October 2, 2019 • 39 mins
It was all wide open. Great awakenings shattered the old religions. Showmen made spectacles of cutting-edge science. Radicals campaigned for a social revolution. The nation waited with bated breath for a new kind of prophet to take the stage.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcomed, unobscured, a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky.
There was a stir in the shoemaker's shop. The apprentices
were whispering excitedly. Ira Armstrong, who owned the place, asked
what they were talking about. The sixteen year old Andrew
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showed him a printed advertisement across the top in a
blast of ink. It read Mesmerism Wonderful Experiments Magnetizer and Phrenologist.
Andrew had never heard the term mesmerism before. He had
no idea what was going to be on display, but
the pamphlets made one thing clear. It was going to
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be a spectacle. The boys could barely sit still. The
word passed through Poughkeepsie that the oncoming professor was some
sort of wonder worker, a man who would demonstrate mesmeric
miracles at the village hall. Every one in town was
talking about it. The boys wanted to see for themselves
if the stories were true. Ira grumbled something about magnetic buffoonery,
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but he must not have been too hard a taskmaster.
He gave the boys the afternoon off, and so Andrew
bounced off toward Hatch's Hotel with fellow apprentice Edwin in
tow when they arrived, though, the pair were led to
a quiet room upstairs. This wasn't the miracles in the
village hall the advertisements had promised. When Andrew reached the
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little room, he found a crowd of boys fidgeting in
their seats, craning their necks to look around the room.
All of them shared that same eagerness. They were there
to witness a mystery. What they got when the professor
arrived didn't quite bring the advertisement to life. A man
walked to the front of the room and he started
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to talk. He started to lecture. Sure, his subjects were
as promised, phrenology and animal magnetism, but these are sixteen
year old boys were talking about They wanted action. His
droning went on so long. In fact, Andrew later said
it was nearly two hours long that the boy started
to doze. He closed his eyes and his head drooped,
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But before he could fall asleep, he heard footsteps approach.
The lecturing voice took on an eagerness as it came
to a stop in front of Andrew. It was time.
The man said, we're a demonstration. He started to wave
his hand dramatically in front of Andrew's head. Then he declared,
you can't open your eyes. Andrew must have frowned. He
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raised his head and looked up skeptically into the man's face.
We can only imagine the look of teenage contempt the
man got for wasting Andrew's afternoon off. It was nothing
short of a letdown, so Andrew went back to work.
Any of Irish's smugness about his apprentice's gullibility is lost
to history. The stranger had been no mesmerist. His voice
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did have the power to put people to sleep, but
where was the miracle in that? It wasn't long, though,
before Andrew and Edwins started to hear more stories. They
weren't the only ones to attend the demonstration. The following
day and the day after that, rumors started to travel
throughout town. Other people who went to the demonstrations, they said,
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had felt something. Maybe they missed it the first time,
or perhaps the visitor needed to warm up like an
athlete before a big game. Either way, word around town
was beginning to sound very different from what Andrew and
Edwin had expected, and the people were doing more than
just whisper. Soon those murmurs would consume a nation. Something
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supernatural was about to begin this is unobscured. I'm Aaron Mackey.
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Why did the power of mesmerism pass by the shoemaker's apprentice.
Maybe it had something to do with the boy's hard life.
Growing up, Andrew moved between tenements and tenant houses in
towns along the west bank of the Hudson River. His
father did odd jobs to keep them alive. He made shoes,
wove cloth, whatever handcrafts could earn something for his family,
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a wife and seven children. He never made much, though,
with his children to feed, Andrew's father scratched out a
living anyway he could. It was a difficult and anxious
way to live. Unsurprisingly, much of what he did earn
was spent on alcohol. It wasn't just his father's habits
that made their life uncertain, though. When they looked at
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the nation around them, they saw the same thing. Andrew
was born in eighteen six, the year the United States
celebrated its jubilee. On July four. It had been fifty
years since the Declaration of Independence was signed by the
founding fathers, but the celebration was darkened by clouds of uncertainty.
On that exact same day, both John Adams and Thomas
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Jefferson died in their homes, their coffins slam shut on
the founding era. What would come next? One answer was
Andrew Jackson's new Democratic Party. It burst into the world
with a bold promise that it would bring about something new,
the rule of the common man. Here's Molly McGarry, Associate
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professor of History at the University of California, Riverside. The
most significant change affected by Jackson in democracy was the
extension of the franchise of the vote to white man
over the age of twenty one who did not own property.
The elite power brokers who had shaped the nation saw
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their numbers shrinking, and the oncoming forces of democratic fervor
posed a major threat to their top down rule. They
fought tooth and nail to hold back the political transformation
that was swiftly overtaking them. Already contentious and chaotic in
eighteen s the presidential campaign assured men like the New
York shoemaker that the nation would now be ordered in
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their favor. In New York, Little Andrew was named in
honor of Jackson's vision for the future. In the end, though,
it would be the boy's own visions that would define
his life, but he would have to suffer first. Along
the way to his sixteenth birthday, Andrew lost his mother,
two sisters, and a brother. The grief must have been devastating,
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but there was no time to rest as the blows
kept coming. Because his father struggled to support even his
dwindling family. Things were so rough for them that he
rented out Andrew to farmers and tradesmen as a hired hand.
Whatever the boy felt, his life came down to work. Eventually,
in their wandering search for a way to make a living,
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Andrew and his father arrived in Poughkeepsie, New York, seventy
miles north of New York City, where a local shoemaker,
Ira Armstrong, hired Andrew as an apprentice. Ira would later
note that Andrew knew how to read and write, but
that his knowledge was only rudimentary. Andrew's working life hadn't
allowed him a lot of time for school. He was
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known as a frank, open and honest boy with a
curious attitude, but he wasn't a scholar, a thinker, or
a writer. He was known to most folks as friendly
and well disposed, and to his boss he was a
steady and reliable worker. When it all added up, he
was just ordinary. But in eighteen forty three, all of
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that would change. In the early eighteen hundreds, it wasn't
just the political landscape that was cracking apart. Shock waves
in the scientific world were also breaking up old ways
of thinking and injecting new ideas into American culture. One
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of those shock waves was a man by the name
of J. Stanley Grimes, and in eighteen forty three he
made his way to Poughkeepsie, and with considerable fanfare too.
He was a magnetizer and phrenologist, and as arrival was
paved with a burst of announcements and show bills. It
was their heading Mesmerism that had captured Andrew's attention, originally
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developed by the German physician France Anton Mesmer, who taught
that everything was permeated by an invisible fluid carrying magnetic
energy throughout the universe. Here's Kathy gutierres historian and scholar
in residence at the New York Public Library. Why don't
stars fall out the sky right? Why our planets predictable? Well,
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they're held in some sort of kinetic tension through magnetic attraction. Certainly,
Kepler thought this what Mesmer did was he applied that
idea to the human body, so not only the planets,
but the tides and the sea, and the waning of
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the moon, and the flow of this energy through the
body could be redirected and redistributed. And that's where J.
Stanley Grimes stepped in. For some who kept abreast of
advances in science, Grimes was already a household name, a Bostonian,
and a medical lawyer by training. Grimes was at the
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forefront of American sciences of the mind by eighteen thirty two.
That was when demonstrators arrived from Germany and led curious
Bostonians in a course on the discipline of phrenology. They
taught that the shape of the human skull reflected uneven
development of the brain, where each part performed a specific function.
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Grimes believed that he could use phrenology to harness the
power of Mesmer's animal magnetism. If he followed the right
contours of the skull to excite certain organs of the brain,
he could pick up where Mesmer left off. In particular,
he could drop his subjects into a suggestible, trance like
state he called mesmeric sleep in honor of the German doctor.
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And it was this freno magnetism, his personal combination of
cutting edge sciences, that Grimes demonstrated in Poughkeepsie. A few
days after Andrew's disappointing encounter with Grimes, a local tailor
named William Livingston came by the Shoemaker's shop. He and
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Andrew struck up a conversation. When they got around to
grimes failed attempt to magnetize Andrew well, Livingstone had something
to say about that. He told Andrew that Grimes wasn't
so special. In fact, Livingstone claimed that he was an
even better magnetizer. He performed many magnetic marvels, both in
Poughkeepsie and in his travels elsewhere. And Livingstone believed that
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he could succeed with Andrew where the celebrity scientist had failed,
so he invited both Andrew and Edwin to his house
for his own attempt to magnetize Andrew. Later that night,
the shoemaker's apprentice sat across from Livingstone, relaxed and curious
to see if the tailor could succeed where the traveling
showman had failed. Andrew closed his eyes and felt William's
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chilly hand pass and repass over his forehead. The effect
was sudden. Andrew would later say that ten thousand avenues
of sensation were illumed, as with the livid flames of
electric fire. Then a sense of intense darkness, a surge
of horrible feelings he couldn't put into words, and then
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a wave of pain. He tried to protest, but his
tongue froze to the roof of his mouth, his cheeks
seemed extremely swollen, his lips fused shut, and he could
no longer control any part of his body. He was paralyzed,
even as he felt himself whirling along a revolving spiral path.
He even wondered at that moment if he was dying.
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And then, as suddenly as the first wave of disorientation
had arrived, a cascade of bright, utterly new thoughts gushed
into his mind, and he fell unconscious. When he woke up,
Andrew was sitting in the same position, in the very
same chair, right across from Livingstone. But now he found
that the tailor it was bursting with excitement. He saw
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the same thing on the faces of everyone else in
the room, some of whom had not been there when
they began. According to Livingstone. He had called them in
to watch Andrew perform in his trance. Andrew had read
from newspapers held against his forehead, told the time on
every watch in the room, and one by one described
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the diseases and wounds of the people around him. Andrew
sat stunned while Livingston described the things he'd done. It
shook his world to the core, but it also left
him feeling confused. It was one thing to have an experience,
but it was something altogether different to explain it. For that,
Andrew had nothing to say. But William Livingston, did I
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know what your power is called? The tailor told him clairvoyance.
Clairvoyance comes from the Latin for clear vision, and that's
exactly what William Livingston identified in Andrew Jackson Davis on
that night in eighteen forty three when he fell into
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a mesmerized trance and began to speak. But Andrew discovered
quickly that the spirit speaking through him. We're looking for
a much wider audience, you see. Andrew and William repeated
their mesmeric ex yeraments every night, over and over, with
the same dramatic result. Andrew would fall into a trance
and while his body was locked in stasis, he would
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burst out into lectures that amazed visitors with their eloquence
and insight. The first small groups grew into crowds, including
curious neighbors who came to test Andrew's powers, and here
the young, uneducated shoemaker's apprentice expound on mystical theology and
the nature of the universe. Andrew's dramatic performance of trance
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visions were big news around Poughkeepsie, and the response was
equal parts wonder and ridicule, which meant that it didn't
take long for the news to travel beyond town. After
that first night, Andrew came out of a trance to
find that he was famous. As his trances continued, he
described in greater and greater detail the way that his
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vision opened up to the world within the human body,
the luminous atmospheres, as he called it, that he saw
in human brains and hearts, and then into the branches
and leaves of plants, or in the geologic layers of
the earth under their feet. When Andrew Jackson Davis was
in a trance, he said, the fiery light glowing within
all life became visible to him like a mesmerists diagnostic tool.
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He could clearly see the forces that Mesmer had always
taught were binding the universe together. Soon enough, in addition
to the medical cures that Andrew offered to his visitors,
he also went on journeys into the spirit land. There
he began to encounter figures who would speak to him,
to teach him and to pass along wisdom through long
lectures about the spiritual structure of the universe. Figures who
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told Andrew that they were the spirits of the dead.
It was an astonishing revelation if it could be trusted.
That is, like all the Mesmerists who had come before.
Andrew knew that people would want to witness his trances
for themselves. So, at the invitation of a Poughkeepsie minister,
Andrew and William began to travel. William put Andrew into
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trances in Albany, New York, and then Danbury, Connecticut, and
then Bridgeport as well. His clarivoyant healing and trance lectures
gathered bigger and bigger crowds. For a time, he made
a frequent circuit between Connecticut and New York, seeing patients
along the way and serving as their medical diagnostician, viewing
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their wounds like a clairvoyant x ray and offering healing
advice from the spirits of the dead. Among those spirits,
Andrew began to report that his guides included the ancient
Greek physician Galen, who would help him to heal his patients.
After that he met the spirit of the Swedish Lutheranistic
Emmanuel Swedenborg. It was Swedenborg, he said, who guided him
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on journeys through the astral plane and showed him the
structure of the universe. Here's Ann Browdie, Senior lecturer on
American religious history at Harvard Divinity School. Swedenborg's vision, which
Andrew Jackson Davis was inspired by, described a world of spheres.
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He understood the world in terms of levels, both levels
under the ground and levels spheres above the ground that
are through which the soul advances in its journey towards heaven.
Orthodox Calvinism and Protestant faith taught that whatever virtue you
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had accomplished in your life at the moment of death
or lack of virtue, determined your faith for eternity, that
you would either be damned or you would be blessed
to sit at the right hand of God for eternity
and saved thereby from the flames of hell and eternal suffering.
This is a source of huge anxiety. And Andrew Jackson
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Davis address that anxiety with the idea building on Swedenborg,
that the soul can continue to progress in grace following death.
As his fame grew, Andrew found better partners than his
Poughkeepsie Taylor. In November of eighteen forty five, he began
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working with a mesmeric doctor who offered him the chance
to become his clairvoyant diagnostician in New York City. And
Andrew jumped at the chance. Once they're the pair began
working with a universalist minister and publisher who started writing
down the things that Andrew would say during his trances.
After a year of collecting the lectures from his journeys
into the spirit land, Andrew published it all as a
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book in eighteen forty seven, The Principles of Nature, Her
Divine Revelations, and a Voice to Mankind. Andrew was just
twenty one at the time, making it quite the accomplishment.
He didn't know yet, but his work was about to
become the foundation for a coming movement, spurred on, of course,
by newspaper reports of the dramatic healings and revelations of
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his lectures. The book was immediately reviewed throughout the New
York press. Some poured praise on the work, while there's
mocked it. In the book's defense, a Reverend George Bush
stepped in and explained that the teachings found inside were
not that different from the Transcendentalists in Boston. In fact,
just a few years earlier, Ralph Waldo Emerson had called
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together a meeting of the Transcendental Club precisely to discuss
the role of mysticism in modern life. For Emerson and
the other Transcendentalists, Emmanuel Swedenborg was simply a mystic par excellence.
Now Andrew was meeting with that man's spirit and narrating
it for all religiously curious Americans. What Davis started with
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his first book soon came to be called his harmonial philosophy.
At its core, his message was one of universal religion,
that there was a truth transcending all religions, and that
if we lived by that truth, it would create a
world of peace and order. Spirits who embraced that piece well,
they would progress into the upper heavens to help spread
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his harmonial philosophy. Davis and his cohorts Estabil wished a
newspaper that became his mouthpiece. Their goal was, and I quote,
the establishment of a universal system of truth, the reform
and the reorganization of society. To really make the movement
take off, though, the theology and the community would need
something else, something tactile and visible and earthier, something powerful
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for people to experience. Don't fool yourself into thinking that
America wasn't ready for something different. In the early eighteen fifties,
the writer Ralph Waldo Emerson reflected back on the state
of religion in America and he wrote that the stern
old faiths have all pulverized America, he said, was a
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whole population of gentlemen and ladies out in search of religions.
Tis a flat anarchy in our ecclesiastical realms. Here's Harvard
Divinity schools and Browdie once again. The period of the
eighteen twenties and thirties is known as the second grade Awakening,
and it's sometimes referred to as the period of the
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democratization of American religion, when we see religious authority and
experience sweeping the country through revivals, and we see a
declining emphasis on an educated clergy, on religious hierarchies, on
religious education, and an increasing emphasis on religious experience that
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is accessible to any individual. It was the perfect environment
for men like Aidan Blue. He was born in eighteen
oh three into a family that had farmed the same
land in Rhode Island for generations. At the age of twelve,
his whole family experienced a new kind of religion when
they attended a Universalist revival meeting, singing, praying, and weeping
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at the incredible stories the traveling pre church told them.
It was so powerful, in fact, that for the next
three years, Aiden's whole family chased the high. They formed
their own church, and Aiden's father served as the deacon.
But not long after that, his family experienced their first
taste of sorrow. Arnold, one of Aiden's older brothers, became
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ill and passed away. It was a moment that changed
aid into the core. It wouldn't be the last time
he experienced loss, but that didn't mean it was any
less powerful. In fact, the death of his brother haunted him.
And then there was the vision. One night, long after
his brother had passed away, Aiden awoke in the middle
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of the nights. Feeling disoriented, he sat up and looked
around the room to try and find his bearings, and
then finally glanced out the window, and that's when he
saw it, a human form in a white robe standing outside. Strangely,
Aiden didn't feel afraid, but instead examined the figure. As
his eyes adjusted to the figure's brightness, he the features
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of the face and suddenly recognized it. The shining figure
outside his room was his dead brother, and then it
moved toward him, passing through the solid wall to arrive
at the side of his bed. I have a command
from God, the figure said, with a finger pointed at him.
Preach to your fellow men. The blood of their souls
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will be on your hands. Aiden's peace suddenly vanished and
was replaced with panic and fear. He spent the rest
of the night trying to convince himself that he wasn't dreaming,
that what he had seen was real, because if it
was real, then he needed to obey. From that day forward,
he was plagued by questions about the afterlife and by
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the issues of suffering and loss. He would eventually go
on to start his own church and to travel around
the New England area, preaching and serving the communities he
had countered. He wasn't to train minister, but that wasn't
about to stop him. After all, his mission came straight
from the other world, from God himself, and he would
be a fool to ignore it. He would taste the
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bitter wine of loss a few more times over the years.
His first wife passed away just a few years after
they were married, and then both of his sons as well.
He remarried. But once you've experienced loss on the scale
Aiden had, it's easy to keep glancing over your shoulder.
For a fighter like him, though, that meant looking for
answers and building hope. It wasn't long before he and
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a few of his followers decided to set out on
their own and build a community together. In eighteen forty one,
he led twenty eight followers from across New York and
New England into the woods thirty miles southwest of Boston.
There they founded what was to be the model for
a perfect society, a city built on hope. Perhaps that's
why he called it Hopedale. Here's Harvard Divinity Schools and Browdie.
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Once again, Hopedale, which was one of the most important
for the spread of spiritualism was considered a community based
on what they called practical Christian socialism. And of course,
a communitarian ideal and a socialist ideal go hand in
hand because of the idea of shared property. Holding property
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in common is a common element of utopian settlements, and
believe me, socialism is a lot easier if you have
a religious motivation. Without a religious motive. Not that many
people are willing to share property or to live in
harmony to to place their desires as individuals. They weren't
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the first to experiment with the idea of a utopian society,
not by a long shot. Transcendentalist reformers, including a young
Nathaniel Hawthorne, bounded a similar commune outside of Boston. Elsewhere,
a Scotsman named Robert Owen founded two separate communities, including
one in Indiana called New Harmony. But even he took
inspiration from an earlier example, the Shakers. The Shakers ticked
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all the boxes for a utopian society from the early
eighteen hundreds. They held their own property in common, they
worked the land, they plied their trades in cooperation, and
they practiced true equality by giving leadership roles to both
men and women. But ever since they arrived in New
York in the seventeen seventies, the Shakers had also begun
to experience something else, ecstatic visitations. In eighteen thirty seven,
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at their communal home in New York, three girls whose
ages ranged from ten to fourteen, fell under some invisible
spiritual power, and Goff, the oldest of them, stood before
her community and told them that she had seen a
female spirit dressed in white. And while that might sound
like something pulled right out of the sale in witch
trials of sixteen ninety two, the one fifty years that
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separated them made a world of difference. Rather than start
a witch hunt, their story was received with open arms.
Later that same day, as the community danced in enthusiastic
worship and mostly friend reappeared and moved among them, kissing
them and singing songs to them. The next time she
was seeing, she brought others with her, always appearing to Anne.
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Soon enough, the spirits of the dead were appearing at
their own funerals to comfort their morning families. Even mother
Ann Lee, who founded the Shaker order before dying in
sev four, appeared with heavenly messages for her followers. Remarkably,
spirits from outside the Shaker community began to arrive as well.
George Washington, Lafayette, Napoleon, the biblical Queen Esther, and the
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spirits of Native Americans all appeared with messages and lessons
for them all. And here's the thing. Shaker communities around
New York started to believe that some Shakers were born
to communicate with these ghostly visitors. They called them instruments
of the spirit world, and whatever they received they would
share with others, all for the building up of their community.
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Whatever their power might have been, these instruments offered hope.
And whether they were offering divine wisdom, comforting words, or
answers to difficult questions, one thing was absolutely clear. For
those with eyes to see the dead that burst from
the grave. History hasn't been kind of spiritualism. A recent
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two volume History of the United States treated spiritualism with
a single dismissive sentence, as if it was an insignificant
movement making self evidently foolish claims. And honestly, there are
a lot of people today who agree with that sentiment.
But just wait, because that view is far from reality
and far from the way the world looked to a
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lot of people in the forties, in a time when
the spiritual sciences of mesmerism, animal magnetism, and phrenology were
popular and became major new preoccupations. Well, the right way
to see the world became less and less obvious. Before
spiritualism became the parlor room seance and the music hall
spectacle that's so often mocked today, it was born in
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the minds of deeply religious teachers, passionate social reformers, and
curious scientists who wanted to change the world. Here's Dr
John Busher, co director of the International Association for the
Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals. That profound influence that
they exerted on the national life was deliberately written out
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of histories of reform movements like the Women's movement, of
labor movement, politics, history of the politics of the period,
the intellectual history, history of of the novel and poetry,
and on and on. That story has hardly been told
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in this season of Unobscured. Well trace the path of
the spiritualists who followed the voice of Andrew Jackson Davis
over the course of the nineteenth century, spiritualism became a
kaleidoscope of novel beliefs, courageous people, and world shaking events.
Here's historian Molly McGarry. There were always many spiritualisms, both
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in the nineteenth century and beyond. So some people came
to the science tables seeking answers, wanting deeply to commune
with lost loved ones. Others were curious investigators, looking to
see for themselves with this new technology could materialize. But
what I found in what I've been most struck by
is that many spiritualists took seriously the possibility of channeling
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the voices of the dead as a means of both
connecting with the past and imagining both worldly and otherworldly futures.
The truth is, spiritualists traveled all around the world, started
a raft of publications and took up, proclaimed and then rejected,
a vast web of ideas about the afterlife, communication with
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the spirits of the dead and the authority those spirits
had over the living. Their story touches everything from technology
to medicine, to the genocide of Native Americans and the
murder of a president, and along the way, its values
were echoed by social causes like abolition, women's suffrage, and
labor rights, helping it grow from a local fad to
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a global phenomenon. And yes, it's a story about religion,
but it's so much more. It's a story of idealism
and individualism, of poachers and preachers, and of freedom fighters
and celebrities. And while the Shaker Girls provided an early
model for those emerging spiritualists, it was Andrew Jackson Davis,
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the Seer of Poughkeepsie, who would do something bigger. He
would be their first bona fide star. Amy was running
from her pain. In the spring of eighteen twenty five,
Amy's fiance suddenly became ill and passed away, and then
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a short while later, she received a letter from her
brother in law that her sister was also sick. Amy
rushed to her sister's side, and together with her brother
in law, Isaac, they cared for the dying woman as
best they could, but eventually the illness won and both
of them were left to deal with their loss and grief.
The road to healing also turned out to be a
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road to second chances, and two years later the pair
were married. Amy and Isaac Post were Quakers, a religious
group that had been in America since the middle of
the sixteen hundreds. Since the beginning, they often found themselves
at odds with their Protestant neighbors because of their unique beliefs.
In fact, during the Salem witch Trials, of being part
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of the Quaker movement was a very good way to
get yourself accused of witchcraft. But they were also one
of the first utopian experiments. Here's an Browdie again from
Harvard Divinity School. To give up the notion that individual
property equals happiness, you have to be very deeply committed,
and piety, religious fervor go a long way towards making
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that possible. Of course, the Quakers are the most successful
communitarian religious experiment in American history. In eighteen twenty seven,
the Quaker movement split into two pieces. One of their
charismatic leaders, who also happened to be Amy's cousin, thought
their community had become too worldly, not least because there
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were so many Quakers comfortable with the institution of slavery,
some even holding slaves of their own. Along with Isaac,
Amy followed the dissenters, seeking a religion that was more pure.
Here's Molly McGarry once again. She came from a family
religious radicals who had thought that the Quaker establishment had
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grown too orthodox, too comfortable with the material institutions of
the world, including slavery. The couple moved to Rochester in
eighteen thirty six, where Isaac became a successful pharmacist. Not
long after, Amy started holding abolition meetings in their home.
And it wasn't just radical Quakers who were invited. You see,
New York State had abolished slavery a decade earlier, and
(34:18):
then in eighteen thirty four, a group of black women
founded Rochester's first female abolition society, following the examples set
by black women in Salem, Massachusetts, who formed the first
women's anti slavery society in the United States in eighteen
thirty two. That very same year, a school for black
children opened in Rochester, two blocks away from a church
(34:39):
on thirty four Sophia Street. When Isaac and Amy Post
moved into town in eighteen thirty six, they took the
home next door. By the mid eighteen forties, words spread
that Isaac and Amy had started participating in worldly groups
filled with people who weren't Quakers. This was too much
even for many of the Quaker separatists Molly mcgeary. Once again,
(35:02):
Isaac and Amy Posts were actually thrown out of their
Genesee Quakers group, for, as the story goes, having hosted
a wedding of two African American friends of theirs. The
black neighborhoods and black churches in Rochester were growing. As
news spread, people began to arrive in town looking for
safe harbor. First and foremost they were people who had
(35:24):
escaped from slavery, and black churches were the first places
in the city to provide shelter for them, sometimes finding
ways to hide survivors in plain sight. At one point,
local ebolitionists counted that they were helping one fifty people
each year. Soon enough, Amy and Isaac joined in helping
their neighbors hide fugitives and also giving them food, blankets, clothing,
(35:46):
and money for the journey farther north, where freedom awaited them.
In July of eighteen forty three, Isaac Post and a
few others put together a three day convention of their friends,
and the Posts hosted speakers in their home. In fact,
one of them was a young man who had escaped
from slavery in Maryland. His name Frederick Douglas, but that
(36:07):
wasn't all. Amy and Isaac also met a young white
woman named Leah Fish. She was a single mother who
was struggling to make a living as a piano teacher
in Rochester, and they felt moved to help her, so
they took her into their home. A short while later,
Leah's parents, John and Margaret also arrived in town, along
with two of Leah's younger sisters. They had recently lost
(36:30):
everything in a failed farming experiment farther north and needed
a place to rest, recover, and plan their next move.
Amy was only too happy to help. It turned out
to be a fateful meeting. What Leah and her sisters
brought into Amy's life would shift her horizons, change her
place in the world, and etch Rochester's name into the
(36:52):
nation's religious history. And they would give Andrew Jackson Davis's
harmonial philosophy the thing it was missing. Eight was about
to dawn, and the age of Spiritualism was about to begin.
(37:13):
That's it for this week's episode of Unobscured. Stick around
after this short sponsor break for a preview of what's
in store for next week. Next time on Unobscured, more
and more seekers were making their way into Rochester, all
while other religious experiments were falling flat and communities along
(37:35):
the canal were folding, looking for guidance, for connection and
for the next step to take in their lives. People
knew to the city were open to something that could
be seen and heard, something that could be witnessed. After
a year of closed sittings, the Spirits spoke up. They
were ready for a wider audience in a private seance
(37:56):
just for the Posts. The Spirits spoke through Leah, telling
Isaac to rent Rochester's Corinthian Hall for a whole three
nights for the first time ever. They were going to
throw the doors open wide to a paying crowd. It
was time for the Spirits to take the stage. Unobscured
(38:31):
was created by me Aaron Manky and produced by Matt Frederick,
Alex Williams, and Josh Thane in partnership with I Heart Radio.
Research and writing for this season is all the work
of my right hand man, Carl Nellis and the brilliant
Chad Lawson composed the brand new soundtrack. Learn more about
our contributing historians, source material and links to our other
(38:51):
shows over at History Unobscured dot com and until next time.
Thanks for listening. Yeah. Unobscured is a production of I
heart Radio and Aaron Menkey. For more podcasts for my
heart Radio, visit i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
(39:12):
wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H
Welcomed, unobscured, a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky.
There was a stir in the shoemaker's shop. The apprentices
were whispering excitedly. Ira Armstrong, who owned the place, asked
what they were talking about. The sixteen year old Andrew
(00:22):
showed him a printed advertisement across the top in a
blast of ink. It read Mesmerism Wonderful Experiments Magnetizer and Phrenologist.
Andrew had never heard the term mesmerism before. He had
no idea what was going to be on display, but
the pamphlets made one thing clear. It was going to
(00:44):
be a spectacle. The boys could barely sit still. The
word passed through Poughkeepsie that the oncoming professor was some
sort of wonder worker, a man who would demonstrate mesmeric
miracles at the village hall. Every one in town was
talking about it. The boys wanted to see for themselves
if the stories were true. Ira grumbled something about magnetic buffoonery,
(01:10):
but he must not have been too hard a taskmaster.
He gave the boys the afternoon off, and so Andrew
bounced off toward Hatch's Hotel with fellow apprentice Edwin in
tow when they arrived, though, the pair were led to
a quiet room upstairs. This wasn't the miracles in the
village hall the advertisements had promised. When Andrew reached the
(01:31):
little room, he found a crowd of boys fidgeting in
their seats, craning their necks to look around the room.
All of them shared that same eagerness. They were there
to witness a mystery. What they got when the professor
arrived didn't quite bring the advertisement to life. A man
walked to the front of the room and he started
(01:51):
to talk. He started to lecture. Sure, his subjects were
as promised, phrenology and animal magnetism, but these are sixteen
year old boys were talking about They wanted action. His
droning went on so long. In fact, Andrew later said
it was nearly two hours long that the boy started
to doze. He closed his eyes and his head drooped,
(02:14):
But before he could fall asleep, he heard footsteps approach.
The lecturing voice took on an eagerness as it came
to a stop in front of Andrew. It was time.
The man said, we're a demonstration. He started to wave
his hand dramatically in front of Andrew's head. Then he declared,
you can't open your eyes. Andrew must have frowned. He
(02:36):
raised his head and looked up skeptically into the man's face.
We can only imagine the look of teenage contempt the
man got for wasting Andrew's afternoon off. It was nothing
short of a letdown, so Andrew went back to work.
Any of Irish's smugness about his apprentice's gullibility is lost
to history. The stranger had been no mesmerist. His voice
(02:58):
did have the power to put people to sleep, but
where was the miracle in that? It wasn't long, though,
before Andrew and Edwins started to hear more stories. They
weren't the only ones to attend the demonstration. The following
day and the day after that, rumors started to travel
throughout town. Other people who went to the demonstrations, they said,
(03:19):
had felt something. Maybe they missed it the first time,
or perhaps the visitor needed to warm up like an
athlete before a big game. Either way, word around town
was beginning to sound very different from what Andrew and
Edwin had expected, and the people were doing more than
just whisper. Soon those murmurs would consume a nation. Something
(03:44):
supernatural was about to begin this is unobscured. I'm Aaron Mackey.
(04:26):
Why did the power of mesmerism pass by the shoemaker's apprentice.
Maybe it had something to do with the boy's hard life.
Growing up, Andrew moved between tenements and tenant houses in
towns along the west bank of the Hudson River. His
father did odd jobs to keep them alive. He made shoes,
wove cloth, whatever handcrafts could earn something for his family,
(04:48):
a wife and seven children. He never made much, though,
with his children to feed, Andrew's father scratched out a
living anyway he could. It was a difficult and anxious
way to live. Unsurprisingly, much of what he did earn
was spent on alcohol. It wasn't just his father's habits
that made their life uncertain, though. When they looked at
(05:09):
the nation around them, they saw the same thing. Andrew
was born in eighteen six, the year the United States
celebrated its jubilee. On July four. It had been fifty
years since the Declaration of Independence was signed by the
founding fathers, but the celebration was darkened by clouds of uncertainty.
On that exact same day, both John Adams and Thomas
(05:32):
Jefferson died in their homes, their coffins slam shut on
the founding era. What would come next? One answer was
Andrew Jackson's new Democratic Party. It burst into the world
with a bold promise that it would bring about something new,
the rule of the common man. Here's Molly McGarry, Associate
(05:52):
professor of History at the University of California, Riverside. The
most significant change affected by Jackson in democracy was the
extension of the franchise of the vote to white man
over the age of twenty one who did not own property.
The elite power brokers who had shaped the nation saw
(06:12):
their numbers shrinking, and the oncoming forces of democratic fervor
posed a major threat to their top down rule. They
fought tooth and nail to hold back the political transformation
that was swiftly overtaking them. Already contentious and chaotic in
eighteen s the presidential campaign assured men like the New
York shoemaker that the nation would now be ordered in
(06:34):
their favor. In New York, Little Andrew was named in
honor of Jackson's vision for the future. In the end, though,
it would be the boy's own visions that would define
his life, but he would have to suffer first. Along
the way to his sixteenth birthday, Andrew lost his mother,
two sisters, and a brother. The grief must have been devastating,
(06:58):
but there was no time to rest as the blows
kept coming. Because his father struggled to support even his
dwindling family. Things were so rough for them that he
rented out Andrew to farmers and tradesmen as a hired hand.
Whatever the boy felt, his life came down to work. Eventually,
in their wandering search for a way to make a living,
(07:19):
Andrew and his father arrived in Poughkeepsie, New York, seventy
miles north of New York City, where a local shoemaker,
Ira Armstrong, hired Andrew as an apprentice. Ira would later
note that Andrew knew how to read and write, but
that his knowledge was only rudimentary. Andrew's working life hadn't
allowed him a lot of time for school. He was
(07:40):
known as a frank, open and honest boy with a
curious attitude, but he wasn't a scholar, a thinker, or
a writer. He was known to most folks as friendly
and well disposed, and to his boss he was a
steady and reliable worker. When it all added up, he
was just ordinary. But in eighteen forty three, all of
(08:04):
that would change. In the early eighteen hundreds, it wasn't
just the political landscape that was cracking apart. Shock waves
in the scientific world were also breaking up old ways
of thinking and injecting new ideas into American culture. One
(08:24):
of those shock waves was a man by the name
of J. Stanley Grimes, and in eighteen forty three he
made his way to Poughkeepsie, and with considerable fanfare too.
He was a magnetizer and phrenologist, and as arrival was
paved with a burst of announcements and show bills. It
was their heading Mesmerism that had captured Andrew's attention, originally
(08:47):
developed by the German physician France Anton Mesmer, who taught
that everything was permeated by an invisible fluid carrying magnetic
energy throughout the universe. Here's Kathy gutierres historian and scholar
in residence at the New York Public Library. Why don't
stars fall out the sky right? Why our planets predictable? Well,
(09:08):
they're held in some sort of kinetic tension through magnetic attraction. Certainly,
Kepler thought this what Mesmer did was he applied that
idea to the human body, so not only the planets,
but the tides and the sea, and the waning of
(09:29):
the moon, and the flow of this energy through the
body could be redirected and redistributed. And that's where J.
Stanley Grimes stepped in. For some who kept abreast of
advances in science, Grimes was already a household name, a Bostonian,
and a medical lawyer by training. Grimes was at the
(09:50):
forefront of American sciences of the mind by eighteen thirty two.
That was when demonstrators arrived from Germany and led curious
Bostonians in a course on the discipline of phrenology. They
taught that the shape of the human skull reflected uneven
development of the brain, where each part performed a specific function.
(10:10):
Grimes believed that he could use phrenology to harness the
power of Mesmer's animal magnetism. If he followed the right
contours of the skull to excite certain organs of the brain,
he could pick up where Mesmer left off. In particular,
he could drop his subjects into a suggestible, trance like
state he called mesmeric sleep in honor of the German doctor.
(10:31):
And it was this freno magnetism, his personal combination of
cutting edge sciences, that Grimes demonstrated in Poughkeepsie. A few
days after Andrew's disappointing encounter with Grimes, a local tailor
named William Livingston came by the Shoemaker's shop. He and
(10:54):
Andrew struck up a conversation. When they got around to
grimes failed attempt to magnetize Andrew well, Livingstone had something
to say about that. He told Andrew that Grimes wasn't
so special. In fact, Livingstone claimed that he was an
even better magnetizer. He performed many magnetic marvels, both in
Poughkeepsie and in his travels elsewhere. And Livingstone believed that
(11:16):
he could succeed with Andrew where the celebrity scientist had failed,
so he invited both Andrew and Edwin to his house
for his own attempt to magnetize Andrew. Later that night,
the shoemaker's apprentice sat across from Livingstone, relaxed and curious
to see if the tailor could succeed where the traveling
showman had failed. Andrew closed his eyes and felt William's
(11:37):
chilly hand pass and repass over his forehead. The effect
was sudden. Andrew would later say that ten thousand avenues
of sensation were illumed, as with the livid flames of
electric fire. Then a sense of intense darkness, a surge
of horrible feelings he couldn't put into words, and then
(11:58):
a wave of pain. He tried to protest, but his
tongue froze to the roof of his mouth, his cheeks
seemed extremely swollen, his lips fused shut, and he could
no longer control any part of his body. He was paralyzed,
even as he felt himself whirling along a revolving spiral path.
He even wondered at that moment if he was dying.
(12:20):
And then, as suddenly as the first wave of disorientation
had arrived, a cascade of bright, utterly new thoughts gushed
into his mind, and he fell unconscious. When he woke up,
Andrew was sitting in the same position, in the very
same chair, right across from Livingstone. But now he found
that the tailor it was bursting with excitement. He saw
(12:41):
the same thing on the faces of everyone else in
the room, some of whom had not been there when
they began. According to Livingstone. He had called them in
to watch Andrew perform in his trance. Andrew had read
from newspapers held against his forehead, told the time on
every watch in the room, and one by one described
(13:02):
the diseases and wounds of the people around him. Andrew
sat stunned while Livingston described the things he'd done. It
shook his world to the core, but it also left
him feeling confused. It was one thing to have an experience,
but it was something altogether different to explain it. For that,
Andrew had nothing to say. But William Livingston, did I
(13:27):
know what your power is called? The tailor told him clairvoyance.
Clairvoyance comes from the Latin for clear vision, and that's
exactly what William Livingston identified in Andrew Jackson Davis on
that night in eighteen forty three when he fell into
(13:47):
a mesmerized trance and began to speak. But Andrew discovered
quickly that the spirit speaking through him. We're looking for
a much wider audience, you see. Andrew and William repeated
their mesmeric ex yeraments every night, over and over, with
the same dramatic result. Andrew would fall into a trance
and while his body was locked in stasis, he would
(14:08):
burst out into lectures that amazed visitors with their eloquence
and insight. The first small groups grew into crowds, including
curious neighbors who came to test Andrew's powers, and here
the young, uneducated shoemaker's apprentice expound on mystical theology and
the nature of the universe. Andrew's dramatic performance of trance
(14:29):
visions were big news around Poughkeepsie, and the response was
equal parts wonder and ridicule, which meant that it didn't
take long for the news to travel beyond town. After
that first night, Andrew came out of a trance to
find that he was famous. As his trances continued, he
described in greater and greater detail the way that his
(14:49):
vision opened up to the world within the human body,
the luminous atmospheres, as he called it, that he saw
in human brains and hearts, and then into the branches
and leaves of plants, or in the geologic layers of
the earth under their feet. When Andrew Jackson Davis was
in a trance, he said, the fiery light glowing within
all life became visible to him like a mesmerists diagnostic tool.
(15:13):
He could clearly see the forces that Mesmer had always
taught were binding the universe together. Soon enough, in addition
to the medical cures that Andrew offered to his visitors,
he also went on journeys into the spirit land. There
he began to encounter figures who would speak to him,
to teach him and to pass along wisdom through long
lectures about the spiritual structure of the universe. Figures who
(15:36):
told Andrew that they were the spirits of the dead.
It was an astonishing revelation if it could be trusted.
That is, like all the Mesmerists who had come before.
Andrew knew that people would want to witness his trances
for themselves. So, at the invitation of a Poughkeepsie minister,
Andrew and William began to travel. William put Andrew into
(15:56):
trances in Albany, New York, and then Danbury, Connecticut, and
then Bridgeport as well. His clarivoyant healing and trance lectures
gathered bigger and bigger crowds. For a time, he made
a frequent circuit between Connecticut and New York, seeing patients
along the way and serving as their medical diagnostician, viewing
(16:16):
their wounds like a clairvoyant x ray and offering healing
advice from the spirits of the dead. Among those spirits,
Andrew began to report that his guides included the ancient
Greek physician Galen, who would help him to heal his patients.
After that he met the spirit of the Swedish Lutheranistic
Emmanuel Swedenborg. It was Swedenborg, he said, who guided him
(16:38):
on journeys through the astral plane and showed him the
structure of the universe. Here's Ann Browdie, Senior lecturer on
American religious history at Harvard Divinity School. Swedenborg's vision, which
Andrew Jackson Davis was inspired by, described a world of spheres.
(16:59):
He understood the world in terms of levels, both levels
under the ground and levels spheres above the ground that
are through which the soul advances in its journey towards heaven.
Orthodox Calvinism and Protestant faith taught that whatever virtue you
(17:23):
had accomplished in your life at the moment of death
or lack of virtue, determined your faith for eternity, that
you would either be damned or you would be blessed
to sit at the right hand of God for eternity
and saved thereby from the flames of hell and eternal suffering.
This is a source of huge anxiety. And Andrew Jackson
(17:47):
Davis address that anxiety with the idea building on Swedenborg,
that the soul can continue to progress in grace following death.
As his fame grew, Andrew found better partners than his
Poughkeepsie Taylor. In November of eighteen forty five, he began
(18:07):
working with a mesmeric doctor who offered him the chance
to become his clairvoyant diagnostician in New York City. And
Andrew jumped at the chance. Once they're the pair began
working with a universalist minister and publisher who started writing
down the things that Andrew would say during his trances.
After a year of collecting the lectures from his journeys
into the spirit land, Andrew published it all as a
(18:30):
book in eighteen forty seven, The Principles of Nature, Her
Divine Revelations, and a Voice to Mankind. Andrew was just
twenty one at the time, making it quite the accomplishment.
He didn't know yet, but his work was about to
become the foundation for a coming movement, spurred on, of course,
by newspaper reports of the dramatic healings and revelations of
(18:52):
his lectures. The book was immediately reviewed throughout the New
York press. Some poured praise on the work, while there's
mocked it. In the book's defense, a Reverend George Bush
stepped in and explained that the teachings found inside were
not that different from the Transcendentalists in Boston. In fact,
just a few years earlier, Ralph Waldo Emerson had called
(19:13):
together a meeting of the Transcendental Club precisely to discuss
the role of mysticism in modern life. For Emerson and
the other Transcendentalists, Emmanuel Swedenborg was simply a mystic par excellence.
Now Andrew was meeting with that man's spirit and narrating
it for all religiously curious Americans. What Davis started with
(19:34):
his first book soon came to be called his harmonial philosophy.
At its core, his message was one of universal religion,
that there was a truth transcending all religions, and that
if we lived by that truth, it would create a
world of peace and order. Spirits who embraced that piece well,
they would progress into the upper heavens to help spread
(19:56):
his harmonial philosophy. Davis and his cohorts Estabil wished a
newspaper that became his mouthpiece. Their goal was, and I quote,
the establishment of a universal system of truth, the reform
and the reorganization of society. To really make the movement
take off, though, the theology and the community would need
something else, something tactile and visible and earthier, something powerful
(20:22):
for people to experience. Don't fool yourself into thinking that
America wasn't ready for something different. In the early eighteen fifties,
the writer Ralph Waldo Emerson reflected back on the state
of religion in America and he wrote that the stern
old faiths have all pulverized America, he said, was a
(20:47):
whole population of gentlemen and ladies out in search of religions.
Tis a flat anarchy in our ecclesiastical realms. Here's Harvard
Divinity schools and Browdie once again. The period of the
eighteen twenties and thirties is known as the second grade Awakening,
and it's sometimes referred to as the period of the
(21:09):
democratization of American religion, when we see religious authority and
experience sweeping the country through revivals, and we see a
declining emphasis on an educated clergy, on religious hierarchies, on
religious education, and an increasing emphasis on religious experience that
(21:35):
is accessible to any individual. It was the perfect environment
for men like Aidan Blue. He was born in eighteen
oh three into a family that had farmed the same
land in Rhode Island for generations. At the age of twelve,
his whole family experienced a new kind of religion when
they attended a Universalist revival meeting, singing, praying, and weeping
(21:57):
at the incredible stories the traveling pre church told them.
It was so powerful, in fact, that for the next
three years, Aiden's whole family chased the high. They formed
their own church, and Aiden's father served as the deacon.
But not long after that, his family experienced their first
taste of sorrow. Arnold, one of Aiden's older brothers, became
(22:18):
ill and passed away. It was a moment that changed
aid into the core. It wouldn't be the last time
he experienced loss, but that didn't mean it was any
less powerful. In fact, the death of his brother haunted him.
And then there was the vision. One night, long after
his brother had passed away, Aiden awoke in the middle
(22:38):
of the nights. Feeling disoriented, he sat up and looked
around the room to try and find his bearings, and
then finally glanced out the window, and that's when he
saw it, a human form in a white robe standing outside. Strangely,
Aiden didn't feel afraid, but instead examined the figure. As
his eyes adjusted to the figure's brightness, he the features
(23:00):
of the face and suddenly recognized it. The shining figure
outside his room was his dead brother, and then it
moved toward him, passing through the solid wall to arrive
at the side of his bed. I have a command
from God, the figure said, with a finger pointed at him.
Preach to your fellow men. The blood of their souls
(23:21):
will be on your hands. Aiden's peace suddenly vanished and
was replaced with panic and fear. He spent the rest
of the night trying to convince himself that he wasn't dreaming,
that what he had seen was real, because if it
was real, then he needed to obey. From that day forward,
he was plagued by questions about the afterlife and by
(23:42):
the issues of suffering and loss. He would eventually go
on to start his own church and to travel around
the New England area, preaching and serving the communities he
had countered. He wasn't to train minister, but that wasn't
about to stop him. After all, his mission came straight
from the other world, from God himself, and he would
be a fool to ignore it. He would taste the
(24:04):
bitter wine of loss a few more times over the years.
His first wife passed away just a few years after
they were married, and then both of his sons as well.
He remarried. But once you've experienced loss on the scale
Aiden had, it's easy to keep glancing over your shoulder.
For a fighter like him, though, that meant looking for
answers and building hope. It wasn't long before he and
(24:26):
a few of his followers decided to set out on
their own and build a community together. In eighteen forty one,
he led twenty eight followers from across New York and
New England into the woods thirty miles southwest of Boston.
There they founded what was to be the model for
a perfect society, a city built on hope. Perhaps that's
why he called it Hopedale. Here's Harvard Divinity Schools and Browdie.
(24:50):
Once again, Hopedale, which was one of the most important
for the spread of spiritualism was considered a community based
on what they called practical Christian socialism. And of course,
a communitarian ideal and a socialist ideal go hand in
hand because of the idea of shared property. Holding property
(25:13):
in common is a common element of utopian settlements, and
believe me, socialism is a lot easier if you have
a religious motivation. Without a religious motive. Not that many
people are willing to share property or to live in
harmony to to place their desires as individuals. They weren't
(25:36):
the first to experiment with the idea of a utopian society,
not by a long shot. Transcendentalist reformers, including a young
Nathaniel Hawthorne, bounded a similar commune outside of Boston. Elsewhere,
a Scotsman named Robert Owen founded two separate communities, including
one in Indiana called New Harmony. But even he took
inspiration from an earlier example, the Shakers. The Shakers ticked
(26:01):
all the boxes for a utopian society from the early
eighteen hundreds. They held their own property in common, they
worked the land, they plied their trades in cooperation, and
they practiced true equality by giving leadership roles to both
men and women. But ever since they arrived in New
York in the seventeen seventies, the Shakers had also begun
to experience something else, ecstatic visitations. In eighteen thirty seven,
(26:26):
at their communal home in New York, three girls whose
ages ranged from ten to fourteen, fell under some invisible
spiritual power, and Goff, the oldest of them, stood before
her community and told them that she had seen a
female spirit dressed in white. And while that might sound
like something pulled right out of the sale in witch
trials of sixteen ninety two, the one fifty years that
(26:48):
separated them made a world of difference. Rather than start
a witch hunt, their story was received with open arms.
Later that same day, as the community danced in enthusiastic
worship and mostly friend reappeared and moved among them, kissing
them and singing songs to them. The next time she
was seeing, she brought others with her, always appearing to Anne.
(27:11):
Soon enough, the spirits of the dead were appearing at
their own funerals to comfort their morning families. Even mother
Ann Lee, who founded the Shaker order before dying in
sev four, appeared with heavenly messages for her followers. Remarkably,
spirits from outside the Shaker community began to arrive as well.
George Washington, Lafayette, Napoleon, the biblical Queen Esther, and the
(27:34):
spirits of Native Americans all appeared with messages and lessons
for them all. And here's the thing. Shaker communities around
New York started to believe that some Shakers were born
to communicate with these ghostly visitors. They called them instruments
of the spirit world, and whatever they received they would
share with others, all for the building up of their community.
(27:56):
Whatever their power might have been, these instruments offered hope.
And whether they were offering divine wisdom, comforting words, or
answers to difficult questions, one thing was absolutely clear. For
those with eyes to see the dead that burst from
the grave. History hasn't been kind of spiritualism. A recent
(28:27):
two volume History of the United States treated spiritualism with
a single dismissive sentence, as if it was an insignificant
movement making self evidently foolish claims. And honestly, there are
a lot of people today who agree with that sentiment.
But just wait, because that view is far from reality
and far from the way the world looked to a
(28:48):
lot of people in the forties, in a time when
the spiritual sciences of mesmerism, animal magnetism, and phrenology were
popular and became major new preoccupations. Well, the right way
to see the world became less and less obvious. Before
spiritualism became the parlor room seance and the music hall
spectacle that's so often mocked today, it was born in
(29:11):
the minds of deeply religious teachers, passionate social reformers, and
curious scientists who wanted to change the world. Here's Dr
John Busher, co director of the International Association for the
Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals. That profound influence that
they exerted on the national life was deliberately written out
(29:34):
of histories of reform movements like the Women's movement, of
labor movement, politics, history of the politics of the period,
the intellectual history, history of of the novel and poetry,
and on and on. That story has hardly been told
(29:58):
in this season of Unobscured. Well trace the path of
the spiritualists who followed the voice of Andrew Jackson Davis
over the course of the nineteenth century, spiritualism became a
kaleidoscope of novel beliefs, courageous people, and world shaking events.
Here's historian Molly McGarry. There were always many spiritualisms, both
(30:19):
in the nineteenth century and beyond. So some people came
to the science tables seeking answers, wanting deeply to commune
with lost loved ones. Others were curious investigators, looking to
see for themselves with this new technology could materialize. But
what I found in what I've been most struck by
is that many spiritualists took seriously the possibility of channeling
(30:39):
the voices of the dead as a means of both
connecting with the past and imagining both worldly and otherworldly futures.
The truth is, spiritualists traveled all around the world, started
a raft of publications and took up, proclaimed and then rejected,
a vast web of ideas about the afterlife, communication with
(31:01):
the spirits of the dead and the authority those spirits
had over the living. Their story touches everything from technology
to medicine, to the genocide of Native Americans and the
murder of a president, and along the way, its values
were echoed by social causes like abolition, women's suffrage, and
labor rights, helping it grow from a local fad to
(31:22):
a global phenomenon. And yes, it's a story about religion,
but it's so much more. It's a story of idealism
and individualism, of poachers and preachers, and of freedom fighters
and celebrities. And while the Shaker Girls provided an early
model for those emerging spiritualists, it was Andrew Jackson Davis,
(31:44):
the Seer of Poughkeepsie, who would do something bigger. He
would be their first bona fide star. Amy was running
from her pain. In the spring of eighteen twenty five,
Amy's fiance suddenly became ill and passed away, and then
(32:07):
a short while later, she received a letter from her
brother in law that her sister was also sick. Amy
rushed to her sister's side, and together with her brother
in law, Isaac, they cared for the dying woman as
best they could, but eventually the illness won and both
of them were left to deal with their loss and grief.
The road to healing also turned out to be a
(32:28):
road to second chances, and two years later the pair
were married. Amy and Isaac Post were Quakers, a religious
group that had been in America since the middle of
the sixteen hundreds. Since the beginning, they often found themselves
at odds with their Protestant neighbors because of their unique beliefs.
In fact, during the Salem witch Trials, of being part
(32:50):
of the Quaker movement was a very good way to
get yourself accused of witchcraft. But they were also one
of the first utopian experiments. Here's an Browdie again from
Harvard Divinity School. To give up the notion that individual
property equals happiness, you have to be very deeply committed,
and piety, religious fervor go a long way towards making
(33:15):
that possible. Of course, the Quakers are the most successful
communitarian religious experiment in American history. In eighteen twenty seven,
the Quaker movement split into two pieces. One of their
charismatic leaders, who also happened to be Amy's cousin, thought
their community had become too worldly, not least because there
(33:35):
were so many Quakers comfortable with the institution of slavery,
some even holding slaves of their own. Along with Isaac,
Amy followed the dissenters, seeking a religion that was more pure.
Here's Molly McGarry once again. She came from a family
religious radicals who had thought that the Quaker establishment had
(33:56):
grown too orthodox, too comfortable with the material institutions of
the world, including slavery. The couple moved to Rochester in
eighteen thirty six, where Isaac became a successful pharmacist. Not
long after, Amy started holding abolition meetings in their home.
And it wasn't just radical Quakers who were invited. You see,
New York State had abolished slavery a decade earlier, and
(34:18):
then in eighteen thirty four, a group of black women
founded Rochester's first female abolition society, following the examples set
by black women in Salem, Massachusetts, who formed the first
women's anti slavery society in the United States in eighteen
thirty two. That very same year, a school for black
children opened in Rochester, two blocks away from a church
(34:39):
on thirty four Sophia Street. When Isaac and Amy Post
moved into town in eighteen thirty six, they took the
home next door. By the mid eighteen forties, words spread
that Isaac and Amy had started participating in worldly groups
filled with people who weren't Quakers. This was too much
even for many of the Quaker separatists Molly mcgeary. Once again,
(35:02):
Isaac and Amy Posts were actually thrown out of their
Genesee Quakers group, for, as the story goes, having hosted
a wedding of two African American friends of theirs. The
black neighborhoods and black churches in Rochester were growing. As
news spread, people began to arrive in town looking for
safe harbor. First and foremost they were people who had
(35:24):
escaped from slavery, and black churches were the first places
in the city to provide shelter for them, sometimes finding
ways to hide survivors in plain sight. At one point,
local ebolitionists counted that they were helping one fifty people
each year. Soon enough, Amy and Isaac joined in helping
their neighbors hide fugitives and also giving them food, blankets, clothing,
(35:46):
and money for the journey farther north, where freedom awaited them.
In July of eighteen forty three, Isaac Post and a
few others put together a three day convention of their friends,
and the Posts hosted speakers in their home. In fact,
one of them was a young man who had escaped
from slavery in Maryland. His name Frederick Douglas, but that
(36:07):
wasn't all. Amy and Isaac also met a young white
woman named Leah Fish. She was a single mother who
was struggling to make a living as a piano teacher
in Rochester, and they felt moved to help her, so
they took her into their home. A short while later,
Leah's parents, John and Margaret also arrived in town, along
with two of Leah's younger sisters. They had recently lost
(36:30):
everything in a failed farming experiment farther north and needed
a place to rest, recover, and plan their next move.
Amy was only too happy to help. It turned out
to be a fateful meeting. What Leah and her sisters
brought into Amy's life would shift her horizons, change her
place in the world, and etch Rochester's name into the
(36:52):
nation's religious history. And they would give Andrew Jackson Davis's
harmonial philosophy the thing it was missing. Eight was about
to dawn, and the age of Spiritualism was about to begin.
(37:13):
That's it for this week's episode of Unobscured. Stick around
after this short sponsor break for a preview of what's
in store for next week. Next time on Unobscured, more
and more seekers were making their way into Rochester, all
while other religious experiments were falling flat and communities along
(37:35):
the canal were folding, looking for guidance, for connection and
for the next step to take in their lives. People
knew to the city were open to something that could
be seen and heard, something that could be witnessed. After
a year of closed sittings, the Spirits spoke up. They
were ready for a wider audience in a private seance
(37:56):
just for the Posts. The Spirits spoke through Leah, telling
Isaac to rent Rochester's Corinthian Hall for a whole three
nights for the first time ever. They were going to
throw the doors open wide to a paying crowd. It
was time for the Spirits to take the stage. Unobscured
(38:31):
was created by me Aaron Manky and produced by Matt Frederick,
Alex Williams, and Josh Thane in partnership with I Heart Radio.
Research and writing for this season is all the work
of my right hand man, Carl Nellis and the brilliant
Chad Lawson composed the brand new soundtrack. Learn more about
our contributing historians, source material and links to our other
(38:51):
shows over at History Unobscured dot com and until next time.
Thanks for listening. Yeah. Unobscured is a production of I
heart Radio and Aaron Menkey. For more podcasts for my
heart Radio, visit i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
(39:12):
wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H
Unobscured News
Hosts And Creators
Aaron Mahnke
Matt Frederick
Alex Williams
Carl Nellis
Chad Lawson
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