WEBVTT - S2 – 7: Preach the Word 0:00:01.160 --> 0:00:04.360 Welcomed, unobscured a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky. 0:00:12.520 --> 0:00:15.319 There was a glow about her, at least that's what 0:00:15.360 --> 0:00:17.360 they say when there is a suitor on the horizon. 0:00:17.560 --> 0:00:21.599 Right in eighteen fifty seven, despite everything that had happened, 0:00:21.800 --> 0:00:24.639 Leah was on the cusp of marriage again. This time, 0:00:24.680 --> 0:00:27.560 though she was no teenage girl untried by the world. 0:00:27.960 --> 0:00:31.280 She was a professional woman, a genuine celebrity. In fact, 0:00:32.360 --> 0:00:35.800 while other mediums had been played for fools by predatory managers, 0:00:36.159 --> 0:00:38.599 Leah had stepped in and taken control of things for 0:00:38.640 --> 0:00:42.120 her family. She had fought Elisha Caine to a standstill 0:00:42.159 --> 0:00:45.239 when he tried to take Maggie. Yes, he did convince 0:00:45.280 --> 0:00:48.920 her sister to give up spiritualism, Bliah convinced him that 0:00:49.040 --> 0:00:53.160 a stipend should come her way. Her experiences had taken 0:00:53.200 --> 0:00:55.400 her to some of the greatest cities in the nation. 0:00:55.760 --> 0:00:59.840 She had navigated unfriendly crowds at gunpoints, and held seances 0:01:00.120 --> 0:01:04.360 sittings for some of America's most respected politicians and ministers. 0:01:04.360 --> 0:01:07.760 She had even been married a second time, although that man, 0:01:07.840 --> 0:01:12.319 Calvin Brown, had died four years earlier. So yes, Leah 0:01:12.319 --> 0:01:14.520 seemed to have done it all, but when the Boston 0:01:14.560 --> 0:01:18.399 Courier printed their rejection of spiritualism, their shots hit home. 0:01:19.080 --> 0:01:23.120 They hurt, but Leah took comfort in finding friends on 0:01:23.160 --> 0:01:26.720 her own side. If the Boston Courier used their investigations 0:01:26.760 --> 0:01:30.600 to attack the Fox Sisters, well competing Boston newspaper, The 0:01:30.600 --> 0:01:34.039 Traveler was there to defend them. The Traveler printed a 0:01:34.040 --> 0:01:37.400 statement saying that the real sham was the investigation those 0:01:37.440 --> 0:01:40.920 Harvard professors had refused to cooperate with the mediums. Even 0:01:40.959 --> 0:01:44.480 the Cambridge Chronicle acknowledged that the professors were too biased. 0:01:45.640 --> 0:01:48.760 Leah took some comfort in that, but even having friends 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:51.680 to return fire could only go so far towards getting 0:01:51.680 --> 0:01:54.480 her back on her feet. She and Kate retreated to 0:01:54.560 --> 0:01:57.080 New York, where they stayed with their mother at Horace 0:01:57.160 --> 0:02:01.080 Greeley's house, and for a while Leah only gave seances 0:02:01.080 --> 0:02:06.120 two familiar circles of friends around the city, until one evening, 0:02:06.280 --> 0:02:08.760 when they accepted an invitation to hold the seance for 0:02:08.800 --> 0:02:11.880 a small circle in Jersey City, New Jersey. A man 0:02:12.040 --> 0:02:14.520 arrived to escort her, a little older than she was. 0:02:14.960 --> 0:02:17.600 He was dressed in well tailored clothes and offered her 0:02:17.639 --> 0:02:20.560 an umbrella to hold off the falling rain. He introduced 0:02:20.600 --> 0:02:25.520 himself as Daniel. Underhill Talia's relief, the man was already 0:02:25.560 --> 0:02:28.760 a spiritualist, to Leah's deep interest. The man was the 0:02:28.800 --> 0:02:31.800 president of an insurance company and had managed to hold 0:02:31.800 --> 0:02:35.960 onto his money through the recent crash. The seance that 0:02:36.080 --> 0:02:39.720 night was something remarkable. You see, Lea's seances had recently 0:02:39.720 --> 0:02:42.480 been accompanied by spirit lights, like the ones that had 0:02:42.520 --> 0:02:46.399 been witnessed in seances by Daniel Hume, luminous clouds, sometimes 0:02:46.400 --> 0:02:49.200 as small as a spark, that would flit and flicker 0:02:49.400 --> 0:02:52.919 outside the seance circle. That night, they held a seance 0:02:52.960 --> 0:02:56.520 around the table as usual and got the ordinary knocking sounds, 0:02:56.800 --> 0:02:59.440 but Leah also pulled a few of the visitors aside, 0:02:59.560 --> 0:03:02.200 one by one. She says, she picked the ones with 0:03:02.440 --> 0:03:07.040 good sense, and Daniel was among them. They stepped together 0:03:07.120 --> 0:03:10.320 into the complete darkness of a bathroom there as they 0:03:10.400 --> 0:03:13.800 dared to hope, the spirit lights arrived. But these weren't 0:03:13.840 --> 0:03:17.680 clouds on the edge of visibility. These lights blazed. They 0:03:17.720 --> 0:03:20.079 were so bright they lit up the entire room, and 0:03:20.200 --> 0:03:24.360 Leah and Daniel were dazed by them. Leah said the 0:03:24.440 --> 0:03:26.720 lights were so bright that her hands started to burn 0:03:26.919 --> 0:03:29.640 and she felt faint. She turned on the faucet and 0:03:29.720 --> 0:03:32.440 ran her hands under the water, and then, together with 0:03:32.520 --> 0:03:35.480 the hostess, ran out into the backyard, where she pushed 0:03:35.480 --> 0:03:39.160 her hands into the rain wet ground. The spirit lights faded. 0:03:39.640 --> 0:03:43.880 The seance concluded, and Leah made her way home. It 0:03:44.000 --> 0:03:46.240 was only two days later that a letter arrived for 0:03:46.360 --> 0:03:49.840 Leah with a curious question. The day after the seance, 0:03:49.880 --> 0:03:52.320 it said, the hostess had looked out of her house 0:03:52.360 --> 0:03:55.360 and witnessed lights coming from the ground where Leah's hands 0:03:55.360 --> 0:03:58.680 had been. She examined the spot and found particles of 0:03:58.720 --> 0:04:03.160 solid phosphorus smoking in the soil. A few of the 0:04:03.280 --> 0:04:05.680 visitors that the seance had gathered to argue about what 0:04:05.720 --> 0:04:08.080 it meant. Some of them believed that this was a 0:04:08.120 --> 0:04:11.640 sign that the spirits had manifested their lights by manufacturing 0:04:11.680 --> 0:04:15.600 phosphorus from the atmosphere. Others thought that the phosphorus had 0:04:15.640 --> 0:04:19.520 been a tool used by Leah to artificially manufacture the lights. 0:04:20.080 --> 0:04:23.760 Now they were asking Leah to explain it to them. 0:04:23.760 --> 0:04:27.000 In her own words, she was painfully astonished by the 0:04:27.040 --> 0:04:30.279 accusations that she could be faking the lights. It hurt 0:04:30.320 --> 0:04:33.000 her so deeply that she didn't know how to respond. 0:04:33.600 --> 0:04:37.360 But a champion appeared. Her new friend, Daniel Underhill, was 0:04:37.440 --> 0:04:40.680 convinced of her innocence. As Leah would later put it, 0:04:41.000 --> 0:04:43.440 he came to her rescue to fight for her reputation 0:04:43.560 --> 0:04:47.080 and integrity, first among her friends and then in the 0:04:47.120 --> 0:04:50.400 public forum. And as far as Leah was concerned, he 0:04:50.440 --> 0:04:53.720 won those fights. But he also won her heart, and 0:04:53.760 --> 0:04:56.000 it turns out that he was smitten with her too. 0:04:56.400 --> 0:04:58.440 By the end of the month, they were married and 0:04:58.560 --> 0:05:00.840 she was settling into his brow own stone on New 0:05:00.920 --> 0:05:04.520 York's West thirty seven Street. Then she set about filling 0:05:04.520 --> 0:05:06.480 it up with things that were very much to her, 0:05:06.520 --> 0:05:13.080 liking gilded wallpaper, rosewood chairs, mahogany tables, new carpets, statuary, 0:05:13.240 --> 0:05:16.479 and of course for her music, both at piano and 0:05:16.640 --> 0:05:20.600 an organ. To this, Daniel added an aviary, which he 0:05:20.640 --> 0:05:23.360 built off the dining room, filled with songbirds he bought 0:05:23.440 --> 0:05:26.839 from distant places. Suddenly living the best life his money 0:05:26.839 --> 0:05:30.320 could buy, Leah shocked her family and the interested public 0:05:30.440 --> 0:05:35.240 with an announcement, no more investigations, no more public seances, 0:05:35.800 --> 0:05:40.160 no more tests. Her career as a public medium was over. 0:05:45.760 --> 0:05:48.400 The only people to pass the defenses of her newly 0:05:48.480 --> 0:05:51.760 fortified life, she said, were those who already admired her. 0:05:52.279 --> 0:05:57.000 As always. Family was an exception, family like Maggie, still 0:05:57.120 --> 0:06:00.600 mourning the loss of Elisha Caine. Maggie often avoided her 0:06:00.640 --> 0:06:04.320 older sister, but the newfound lap of luxury provoked her, 0:06:04.680 --> 0:06:08.200 so she struck back. The next time the two sisters 0:06:08.279 --> 0:06:11.440 faced off, Maggie looked Leah in the eye and said, 0:06:12.240 --> 0:06:15.239 now that you're rich, why don't you save your soul? 0:06:16.480 --> 0:06:23.920 The backlash of Leah's rage tore them apart. This is unobscured. 0:06:24.800 --> 0:06:52.200 I'm Aaron Manky. Sojourn Her truth was no stranger to 0:06:52.320 --> 0:06:55.880 a good fight. She was also no stranger to saving souls. 0:06:56.240 --> 0:06:59.640 But after the lavish disaster in the Kingdom of Matthias, 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:03.320 Sojourner could never view wealth as a key to the afterlife, 0:07:03.480 --> 0:07:07.560 or even to happiness. When she found her home base 0:07:07.680 --> 0:07:10.840 at the Northampton Community, it did nothing to slow her down. 0:07:11.440 --> 0:07:13.680 Years before, she had received a call from God to 0:07:13.720 --> 0:07:17.040 be a traveler. Sojourner so, even with a place to 0:07:17.120 --> 0:07:19.800 lay her head and a circle of friends who supported her, 0:07:20.200 --> 0:07:23.600 she still had a mission, and that mission put Sojourner 0:07:23.640 --> 0:07:26.240 in the line of fire. In her day, so called 0:07:26.360 --> 0:07:30.320 circuit preaching was hardly safe work. Wherever camp meetings were 0:07:30.360 --> 0:07:33.120 set up, they were followed by drunken, hostile men so 0:07:33.240 --> 0:07:36.760 often that they got a nickname the rowdies, and they 0:07:36.760 --> 0:07:40.520 deserved it too. Carrying clubs and bringing a taste for violence, 0:07:40.920 --> 0:07:44.600 they became a regular menacing presence at revival tents, and 0:07:44.600 --> 0:07:48.000 they threatened worshippers and speakers alike. It should come as 0:07:48.040 --> 0:07:53.480 no surprise, then, that they often targeted black attendees. Sojourner 0:07:53.600 --> 0:07:56.239 never lacked for courage, though, and she brought a power 0:07:56.280 --> 0:07:59.880 to her lectures that moved audiences everywhere she went. Here's 0:08:00.040 --> 0:08:04.760 historian Margaret Washington. To be a powerful speaker, first of all, 0:08:04.800 --> 0:08:08.720 you had to have pathos, you had to have humor. 0:08:09.560 --> 0:08:12.560 You had to sing. She had a beautiful singing voice, 0:08:12.560 --> 0:08:16.640 and she would often begin with a song, then she'd 0:08:16.680 --> 0:08:20.880 have a prayer, and then she would speak. Her speaking 0:08:21.080 --> 0:08:26.360 was instructive. She would always talk about her life as 0:08:26.400 --> 0:08:33.320 a slave and her experience. So Journer's messages from the 0:08:33.360 --> 0:08:36.760 Spirits took some share of the credit. One young seminarian, 0:08:36.920 --> 0:08:40.400 Giles Stebbins, joined some of his family at Northampton, despite 0:08:40.440 --> 0:08:43.200 opposing their views at the time, and he was a 0:08:43.200 --> 0:08:46.360 young hothead who loved to start trouble what sort of 0:08:46.400 --> 0:08:50.120 trouble while he decided to start making public arguments in 0:08:50.240 --> 0:08:55.240 support of slavery while living in an antislavery commune, but 0:08:55.320 --> 0:08:58.120 he was surrounded by a community that interpreted the Bible 0:08:58.360 --> 0:09:01.360 as they say, in the light of liberty, filled with 0:09:01.440 --> 0:09:04.679 preachers and teachers like Sojourner Truth who had heard all 0:09:04.800 --> 0:09:08.240 his arguments before, face to face with people who didn't 0:09:08.280 --> 0:09:11.240 think he was all that convincing, his message fell with 0:09:11.280 --> 0:09:15.200 a thud, but it gets better. Within a year of 0:09:15.200 --> 0:09:18.680 settling in among the others at Northampton, he switched sides, 0:09:18.960 --> 0:09:23.240 eventually preaching the message of radical abolition, and like Sojourner, 0:09:23.520 --> 0:09:26.680 Giles would also go on to become a lifelong spiritualist. 0:09:28.320 --> 0:09:30.920 But Northampton wasn't just a place for young bullies like 0:09:30.960 --> 0:09:33.680 Giles Stebbins to visit their family. In fact, it was 0:09:33.720 --> 0:09:36.440 there that so journal would reunite with her own family. 0:09:36.880 --> 0:09:40.480 Hurt two daughters, Sophia and Elizabeth, arrived with so much 0:09:40.559 --> 0:09:43.440 joy that others at Northampton compared the reunion to the 0:09:43.480 --> 0:09:48.520 return of the biblical chronigal Son. So Journer had lost 0:09:48.559 --> 0:09:50.960 touch with her daughters when Sophia had to fight her 0:09:51.000 --> 0:09:53.280 mother and moved in with a man who took advantage 0:09:53.280 --> 0:09:57.160 of her. Now just eighteen years old and pregnant, Sophia 0:09:57.280 --> 0:10:00.280 sought refuge in her mother's company. As the bay Bes 0:10:00.320 --> 0:10:03.640 birth approached, so Journer split her time between her travels 0:10:03.720 --> 0:10:06.160 and her family. It was the only thing that could 0:10:06.280 --> 0:10:10.880 keep her off the preaching circuit. In the following years, 0:10:10.920 --> 0:10:14.240 the family grew into a close unit. Sojourner and her 0:10:14.320 --> 0:10:16.320 daughters would care for each other for the rest of 0:10:16.360 --> 0:10:19.079 their lives and always stay in touch when they couldn't 0:10:19.080 --> 0:10:22.920 stay together. The pain of separation had been deep. Now 0:10:22.920 --> 0:10:25.640 they were determined to hold onto each other through whatever 0:10:25.800 --> 0:10:28.959 life tossed at them, and not all of it would 0:10:28.960 --> 0:10:32.720 be easy. The community at Northampton began to slowly dissolve 0:10:32.840 --> 0:10:35.800 as its various members with their own ways to new 0:10:35.840 --> 0:10:39.520 homes and new missions. So Journer eventually bought a house 0:10:39.559 --> 0:10:42.400 in town there for herself and her daughters, although she 0:10:42.559 --> 0:10:46.840 continued to travel and teach. For a time, she made 0:10:46.840 --> 0:10:49.880 her way to Rochester and lived with the posts their 0:10:49.920 --> 0:10:52.920 home became her new lecturing base while she traveled to 0:10:52.920 --> 0:10:56.079 the surrounding towns. She even held one of those gatherings 0:10:56.080 --> 0:10:59.560 in Rochester's Corinthian Hall, where the Fox sisters had made 0:10:59.559 --> 0:11:02.959 that first public spirit demonstration. When the Foxes next came 0:11:02.960 --> 0:11:06.520 into town to visit the posts, they befriended Sojourner as well. 0:11:07.800 --> 0:11:11.000 She grew in power over the years as she traveled, lectured, 0:11:11.080 --> 0:11:16.760 and faced new challenges. Here's more from Margaret Washington. As 0:11:16.800 --> 0:11:20.400 she became more and more experience, one thing we don't 0:11:20.440 --> 0:11:23.640 have any record of her ever having talked about was Matthias. 0:11:24.480 --> 0:11:27.880 But as she got more and more experience than her 0:11:27.920 --> 0:11:31.880 speeches would often when she got into the meat of 0:11:31.920 --> 0:11:37.800 it would reflect things she had heard other people say 0:11:37.840 --> 0:11:42.160 that she would pull apart. She also because she knew 0:11:42.200 --> 0:11:44.280 so much scripture. I mean, for a woman who couldn't 0:11:44.320 --> 0:11:49.280 read and write, she could quote scripture. In one meeting 0:11:49.440 --> 0:11:53.000 held by antislavery speakers, a minister stood up and shouted 0:11:53.040 --> 0:11:55.920 that he hadn't heard anything convincing, just a lot of 0:11:55.960 --> 0:11:59.800 noise in his words, from women and jackasses. In the 0:12:00.000 --> 0:12:03.840 shocks silence that followed, Sojourner rose to her feet, and 0:12:03.880 --> 0:12:07.240 reminded the man of a biblical story. In it, a 0:12:07.360 --> 0:12:10.200 prophet was writing a donkey along the road when the 0:12:10.240 --> 0:12:13.680 donkey suddenly stopped without warning, the prophet beat the animal, 0:12:14.200 --> 0:12:16.559 But that's because the man was blind to what had 0:12:16.600 --> 0:12:19.960 really happened, the presence of an angel that was blocking 0:12:19.960 --> 0:12:23.240 the way she tells the story, and she says, so, 0:12:23.320 --> 0:12:26.320 I just want to remind the man and the audience 0:12:27.160 --> 0:12:32.600 that it was the ass and not the minister who 0:12:32.679 --> 0:12:38.880 saw the angel, and the crowd just went wild. With 0:12:38.920 --> 0:12:41.520 her knowledge of the Bible already at hand, it didn't 0:12:41.520 --> 0:12:45.120 matter to audiences that Sojourner couldn't read. But there was 0:12:45.160 --> 0:12:48.800 only one Sojourner truth to go around. The printing presses 0:12:48.840 --> 0:12:52.120 in Rochester, Boston, and New York City, though, could send 0:12:52.120 --> 0:12:56.120 out spiritualists and abolitionist papers by the thousands, and it 0:12:56.200 --> 0:12:59.359 was their work in producing the public argument for abolition, 0:12:59.640 --> 0:13:03.520 along side the circuit writing preachers and traveling lecturers that 0:13:03.559 --> 0:13:07.200 fan the flames that she lit against the horrors of slavery. 0:13:07.480 --> 0:13:10.600 Who would get burned, though, was still up for grabs. 0:13:19.360 --> 0:13:22.880 So Journer went to Boston with fists clenched tight. It 0:13:23.000 --> 0:13:26.480 was eighteen fifty four and thousands of reformers were converging 0:13:26.520 --> 0:13:29.479 on the city for the New England Anti Slavery Convention 0:13:29.679 --> 0:13:32.520 and for the Women's Convention. If that was all, it 0:13:32.559 --> 0:13:35.760 would have been exciting news, but recent events had charged 0:13:35.800 --> 0:13:40.040 the meetings with passion. You see, in May of that year, 0:13:40.240 --> 0:13:43.120 a man named Anthony Burns had escaped from slavery in 0:13:43.240 --> 0:13:46.920 Virginia before being arrested by the authorities in Boston. The 0:13:46.960 --> 0:13:49.920 police there had decided to obey the Fugitive Slave Act 0:13:50.000 --> 0:13:53.800 by sending him back to captivity, but Boston abolitionists wanted 0:13:53.840 --> 0:13:57.000 to say in the matter too. Inspired by armed rescues 0:13:57.040 --> 0:14:00.360 that had taken place elsewhere, they gathered weapons and marched 0:14:00.360 --> 0:14:05.120 on the courthouse on the evening of May. The crowd 0:14:05.120 --> 0:14:08.160 of both black and white abolitionists fought a pitched battle 0:14:08.160 --> 0:14:12.880 in the streets with the Court's deputies wielding revolvers, axes, clubs, 0:14:12.920 --> 0:14:16.040 and cleavers. They tried to ram down the courthouse door, 0:14:16.600 --> 0:14:20.520 but were beaten back. Nine of the abolitionists were arrested, 0:14:20.640 --> 0:14:23.800 and their attempt to save Anthony Burns had failed. President 0:14:23.840 --> 0:14:27.480 Franklin Pierce eventually had to send military forces to escort 0:14:27.520 --> 0:14:29.920 Burns to a ship in the harbor that would transport 0:14:30.000 --> 0:14:34.440 him back south. So Journer was in the crowd that day, 0:14:34.480 --> 0:14:38.200 held back by cavalry and marines. On July four, the 0:14:38.240 --> 0:14:42.880 Massachusetts Antislavery Society held a meeting in Burns honor. When 0:14:42.880 --> 0:14:45.600 so Journer stood to speak, it had been two years 0:14:45.680 --> 0:14:49.200 since Frederick Douglas had delivered his famous lecture What to 0:14:49.280 --> 0:14:52.960 the Slave is fourth of July. Now she stood before 0:14:53.000 --> 0:14:55.760 them to remind her audience that every northern city and 0:14:55.840 --> 0:14:58.720 town that followed the Fugitive Slave Act by sending their 0:14:58.720 --> 0:15:01.960 neighbors south into bond it was working to uphold the 0:15:02.000 --> 0:15:06.000 slave system. When Henry David Thureau followed her on the stage, 0:15:06.040 --> 0:15:09.360 he addressed the issue from another angle. Many people in 0:15:09.440 --> 0:15:12.960 Massachusetts had been very concerned about the expansion of slavery 0:15:13.040 --> 0:15:16.520 into Kansas and Nebraska, but for years, he said, they 0:15:16.520 --> 0:15:20.280 had talked about the problem as something big yet far away. 0:15:20.320 --> 0:15:23.200 But when slaveholders could reach into the North and use 0:15:23.280 --> 0:15:26.680 the Boston Police and US military as a tool, that 0:15:26.840 --> 0:15:30.800 problem stopped being a faraway thing. As throw put it, 0:15:31.400 --> 0:15:34.280 the whole military force of the state is at the 0:15:34.280 --> 0:15:37.720 service of a slaveholder from Virginia to enable him to 0:15:37.760 --> 0:15:40.520 catch a man whom he calls his property, but not 0:15:40.600 --> 0:15:43.560 a soldier is offered to save a citizen of Massachusetts 0:15:43.560 --> 0:15:48.840 from being kidnapped. In the past, th Row had mocked spiritualism. 0:15:48.880 --> 0:15:51.760 He said he would prefer the revelation of hooting owls 0:15:51.800 --> 0:15:54.600 and croaking frogs to the knocking sounds, and that if 0:15:54.600 --> 0:15:57.440 the spirit messages that passed through mediums were a true 0:15:57.480 --> 0:16:00.120 sign of what life would be like after death, he 0:16:00.160 --> 0:16:03.840 would exchange immortality for a glass of beer. But he 0:16:03.880 --> 0:16:07.400 stood side by side with those spiritualists in eighteen fifty four. 0:16:09.120 --> 0:16:12.360 That was Boston, though in New York things continued to 0:16:12.440 --> 0:16:15.760 roll forward in a tangle. In our previous episode, we 0:16:15.800 --> 0:16:19.040 talked about how the Brooklyn poet Walt Whitman embraced white 0:16:19.080 --> 0:16:22.200 supremacy as a means to conquer the land, but that's 0:16:22.240 --> 0:16:25.080 not the only way he was. Unlike the Row. Born 0:16:25.120 --> 0:16:28.720 to a Quaker family and a fan of Swedenborg's mysticism, 0:16:28.720 --> 0:16:32.320 Whitman followed an interest in spiritualism throughout his whole life. 0:16:33.560 --> 0:16:36.040 In fact, the older he got, the deeper he went. 0:16:36.520 --> 0:16:39.160 He even began to see himself as a medium, and 0:16:39.240 --> 0:16:43.440 even wrote that poets are divine mediums. Through them comes 0:16:43.520 --> 0:16:47.920 spirits and materials to all the people. Whitman also sought 0:16:47.960 --> 0:16:50.760 out the friendship of the Universalist minister in New York, 0:16:50.760 --> 0:16:53.720 who had worked with Andrew Jackson Davis to transcribe his 0:16:53.800 --> 0:16:57.720 spirit lectures in the eighteen forties. Together, they attended seances 0:16:57.800 --> 0:17:01.040 by a spiritualist named Thomas Lake Harris, a medium who 0:17:01.040 --> 0:17:04.560 wrote mystical poetry while in his trances it was just 0:17:04.800 --> 0:17:08.399 what women liked, and when women attended a Cora Hatch 0:17:08.440 --> 0:17:11.040 spirit lecture, he was so inspired by her that he 0:17:11.080 --> 0:17:14.720 became determined to develop his own powers of spirit communication. 0:17:15.359 --> 0:17:17.840 Put it all together, and it adds up to one 0:17:17.880 --> 0:17:21.359 big mess. We'd like to believe that the connection between 0:17:21.400 --> 0:17:25.880 spiritualism and social causes like abolition were simple, but we've 0:17:25.920 --> 0:17:28.320 seen by now. Rather than being a neat and tidy 0:17:28.359 --> 0:17:32.560 bundle of threads woven into a beautiful story, those connections 0:17:32.560 --> 0:17:35.399 were more of a snorl knot the good and the 0:17:35.480 --> 0:17:39.800 bad all mixed together. Judging by life in New York 0:17:39.840 --> 0:17:43.200 at the time, though none of that should come as 0:17:43.240 --> 0:17:54.919 a surprise. Slavery had been illegal in New York for years, 0:17:55.440 --> 0:17:58.320 but the city had been built on slavery. That much 0:17:58.400 --> 0:18:01.280 was clear in the view from Horace Really's house. It 0:18:01.400 --> 0:18:03.520 was now the home to the Fox family, but whenever 0:18:03.560 --> 0:18:06.120 Greeley returned to the city, they always had a room 0:18:06.160 --> 0:18:10.720 open for him. In June of eighteen sixty, Greeley wrote 0:18:10.760 --> 0:18:13.560 an editorial in his New York Tribune under the title 0:18:13.760 --> 0:18:17.920 the slave Trade in New York It is a remarkable fact. 0:18:18.000 --> 0:18:21.040 He wrote that the slave traders in this city almost 0:18:21.080 --> 0:18:24.840 invariably managed to elude the meshes of the law. Now 0:18:24.880 --> 0:18:28.560 they bribe a jury, another time their counsels or agents 0:18:28.640 --> 0:18:32.600 spirit away a vital witness. Slave trading had been punishable 0:18:32.600 --> 0:18:34.960 by death in New York since eighteen twenty, but the 0:18:35.000 --> 0:18:38.160 brutal business carried on. In fact, not a single slave 0:18:38.200 --> 0:18:41.679 trader had been executed by eighteen sixty. It made Horace 0:18:41.760 --> 0:18:44.679 write that to break up the African slave trade, it 0:18:44.720 --> 0:18:47.960 will be necessary to purge the courts and offices of 0:18:48.000 --> 0:18:51.120 those pimps of piracy who are well known, and at 0:18:51.119 --> 0:18:55.440 the proper time will receive their just desserts. It wasn't 0:18:55.440 --> 0:18:58.280 clear how soon that time would be, though, so journ 0:18:58.359 --> 0:19:01.040 or truth story, like her battles against her neighbors to 0:19:01.080 --> 0:19:03.920 bring back her son from Alabama can help us see 0:19:03.960 --> 0:19:07.119 how the riffs over support for slavery didn't just split 0:19:07.240 --> 0:19:11.119 North from South. They split communities everywhere, even in the 0:19:11.160 --> 0:19:16.399 anti slavery North. And it's no wonder. In seventeen ninety, 0:19:16.640 --> 0:19:19.960 just before Sojourner was born, some counties in New York 0:19:20.000 --> 0:19:23.520 had a higher proportion of slaveholding families than South Carolina. 0:19:24.000 --> 0:19:27.320 Their way of thinking about the world didn't magically evaporate 0:19:27.400 --> 0:19:32.159 when New York abolished slavery. It just went underground, and 0:19:32.200 --> 0:19:35.240 the New Yorkers who profited from slavery didn't lose their 0:19:35.240 --> 0:19:38.440 connections to the South either. Greeley tried to point out 0:19:38.480 --> 0:19:40.480 that New York was still a major hub of the 0:19:40.520 --> 0:19:43.520 Southern slave trade even though it was now illegal there, 0:19:43.840 --> 0:19:47.800 whether as investors, ship owners, or captains and crew, New 0:19:47.880 --> 0:19:52.960 Yorkers promoted and practiced human trafficking, and Greeley's Tribune wasn't 0:19:52.960 --> 0:19:55.520 the only paper to publish this kind of report. The 0:19:55.600 --> 0:19:59.240 Local Evening Post reported in eighteen sixty that the city 0:19:59.280 --> 0:20:02.320 of New York belongs as much to the South as 0:20:02.359 --> 0:20:05.520 to the North, and they made that clear. As the 0:20:05.600 --> 0:20:09.160 nation's politics came to a boil in the presidential election 0:20:09.200 --> 0:20:13.320 of eighteen sixty which pitted Abraham Lincoln against Stephen Douglas. 0:20:13.359 --> 0:20:17.840 Every county around New York City voted for Douglas. Months later, 0:20:17.880 --> 0:20:21.600 in January of eighteen sixty one, when South Carolina seceded 0:20:21.640 --> 0:20:24.400 from the United States and protest, the mayor of New 0:20:24.480 --> 0:20:28.800 York called a meeting of his allies. He suggested that 0:20:28.840 --> 0:20:32.159 living under the federal government of the Lincoln administration was, 0:20:32.400 --> 0:20:36.440 in his words, odious and oppressive. He suggested that New 0:20:36.520 --> 0:20:40.720 York City follow South Carolina's example. They should succeed, he said, 0:20:41.000 --> 0:20:45.440 and become a nation unto themselves. Taxes for businesses would 0:20:45.440 --> 0:20:48.639 be low, and the slave trade could continue. And some 0:20:48.800 --> 0:20:51.399 of the city's bankers and merchants were quick to sign 0:20:51.400 --> 0:20:54.240 on to this new idea. A few newspapers through and 0:20:54.240 --> 0:20:57.600 with them as well, the city's council even approved the idea. 0:20:58.920 --> 0:21:01.800 It was exactly why writers like Frederick Douglas knew they 0:21:01.800 --> 0:21:05.440 needed to start their own newspapers. There were others around him, too, 0:21:05.640 --> 0:21:08.240 like David Ruggles, who had started as a free black 0:21:08.280 --> 0:21:12.920 grocer in New York before becoming a newspaperman himself years 0:21:12.920 --> 0:21:16.000 before on an early September day in the eighteen thirties, 0:21:16.240 --> 0:21:18.280 Ruggles had opened his door to the knock of a 0:21:18.280 --> 0:21:21.399 young Frederick Douglas, who had just escaped his captivity in 0:21:21.400 --> 0:21:25.120 the Baltimore Shipyards. Ruggles had mentored Douglas there in New York, 0:21:25.320 --> 0:21:28.600 even hosting the man's wedding in his living room. When 0:21:28.600 --> 0:21:30.800 he moved from New York, Ruggles found a home in 0:21:30.800 --> 0:21:35.520 a more welcoming community in Northampton, Massachusetts. There he edited 0:21:35.560 --> 0:21:38.880 his own newspaper, The Mirror of Liberty. It served as 0:21:38.880 --> 0:21:42.240 a powerful inspiration for Douglas, showing the younger man what 0:21:42.400 --> 0:21:46.200 was possible with the printing press and a message. Here's 0:21:46.240 --> 0:21:52.800 historian An Browdie. What periodicals provided for them was the 0:21:52.840 --> 0:21:58.840 ability to form non geographic communities, communities of like minded 0:21:58.920 --> 0:22:02.040 people who did not see each other face to face. 0:22:02.640 --> 0:22:06.119 So you see the seeds of the virtual communities that 0:22:06.200 --> 0:22:10.280 have become so important in the digital age. In the 0:22:10.359 --> 0:22:15.119 periodical press of the ninete century, you could subscribe to 0:22:15.280 --> 0:22:20.600 a periodical published in Chicago or Milwaukee or Boston, no 0:22:20.640 --> 0:22:23.040 matter where you lived, and you would receive it through 0:22:23.080 --> 0:22:26.400 the mail, and you would see on it the names 0:22:26.480 --> 0:22:31.159 of other subscribers in your small town or in your state. 0:22:32.640 --> 0:22:38.560 But there's more. Here's historian Mary Gabriel. It was really fascinating. 0:22:38.560 --> 0:22:40.399 And it wasn't just in the United States. It was 0:22:40.440 --> 0:22:46.240 in Europe as well. Every organization, every political party, every group, 0:22:46.320 --> 0:22:49.800 the farmers groups, the coal group, you know, coal miners. 0:22:49.840 --> 0:22:55.040 Everyone had a periodical when the spirit spoke from the 0:22:55.040 --> 0:22:58.320 pages of black newspapers like The North Star. They offered 0:22:58.359 --> 0:23:01.439 a vision of liberty and a quality for Black Americans 0:23:01.480 --> 0:23:05.080 that was frequently repeated in the spiritualist press. And as 0:23:05.119 --> 0:23:09.280 we've mentioned before, spiritualists were also launching newspapers of their own. 0:23:10.720 --> 0:23:14.080 From the beginning, the treatment of spiritualism in Southern newspapers 0:23:14.280 --> 0:23:17.280 was chilly at best. One paper in eighteen fifty one 0:23:17.400 --> 0:23:22.480 railed against the buffooneries of the Foxes and the Fishes. Spiritualists, 0:23:22.520 --> 0:23:27.840 they wrote, were ardent zealots, weak minded enthusiasts, and gullible dreamers. 0:23:28.760 --> 0:23:31.280 The following year, in eighteen fifty two, the New Orleans 0:23:31.400 --> 0:23:35.280 Daily Crescent reported that Thomas Lake Harris, the spiritualist poet 0:23:35.280 --> 0:23:38.359 who Walt Whitman like so much, had arrived in their city. 0:23:38.760 --> 0:23:41.040 He was staying at the Veranda hotel for the winter 0:23:41.440 --> 0:23:43.720 and was willing to receive visitors in his room for 0:23:43.800 --> 0:23:48.520 private seances, but it wasn't published as an advertisement. The 0:23:48.520 --> 0:23:50.680 paper claimed that he was trying to raise an army 0:23:50.680 --> 0:23:53.480 of converts to his new faith and warned that some 0:23:53.600 --> 0:23:57.520 of the respectable citizens of New Orleans were leaning his way. 0:23:58.920 --> 0:24:02.719 Years later, when Southern states started succeeding, they also started 0:24:02.760 --> 0:24:08.400 rejecting shipments of spiritualist newspapers because they considered them abolitionist publications. 0:24:09.119 --> 0:24:11.879 The war of words and ideas fought in the eighteen 0:24:12.000 --> 0:24:16.000 fifties was leading towards something darker. The isms of the 0:24:16.040 --> 0:24:19.560 North were scorned in the Southern press, viewed as attacks 0:24:19.640 --> 0:24:23.760 that threatened the wealth and power of slaveholders. But those 0:24:23.800 --> 0:24:37.159 attacks we're just beginning. New York was filled with conflict, 0:24:37.640 --> 0:24:40.399 and it wasn't just struggling over questions of slavery and 0:24:40.440 --> 0:24:43.280 abolition that put spiritualists at the center of the fight. 0:24:43.880 --> 0:24:46.680 Even as the identity of the nation and its relationship 0:24:46.760 --> 0:24:50.200 to the abuses of slavery fueled round after round fighting, 0:24:50.560 --> 0:24:55.000 spiritualism itself was still on trial in New York. The 0:24:55.080 --> 0:24:58.840 tests undergone by the movement's most prominent figures sometimes took 0:24:58.920 --> 0:25:02.200 odd turns in the headwinds of history. That was clear 0:25:02.280 --> 0:25:05.800 to see in eighteen sixty when Maggie Fox, now in 0:25:05.840 --> 0:25:09.040 her late twenties, a Catholic and a veteran performer, but 0:25:09.160 --> 0:25:12.879 also a reformed spiritualist, agreed once again to be party 0:25:12.920 --> 0:25:16.400