WEBVTT - S2 – INTERVIEW 8: Molly McGarry 0:00:01.080 --> 0:00:06.920 Welcomed Unobscured, a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minkey. 0:00:09.039 --> 0:00:12.640 We end our series of interviews today with historian Molly McGary, 0:00:12.760 --> 0:00:16.599 Associate Professor of History at the University of California Riverside. 0:00:16.960 --> 0:00:20.160 Dr McGary has never been shy about sharing her research. 0:00:20.440 --> 0:00:22.920 In fact, she has curated museum exhibits at the New 0:00:23.000 --> 0:00:26.400 York Public Library, the Jewish Museum, and the University of 0:00:26.440 --> 0:00:30.880 California's Museum of Photography. Dr McGarry has been honored by 0:00:30.880 --> 0:00:34.840 the Smithsonian, the American Association of Museums, and the Society 0:00:34.880 --> 0:00:38.560 of American Archivists, among others. So we were delighted when 0:00:38.560 --> 0:00:40.920 she agreed to sit down with researcher Carl Nellis to 0:00:41.000 --> 0:00:44.640 discuss her book, Ghosts of Futures Past and the power 0:00:44.720 --> 0:00:48.760 of Spiritualism in America. I think that you'll find Dr 0:00:48.840 --> 0:00:53.080 McGarry's incredible insight into spiritualism and her consideration for what 0:00:53.120 --> 0:00:56.600 it still means today make this conversation the perfect place 0:00:56.600 --> 0:00:59.880 to wrap up our series. Thanks so much for listening. 0:01:00.720 --> 0:01:04.680 Without further ado, here's our interview with Dr Molly McGarry. 0:01:05.800 --> 0:01:10.120 This is the Unobscured Interview series for season two. I'm 0:01:10.160 --> 0:01:35.039 Aaron Mankey. To be a spiritualist was never one thing. 0:01:35.760 --> 0:01:39.240 There were always many spiritualisms, both in the nineteenth century 0:01:39.240 --> 0:01:42.240 and beyond. So some people came to the science tables 0:01:42.280 --> 0:01:46.960 seeking answers, wanting deeply to commune with lost loved ones. Um. 0:01:46.959 --> 0:01:50.520 Others were curious investigators, looking to see for themselves with 0:01:50.600 --> 0:01:53.920 this new technology could materialize. UM. But what I found 0:01:53.960 --> 0:01:56.520 in what I've been most struck by is that many 0:01:56.600 --> 0:02:00.480 spiritualists took seriously the possibility of channeling of voices of 0:02:00.520 --> 0:02:03.200 the dead as a means of both connecting with the 0:02:03.240 --> 0:02:10.680 past and imagining both worldly and otherworldly futures. Mhm. Let's 0:02:10.720 --> 0:02:13.720 talk a little bit about the world where that kind 0:02:13.760 --> 0:02:16.640 of mindset and that kind of perspective and belief could 0:02:16.639 --> 0:02:24.840 come into being. There are religious threads and technological, scientific, historical. Um. 0:02:24.840 --> 0:02:30.480 Maybe let's start kind of on the political side and say, UM, 0:02:30.639 --> 0:02:33.760 dig into what historians mean when they would talk about 0:02:33.760 --> 0:02:37.560 something like Jacksonian democracy in American life in the decades 0:02:37.600 --> 0:02:41.720 before spiritualism alived arrived on the scene. What do we 0:02:41.760 --> 0:02:44.920 mean by that and what influence did something like a 0:02:44.960 --> 0:02:50.720 democratic spirit or a Jacksonian democracy have on American religion well. 0:02:50.880 --> 0:02:54.520 Jacksonian democracy, of course, refers to a series of political 0:02:54.520 --> 0:03:00.480 movements around the term two term presidency of Andrew Jackson seven, 0:03:01.200 --> 0:03:05.640 and the most significant change affected by Jacksonian democracy was 0:03:05.680 --> 0:03:08.880 the extension of the franchise of the vote to white 0:03:08.880 --> 0:03:11.079 men over the age of twenty one who did not 0:03:11.200 --> 0:03:14.960 own property, so that that was new um. At the 0:03:14.960 --> 0:03:17.239 same time, those same white men who had been granted 0:03:17.240 --> 0:03:20.040 the vote became a key constituency in keeping others from 0:03:20.040 --> 0:03:22.960 getting the vote. So the democracy of Jacksonian is um 0:03:23.080 --> 0:03:26.799 was always severely limited. UM. I should probably also add 0:03:26.800 --> 0:03:30.560 that Jacksonian democracy is also intimately tied with settled colonialism, 0:03:30.600 --> 0:03:34.280 with Indian genocide, empire building, clearing the West for a 0:03:34.360 --> 0:03:39.240 new manifest destiny. That said, there were real changes and 0:03:39.400 --> 0:03:42.880 forms of democratization, but maybe to cast the lens a 0:03:42.920 --> 0:03:46.520 little bit wider um. Spiritualism was born of an era 0:03:46.760 --> 0:03:52.920 of enormous social change and fervent anti authoritian impulses. So 0:03:53.120 --> 0:03:56.600 for many spiritualists, small group communalism took the place of 0:03:56.600 --> 0:04:02.880 institutionalized religion. Alternative healing placed male dominated medicine UM, and 0:04:03.000 --> 0:04:05.680 the voices of priests and ministers were drowned out by 0:04:05.680 --> 0:04:09.520 the spirits themselves. So this is a very different imagination 0:04:09.560 --> 0:04:15.119 and formation of antebellum democracy. And I would also add 0:04:15.160 --> 0:04:18.240 that actually in terms of Democrats versus Republicans, that that 0:04:18.279 --> 0:04:21.480 in many ways that what became the Republican Party UM 0:04:21.680 --> 0:04:24.680 was much more important for sort of fueling the and 0:04:24.880 --> 0:04:28.840 peopling spiritualism itself. So I could say more about that, 0:04:28.880 --> 0:04:31.800 but I think it's it's interesting that spiritualists were actually 0:04:31.839 --> 0:04:35.880 crucial to the Free Democratic Party and then present at 0:04:35.920 --> 0:04:38.839 the eight fifty four birth of the Republican Party, and 0:04:39.040 --> 0:04:43.520 spiritualism actually functions as a kind of political theology which 0:04:43.839 --> 0:04:48.240 provided the third party insurgency that became the Republican Party 0:04:48.520 --> 0:04:53.279 UM with a deeper, open ended theology of free labor 0:04:53.960 --> 0:04:57.960 and a deep faith in the national rebirth the kind 0:04:57.960 --> 0:05:03.560 of millennial Second American revolution him in that context where 0:05:03.600 --> 0:05:07.440 it is a movement that's so um that that's breaking 0:05:07.520 --> 0:05:11.080 down or cutting against so many of these hierarchies. It's 0:05:11.120 --> 0:05:14.480 interesting that early on spirits like Benjamin Franklin and George 0:05:14.480 --> 0:05:19.200 Washington William Penn, white male authority figures statesmen appear to 0:05:19.320 --> 0:05:22.760 various sound circles and translactors. Uh. Sometimes they're addressing just 0:05:22.760 --> 0:05:25.279 one or two people through the Fox Sisters, especially the 0:05:25.320 --> 0:05:28.280 Post Household early on records. You know, Benjamin Franklin showing 0:05:28.320 --> 0:05:31.240 up in Isaac Post has taken down their message. UM. 0:05:31.279 --> 0:05:34.880 But sometimes they're addressing large crowds through a translactor like 0:05:34.960 --> 0:05:36.680 Cora Scott. And you know, I'm just saying, this is 0:05:36.720 --> 0:05:40.200 Thomas Jefferson, and he says, m M, what do these 0:05:40.240 --> 0:05:45.320 kind of appearances tell us about, um, A relationship to 0:05:45.360 --> 0:05:49.120 a particular kind of past, to a history in a 0:05:49.240 --> 0:05:55.520 kind of anti authoritarian collectivist movement. Yeah, that's that's a 0:05:55.560 --> 0:05:59.280 great question. And I think I think what Spirits said 0:05:59.320 --> 0:06:03.279 reveals most about who they said it to. So following 0:06:03.320 --> 0:06:07.160 that logic, seance revelations provide a kind of unique window 0:06:07.279 --> 0:06:09.880 into what at least a segment of nineteent century Americans 0:06:09.960 --> 0:06:11.920 might have wanted to know, both from their own dead 0:06:11.920 --> 0:06:14.760 ancestors as well as from other actors who people to 0:06:14.760 --> 0:06:17.719 America has passed in its history. UM. The ghost of 0:06:17.720 --> 0:06:23.520 George Washington often offered blessings to spirit circles, presumably as 0:06:23.560 --> 0:06:28.640 a founding father, giving national foundational stature to this seemingly 0:06:28.680 --> 0:06:32.479 marginal movement. UM. William Penn. The spirit of William Penn 0:06:32.680 --> 0:06:37.080 often appeared with vaguely Quaker messages of peace and of 0:06:37.160 --> 0:06:41.719 non violence. And Benjamin Franklin was ubiquitous, the ghost of 0:06:41.960 --> 0:06:45.919 Benjamin Franklin, the Great Inventor. Um. As an inventor and 0:06:45.960 --> 0:06:49.479 as a scientist, his spirit is often called up to 0:06:49.640 --> 0:06:54.440 offer scientific impromoter for a new spiritualist media. Literally, um, 0:06:54.480 --> 0:06:58.120 the wraps and knox of mediums echo the spiritualist telegraph 0:06:58.240 --> 0:07:01.320 and spiritualist media, both in terms of mediums, but in 0:07:01.400 --> 0:07:04.760 terms of these other kind of technologies. Um, we're very 0:07:04.839 --> 0:07:10.320 much ameshed in conversations and investigations into electricity and spiritualists 0:07:10.360 --> 0:07:15.120 imagine themselves investigators who who wait Benjamin Franklin would offer 0:07:15.120 --> 0:07:20.200 blessings to I'd love to hear a little bit more 0:07:20.240 --> 0:07:23.040 about technology, because it does seem to be so significant 0:07:23.040 --> 0:07:28.640 for spiritualism. Um, the telegraph, new canals, opening up railroads. Um. 0:07:29.320 --> 0:07:34.720 Thinking about people's relationship to distance and time and communication changing, 0:07:34.760 --> 0:07:37.560 even the explosion of periodicals at the at the moment, 0:07:37.920 --> 0:07:41.520 Can you talk a little more about spiritualism and its 0:07:41.560 --> 0:07:47.040 relation to ship to technology. Yes, Um, so spiritualism this 0:07:47.360 --> 0:07:50.880 popular religious practice conducted through communication with the spirits of 0:07:50.920 --> 0:07:55.560 the dead, was born a century and popularized during a 0:07:55.640 --> 0:08:01.040 time of newly proliferating media technologies, when speaking to the 0:08:01.080 --> 0:08:04.320 dead may have seemed no less strained than communicating across 0:08:04.400 --> 0:08:08.440 cables or capturing the living on film. So spiritualism at 0:08:08.440 --> 0:08:13.360 once transformed ordinary Americans into spiritual mediums that sense of media, 0:08:13.560 --> 0:08:18.160 and transfigured new forms of information and technological media into 0:08:18.200 --> 0:08:22.960 the means of the movement's proliferation. So just to sort 0:08:22.960 --> 0:08:25.400 of set up to set up the dates um, Samuel 0:08:25.400 --> 0:08:28.640 Morris's electrical telegraph was introduced in eighteen forty four, so 0:08:28.680 --> 0:08:33.560 it predated the Fox sisters invention of spirit rapping, but 0:08:33.760 --> 0:08:38.160 their communication, that is spirit rapping, with its telegraphic typing, 0:08:38.320 --> 0:08:42.760 it's encoded sequences and subsequent inscriptions of messages from the dead, 0:08:43.000 --> 0:08:46.440 was almost immediately dubbed the spiritual telegraph, as was one 0:08:46.480 --> 0:08:49.800 of the first spiritualist newspapers, which extended the connection as 0:08:49.800 --> 0:08:55.640 it spread the news in this atmosphere of all these 0:08:55.640 --> 0:09:00.680 new technologies, communication technologies reaching places they hadn't been before. 0:09:01.320 --> 0:09:04.480 There are also other ideas about the human mind and 0:09:04.600 --> 0:09:08.160 the way that we think, uh, what's going on inside 0:09:08.160 --> 0:09:10.199 of our bodies and our relationship of our bodies to 0:09:10.480 --> 0:09:14.640 something like a mind, with mesmerism and phrenology and related 0:09:14.679 --> 0:09:17.920 practices that were kind of horizons of applied science that 0:09:17.960 --> 0:09:21.839 people were lecturing about on the circuit um. How did 0:09:21.960 --> 0:09:24.680 how did these kind of understandings and practices around what 0:09:24.760 --> 0:09:29.719 a human mind was contribute to the foundations for spiritualism. Well, 0:09:29.720 --> 0:09:32.320 there are there were a number of investigators interested in 0:09:32.360 --> 0:09:35.880 these new sciences of head reading and mind readings and 0:09:36.040 --> 0:09:39.439 chronology and mesmerism in the eighteen thirties and eighteen forties, 0:09:40.000 --> 0:09:43.320 and they later became spiritualists, So that's the most obvious connection. 0:09:44.080 --> 0:09:47.920 But like mesmerism and I think phrenology to a lesser extent, 0:09:48.080 --> 0:09:53.520 spiritualism responded to a growing interest in ecstatic experiences, so 0:09:53.640 --> 0:09:58.120 the fits, trances and visions experienced, and religious revivals. Uh. 0:09:58.120 --> 0:10:02.240 And they were interested in using scientific thinking and explanatory 0:10:02.280 --> 0:10:07.680 systems to to understand the relationship between mind and body. Um. 0:10:07.760 --> 0:10:10.800 And as you point out, mesmerism and phrenology were studies 0:10:10.840 --> 0:10:14.079 at the horizons of applied science in the early nineteenth century. 0:10:14.640 --> 0:10:17.760 UM addressing the meanings and connections between the soul, brain, 0:10:17.840 --> 0:10:21.679 and psyche. Uh that these are now considered pseudosciences or 0:10:21.720 --> 0:10:25.360 debunked sciences was not inevitable. It certainly wasn't inevitable at 0:10:25.360 --> 0:10:29.719 the time. And all of these all of these investigations 0:10:29.800 --> 0:10:33.640 into that kind of nexus, that triangle between religion, science 0:10:33.640 --> 0:10:36.880 and magic were working on the same kinds of questions. 0:10:37.480 --> 0:10:40.640 Um they were imbricated and shifting during the nineteenth century 0:10:40.800 --> 0:10:45.400 and arguably to this day. But what roses science and 0:10:45.440 --> 0:10:48.640 what was designated as religion or spurned as magic or 0:10:48.679 --> 0:10:52.800 superstition was always about gate keeping about what counts as 0:10:52.840 --> 0:10:55.959 religion proper, that is, good religion, religion that stays in 0:10:56.040 --> 0:11:01.199 its place, real science, testable in a laboratory, and large 0:11:01.320 --> 0:11:07.559 questions about rationality, about modernity and how you know, seemingly 0:11:08.320 --> 0:11:13.719 marginal practices like spiritualism might fit into this. But spiritualisms 0:11:13.840 --> 0:11:19.880 spiritualists understood themselves as investigators, as popular scientists who attended 0:11:19.880 --> 0:11:26.239 sciences under test conditions. So spiritualism supplied both the language 0:11:26.360 --> 0:11:31.040 and the technology to test the unseen boundary between this 0:11:31.120 --> 0:11:35.080 world and the next. Um. So eventually, as mesmerism and 0:11:35.080 --> 0:11:38.960 phrenology faded over the course of the nineteenth century, spiritualism 0:11:38.960 --> 0:11:44.000 eventually became another site for a sophisticated struggle over some 0:11:44.120 --> 0:11:47.280 of the most vexing issues of the day. UM questions 0:11:47.280 --> 0:11:51.400 about the nature of scientific knowledge and the possibilities and 0:11:51.520 --> 0:11:54.960 I suppose also the limits of the scientific method in 0:11:55.160 --> 0:12:02.839 understanding phenomenon like mediumship. There are magnetizers traveling around putting 0:12:02.840 --> 0:12:08.959 people in chances. Um. There are uh, you know, abolitionist 0:12:09.040 --> 0:12:12.480 movements that are connected operating underground railroad to places like 0:12:12.559 --> 0:12:15.880 Rochester where the telegraph has arrived. And we come to 0:12:15.960 --> 0:12:19.280 your eighty and you do a beautiful job in your 0:12:19.280 --> 0:12:23.320 work of talking about the global context of what was 0:12:23.360 --> 0:12:27.240 going on in eight Can you can you put the 0:12:27.320 --> 0:12:35.760 Fox Sisters in the transatlantic context? For US? Eighty eight 0:12:35.960 --> 0:12:40.800 was a year like few others. Um, maybe was a 0:12:40.880 --> 0:12:43.440 year like this. There are very few years that have 0:12:43.640 --> 0:12:47.800 this almost talismanic quality where the year itself contains so 0:12:47.880 --> 0:12:50.880 much that it's it's hard to even understand the kind 0:12:50.880 --> 0:12:54.800 of revolutionary impulses that are swirling around the globe. So 0:12:54.880 --> 0:12:59.200 in the year eight alone, revolutions ignited across the world 0:12:59.400 --> 0:13:04.360 from Aunts to Brazil, but also from Sicily to the 0:13:04.400 --> 0:13:09.960 Austrian Empire, and revolutions swept the globe during that year. UM. 0:13:10.120 --> 0:13:13.760 Of course, also in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels published 0:13:13.760 --> 0:13:17.120 the Communist Manifesto, opening with the line a specter is 0:13:17.160 --> 0:13:20.600 haunting Europe, the specter of communism. Um. And in that 0:13:20.679 --> 0:13:23.040 same year, two young girls heard communications from a very 0:13:23.080 --> 0:13:26.839 different sort of specter, giving rise to a quite different revolution. 0:13:27.520 --> 0:13:32.080 But the revolutionary impulses that fueled these very different international 0:13:32.160 --> 0:13:37.440 global revolutions were a kind of world spirit. Um. Each 0:13:38.040 --> 0:13:41.520 each of them had a different specific history that um, 0:13:41.559 --> 0:13:44.480 you know, that explains why things broke out in different 0:13:44.480 --> 0:13:47.920 places at different times. But the year itself was one 0:13:48.120 --> 0:13:52.480 that if reading writings from those times, the sense of 0:13:52.520 --> 0:13:55.000 revolutionary possibility was in the air, and it was in 0:13:55.160 --> 0:13:58.959 and it was in the air across the globe. One 0:13:58.960 --> 0:14:02.760 of the people who is expressing that sense of revolutionary 0:14:02.760 --> 0:14:07.440 possibility through a new publication was Frederick Douglas. He and WILLIAMS. 0:14:07.440 --> 0:14:10.680 C Nell moved to Rochester and they launched The North Star, 0:14:11.240 --> 0:14:13.640 the paper that would be connected with with Douglas for 0:14:13.679 --> 0:14:16.840 the rest of his life. UM. How did they imagine 0:14:16.840 --> 0:14:20.680 their new publication in the context of a local community 0:14:20.720 --> 0:14:26.840 but also a global liberation movement Rochester, New York was 0:14:26.880 --> 0:14:30.520 an interesting place in the nineteenth century, so for Frederick 0:14:30.560 --> 0:14:33.560 Douglas and others it became a center of abolitionist organizing. 0:14:33.720 --> 0:14:36.240 It's there where they published the abolitionist newspaper The North 0:14:36.320 --> 0:14:39.880 Star and the celestial north Star, of course, is the 0:14:39.920 --> 0:14:42.920 marker and the night sky, pointing the way towards freedom 0:14:42.960 --> 0:14:46.760 from the south to the north. And not coincidentally, Rochester 0:14:46.880 --> 0:14:49.280 is bordered on its north shore by Lake Ontario, the 0:14:49.360 --> 0:14:52.920 waterway that separates the US from Canada, so flight to 0:14:53.000 --> 0:14:58.520 Canada was possible at that almost visible border. Um Douglas's 0:14:58.560 --> 0:15:02.560 North Star Circle in Rochester was a key center in 0:15:02.680 --> 0:15:06.960 a global movement for freedom, and Douglas and Nell obviously 0:15:07.000 --> 0:15:09.360 launched The North Star in that newspaper is crucially important. 0:15:09.400 --> 0:15:13.040 Douglas Is organizing was important. But there are also figures 0:15:13.080 --> 0:15:15.960 like Harriet Jacobs, who went on to write Incidents in 0:15:15.960 --> 0:15:18.280 the Life of a Slave Girl, who landed in Rochester 0:15:18.360 --> 0:15:23.000 at the same time and not coincidentally um In Harry 0:15:23.040 --> 0:15:26.560 Jacobs moved to Rochester to help her brother John run 0:15:26.600 --> 0:15:29.800 the anti slavery Reading Room, which was located above the 0:15:29.840 --> 0:15:33.680 offices where Frederick Douglas published the North Star, and at 0:15:33.720 --> 0:15:37.040 that time and probably in that place, Jacobs also began 0:15:37.280 --> 0:15:41.680 a lifelong friendship with Amy Post, who was a radical Quaker, 0:15:41.880 --> 0:15:45.120 a long standing abolitionist, and early activists in in the 0:15:45.160 --> 0:15:49.120 cause of women's rights, and not coincidentally, one of the 0:15:49.120 --> 0:15:53.840 earliest proponents of spiritualism. UM And there's whole lots more 0:15:53.880 --> 0:15:58.240 to say about about Amy Post, But as scholars have documented, 0:15:58.360 --> 0:16:01.880 Jacobs told her story to Post in eighty nine, and 0:16:01.920 --> 0:16:04.000 between that time and the time that Incidents in the 0:16:04.080 --> 0:16:06.520 Life of Slave Girl was published in eighteen sixty one, 0:16:07.440 --> 0:16:12.560 it's precisely those circles of abolitionists that make possible speaking 0:16:12.600 --> 0:16:16.560 tours and um and and eventually the publication of that work. 0:16:18.880 --> 0:16:23.080 And it's also it's also the Posts who host the 0:16:23.120 --> 0:16:29.040 Foxes family when they arrived in Rochester and eventually send 0:16:29.080 --> 0:16:33.880 them off to a hamlet called Hydesville. Um who were 0:16:33.920 --> 0:16:36.600 the fox family And what was the relationship like with 0:16:36.640 --> 0:16:41.800 the Posts in in those years, Well, I should say 0:16:41.800 --> 0:16:45.840 a by Post was um Again, She's she's sort of deeply, 0:16:45.960 --> 0:16:49.280 deeply involved in a series of movements. She's also the cousin. 0:16:49.520 --> 0:16:51.440 We're gonna get into the family tree on this She 0:16:51.520 --> 0:16:54.040 was the cousin of a man named Elias Hicks, who 0:16:54.120 --> 0:16:59.400 had organized the Hicksite separation. But the fact was that 0:16:59.440 --> 0:17:03.800 she came from a family of religious radicals who had 0:17:03.840 --> 0:17:07.080 thought that the Quaker establishment had grown to orthodox, too 0:17:07.080 --> 0:17:11.240 comfortable with the material institutions of the world, including slavery. 0:17:11.320 --> 0:17:16.320 So it's um, it is the power of of the 0:17:16.359 --> 0:17:20.359 posts in many ways that both radicalize the movement but 0:17:20.440 --> 0:17:23.680 also provide a home for the Fox sisters. So as 0:17:23.680 --> 0:17:27.679 the story goes, as you know, UM, in March of 0:17:27.680 --> 0:17:32.240 of ety eight, Maggie Fox Margaret Fox usually called Maggie, 0:17:32.600 --> 0:17:35.879 aged thirteen, and Kate, her younger sister, who twelve at 0:17:35.880 --> 0:17:42.240 the time, heard the knox of a spirit of supposedly 0:17:42.240 --> 0:17:45.800 a murdered peddler. Um. They determined that the raps were 0:17:45.840 --> 0:17:48.719 coming from this ghost who communicated by making a knocking 0:17:48.760 --> 0:17:51.959 sound and answer to a yes no question, or by 0:17:52.000 --> 0:17:54.400 wrapping out letters of the alphabet. And again you see 0:17:54.400 --> 0:17:58.040 that you see the connection with Morris's telegraph and the 0:17:58.160 --> 0:18:01.560 particular kind of telegraphic type being in coding sequences and 0:18:01.960 --> 0:18:05.640 subsequent inscriptions from the dead. And and and why um, 0:18:05.760 --> 0:18:08.320 the term the spiritual telegraph would have been used so quickly, 0:18:08.800 --> 0:18:10.840 but anyway, as soon as the raps were heard in 0:18:10.840 --> 0:18:13.080 this little town called Hydesville, which is not far from 0:18:13.200 --> 0:18:17.800 Rochester in central New York, um yet people came to 0:18:17.840 --> 0:18:22.359 hear the knocks and raps from all around, and soon 0:18:22.400 --> 0:18:26.040 they be began receiving messages from the Fox sisters about 0:18:26.040 --> 0:18:28.959 dead relatives, about things that presumably the sisters would have 0:18:28.960 --> 0:18:33.240 no other knowledge of. And the news of this unquiet 0:18:33.320 --> 0:18:36.760 household spread. So the family, that is the Fox family 0:18:36.920 --> 0:18:40.880 DeCamp to Rochester, left Hindsville to to leave the throngs 0:18:40.880 --> 0:18:45.479 and crowds, and went to Rochester to the home of 0:18:45.560 --> 0:18:48.800 the third Fox sister, the older sister of of Maggie 0:18:48.840 --> 0:18:51.920 and Kate, whose name is Leah Fox fish Um later 0:18:52.080 --> 0:18:54.920 under Hill. She was an old family friend of Isaac 0:18:54.960 --> 0:18:57.560 and Amy Post, who later became a medium as well. 0:18:58.080 --> 0:19:02.920 So the Posts took an early, if initially skeptical interest 0:19:03.119 --> 0:19:06.280 in the two local celebrities in the Fox sisters, but 0:19:06.560 --> 0:19:09.560 their interests soon grew as the girls seemed able to 0:19:09.560 --> 0:19:13.600 communicate with recently deceased friends and loved ones, and while 0:19:13.680 --> 0:19:15.440 some of the messages they brought from the dead were 0:19:15.520 --> 0:19:18.800 banal or just wrong, Um, there was enough that was 0:19:18.920 --> 0:19:23.280 right and that that it fit. And it also fit 0:19:23.400 --> 0:19:28.000 in the context in which um, the splits and schisms 0:19:28.040 --> 0:19:32.960 of the Quakers were all of a sudden receiving UM, 0:19:32.960 --> 0:19:35.760 you know, messages from beyond that they were doing the 0:19:35.840 --> 0:19:42.960 good work in the world. And word spreads pretty quickly. 0:19:43.600 --> 0:19:46.840 It brought. It brought seekers to Hydesville first, but then 0:19:46.880 --> 0:19:51.000 also to Rochester, and then out from Rochester the practice 0:19:51.119 --> 0:19:56.800 of table wrappings spreads. UM. Within three years after those rapping, 0:19:56.880 --> 0:20:03.040 spiritualism traveled to England. Um, how is it received when 0:20:03.080 --> 0:20:07.040 it got outside of it's you know, it's the context 0:20:07.080 --> 0:20:10.880 of its origin and in these Quakers and the religious 0:20:10.920 --> 0:20:14.919 impulses in the burned Over district. Once spiritualism spreads outside 0:20:14.960 --> 0:20:20.920 of that cradle, what's the response. Well, in many ways 0:20:20.920 --> 0:20:24.160 you could argue that spiritualism in America predates the eighteen 0:20:24.240 --> 0:20:28.800 forty eight knockings. UM. Belief in spirit communication has long 0:20:29.040 --> 0:20:34.560 even ancient roots across cultures. Regular communication with the spirit 0:20:34.600 --> 0:20:38.560 world features prominently in Native American cosmologies, and Europeans and 0:20:38.680 --> 0:20:42.000 Africans brought forms of spiritism with them to American shores. 0:20:42.359 --> 0:20:45.639 So I don't want to collapse important differences here. Um 0:20:45.720 --> 0:20:50.280 that said, in many ways, you could argue that spiritualism 0:20:50.320 --> 0:20:53.520 in America predates the eighteen forty eight knockings. So when 0:20:53.520 --> 0:20:56.679 spiritualism becomes a global movement, it becomes one for the 0:20:56.720 --> 0:21:00.480 same reasons that it had power in the United States. 0:21:01.119 --> 0:21:04.640 So these religious reform movements, very specific ones that are 0:21:04.680 --> 0:21:08.040 coming out of the burned over district, but others across 0:21:08.040 --> 0:21:12.440 the world differently, but in some ways similarly, are drawing 0:21:12.640 --> 0:21:16.320 on a kind of the twin reservoirs of elite and 0:21:16.560 --> 0:21:22.000 folk discourse that had a sense of a form of spiritualism. 0:21:22.040 --> 0:21:27.720 So in some cases and internationally, it's about Unitarians and universalists, 0:21:27.760 --> 0:21:31.000 about Freemasons and free lovers, about Shakers and Quakers, and 0:21:31.040 --> 0:21:35.600 Mormons and Millerites. But all of that rich soil that 0:21:35.680 --> 0:21:39.440 became the kind of spiritual hotbed that that birtht American 0:21:39.480 --> 0:21:44.320 spiritualism had enough that connected it to distinctive but older 0:21:44.359 --> 0:21:48.840 folk traditions and you know, maybe even just older desires 0:21:48.880 --> 0:21:55.280 for spiritual contact and connection that translated and spread m 0:21:57.560 --> 0:22:01.280 You write that in your book that spiritualism was similar 0:22:01.320 --> 0:22:03.760 to many of the other kind of radical anti clerical 0:22:03.840 --> 0:22:09.280 strains of Protestantism at the time, pardon me, and and 0:22:09.359 --> 0:22:12.120 that it sought to make religious hierarchy, and you said 0:22:12.119 --> 0:22:15.440 this at the beginning to and kind of the control 0:22:15.600 --> 0:22:21.600 of expertise by white men, and they're kind of the 0:22:21.640 --> 0:22:26.600 boundaries around authority obsolete. And it wasn't that that it 0:22:26.720 --> 0:22:32.280 eliminated the idea of revelation through a medium or that 0:22:32.359 --> 0:22:34.840 it was mediated by someone in particular, but it changed 0:22:35.400 --> 0:22:38.040 the rules of who could be the go between. Can 0:22:38.080 --> 0:22:40.600 you talk a little bit about the consequence of these changes, 0:22:40.800 --> 0:22:44.240 maybe in the context of the Seneca False Convention, which 0:22:44.280 --> 0:22:50.000 was also part of that revolutionary spirit and they were 0:22:50.040 --> 0:22:53.359 all connected. I mean, the most obvious and unique thing 0:22:53.400 --> 0:22:56.439 about spiritualism is that women and sometimes young girls like 0:22:56.520 --> 0:22:59.560 the Fox sisters, were placed at the center of spirit circles. 0:23:00.080 --> 0:23:01.840 So at a time in the middle of the nineteenth 0:23:01.880 --> 0:23:06.320 century where the idea of women speaking in public was anathema, 0:23:07.160 --> 0:23:09.920 all of the sudden there were these women and children 0:23:10.160 --> 0:23:13.600 speaking in voices that presumably were not their own, but 0:23:13.920 --> 0:23:16.719 in doing so, they were taking center stage in a 0:23:16.760 --> 0:23:20.520 way that had not been seen before. And actually, and 0:23:20.640 --> 0:23:23.760 Browdie argues that that of the women speaking in public 0:23:23.840 --> 0:23:28.000 at that time of the nineteenth century, spiritualist outnumber all 0:23:28.000 --> 0:23:31.879 other public speakers, so it becomes a way for women 0:23:32.000 --> 0:23:34.719 to find women and girls to find a different voice. 0:23:34.840 --> 0:23:39.800 Although this gets really tricky because their vessels of a sort, 0:23:39.880 --> 0:23:43.200 they're not presumably speaking in their own words, they're they're 0:23:43.320 --> 0:23:47.919 channeling messages from beyond. So what spiritualism allows for is 0:23:48.040 --> 0:23:52.440 a kind of remaking of women, middle class white women, 0:23:52.480 --> 0:23:57.119 I should say, as as pure, as receptive, as passive. 0:23:57.840 --> 0:24:01.480 All of those qualities that seemingly them unfit for public 0:24:01.520 --> 0:24:05.880 life made them perfectly fit as the empty vessels who 0:24:05.960 --> 0:24:09.560 could channel the spirits and the words of others from beyond. 0:24:12.040 --> 0:24:15.120 You write that the roots of spiritualism and radical communities 0:24:15.240 --> 0:24:18.520 and including the women's rights movement at the time, meant 0:24:18.520 --> 0:24:21.760 that spiritualists when they went to England, spiritualists like Maria 0:24:21.800 --> 0:24:26.080 hayden Um had access to some well known reformers and 0:24:26.359 --> 0:24:30.280 and uh utopians like Robert Owen and other European radicals. 0:24:30.840 --> 0:24:34.399 Can you briefly describe the political situation in England uh 0:24:34.520 --> 0:24:36.520 kind of at the time that would have opened space 0:24:36.880 --> 0:24:40.560 for people like Robert Owen and for spiritualists who had 0:24:40.600 --> 0:24:46.200 connections to him again, this goes beyond on the scope 0:24:46.200 --> 0:24:48.480 of my knowledge, and I'm taking this up in the 0:24:48.480 --> 0:24:51.000 morn No. But it's super but it's but it's super fascinating. 0:24:51.040 --> 0:24:53.240 And that that the kind of Anglo American movement, the 0:24:53.280 --> 0:24:56.920 movement back and forth across the Atlantic, is absolutely crucial 0:24:56.960 --> 0:25:00.640 to the to the structuring practice of spiritualism. And it's 0:25:00.680 --> 0:25:03.560 not just that that mediums moved back and forth, or 0:25:03.600 --> 0:25:05.880 that there were speakers who you know, went on circuits 0:25:05.880 --> 0:25:07.919 and traveled. But you know, as you point out, that 0:25:07.960 --> 0:25:10.960 there were there were these connections of of of folks 0:25:11.040 --> 0:25:13.480 and what it meant is that it opened very powerful 0:25:13.520 --> 0:25:16.760 doors very quickly. So what I know about that particular 0:25:16.840 --> 0:25:21.159 case is that medium um was very well connected and 0:25:21.160 --> 0:25:23.719 and you know, someone who can who knows more can 0:25:23.760 --> 0:25:28.199 tell you about it. But that combination of mediumship media, 0:25:28.320 --> 0:25:30.160 which is to say a lot of people who had 0:25:30.960 --> 0:25:34.000 relationships with the press, that was that was that enabled 0:25:34.000 --> 0:25:38.639 to kind of mediation of these um, of these experiences 0:25:38.640 --> 0:25:41.919 and of this movement meant that door swung open in 0:25:41.960 --> 0:25:45.000 ways that they that seems really surprising from our vantage. 0:25:45.440 --> 0:25:51.359 Let's jump to uh spiritualism and the institution of marriage. 0:25:51.400 --> 0:25:53.879 We've been talking about kind of the instant, the anti 0:25:53.960 --> 0:25:59.480 institutional impulse, uh, and its relationship to spiritualism. UH. Marriages 0:25:59.600 --> 0:26:04.600 like Cora Hatch's marriage to Benjamin Hatch or Victoria Woodhall's 0:26:04.640 --> 0:26:07.639 early marriage to Kenning. Um, what did they tell us 0:26:07.680 --> 0:26:11.320 about marriage and gendered power more broadly in American life 0:26:11.800 --> 0:26:17.720 in the eighteen forties, fifties, sixties, in eighteen seventies, where 0:26:17.880 --> 0:26:23.600 people like Victoria would Hall really challenge the well, I 0:26:23.680 --> 0:26:26.680 get a Victoria Woodhall. But to begin with the question 0:26:26.680 --> 0:26:29.720 that you asked in the eighteen forties and fifties, it's 0:26:29.840 --> 0:26:34.280 probably worth saying that coverture, which is the legal doctrine 0:26:34.600 --> 0:26:39.560 in which the married woman is literally covered politically, socially, 0:26:39.560 --> 0:26:43.520 and economically by her husband, meant that marriage was an 0:26:43.520 --> 0:26:48.320 institution which women gave up their power figuratively and literally. Uh. 0:26:48.400 --> 0:26:51.800 So spiritual is become among the group of folks, and 0:26:51.840 --> 0:26:56.359 really starting in the eighteen fifties, they allie um in 0:26:56.440 --> 0:27:00.719 some ways with also free love advocates. And I should say, um, 0:27:00.760 --> 0:27:04.880 from our vandam point, free love sounds very sixties or seventies, UM, 0:27:05.040 --> 0:27:07.320 And it's you know, it sounds like a kind of 0:27:07.640 --> 0:27:12.760 untrammeled sexual license, which it really wasn't um. Free love advocates, 0:27:12.880 --> 0:27:16.879