Speaker 1: Welcomed Unobscured, a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky.
Speaker 1: Bell had known him for decades. When they were children
Speaker 1: growing up in the Dutch community along the Hudson River,
Speaker 1: the two had played together, the Dutch Boy and the
Speaker 1: Black Girl, enslaved by his neighbors. Isaac's father had owned
Speaker 1: slaves as well, but as he grew up, he and
Speaker 1: his brother rejected its brutality. Bell had lived through that brutality, though,
Speaker 1: and the scars on her back would be a reminder
Speaker 1: of its evil for the rest of her life. Maybe
Speaker 1: somewhere along the way, Belle had heard that Isaac condemned
Speaker 1: the evil that his neighbors considered normal. Maybe it was
Speaker 1: just their mutual friends who told Bell that Isaac would
Speaker 1: lend her a hand, whatever the case. On July, Bell
Speaker 1: knocked on Isaac's door. When he welcomed her inside. Bell
Speaker 1: stepped in, holding her infant daughter, and then quickly explained
Speaker 1: what had happened. By that time, though the man she
Speaker 1: had escaped was hard on her heels. Soon enough, a
Speaker 1: second fist was pounding on Isaac's door, his voice demanding
Speaker 1: that Bell come back to his home, to his land.
Speaker 1: The slavery, never wanted to shrink from danger or oppression.
Speaker 1: Bell answered back, yes, she was here, but no, she
Speaker 1: would never go back to her old life. Furious, the
Speaker 1: pair continued to spar until Isaac stepped in and paid
Speaker 1: the man off. He marched back out to the road,
Speaker 1: fuming with anger and frustration, his money clenched in a
Speaker 1: tight fist. Isaac turned to Bell and said, there is
Speaker 1: but one master, and he who is your master is
Speaker 1: my master. The pair stood together as they always had,
Speaker 1: nothing more than children of God, following his voice, agonizing
Speaker 1: days were ahead, though Bell stayed as a guest with
Speaker 1: Isaac's family while she decided what to do next. But
Speaker 1: the rest of her children were still held captive, and
Speaker 1: Isaac heard news one day the Bell's five year old son, Peter,
Speaker 1: a spirited, mischievous, inquisitive boy, had disappeared from the farm.
Speaker 1: Asking more questions, they learned that the man's nephew had
Speaker 1: taken the boy to New York City and sold him
Speaker 1: to Alabama. The malice behind the sale was clear. Bell
Speaker 1: charged back to the farm and confronted the family. The
Speaker 1: farmer's wife mocked her and spat venomous slurs. Both at
Speaker 1: her and her boy. But whenever she recalled that moment
Speaker 1: years later, Bell would say, I was sure God would
Speaker 1: help me to get him. I felt as if the
Speaker 1: power of the nation was with me. But she knew
Speaker 1: the nation she imagined, the one that honored her dignity
Speaker 1: and worth, was still struggling to be born. For now.
Speaker 1: The United States was still gripped by what she called
Speaker 1: a national sin that made America Babylon instead of New Israel.
Speaker 1: Here's historian Margaret Washington. This is our second sense of
Speaker 1: what a powerhouse this woman is going to be. The
Speaker 1: first one is when she challenges her owner and flees.
Speaker 1: The second one is when she will not accept the
Speaker 1: fact that her son has been sold. And she basically
Speaker 1: campaigned all over the neighborhood of Ulster County, rilling people
Speaker 1: about this, and especially the Quakers, because it is against
Speaker 1: the law. But what enslaved woman has the wherewithal to
Speaker 1: challenge the slave power? Antislavery? Quakers rallied to her cause
Speaker 1: and helped to pay for a lawyer, But when they
Speaker 1: reached the courtroom, things were already tilted against Bell. The
Speaker 1: district attorney on the case was another nephew of the
Speaker 1: farmer that Bell had escaped. The jury was a collection
Speaker 1: of other wealthy slaveholders and their relatives, and at one
Speaker 1: point the Justice of the Peace even suggested pain Bell
Speaker 1: six hundred dollars to settle trial. But this was her
Speaker 1: son's life on the line. Belle raised Hell, and she
Speaker 1: had allies on her side, Quakers, yes, but also the
Speaker 1: spirits of her dead father and the spirit of God himself.
Speaker 1: She talked with God as she traveled the countryside organizing support.
Speaker 1: By the day of the trial, well healed country squires
Speaker 1: were squaring off on both sides of the case. It
Speaker 1: took a year, but in the end, Bell and her
Speaker 1: son Peter won their reunion under the laws of New York,
Speaker 1: much to the anger of some of the states citizens.
Speaker 1: Bell would later talk about these divisions in New York
Speaker 1: as a spiritual contest like the one between Babylon and Israel,
Speaker 1: a contest for the soul of the nation. But for
Speaker 1: too many women like Bell, that fight was not just
Speaker 1: a metaphor. Her story makes clear what was at stake
Speaker 1: in the battles she would fight for the rest of
Speaker 1: her life, whether the next generation of black Americans would
Speaker 1: continue to be shuffled from bondage to bondage for the
Speaker 1: profit of powerful slaveholders, or whether black families would be
Speaker 1: able to break the system of chattel slavery rebel The
Speaker 1: fight was as personal as it gets, but Bell didn't
Speaker 1: struggle alone. Together with her friends and the anti slavery
Speaker 1: societies of the Northeast, including those in Rochester, she became
Speaker 1: part of something bigger, a movement, a driving force of
Speaker 1: radicalism and revolution, a force that was all too familiar
Speaker 1: to someone else, the spiritualists. This is unobscured. I'm Aaron Manky.
Speaker 1: The call to freedom was spiritual. You'll remember that when
Speaker 1: Bell freed herself, she was following the voice of God,
Speaker 1: and when she took up the fight for her son's freedom,
Speaker 1: she viewed it as a divine mission. In fact, most
Speaker 1: radical reformers in the eighteen hundreds were intensely religious. One
Speaker 1: abolitionist would later say that she left her church more
Speaker 1: because it was comfortable with slavery than because she stopped
Speaker 1: believing any of its teachings. Even Amy and Isaac Post
Speaker 1: criticized their fellow Quakers not because they rejected the religion,
Speaker 1: but because they saw how corrupt some Quakers had become.
Speaker 1: When Bell started living with a family known as the
Speaker 1: Van Wagoners. She joined them from Methodist camp meetings in
Speaker 1: rural New York. She found in the New Church a
Speaker 1: warm antislavery community who welcomed black converts and black preaching.
Speaker 1: And at these meetings she started to have amazing experiences.
Speaker 1: The feeling of Jesus presence, cool and refreshing and as
Speaker 1: she would later say, be mean with the beauty of
Speaker 1: holiness would wash over her. And it was an experience
Speaker 1: that she wanted to share, so she started to preach,
Speaker 1: telling the story of her fight to recover her son.
Speaker 1: When Methodists from New York City visited and heard her
Speaker 1: freedom sermons, they were struck. Here's historian Margaret Washington. Once again,
Speaker 1: They essentially said, your message is too important for you
Speaker 1: to be here. She had a kind of specialness about
Speaker 1: her because of her experiences, because of her capacity to communicate,
Speaker 1: keeping in mind that her English is not very good,
Speaker 1: but she's able to communicate with him even with her
Speaker 1: broken English and her Dutch rogue, in a way so
Speaker 1: that they find her incredibly inspiring. And she becomes a
Speaker 1: Revivalist preacher. And there was plenty of preaching to do
Speaker 1: for fifteen years she taught about the moral reform and
Speaker 1: renewal of the nation. In New York City, she opened
Speaker 1: a Sabbath school in the infamous Five Points neighborhood, known
Speaker 1: for its theaters, saloons, dance halls, and brothels. Among the
Speaker 1: other New York Methodists who are preaching a reformed society, though,
Speaker 1: there was one man who would give Bell her first
Speaker 1: glimpse at seeing her faith and best impulses exploited by others.
Speaker 1: He called himself Matthias, and he was among the Methodists
Speaker 1: who objected when church leaders said that they wanted to
Speaker 1: make the Methodist Church less radical and more respectable. Here's
Speaker 1: Margaret Washington again, by the lady eteen twenties. The Methodists
Speaker 1: wanted to become just like High Church. They wanted to
Speaker 1: become like Presbyterians and Congregationalists. All the things that made
Speaker 1: me tois m a religion of expression, those were left
Speaker 1: by the wayside, and concerned for the poor, those were
Speaker 1: left by the wayside. And so people who were Methodists
Speaker 1: objected to this. So they left the Methodist Church and
Speaker 1: founded these little perfectionist cells, and the Matthias Kingdom grew
Speaker 1: out of one of those Yes, you heard that right.
Speaker 1: The Matthias Kingdom, you see, it started with the Communal
Speaker 1: House downtown, a place where these newly independent Methodists could
Speaker 1: keep caring for the poor and teaching the people that
Speaker 1: the other church leaders wanted to leave behind, like those
Speaker 1: suffering from cholera in New York. Sixth ward not to
Speaker 1: mention the city sex workers or all of the families
Speaker 1: who were simply struggling as they tried to find jobs
Speaker 1: inside the slums. When none of matthias followers were hit
Speaker 1: by cholera, they took it as a sign they were
Speaker 1: on God's path. But working in the Five Points put
Speaker 1: Matthias and Bell in the crosshairs of the law. They
Speaker 1: were too unsavory for the polished up image of the
Speaker 1: Methodist church. They made enemies among church leaders, and that
Speaker 1: left them vulnerable. After their home was raided by the police,
Speaker 1: Matthias was thrown into an asylum. When he was released,
Speaker 1: he decided it was time for his followers to leave
Speaker 1: the city. But that's when things went sideways. Bell found
Speaker 1: herself in a mansion outside the cities. Matthias said that
Speaker 1: his goal, like Aiden Blue, was to form a perfect
Speaker 1: community that he called Zion Hill. It would be a
Speaker 1: place of temperance, clean living, prayer and unity. But when
Speaker 1: Bell arrived, she realized the reality didn't pass the smell test.
Speaker 1: You see, Matthias had made some wealthy friends, and from
Speaker 1: their new center of gravity outside the city, they started
Speaker 1: plotting a run of real estate speculation downtown. They also
Speaker 1: threw temperance to the wind. Lavish meals turned to lavish parties.
Speaker 1: Lavish parties turned into something more. Soon Matthias was teaching
Speaker 1: that God had given him the right to other men's wives,
Speaker 1: and the families in the commune fell into a series
Speaker 1: of backstabbing, recriminations, and eventually even criminal charges. When one
Speaker 1: of the men died. That's when one of the women
Speaker 1: who had been sleeping with Matthias tried to pin the
Speaker 1: murder on Bell. Here's Dr Washington again. So she wanted
Speaker 1: to put the blame on the colored woman. And that
Speaker 1: would make sense to the average white New Yorker, because
Speaker 1: part of the attitudes toward black women was that they
Speaker 1: were loose women. Bell wasn't afraid though. She'd been to
Speaker 1: court before, as we've already seen, and she had won.
Speaker 1: And the one of the ways in which she got
Speaker 1: prepared is she went to an editor and told her
Speaker 1: story of the commune, which I'm in the process of reproducing,
Speaker 1: republishing her story of what happened. And she said, as
Speaker 1: it's a wonderful quote. I've got the truth on my side,
Speaker 1: and I can crush them with the truth. Not only
Speaker 1: did Matthias and his followers fail to pin the death
Speaker 1: on Bell, but she turned the situation around and sued
Speaker 1: them for defamation of character, and she won. Bell didn't
Speaker 1: quite leave the situation unscathed, though. She came out of
Speaker 1: the Kingdom of Matthias with a new disgust for flamboyant
Speaker 1: leaders and for how easily the desire for a loving
Speaker 1: community could be turned to selfish ends. She also had
Speaker 1: a renewed reliance on her own internal compass and the
Speaker 1: voices of spirits who would guide her better than any
Speaker 1: charismatic preacher ever could. Other tragedies soon followed, though. Bell's son, Peter,
Speaker 1: who had grown from that five year old boy into
Speaker 1: a working sailor, died at sea, and the political landscape
Speaker 1: in New York was changing too. Somehow, despite their work,
Speaker 1: pro slavery forces had risen to power Harry in the
Speaker 1: way of all that tragedy, Bell left the city, and
Speaker 1: it was this journey that finally led her into a
Speaker 1: new identity, when the Voice of God confirmed that it
Speaker 1: was her calling for the rest of her life to
Speaker 1: travel and teach and to crush her adversaries with the truth.
Speaker 1: That same voice of God comforted her when a Quaker
Speaker 1: woman mocked her for still carrying the name she'd had
Speaker 1: in slavery. As true as God, as true, the Voice
Speaker 1: had said to her. So she took a new name,
Speaker 1: Sojourner Truth. That she could do. It was, in her
Speaker 1: own words, a name with a handle to it. At
Speaker 1: the age of forty six, she began traveling between Methodist camps, working, cooking,
Speaker 1: and preaching both religion and abolition. Unfortunately, Sojourner Truths run
Speaker 1: in with Matthias wasn't the only time the story of
Speaker 1: Spiritualism saw predators ready to take advantage of a heartfelt faith.
Speaker 1: It seems that as Spiritualism grew, there were more and
Speaker 1: more wolves waiting in the shadows. Victoria was named after
Speaker 1: the Queen. We can't be sure why. At the time,
Speaker 1: it was a tribute that must have seemed even stranger
Speaker 1: than the Davis family naming their boy for a presidential candidate,
Speaker 1: especially for a family that lived in a wood shack
Speaker 1: on the side of a hill in Homer, Ohio. The
Speaker 1: story goes that the kids in the neighborhood like to
Speaker 1: run along the rickety porch so that they could hear
Speaker 1: the boards rattle. But it wasn't just the house that
Speaker 1: barely held together, it was the family too. Victoria's spirit
Speaker 1: ecstasies came from her mother Anna. She had been a
Speaker 1: poor girl who elevated her station in life by working
Speaker 1: as a maid for the governor of Pennsylvania. But the
Speaker 1: governor's son, John, was as venal and entitled as anyone
Speaker 1: born to wealth and power you can imagine, and as
Speaker 1: friends were worse. Friends like Buck Claflin, a law school dropout,
Speaker 1: put his talents and intelligence in service to his predatory instincts.
Speaker 1: When Buck fell in with the governor's son and the
Speaker 1: pair started stealing horses to assemble a private racing stable,
Speaker 1: he was living in the room next door to Anna.
Speaker 1: When Buck and Anna married in eighteen five, she was
Speaker 1: already three months pregnant. Buck and John didn't know which
Speaker 1: of them was the father. During their painful marriage, Anna
Speaker 1: would give birth on average every two years over a
Speaker 1: twenty year period. She followed Buck when he parted ways
Speaker 1: with John, but it wasn't for security. They bounced from
Speaker 1: one Pennsylvania river town to another, while Buck ran taverns
Speaker 1: and crude riverboats. Here's author Mary Gabriel Buck class and
Speaker 1: her father was a notorious thief arsonist. He called himself
Speaker 1: a lawyer, but his main connection to the law was
Speaker 1: breaking it. When two of their daughters died of typhus,
Speaker 1: and his grief hardened into permanent bitterness. Her only solace
Speaker 1: came in the fervor of her the just visions, and
Speaker 1: she wasn't quiet about it either. Here's Mary Gabriel again. Basically,
Speaker 1: the mother would go out and kind of have hallucinations
Speaker 1: and shout to the skies her problems about her husband
Speaker 1: and said what she was doing was speaking to it
Speaker 1: to spirits from another world after dead relatives or her
Speaker 1: dead children. The problem was Buck saw Anna's zeal as
Speaker 1: one more way to play at a game. He convinced
Speaker 1: Anna to start setting up a table as a fortune
Speaker 1: teller at local fairs. When he caught wind of the
Speaker 1: new science of mesmerism. Well, he added that to her
Speaker 1: act as well. By the time Victoria and her younger sister,
Speaker 1: Tennessee were born, Anna had a habit of falling into
Speaker 1: trances and firing invisible energies into her daughters to cure
Speaker 1: them when they were sick. By the time her children
Speaker 1: had survived the vulnerable days of their infancy, Anna was
Speaker 1: convinced that she had the power to heal. But she
Speaker 1: went further. Anna told her daughter Victoria that she had
Speaker 1: other eyes, eyes she could use to see the girl's thoughts,
Speaker 1: and that when she doctored the girls with mesmerism, she
Speaker 1: healed not just their bodies, but sanctified their souls as well.
Speaker 1: Anna might have gained another eye, but somewhere along the way,
Speaker 1: Buck had lost one, almost two on the nose for
Speaker 1: his approach to life. One writer calls Buck a one eyed,
Speaker 1: one man crime spree, and honestly, that's just about right.
Speaker 1: With his wife so focused on healing, Buck joined in
Speaker 1: selling bottles of a life elixir for one dollar each,
Speaker 1: a mix of alcohol, opium, herbs, and molasses, and it
Speaker 1: was popular, but Anna probably took more of it than
Speaker 1: anyone else. It seems that everything Buck tried his hand
Speaker 1: out was a con except maybe for the violence that
Speaker 1: was real enough. He was brutal with his wife and
Speaker 1: his children. Things were so bad in their household that
Speaker 1: one of Victoria's brothers disappeared when he was thirteen to
Speaker 1: escape the family's vicious life. Victoria, though, followed in her
Speaker 1: mother's footsteps. Religious x to sees, lifted her spirit out
Speaker 1: of the violent home. In one of their neighborhoods, Victoria
Speaker 1: found daily refuge with a woman who fed her, washed
Speaker 1: her hair, and taught her to read and write. It
Speaker 1: was a comforting and carrying presence in an otherwise harsh world.
Speaker 1: But when that neighbor died, the sense that only a
Speaker 1: different world could provide an escape from suffering lodged into
Speaker 1: Victoria's heart. She would later say that her neighborhood friend's
Speaker 1: spirit was her first visitation. As Victoria wept over the
Speaker 1: woman's death, the woman's tender hearted ghost took her by
Speaker 1: the hand, lifted her off the ground, and for three
Speaker 1: hours the pair soared over Homer, Ohio. Except to her
Speaker 1: mother Anna, it only looked as if Victoria had collapsed
Speaker 1: on the floor rather than flying. She lay as if
Speaker 1: dead for three hours. That wasn't the last time it
Speaker 1: would happen either. Trances and paralysis became a regular part
Speaker 1: of Victoria's life. Then other remarkable thing started to happen
Speaker 1: around her. Anna reported that once, when Victoria was taking
Speaker 1: care of a sick baby, the girl fell into a
Speaker 1: trance and the baby's fever dropped. Years before spiritualism arrived
Speaker 1: in New York, it seemed that Victoria was already a
Speaker 1: trance healer. When Victoria was ten, Buck ensured the unused
Speaker 1: gristmill on the land near their shack for four thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Then it mysteriously caught fire while he was drinking at
Speaker 1: a nearby pub. When Buck tried to collect the insurance,
Speaker 1: the neighbors random out of town, but they didn't think
Speaker 1: that he worked alone. In fact, they suspected Anna and
Speaker 1: Victoria of helping him set the fire. Buck had been
Speaker 1: the town's postmaster too, and when he was gone, they
Speaker 1: discovered a trunk filled with empty envelopes addressed to homer residence.
Speaker 1: It seems mail theft could be added to his long
Speaker 1: string of offenses. In the winter of eighty eight, when
Speaker 1: the Fox sisters were meeting the ghost of a murdered
Speaker 1: peddler who claimed be buried in their basement. The women
Speaker 1: of Homer, Ohio were organizing a fundraiser to pay for
Speaker 1: Anna's exit. She packed up the kids into a wagon
Speaker 1: and rattled off over the frozen ground. Hard scrabble years
Speaker 1: would follow, but so would greater and greater interest in
Speaker 1: communicating with the spirits. When he finally rejoined his wife
Speaker 1: and children, Buck knew that the spirits were on the move.
Speaker 1: There was never a trusting soul that Buck couldn't exploit,
Speaker 1: and as always, he took out every scheme, impulse, and
Speaker 1: outburst on his daughter's Victoria was rarely strong enough to work, though,
Speaker 1: so Buck began using his youngest daughter, seven year old Tennessee,
Speaker 1: in his schemes. He dressed up a wagon with a
Speaker 1: bright red canopy, blue trim, and a playbill announcing the
Speaker 1: wonder child who would channel spirits. After their first tour,
Speaker 1: he roped in the sickly Victoria. In eighteen forty one,
Speaker 1: he opened rooms at the boarding house in Mount Gilead, Ohio,
Speaker 1: and broadcast that his fourteen year old daughter, Vick Torria,
Speaker 1: was a medium. Just like the Fox sisters. She could
Speaker 1: hold seances, convey spirit messages, and make spirit music. All
Speaker 1: for the low low price of just one dollar per
Speaker 1: visit the opiate of the masses. By now, it's a
Speaker 1: famous put down of religion. In the eighteen fifties, there
Speaker 1: were plenty of folks who thought it was a perfect
Speaker 1: description of spiritualism, and with people like Buck on the scene,
Speaker 1: who could blame them if the new movement was going
Speaker 1: to be dismissed as a con game, though, there would
Speaker 1: need to be some proof. Mediums and their seance visitors
Speaker 1: were certainly witnesses to something, but what exactly. When the
Speaker 1: Fox sisters were sitting at Barnum's Hotel in the summer
Speaker 1: of eighteen fifty, they convinced many of their observers that
Speaker 1: there was no better explanation than the one they gave.
Speaker 1: They were simply well tuned instruments of the spirits. Among
Speaker 1: those converts was Horace Greeley. He was the publisher of
Speaker 1: the New York Tribune and a significant intellectual figure in
Speaker 1: American life. In August of that year, he wrote in
Speaker 1: his newspaper that the girls had been put to every
Speaker 1: reasonable test. They had absorbed keen and critical scrutiny. No
Speaker 1: one could detect any method of fraud as far as
Speaker 1: Horace could tell, whatever the origin of the noises might be,
Speaker 1: he wrote, Leah, Maggie and Kate did not manufacture them.
Speaker 1: An opposing verdict arrived that winter. You see, the Fox
Speaker 1: sisters left New York City in the fall and started
Speaker 1: touring throughout the Northeast. In December, they spent three weeks
Speaker 1: in Buffalo. The following February, three professors from the University
Speaker 1: of Buffalo published a joint letter in the local newspaper.
Speaker 1: Unlike Horace Greeley, they said they had a better explanation
Speaker 1: than spirit contact for the strange rapping sounds. It was,
Speaker 1: they said, simply the popping of knee joints. Leah, managing
Speaker 1: the public face of her younger sisters, immediately challenged the
Speaker 1: professors to of it, which they accepted. The game was on.
Speaker 1: Things didn't exactly go well for the Fox sisters, though.
Speaker 1: The tests left the doctors unconvinced, and they didn't mind
Speaker 1: saying so. But when the professors published their findings, it
Speaker 1: was clear that they were looking down their noses at
Speaker 1: the girls from the start. Their report called Leah, Maggie
Speaker 1: and Kate the Rochester females, and according to some readers.
Speaker 1: Those doctors had been a little too eager to see
Speaker 1: what they wanted in the tests. The report described how
Speaker 1: the three men gripped the girl's legs and help them
Speaker 1: in a static position. During those sittings, there were no
Speaker 1: strange knocking sounds. When the girls were allowed to sit
Speaker 1: comfortably on the sofa with their feet on the floor
Speaker 1: and without the professors squeezing their legs, the tapping sounds resumed.
Speaker 1: The three professors agreed that this was definitive proof that
Speaker 1: their theory was right. The fox sisters, they claimed, had
Speaker 1: created the sounds with popping joints. Here's historian Kathy Gautier ris,
Speaker 1: the existence of fake flowers does not disprove the existence
Speaker 1: of real ones. The idea that because there are occasional cheaters,
Speaker 1: or that an actual medium occasionally cheats, is sort of
Speaker 1: easily incorporated into the world view. So if you thought
Speaker 1: they were ridiculous began with you continued to think they
Speaker 1: were ridiculous after the Buffalo investigations, And if you thought
Speaker 1: they were the real deal, but they are just kids
Speaker 1: put in this awkward position, so sometimes it got slippery,
Speaker 1: then that's what you thought. This wasn't the most damaging test, though,
Speaker 1: no that came in April of the same year, when
Speaker 1: The New York Herald decided to go head to head
Speaker 1: with Horace Greeley's New York Tribune. In an article co
Speaker 1: signed by a doctor and a minister, one of the
Speaker 1: Fox in laws, Mrs Culver gave some damning testimony. She
Speaker 1: said that for two years she had believed the knocking
Speaker 1: sounds were genuine communication from the dead. That is until
Speaker 1: a recent visit when Maggie was away and Kate asked
Speaker 1: for some assistance with a seance. That was when, according
Speaker 1: to Mrs Culver, Kate showed her how it worked. She
Speaker 1: said that Kate told her it was the girls who
Speaker 1: made the knocking sounds by popping their knees and toes
Speaker 1: in the early tests. Mrs Culver said the girls had
Speaker 1: accomplices who knocked on the walls from the room next
Speaker 1: door when necessary. Taken together, these accounts caused to stir
Speaker 1: The first, the three Buffalo professors, came from people who
Speaker 1: leaned on their academic credentials. The second, the New York
Speaker 1: Herald challenge, came with the flavor of an exposed cover up.
Speaker 1: Writing on the social standing of religious and medical authorities
Speaker 1: from both angles. These articles claimed that the Fox Sisters
Speaker 1: the Rochester females were tricksters and the movement that trusted
Speaker 1: them as four Runners and champions was based on a
Speaker 1: simple prank that had grown into a massive fraud. These
Speaker 1: debunking effort were all about what was true, but they
Speaker 1: also carried a whiff of the town meetings in Wisconsin
Speaker 1: when the leaders of the community got together to shut
Speaker 1: down Cora and Mary, who had challenged their authority. On
Speaker 1: one level, debunking was an attempt to hold back the
Speaker 1: opportunistic frauds of the world, predatory hucksters like buck Laughlin,
Speaker 1: But too often it was also clearly an attempt to
Speaker 1: keep society's reigns in the hands of the professor's, doctors
Speaker 1: and ministers who had held them for so long. And
Speaker 1: of course, being convinced of spirit contact wasn't the only
Speaker 1: reason that someone might pay a few pennies to step
Speaker 1: into a concert hall and see young women shuddering entrances
Speaker 1: on stage, or to slide a dollar over to a
Speaker 1: medium's manager or an evening's meeting with her in a
Speaker 1: dimly lit parlor. But spiritual belief was just one of
Speaker 1: the many conflicting reasons for holding hands around a seance table.
Speaker 1: It could also have been a thirst for thrills, for
Speaker 1: a night of entertainment, or a simple curiosity about something bizarre.
Speaker 1: Two amateur sleuths, what could be more tantalizing than a
Speaker 1: chance to go out and do a little fraud detection
Speaker 1: of your own. But don't take these early attacks on
Speaker 1: spiritualism at purely face value. Yes, they were assaults on
Speaker 1: a new and growing movement, but there were something else too,
Speaker 1: Because when it came to turning tables for a profit,
Speaker 1: sometimes even bad press was good business. Cora was headed
Speaker 1: back to Spiritualism's heartland. She had traveled with her father
Speaker 1: all over Wisconsin, speaking in trances and working with her
Speaker 1: German doctor to heal illnesses. But they had received tragic news.
Speaker 1: Their friend Aidan Blue, whose Hope Dale community was their
Speaker 1: original launchpad, had suffered a blow. His son, Augustus had died.
Speaker 1: The boy had only been nineteen, but had also been
Speaker 1: an ardent follower of his father's teaching. He was an
Speaker 1: apt scholar, an enthusiastic reader of European socialist writers, and
Speaker 1: an eloquent speaker. But now he was dead. Under normal
Speaker 1: circumstances that might only have required some mailed gift or
Speaker 1: a message of sympathy. But the times were new, and
Speaker 1: it seemed that Augustus wasn't done preaching just yet. In fact,
Speaker 1: word of his death reached Cora and her father before
Speaker 1: the message that raced over the telegraph lines to the west.
Speaker 1: You see, Augustus had begun to speak through Coras trances.
Speaker 1: From this point forward, he would become one of her
Speaker 1: most common spirit controls, and he had more words of
Speaker 1: hope and healing for his country and for his father.
Speaker 1: So in the summer of eighteen fifty two, Cora and
Speaker 1: her father boarded the very same steamer that had brought
Speaker 1: them to Wisconsin, a canal boat called the Globe, to
Speaker 1: make their way back to New York. By the time
Speaker 1: they reached their destination, they had a new convert to
Speaker 1: Cora's cause. The captain of the boat had suffered from
Speaker 1: an ulcerous fever sore. When Cora sat with him during
Speaker 1: the voyage, his pain had cleared and the ulcers started
Speaker 1: to close. He was just one of thousands who would
Speaker 1: experience something miraculous in her presence. They brought word back
Speaker 1: east from Augustus to his family in Hopedale, but also
Speaker 1: to Cuba, New York, where Cora's father grew up. There
Speaker 1: were no Mrs Culver's and Corus family. Her large circle
Speaker 1: of relatives paved the way for her to speak in school,
Speaker 1: district houses, and town halls across the county. Despite all
Speaker 1: the fake flowers in the garden, a medium was blooming
Speaker 1: in the family, and in the spring of eighteen fifty
Speaker 1: two that meant something. With Augustus Blue as her spirit guide,
Speaker 1: Corus trances started to become more complex. Soon it wasn't
Speaker 1: just Augustus. Like the crowds of spirits that arrived in
Speaker 1: Rochester to speak through Isaac Post, a full roster of
Speaker 1: significant figures appeared in her spirit sessions. She would speak
Speaker 1: on philosophy, she would speak on ethics. One writer remarked
Speaker 1: that ardless of whether her lectures were her own thoughts
Speaker 1: or truly from a spirit control, they would have astonished him,
Speaker 1: coming from the most accomplished orator in the world. But
Speaker 1: things changed for Cora when her father died in eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty four. Her mother and siblings retreated to the Hopetale community,
Speaker 1: but Cora's fame had outgrown its shelter. And that's when
Speaker 1: Cora was invited to join a spiritualist circle in Buffalo,
Speaker 1: where the university inquisition had wrung the Fox Sisters dry
Speaker 1: two years earlier. Just fourteen years old, Cora took up
Speaker 1: the challenge, and it threw her star into the sky.
Speaker 1: When she arrived, there were plenty of friendly spiritualists to
Speaker 1: watch out for her when the interrogations came, and come
Speaker 1: they did. James Mapes, professor of chemistry there, decided that
Speaker 1: he would be the first. He challenged Cora to speak
Speaker 1: for the spirits on geology. The text of the spirit
Speaker 1: lecture is lost to us, but by the end Mapes
Speaker 1: was stunned. I have been all my long life an
Speaker 1: investigator on scientific subjects, he said, but I stand here
Speaker 1: this afternoon dumb before this girl. More friends in high
Speaker 1: places followed. One of them was Samon P. Chase, the
Speaker 1: former senator who had been elected governor of Ohio in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty. A host of other professional skeptics, lawyers, doctors,
Speaker 1: and scientific agnostics were also baffled by her. At least,
Speaker 1: that's the story that comes down to us. Not so
Speaker 1: easily dismissed as a simple trickster. Cora instead directly confronted
Speaker 1: the man's world of the intellectual elite, and somehow she thrived.
Speaker 1: The first Spiritual Society of Buffalo ballooned as a result.
Speaker 1: By the summer of eighteen fifty five. They had to
Speaker 1: rent out a larger hall for their regular meetings. Of course,
Speaker 1: they made Cora their centerpiece. As we've seen though, such
Speaker 1: a bright light also tends to attract moths, which is
Speaker 1: where she met Dr Benjamin F. Hatch. As one historian
Speaker 1: puts it, his m d was um self awarded in
Speaker 1: his fifties. He had been, like Buck Laflin, a pitchman
Speaker 1: for a number of cures that he talked to patients
Speaker 1: under false credentials until he landed on his golden ticket.
Speaker 1: That is Here's historian John Busher, Benjamin Hatch was alternative
Speaker 1: physician in that time. That could mean almost anything. In
Speaker 1: his case, it meant that he was one who was
Speaker 1: very intent on using masmerism as part of his tools.
Speaker 1: He must have projected an air of success. He was
Speaker 1: convincing enough to Cora's friends and then to Cora herself.
Speaker 1: In fact, he convinced the girl to marry him after
Speaker 1: he pulled her out of Buffalo. Benjamin put her name
Speaker 1: in lights. It was as Cora Hatch that she would
Speaker 1: become best known. But the story of Benjamin and Cora
Speaker 1: would become a major scandal in the spiritualist movement over
Speaker 1: the next five years. Here's Kathy Gutierrez once again. She
Speaker 1: was very beautiful, and every single newspaper account of her
Speaker 1: just fulminates over her long blonde curls, and she was
Speaker 1: always decked out in a slightly racy outfit. And as
Speaker 1: for Benjamin, he was, not, to put too fine a
Speaker 1: point on it, a bit of charlatan and something of
Speaker 1: a pimp. There is no need to treat him with
Speaker 1: kid gloves. After only two years of marriage, Cora was
Speaker 1: run ragged, exhausted, sick, and trapped. One night in New Haven, Connecticut,
Speaker 1: a bedraggled Cora burst into a hotel and begged for shelter.
Speaker 1: She had run out into the night to escape a
Speaker 1: beating from Benjamin. She was worried that he was going
Speaker 1: to kill her. One of the guests in the hotel,
Speaker 1: William Britton, heard the noise in the entry hall. William
Speaker 1: was a spiritualist, and he recognized the famous girl. He
Speaker 1: stepped out with a book in his hand and saw
Speaker 1: the tears on her face, the fear in her eyes.
Speaker 1: William covered the cost of her room that night and
Speaker 1: delivered her into the care of her friends. Soon enough,
Speaker 1: Cora and Benjamin launched divorce proceedings that would become a
Speaker 1: snarl of lawsuits, battles for the proceeds of her lectures,
Speaker 1: and venomous public statements that would stretch out for almost
Speaker 1: a decade. And in the midst of that fight, William
Speaker 1: Brittain's assistants became a rare example of something much needed
Speaker 1: in the lives of the mediums who would go public
Speaker 1: with their work kindness. Buck knew how he wanted the
Speaker 1: seances to work, but Victoria wouldn't cooperate. She would fall
Speaker 1: so deeply into her trances that she wouldn't respond to
Speaker 1: his commands, and when she woke back up, she would
Speaker 1: be disoriented. And it was important that she did what
Speaker 1: she was told because Buck was counting on his daughters
Speaker 1: for his drinking and gambling money. So when Victoria started
Speaker 1: getting sicker and sicker, he called on a doctor. He
Speaker 1: called on Kenning Woodhall. He was one of the many
Speaker 1: who were making their way west to find a place
Speaker 1: in the world, but Canning came to Mount Guillet, Ohio
Speaker 1: with the story that bolstered his prospects more than most.
Speaker 1: Here's Mary Gabrielle again. Keening Woodhall was supposedly a medical
Speaker 1: doctor who rolled into Mount Guillet, Ohio, where Victoria was
Speaker 1: living with her family, and set up a practice. Keening
Speaker 1: Woodhall was in his early thirties and Victoria was fifteen,
Speaker 1: and he started wooing her and told her that he
Speaker 1: was related to the mayor of New York City, and
Speaker 1: was a relative of a judge in New York, and
Speaker 1: that he was a practicing doctor, and in other words,
Speaker 1: he was everything Victoria Woodhall wasn't. Maybe it was because
Speaker 1: of these famous connections the Buck decided to ask him
Speaker 1: to treat Victoria, and his first prescriptions seemed promising enough.
Speaker 1: A healthy diet, school lessons instead of seances, and regular
Speaker 1: walks in the fresh air. On one of her walks,
Speaker 1: Victoria ran into Channing in the street. He asked the
Speaker 1: girl to come to him to Mount Gilead's Fourth of
Speaker 1: July picnic. She agreed and sold apples by hand until
Speaker 1: she had stashed enough money away from Bucks Clutches to
Speaker 1: buy clothes for the event. Afterwards, when he was walking
Speaker 1: her back to her family's door, Canning ling down and said,
Speaker 1: tell your father and mother that I want you for
Speaker 1: a wife. Anna saw a way to get her daughter
Speaker 1: out from under Buck's predatory thumb. Buck saw the same thing,
Speaker 1: just from his own point of view. He confronted Canning
Speaker 1: and told him to stay away from Victoria. But despite
Speaker 1: these attempts to keep her under his control, Victoria slipped
Speaker 1: out and married Channing anyway. She had known him for
Speaker 1: only a few months, but an escape was still an escape.
Speaker 1: It turned out to be a terrible one, though sure.
Speaker 1: Canning was less harsh than her father, and he taught
Speaker 1: her some social graces that she had never learned at home,
Speaker 1: but it also gave her a long hard look at
Speaker 1: what was beneath his veneer of respectability. Canning was not,
Speaker 1: as he claimed, related to judges and mayors, but he
Speaker 1: was an alcoholic and a morphine addict. His medical credentials
Speaker 1: matched Benjamin Hatches too, and to put a punctuation mark
Speaker 1: on all the lies, he spent the third night of
Speaker 1: their marriage at the local brothel. Soon enough, Victoria was
Speaker 1: a teenage wife without love or money, She followed Canning
Speaker 1: from tavern to brothel to tavern. Six weeks into their marriage,
Speaker 1: she found a letter in her husband's jacket from his
Speaker 1: previous mistress. By the middle of eighteen fifty four, Victoria
Speaker 1: had left Ohio and the Clafland clan behind her. Winter
Speaker 1: found her living in a Chicago tenement. She was pregnant,
Speaker 1: far from home and trapped in a marriage with a
Speaker 1: counterfeit doctor. She would later write, I soon learned that
Speaker 1: what I had believed of marriage and society was the
Speaker 1: merest sham, a cloak made by devotees to hide the
Speaker 1: realities and to entice the innocent into their snares. The
Speaker 1: deep suffering and dis illusionment of those experiences would take
Speaker 1: roots in Victoria. Over time, they would fuel a fire
Speaker 1: that would burn so hot it would threaten the central
Speaker 1: pillars of the society that allowed men like Matthias but Claflin,
Speaker 1: Benjamin Hatch, and Canning Woodhall to wield so much power
Speaker 1: over the women in their lives. Victoria didn't know it then,
Speaker 1: but there were already a host of people working to
Speaker 1: challenge that society and to bring something new into being.
Speaker 1: And they were nowhere more active than in the town
Speaker 1: of Northampton, Massachusetts. That's where sojourn Or Truth found her
Speaker 1: way into their company. Here's Margaret Washington. Northampton was a
Speaker 1: very special place. First of all, it was founded by
Speaker 1: William Lord Garrison, the head of the American Anti Slavery Society,
Speaker 1: founded by his brother in law. That made it sort
Speaker 1: of an entrepole for anti slavery. The next headquarters after
Speaker 1: Boston was really rot Chester. Northampton was in between. For
Speaker 1: individuals leaving Boston and that area to go into the Midwest.
Speaker 1: To speak, then Northampton was a stopping place for them
Speaker 1: going that way. It was also a stopping place if
Speaker 1: they were going to go north. It was also an
Speaker 1: important underground railroad entrepos All of the reasons that someone
Speaker 1: would want to be in Northampton as sort of the
Speaker 1: core of anti slavery in the East were there for Sojourner.
Speaker 1: The friends at Northampton lived in rustic Plaine farming quarters.
Speaker 1: It was a refreshing contrast to the brawl of life
Speaker 1: in the Five Points or the hypocritical indulgence of Matthias's mansion. Besides,
Speaker 1: Sojourner had finally found a community that prided itself on
Speaker 1: equality of races and the equality of men and women too.
Speaker 1: The air was full of ideas communal living, transcendentalism, abolitionism,
Speaker 1: and of course they were also discussing the ideas of
Speaker 1: Andrew Jackson Davis. When his Harmonial Philosophy reached Northampton. Some
Speaker 1: in the group found his writing verbose, redundant, and derived.
Speaker 1: In their eyes, he was just a poor man's Emerson.
Speaker 1: In light of her history with Matthias, Sojourner was suspicious
Speaker 1: of spiritualism's preference for talking with the spirits of the
Speaker 1: dead overhearing from the voice of God. As her friends
Speaker 1: read Davis's book, Sojourner rejected his approach to Christian teaching.
Speaker 1: He denied the doctrines of the Trinity, original sin, and
Speaker 1: the miraculous conception of Christ. Throughout her life, Sojourner had
Speaker 1: seen enough miracles and enough sin for his new visions
Speaker 1: to leave her unimpressed. Once, in eighteen fifty one, she
Speaker 1: visited Rochester and stayed with Amy and Isaac Post. She
Speaker 1: was there at the right time too. The Posts were
Speaker 1: forming a seance circle, and they invited Sojourner to join them.
Speaker 1: The spirit knocking did come, but it came faint and low.
Speaker 1: There were long gaps in between, nothing to set your
Speaker 1: traveling feet to if you were a woman on a mission.
Speaker 1: In the words of one writer, so Journer listened with
Speaker 1: all her soul until her patients ran out. She leaned
Speaker 1: down to the floor and called out, come, spirit, hop
Speaker 1: up here on the table and see if you can't
Speaker 1: make a louder noise. She clearly knew how to keep
Speaker 1: her head and her sense of humor when she was
Speaker 1: less than convinced, But her own beliefs still shared too
Speaker 1: much in common with Davis's to keep her completely apart
Speaker 1: from her spiritualist friends. In reality, she agreed with much
Speaker 1: of what they believed about the afterlife. After all, she
Speaker 1: had been speaking with the spirit of her father for decades,
Speaker 1: only she didn't need a table to do it. Not
Speaker 1: every medium wanted to change society. Some just wanted to
Speaker 1: float above it, like our Scottish friend Daniel Hume. The
Speaker 1: day he held his seance with Maria Hayden was a
Speaker 1: turning point for the spread of spiritualism to Europe. She
Speaker 1: took the voices of the spirits with her to harvest
Speaker 1: converts in the Old world, but Daniel hadn't quite tapped
Speaker 1: every well in American soil. After Maria's husband William published
Speaker 1: his story of their seance, Daniel never again had a
Speaker 1: spare moment. Every day and every night he had people
Speaker 1: clamoring to see the power of the spirits turned tables
Speaker 1: like Cora. He was flooded with invitations from doctors and scientists,
Speaker 1: from ministers who wanted to put his spirits to the test,
Speaker 1: and from writers who wanted to see for themselves if
Speaker 1: the stories were true. When the voice of a spirit
Speaker 1: helped him find the missing will of a dead man
Speaker 1: in Ohio, Daniel made the story his banner. Finding the
Speaker 1: document allowed the man's niece to inherit the land. It
Speaker 1: was a point of pride for the young medium, and
Speaker 1: no surprise, it put him in the most charming lights imaginable.
Speaker 1: Through his new communication with the spirits, justice could be
Speaker 1: done for the women of America, who were so often
Speaker 1: built of their rights and property and were suffering from
Speaker 1: losses at the hands of powerful men and tilted scales.
Speaker 1: There was a new way to be made whole again
Speaker 1: by Daniel's telling. That new way was him. There were
Speaker 1: plenty who were ready to hear his White Night stories too,
Speaker 1: and as Daniel started to travel around New England, he
Speaker 1: was supported by a string of benefactors who shielded him
Speaker 1: from scrutiny. In eighteen fifty one, when the Fox Sisters
Speaker 1: were being ridiculed by their relatives and the faculty at
Speaker 1: the University of Buffalo, Daniel was befriending former Presbyterian minister
Speaker 1: George Bush, who taught biblical languages and ancient literature at
Speaker 1: New York University. Daniel then hopped over to poet, journalist
Speaker 1: and lawyer William Cullen Bryant. After that it was Harvard
Speaker 1: engineer and economist Vid Aims Wells. Their report on the
Speaker 1: violent energy of the spirits at his seance, with shocks
Speaker 1: that shook the room, cemented their belief that there was
Speaker 1: some powerful intelligence manifesting through him. Of course, he was
Speaker 1: also a man, so no one bothered to restrain his legs.
Speaker 1: Where the height of the scientific community and the intellectual
Speaker 1: sets came down heavily on the Fox Sisters, those same
Speaker 1: forces actually assisted Daniel Humes rise, but as we'll soon
Speaker 1: find out, they weren't the only forces lifting him up.
Speaker 1: That's it for this week's episode. Of Unobscured. Stick around
Speaker 1: after this short sponsor break for a preview of what's
Speaker 1: in store for next week. Next time on Unobscured. A
Speaker 1: group of prominent citizens in turn organized their own spirit
Speaker 1: circle in eighteen fifty six, which included members of the
Speaker 1: Savoy nobility and even the vice president of their parliament,
Speaker 1: But under pressure from the Catholic Church, that group didn't
Speaker 1: last more than two years. In Spain, the response was
Speaker 1: even more dramatic. They're The Bishop of Barcelona called on
Speaker 1: the military to help. He had heard that a Spanish
Speaker 1: bookseller ordered a shipment of spiritualist books from France, and
Speaker 1: they were arriving on a French steamship called the L Monarca.
Speaker 1: They whispered that the captain was a known smuggler who
Speaker 1: had used compartments in the ship to transport government fugitives
Speaker 1: and forbidden literature. From the bishop's point of view, El
Speaker 1: Monarca might as well have shipped the books direct from
Speaker 1: the fires of Hell. When the ship landed, soldiers marched
Speaker 1: aboard and toward apart. They carted the books into the
Speaker 1: city square and threw them into a bonfire. The drifting
Speaker 1: spiral of smoke was all the levitation the bishop wanted,
Speaker 1: but there were some who claimed that, just like the
Speaker 1: mob in Hartford, the book burning had the opposite effect.
Speaker 1: When Barcelona's citizens realized what was happening, a crowd gathered.
Speaker 1: First there were just murmurs, but then someone shouted down
Speaker 1: with the inquisition. Soon the boldest people in the crowd
Speaker 1: rushed toward the flames and snatched burning fragments of paper.
Speaker 1: The declaration of forbidden knowledge ended up drawing curious citizens
Speaker 1: like moths to a flame. An underground network of spiritualist
Speaker 1: societies had formed, and it was spreading. Un Obscured was
Speaker 1: created by me Aaron Manky 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 control remading historians, source material and links to our
Speaker 1: other shows over at history unobscured dot com, and until
Speaker 1: next time, thanks for listening. Unobscured is a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Aaron Minkey. For more podcasts for
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit i heeart radio, app, Apple podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.