WEBVTT - S2 – 4: The Way, The Truth, The Lie 0:00:01.080 --> 0:00:04.320 Welcomed Unobscured, a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky. 0:00:11.160 --> 0:00:14.720 Bell had known him for decades. When they were children 0:00:14.840 --> 0:00:17.599 growing up in the Dutch community along the Hudson River, 0:00:17.840 --> 0:00:20.639 the two had played together, the Dutch Boy and the 0:00:20.680 --> 0:00:24.680 Black Girl, enslaved by his neighbors. Isaac's father had owned 0:00:24.680 --> 0:00:27.080 slaves as well, but as he grew up, he and 0:00:27.120 --> 0:00:31.680 his brother rejected its brutality. Bell had lived through that brutality, though, 0:00:31.920 --> 0:00:34.400 and the scars on her back would be a reminder 0:00:34.440 --> 0:00:38.720 of its evil for the rest of her life. Maybe 0:00:38.840 --> 0:00:41.760 somewhere along the way, Belle had heard that Isaac condemned 0:00:41.760 --> 0:00:45.239 the evil that his neighbors considered normal. Maybe it was 0:00:45.360 --> 0:00:48.240 just their mutual friends who told Bell that Isaac would 0:00:48.320 --> 0:00:52.800 lend her a hand, whatever the case. On July, Bell 0:00:53.040 --> 0:00:57.760 knocked on Isaac's door. When he welcomed her inside. Bell 0:00:57.840 --> 0:01:01.360 stepped in, holding her infant daughter, and then quickly explained 0:01:01.400 --> 0:01:04.040 what had happened. By that time, though the man she 0:01:04.120 --> 0:01:08.360 had escaped was hard on her heels. Soon enough, a 0:01:08.440 --> 0:01:12.560 second fist was pounding on Isaac's door, his voice demanding 0:01:12.640 --> 0:01:15.759 that Bell come back to his home, to his land. 0:01:16.319 --> 0:01:20.360 The slavery, never wanted to shrink from danger or oppression. 0:01:20.920 --> 0:01:24.720 Bell answered back, yes, she was here, but no, she 0:01:24.760 --> 0:01:28.800 would never go back to her old life. Furious, the 0:01:28.840 --> 0:01:32.000 pair continued to spar until Isaac stepped in and paid 0:01:32.040 --> 0:01:34.600 the man off. He marched back out to the road, 0:01:34.680 --> 0:01:38.399 fuming with anger and frustration, his money clenched in a 0:01:38.440 --> 0:01:42.280 tight fist. Isaac turned to Bell and said, there is 0:01:42.360 --> 0:01:45.520 but one master, and he who is your master is 0:01:45.600 --> 0:01:49.760 my master. The pair stood together as they always had, 0:01:49.800 --> 0:01:55.480 nothing more than children of God, following his voice, agonizing 0:01:55.560 --> 0:01:58.320 days were ahead, though Bell stayed as a guest with 0:01:58.360 --> 0:02:01.400 Isaac's family while she decided what to do next. But 0:02:01.440 --> 0:02:04.360 the rest of her children were still held captive, and 0:02:04.400 --> 0:02:07.520 Isaac heard news one day the Bell's five year old son, Peter, 0:02:07.920 --> 0:02:12.960 a spirited, mischievous, inquisitive boy, had disappeared from the farm. 0:02:13.000 --> 0:02:16.079 Asking more questions, they learned that the man's nephew had 0:02:16.120 --> 0:02:18.919 taken the boy to New York City and sold him 0:02:18.960 --> 0:02:23.880 to Alabama. The malice behind the sale was clear. Bell 0:02:24.080 --> 0:02:27.080 charged back to the farm and confronted the family. The 0:02:27.120 --> 0:02:30.760 farmer's wife mocked her and spat venomous slurs. Both at 0:02:30.800 --> 0:02:33.800 her and her boy. But whenever she recalled that moment 0:02:33.919 --> 0:02:37.240 years later, Bell would say, I was sure God would 0:02:37.240 --> 0:02:39.600 help me to get him. I felt as if the 0:02:39.639 --> 0:02:43.359 power of the nation was with me. But she knew 0:02:43.400 --> 0:02:46.600 the nation she imagined, the one that honored her dignity 0:02:46.639 --> 0:02:50.280 and worth, was still struggling to be born. For now. 0:02:50.360 --> 0:02:52.720 The United States was still gripped by what she called 0:02:53.000 --> 0:02:57.200 a national sin that made America Babylon instead of New Israel. 0:02:57.800 --> 0:03:03.919 Here's historian Margaret Washington. This is our second sense of 0:03:04.440 --> 0:03:06.760 what a powerhouse this woman is going to be. The 0:03:06.800 --> 0:03:09.680 first one is when she challenges her owner and flees. 0:03:10.080 --> 0:03:14.760 The second one is when she will not accept the 0:03:14.880 --> 0:03:18.760 fact that her son has been sold. And she basically 0:03:18.919 --> 0:03:24.040 campaigned all over the neighborhood of Ulster County, rilling people 0:03:24.120 --> 0:03:27.560 about this, and especially the Quakers, because it is against 0:03:27.560 --> 0:03:32.359 the law. But what enslaved woman has the wherewithal to 0:03:32.639 --> 0:03:39.400 challenge the slave power? Antislavery? Quakers rallied to her cause 0:03:39.640 --> 0:03:41.840 and helped to pay for a lawyer, But when they 0:03:41.920 --> 0:03:45.600 reached the courtroom, things were already tilted against Bell. The 0:03:45.640 --> 0:03:48.360 district attorney on the case was another nephew of the 0:03:48.400 --> 0:03:51.720 farmer that Bell had escaped. The jury was a collection 0:03:51.760 --> 0:03:55.400 of other wealthy slaveholders and their relatives, and at one 0:03:55.400 --> 0:03:58.240 point the Justice of the Peace even suggested pain Bell 0:03:58.400 --> 0:04:01.800 six hundred dollars to settle trial. But this was her 0:04:01.840 --> 0:04:05.760 son's life on the line. Belle raised Hell, and she 0:04:05.800 --> 0:04:09.240 had allies on her side, Quakers, yes, but also the 0:04:09.280 --> 0:04:12.520 spirits of her dead father and the spirit of God himself. 0:04:13.040 --> 0:04:16.680 She talked with God as she traveled the countryside organizing support. 0:04:17.240 --> 0:04:20.120 By the day of the trial, well healed country squires 0:04:20.400 --> 0:04:24.120 were squaring off on both sides of the case. It 0:04:24.200 --> 0:04:26.160 took a year, but in the end, Bell and her 0:04:26.200 --> 0:04:29.080 son Peter won their reunion under the laws of New York, 0:04:29.520 --> 0:04:31.919 much to the anger of some of the states citizens. 0:04:33.640 --> 0:04:36.080 Bell would later talk about these divisions in New York 0:04:36.120 --> 0:04:40.160 as a spiritual contest like the one between Babylon and Israel, 0:04:40.600 --> 0:04:43.359 a contest for the soul of the nation. But for 0:04:43.400 --> 0:04:46.360 too many women like Bell, that fight was not just 0:04:46.520 --> 0:04:50.719 a metaphor. Her story makes clear what was at stake 0:04:50.800 --> 0:04:52.720 in the battles she would fight for the rest of 0:04:52.720 --> 0:04:56.240 her life, whether the next generation of black Americans would 0:04:56.240 --> 0:04:59.200 continue to be shuffled from bondage to bondage for the 0:04:59.240 --> 0:05:03.080 profit of powerful slaveholders, or whether black families would be 0:05:03.120 --> 0:05:07.479 able to break the system of chattel slavery rebel The 0:05:07.560 --> 0:05:12.880 fight was as personal as it gets, but Bell didn't 0:05:12.920 --> 0:05:17.240 struggle alone. Together with her friends and the anti slavery 0:05:17.360 --> 0:05:21.679 societies of the Northeast, including those in Rochester, she became 0:05:21.760 --> 0:05:26.320 part of something bigger, a movement, a driving force of 0:05:26.440 --> 0:05:32.279 radicalism and revolution, a force that was all too familiar 0:05:32.360 --> 0:05:42.360 to someone else, the spiritualists. This is unobscured. I'm Aaron Manky. 0:06:18.040 --> 0:06:21.680 The call to freedom was spiritual. You'll remember that when 0:06:21.720 --> 0:06:24.520 Bell freed herself, she was following the voice of God, 0:06:24.920 --> 0:06:27.440 and when she took up the fight for her son's freedom, 0:06:27.560 --> 0:06:30.320 she viewed it as a divine mission. In fact, most 0:06:30.440 --> 0:06:35.599 radical reformers in the eighteen hundreds were intensely religious. One 0:06:35.640 --> 0:06:38.479 abolitionist would later say that she left her church more 0:06:38.560 --> 0:06:41.520 because it was comfortable with slavery than because she stopped 0:06:41.520 --> 0:06:45.080 believing any of its teachings. Even Amy and Isaac Post 0:06:45.160 --> 0:06:48.920 criticized their fellow Quakers not because they rejected the religion, 0:06:49.200 --> 0:06:52.040 but because they saw how corrupt some Quakers had become. 0:06:53.480 --> 0:06:55.800 When Bell started living with a family known as the 0:06:55.880 --> 0:06:58.880 Van Wagoners. She joined them from Methodist camp meetings in 0:06:58.960 --> 0:07:01.640 rural New York. She found in the New Church a 0:07:01.680 --> 0:07:06.600 warm antislavery community who welcomed black converts and black preaching. 0:07:07.080 --> 0:07:11.000 And at these meetings she started to have amazing experiences. 0:07:11.960 --> 0:07:15.840 The feeling of Jesus presence, cool and refreshing and as 0:07:15.880 --> 0:07:18.400 she would later say, be mean with the beauty of 0:07:18.400 --> 0:07:21.880 holiness would wash over her. And it was an experience 0:07:21.920 --> 0:07:24.800 that she wanted to share, so she started to preach, 0:07:25.040 --> 0:07:27.600 telling the story of her fight to recover her son. 0:07:28.120 --> 0:07:30.920 When Methodists from New York City visited and heard her 0:07:30.960 --> 0:07:35.760 freedom sermons, they were struck. Here's historian Margaret Washington. Once again, 0:07:36.520 --> 0:07:40.640 They essentially said, your message is too important for you 0:07:40.720 --> 0:07:44.200 to be here. She had a kind of specialness about 0:07:44.240 --> 0:07:49.600 her because of her experiences, because of her capacity to communicate, 0:07:50.080 --> 0:07:53.400 keeping in mind that her English is not very good, 0:07:53.800 --> 0:07:58.160 but she's able to communicate with him even with her 0:07:58.200 --> 0:08:01.680 broken English and her Dutch rogue, in a way so 0:08:01.760 --> 0:08:05.720 that they find her incredibly inspiring. And she becomes a 0:08:05.720 --> 0:08:09.840 Revivalist preacher. And there was plenty of preaching to do 0:08:10.520 --> 0:08:13.840 for fifteen years she taught about the moral reform and 0:08:13.880 --> 0:08:17.040 renewal of the nation. In New York City, she opened 0:08:17.040 --> 0:08:20.320 a Sabbath school in the infamous Five Points neighborhood, known 0:08:20.320 --> 0:08:24.840 for its theaters, saloons, dance halls, and brothels. Among the 0:08:24.840 --> 0:08:28.040 other New York Methodists who are preaching a reformed society, though, 0:08:28.280 --> 0:08:30.600 there was one man who would give Bell her first 0:08:30.640 --> 0:08:35.080 glimpse at seeing her faith and best impulses exploited by others. 0:08:35.480 --> 0:08:38.960 He called himself Matthias, and he was among the Methodists 0:08:39.000 --> 0:08:41.880 who objected when church leaders said that they wanted to 0:08:41.880 --> 0:08:45.920 make the Methodist Church less radical and more respectable. Here's 0:08:45.960 --> 0:08:51.440 Margaret Washington again, by the lady eteen twenties. The Methodists 0:08:51.520 --> 0:08:55.440 wanted to become just like High Church. They wanted to 0:08:55.480 --> 0:08:59.640 become like Presbyterians and Congregationalists. All the things that made 0:08:59.800 --> 0:09:04.240 me tois m a religion of expression, those were left 0:09:04.280 --> 0:09:08.280 by the wayside, and concerned for the poor, those were 0:09:08.360 --> 0:09:12.040 left by the wayside. And so people who were Methodists 0:09:12.240 --> 0:09:15.720 objected to this. So they left the Methodist Church and 0:09:15.840 --> 0:09:22.920 founded these little perfectionist cells, and the Matthias Kingdom grew 0:09:22.920 --> 0:09:27.040 out of one of those Yes, you heard that right. 0:09:27.320 --> 0:09:30.760 The Matthias Kingdom, you see, it started with the Communal 0:09:30.760 --> 0:09:34.480 House downtown, a place where these newly independent Methodists could 0:09:34.559 --> 0:09:37.120 keep caring for the poor and teaching the people that 0:09:37.200 --> 0:09:40.040 the other church leaders wanted to leave behind, like those 0:09:40.080 --> 0:09:43.520 suffering from cholera in New York. Sixth ward not to 0:09:43.600 --> 0:09:46.520 mention the city sex workers or all of the families 0:09:46.520 --> 0:09:49.120 who were simply struggling as they tried to find jobs 0:09:49.160 --> 0:09:53.960 inside the slums. When none of matthias followers were hit 0:09:54.040 --> 0:09:56.240 by cholera, they took it as a sign they were 0:09:56.240 --> 0:09:59.280 on God's path. But working in the Five Points put 0:09:59.320 --> 0:10:02.360 Matthias and Bell in the crosshairs of the law. They 0:10:02.400 --> 0:10:05.480 were too unsavory for the polished up image of the 0:10:05.520 --> 0:10:09.520 Methodist church. They made enemies among church leaders, and that 0:10:09.600 --> 0:10:12.880 left them vulnerable. After their home was raided by the police, 0:10:13.080 --> 0:10:16.160 Matthias was thrown into an asylum. When he was released, 0:10:16.400 --> 0:10:18.760 he decided it was time for his followers to leave 0:10:18.800 --> 0:10:24.560 the city. But that's when things went sideways. Bell found 0:10:24.600 --> 0:10:28.080 herself in a mansion outside the cities. Matthias said that 0:10:28.200 --> 0:10:31.240 his goal, like Aiden Blue, was to form a perfect 0:10:31.280 --> 0:10:34.360 community that he called Zion Hill. It would be a 0:10:34.360 --> 0:10:38.400 place of temperance, clean living, prayer and unity. But when 0:10:38.440 --> 0:10:42.199 Bell arrived, she realized the reality didn't pass the smell test. 0:10:43.520 --> 0:10:46.360 You see, Matthias had made some wealthy friends, and from 0:10:46.400 --> 0:10:49.360 their new center of gravity outside the city, they started 0:10:49.400 --> 0:10:53.320 plotting a run of real estate speculation downtown. They also 0:10:53.440 --> 0:10:57.400 threw temperance to the wind. Lavish meals turned to lavish parties. 0:10:57.800 --> 0:11:03.320 Lavish parties turned into something more. Soon Matthias was teaching 0:11:03.320 --> 0:11:05.840 that God had given him the right to other men's wives, 0:11:06.160 --> 0:11:08.720 and the families in the commune fell into a series 0:11:08.760 --> 0:11:13.719 of backstabbing, recriminations, and eventually even criminal charges. When one 0:11:13.760 --> 0:11:16.320 of the men died. That's when one of the women 0:11:16.360 --> 0:11:19.160 who had been sleeping with Matthias tried to pin the 0:11:19.240 --> 0:11:24.280 murder on Bell. Here's Dr Washington again. So she wanted 0:11:24.280 --> 0:11:27.320 to put the blame on the colored woman. And that 0:11:27.400 --> 0:11:30.720 would make sense to the average white New Yorker, because 0:11:30.800 --> 0:11:35.800 part of the attitudes toward black women was that they 0:11:35.800 --> 0:11:41.480 were loose women. Bell wasn't afraid though. She'd been to 0:11:41.559 --> 0:11:44.720 court before, as we've already seen, and she had won. 0:11:46.440 --> 0:11:48.040 And the one of the ways in which she got 0:11:48.080 --> 0:11:51.760 prepared is she went to an editor and told her 0:11:51.800 --> 0:11:56.160 story of the commune, which I'm in the process of reproducing, 0:11:56.280 --> 0:12:00.400 republishing her story of what happened. And she said, as 0:12:00.160 --> 0:12:03.640 it's a wonderful quote. I've got the truth on my side, 0:12:04.080 --> 0:12:08.720 and I can crush them with the truth. Not only 0:12:08.760 --> 0:12:11.360 did Matthias and his followers fail to pin the death 0:12:11.440 --> 0:12:14.600 on Bell, but she turned the situation around and sued 0:12:14.640 --> 0:12:19.640 them for defamation of character, and she won. Bell didn't 0:12:19.720 --> 0:12:22.840 quite leave the situation unscathed, though. She came out of 0:12:22.840 --> 0:12:26.360 the Kingdom of Matthias with a new disgust for flamboyant 0:12:26.440 --> 0:12:29.280 leaders and for how easily the desire for a loving 0:12:29.360 --> 0:12:32.920 community could be turned to selfish ends. She also had 0:12:32.920 --> 0:12:35.960 a renewed reliance on her own internal compass and the 0:12:36.040 --> 0:12:38.760 voices of spirits who would guide her better than any 0:12:38.880 --> 0:12:45.199 charismatic preacher ever could. Other tragedies soon followed, though. Bell's son, Peter, 0:12:45.400 --> 0:12:47.640 who had grown from that five year old boy into 0:12:47.720 --> 0:12:51.640 a working sailor, died at sea, and the political landscape 0:12:51.640 --> 0:12:55.200 in New York was changing too. Somehow, despite their work, 0:12:55.600 --> 0:12:59.560 pro slavery forces had risen to power Harry in the 0:12:59.559 --> 0:13:02.840 way of all that tragedy, Bell left the city, and 0:13:02.920 --> 0:13:05.400 it was this journey that finally led her into a 0:13:05.440 --> 0:13:08.440 new identity, when the Voice of God confirmed that it 0:13:08.520 --> 0:13:11.120 was her calling for the rest of her life to 0:13:11.240 --> 0:13:14.880 travel and teach and to crush her adversaries with the truth. 0:13:16.160 --> 0:13:19.160 That same voice of God comforted her when a Quaker 0:13:19.160 --> 0:13:21.840 woman mocked her for still carrying the name she'd had 0:13:21.840 --> 0:13:25.280 in slavery. As true as God, as true, the Voice 0:13:25.320 --> 0:13:27.679 had said to her. So she took a new name, 0:13:28.440 --> 0:13:32.640 Sojourner Truth. That she could do. It was, in her 0:13:32.679 --> 0:13:36.160 own words, a name with a handle to it. At 0:13:36.200 --> 0:13:41.160 the age of forty six, she began traveling between Methodist camps, working, cooking, 0:13:41.400 --> 0:13:46.920 and preaching both religion and abolition. Unfortunately, Sojourner Truths run 0:13:46.920 --> 0:13:49.800 in with Matthias wasn't the only time the story of 0:13:49.840 --> 0:13:54.360 Spiritualism saw predators ready to take advantage of a heartfelt faith. 0:13:55.400 --> 0:13:58.960 It seems that as Spiritualism grew, there were more and 0:13:59.040 --> 0:14:10.800 more wolves waiting in the shadows. Victoria was named after 0:14:10.840 --> 0:14:14.560 the Queen. We can't be sure why. At the time, 0:14:14.600 --> 0:14:17.120 it was a tribute that must have seemed even stranger 0:14:17.160 --> 0:14:20.840 than the Davis family naming their boy for a presidential candidate, 0:14:21.240 --> 0:14:23.560 especially for a family that lived in a wood shack 0:14:23.640 --> 0:14:27.240 on the side of a hill in Homer, Ohio. The 0:14:27.280 --> 0:14:29.520 story goes that the kids in the neighborhood like to 0:14:29.600 --> 0:14:31.920 run along the rickety porch so that they could hear 0:14:31.960 --> 0:14:34.800 the boards rattle. But it wasn't just the house that 0:14:34.880 --> 0:14:40.280 barely held together, it was the family too. Victoria's spirit 0:14:40.360 --> 0:14:43.960 ecstasies came from her mother Anna. She had been a 0:14:43.960 --> 0:14:46.680 poor girl who elevated her station in life by working 0:14:46.720 --> 0:14:49.520 as a maid for the governor of Pennsylvania. But the 0:14:49.560 --> 0:14:53.160 governor's son, John, was as venal and entitled as anyone 0:14:53.240 --> 0:14:55.760 born to wealth and power you can imagine, and as 0:14:55.840 --> 0:14:59.840 friends were worse. Friends like Buck Claflin, a law school dropout, 0:15:00.120 --> 0:15:04.440 put his talents and intelligence in service to his predatory instincts. 0:15:05.240 --> 0:15:07.520 When Buck fell in with the governor's son and the 0:15:07.560 --> 0:15:11.160 pair started stealing horses to assemble a private racing stable, 0:15:11.360 --> 0:15:13.360 he was living in the room next door to Anna. 0:15:13.760 --> 0:15:17.040 When Buck and Anna married in eighteen five, she was 0:15:17.160 --> 0:15:21.120 already three months pregnant. Buck and John didn't know which 0:15:21.120 --> 0:15:25.240 of them was the father. During their painful marriage, Anna 0:15:25.280 --> 0:15:28.200 would give birth on average every two years over a 0:15:28.240 --> 0:15:31.560 twenty year period. She followed Buck when he parted ways 0:15:31.600 --> 0:15:35.080 with John, but it wasn't for security. They bounced from 0:15:35.080 --> 0:15:38.680 one Pennsylvania river town to another, while Buck ran taverns 0:15:38.720 --> 0:15:43.720 and crude riverboats. Here's author Mary Gabriel Buck class and 0:15:43.800 --> 0:15:48.520 her father was a notorious thief arsonist. He called himself 0:15:48.560 --> 0:15:50.840 a lawyer, but his main connection to the law was 0:15:50.880 --> 0:15:54.800 breaking it. When two of their daughters died of typhus, 0:15:54.800 --> 0:15:58.560 and his grief hardened into permanent bitterness. Her only solace 0:15:58.640 --> 0:16:01.080 came in the fervor of her the just visions, and 0:16:01.320 --> 0:16:06.960 she wasn't quiet about it either. Here's Mary Gabriel again. Basically, 0:16:07.000 --> 0:16:09.560 the mother would go out and kind of have hallucinations 0:16:09.680 --> 0:16:12.600 and shout to the skies her problems about her husband 0:16:12.840 --> 0:16:14.880 and said what she was doing was speaking to it 0:16:15.000 --> 0:16:18.000 to spirits from another world after dead relatives or her 0:16:18.040 --> 0:16:22.640 dead children. The problem was Buck saw Anna's zeal as 0:16:22.720 --> 0:16:25.440 one more way to play at a game. He convinced 0:16:25.440 --> 0:16:27.840 Anna to start setting up a table as a fortune 0:16:27.840 --> 0:16:30.680 teller at local fairs. When he caught wind of the 0:16:30.680 --> 0:16:33.840 new science of mesmerism. Well, he added that to her 0:16:33.880 --> 0:16:37.080 act as well. By the time Victoria and her younger sister, 0:16:37.240 --> 0:16:40.200 Tennessee were born, Anna had a habit of falling into 0:16:40.240 --> 0:16:43.760 trances and firing invisible energies into her daughters to cure 0:16:43.800 --> 0:16:46.040 them when they were sick. By the time her children 0:16:46.080 --> 0:16:49.160 had survived the vulnerable days of their infancy, Anna was 0:16:49.240 --> 0:16:53.280 convinced that she had the power to heal. But she 0:16:53.360 --> 0:16:56.520 went further. Anna told her daughter Victoria that she had 0:16:56.600 --> 0:16:59.720 other eyes, eyes she could use to see the girl's thoughts, 0:17:00.160 --> 0:17:03.160 and that when she doctored the girls with mesmerism, she 0:17:03.280 --> 0:17:06.920 healed not just their bodies, but sanctified their souls as well. 0:17:08.840 --> 0:17:11.800 Anna might have gained another eye, but somewhere along the way, 0:17:11.840 --> 0:17:14.639 Buck had lost one, almost two on the nose for 0:17:14.800 --> 0:17:18.200 his approach to life. One writer calls Buck a one eyed, 0:17:18.280 --> 0:17:21.880 one man crime spree, and honestly, that's just about right. 0:17:22.359 --> 0:17:25.240 With his wife so focused on healing, Buck joined in 0:17:25.520 --> 0:17:28.840 selling bottles of a life elixir for one dollar each, 0:17:29.160 --> 0:17:32.840 a mix of alcohol, opium, herbs, and molasses, and it 0:17:32.960 --> 0:17:35.680 was popular, but Anna probably took more of it than 0:17:35.760 --> 0:17:39.960 anyone else. It seems that everything Buck tried his hand 0:17:39.960 --> 0:17:42.880 out was a con except maybe for the violence that 0:17:43.000 --> 0:17:46.160 was real enough. He was brutal with his wife and 0:17:46.240 --> 0:17:49.359 his children. Things were so bad in their household that 0:17:49.400 --> 0:17:52.600 one of Victoria's brothers disappeared when he was thirteen to 0:17:52.840 --> 0:17:57.680 escape the family's vicious life. Victoria, though, followed in her 0:17:57.680 --> 0:18:01.640 mother's footsteps. Religious x to sees, lifted her spirit out 0:18:01.680 --> 0:18:04.720 of the violent home. In one of their neighborhoods, Victoria 0:18:04.760 --> 0:18:07.600 found daily refuge with a woman who fed her, washed 0:18:07.600 --> 0:18:10.199 her hair, and taught her to read and write. It 0:18:10.280 --> 0:18:13.800 was a comforting and carrying presence in an otherwise harsh world. 0:18:14.359 --> 0:18:17.520 But when that neighbor died, the sense that only a 0:18:17.560 --> 0:18:21.600 different world could provide an escape from suffering lodged into 0:18:21.680 --> 0:18:26.040 Victoria's heart. She would later say that her neighborhood friend's 0:18:26.080 --> 0:18:30.240 spirit was her first visitation. As Victoria wept over the 0:18:30.280 --> 0:18:33.560 woman's death, the woman's tender hearted ghost took her by 0:18:33.600 --> 0:18:36.520 the hand, lifted her off the ground, and for three 0:18:36.560 --> 0:18:40.600 hours the pair soared over Homer, Ohio. Except to her 0:18:40.640 --> 0:18:43.680 mother Anna, it only looked as if Victoria had collapsed 0:18:43.680 --> 0:18:47.480 on the floor rather than flying. She lay as if 0:18:47.520 --> 0:18:52.119 dead for three hours. That wasn't the last time it 0:18:52.160 --> 0:18:56.560 would happen either. Trances and paralysis became a regular part 0:18:56.560 --> 0:19:00.920 of Victoria's life. Then other remarkable thing started to happen 0:19:00.960 --> 0:19:04.439 around her. Anna reported that once, when Victoria was taking 0:19:04.440 --> 0:19:06.840 care of a sick baby, the girl fell into a 0:19:06.880 --> 0:19:11.520 trance and the baby's fever dropped. Years before spiritualism arrived 0:19:11.520 --> 0:19:14.560 in New York, it seemed that Victoria was already a 0:19:14.600 --> 0:19:20.080 trance healer. When Victoria was ten, Buck ensured the unused 0:19:20.080 --> 0:19:23.640 gristmill on the land near their shack for four thousand dollars. 0:19:24.119 --> 0:19:27.560 Then it mysteriously caught fire while he was drinking at 0:19:27.560 --> 0:19:30.840 a nearby pub. When Buck tried to collect the insurance, 0:19:31.119 --> 0:19:34.240 the neighbors random out of town, but they didn't think 0:19:34.320 --> 0:19:38.480 that he worked alone. In fact, they suspected Anna and 0:19:38.560 --> 0:19:41.760 Victoria of helping him set the fire. Buck had been 0:19:41.800 --> 0:19:44.600 the town's postmaster too, and when he was gone, they 0:19:44.640 --> 0:19:48.440 discovered a trunk filled with empty envelopes addressed to homer residence. 0:19:48.840 --> 0:19:51.240 It seems mail theft could be added to his long 0:19:51.320 --> 0:19:56.680 string of offenses. In the winter of eighty eight, when 0:19:56.680 --> 0:19:59.040 the Fox sisters were meeting the ghost of a murdered 0:19:59.040 --> 0:20:01.800 peddler who claimed be buried in their basement. The women 0:20:01.800 --> 0:20:04.760 of Homer, Ohio were organizing a fundraiser to pay for 0:20:04.800 --> 0:20:07.800 Anna's exit. She packed up the kids into a wagon 0:20:08.040 --> 0:20:11.639 and rattled off over the frozen ground. Hard scrabble years 0:20:11.640 --> 0:20:14.800 would follow, but so would greater and greater interest in 0:20:14.880 --> 0:20:19.440 communicating with the spirits. When he finally rejoined his wife 0:20:19.440 --> 0:20:22.160 and children, Buck knew that the spirits were on the move. 0:20:22.600 --> 0:20:25.720 There was never a trusting soul that Buck couldn't exploit, 0:20:26.119 --> 0:20:29.280 and as always, he took out every scheme, impulse, and 0:20:29.440 --> 0:20:35.359 outburst on his daughter's Victoria was rarely strong enough to work, though, 0:20:35.440 --> 0:20:38.879 so Buck began using his youngest daughter, seven year old Tennessee, 0:20:39.280 --> 0:20:41.840 in his schemes. He dressed up a wagon with a 0:20:41.880 --> 0:20:45.480 bright red canopy, blue trim, and a playbill announcing the 0:20:45.560 --> 0:20:49.400 wonder child who would channel spirits. After their first tour, 0:20:49.840 --> 0:20:54.000 he roped in the sickly Victoria. In eighteen forty one, 0:20:54.040 --> 0:20:57.119 he opened rooms at the boarding house in Mount Gilead, Ohio, 0:20:57.480 --> 0:21:00.440 and broadcast that his fourteen year old daughter, Vick Torria, 0:21:00.600 --> 0:21:03.800 was a medium. Just like the Fox sisters. She could 0:21:03.840 --> 0:21:09.600 hold seances, convey spirit messages, and make spirit music. All 0:21:09.680 --> 0:21:13.160 for the low low price of just one dollar per 0:21:13.280 --> 0:21:22.639 visit the opiate of the masses. By now, it's a 0:21:22.720 --> 0:21:25.959 famous put down of religion. In the eighteen fifties, there 0:21:26.000 --> 0:21:27.960 were plenty of folks who thought it was a perfect 0:21:28.000 --> 0:21:31.520 description of spiritualism, and with people like Buck on the scene, 0:21:32.000 --> 0:21:35.280 who could blame them if the new movement was going 0:21:35.359 --> 0:21:37.400 to be dismissed as a con game, though, there would 0:21:37.480 --> 0:21:41.040 need to be some proof. Mediums and their seance visitors 0:21:41.040 --> 0:21:45.320 were certainly witnesses to something, but what exactly. When the 0:21:45.359 --> 0:21:47.960 Fox sisters were sitting at Barnum's Hotel in the summer 0:21:48.000 --> 0:21:51.040 of eighteen fifty, they convinced many of their observers that 0:21:51.080 --> 0:21:53.680 there was no better explanation than the one they gave. 0:21:54.200 --> 0:21:59.160 They were simply well tuned instruments of the spirits. Among 0:21:59.200 --> 0:22:02.280 those converts was Horace Greeley. He was the publisher of 0:22:02.280 --> 0:22:05.439 the New York Tribune and a significant intellectual figure in 0:22:05.480 --> 0:22:08.280 American life. In August of that year, he wrote in 0:22:08.280 --> 0:22:10.679 his newspaper that the girls had been put to every 0:22:10.760 --> 0:22:15.439 reasonable test. They had absorbed keen and critical scrutiny. No 0:22:15.480 --> 0:22:18.160 one could detect any method of fraud as far as 0:22:18.200 --> 0:22:21.119 Horace could tell, whatever the origin of the noises might be, 0:22:21.320 --> 0:22:26.239 he wrote, Leah, Maggie and Kate did not manufacture them. 0:22:26.280 --> 0:22:29.560 An opposing verdict arrived that winter. You see, the Fox 0:22:29.560 --> 0:22:32.240 sisters left New York City in the fall and started 0:22:32.280 --> 0:22:35.760 touring throughout the Northeast. In December, they spent three weeks 0:22:35.760 --> 0:22:39.840 in Buffalo. The following February, three professors from the University 0:22:39.840 --> 0:22:42.959 of Buffalo published a joint letter in the local newspaper. 0:22:43.640 --> 0:22:46.720 Unlike Horace Greeley, they said they had a better explanation 0:22:46.800 --> 0:22:50.560 than spirit contact for the strange rapping sounds. It was, 0:22:50.680 --> 0:22:55.680 they said, simply the popping of knee joints. Leah, managing 0:22:55.720 --> 0:22:59.040 the public face of her younger sisters, immediately challenged the 0:22:59.080 --> 0:23:03.560 professors to of it, which they accepted. The game was on. 0:23:05.600 --> 0:23:08.480 Things didn't exactly go well for the Fox sisters, though. 0:23:09.000 --> 0:23:12.320 The tests left the doctors unconvinced, and they didn't mind 0:23:12.359 --> 0:23:15.840 saying so. But when the professors published their findings, it 0:23:15.960 --> 0:23:18.199 was clear that they were looking down their noses at 0:23:18.240 --> 0:23:21.639 the girls from the start. Their report called Leah, Maggie 0:23:21.680 --> 0:23:25.600 and Kate the Rochester females, and according to some readers. 0:23:25.640 --> 0:23:28.200 Those doctors had been a little too eager to see 0:23:28.200 --> 0:23:32.360 what they wanted in the tests. The report described how 0:23:32.359 --> 0:23:34.920 the three men gripped the girl's legs and help them 0:23:34.920 --> 0:23:38.240 in a static position. During those sittings, there were no 0:23:38.359 --> 0:23:41.520 strange knocking sounds. When the girls were allowed to sit 0:23:41.560 --> 0:23:44.040 comfortably on the sofa with their feet on the floor 0:23:44.240 --> 0:23:48.360 and without the professors squeezing their legs, the tapping sounds resumed. 0:23:48.880 --> 0:23:51.960 The three professors agreed that this was definitive proof that 0:23:52.000 --> 0:23:55.480 their theory was right. The fox sisters, they claimed, had 0:23:55.520 --> 0:24:00.280 created the sounds with popping joints. Here's historian Kathy Gautier ris, 0:24:02.119 --> 0:24:05.960 the existence of fake flowers does not disprove the existence 0:24:06.000 --> 0:24:12.280 of real ones. The idea that because there are occasional cheaters, 0:24:12.440 --> 0:24:17.480 or that an actual medium occasionally cheats, is sort of 0:24:17.520 --> 0:24:20.520 easily incorporated into the world view. So if you thought 0:24:20.520 --> 0:24:22.800 they were ridiculous began with you continued to think they 0:24:22.840 --> 0:24:27.800 were ridiculous after the Buffalo investigations, And if you thought 0:24:27.840 --> 0:24:30.840 they were the real deal, but they are just kids 0:24:30.840 --> 0:24:35.040 put in this awkward position, so sometimes it got slippery, 0:24:35.480 --> 0:24:40.200 then that's what you thought. This wasn't the most damaging test, though, 0:24:40.720 --> 0:24:43.240 no that came in April of the same year, when 0:24:43.240 --> 0:24:45.480 The New York Herald decided to go head to head 0:24:45.560 --> 0:24:48.760 with Horace Greeley's New York Tribune. In an article co 0:24:48.880 --> 0:24:51.320 signed by a doctor and a minister, one of the 0:24:51.359 --> 0:24:56.399 Fox in laws, Mrs Culver gave some damning testimony. She 0:24:56.480 --> 0:24:58.919 said that for two years she had believed the knocking 0:24:59.000 --> 0:25:02.879 sounds were genuine communication from the dead. That is until 0:25:02.960 --> 0:25:06.000 a recent visit when Maggie was away and Kate asked 0:25:06.040 --> 0:25:09.280 for some assistance with a seance. That was when, according 0:25:09.280 --> 0:25:13.040 to Mrs Culver, Kate showed her how it worked. She 0:25:13.119 --> 0:25:15.120 said that Kate told her it was the girls who 0:25:15.160 --> 0:25:18.159 made the knocking sounds by popping their knees and toes 0:25:18.720 --> 0:25:21.199 in the early tests. Mrs Culver said the girls had 0:25:21.240 --> 0:25:24.000 accomplices who knocked on the walls from the room next 0:25:24.000 --> 0:25:28.000