 566 00:35:31,640 --> 00:35:34,800 Speaker 1: Lake Harris taking up residents in New Orleans and families 567 00:35:34,840 --> 00:35:38,520 Speaker 1: like the Morgan's embracing spiritualism. The editors of the Banner 568 00:35:38,560 --> 00:35:41,439 Speaker 1: of Light felt that Louisiana had something for them to see, 569 00:35:42,000 --> 00:35:45,120 Speaker 1: so in eighteen fifty six they crossed the Ohio Valley 570 00:35:45,160 --> 00:35:48,640 Speaker 1: and the Mississippi River to lecture on spiritualism in New Orleans, 571 00:35:48,960 --> 00:35:52,680 Speaker 1: and despite the reputation of their northern religion, the city 572 00:35:52,840 --> 00:35:57,239 Speaker 1: lit up on their arrival. It's set a precedent and 573 00:35:57,480 --> 00:36:00,880 Speaker 1: became an inspiration. The next year and Harding laid a 574 00:36:00,920 --> 00:36:03,400 Speaker 1: course for her seance tables in New York to the 575 00:36:03,480 --> 00:36:07,840 Speaker 1: National Spiritualist Convention in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Then in August of 576 00:36:07,880 --> 00:36:11,319 Speaker 1: eighteen fifty nine, she would hit the road. Her first 577 00:36:11,320 --> 00:36:14,960 Speaker 1: stop was Memphis, Tennessee, then Evansville, Iowa, and then a 578 00:36:15,040 --> 00:36:19,440 Speaker 1: trek through Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, and the Carolinas. From the 579 00:36:19,480 --> 00:36:22,800 Speaker 1: first days, though, Emma was met with a violent reaction. 580 00:36:24,160 --> 00:36:27,160 Speaker 1: At her first Tennessee lecture, someone outside the hall where 581 00:36:27,200 --> 00:36:30,160 Speaker 1: she was speaking through a stone through the window. It 582 00:36:30,320 --> 00:36:33,160 Speaker 1: rolled to her feet, while glass shattered onto her audience. 583 00:36:33,640 --> 00:36:37,760 Speaker 1: Things only got worse from there. The Memphis Inquirer published 584 00:36:37,760 --> 00:36:41,920 Speaker 1: an editorial calling Emma an outside agitator who threatened a 585 00:36:42,000 --> 00:36:46,400 Speaker 1: favorite Southern institution. No one was confused about what that meant. 586 00:36:46,680 --> 00:36:50,160 Speaker 1: She had flown south on the winds of abolition. Emma's 587 00:36:50,239 --> 00:36:53,120 Speaker 1: last lecture in Memphis was ultimately canceled when a group 588 00:36:53,160 --> 00:36:55,919 Speaker 1: of rowdies threatened to lynch her and anyone who came 589 00:36:55,960 --> 00:37:00,600 Speaker 1: to hear her speak. She tried to counter the acusations 590 00:37:00,600 --> 00:37:04,319 Speaker 1: of being a Yankee infidel by pointing to her British birth, 591 00:37:04,760 --> 00:37:07,400 Speaker 1: but papers along her route continued to burn her to 592 00:37:07,440 --> 00:37:10,600 Speaker 1: the ground before she arrived. Further death threats fell on 593 00:37:10,640 --> 00:37:14,960 Speaker 1: her in Tennessee and South Carolina. Later, Emma would write 594 00:37:15,000 --> 00:37:17,400 Speaker 1: that at every turn on the tour, she saw the 595 00:37:17,440 --> 00:37:21,319 Speaker 1: bitterness of slaveholders toward the advocates of freedom. So it 596 00:37:21,320 --> 00:37:23,640 Speaker 1: should come as no surprise that she arrived in New 597 00:37:23,760 --> 00:37:28,120 Speaker 1: Orleans feeling weak and dispirited. But that weakness soon became 598 00:37:28,160 --> 00:37:34,360 Speaker 1: a demonstration of strength. Here's historian Emily Clark. She's delivering 599 00:37:34,360 --> 00:37:37,200 Speaker 1: a lecture in New Orleans at one of the Fraternal lodges, 600 00:37:38,040 --> 00:37:40,720 Speaker 1: and she begins to get tired. Now she'd been lecturing 601 00:37:40,760 --> 00:37:44,279 Speaker 1: on spiritualism and demonstrating for a while now, so she's 602 00:37:44,360 --> 00:37:48,920 Speaker 1: tiring and her spiritualist demonstrations are suffering. As this is 603 00:37:48,960 --> 00:37:54,080 Speaker 1: going on, a black Creole man was walking by and 604 00:37:54,239 --> 00:37:58,960 Speaker 1: he's supposedly seized by a spiritual force that pulls him 605 00:37:58,960 --> 00:38:02,040 Speaker 1: into the auditory him. Emma invites him to come up 606 00:38:02,040 --> 00:38:05,080 Speaker 1: on the stage, as she says, because he is full 607 00:38:05,080 --> 00:38:09,920 Speaker 1: of electricity, and he and Emma Harding have this spiritual affinity, 608 00:38:09,960 --> 00:38:13,719 Speaker 1: it seemed. So he remains with her on stage, and 609 00:38:13,800 --> 00:38:16,960 Speaker 1: she uses that connection between them to draw power, and 610 00:38:17,000 --> 00:38:20,560 Speaker 1: she continues these demonstrations for a couple more hours, just 611 00:38:20,640 --> 00:38:27,080 Speaker 1: leaving the audience enthralled. If they were enthralled at this connection, 612 00:38:27,120 --> 00:38:30,120 Speaker 1: though anyone who knew the man wouldn't have been surprised. 613 00:38:30,640 --> 00:38:34,480 Speaker 1: His name was JB. Valmore. He was a blacksmith, but 614 00:38:34,560 --> 00:38:37,359 Speaker 1: that was just one of his jobs. He was also 615 00:38:37,440 --> 00:38:41,200 Speaker 1: known as a remarkable spiritual healer. In fact, Valmore's blacksmith 616 00:38:41,280 --> 00:38:43,480 Speaker 1: shop had become a meeting room where he would hold 617 00:38:43,520 --> 00:38:46,759 Speaker 1: seances and receive visitors who wanted to be healed by 618 00:38:46,840 --> 00:38:49,920 Speaker 1: his power, and he had been doing that work for years. 619 00:38:50,360 --> 00:38:53,399 Speaker 1: Just one year earlier, the police had rated Valmore's house 620 00:38:53,440 --> 00:38:56,000 Speaker 1: in the middle of a seance on the suspicion that 621 00:38:56,040 --> 00:38:59,480 Speaker 1: he was practicing voodoo. Many white folks in New Orleans 622 00:38:59,480 --> 00:39:02,800 Speaker 1: were afraid of being spiritually attacked by their black neighbors, 623 00:39:02,840 --> 00:39:05,400 Speaker 1: so they used the police like a tool to combat 624 00:39:05,480 --> 00:39:09,120 Speaker 1: that fear. In fact, ever since the successful revolt that 625 00:39:09,160 --> 00:39:12,799 Speaker 1: one Haitian independence from France in eighteen o four, whispers 626 00:39:12,840 --> 00:39:17,080 Speaker 1: of voodoo among white slaveholders had escalated into violence. In 627 00:39:17,120 --> 00:39:20,360 Speaker 1: eighteen fifty, the state rule that free blacks didn't have 628 00:39:20,440 --> 00:39:23,799 Speaker 1: the right to organize religious groups. In eighteen fifty five, 629 00:39:23,880 --> 00:39:28,960 Speaker 1: those rules tightened further forbidding scientific, literary, and charitable societies 630 00:39:29,000 --> 00:39:32,080 Speaker 1: as well. But there were some in the Afro Creole 631 00:39:32,160 --> 00:39:35,800 Speaker 1: community of New Orleans who counted spiritualists among their number, 632 00:39:36,360 --> 00:39:39,040 Speaker 1: and in the coming years they would work with Valmore 633 00:39:39,160 --> 00:39:43,560 Speaker 1: and others to form an enduring partnership, a harmonial circle 634 00:39:43,800 --> 00:39:48,640 Speaker 1: that would record remarkable seances, and along the way, they 635 00:39:48,680 --> 00:39:52,200 Speaker 1: would also bear witness to some of the most terrifying 636 00:39:52,320 --> 00:40:06,080 Speaker 1: moments in the city's history. Now that you're rich, why 637 00:40:06,120 --> 00:40:09,560 Speaker 1: don't you save your soul? That was the question Maggie 638 00:40:09,560 --> 00:40:12,200 Speaker 1: had thrown in her sister Leah's face after seeing her 639 00:40:12,280 --> 00:40:15,040 Speaker 1: rise above troubled times on a ride of insurance money. 640 00:40:15,440 --> 00:40:17,759 Speaker 1: We can imagine that something similar might have occurred to 641 00:40:17,800 --> 00:40:21,479 Speaker 1: Emma Harding as she finished her Southern tour. She said 642 00:40:21,520 --> 00:40:24,239 Speaker 1: she witnessed the horrors of slavery as she traveled through 643 00:40:24,239 --> 00:40:27,160 Speaker 1: the Deep South for her own part, she faced day 644 00:40:27,200 --> 00:40:30,799 Speaker 1: after day of Southern ministers who shouted at her, proclaiming 645 00:40:30,840 --> 00:40:34,680 Speaker 1: slavery to be a divine institution and calling Emma an 646 00:40:34,680 --> 00:40:38,840 Speaker 1: infidel who sought to overthrow the divine order. But in 647 00:40:38,880 --> 00:40:42,040 Speaker 1: the final stops on her tour, she found devoted spiritualists 648 00:40:42,080 --> 00:40:44,880 Speaker 1: who were beaten down by their world. They were looking 649 00:40:45,000 --> 00:40:48,400 Speaker 1: for hope, and Emma saw little of that divine order 650 00:40:48,440 --> 00:40:51,680 Speaker 1: around them, especially when she talked to women who crowded 651 00:40:51,680 --> 00:40:54,360 Speaker 1: in so close to her lectures that they overflowed the 652 00:40:54,400 --> 00:40:57,560 Speaker 1: seats to sit and stand on the floor. They needed 653 00:40:57,600 --> 00:40:59,960 Speaker 1: a vision of another world to lift them out of 654 00:41:00,040 --> 00:41:03,200 Speaker 1: their life of suffering. As far as Emma knew, that 655 00:41:03,280 --> 00:41:06,399 Speaker 1: world was already open to them, and the spirits led 656 00:41:06,400 --> 00:41:10,400 Speaker 1: the way. When she steamed into Mobile, Alabama, though Emma 657 00:41:10,520 --> 00:41:13,200 Speaker 1: was met by signs on the wall, they announced a 658 00:41:13,239 --> 00:41:17,719 Speaker 1: new order from the state legislature, no infidel lecturer was 659 00:41:17,800 --> 00:41:21,680 Speaker 1: allowed to speak anywhere in the entire state. Here's historian 660 00:41:21,840 --> 00:41:28,880 Speaker 1: Molly McGarry. Before the Civil War, the Alabama and South 661 00:41:28,920 --> 00:41:34,760 Speaker 1: Carolina legislatures prohibited sciences and other gatherings in their states, 662 00:41:35,239 --> 00:41:38,720 Speaker 1: which I found particularly interesting because we know the way 663 00:41:38,760 --> 00:41:41,440 Speaker 1: that religion was prohibited and was seen and for enslaved 664 00:41:41,480 --> 00:41:44,160 Speaker 1: people as a way to organize. So some religious gatherings 665 00:41:44,200 --> 00:41:46,760 Speaker 1: at certain times in different states across the South were 666 00:41:47,120 --> 00:41:51,440 Speaker 1: made illegal. But the fact that Alabama and South Carolina 667 00:41:51,920 --> 00:41:56,440 Speaker 1: bothered to put this newly into their laws to suggest 668 00:41:56,520 --> 00:41:58,880 Speaker 1: that perhaps there was something going on, and that the 669 00:41:58,960 --> 00:42:02,520 Speaker 1: spread of spiritism, like the spread of the abolitionist publications 670 00:42:02,520 --> 00:42:05,800 Speaker 1: that were making their way south from the North, was 671 00:42:05,840 --> 00:42:11,600 Speaker 1: seen as particularly dangerous. Despite these warnings, Emma was met 672 00:42:11,640 --> 00:42:14,520 Speaker 1: with so much interest that she held seances three times 673 00:42:14,520 --> 00:42:19,120 Speaker 1: a day, but her messages weren't encouraging. Under the guidance 674 00:42:19,160 --> 00:42:22,239 Speaker 1: of the spirits, Emma foresaw the conflict between the North 675 00:42:22,239 --> 00:42:25,359 Speaker 1: and the South coming to fruition. What she meant by 676 00:42:25,400 --> 00:42:30,040 Speaker 1: that was simple enough. War. Emma declared that the piece 677 00:42:30,080 --> 00:42:33,480 Speaker 1: of Alabama would soon be broken. Days were coming she 678 00:42:33,560 --> 00:42:37,360 Speaker 1: said that would be full of mourning and lamentation, although 679 00:42:37,400 --> 00:42:39,759 Speaker 1: many of the people she encountered on her travels they're 680 00:42:40,120 --> 00:42:42,520 Speaker 1: already seemed to be living through a portion of that. 681 00:42:43,160 --> 00:42:47,160 Speaker 1: In eighteen sixty Emma headed back north. The Spirits had 682 00:42:47,160 --> 00:42:50,520 Speaker 1: a plan for the South, but she certainly wasn't necessary 683 00:42:50,600 --> 00:42:54,760 Speaker 1: for their fulfillment. They had already been speaking before she arrived, 684 00:42:55,480 --> 00:43:00,839 Speaker 1: and they certainly weren't about to stop. That's it for 685 00:43:00,880 --> 00:43:05,000 Speaker 1: this week's episode of Unobscured. Stick around after this short 686 00:43:05,040 --> 00:43:08,200 Speaker 1: sponsor break for a preview of what's in store for 687 00:43:08,280 --> 00:43:17,959 Speaker 1: next week. Next time on Unobscured. By eighteen sixty three, 688 00:43:18,239 --> 00:43:21,200 Speaker 1: with two years of the war behind her, Cora now 689 00:43:21,320 --> 00:43:24,160 Speaker 1: channeled the spirit that cried out for and I quote 690 00:43:24,640 --> 00:43:28,560 Speaker 1: a holy crusade to eliminate slavery and redeemed the land 691 00:43:28,640 --> 00:43:33,320 Speaker 1: from its bondage and its sin. This new message directly 692 00:43:33,360 --> 00:43:37,560 Speaker 1: aligned her with the radical Republicans and their liberal social reforms, 693 00:43:37,960 --> 00:43:41,319 Speaker 1: and with President Lincoln's rhetoric about the war. In fact, 694 00:43:41,360 --> 00:43:44,839 Speaker 1: Lincoln spoke of the fighting as a national blood sacrifice 695 00:43:44,920 --> 00:43:48,200 Speaker 1: that might cover the nation's sins of slavery, which, of 696 00:43:48,239 --> 00:43:52,799 Speaker 1: course had been sojourner truth's message for years. In fact, 697 00:43:52,880 --> 00:43:57,040 Speaker 1: few traveling speakers campaigned harder for Lincoln's reelection than she did, 698 00:43:57,440 --> 00:44:00,880 Speaker 1: but other spiritualists did join her at meetings cross the Northeast. 699 00:44:01,440 --> 00:44:05,160 Speaker 1: Once Neddie Colburn was a featured speaker at a campaign rally. 700 00:44:05,520 --> 00:44:08,800 Speaker 1: In her trance, the Spirits offered his gathered supporters the 701 00:44:08,880 --> 00:44:12,200 Speaker 1: kind of certainty that forecasters today are always hoping for. 702 00:44:12,719 --> 00:44:18,160 Speaker 1: The Spirits were certain that Lincoln would win. Later, Sojourner 703 00:44:18,239 --> 00:44:21,560 Speaker 1: traveled to Washington and met with Lincoln, but their conversation, 704 00:44:21,800 --> 00:44:24,080 Speaker 1: as far as we know, was little more than a 705 00:44:24,080 --> 00:44:28,680 Speaker 1: brief exchange of courtesies. Other mediums, though, would get far 706 00:44:28,760 --> 00:44:32,960 Speaker 1: closer to the president, and not always for the best. 707 00:44:48,920 --> 00:44:52,120 Speaker 1: Loun Obscured was created by me Aaron Manky and produced 708 00:44:52,120 --> 00:44:55,799 Speaker 1: by Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Josh Thane in partnership 709 00:44:55,840 --> 00:44:58,920 Speaker 1: with I Heart Radio. Research and writing for this season 710 00:44:59,120 --> 00:45:01,680 Speaker 1: is all the work of my right hand man, Carl Nellis, 711 00:45:01,840 --> 00:45:04,920 Speaker 1: and the brilliant Chad Lawson composed the brand new soundtrack. 712 00:45:05,440 --> 00:45:09,360 Speaker 1: Learn more about our contributing historians, source material and links 713 00:45:09,400 --> 00:45:13,719 Speaker 1: to our other shows over at History Unobscured dot com, 714 00:45:13,760 --> 00:45:24,560 Speaker 1: and until next time, thanks for listening. Unobscured is a 715 00:45:24,560 --> 00:45:26,920 Speaker 1: production of I heart Radio and Aaron Minkey. For more 716 00:45:26,960 --> 00:45:30,080 Speaker 1: podcasts for my heart Radio, visit diheart radio app, Apple podcasts, 717 00:45:30,120 --> 00:45:31,760 Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.