Speaker 1: Welcomed, unobscured a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky.
Speaker 1: There was a glow about her, at least that's what
Speaker 1: they say when there is a suitor on the horizon.
Speaker 1: Right in eighteen fifty seven, despite everything that had happened,
Speaker 1: Leah was on the cusp of marriage again. This time,
Speaker 1: though she was no teenage girl untried by the world.
Speaker 1: She was a professional woman, a genuine celebrity. In fact,
Speaker 1: while other mediums had been played for fools by predatory managers,
Speaker 1: Leah had stepped in and taken control of things for
Speaker 1: her family. She had fought Elisha Caine to a standstill
Speaker 1: when he tried to take Maggie. Yes, he did convince
Speaker 1: her sister to give up spiritualism, Bliah convinced him that
Speaker 1: a stipend should come her way. Her experiences had taken
Speaker 1: her to some of the greatest cities in the nation.
Speaker 1: She had navigated unfriendly crowds at gunpoints, and held seances
Speaker 1: sittings for some of America's most respected politicians and ministers.
Speaker 1: She had even been married a second time, although that man,
Speaker 1: Calvin Brown, had died four years earlier. So yes, Leah
Speaker 1: seemed to have done it all, but when the Boston
Speaker 1: Courier printed their rejection of spiritualism, their shots hit home.
Speaker 1: They hurt, but Leah took comfort in finding friends on
Speaker 1: her own side. If the Boston Courier used their investigations
Speaker 1: to attack the Fox Sisters, well competing Boston newspaper, The
Speaker 1: Traveler was there to defend them. The Traveler printed a
Speaker 1: statement saying that the real sham was the investigation those
Speaker 1: Harvard professors had refused to cooperate with the mediums. Even
Speaker 1: the Cambridge Chronicle acknowledged that the professors were too biased.
Speaker 1: Leah took some comfort in that, but even having friends
Speaker 1: to return fire could only go so far towards getting
Speaker 1: her back on her feet. She and Kate retreated to
Speaker 1: New York, where they stayed with their mother at Horace
Speaker 1: Greeley's house, and for a while Leah only gave seances
Speaker 1: two familiar circles of friends around the city, until one evening,
Speaker 1: when they accepted an invitation to hold the seance for
Speaker 1: a small circle in Jersey City, New Jersey. A man
Speaker 1: arrived to escort her, a little older than she was.
Speaker 1: He was dressed in well tailored clothes and offered her
Speaker 1: an umbrella to hold off the falling rain. He introduced
Speaker 1: himself as Daniel. Underhill Talia's relief, the man was already
Speaker 1: a spiritualist, to Leah's deep interest. The man was the
Speaker 1: president of an insurance company and had managed to hold
Speaker 1: onto his money through the recent crash. The seance that
Speaker 1: night was something remarkable. You see, Lea's seances had recently
Speaker 1: been accompanied by spirit lights, like the ones that had
Speaker 1: been witnessed in seances by Daniel Hume, luminous clouds, sometimes
Speaker 1: as small as a spark, that would flit and flicker
Speaker 1: outside the seance circle. That night, they held a seance
Speaker 1: around the table as usual and got the ordinary knocking sounds,
Speaker 1: but Leah also pulled a few of the visitors aside,
Speaker 1: one by one. She says, she picked the ones with
Speaker 1: good sense, and Daniel was among them. They stepped together
Speaker 1: into the complete darkness of a bathroom there as they
Speaker 1: dared to hope, the spirit lights arrived. But these weren't
Speaker 1: clouds on the edge of visibility. These lights blazed. They
Speaker 1: were so bright they lit up the entire room, and
Speaker 1: Leah and Daniel were dazed by them. Leah said the
Speaker 1: lights were so bright that her hands started to burn
Speaker 1: and she felt faint. She turned on the faucet and
Speaker 1: ran her hands under the water, and then, together with
Speaker 1: the hostess, ran out into the backyard, where she pushed
Speaker 1: her hands into the rain wet ground. The spirit lights faded.
Speaker 1: The seance concluded, and Leah made her way home. It
Speaker 1: was only two days later that a letter arrived for
Speaker 1: Leah with a curious question. The day after the seance,
Speaker 1: it said, the hostess had looked out of her house
Speaker 1: and witnessed lights coming from the ground where Leah's hands
Speaker 1: had been. She examined the spot and found particles of
Speaker 1: solid phosphorus smoking in the soil. A few of the
Speaker 1: visitors that the seance had gathered to argue about what
Speaker 1: it meant. Some of them believed that this was a
Speaker 1: sign that the spirits had manifested their lights by manufacturing
Speaker 1: phosphorus from the atmosphere. Others thought that the phosphorus had
Speaker 1: been a tool used by Leah to artificially manufacture the lights.
Speaker 1: Now they were asking Leah to explain it to them.
Speaker 1: In her own words, she was painfully astonished by the
Speaker 1: accusations that she could be faking the lights. It hurt
Speaker 1: her so deeply that she didn't know how to respond.
Speaker 1: But a champion appeared. Her new friend, Daniel Underhill, was
Speaker 1: convinced of her innocence. As Leah would later put it,
Speaker 1: he came to her rescue to fight for her reputation
Speaker 1: and integrity, first among her friends and then in the
Speaker 1: public forum. And as far as Leah was concerned, he
Speaker 1: won those fights. But he also won her heart, and
Speaker 1: it turns out that he was smitten with her too.
Speaker 1: By the end of the month, they were married and
Speaker 1: she was settling into his brow own stone on New
Speaker 1: York's West thirty seven Street. Then she set about filling
Speaker 1: it up with things that were very much to her,
Speaker 1: liking gilded wallpaper, rosewood chairs, mahogany tables, new carpets, statuary,
Speaker 1: and of course for her music, both at piano and
Speaker 1: an organ. To this, Daniel added an aviary, which he
Speaker 1: built off the dining room, filled with songbirds he bought
Speaker 1: from distant places. Suddenly living the best life his money
Speaker 1: could buy, Leah shocked her family and the interested public
Speaker 1: with an announcement, no more investigations, no more public seances,
Speaker 1: no more tests. Her career as a public medium was over.
Speaker 1: The only people to pass the defenses of her newly
Speaker 1: fortified life, she said, were those who already admired her.
Speaker 1: As always. Family was an exception, family like Maggie, still
Speaker 1: mourning the loss of Elisha Caine. Maggie often avoided her
Speaker 1: older sister, but the newfound lap of luxury provoked her,
Speaker 1: so she struck back. The next time the two sisters
Speaker 1: faced off, Maggie looked Leah in the eye and said,
Speaker 1: now that you're rich, why don't you save your soul?
Speaker 1: The backlash of Leah's rage tore them apart. This is unobscured.
Speaker 1: I'm Aaron Manky. Sojourn Her truth was no stranger to
Speaker 1: a good fight. She was also no stranger to saving souls.
Speaker 1: But after the lavish disaster in the Kingdom of Matthias,
Speaker 1: Sojourner could never view wealth as a key to the afterlife,
Speaker 1: or even to happiness. When she found her home base
Speaker 1: at the Northampton Community, it did nothing to slow her down.
Speaker 1: Years before, she had received a call from God to
Speaker 1: be a traveler. Sojourner so, even with a place to
Speaker 1: lay her head and a circle of friends who supported her,
Speaker 1: she still had a mission, and that mission put Sojourner
Speaker 1: in the line of fire. In her day, so called
Speaker 1: circuit preaching was hardly safe work. Wherever camp meetings were
Speaker 1: set up, they were followed by drunken, hostile men so
Speaker 1: often that they got a nickname the rowdies, and they
Speaker 1: deserved it too. Carrying clubs and bringing a taste for violence,
Speaker 1: they became a regular menacing presence at revival tents, and
Speaker 1: they threatened worshippers and speakers alike. It should come as
Speaker 1: no surprise, then, that they often targeted black attendees. Sojourner
Speaker 1: never lacked for courage, though, and she brought a power
Speaker 1: to her lectures that moved audiences everywhere she went. Here's
Speaker 1: historian Margaret Washington. To be a powerful speaker, first of all,
Speaker 1: you had to have pathos, you had to have humor.
Speaker 1: You had to sing. She had a beautiful singing voice,
Speaker 1: and she would often begin with a song, then she'd
Speaker 1: have a prayer, and then she would speak. Her speaking
Speaker 1: was instructive. She would always talk about her life as
Speaker 1: a slave and her experience. So Journer's messages from the
Speaker 1: Spirits took some share of the credit. One young seminarian,
Speaker 1: Giles Stebbins, joined some of his family at Northampton, despite
Speaker 1: opposing their views at the time, and he was a
Speaker 1: young hothead who loved to start trouble what sort of
Speaker 1: trouble while he decided to start making public arguments in
Speaker 1: support of slavery while living in an antislavery commune, but
Speaker 1: he was surrounded by a community that interpreted the Bible
Speaker 1: as they say, in the light of liberty, filled with
Speaker 1: preachers and teachers like Sojourner Truth who had heard all
Speaker 1: his arguments before, face to face with people who didn't
Speaker 1: think he was all that convincing, his message fell with
Speaker 1: a thud, but it gets better. Within a year of
Speaker 1: settling in among the others at Northampton, he switched sides,
Speaker 1: eventually preaching the message of radical abolition, and like Sojourner,
Speaker 1: Giles would also go on to become a lifelong spiritualist.
Speaker 1: But Northampton wasn't just a place for young bullies like
Speaker 1: Giles Stebbins to visit their family. In fact, it was
Speaker 1: there that so journal would reunite with her own family.
Speaker 1: Hurt two daughters, Sophia and Elizabeth, arrived with so much
Speaker 1: joy that others at Northampton compared the reunion to the
Speaker 1: return of the biblical chronigal Son. So Journer had lost
Speaker 1: touch with her daughters when Sophia had to fight her
Speaker 1: mother and moved in with a man who took advantage
Speaker 1: of her. Now just eighteen years old and pregnant, Sophia
Speaker 1: sought refuge in her mother's company. As the bay Bes
Speaker 1: birth approached, so Journer split her time between her travels
Speaker 1: and her family. It was the only thing that could
Speaker 1: keep her off the preaching circuit. In the following years,
Speaker 1: the family grew into a close unit. Sojourner and her
Speaker 1: daughters would care for each other for the rest of
Speaker 1: their lives and always stay in touch when they couldn't
Speaker 1: stay together. The pain of separation had been deep. Now
Speaker 1: they were determined to hold onto each other through whatever
Speaker 1: life tossed at them, and not all of it would
Speaker 1: be easy. The community at Northampton began to slowly dissolve
Speaker 1: as its various members with their own ways to new
Speaker 1: homes and new missions. So Journer eventually bought a house
Speaker 1: in town there for herself and her daughters, although she
Speaker 1: continued to travel and teach. For a time, she made
Speaker 1: her way to Rochester and lived with the posts their
Speaker 1: home became her new lecturing base while she traveled to
Speaker 1: the surrounding towns. She even held one of those gatherings
Speaker 1: in Rochester's Corinthian Hall, where the Fox sisters had made
Speaker 1: that first public spirit demonstration. When the Foxes next came
Speaker 1: into town to visit the posts, they befriended Sojourner as well.
Speaker 1: She grew in power over the years as she traveled, lectured,
Speaker 1: and faced new challenges. Here's more from Margaret Washington. As
Speaker 1: she became more and more experience, one thing we don't
Speaker 1: have any record of her ever having talked about was Matthias.
Speaker 1: But as she got more and more experience than her
Speaker 1: speeches would often when she got into the meat of
Speaker 1: it would reflect things she had heard other people say
Speaker 1: that she would pull apart. She also because she knew
Speaker 1: so much scripture. I mean, for a woman who couldn't
Speaker 1: read and write, she could quote scripture. In one meeting
Speaker 1: held by antislavery speakers, a minister stood up and shouted
Speaker 1: that he hadn't heard anything convincing, just a lot of
Speaker 1: noise in his words, from women and jackasses. In the
Speaker 1: shocks silence that followed, Sojourner rose to her feet, and
Speaker 1: reminded the man of a biblical story. In it, a
Speaker 1: prophet was writing a donkey along the road when the
Speaker 1: donkey suddenly stopped without warning, the prophet beat the animal,
Speaker 1: But that's because the man was blind to what had
Speaker 1: really happened, the presence of an angel that was blocking
Speaker 1: the way she tells the story, and she says, so,
Speaker 1: I just want to remind the man and the audience
Speaker 1: that it was the ass and not the minister who
Speaker 1: saw the angel, and the crowd just went wild. With
Speaker 1: her knowledge of the Bible already at hand, it didn't
Speaker 1: matter to audiences that Sojourner couldn't read. But there was
Speaker 1: only one Sojourner truth to go around. The printing presses
Speaker 1: in Rochester, Boston, and New York City, though, could send
Speaker 1: out spiritualists and abolitionist papers by the thousands, and it
Speaker 1: was their work in producing the public argument for abolition,
Speaker 1: along side the circuit writing preachers and traveling lecturers that
Speaker 1: fan the flames that she lit against the horrors of slavery.
Speaker 1: Who would get burned, though, was still up for grabs.
Speaker 1: So Journer went to Boston with fists clenched tight. It
Speaker 1: was eighteen fifty four and thousands of reformers were converging
Speaker 1: on the city for the New England Anti Slavery Convention
Speaker 1: and for the Women's Convention. If that was all, it
Speaker 1: would have been exciting news, but recent events had charged
Speaker 1: the meetings with passion. You see, in May of that year,
Speaker 1: a man named Anthony Burns had escaped from slavery in
Speaker 1: Virginia before being arrested by the authorities in Boston. The
Speaker 1: police there had decided to obey the Fugitive Slave Act
Speaker 1: by sending him back to captivity, but Boston abolitionists wanted
Speaker 1: to say in the matter too. Inspired by armed rescues
Speaker 1: that had taken place elsewhere, they gathered weapons and marched
Speaker 1: on the courthouse on the evening of May. The crowd
Speaker 1: of both black and white abolitionists fought a pitched battle
Speaker 1: in the streets with the Court's deputies wielding revolvers, axes, clubs,
Speaker 1: and cleavers. They tried to ram down the courthouse door,
Speaker 1: but were beaten back. Nine of the abolitionists were arrested,
Speaker 1: and their attempt to save Anthony Burns had failed. President
Speaker 1: Franklin Pierce eventually had to send military forces to escort
Speaker 1: Burns to a ship in the harbor that would transport
Speaker 1: him back south. So Journer was in the crowd that day,
Speaker 1: held back by cavalry and marines. On July four, the
Speaker 1: Massachusetts Antislavery Society held a meeting in Burns honor. When
Speaker 1: so Journer stood to speak, it had been two years
Speaker 1: since Frederick Douglas had delivered his famous lecture What to
Speaker 1: the Slave is fourth of July. Now she stood before
Speaker 1: them to remind her audience that every northern city and
Speaker 1: town that followed the Fugitive Slave Act by sending their
Speaker 1: neighbors south into bond it was working to uphold the
Speaker 1: slave system. When Henry David Thureau followed her on the stage,
Speaker 1: he addressed the issue from another angle. Many people in
Speaker 1: Massachusetts had been very concerned about the expansion of slavery
Speaker 1: into Kansas and Nebraska, but for years, he said, they
Speaker 1: had talked about the problem as something big yet far away.
Speaker 1: But when slaveholders could reach into the North and use
Speaker 1: the Boston Police and US military as a tool, that
Speaker 1: problem stopped being a faraway thing. As throw put it,
Speaker 1: the whole military force of the state is at the
Speaker 1: service of a slaveholder from Virginia to enable him to
Speaker 1: catch a man whom he calls his property, but not
Speaker 1: a soldier is offered to save a citizen of Massachusetts
Speaker 1: from being kidnapped. In the past, th Row had mocked spiritualism.
Speaker 1: He said he would prefer the revelation of hooting owls
Speaker 1: and croaking frogs to the knocking sounds, and that if
Speaker 1: the spirit messages that passed through mediums were a true
Speaker 1: sign of what life would be like after death, he
Speaker 1: would exchange immortality for a glass of beer. But he
Speaker 1: stood side by side with those spiritualists in eighteen fifty four.
Speaker 1: That was Boston, though in New York things continued to
Speaker 1: roll forward in a tangle. In our previous episode, we
Speaker 1: talked about how the Brooklyn poet Walt Whitman embraced white
Speaker 1: supremacy as a means to conquer the land, but that's
Speaker 1: not the only way he was. Unlike the Row. Born
Speaker 1: to a Quaker family and a fan of Swedenborg's mysticism,
Speaker 1: Whitman followed an interest in spiritualism throughout his whole life.
Speaker 1: In fact, the older he got, the deeper he went.
Speaker 1: He even began to see himself as a medium, and
Speaker 1: even wrote that poets are divine mediums. Through them comes
Speaker 1: spirits and materials to all the people. Whitman also sought
Speaker 1: out the friendship of the Universalist minister in New York,
Speaker 1: who had worked with Andrew Jackson Davis to transcribe his
Speaker 1: spirit lectures in the eighteen forties. Together, they attended seances
Speaker 1: by a spiritualist named Thomas Lake Harris, a medium who
Speaker 1: wrote mystical poetry while in his trances it was just
Speaker 1: what women liked, and when women attended a Cora Hatch
Speaker 1: spirit lecture, he was so inspired by her that he
Speaker 1: became determined to develop his own powers of spirit communication.
Speaker 1: Put it all together, and it adds up to one
Speaker 1: big mess. We'd like to believe that the connection between
Speaker 1: spiritualism and social causes like abolition were simple, but we've
Speaker 1: seen by now. Rather than being a neat and tidy
Speaker 1: bundle of threads woven into a beautiful story, those connections
Speaker 1: were more of a snorl knot the good and the
Speaker 1: bad all mixed together. Judging by life in New York
Speaker 1: at the time, though none of that should come as
Speaker 1: a surprise. Slavery had been illegal in New York for years,
Speaker 1: but the city had been built on slavery. That much
Speaker 1: was clear in the view from Horace Really's house. It
Speaker 1: was now the home to the Fox family, but whenever
Speaker 1: Greeley returned to the city, they always had a room
Speaker 1: open for him. In June of eighteen sixty, Greeley wrote
Speaker 1: an editorial in his New York Tribune under the title
Speaker 1: the slave Trade in New York It is a remarkable fact.
Speaker 1: He wrote that the slave traders in this city almost
Speaker 1: invariably managed to elude the meshes of the law. Now
Speaker 1: they bribe a jury, another time their counsels or agents
Speaker 1: spirit away a vital witness. Slave trading had been punishable
Speaker 1: by death in New York since eighteen twenty, but the
Speaker 1: brutal business carried on. In fact, not a single slave
Speaker 1: trader had been executed by eighteen sixty. It made Horace
Speaker 1: write that to break up the African slave trade, it
Speaker 1: will be necessary to purge the courts and offices of
Speaker 1: those pimps of piracy who are well known, and at
Speaker 1: the proper time will receive their just desserts. It wasn't
Speaker 1: clear how soon that time would be, though, so journ
Speaker 1: or truth story, like her battles against her neighbors to
Speaker 1: bring back her son from Alabama can help us see
Speaker 1: how the riffs over support for slavery didn't just split
Speaker 1: North from South. They split communities everywhere, even in the
Speaker 1: anti slavery North. And it's no wonder. In seventeen ninety,
Speaker 1: just before Sojourner was born, some counties in New York
Speaker 1: had a higher proportion of slaveholding families than South Carolina.
Speaker 1: Their way of thinking about the world didn't magically evaporate
Speaker 1: when New York abolished slavery. It just went underground, and
Speaker 1: the New Yorkers who profited from slavery didn't lose their
Speaker 1: connections to the South either. Greeley tried to point out
Speaker 1: that New York was still a major hub of the
Speaker 1: Southern slave trade even though it was now illegal there,
Speaker 1: whether as investors, ship owners, or captains and crew, New
Speaker 1: Yorkers promoted and practiced human trafficking, and Greeley's Tribune wasn't
Speaker 1: the only paper to publish this kind of report. The
Speaker 1: Local Evening Post reported in eighteen sixty that the city
Speaker 1: of New York belongs as much to the South as
Speaker 1: to the North, and they made that clear. As the
Speaker 1: nation's politics came to a boil in the presidential election
Speaker 1: of eighteen sixty which pitted Abraham Lincoln against Stephen Douglas.
Speaker 1: Every county around New York City voted for Douglas. Months later,
Speaker 1: in January of eighteen sixty one, when South Carolina seceded
Speaker 1: from the United States and protest, the mayor of New
Speaker 1: York called a meeting of his allies. He suggested that
Speaker 1: living under the federal government of the Lincoln administration was,
Speaker 1: in his words, odious and oppressive. He suggested that New
Speaker 1: York City follow South Carolina's example. They should succeed, he said,
Speaker 1: and become a nation unto themselves. Taxes for businesses would
Speaker 1: be low, and the slave trade could continue. And some
Speaker 1: of the city's bankers and merchants were quick to sign
Speaker 1: on to this new idea. A few newspapers through and
Speaker 1: with them as well, the city's council even approved the idea.
Speaker 1: It was exactly why writers like Frederick Douglas knew they
Speaker 1: needed to start their own newspapers. There were others around him, too,
Speaker 1: like David Ruggles, who had started as a free black
Speaker 1: grocer in New York before becoming a newspaperman himself years
Speaker 1: before on an early September day in the eighteen thirties,
Speaker 1: Ruggles had opened his door to the knock of a
Speaker 1: young Frederick Douglas, who had just escaped his captivity in
Speaker 1: the Baltimore Shipyards. Ruggles had mentored Douglas there in New York,
Speaker 1: even hosting the man's wedding in his living room. When
Speaker 1: he moved from New York, Ruggles found a home in
Speaker 1: a more welcoming community in Northampton, Massachusetts. There he edited
Speaker 1: his own newspaper, The Mirror of Liberty. It served as
Speaker 1: a powerful inspiration for Douglas, showing the younger man what
Speaker 1: was possible with the printing press and a message. Here's
Speaker 1: historian An Browdie. What periodicals provided for them was the
Speaker 1: ability to form non geographic communities, communities of like minded
Speaker 1: people who did not see each other face to face.
Speaker 1: So you see the seeds of the virtual communities that
Speaker 1: have become so important in the digital age. In the
Speaker 1: periodical press of the ninete century, you could subscribe to
Speaker 1: a periodical published in Chicago or Milwaukee or Boston, no
Speaker 1: matter where you lived, and you would receive it through
Speaker 1: the mail, and you would see on it the names
Speaker 1: of other subscribers in your small town or in your state.
Speaker 1: But there's more. Here's historian Mary Gabriel. It was really fascinating.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't just in the United States. It was
Speaker 1: in Europe as well. Every organization, every political party, every group,
Speaker 1: the farmers groups, the coal group, you know, coal miners.
Speaker 1: Everyone had a periodical when the spirit spoke from the
Speaker 1: pages of black newspapers like The North Star. They offered
Speaker 1: a vision of liberty and a quality for Black Americans
Speaker 1: that was frequently repeated in the spiritualist press. And as
Speaker 1: we've mentioned before, spiritualists were also launching newspapers of their own.
Speaker 1: From the beginning, the treatment of spiritualism in Southern newspapers
Speaker 1: was chilly at best. One paper in eighteen fifty one
Speaker 1: railed against the buffooneries of the Foxes and the Fishes. Spiritualists,
Speaker 1: they wrote, were ardent zealots, weak minded enthusiasts, and gullible dreamers.
Speaker 1: The following year, in eighteen fifty two, the New Orleans
Speaker 1: Daily Crescent reported that Thomas Lake Harris, the spiritualist poet
Speaker 1: who Walt Whitman like so much, had arrived in their city.
Speaker 1: He was staying at the Veranda hotel for the winter
Speaker 1: and was willing to receive visitors in his room for
Speaker 1: private seances, but it wasn't published as an advertisement. The
Speaker 1: paper claimed that he was trying to raise an army
Speaker 1: of converts to his new faith and warned that some
Speaker 1: of the respectable citizens of New Orleans were leaning his way.
Speaker 1: Years later, when Southern states started succeeding, they also started
Speaker 1: rejecting shipments of spiritualist newspapers because they considered them abolitionist publications.
Speaker 1: The war of words and ideas fought in the eighteen
Speaker 1: fifties was leading towards something darker. The isms of the
Speaker 1: North were scorned in the Southern press, viewed as attacks
Speaker 1: that threatened the wealth and power of slaveholders. But those
Speaker 1: attacks we're just beginning. New York was filled with conflict,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't just struggling over questions of slavery and
Speaker 1: abolition that put spiritualists at the center of the fight.
Speaker 1: Even as the identity of the nation and its relationship
Speaker 1: to the abuses of slavery fueled round after round fighting,
Speaker 1: spiritualism itself was still on trial in New York. The
Speaker 1: tests undergone by the movement's most prominent figures sometimes took
Speaker 1: odd turns in the headwinds of history. That was clear
Speaker 1: to see in eighteen sixty when Maggie Fox, now in
Speaker 1: her late twenties, a Catholic and a veteran performer, but
Speaker 1: also a reformed spiritualist, agreed once again to be party
Speaker 1: to an investigation. Maybe it was Kate who convinced her.
Speaker 1: Because they took this test together. They weren't alone either.
Speaker 1: There was a huddle full of spiritualists floating out on
Speaker 1: the water because it was a day for public spectacle.
Speaker 1: The city of New York might not have executed any
Speaker 1: slave traders, but they were still willing to execute people
Speaker 1: like the notorious pirate John Hicks. A six day trial
Speaker 1: had convicted him for murdering three men at sea, and
Speaker 1: when his confession followed, he admitted to a wild story
Speaker 1: of jumping ship to ship, leaving a trail of dead
Speaker 1: behind him. His final crimes were described in action packed
Speaker 1: detail and were published alongside a full phrenological diagnosis of
Speaker 1: his mind. But for anology wasn't the only tool to
Speaker 1: be used on him. There were also plenty of others
Speaker 1: who wanted to see what would happen when he crossed
Speaker 1: that boundary between life and death. For that, they decided
Speaker 1: spiritualist mediums were just the people to call. On the
Speaker 1: day set for his execution, crowds lined the streets to
Speaker 1: watch him go by. He boarded the steamship called the
Speaker 1: Red Jacket, accompanied by a core of marines and to
Speaker 1: federal marshals. The spiritualists were already on board the ship.
Speaker 1: They made for an island in the middle of the
Speaker 1: harbor where the gallows waited for him. Here's historian Kathy Gutierrez.
Speaker 1: So there's this floating seance basically that is surrounding this
Speaker 1: island with the expectation that at the moment of this
Speaker 1: guy's death that they would be able to communicate with him.
Speaker 1: It was also something like a floating reception. In fact,
Speaker 1: refreshments had been set out for the gathered mediums all
Speaker 1: while the execution moved forward on his way to the noose.
Speaker 1: Hicks didn't seem to show much interest in the spirit ritualists,
Speaker 1: but they were hoping that in the presence of so
Speaker 1: many powerful mediums like the Fox Sisters, who were so
Speaker 1: attuned to the spirit world, his death would produce some
Speaker 1: kind of amazing spiritual revelation as his soul departed his body,
Speaker 1: but those hopes were dashed. In fact, Hicks was hanged
Speaker 1: with hardly any notice or additional fanfare. Here's more from
Speaker 1: Kathy Gutierrez. Well, embarrassingly enough of the spiritualists, much like
Speaker 1: graduate students, were so excited about the free food and drink,
Speaker 1: that they completely missed the hanging. And we're busily chowing
Speaker 1: down on the cucumber sandwiches and new communication whatsoever took place.
Speaker 1: It was another huge embarrassment for those who wanted spiritualism
Speaker 1: to finally be proven in the light of day. The
Speaker 1: critics decided to rub it into writing that the pirates
Speaker 1: spirit had been dispatched so speedily that he flew right
Speaker 1: past the watchful eyes of the mediums. The incident was
Speaker 1: so embarras a scene that it simply was left out
Speaker 1: of most spiritualist writings. But there was another hanging that
Speaker 1: spiritualists and abolitionists were keen to get into the papers,
Speaker 1: the execution of John Brown, or the raid on Harper's Ferry.
Speaker 1: Brown had already been a hero of abolitionists before he
Speaker 1: attacked the arsenal in the hope of arming a slave revolt.
Speaker 1: He'd once liberated eleven people held in slavery in Missouri
Speaker 1: and led them over eleven hundred miles through four states,
Speaker 1: dodging federal troops and a volunteer militia along the way. Afterwards,
Speaker 1: he met with Frederick Douglas and other leaders to recruit
Speaker 1: them into his plan to fight slaveholders elsewhere. Captured later
Speaker 1: in Virginia, John Brown was sentenced to hang. Oddly, the
Speaker 1: Virginia state government forbid any journalist from a northern paper
Speaker 1: from witnessing the execution. One man, Henry Steele Alcott, was
Speaker 1: able to evade this prohibition, though, and sent his report
Speaker 1: back to the New York Sun. Alcott would play a
Speaker 1: later role in this Spiritualist history that will explore in
Speaker 1: future episodes. For now, though, the important thing is that
Speaker 1: he got his message out, and because of that the
Speaker 1: news spread. Brown was mourned and celebrated. At the same time,
Speaker 1: Harriet Tubman, who was at one point planning on joining
Speaker 1: John Brown at Harper's Ferry, told one Spiritualist editor that
Speaker 1: it wasn't really John Brown who had been executed, It
Speaker 1: was christ from his exile in the English Channel. Victor
Speaker 1: Hugo agreed. He wrote a letter to friends in Haiti,
Speaker 1: stating that what the South slew was not John Brown
Speaker 1: but slavery. Abolitionists and radical spiritualists agreed. John Brown's body
Speaker 1: might have been rotting in the grave, but his soul
Speaker 1: was marching on. It had always been about carrying messages,
Speaker 1: whether we can count beginning of Spiritualism from the Shaker Girls,
Speaker 1: or from Andrew Jackson Davis, or even further back from
Speaker 1: Sojourn or Truth's messages from her father. Spiritualists had long
Speaker 1: felt they had a responsibility to pass along the word
Speaker 1: from beyond death. So in eighteen fifty seven, spiritualists in
Speaker 1: Boston founded a newspaper that would do just that, print
Speaker 1: messages from the spirit world. It would be one of
Speaker 1: many spiritualist newspapers over the years, but whether they knew
Speaker 1: it or not, it was a monumental moment in the
Speaker 1: history of their movement. Their newspaper would tell the amazing
Speaker 1: stories of the mediums who delivered all those messages to
Speaker 1: their say once circles. They would become the foundational voice
Speaker 1: of spiritualism for decades, and they called it the Banner
Speaker 1: of Light. I don't think many historians would contradict me
Speaker 1: if I said that the two most important periodicals were
Speaker 1: The Banner of Light, published in Boston, the longest lived
Speaker 1: and most wide we read of the spiritualist periodicals, followed
Speaker 1: by the Religio Philosophical Journal in Chicago, which was really
Speaker 1: the voice of the Midwest. For many in the North.
Speaker 1: It was precisely the message of radical reform coming from
Speaker 1: the spirits that attracted followers to spiritualism, even while its
Speaker 1: claims to prove contact with the dead remained in doubt
Speaker 1: below the Mason Dixon line, though that picture was often inverted.
Speaker 1: Where we have evidence of spiritualism catching on among wealthy
Speaker 1: white families, it was often achieved by cutting off the
Speaker 1: idea of a reformation in the spirit world. Take Sarah Morgan,
Speaker 1: for example. Her diary would make her one of the
Speaker 1: most well known recorders of Southern life among Louisiana's prominent families.
Speaker 1: Her father was a respected judge in Baton Rouge, her
Speaker 1: brother was a judge in New Orleans, and her family
Speaker 1: numbered among Louisiana's most wealthy. Sarah would read the newspapers
Speaker 1: with her father, and they got word of the table
Speaker 1: turning and spirit knocking in eighty eight. In the following years,
Speaker 1: those spirits populated Sarah's world. When her brother Jimmy traveled
Speaker 1: to England, he wrote home describing a seance he attended,
Speaker 1: and Sarah herself tried to summon spirit knockings alone at
Speaker 1: home without success. After her father, brother, and husband all
Speaker 1: passed away, Sarah longed to communicate with them, so she
Speaker 1: turned to spiritualism. It said that she would end each
Speaker 1: of her daily deliveries of flowers to their grave sites
Speaker 1: with a visit to a local medium. When rumors began
Speaker 1: to surface that her late husband had slept with the
Speaker 1: families governess, the medium delivered his spirit into the room,
Speaker 1: where he assured her that he had been faithful. Despite
Speaker 1: what other white Southerners might have said, Sarah never gave
Speaker 1: up her enthusiasm for speaking with the spirits of her
Speaker 1: dead family. As she got back on her feet and
Speaker 1: began to travel, she made regular stops at seances around
Speaker 1: the world. She sat with mediums in New York City, London,
Speaker 1: and Rome, interpreted dreams, and talked about the personal prophecies
Speaker 1: she had received from spirits, but their messages were rarely
Speaker 1: more significant than news about her own life or people
Speaker 1: in her family, and she carried a lifelong hatred for
Speaker 1: the North and its radicalism, a hatred that would blossom
Speaker 1: in the eighteen sixties when two more of her brothers
Speaker 1: were killed during the Civil War. But a spiritualism that
Speaker 1: ignored the call of liberty and freedom wouldn't have sat
Speaker 1: well with Sojourner truth In fact, as she got older,
Speaker 1: she turned her eyes to the west, and a tour
Speaker 1: through Pennsylvania, she met white farmers who were laying plans
Speaker 1: to move westward. They said they wanted good men and
Speaker 1: women to work their farms on shares. Conversations like that
Speaker 1: convinced her that if black families went west, they might
Speaker 1: be able to find a place to become self sufficient.
Speaker 1: Her dream of future prosperity was golden fields of grain,
Speaker 1: rather than the gold mines of California or Colorado. That
Speaker 1: seemed to be the most popular choice. But it wasn't
Speaker 1: just future process verity that attracted her. It was also
Speaker 1: the need for abolitionist voices raised among the settlers on
Speaker 1: west Land. So Journer had preached social reform in the
Speaker 1: rough and loud New York of the eighteen thirties. Now
Speaker 1: she saw the need to bring a voice of liberation
Speaker 1: to the lawlessness of the West. At the eighteen fifty
Speaker 1: six Anti Slavery Convention, Sojourner laid plans with friends who
Speaker 1: called themselves the Anti Slavery Apostles. They vowed to transform
Speaker 1: the American West, and they wasted no time. Their mantra
Speaker 1: was no union with slaveholders. So Journer set out immediately
Speaker 1: to organize anti slavery meetings throughout Ohio and finally Michigan,
Speaker 1: and it was there that she found a town that
Speaker 1: was already a thriving spiritualist hub. They even had their
Speaker 1: own commune there called Harmonia, founded by Quakers. It was
Speaker 1: full of similar ideas to Northampton or Rochester, and so
Speaker 1: Journer felt right at home. In eighteen fifty seven, she
Speaker 1: bought a plot of land outside Harmonia and chose her
Speaker 1: new home base. It didn't slow her mission down, though,
Speaker 1: because there were souls to be won, but not everyone,
Speaker 1: it seems, was heading west. Emma Harding was never shy,
Speaker 1: and she was paying attention. After all, she read the newspaper.
Speaker 1: It had only been in print for a year, but
Speaker 1: the Banner of Lights had already claimed the top billing
Speaker 1: amongst spiritualists across the nation, plus with mystics like Thomas
Speaker 1: Lake Harris taking up residents in New Orleans and families
Speaker 1: like the Morgan's embracing spiritualism. The editors of the Banner
Speaker 1: of Light felt that Louisiana had something for them to see,
Speaker 1: so in eighteen fifty six they crossed the Ohio Valley
Speaker 1: and the Mississippi River to lecture on spiritualism in New Orleans,
Speaker 1: and despite the reputation of their northern religion, the city
Speaker 1: lit up on their arrival. It's set a precedent and
Speaker 1: became an inspiration. The next year and Harding laid a
Speaker 1: course for her seance tables in New York to the
Speaker 1: National Spiritualist Convention in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Then in August of
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty nine, she would hit the road. Her first
Speaker 1: stop was Memphis, Tennessee, then Evansville, Iowa, and then a
Speaker 1: trek through Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, and the Carolinas. From the
Speaker 1: first days, though, Emma was met with a violent reaction.
Speaker 1: At her first Tennessee lecture, someone outside the hall where
Speaker 1: she was speaking through a stone through the window. It
Speaker 1: rolled to her feet, while glass shattered onto her audience.
Speaker 1: Things only got worse from there. The Memphis Inquirer published
Speaker 1: an editorial calling Emma an outside agitator who threatened a
Speaker 1: favorite Southern institution. No one was confused about what that meant.
Speaker 1: She had flown south on the winds of abolition. Emma's
Speaker 1: last lecture in Memphis was ultimately canceled when a group
Speaker 1: of rowdies threatened to lynch her and anyone who came
Speaker 1: to hear her speak. She tried to counter the acusations
Speaker 1: of being a Yankee infidel by pointing to her British birth,
Speaker 1: but papers along her route continued to burn her to
Speaker 1: the ground before she arrived. Further death threats fell on
Speaker 1: her in Tennessee and South Carolina. Later, Emma would write
Speaker 1: that at every turn on the tour, she saw the
Speaker 1: bitterness of slaveholders toward the advocates of freedom. So it
Speaker 1: should come as no surprise that she arrived in New
Speaker 1: Orleans feeling weak and dispirited. But that weakness soon became
Speaker 1: a demonstration of strength. Here's historian Emily Clark. She's delivering
Speaker 1: a lecture in New Orleans at one of the Fraternal lodges,
Speaker 1: and she begins to get tired. Now she'd been lecturing
Speaker 1: on spiritualism and demonstrating for a while now, so she's
Speaker 1: tiring and her spiritualist demonstrations are suffering. As this is
Speaker 1: going on, a black Creole man was walking by and
Speaker 1: he's supposedly seized by a spiritual force that pulls him
Speaker 1: into the auditory him. Emma invites him to come up
Speaker 1: on the stage, as she says, because he is full
Speaker 1: of electricity, and he and Emma Harding have this spiritual affinity,
Speaker 1: it seemed. So he remains with her on stage, and
Speaker 1: she uses that connection between them to draw power, and
Speaker 1: she continues these demonstrations for a couple more hours, just
Speaker 1: leaving the audience enthralled. If they were enthralled at this connection,
Speaker 1: though anyone who knew the man wouldn't have been surprised.
Speaker 1: His name was JB. Valmore. He was a blacksmith, but
Speaker 1: that was just one of his jobs. He was also
Speaker 1: known as a remarkable spiritual healer. In fact, Valmore's blacksmith
Speaker 1: shop had become a meeting room where he would hold
Speaker 1: seances and receive visitors who wanted to be healed by
Speaker 1: his power, and he had been doing that work for years.
Speaker 1: Just one year earlier, the police had rated Valmore's house
Speaker 1: in the middle of a seance on the suspicion that
Speaker 1: he was practicing voodoo. Many white folks in New Orleans
Speaker 1: were afraid of being spiritually attacked by their black neighbors,
Speaker 1: so they used the police like a tool to combat
Speaker 1: that fear. In fact, ever since the successful revolt that
Speaker 1: one Haitian independence from France in eighteen o four, whispers
Speaker 1: of voodoo among white slaveholders had escalated into violence. In
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty, the state rule that free blacks didn't have
Speaker 1: the right to organize religious groups. In eighteen fifty five,
Speaker 1: those rules tightened further forbidding scientific, literary, and charitable societies
Speaker 1: as well. But there were some in the Afro Creole
Speaker 1: community of New Orleans who counted spiritualists among their number,
Speaker 1: and in the coming years they would work with Valmore
Speaker 1: and others to form an enduring partnership, a harmonial circle
Speaker 1: that would record remarkable seances, and along the way, they
Speaker 1: would also bear witness to some of the most terrifying
Speaker 1: moments in the city's history. Now that you're rich, why
Speaker 1: don't you save your soul? That was the question Maggie
Speaker 1: had thrown in her sister Leah's face after seeing her
Speaker 1: rise above troubled times on a ride of insurance money.
Speaker 1: We can imagine that something similar might have occurred to
Speaker 1: Emma Harding as she finished her Southern tour. She said
Speaker 1: she witnessed the horrors of slavery as she traveled through
Speaker 1: the Deep South for her own part, she faced day
Speaker 1: after day of Southern ministers who shouted at her, proclaiming
Speaker 1: slavery to be a divine institution and calling Emma an
Speaker 1: infidel who sought to overthrow the divine order. But in
Speaker 1: the final stops on her tour, she found devoted spiritualists
Speaker 1: who were beaten down by their world. They were looking
Speaker 1: for hope, and Emma saw little of that divine order
Speaker 1: around them, especially when she talked to women who crowded
Speaker 1: in so close to her lectures that they overflowed the
Speaker 1: seats to sit and stand on the floor. They needed
Speaker 1: a vision of another world to lift them out of
Speaker 1: their life of suffering. As far as Emma knew, that
Speaker 1: world was already open to them, and the spirits led
Speaker 1: the way. When she steamed into Mobile, Alabama, though Emma
Speaker 1: was met by signs on the wall, they announced a
Speaker 1: new order from the state legislature, no infidel lecturer was
Speaker 1: allowed to speak anywhere in the entire state. Here's historian
Speaker 1: Molly McGarry. Before the Civil War, the Alabama and South
Speaker 1: Carolina legislatures prohibited sciences and other gatherings in their states,
Speaker 1: which I found particularly interesting because we know the way
Speaker 1: that religion was prohibited and was seen and for enslaved
Speaker 1: people as a way to organize. So some religious gatherings
Speaker 1: at certain times in different states across the South were
Speaker 1: made illegal. But the fact that Alabama and South Carolina
Speaker 1: bothered to put this newly into their laws to suggest
Speaker 1: that perhaps there was something going on, and that the
Speaker 1: spread of spiritism, like the spread of the abolitionist publications
Speaker 1: that were making their way south from the North, was
Speaker 1: seen as particularly dangerous. Despite these warnings, Emma was met
Speaker 1: with so much interest that she held seances three times
Speaker 1: a day, but her messages weren't encouraging. Under the guidance
Speaker 1: of the spirits, Emma foresaw the conflict between the North
Speaker 1: and the South coming to fruition. What she meant by
Speaker 1: that was simple enough. War. Emma declared that the piece
Speaker 1: of Alabama would soon be broken. Days were coming she
Speaker 1: said that would be full of mourning and lamentation, although
Speaker 1: many of the people she encountered on her travels they're
Speaker 1: already seemed to be living through a portion of that.
Speaker 1: In eighteen sixty Emma headed back north. The Spirits had
Speaker 1: a plan for the South, but she certainly wasn't necessary
Speaker 1: for their fulfillment. They had already been speaking before she arrived,
Speaker 1: and they certainly weren't about to stop. That's it for
Speaker 1: this week's episode of Unobscured. Stick around after this short
Speaker 1: sponsor break for a preview of what's in store for
Speaker 1: next week. Next time on Unobscured. By eighteen sixty three,
Speaker 1: with two years of the war behind her, Cora now
Speaker 1: channeled the spirit that cried out for and I quote
Speaker 1: a holy crusade to eliminate slavery and redeemed the land
Speaker 1: from its bondage and its sin. This new message directly
Speaker 1: aligned her with the radical Republicans and their liberal social reforms,
Speaker 1: and with President Lincoln's rhetoric about the war. In fact,
Speaker 1: Lincoln spoke of the fighting as a national blood sacrifice
Speaker 1: that might cover the nation's sins of slavery, which, of
Speaker 1: course had been sojourner truth's message for years. In fact,
Speaker 1: few traveling speakers campaigned harder for Lincoln's reelection than she did,
Speaker 1: but other spiritualists did join her at meetings cross the Northeast.
Speaker 1: Once Neddie Colburn was a featured speaker at a campaign rally.
Speaker 1: In her trance, the Spirits offered his gathered supporters the
Speaker 1: kind of certainty that forecasters today are always hoping for.
Speaker 1: The Spirits were certain that Lincoln would win. Later, Sojourner
Speaker 1: traveled to Washington and met with Lincoln, but their conversation,
Speaker 1: as far as we know, was little more than a
Speaker 1: brief exchange of courtesies. Other mediums, though, would get far
Speaker 1: closer to the president, and not always for the best.
Speaker 1: Loun Obscured was created by me Aaron Manky and produced
Speaker 1: by Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Josh Thane in partnership
Speaker 1: with I Heart Radio. Research and writing for this season
Speaker 1: is all the work of my right hand man, Carl Nellis,
Speaker 1: and the brilliant Chad Lawson composed the brand new soundtrack.
Speaker 1: Learn more about our contributing historians, source material and links
Speaker 1: to our other shows over at History Unobscured dot com,
Speaker 1: and until next time, thanks for listening. Unobscured is a
Speaker 1: production of I heart Radio and Aaron Minkey. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts for my heart Radio, visit diheart radio app, Apple podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.