Speaker 1: Welcomed, unobscured a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky.
Speaker 1: Summer arrived without a thaw. Elisha and his crew suffered
Speaker 1: the teeth of ice through June, then through July, and
Speaker 1: on into the darkening fall. Winter was coming again, though
Speaker 1: for these lost explorers it had never really left. The
Speaker 1: men were trapped, stranded and alone in a frozen cove
Speaker 1: off the northwest coast of Greenland. In his published writings,
Speaker 1: Elisha seemed like a stalwart voice of reason in the
Speaker 1: midst of a crew who were spooked by shadows. But
Speaker 1: his private diary tells a different tale. In the days
Speaker 1: after Elishah rebuked his men for ghost hunting on the ice,
Speaker 1: he had his own series of visions that left him
Speaker 1: shot waking dreams, he called them, and they were intense.
Speaker 1: One minute, he wrote, he was on the frozen ship.
Speaker 1: Next though, he was transported back to his family home,
Speaker 1: right into the dining room, and the whole family was
Speaker 1: gathered around the table, feasting and laughing. He would have
Speaker 1: held onto that vision as long as he could, but
Speaker 1: it seemed like a trance that was out of his hands.
Speaker 1: Until that is a few days later, when he was
Speaker 1: trying to build a fire, and a strange glow, like
Speaker 1: a spirit light, surrounded his hand in the darkness. He
Speaker 1: wondered if this was the end, if he was preparing
Speaker 1: to cross over into the spirit world. In the end,
Speaker 1: Elisha and his men only survived the unrelenting cold because
Speaker 1: they began to meet Inuits who lived in Greenland's icy heart.
Speaker 1: The local people found the men trapped on their ship
Speaker 1: and started to trade them the supplies of food they
Speaker 1: needed to endure. Some of Elisha's crew quit the expedition
Speaker 1: altogether and their old lives to go live with the
Speaker 1: Inuits permanently instead. Eventually, Alisha gave into the realization that
Speaker 1: clinging to his mission would only leave him on a
Speaker 1: dark threshold to death. Store setting aside his pride, he
Speaker 1: and his remaining men finally abandoned the ship, but they
Speaker 1: were far from clear. Their journey would take them overland
Speaker 1: for more than one thousand miles. Along the way, they
Speaker 1: were helped by more indigenous people. They fed Elisha's men
Speaker 1: and even stepped in to drag the whaling boats that
Speaker 1: Elisha's crew were using as sledges, each filled with heavy supplies.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until August of eighteen fifty five, after twenty
Speaker 1: seven months of travel, that Elisha and his remaining crew
Speaker 1: were picked up by another ship on Greenland's south coast.
Speaker 1: When he sailed back toward the United States, he knew
Speaker 1: he was leaving members of his crew behind him in Greenland,
Speaker 1: both alive and dead. Back in New York, he was
Speaker 1: welcomed as a hero, and the public clamored around him.
Speaker 1: Of course, there was someone else he wanted to see, though,
Speaker 1: and she wanted to see him. But it took two
Speaker 1: days for him to fight through the press to finally
Speaker 1: reach Maggie's side. All the while, rumors about their not
Speaker 1: so secret engagement began to enrage Elisha's wealthy family. Speculation
Speaker 1: about their relationship had been published in the New York papers,
Speaker 1: The Post, The Express, and The Times, among others, and
Speaker 1: none of it made the Cane family happy, so they
Speaker 1: resolved to throw their weight into separating the newly reunited pair.
Speaker 1: Maggie would later write that seeing Elisha again after two
Speaker 1: years was joyous and passionate, and when the Canes leaned
Speaker 1: on Maggie's family, the other Foxes started once again to
Speaker 1: beg Elisha to leave her alone. In response, he retreated
Speaker 1: to Philadelphia, but he did visit New York as often
Speaker 1: as he could. Maggie held on as best as she
Speaker 1: was able. She still didn't rejoin Leah and Kate seances
Speaker 1: and continued to study with Elisha's friends, hoping she might
Speaker 1: yet earn his family's approval. For his part, Elisha feed
Speaker 1: wishly worked on his next book about the recent journey,
Speaker 1: already under contract with the Philadelphia publisher, the time was
Speaker 1: stretching on. Eventually, Elisha was tired of waiting for his
Speaker 1: family's approval. On an afternoon in September of eighteen fifty six,
Speaker 1: when Elisha was visiting Maggie in New York, he sent
Speaker 1: a call throughout the house. He summoned Kate to the
Speaker 1: parlor where he and Maggie had been talking, and then
Speaker 1: he called for Mrs Fox as well. Even the household
Speaker 1: staff were requested. Once they had all crowded into the parlor,
Speaker 1: Elisha lined them up. Then he took Maggie by the
Speaker 1: hand and made a pronouncement. He and Maggie were husband
Speaker 1: and wife, and they declared their love for each other
Speaker 1: right there in front of all of them, And that
Speaker 1: was that Their common law. Marriage was sealed after that night.
Speaker 1: Elisha's letters were filled with endearments to his wife, Calling
Speaker 1: Maggie Mrs Kane, he showered her with diamonds. The two
Speaker 1: still lived apart for the time being, but he had
Speaker 1: survived Arctic ordeal and they wouldn't be stopped from enjoying
Speaker 1: his return. Despite his best efforts, though anxiety started to
Speaker 1: creep in. You see, Elisha wasn't feeling very well. He
Speaker 1: told Maggie not to worry, that he had written her
Speaker 1: into his will just in case. Besides, his aches and
Speaker 1: pains were nothing compared to living apart from her. The
Speaker 1: pain at the center of their marriage may have felt
Speaker 1: cruel and unusual to Elisha and Maggie, There's no doubt
Speaker 1: about that. I think any of us could sympathize. But
Speaker 1: it paled in comparison to the marriages of other mediums
Speaker 1: in the spiritualist community. For them, life was an endless
Speaker 1: parade of suffering. This is unobscured. I'm Aaron Manky. Still
Speaker 1: just sixteen, Victoria found herself in a constant battle to
Speaker 1: keep both her husband and her young son alive. She
Speaker 1: lived in Chicago, but the city never felt like home.
Speaker 1: And her time there had left her with scars. For
Speaker 1: one thing, leaving Pennsylvania hadn't stopped her husband, Canning's carousing.
Speaker 1: In fact, he'd been drunk when Victoria delivered their baby, Byron,
Speaker 1: in a house so cold that one of her biographers
Speaker 1: described the icicles clinging to her bed post while she
Speaker 1: was in labor. In the following days, she nearly died.
Speaker 1: It was only thanks to the quick and caring intervention
Speaker 1: of a neighbor and then a fortunate visit from her
Speaker 1: mother that Victoria made it through alive. Canning barely worked,
Speaker 1: although if we're honest, that was probably for the best.
Speaker 1: What his potential patients really needed was a real doctor.
Speaker 1: But Canning's hard living meant Victoria and the baby were
Speaker 1: often left hungry. Victoria turned back to holding seances, but
Speaker 1: it just wasn't enough not to mention that Chicago was
Speaker 1: still a bit too close to her father Buck. Here's
Speaker 1: author Mary Gabriel. She couldn't continue as a spiritualist and
Speaker 1: make the kind of money she needed to support Canning,
Speaker 1: Byron and her entire family, and in fact, by this
Speaker 1: point she wanted to get rid of her family because
Speaker 1: Buck had had some more run ins with the law,
Speaker 1: and Victoria was old enough now to realize that he
Speaker 1: was a scoundrel and always would be. Victoria knew she
Speaker 1: couldn't go on having like this, so she aimed her
Speaker 1: sites where so many others had before, to the West.
Speaker 1: Anyone as frost bitten and weighed down as Victoria must
Speaker 1: have at least considered the desperate move that she was
Speaker 1: about to make. In a bid to inspire her husband
Speaker 1: to start a new life, she loaded him and their
Speaker 1: son onto a steamship, their destination san Francisco. Now, if
Speaker 1: Chicago had been boisterous and full of vices to trip
Speaker 1: up Canning, well, san Francisco was downright bedlam. After gold
Speaker 1: had been discovered in California, the state's population of white
Speaker 1: settlers had balloon from fifteen thousand to over three hundred thousand,
Speaker 1: all in the span of just seven years, and San
Speaker 1: Francisco was at the heart of that change. In ety eight,
Speaker 1: there were roughly four hundred residents camping in the muddy
Speaker 1: marshes around the Bay. But that was the year that
Speaker 1: President James K. Polk stood before Congress and confirmed the
Speaker 1: rumors he held up fourteen pounds of gold in his
Speaker 1: hand and asked his fellow Americans to become colonists again,
Speaker 1: to go west, to settle down there, and to raid
Speaker 1: the soil for riches. The message was loud, clear, and compelling.
Speaker 1: By the middle of the eighteen fifties, San Francisco's population
Speaker 1: had grown from four hundred to forty thousand. One young
Speaker 1: observer published a book that was critical of the boosterism
Speaker 1: that San Francisco got in the press. In one of
Speaker 1: his most famous passages, he wrote, I have seen pure liquors,
Speaker 1: better cigars, truer pistols, larger bowie knives, and prettier courtesan's
Speaker 1: here than in any other places I have visited. It
Speaker 1: is my unbiased opinion that California can and does furnish
Speaker 1: the best bad things that are obtainable in America. Of course,
Speaker 1: if this account was meant to drive treasure and pleasure
Speaker 1: hunters away from California and had the opposite effect. So
Speaker 1: by the time Victoria arrived with her family in tow,
Speaker 1: the city had already begun to rise. Here's Mary Gabriel again,
Speaker 1: with a deeper look. She broke away and went to
Speaker 1: the one place that promised, possibly the hope that caning
Speaker 1: could in fact resurrect some kind of medical career in
Speaker 1: a in a town like San Francisco, which was barely
Speaker 1: discernible as a town. It was just beginning to have
Speaker 1: cobble stone streets. It was a place where I think
Speaker 1: that the ratio of men was ten to one, ten
Speaker 1: men to one woman. It was lawless. It was the
Speaker 1: main motivation for people. There was self enrichment. That was
Speaker 1: the only thing that drove them. But if Victoria heard
Speaker 1: there was opportunity in San Francisco for women, she wasn't misled.
Speaker 1: Women were opening clothing stores, restaurants, hotels, theaters, brothels, and laundries,
Speaker 1: all catering to the flood of California's new fortune seekers.
Speaker 1: One woman, who didn't have the money to pay her
Speaker 1: fair west, took the journey on credit, opened a hotel
Speaker 1: in San Francisco when she got there, and paid back
Speaker 1: seven hundred dollars to her drivers six weeks later, and
Speaker 1: she was soon making five thousand dollars a week, equal
Speaker 1: to about one fifty dollars today. It was more than
Speaker 1: five hundred times the weekly pay of a woman working
Speaker 1: in a Massachusetts silk mill. San Francisco was a gold
Speaker 1: mine for white settlers in more ways than one. But
Speaker 1: for as canny as Victoria was, she didn't have that
Speaker 1: kind of business acumen. What she did have, though, was beauty, ambition,
Speaker 1: and tenacity, so she did find work. She answered an
Speaker 1: advertisement for a cigar girl in a CD saloon and
Speaker 1: was put to work behind the counter immediately, but she
Speaker 1: didn't keep the position long. Here's Mary Gabriel once again.
Speaker 1: There was one area called the Barbary Coast, which is
Speaker 1: where it's most notorious. Early early claim to fame was
Speaker 1: where the tapless waitress was born, and the story is
Speaker 1: that the proprietor told her she was too fine to
Speaker 1: do that kind of work, which is essentially, no doubt
Speaker 1: probaly some kind of form of prostitution. When Victoria refused
Speaker 1: to play along, the saloon keeper center on her way,
Speaker 1: remarking that she would need to rough it if she
Speaker 1: was going to make a living in his part of town.
Speaker 1: He must have taken some pity on her, though, because
Speaker 1: he sent her off with a twenty dollar gold piece.
Speaker 1: It was enough to give Victoria a moment to breathe
Speaker 1: and rethink her options, finally deciding to see if she
Speaker 1: could snare more income. Using her skill with a needle
Speaker 1: and thread, she started going door to door offering to
Speaker 1: work as a seamstress, and her services were thankfully met
Speaker 1: with some demand. One afternoon, though, one of her clients
Speaker 1: interrupted Victoria's work. She and the woman, an actress named Anna,
Speaker 1: had become friends. During their long afternoons spent fitting and
Speaker 1: fixing stagewear for the evening performance, and Victoria told her
Speaker 1: new friend that she was making only about three dollars
Speaker 1: a week, barely enough to keep the family afloat. Between
Speaker 1: caring for Byron, room and board at the hotel and
Speaker 1: Canning's constant donations to the wishing well at the bottom
Speaker 1: of every pint glass, Victoria was always running short. Anna
Speaker 1: had a better idea. She urged Victoria to become an actress,
Speaker 1: and then practically hauled her onto the stage. Now, maybe
Speaker 1: Victoria was able to draw on her experiences as a medium,
Speaker 1: or perhaps she was just a quick study. Either way,
Speaker 1: she was instantly able to command her parts. Like Emma
Speaker 1: before her. She had moved from the seance table to
Speaker 1: the stage. Back in the spotlight, Victoria thrived, and more
Speaker 1: than that, her first week on stage earned her fifty
Speaker 1: two dollars about fifteen hundred today, and after all she'd
Speaker 1: been through, I can't help but imagine that she sighed
Speaker 1: with relief. Finally there was something new on the horizon. Hope,
Speaker 1: Victoria and others weren't the only ones to travel. Soon enough,
Speaker 1: even the spirits were criss crossing the nation. And it's
Speaker 1: no surprise why. For Americans who wanted to imagine their
Speaker 1: nation as expansive as the land it inhabited, the idea
Speaker 1: of the West was a place to hang their hopes.
Speaker 1: While spiritualism had been growing and spreading, so too was
Speaker 1: the idea that the United States had a manifest destiny
Speaker 1: to take over every inch of land on the continent,
Speaker 1: which brings us back to the writers and historians we
Speaker 1: talked about in the last episode. Men like George Bancroft
Speaker 1: and William Cullen Bryant. Remember bold visionaries like sojourn or
Speaker 1: Truth and Aidan Blue were calling the nation to be remade.
Speaker 1: They knew that America had inner demons to battle before
Speaker 1: it would live up to their ideals. But Bancroft and
Speaker 1: Bryant saw things a different way, and we could add
Speaker 1: other people to that list as well, including a man
Speaker 1: named Walt Whitman. Like William Cullen Bryant, Walt Whitman was
Speaker 1: a poet who had turned his literary power to journalism
Speaker 1: as well. He edited his own newspaper in New York
Speaker 1: called the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. He liked to think that
Speaker 1: he was every bit of visionary as writers like Frederick Douglas.
Speaker 1: But let's take a look at the actual shape of
Speaker 1: his vision. Buckle up, though, because sadly it gets ugly.
Speaker 1: But don't take my word for it. His own words
Speaker 1: were damning enough when it came to taking land women,
Speaker 1: claimed that the energy of European settlers made them a
Speaker 1: superior grade to everyone else on the continent. Again, his words,
Speaker 1: not mine. In his view, the violence that had been
Speaker 1: visited upon the native people's in the land between the
Speaker 1: Rockies and the Pacific was only natural. The strong prey
Speaker 1: on the week, he said, and they also take the gold.
Speaker 1: That was his view. The historian Bancroft felt the same way.
Speaker 1: He wrote that human progress always went westward, Crossing the
Speaker 1: Atlantic was a final great stride. He thought that America
Speaker 1: was the peak of some realization, and that progress had
Speaker 1: reached its highest point in the institutions of the United States. Thus,
Speaker 1: somehow he argued that the extermination of Native people was necessary.
Speaker 1: In fact, he wrote that anyone who did not accept
Speaker 1: white mastery was marked by destiny for destruction. The evil
Speaker 1: in that view was pretty thorough. I know. It was
Speaker 1: also a fairly common among literary and political circles in
Speaker 1: New York at the time, But it also provided an
Speaker 1: excuse for the long history of genocide that had recently
Speaker 1: included Andrew Jackson's Indian removal policies. We can see how
Speaker 1: sojourn or truth would point it out as a troubling
Speaker 1: national sin, with writers like Bancroft and Whitman driving the
Speaker 1: conversation in the eighteen fifties. It should come as no
Speaker 1: surprise that when gold was discovered in California, white settlers
Speaker 1: marched west in unprecedented numbers, weapons in toe. Even the
Speaker 1: water route to California was carved open. Under that kind
Speaker 1: of thinking, there was so much money to be made.
Speaker 1: Attitudes like these and the thinking that motivated them, convinced
Speaker 1: reformers like Aidan Blue that the nation needed reinventing. He
Speaker 1: was preaching against greed, against slavery, and against war when
Speaker 1: the United States invaded Mexico in the eighteen forties, and
Speaker 1: there was no mistaking that these ideas came from the
Speaker 1: spirit world to push back against the powers of this one.
Speaker 1: Here's historian John Busher Blou was by that time giving
Speaker 1: sermons to his followers in a sort of elevated trance state,
Speaker 1: supposedly under the direction of spirits, because there were rappings
Speaker 1: going on all around the room. But after ten years
Speaker 1: of spirit communications, things in Hopedale were still on rocky ground.
Speaker 1: In fact, despite being one of the brightest beacons of
Speaker 1: the reform movement, hope Dale had actually begun to flounder.
Speaker 1: Aidan Blue had hoped that his son Augustus might one
Speaker 1: day take over as the leader of their community. The
Speaker 1: young man's death might not have ended his speeches, after all,
Speaker 1: Cora and others had begun to channel his voice for
Speaker 1: the rest of the community, but it wasn't the same
Speaker 1: as having the young man's energetic presence. Then there was
Speaker 1: the financial side of things. When Cora and her father
Speaker 1: came back from Wisconsin without having established a new outpost
Speaker 1: for their community, its residents fell to fighting over limited resources.
Speaker 1: You see, hope Dale had been established as a joint
Speaker 1: stock company, but by eighteen fifty five, one relatively new
Speaker 1: member of the group had managed to collect three fourths
Speaker 1: of the company. This man's brother had also been a
Speaker 1: long standing follower of Aiden's, and the pair worked to
Speaker 1: pile up the ownership of the community. Then they threatened
Speaker 1: to withdraw and bankrupt the rest of them. That is,
Speaker 1: of course, unless the other leaders gave them total control
Speaker 1: over hope Dale's silk business. With no other choice, Aiden
Speaker 1: and the others folded. Of course, the new kingpin promised
Speaker 1: that all the residents could stay. They could still bring
Speaker 1: in new relatives, go to the community church and teach
Speaker 1: in the local school, and they could keep working in
Speaker 1: his silk mill. Naturally, but the character of the place
Speaker 1: had changed. Once it had been a Christian socialist commune,
Speaker 1: Now though it was nothing more than a company town.
Speaker 1: Aiden had lost his model community. He'd set out to
Speaker 1: remake the face of the nation. Instead, that nation had
Speaker 1: crept in and taken control. Aidan Blues experiment in optimism
Speaker 1: was over. It felt new, but that wasn't entirely true.
Speaker 1: What the spiritualists created in the eighteen fifties was actually
Speaker 1: made from pieces snipped out of older fabric. In her book,
Speaker 1: Kathy Goodierres called spiritualism the frontiers spirit brought to bear
Speaker 1: on the afterlife. That's more true than we have yet explored.
Speaker 1: We talked about Swedenborg and the Shakers in the first
Speaker 1: episode of this season. Then with Sojourn or Truth, we
Speaker 1: saw the influence of African spirituality, even when they didn't
Speaker 1: always put it in these terms. It's clear the spiritualists
Speaker 1: knew how much they were taking from non European spirit beliefs.
Speaker 1: But from the beginning, one thing that was definitely knew
Speaker 1: about American spiritualism was the appearance of Native American ghosts.
Speaker 1: Here's Historian and Browdie spirit guides. Indian spirit guides are
Speaker 1: part of a longer American tradition that dates back long
Speaker 1: before the spiritualist religion emerges in the eighteen forties. There
Speaker 1: is this ability in American culture to espouse positive views
Speaker 1: about Native Americans at the same time that one assumes
Speaker 1: that they are people of the past who are dying
Speaker 1: away and who are appropriately part of the past that
Speaker 1: is part of the land of the spirits. In New York.
Speaker 1: Emma noticed this right away as she left her Broadway
Speaker 1: career to become a medium full time. She observed that
Speaker 1: Native spirits played a prominent role in the seances of
Speaker 1: American spiritualists. She would later write that nearly every medium
Speaker 1: is attended by a Native spirit. She expressed the opinions
Speaker 1: of many American spiritualists when she wrote that those spirits
Speaker 1: were kind and generous. They were guides for the white spiritualists, counseling, protecting,
Speaker 1: and using their knowledge of herbs to suggest rare cures
Speaker 1: for diseases. Her way of talking about Native nations in
Speaker 1: some way echoes what Alisha wrote about the Inuit people
Speaker 1: he met in Greenland. But like most spiritualists, both of
Speaker 1: these writers saw Indigenous Americans as the supporting cast for
Speaker 1: stories of white exploration and white healing. Sadly, Emma's writing
Speaker 1: describes the beliefs and practices of Native nations as bygone relics,
Speaker 1: resources to be mined by white mediums that would otherwise
Speaker 1: be buried in the past, and in doing so, she
Speaker 1: ignored the suffering and the strength of Native nations across
Speaker 1: the United States. In a sense, it showed the ways
Speaker 1: that spiritualism had absorbed, rather than reformed, the American imagination.
Speaker 1: Cora's spirit lectures played apart in spreading this style of revelation.
Speaker 1: In eighteen fifty one, when she was still living in Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: receiving spirit messages from Augustus Belu and healing the sick,
Speaker 1: there was a third spirit that became one of her controls.
Speaker 1: Here's John Busher once again. I think the first spirit
Speaker 1: control that she had was the son of Aiden Blue,
Speaker 1: Aidan Augustus Blue, who died early in his life. She
Speaker 1: also had it developed a series of Indian spirit controls.
Speaker 1: One of them was named Weena. One of them was
Speaker 1: named Shannandoah. There were a bunch of those as well.
Speaker 1: As Cora grew in prominence, Weena continued speaking. Her story
Speaker 1: is part and parcel of American spiritualism's influence, and when
Speaker 1: Cora had her fateful confrontation with J. J. Mapes in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty four, the first spirit control to speak to
Speaker 1: the scientist was Shenandoah. Cora and other spiritualists didn't always
Speaker 1: have relationships with Indigenous people, though, in fact, in many
Speaker 1: of these trances, the native spirit guides sound very much
Speaker 1: like the white fantasies coming from the fiction of the time.
Speaker 1: Here's more on that from Ann Browdie. Spiritualists participate in
Speaker 1: ideas about romantic ideas about Indians that have already begun
Speaker 1: to develop and are developing in American literature. Indian guides
Speaker 1: of mediums often just scribe a place they describe as
Speaker 1: the summer Land, a land of natural beauty and an
Speaker 1: undisturbed natural land where Indians live in peace and harmony
Speaker 1: as to white people, and where there is no conflict
Speaker 1: between the indigenous inhabitants and those who have displaced them.
Speaker 1: So spiritualists participate in the fantasy that Indigenous America and
Speaker 1: a European dominated America can live in harmony and can
Speaker 1: be part of the same spiritual vision. But that's a
Speaker 1: fantasy in some cases, though, where Cora spoke for the
Speaker 1: spirit of someone familiar to an audience member, it didn't
Speaker 1: always go so well. Once in Boston, she gave a
Speaker 1: trans lecture from the spirit of a well known Boston abolitionist,
Speaker 1: and one of the dead Man's friends protested. Afterward. He
Speaker 1: wrote a scathing letter to the newspaper saying that Cora
Speaker 1: wasn't channeling a genuine spirit, but rather than I quote,
Speaker 1: confiscating and misusing the man's name and ideas. He wrote
Speaker 1: that Cora's lecture was nothing but a mash of false quotations,
Speaker 1: words which he never used, and ideas which he never thought.
Speaker 1: If that was how some people responded to Cora's speaking
Speaker 1: in the voice of people they knew, we can only
Speaker 1: imagine what an actual Native American audience might have thought
Speaker 1: of her use of Weenaw and Shenandoah. But we do
Speaker 1: know one thing. To her audience in Boston, she was
Speaker 1: no better than an actress on a stage. Victoria made
Speaker 1: a splash. The members of her San Francisco acting troops
Speaker 1: said that there was a simplicity about her that was
Speaker 1: very convincing, charming, even she somehow managed to convey a
Speaker 1: powerful spirituality from the stage. Indeed, just as Victoria had
Speaker 1: not managed to outrun Canning's thirst, neither had she outrun
Speaker 1: the spirits. One night, when Victoria was playing a part
Speaker 1: in an adaptation of an Alexander Dumas story in which twins,
Speaker 1: although separated at birth, continued to fill each other's pain,
Speaker 1: something about the play broke through Victoria's mind, her soul,
Speaker 1: and her spirit. Later in life, one of her friends
Speaker 1: would write that Victoria was so overcome with emotion that
Speaker 1: night that she plunged into a trance. Her vision was
Speaker 1: open to the spirit world, and she was transported away
Speaker 1: from the stage. When things came into focus around her,
Speaker 1: she saw her younger sister Tennessee, along with her mother.
Speaker 1: They were looking out a window over Ohio's hills, and
Speaker 1: both were calling on Victoria to come home. As the
Speaker 1: story goes, she bolted from the stage, still dressed in
Speaker 1: the pink silk dress and slippers of her costumes. She
Speaker 1: ran through a foggy rain back to her hotel. Then
Speaker 1: she packed up their few belongings, dragged Canning out of
Speaker 1: whatever watering he was in at the time, and bundled
Speaker 1: Byron up for a journey. The very next morning, she
Speaker 1: loaded them onto a steamship and began that long journey
Speaker 1: back to New York. Victoria's trip home from the West
Speaker 1: sounds like the trip Cora took up through the Erie
Speaker 1: Canal a few years before. Under the power of spirits.
Speaker 1: All the way throughout the voyage, Victoria experienced such vivid
Speaker 1: trances that she created a profound excitement among the passengers.
Speaker 1: At least that's what her biographer wrote. But if the
Speaker 1: next phase of her career is any indication. She also
Speaker 1: found herself growing in power as she spoke to the
Speaker 1: passengers and the crew. She said she could tell, just
Speaker 1: by inspiration from the spirits, what their names were, where
Speaker 1: their homes were located, and what their maladies were. Like
Speaker 1: other spiritualists of the age, Victoria had become the healer
Speaker 1: that her husband never was. Soon enough, the steamer returned
Speaker 1: to its homeport in New York, and then Victoria continued
Speaker 1: on to Ohio. Her future in New York City would
Speaker 1: have to wait. When she arrived home and flew into
Speaker 1: her sister's arms, she told her the story of her
Speaker 1: on stage vision. Amazingly, Tennessee was wearing the same striped
Speaker 1: French calico frock that Victoria had seen in the vision.
Speaker 1: Their mother offered a smile, but there was no surprise there.
Speaker 1: On the day that Victoria had been shocked out of
Speaker 1: her performance and back to her family, Anna claims that
Speaker 1: she had commanded Tennessee to send the spirits after Victoria
Speaker 1: and bring her home. Looking back, it seems to have worked.
Speaker 1: Reunited by the work of the spirits, the sisters set
Speaker 1: out on a new chapter, away from her home and family.
Speaker 1: Victoria had found the vision and courage within herself to
Speaker 1: chart her own course rather than be directed by the
Speaker 1: predatory and hairbrained schemes of her father and her husband.
Speaker 1: She was reborn, if her biography is a reliable account,
Speaker 1: From that point on, she was determined to follow only
Speaker 1: what the spirits would direct, and direct they did. The
Speaker 1: two sisters set out for Indianapolis, rented rooms in the
Speaker 1: Bates House Hotel, and then announced to the public that
Speaker 1: they were a pair of mediums. Ready, she later wrote
Speaker 1: to treat patients for the cure of disease far away
Speaker 1: in New York. That was the very thing Maggie Fox
Speaker 1: wished that she could claim to be anxious at Elisha's sickness.
Speaker 1: Maggie felt the joy of their marriage slipping away. It
Speaker 1: vanished even faster for Elisha too, He was constantly wrapped
Speaker 1: up in thoughts of his death. Besides, the two of
Speaker 1: them were still separated, the relationship with each other still
Speaker 1: confined to scraps of paper delivered between cities, and no
Speaker 1: spirit did Maggie's bidding. But they were about to be
Speaker 1: separated by an even greater divide, because Elisha had planned
Speaker 1: a journey to England. He was going to meet with
Speaker 1: the family of his hero, Sir John Franklin, even though
Speaker 1: he had never located the explorers remains. When Elisha left
Speaker 1: on October eleven, eighteen fifty six, just a month after
Speaker 1: they were married, he asked Mary to stand in the
Speaker 1: doorway so that he could see her until the last
Speaker 1: moment his carriage pulled away. Before he had gone out
Speaker 1: of site, though, a carriage lurched to a stop, and
Speaker 1: he rushed back, begging Maggie to tell him whether he
Speaker 1: should go. Sorrowfully, Maggie sent him along. Here's author Nancy Stewart. Finally,
Speaker 1: he's supposed to go to England to be honored by
Speaker 1: the Royal Society and to have reception all Whitehall and
Speaker 1: all kinds of other dignitaries. And he arrives there in
Speaker 1: October eighteen fifty six. And his plan is, now that
Speaker 1: he's married her, he's going to support Maggie with the
Speaker 1: proceeds from his book. And there's a way that they
Speaker 1: have secretly had some intermediary who can get her letters
Speaker 1: to him in England and so on. Because his family
Speaker 1: is still watching very carefully. It's just really heartbreaking. Despite
Speaker 1: his disapproval of Maggie's career as a medium, Elisha had
Speaker 1: come to respect the social role that Maggie had created
Speaker 1: for herself. It broke new territory for women like her.
Speaker 1: Spiritualism put girls and women in front of crowds and
Speaker 1: grasped their attention like never before. Even the theater, with
Speaker 1: its winking implications, had never conferred such authority on a medium.
Speaker 1: In one letter, Elisha wrote that when crowds attended his lectures,
Speaker 1: as he said, to hear the wild stories of the
Speaker 1: frozen North, he started to see the similarities between his
Speaker 1: work and hers. He believed he was giving the people
Speaker 1: something true, thrilling them with stories of new horizons. It
Speaker 1: echoed what Maggie told him about bringing the spirits near.
Speaker 1: It made him wonder when people came to hear lectures
Speaker 1: about his years locked in the ice, the mysterious wraiths,
Speaker 1: and his starvation in frozen harbors. Were they really coming
Speaker 1: to learn science or something deeper. Maybe they were coming
Speaker 1: to him for the same thing they wanted out of Maggie.
Speaker 1: I sometimes feel that we are not so far removed,
Speaker 1: after all, he wrote, I am no better than the rappers.
Speaker 1: I confess that there is not so much difference. When
Speaker 1: he landed in Liverpool, Elisha was flattened for two days
Speaker 1: by a racking cough, but never wanted to shrink from
Speaker 1: a challenge. He summoned the energy to press on to London.
Speaker 1: Sir John Franklin's widow met him and found him to
Speaker 1: be charming. She also urged him to gather his strength
Speaker 1: and continue with public campaigning to please her. He pushed
Speaker 1: himself too far. The daily stream of letters from Maggie
Speaker 1: couldn't hold Elisha back from death, store though perhaps in
Speaker 1: part because so few of them actually made it through
Speaker 1: his family's dragnet. Then a delegation of his friends and
Speaker 1: family reached England and swept Elisha off to Cuba. They
Speaker 1: had hoped the warmer climate might save him, but the
Speaker 1: journey to Havannah turned out to be more deadly than
Speaker 1: his trip to the Arctic. After he suffered a stroke
Speaker 1: at sea, it seemed the only thing Elisha's family had
Speaker 1: truly managed to shield him from was Maggie's loving words.
Speaker 1: One of the last things he ever wrote was utterly
Speaker 1: gut wrenching. It was an urgent plea for his wife
Speaker 1: to write him something, anything, a second stroke sent him
Speaker 1: on his final journey. He passed away on February of
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty seven. His body was taken to New Orleans
Speaker 1: on a steamship, then up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers
Speaker 1: to Cincinnati, whereas Coffin was loaded onto a touring train.
Speaker 1: It made stops in Columbus, Baltimore, and beyond as it
Speaker 1: headed east. An American hero and a son of science,
Speaker 1: his corpse was honored just as his exploits had been.
Speaker 1: Elisha Caine's scientific career was put to rest along with
Speaker 1: his remains, although the tide of American science and conquest
Speaker 1: rolled on to honor his memory and his wishes. A
Speaker 1: grief stricken Maggie was baptized into the Roman Catholic Church
Speaker 1: that August, and she swore that she would never hold
Speaker 1: another seance again. While Maggie Moore and a Lasha's death,
Speaker 1: her sisters Kate and Leah were still fighting for Spiritualism's life.
Speaker 1: America's churches hadn't snuffed out spiritualism at Hartford or anywhere else.
Speaker 1: It's universities hadn't either, but they were determined to try again.
Speaker 1: This was they thought a job for Harvard men. At least,
Speaker 1: that was the attitude around Boston in eighty seven. That's
Speaker 1: when one of the local newspapers, The Courier, decided to
Speaker 1: put some money in the game. They offered to pay
Speaker 1: five hundred dollars to any medium who could present satisfactory manifestations.
Speaker 1: It was a small fortune equal to roughly fifteen thousand
Speaker 1: dollars today, and as a hub of spiritualism, Boston offered
Speaker 1: up many mediums who were willing to be put to
Speaker 1: the test, and chief among them was Dr H. F. Gardner,
Speaker 1: a man who had been a leading light and austin
Speaker 1: spiritualist circles for years. Of course, academics had tried this
Speaker 1: sort of thing before, The University of Buffalo had given
Speaker 1: it their best shot, But Harvard had Louis Agassi, a
Speaker 1: biologist and geologist who was widely respected by a whole
Speaker 1: generation of scientists, to test the spiritualists. He was joined
Speaker 1: by Eban Horsford, Harvard's chair of chemistry, and Benjamin Pierce,
Speaker 1: Harvard's professor of astronomy and mathematics. In the context of
Speaker 1: that era, it was a star studded panel. A Gardner
Speaker 1: worked to bring his own stars to the stage two.
Speaker 1: They gathered at Boston's Albion Building on June eighteen fifty seven.
Speaker 1: Sisters Leah Fish and Kate Fox were Gardner's heavy hitters,
Speaker 1: brought in from out of town, but they had a
Speaker 1: supporting cast of local mediums who were ready to show
Speaker 1: Harvard spiritualism's true power. For that purpose, they built a
Speaker 1: pine platform in the center of a room to serve
Speaker 1: as a sounding board for the spirits, and then they
Speaker 1: put a light pine table on top of it. On
Speaker 1: the first day, with everyone arrayed around the room, Leah
Speaker 1: and Kate climbed onto the platform and kicked the events off.
Speaker 1: The tapping sounds started almost right away. Then it rose
Speaker 1: in power until finally it was hammering on the pine boards.
Speaker 1: It seemed the spirits wanted to make themselves known. They
Speaker 1: were ready for questions. The Harvard group circled around the
Speaker 1: demonstration table. Horseford started to ask a series of questions.
Speaker 1: The tapping started up again, but Leah frowned. The other
Speaker 1: spiritualists in the room started to mutter the replies are confused,
Speaker 1: They said, something wasn't right. At one point, Gardner turned
Speaker 1: towards the Harvard delecation and suggested that maybe the spirits
Speaker 1: were trying to show the stuck up academics that they
Speaker 1: weren't going to be trifled with. They're trying to make
Speaker 1: sport of us, he told them. Somehow, this wasn't very
Speaker 1: convincing to the investigators. The mood soured and they called
Speaker 1: it off for the day. The following day, Horseford entered
Speaker 1: the room carrying a sealed m velope. When the parties
Speaker 1: had arranged themselves to contact the spirits, he slid the
Speaker 1: envelope onto the table ask the spirits, he said, to
Speaker 1: tell me what it says inside, But all of them
Speaker 1: sat frozen. The silence stretched on as the clock ticked.
Speaker 1: Finally it was Gardner who sat up. He said the
Speaker 1: spirits had spoken to him and revealed that there was
Speaker 1: nothing they could do, and outside influence, he said, was
Speaker 1: absorbing and controlling their power. Eventually, one of the Boston
Speaker 1: mediums grabbed a sheet of paper. As their hand began
Speaker 1: to twitch, they put pencil to scrap and started to write.
Speaker 1: After a moment, they leaned back. The Harvard men approached
Speaker 1: for a better look and found four blocks of unintelligible
Speaker 1: script covering the page. No one in the room could
Speaker 1: say what it meant. The mediums started to go in
Speaker 1: and out of the room. Each time, Gardner would say
Speaker 1: that the spirits were speaking outside and would only communicate
Speaker 1: when the unbelievers weren't there. The professors just shook their
Speaker 1: heads and adjourned the second day. On the third day,
Speaker 1: it brought more of the same, nothing from the spirits
Speaker 1: under test conditions. The mediums accused the investigators of disturbing
Speaker 1: the necessary harmony of the energy. The investigators lost their
Speaker 1: patients and called the whole display excessively silly and inexpressibly tedious. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the Boston Couriers reporter scribbled down his thoughts in the corner.
Speaker 1: Gardner stopped over to him and growled in his face,
Speaker 1: accusing him of being the one to disrupt the spirit communication.
Speaker 1: Before they quit altogether, someone in the group suggested they
Speaker 1: try one last test that didn't require knockings on the table,
Speaker 1: So they called the Davenport Brothers forward. Here's historian Emily Clark.
Speaker 1: The famous Davenport brothers, William and Ira had this large
Speaker 1: cabinet in which both of them would be bound, and
Speaker 1: then the audience would hear musical instruments being played after
Speaker 1: they were closed in the cabinets. They're even tests to
Speaker 1: prove that they weren't playing the instruments themselves. Horseford tied
Speaker 1: their wrists himself, and then Professor Pierce climbed into the
Speaker 1: cabinet with them. When it was closed, Pierce gathered all
Speaker 1: the musical instruments and piled them beneath his legs. Two tambourines,
Speaker 1: a fiddle, banjo, and a tin horn. If the spirits
Speaker 1: could still play the instruments, they'd have to do so
Speaker 1: by evading his guard. After sitting in the dark for
Speaker 1: ten minutes. The only thing the cabinet produced with silence.
Speaker 1: As far as the Courier was concerned, the failure of
Speaker 1: the Davenport brothers sealed the matter. The paper and its
Speaker 1: Harvard professors declared spiritualism and I quote, a ridiculous and
Speaker 1: infamous imposture. They exited the test facility with the same
Speaker 1: amount of indifference and contempt they arrived with, denied the
Speaker 1: prize money, and now taking a beating in the press,
Speaker 1: Kate and Leah Rich needed to lick their wounds. Now
Speaker 1: every one of the sisters felt themselves adrift. The heats
Speaker 1: of Maggie's short, secret marriage froze in the creeping chill
Speaker 1: of Alisha's death, and she was also now struggling to
Speaker 1: win a contest for money. You see, Elisha's parents controlled
Speaker 1: his personal effects, including his writings. Maggie tried to claim
Speaker 1: the financial legacy that Elisha had promised her, but his
Speaker 1: family claimed there was no mention of her in his will.
Speaker 1: But then again, they also refused to let Maggie or
Speaker 1: her friends read it. They even tried to pry Elisha's
Speaker 1: love letters out of Maggie's grasp. For the time being,
Speaker 1: she was left with nothing but her own loss, and
Speaker 1: they're on ending hatred. But it wasn't just Maggie whose
Speaker 1: financial future was torn to pieces by disaster. In fact,
Speaker 1: it was most of the nation. By the end of
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty seven, things were on shaky ground around Wall Street.
Speaker 1: Some were saying the railroads driving west had over extended themselves.
Speaker 1: Others thought that political trouble in France and England had
Speaker 1: pulled Overseas money back to Europe. Then one of America's
Speaker 1: largest banks collapsed due to an embezzlement scandal. If things
Speaker 1: were going to hold together, new money needed to come in,
Speaker 1: and wealthy New Yorkers knew just where to find it.
Speaker 1: Gold was on its way from California, one and a
Speaker 1: half million dollars worth of it, in fact, and on
Speaker 1: a single ship, a ship of gold that would calm
Speaker 1: investors and put anxieties to rest. But it never arrived.
Speaker 1: On September twelfth, news reached the city that a hurricane
Speaker 1: had traveled up the Atlantic and caught the ship as
Speaker 1: it steamed along the coast of South Carolina. It foundered
Speaker 1: in the stormy waves and sank two hundred miles from shore.
Speaker 1: One by one, and then all at once. America's banks collapsed.
Speaker 1: Whatever gold they had was pulled out by panicking investors.
Speaker 1: One Wall Street lawyer wrote in his diary, all confidence
Speaker 1: is lost in the solvency of our merchant princes, and
Speaker 1: with good reason, every last one of them has been
Speaker 1: gambling in stocks and railroad bonds. By the middle of October,
Speaker 1: every bank in the country except one had closed its doors,
Speaker 1: and the nation found itself smothered by a deep depression,
Speaker 1: just like the heart of Maggie Fox. 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. Born to a Quaker
Speaker 1: family and a fan of Swedenborg's mysticism, Whitman followed an
Speaker 1: interest in spiritualism throughout his whole life. In fact, the
Speaker 1: older he got, the deeper he went. He even began
Speaker 1: to see himself as a medium, and even wrote that
Speaker 1: poets are divine mediums. Through them come spirits and materials
Speaker 1: to all the people. Whitman also sought out the friendship
Speaker 1: of the Universalist minister in New York, who had worked
Speaker 1: with Andrew Jackson Davis to transcribe his spirit lectures in
Speaker 1: the eighteen forties. Together they attended seances by a spiritualist
Speaker 1: named Thomas Lake Harris, a medium who wrote mystical poetry
Speaker 1: while in his trances. It was just what Whitman liked,
Speaker 1: and when Whitman attended a Cora Hatch spirit lecture, he
Speaker 1: was so inspired by her that he became determined to
Speaker 1: develop his own powers of spirit communication. Put it all together,
Speaker 1: and it adds up to one big mess. We'd like
Speaker 1: to believe that the connection between spiritualism and social causes
Speaker 1: like abolition were simple, but we've seen by now. Rather
Speaker 1: than being a neat and tidy bundle of threads woven
Speaker 1: into a beautiful story, those connections were more of a
Speaker 1: snarl knot the good and the bad all mixed together,
Speaker 1: judging by life in New York at the time, though
Speaker 1: none of that should come as a surprise. Unobscured was
Speaker 1: created by me, Aaron Mankey and produced by Matt Frederick,
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, and Josh Thane in partnership with I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Research and writing for this season is all the work
Speaker 1: of my right hand man Carl Nellis and the brilliant
Speaker 1: Chad Lawson composed the brand new soundtrack. Learn more about
Speaker 1: our contributing historians, source material and links to our other
Speaker 1: shows over at history unobscured dot com, and until next time,
Speaker 1: thanks for listening Unobscured as a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Aaron Minkey. For more podcasts for my Heart
Speaker 1: radiocasit i heeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. Four