October 30, 2019 • 46 mins
The movement continued to swell. It found friends in high places. But everywhere it went, it found entrenched beliefs threatened by this new source of revelation. Finding harmony around a table was one thing. But when mediums met ministers, the seance became a street fight.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcomed, unobscured a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minkey.
Daniel was sitting pretty. He was in South Manchester, Connecticut,
in the well appointed home of Ward Cheney. All the
little comforts around them were the benefits of the families
growing fortune from silk manufacturing. They patented a new machine
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for rolling silk just five years before, and now it
was the money that was rolling right into their pockets.
In August of eighteen fifty two. The comforts Ward Cheney
afforded because of the new machines would become set dressings
for the turning point in Daniel Hume's career as a medium.
Like other movers and shakers who invited their friends to
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private seances in their parlors, Ward brought a small group
to his home to sit with Daniel. The Scottish team
didn't let them down. They started around a typical seance
table with the dust floating in the dim light that
trickled in through the windows. The spirits started with Daniel's body.
He fell into a shuddering trance. One of the men
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who published his account later in the London Quarterly Review,
said that a dramatic, powerful knocking followed pounding the floor
and then the walls. The table also started to spin,
then to rise and fall. A violent creaking like the
cables of a ship and a storm rose up in
the room, and voices started to call out, like they
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were shouting over a high wind. The table rose, then tipped,
and finally capsized, crashing to the floor. They were eager
to see more lifting Daniel. They retreated to a darker
room and resumed their circle so that they could catch
the dim flashes of light that warred Cheney claimed the
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specters made in Daniel's presence. In the dark, one of
the sitters could feel a cold, childlike hand pressed against
his forehead. A pitter patter of tapping sounds skittered around
the room. A feeling of certainty washed over word. It
was the spirit of his dead daughter. Then, unexpectedly, something
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else happened to Daniel's body. He started to lift. Still
trembling from foot to head, he rose up into the air.
The group broke their circle and reached out for him,
grabbing his hands and feet to pull him back down.
Daniel was raised up from the floor three times, one
man later said, and then lowered again to be examined.
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It was the first of Daniel's levitation seances. They would
eventually become the hallmark of his career as a spiritualist medium.
On the arms of the spirits, he rose above the
criticism that was dragging down other mediums. This was not
some popping leg bone or cracking knuckle. This wasn't a
prank on an anxious mother or a caring neighbor. It
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was one thing for spirits to capsize at table. It
was another to lift a living body off the ground.
Daniel's attendant spirits, and the news of their action swept
him off to New York City and into high society.
Now get ready for a few names here, Because Daniel
could have gathered quite a collection for his autograph book.
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William Cullen Bryant hosted him on New York's Fifth Avenue.
Bryant's friends strode through the doorway, and not just Horace Greeley,
who was already there, but other intellectual lights of the nation,
men like the writer James Fenimore Cooper and historian George Bancroft.
In fact, Bancroft was so impressed he was the one
to next host a seance with Daniel. And he wasn't
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a newly rich silk merchant, or even a well known poet. No.
Bancroft had been Secretary of the Navy for President James Polk,
then the Secretary of War, all before establishing the U. S.
Naval Academy. In when Bancroft was U S. Minister to
England for five years, William Cullen Bryan had visited him,
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a trip that had forged their friendship. With the claims
floating in the air that the spirits of Benjamin Franklin
and George Washington were suddenly speaking at seances, we can't
be too surprised that someone like Bancroft was interested in
what they had to say. Bancroft was a writer, though,
and a famous one. His Histories of the United States
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was monumental. He started in eighteen thirty four and wrote
nine more volumes over the next forty years. Much of
it was based on his personal correspondence with James Madison
and his reading in Madison's private archives. Later we'll talk
more about what kind of place Bancroft imagined the United
States was, but now it's simply worth understanding that his
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writing made him the most popular and powerful historian of
the nineteenth century. Bancroft's dinners brought other international stars to
the table. Washington Irving visited in eighteen fifty three. If
you know the Headless Horseman or Rip van Winkle, then
you know things work. But he also served as US
ambassador to Spain. When he came to daniel seance, he
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brought along the British writer William Makepeace Thackeray. The men
peppered the medium with questions and laughed at the responses
that were hammered out on the table, even when Thackeray,
who called spirit communication a dreary and foolish superstition, came
around when the table began to spin, whether or not
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the spirit communications had been dire, humbug and imposture, he said,
the manifestations he witnessed were undeniable. This is unobscured. I'm
Aaron Manky. When Emma landed in New York, she got
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a very different view of the city, and the city
took a different view of her. Emma's first impression of
New York was its ceaseless hurry and rush. She had
lived in London and Paris, but there was something about
New York's energy that impressed her. But when the theater
where she was engaged to perform opened, she started her
new career on an unpromising note. Emma was met with
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praise from the critics, but failed to find a foothold
in the theater company. She would later say that the
theater manager who hired her had expectations about their relationship
that Emma rejected. We can only guess what he might
have demanded from the actress, especially when we consider that
one of her English friend was so angry when he
heard about it all that he threatened to thrash the
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unsavory man when she didn't bow to her manager's wishes.
Emma was given smaller and smaller parts to play until
she was completely sidelined, and even though her reviews by
the critics were, as she said, warm and complimentary, an
actress wasn't likely to win respectable friends outside the theater.
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Here's historian and Browdy remember that the theater was not
a morally neutral environment. Women of the theater were considered
to be public women. They were considered to be women
of the night, and not necessarily women of the moral
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caliber that one would meet at one's church or want
one's son to marry. Women were considered to be appropriate
to the private sphere, to the sphere of the home,
of the detections of domesticity, and being public. A public
woman was often another word for a prostitute. That is,
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there was a moral equivalence between a woman being in
public rather than private and selling her body. Unwilling to
fully embrace this identity, Emma found herself facing obscurity in
a city she didn't know or understand. Left with idle hands,
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she went looking for amusements and opportunities. Actresses weren't the
only professional performing women in the city, so Emma decided
to see what else New York had in store, and
she began by investigating American spiritualism and sending her reports
home to her curious London friends. Even though she dismissed
seances as foolish behavior, Emma was nervous, So nervous, in fact,
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that when she went to her first seance, she got spooked.
It seems that as the people around the table were
questioning the spirit about the Bible and theology, the answers
they received back were so irreverent and blasphemous that Emma
bolted from the room before it was even over. She
rushed down the stairs, out into the street, and back
to her boarding house, thoroughly indignant and disgusted. It would
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take some time before the shock wore off, and it
would take the coaxing of one of her theater friends
to get her back to another seance. When the pair
finally went together, Emma had an entirely different experience. She
climbed the stairs of a boarding house, determined to sit
through the whole seance this time, and also to collect
a full collection of flaws that she might use to
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write a crushing article about spiritualism. But her angry thoughts
were interrupted when the door was pushed open and in
walked a woman named Ada Foy. Aida was courteous and
welcoming and sat down with Emma and her friend at
a simple table before the seance had even begun, though
a pounding broke the silence, as if something was slam
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being into the bottom of the table. Even Aida seemed
surprised and looked into Emma's face with wonder. She had
come prepared to invite the spirits, but never had they
attended her with so much force. In fact, she claimed
that her powers as a medium weren't nearly strong enough
for something like this. It would take someone more attuned
to the spirits, someone who was a great medium, someone
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apparently like Emma. Aida pushed a card into Emma's hand
that was covered with the letters of the alphabet, followed
by a pencil. She told Emma to point to the
letters and wait for the knocking sounds to tell her
which ones to copy down, but Emma wasn't ready to
play along. When the knocking sounds began again, Emma didn't write. Instead,
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she jumped to her feet, knocking the table over. She
was certain that there was some kind of electric device
hidden under it that was responsible. Instead, it was her
certainties that were overturned. She would later say that she
stood baffled and aghast as the knocking thundered beneath her feet.
After that, they then left the floor, hammering up the
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walls around the room and even on the very chair
she sat in. That's when Aida looked at her and said,
the spirits have a mighty work to perform through you.
And then she bent over, picked the pencil off the floor,
and put it back in Emma's hand. It wasn't just
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New York, of course, as spiritualism climbed the ladder of
prestige in the Empire state and explored the back stairwells
of its boarding houses. It also traveled south to the
nation's capital. Kate and Maggie Fox made a journey to Washington,
d C. In eighteen fifty three. There they found curious
spiritualists already waiting for them. In fact, they were welcomed
into the home of the chief stattician for the U. S.
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Postal Service, who allowed them to hold seances with them
right there. The capital was also home to followers of
Scottish utopian manufacturer Robert Owen, and they welcome spiritual is
Um just as he did. Others who thought of themselves
as radical free thinkers were among the most willing to
give the new revelations a test drive, and of course,
statesmen from Upper New York gave an ear to the
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message that was coming out of their region. In fact,
one congressman who represented New York's thirty third district, Senator
Nathaniel P. Talmadge, had actually been a champion of spiritualism
since his election in eighteen fifty one. As the Fox
sisters made converts and Spiritualism elected, spiritualist candidates to represent them.
Hope started to grow. Perhaps everything the mediums and their
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friends were witnessing along the rivers in Ohio and around
pianos in Rochester would finally be studied and understood if
only the right attention was given, which is why. In
April of eighteen fifty four, Senator James Shields of Illinois
brought a new petition before the United States Senate. It
requested that the Senate turned the resources of the government
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toward investigating the strange powers at work around the seance table.
In particular, he requested that the Senator point a scientific
commission to investigate the many undocumented forces tilting tables, mysterious lights,
and the knocking, rumbling, and low murmurs of human voices
that seemed to emanate from thin air. Here's author Nancy Stewart.
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By eighteen fifty four, there are fifteen thousand signed in
a petition by some very prominent senators and judges and
so on, and it's brought to Congress because now it's
become this outrage, I mean, the religions are all up
in the air about the standard religions. Despite the fifteen
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thousand signatures on the petition, though not every member of
Congress was able to take the suggestion seriously. In fact,
when Shields presented the petition, it was greeted with laughter.
In the face of mockery, Senator Shields himself admitted that
he believed the manifestations at seances were delusions, yet he
still pushed for the commission. In the past, he argued,
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studying the arcane delusions of occultists like John d and
Cornelius Agrippa had led to scientific breakthroughs, so naturally, these
new mysteries at the edge of knowledge in the eighteen
fifties were also worth studying. In the end, though it
seems pretty clear that his argument wasn't taken seriously. One
senator said that since the spirits were in another country,
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the petition should be referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations.
This brought another laugh from the Senate floor. Senator Shields
responded that he hoped the petition would be referred to
the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads, just like
the Telegraph had been. No such luck, though, Instead the
petition was tabled and it's fifteen thousand signers were turned away.
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Here's Nancy Stewarts once again. It just shows you the
enormity of the popularity of it and the fantastic publicity
that surrounded this early movement. When news of the Senate's
rejection reached the press, it ruffled spiritualist feathers. Nathan Talmidge,
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who had been a U. S Senator and then governor
of Wisconsin, published a sharp response. You see, he had
been one of the people who had urged Senator Shields
to bring the petition to Congress. In his view, spiritualism
had been laughed out of the government without ever getting
a fair hearing. In fact, he said, if the senators
believed that spiritualism was a delusion, it was all the
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more important to put it under the microscope rather than
wave it away with a dismissive hand. When the petition
was tabled, one Indiana senator suggested that spiritualism was a
religious matter and should be left to the nation's religious experts,
the pastors of America's churches. But if the senators had
paid attention to what was being said inside those churches,
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they would have noticed something very surprising. Those pastors weren't laughing.
They were the nemesis of the pulpit. That was Oliver
Wendell Holmes assessment of it all with the snap of
a knee joint. He wrote, Kate and Maggie Fox had
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started a spiritual earthquake that ended with and I quote,
such a crack of old beliefs that the roar of
it is heard in all the minister studies in Christendom.
When he was writing his article to Defend Spiritualism, Nathaniel
Talmadge estimated that support for spiritualism was much stronger than
the fifteen thousand who had signed the petition. In fact,
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he guessed that in eighteen fifty four there were over
two million Spiritualists in the United States. Elliot cape Roun,
the radical Quaker who had been the Fox sisters first manager,
included the same guests in his book the next year.
Later on, Cora would write that spiritualists would claim no
definite number, but both supporters and opponents agreed on one thing.
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The movement was going gangbusters. Besides, as Cora wrote, it
wasn't the number that was the most important aspect of
the movement. It was the truth of its principles. If
something was true, she said, then all the world must follow,
and follow they did by eighteen fifty two, the editor
of the New York Tribune, Horace Greeley, had given the
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movement its name Modern Spiritualism. He offered the title Spiritualists
two seekers who flocked to seances and the mediums who
conducted them, speaking in the voices of their dead loved ones.
But it was also personal for Greeley. He'd seen the
Fox Sisters demonstrate their powers in New York. After he
wrote his public defense of their seances. He even invited
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them to stay in his home. He wanted them to
hold seances for his wife Mary. You see, Horace and
Mary had recently lost their four year old son, Picky.
In fact, four of their five children had already died.
As a parent myself, I can't imagine the cavern of
grief they navigated each day, and it was into this
overn that the Fox Sisters descended. But Greeley is convinced
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Kate to live with them the following autumn. Mary had
been consumed by Picky's death, and Horace wanted her to
be able to talk to Picky spirit whenever she wanted.
But if Kate's visit to the Greeley's house brought comfort
to them, it was deeply disturbing to her. She wrote
a letter to Amy post Back in Rochester, telling her
friend and mentor that she was deeply lonely. She admitted
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that the spirits did wonderful things, from invisible fingers that
played the piano to the now routine rapping sounds, but
young Kate didn't find it easy to be the personal
attendant of a devastated mother. That people like Mary Greeley
would flock to the comforts of spiritualism was a difficult
pill to swallow for the leaders of American churches. Every
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time a new spiritualist gathering delivered information that contradicted church teachings,
it was seen as a problem because the movement was popular,
but pastors in seminary didn't take it lying down. Church
magazines and newspapers published articles condemning spiritualism as heresy. They
warned Christians to reject the teachings of a movement that
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was all about contact with familiar spirits and to rely
instead on the revelations of God through the Bible. Throughout
the eighteen fifties, ministers published books with titles like The
Infidelity of the Times as connected with Rappings and Mesmerism,
or Ancient sorcery as revived in modern spiritualism, and spiritualism
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a Satanic delusion and a sign of the times. You
get the point. I'm sure then, as we've mentioned before,
there are clear reasons why church leaders would have seen
spiritualism as a revival of ancient sorcery. Here's historian emmlin Clark.
By taking religious authority away from formal church structures and
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the traditional purveyors of religious authority more or less white
educated men, white educated um in seminaries men. By taking
religious authority away from these more formal structures and placing
it in the bodies the hands of mediums themselves. I mean,
there were a lot of churches really didn't like about spiritualism.
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They could see it as a dangerous threat. American Protestant
churches of every stripe were in a tricky position in
those decades, and not just the young denominations like the
Methodists who are trying to grow into something respectable. Like
we talked about in the last episode, it was the fresh,
vibrant energy of all those new denominations that had the
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older traditions feeling unstable and no wonder their own domains
were splintering as denominations divided and subdivided. At the same time,
they faced more and more questions about the evidence of
their spiritual claims that were taught from the pulpit. What
were the reasons to believe everything these pastors preached, or
even to believe in the authority in the first place.
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In particular, most Protestant ministers were sensitive to the idea
that their faith was in conflict with science. Pastors in
that position tended less to criticize spiritualism as satanic. Instead,
they taught that spiritualism was best explained by fraud. They
fought against spiritualism not because they were afraid of the devil,
but because it was so unbiblical. In their eyes, the
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teachings of these fraudulent mediums was simply a trick. Devil
or not behind the curtain. Still, we can't forget that
most spiritualists were Christians. Here's an browdie once again. Christians
are taught in many contexts that they should try to
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communicate with benevolent spirits who are looking after them, who
are looking down from heaven to lead them in positive directions.
Whether their formal theological doctrines of their religions teach that
or not. Popular culture teaches that, so the ideas of
spiritualism should not be so foreign to Christians, and in
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many cases they're not. In many cases, people who are
church members, um even members of other religions are also
participating in communication with spirits, even though it formally contradicts
the doctrines of their faith. For Christians who long believed
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that they're dead loved ones were looking down on them
from heaven, the rituals of spiritualism could be taken at
face value. We saw this in Sojourn or Truths reliance
on both her dead father's voice and the guiding voice
of God. And there's the story of chorus teacher Mary
in Wisconsin. The message was simple, though. If the voices
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of the spirits urged Christians to follow God and read
the Bible, then who could say that spiritualism was wrong.
Andrew Jackson Davis had taken many beatings. They came from
the pens and pulpits of American ministers. They also came
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from people he admired, like Emerson and Thorreau. Those in
particular must have stung. But he had friends too, and
when he was invited by admirers to leave New York
City and moved to Hartford, Connecticut. Andrew was only too
happy to oblige. When he arrived, though, he opened the
paper to find disparaging comments from America's most popular minister,
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Henry Ward Beecher, and as he walked to the cottage
where he had been invited to live, he was greeted
by more insults. A group of Sunday schoolboys had chalked
vulgarities across the fence and gate. One source of comfort
was his new friendship with Bronson Elcott. Bronson was a
friend of Emerson and Threau, so there was a little
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of that atmosphere Andrew craved, even if it was only
second hand. Together they swapped stories and discuss us the
various communes sprouting up in the northeast. Bronson was convinced
that Andrew's books were good for people. He thought the
new spiritual visions would help his followers to sort out
the old perplexities, as he called them, and the perverted
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teachings of former times. For Bronson, it wasn't that spiritualism
twisted Christian teachings away from the truth, but rather that
it corrected the contortions and errors that had built up
in the church. Over time, with friends like this, Andrew
felt he was ready to become more than just a
trance healer and writer. He wanted to step out from
behind the page, and he decided to start in his
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own backyard. In a series of public lectures, he blasted
the teachings of Hartford's most prominent congregational minister. He was
unsound in his teaching, Andrew said, insufficient in his thinking.
His preaching wasn't as rational as spiritualism, which Andrew told
his audiences was invulnerable and satisfying. And As Andrew made
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these pronouncements, he suggested that other spiritualists do the same.
Soon enough, the circle in Hartford was regularly attacking the
errors of the church. They even put out a public
challenge to all the pastors in the city to join
them in a public debate about spirituality. Sometimes it seems
like the attacks on spiritualism from the churches was a
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symptom of their fear of something new. Sometimes, though, it's
clear that spiritualists were the ones picking the fight. For
Andrew Jackson Davis and the Hartford Spiritualists. This came to
a head at the Bible Convention that they held in
June of eighteen fifty three, they invited reformers and spiritualists
from around the region to come to Hartford and discuss
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the history and authority of the Bible. The abolitionist William
Lloyd Garrison came down from Boston, Sojourner Truth made the
trip as well, and they gathered a crowd. Notably, though
all the Hartford ministers and Christian scholars refused their invitations.
One pastor made it no him that he thought spiritualists
were dishonest plagiarizers and that it was impossible to have
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a conversation with them. After all, they claimed to have
direct knowledge from the spirits. How could you possibly argue
against anything they would say. No prominent ministers joined Andrew
on stage, but they did send their congregations, and they
didn't come in peace. It started with the heckling. Whenever
spiritualist leaders took their place at the front of the room,
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they were met with taunts and shouting. Trader someone screamed
at Andrew blasphemer, and their numbers were growing too. So
much hostility rippled through the crowd that the Hartford mayor
had to call in the police to keep order. That
seemed to hold things back until the final day of
the convention, when the crowds outside the convention hall filled
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up the streets. Andrew Jackson Davis and William Lloyd Garrison
found themselves trapped inside. The mayor was so scared of
the potential violence that he declared the convention canceled. The
spiritualist speaker couldn't get out until bodyguards were available to
escort them through the mob of angry Christians. To them,
the links were clear between spiritualism and reform movements like
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abolition and women's rights, and it created the kind of
disorder they expected from satanic rituals and atheist freethinkers. And
there were consequences for some of these attendees. Here's historian
Margaret Washington, William Lloyd Garrison's brother in law, as a
matter of fact, for supporting it, lost the new job
that he had ultimately had to leave and take his
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whole family to Kansas. They were so ostracized. But that
was a big deal that Hartford Convention because they were
challenging the Bible. But even more devastating to Andrew than
any public outcry about his work was the death of
his wife, Katie. Her health had been slowly declining since
the previous winter. Of course, Andrew had tried multiple times
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to heal her through his trances, but nothing made a difference.
He even called upon the spit or to the ancient
physician Galen, but that failed too. When William Lloyd Garrison
stayed with them during the Bible Convention, he saw Katie's
pallid features and began to wonder how sick she really was.
After the scare of the convention, Andrew and Katie moved
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to the Massachusetts coast, hoping the sea air would be
a better therapy than the winds blowing off the spirit world,
but she continued to get worse. Finally, her crushing symptoms
forced Andrew to agree to bring Katie to a doctor,
but by then it was too late. Katie died a
short while later in November of eighteen fifty three. Andrew
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worked through his grief by loudly proclaiming to others that
he had seen her spirit greeted by relatives in the afterlife.
Then he took to the road, where he tried to
outrun his loss among new, more sympathetic crowds. The power
of Andrew's trances had failed to heal his wife, but
he was still convinced it could remake the nation. Despite
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the fury he had faced, he held on to hope
in something that others felt was out of reach, harmony.
Everywhere spiritualism went it met a church eager to stamp
it out, whether it was the Baptists, Presbyterians and Congregationalists
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in the United States assorted French priests or the leaders
of the Church of England. Ministers everywhere struggled to maintain
the confidence of their flock. In England, though, the churches
responded with far less venom than their American counterparts. Maybe
that's because the British press was so quick to stab
at the first American mediums, and it probably helped that
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there were leaders in the English Church who were actually curious.
It seemed that they were attempted by the news from
spiritualist meetings, as their congregations were. By eighteen fifty five,
three years after Maria Hayden had reached England with spiritualism,
the Yorkshire Spiritual Telegraph reported that ministers of the Church
of England were counted among their spirit circles, and they
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said there were ministers from every other church as well.
For some, Briton's contact with the spirit world didn't threaten
their beliefs. Instead, seance after seance, trance after trance, they
found that spiritualism renewed their Christian faith. The tapping, sounds
and messages from beyond represented the proof of the afterlife
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that they had always wanted. Roman Catholic Christians had the
same feeling. At first. There were even a few priests
who wondered if they had discovered a link with souls
in purgatory. One priest in Paris even published a pamphlet
declaring that this was a sign that the age of
miracles hadn't ended. With that in mind, the Archbishop of
Paris gave him permission to try out some experiments, and
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he got some results. Spirits spoke to him through tapping
and knocking. Tables spun at his request, and this kept
happening even after he poured holy water on the table,
laid a crucifix on it, and said the name of
Christ to him. This was a clear sign that whatever
forces were answering in seances, they weren't demons, as some
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priests feared. Spiritualism was popular in Italy too. It popped
up in Venice Milan and Turin, but Italian priests believed
it was a toxic stew of blasphemies and absurdities. A
few years later, Pope Pious the Ninth wede in writing
a letter about the abuses of mesmerism. His memorandum was
circulated to the bishops and inquisitors all over the Papal states.
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Spiritualism was to be crushed. That was the official stance
of the Church. It didn't stop adventurous mediums from visiting Italy, though,
especially if they had friends in high places. Our favorite traveler,
Daniel Hume, held seances in Florence, Naples and Rome during
the eighteen fifties, slipping through with his network of high
profile supporters. A group of prominent citizens in turn organized
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their own spirit circle in eighteen fifty six, which included
members of the Savoy nobility and even the vice president
of their parliament, but under pressure from the Catholic Church,
that group didn't last more than two years. In Spain,
the response was even more dramatic. There, the Bishop of
Barcelona called on the military to help. He had heard
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that a Spanish bookseller ordered a shipment of spiritualist books
from France, and they were arriving on a French steamship
called the L Monarca. They whispered that the captain was
a known smuggler who had used compartments in the ship
to transport government fugitives and forbidden literature. From the bishop's
point of view, El Monarca might as well have shipped
the books direct from the fires of Hell. When the
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ship landed, soldiers marched aboard and toward apart. They carted
the books into the city square and threw them into
a bonfire. The drifting spiral of smoke was all the
levitation the bishop wanted, but there were some who claimed that,
just like the mob and Hartford, the book burning had
the opposite effect. When Barcelona citizen realized what was happening,
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a crowd gathered. First there were just murmurs, but then
someone shouted down with the inquisition. Soon the boldest people
in the crowd rushed toward the flames and snatched burning
fragments of paper. The declaration of forbidden knowledge ended up
drawing curious citizens like moths to a flame. An underground
(33:24):
network of spiritualist societies had formed, and it was spreading.
While Kate Fox had experienced misadventure at Greeley's, Maggie found
herself in much more dangerous waters. Maggie's reputation had grown
alongside the national acclaim of her sisters. Of course, they
(33:46):
were all in demand. When Leah saw opportunities to spread
their net wider by splitting the sisters up, it just
made sense. So when Maggie received an invitation to visit
family friends in Troy, New York and to hold seances there,
she accepted. Her family expected only friendly faces to be
waiting for her in Troy, so they sent her alone.
(34:07):
When she arrived, she was greeted by a friend, but
on their way into town, they realized that some people
in Troy wanted to give Maggie a Hartford welcome. You see,
they'd arrived at the dock for the Hudson River Ferry,
but what they found was a group of men who
didn't look very friendly. So Maggie's carriage was instead guided
up the riverside and across the Troy Bridge. When the
(34:27):
carriage turned to take the road, though the men followed
at a distance, That's when they went from sinister to
downright threatening. Fortunately, Maggie's friends were quick enough to avoid
the bridge, opting to drive on to an even farther crossing,
but the group of men kept up. Their plan, whatever
it had been, had failed, and now they were angry.
(34:48):
They closed in on Maggie's carriage just as she and
her friend near the house where she would be staying.
The final stretch must have been a mad dash, too,
but Maggie was able to rush inside and bolt the
door before the mob re her. Frustrated again, they surrounded
the house and tried to break down the door. When
that failed, they sent rocks crashing through the windows. After that,
(35:09):
gunfire began and the whole family had to cower out
of sight until dark. Under the cover of darkness, the
family rushed a panic telegram to the Fox family, telling
them that Maggie was in danger. Assassins had laid a
plot to destroy her, it said, and they were back
the next morning. Again they tried to break into the house,
but failed. Over the next few days, Maggie stayed bunkerd
(35:32):
in the house while threatening men were almost always seen nearby.
When Leah received the message, she rushed to catch the
next train to Troy. She arrived to find the house
where Maggie was staying besieged by a crowd in disguise
and surrounded by friends, Leah was able to make it
through the blockade, but only when one of those friends
brandished a pistol to clear the path. On their way through,
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they overheard the charges. The group was certain that the
girls were pracked seen witchcraft, just like so many other
times in places, it was an accusation that worked like
a charm. The men were determined that no witchcraft would
come into their town, and they decided to oppose it
with violence. Once she was inside, Leah found Maggie so
overcome by fear that she was sobbing on the floor
(36:18):
and vomiting. That night, Leoh was able to spirit Maggie
away in the dark, leaving Troy to return to Rochester.
Maggie escaped that crowd, but she couldn't escape the sense
of fear that now clung to her. In the aftermath,
her family decided that she should leave the state with
her mother so that she could have time to recover
in new surroundings. In search of a place where Maggie
(36:40):
would be surrounded by friends, they took up an invitation
from the Spiritualist community in Philadelphia. When Maggie arrived there,
she was still shaken. Barely twenty years old. She had
been traveling and giving seances for years under the direction
of her older sister, but she was ready to turn
a page in her story to start a whole new chapter.
(37:01):
What she found in the city wasn't quite what she expected,
but it would also be a pivotal moment in her
life because it was when she arrived in Philadelphia that
Maggie would meet Elisha Kent Kane. Maggie had barely begun
her sittings as a medium when an energetic and intense
man arrived and asked for a private seance. It started
the ordinary way. Elisha introduced himself and said he was
(37:25):
hoping to speak with the spirit of his brother who
had recently died. Maggie agreed, offering Elisha spirit contact through
the knocking sounds, and then he retreated. It was a
session just like most others, and entirely forgettable. That is
until Elishah came back the next morning. This time, when
he walked into the room, he stared at her for
(37:47):
so long that she started to get uncomfortable. Then, looking
down at her from his full heights, he said, this
is no life for you. Whatever the man meant by that,
it didn't stop him from sitting down for another seance,
not that day or the next. In fact, Elisha started
coming to Maggie seances every day. He brought friends and relatives,
(38:09):
and when he started to ask the spirits for clues
about the location of the missing Arctic explorer, Sir John Franklin,
Elisha's life began to come into view. Here's Nancy Stewart
once again. Elishah Cancaine was from an elite Philadelphia family.
His father was a judge and mother was from a
(38:30):
very well to do Philadelphia family and a very distinguished
upstanding citizens. And Elishah Cancaine is a physician, but he's
also an explorer. Like Maggie, Elisha was also a darling
of the press. For years, it had been his obsession
to find John Franklin's lost expedition. Now he thought the
(38:50):
spirits might be able to help. But it quickly became
clear that he had a new obsession when his daily
visits to Maggie Seances became several visits each day. In return,
Maggie began to notice things about Elisha that she liked,
an understated personal style and a tendency to help others.
He was kind, and in Maggie's world, that meant a lot.
(39:14):
By the time Elisha became friends with her mother, Maggie
was smitten. The three of them would spend hours together.
Until that is, Elisha's work took him out of town.
He had lectures of his own to give in Boston,
New York, and Washington. Elishah spoke on scientific subjects and
raised money for his next Arctic expedition, But Maggie and
(39:36):
Elisha didn't allow the distance to keep them apart. They
sent each other a flurry of letters. To Maggie, for
whom so much of life had been consumed with death
and caught up in the teeth of a hotly contested movement,
Elisha offered entry into a prestigious Philadelphia family and a
love unburdened by the schemes of the less honorable. In fact,
(39:57):
as they grew closer to each other, Ali Shaw became
less and less convinced that spiritualism was even real. Soon
he was urging Maggie to give it all up. It
wasn't just because he didn't believe in it, though, It
was also because he had decided that he wanted the
two of them to get married, but he knew that
if his wealthy Christian family was going to accept Maggie
(40:19):
into their fold, some things would have to change. Things
began to blow up. Maggie was under pressure to throw
away the life her family had created in spiritualism. Leah
(40:43):
was furious that her sister might shatter everything they've built
or a potential future with Alisha, so the Fox family
started to interfere with their relationship. Once Maggie was back
on the road, traveling from city to city to give seances,
she was more death spirit than ever to make every
day with Elisha count. They constantly worked to make their
(41:04):
paths cross. Once, when Elisha arrived in New York to
find that Maggie was in the city, he rushed to
the house where she was staying, but it was Kate
and Mrs Fox who met him at the door. They
told him that he was misinformed, Maggie wasn't there. He
was devastated later when he got a letter from Maggie
telling him that she had spent a miserable day waiting
for him, and as far as she knew, he never came.
(41:28):
For years, Maggie had followed Leah from town to town
and show to show. The family's decisions and instructions had
brought her into a life that was now narrowly confining
as the room where she had been locked up in Troy.
With the Troy gunshots still echoing in her ears, she
was now determined to leave the family behind. She and
Elisha plotted their escape. First, they knew that Maggie had
(41:52):
to be educated. Elisha made arrangements to pay for her schooling,
and then he took on the second bigger task, Leah
had to be pacified. All it took in the end
was monthly payments to her in the Family's objections just
sort of faded away. With arrangements made. It seemed like
there was smooth sailing ahead, but there was trouble yet
(42:13):
to come. Elisha had finally gathered enough money for his
next journey into the Arctic. His book, telling the story
of his first expedition, was published to great celebration. People
with deep pockets had lined up to invest in his
new ship and all the supplies that he would need
to brave the ice again. As with all journeys into
the North, there was a chance he wouldn't return. When
(42:35):
he set out. He left Maggie with a pile of gifts.
They were hints of the upper class life she could
look forward to, from lace under sleeves and handkerchiefs to
the central gift that came with the licious promise, a
diamond ring set in black enamel. So Maggie stayed the course.
She lived with elisious friends, studied hard, and agreed to
hold no more seances. Meanwhile, a Aisha's course had already begun.
(43:02):
He wound his way north at the end of the
year as things got colder, until one day they discovered
the ship was locked in ice. He found himself trapped
on the northwest coast of Greenland. Days stretched into months.
Elisha's crew was starving. He sent out scouting parties over
the ice, but they froze. Little by little. His men
were dying, and they began to see strange things in
(43:24):
the drifting snow. Glowing hands floated over the ship. One night,
as the men looked out over the frozen cove, they
saw a shadow flicker in the dark. When they moved
out to investigate, they found nothing, not even a footprint.
Alicia tried to chase away their fears, but there was
no reasoning with the crew. They believed that they had
(43:45):
seen a wraith trapped among the grinding ice. Elisha felt
his hope begin to dwindle. He knew that if he
was ever going to lay his eyes on Maggie again,
something miraculous wouldn't need to happen. But his time, it seems,
was running out. That's it for this week's episode of Unobscured.
(44:09):
Stick around after this short sponsor break for a preview
of what's in store for next week. Next time on Unobscured,
they had hoped the warmer climate might save him, but
the journey to Havannah turned out to be more deadly
than his trip to the Arctic. After he suffered a
stroke at sea, it seemed the only thing Elisha's family
(44:30):
had truly managed to shield him from was Maggie's loving words.
One of the last things he ever wrote was utterly
gut wrenching. It was an urgent plea for his wife
to write him something anything. A second stroke sent him
on his final journey. He passed away on February of
eighteen fifty seven. His body was taken to New Orleans
(44:55):
on a steamship, then up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers
to Cincinnati, whereas Coffin was loaded onto a touring train.
It made stops in Columbus, Baltimore and beyond as it
headed east. An American hero and a son of science,
his corpse was honored, just as his exploits had been
elishah Caine's scientific career was put to rest along with
(45:18):
his remains, although the tide of American science and conquest
rolled on to honor his memory and his wishes. A
grief stricken Maggie was baptized into the Roman Catholic Church
that August, and she swore that she would never hold
another seance again. Unobscured was created by me Aaron Manky
(45:55):
and produced by Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Josh Thayne
in partnership with 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 shows over at History unobscured
(46:16):
dot com, and until next time, thanks for listening. Unobscured
as a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Monkey.
For more podcasts. For my heart Radio, visit the heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Welcomed, unobscured a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minkey.
Daniel was sitting pretty. He was in South Manchester, Connecticut,
in the well appointed home of Ward Cheney. All the
little comforts around them were the benefits of the families
growing fortune from silk manufacturing. They patented a new machine
(00:24):
for rolling silk just five years before, and now it
was the money that was rolling right into their pockets.
In August of eighteen fifty two. The comforts Ward Cheney
afforded because of the new machines would become set dressings
for the turning point in Daniel Hume's career as a medium.
Like other movers and shakers who invited their friends to
(00:45):
private seances in their parlors, Ward brought a small group
to his home to sit with Daniel. The Scottish team
didn't let them down. They started around a typical seance
table with the dust floating in the dim light that
trickled in through the windows. The spirits started with Daniel's body.
He fell into a shuddering trance. One of the men
(01:06):
who published his account later in the London Quarterly Review,
said that a dramatic, powerful knocking followed pounding the floor
and then the walls. The table also started to spin,
then to rise and fall. A violent creaking like the
cables of a ship and a storm rose up in
the room, and voices started to call out, like they
(01:28):
were shouting over a high wind. The table rose, then tipped,
and finally capsized, crashing to the floor. They were eager
to see more lifting Daniel. They retreated to a darker
room and resumed their circle so that they could catch
the dim flashes of light that warred Cheney claimed the
(01:48):
specters made in Daniel's presence. In the dark, one of
the sitters could feel a cold, childlike hand pressed against
his forehead. A pitter patter of tapping sounds skittered around
the room. A feeling of certainty washed over word. It
was the spirit of his dead daughter. Then, unexpectedly, something
(02:10):
else happened to Daniel's body. He started to lift. Still
trembling from foot to head, he rose up into the air.
The group broke their circle and reached out for him,
grabbing his hands and feet to pull him back down.
Daniel was raised up from the floor three times, one
man later said, and then lowered again to be examined.
(02:33):
It was the first of Daniel's levitation seances. They would
eventually become the hallmark of his career as a spiritualist medium.
On the arms of the spirits, he rose above the
criticism that was dragging down other mediums. This was not
some popping leg bone or cracking knuckle. This wasn't a
prank on an anxious mother or a caring neighbor. It
(02:56):
was one thing for spirits to capsize at table. It
was another to lift a living body off the ground.
Daniel's attendant spirits, and the news of their action swept
him off to New York City and into high society.
Now get ready for a few names here, Because Daniel
could have gathered quite a collection for his autograph book.
(03:18):
William Cullen Bryant hosted him on New York's Fifth Avenue.
Bryant's friends strode through the doorway, and not just Horace Greeley,
who was already there, but other intellectual lights of the nation,
men like the writer James Fenimore Cooper and historian George Bancroft.
In fact, Bancroft was so impressed he was the one
to next host a seance with Daniel. And he wasn't
(03:40):
a newly rich silk merchant, or even a well known poet. No.
Bancroft had been Secretary of the Navy for President James Polk,
then the Secretary of War, all before establishing the U. S.
Naval Academy. In when Bancroft was U S. Minister to
England for five years, William Cullen Bryan had visited him,
(04:01):
a trip that had forged their friendship. With the claims
floating in the air that the spirits of Benjamin Franklin
and George Washington were suddenly speaking at seances, we can't
be too surprised that someone like Bancroft was interested in
what they had to say. Bancroft was a writer, though,
and a famous one. His Histories of the United States
(04:22):
was monumental. He started in eighteen thirty four and wrote
nine more volumes over the next forty years. Much of
it was based on his personal correspondence with James Madison
and his reading in Madison's private archives. Later we'll talk
more about what kind of place Bancroft imagined the United
States was, but now it's simply worth understanding that his
(04:43):
writing made him the most popular and powerful historian of
the nineteenth century. Bancroft's dinners brought other international stars to
the table. Washington Irving visited in eighteen fifty three. If
you know the Headless Horseman or Rip van Winkle, then
you know things work. But he also served as US
ambassador to Spain. When he came to daniel seance, he
(05:06):
brought along the British writer William Makepeace Thackeray. The men
peppered the medium with questions and laughed at the responses
that were hammered out on the table, even when Thackeray,
who called spirit communication a dreary and foolish superstition, came
around when the table began to spin, whether or not
(05:27):
the spirit communications had been dire, humbug and imposture, he said,
the manifestations he witnessed were undeniable. This is unobscured. I'm
Aaron Manky. When Emma landed in New York, she got
(06:19):
a very different view of the city, and the city
took a different view of her. Emma's first impression of
New York was its ceaseless hurry and rush. She had
lived in London and Paris, but there was something about
New York's energy that impressed her. But when the theater
where she was engaged to perform opened, she started her
new career on an unpromising note. Emma was met with
(06:43):
praise from the critics, but failed to find a foothold
in the theater company. She would later say that the
theater manager who hired her had expectations about their relationship
that Emma rejected. We can only guess what he might
have demanded from the actress, especially when we consider that
one of her English friend was so angry when he
heard about it all that he threatened to thrash the
(07:03):
unsavory man when she didn't bow to her manager's wishes.
Emma was given smaller and smaller parts to play until
she was completely sidelined, and even though her reviews by
the critics were, as she said, warm and complimentary, an
actress wasn't likely to win respectable friends outside the theater.
(07:24):
Here's historian and Browdy remember that the theater was not
a morally neutral environment. Women of the theater were considered
to be public women. They were considered to be women
of the night, and not necessarily women of the moral
(07:45):
caliber that one would meet at one's church or want
one's son to marry. Women were considered to be appropriate
to the private sphere, to the sphere of the home,
of the detections of domesticity, and being public. A public
woman was often another word for a prostitute. That is,
(08:10):
there was a moral equivalence between a woman being in
public rather than private and selling her body. Unwilling to
fully embrace this identity, Emma found herself facing obscurity in
a city she didn't know or understand. Left with idle hands,
(08:30):
she went looking for amusements and opportunities. Actresses weren't the
only professional performing women in the city, so Emma decided
to see what else New York had in store, and
she began by investigating American spiritualism and sending her reports
home to her curious London friends. Even though she dismissed
seances as foolish behavior, Emma was nervous, So nervous, in fact,
(08:54):
that when she went to her first seance, she got spooked.
It seems that as the people around the table were
questioning the spirit about the Bible and theology, the answers
they received back were so irreverent and blasphemous that Emma
bolted from the room before it was even over. She
rushed down the stairs, out into the street, and back
to her boarding house, thoroughly indignant and disgusted. It would
(09:17):
take some time before the shock wore off, and it
would take the coaxing of one of her theater friends
to get her back to another seance. When the pair
finally went together, Emma had an entirely different experience. She
climbed the stairs of a boarding house, determined to sit
through the whole seance this time, and also to collect
a full collection of flaws that she might use to
(09:38):
write a crushing article about spiritualism. But her angry thoughts
were interrupted when the door was pushed open and in
walked a woman named Ada Foy. Aida was courteous and
welcoming and sat down with Emma and her friend at
a simple table before the seance had even begun, though
a pounding broke the silence, as if something was slam
(10:00):
being into the bottom of the table. Even Aida seemed
surprised and looked into Emma's face with wonder. She had
come prepared to invite the spirits, but never had they
attended her with so much force. In fact, she claimed
that her powers as a medium weren't nearly strong enough
for something like this. It would take someone more attuned
to the spirits, someone who was a great medium, someone
(10:23):
apparently like Emma. Aida pushed a card into Emma's hand
that was covered with the letters of the alphabet, followed
by a pencil. She told Emma to point to the
letters and wait for the knocking sounds to tell her
which ones to copy down, but Emma wasn't ready to
play along. When the knocking sounds began again, Emma didn't write. Instead,
(10:43):
she jumped to her feet, knocking the table over. She
was certain that there was some kind of electric device
hidden under it that was responsible. Instead, it was her
certainties that were overturned. She would later say that she
stood baffled and aghast as the knocking thundered beneath her feet.
After that, they then left the floor, hammering up the
(11:04):
walls around the room and even on the very chair
she sat in. That's when Aida looked at her and said,
the spirits have a mighty work to perform through you.
And then she bent over, picked the pencil off the floor,
and put it back in Emma's hand. It wasn't just
(11:27):
New York, of course, as spiritualism climbed the ladder of
prestige in the Empire state and explored the back stairwells
of its boarding houses. It also traveled south to the
nation's capital. Kate and Maggie Fox made a journey to Washington,
d C. In eighteen fifty three. There they found curious
spiritualists already waiting for them. In fact, they were welcomed
into the home of the chief stattician for the U. S.
(11:49):
Postal Service, who allowed them to hold seances with them
right there. The capital was also home to followers of
Scottish utopian manufacturer Robert Owen, and they welcome spiritual is
Um just as he did. Others who thought of themselves
as radical free thinkers were among the most willing to
give the new revelations a test drive, and of course,
statesmen from Upper New York gave an ear to the
(12:11):
message that was coming out of their region. In fact,
one congressman who represented New York's thirty third district, Senator
Nathaniel P. Talmadge, had actually been a champion of spiritualism
since his election in eighteen fifty one. As the Fox
sisters made converts and Spiritualism elected, spiritualist candidates to represent them.
Hope started to grow. Perhaps everything the mediums and their
(12:34):
friends were witnessing along the rivers in Ohio and around
pianos in Rochester would finally be studied and understood if
only the right attention was given, which is why. In
April of eighteen fifty four, Senator James Shields of Illinois
brought a new petition before the United States Senate. It
requested that the Senate turned the resources of the government
(12:55):
toward investigating the strange powers at work around the seance table.
In particular, he requested that the Senator point a scientific
commission to investigate the many undocumented forces tilting tables, mysterious lights,
and the knocking, rumbling, and low murmurs of human voices
that seemed to emanate from thin air. Here's author Nancy Stewart.
(13:19):
By eighteen fifty four, there are fifteen thousand signed in
a petition by some very prominent senators and judges and
so on, and it's brought to Congress because now it's
become this outrage, I mean, the religions are all up
in the air about the standard religions. Despite the fifteen
(13:39):
thousand signatures on the petition, though not every member of
Congress was able to take the suggestion seriously. In fact,
when Shields presented the petition, it was greeted with laughter.
In the face of mockery, Senator Shields himself admitted that
he believed the manifestations at seances were delusions, yet he
still pushed for the commission. In the past, he argued,
(14:02):
studying the arcane delusions of occultists like John d and
Cornelius Agrippa had led to scientific breakthroughs, so naturally, these
new mysteries at the edge of knowledge in the eighteen
fifties were also worth studying. In the end, though it
seems pretty clear that his argument wasn't taken seriously. One
senator said that since the spirits were in another country,
(14:24):
the petition should be referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations.
This brought another laugh from the Senate floor. Senator Shields
responded that he hoped the petition would be referred to
the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads, just like
the Telegraph had been. No such luck, though, Instead the
petition was tabled and it's fifteen thousand signers were turned away.
(14:47):
Here's Nancy Stewarts once again. It just shows you the
enormity of the popularity of it and the fantastic publicity
that surrounded this early movement. When news of the Senate's
rejection reached the press, it ruffled spiritualist feathers. Nathan Talmidge,
(15:07):
who had been a U. S Senator and then governor
of Wisconsin, published a sharp response. You see, he had
been one of the people who had urged Senator Shields
to bring the petition to Congress. In his view, spiritualism
had been laughed out of the government without ever getting
a fair hearing. In fact, he said, if the senators
believed that spiritualism was a delusion, it was all the
(15:29):
more important to put it under the microscope rather than
wave it away with a dismissive hand. When the petition
was tabled, one Indiana senator suggested that spiritualism was a
religious matter and should be left to the nation's religious experts,
the pastors of America's churches. But if the senators had
paid attention to what was being said inside those churches,
(15:51):
they would have noticed something very surprising. Those pastors weren't laughing.
They were the nemesis of the pulpit. That was Oliver
Wendell Holmes assessment of it all with the snap of
a knee joint. He wrote, Kate and Maggie Fox had
(16:13):
started a spiritual earthquake that ended with and I quote,
such a crack of old beliefs that the roar of
it is heard in all the minister studies in Christendom.
When he was writing his article to Defend Spiritualism, Nathaniel
Talmadge estimated that support for spiritualism was much stronger than
the fifteen thousand who had signed the petition. In fact,
(16:35):
he guessed that in eighteen fifty four there were over
two million Spiritualists in the United States. Elliot cape Roun,
the radical Quaker who had been the Fox sisters first manager,
included the same guests in his book the next year.
Later on, Cora would write that spiritualists would claim no
definite number, but both supporters and opponents agreed on one thing.
(16:58):
The movement was going gangbusters. Besides, as Cora wrote, it
wasn't the number that was the most important aspect of
the movement. It was the truth of its principles. If
something was true, she said, then all the world must follow,
and follow they did by eighteen fifty two, the editor
of the New York Tribune, Horace Greeley, had given the
(17:20):
movement its name Modern Spiritualism. He offered the title Spiritualists
two seekers who flocked to seances and the mediums who
conducted them, speaking in the voices of their dead loved ones.
But it was also personal for Greeley. He'd seen the
Fox Sisters demonstrate their powers in New York. After he
wrote his public defense of their seances. He even invited
(17:42):
them to stay in his home. He wanted them to
hold seances for his wife Mary. You see, Horace and
Mary had recently lost their four year old son, Picky.
In fact, four of their five children had already died.
As a parent myself, I can't imagine the cavern of
grief they navigated each day, and it was into this
overn that the Fox Sisters descended. But Greeley is convinced
(18:04):
Kate to live with them the following autumn. Mary had
been consumed by Picky's death, and Horace wanted her to
be able to talk to Picky spirit whenever she wanted.
But if Kate's visit to the Greeley's house brought comfort
to them, it was deeply disturbing to her. She wrote
a letter to Amy post Back in Rochester, telling her
friend and mentor that she was deeply lonely. She admitted
(18:27):
that the spirits did wonderful things, from invisible fingers that
played the piano to the now routine rapping sounds, but
young Kate didn't find it easy to be the personal
attendant of a devastated mother. That people like Mary Greeley
would flock to the comforts of spiritualism was a difficult
pill to swallow for the leaders of American churches. Every
(18:49):
time a new spiritualist gathering delivered information that contradicted church teachings,
it was seen as a problem because the movement was popular,
but pastors in seminary didn't take it lying down. Church
magazines and newspapers published articles condemning spiritualism as heresy. They
warned Christians to reject the teachings of a movement that
(19:10):
was all about contact with familiar spirits and to rely
instead on the revelations of God through the Bible. Throughout
the eighteen fifties, ministers published books with titles like The
Infidelity of the Times as connected with Rappings and Mesmerism,
or Ancient sorcery as revived in modern spiritualism, and spiritualism
(19:32):
a Satanic delusion and a sign of the times. You
get the point. I'm sure then, as we've mentioned before,
there are clear reasons why church leaders would have seen
spiritualism as a revival of ancient sorcery. Here's historian emmlin Clark.
By taking religious authority away from formal church structures and
(19:53):
the traditional purveyors of religious authority more or less white
educated men, white educated um in seminaries men. By taking
religious authority away from these more formal structures and placing
it in the bodies the hands of mediums themselves. I mean,
there were a lot of churches really didn't like about spiritualism.
(20:15):
They could see it as a dangerous threat. American Protestant
churches of every stripe were in a tricky position in
those decades, and not just the young denominations like the
Methodists who are trying to grow into something respectable. Like
we talked about in the last episode, it was the fresh,
vibrant energy of all those new denominations that had the
(20:37):
older traditions feeling unstable and no wonder their own domains
were splintering as denominations divided and subdivided. At the same time,
they faced more and more questions about the evidence of
their spiritual claims that were taught from the pulpit. What
were the reasons to believe everything these pastors preached, or
even to believe in the authority in the first place.
(21:00):
In particular, most Protestant ministers were sensitive to the idea
that their faith was in conflict with science. Pastors in
that position tended less to criticize spiritualism as satanic. Instead,
they taught that spiritualism was best explained by fraud. They
fought against spiritualism not because they were afraid of the devil,
but because it was so unbiblical. In their eyes, the
(21:22):
teachings of these fraudulent mediums was simply a trick. Devil
or not behind the curtain. Still, we can't forget that
most spiritualists were Christians. Here's an browdie once again. Christians
are taught in many contexts that they should try to
(21:42):
communicate with benevolent spirits who are looking after them, who
are looking down from heaven to lead them in positive directions.
Whether their formal theological doctrines of their religions teach that
or not. Popular culture teaches that, so the ideas of
spiritualism should not be so foreign to Christians, and in
(22:07):
many cases they're not. In many cases, people who are
church members, um even members of other religions are also
participating in communication with spirits, even though it formally contradicts
the doctrines of their faith. For Christians who long believed
(22:29):
that they're dead loved ones were looking down on them
from heaven, the rituals of spiritualism could be taken at
face value. We saw this in Sojourn or Truths reliance
on both her dead father's voice and the guiding voice
of God. And there's the story of chorus teacher Mary
in Wisconsin. The message was simple, though. If the voices
(22:49):
of the spirits urged Christians to follow God and read
the Bible, then who could say that spiritualism was wrong.
Andrew Jackson Davis had taken many beatings. They came from
the pens and pulpits of American ministers. They also came
(23:12):
from people he admired, like Emerson and Thorreau. Those in
particular must have stung. But he had friends too, and
when he was invited by admirers to leave New York
City and moved to Hartford, Connecticut. Andrew was only too
happy to oblige. When he arrived, though, he opened the
paper to find disparaging comments from America's most popular minister,
(23:33):
Henry Ward Beecher, and as he walked to the cottage
where he had been invited to live, he was greeted
by more insults. A group of Sunday schoolboys had chalked
vulgarities across the fence and gate. One source of comfort
was his new friendship with Bronson Elcott. Bronson was a
friend of Emerson and Threau, so there was a little
(23:53):
of that atmosphere Andrew craved, even if it was only
second hand. Together they swapped stories and discuss us the
various communes sprouting up in the northeast. Bronson was convinced
that Andrew's books were good for people. He thought the
new spiritual visions would help his followers to sort out
the old perplexities, as he called them, and the perverted
(24:14):
teachings of former times. For Bronson, it wasn't that spiritualism
twisted Christian teachings away from the truth, but rather that
it corrected the contortions and errors that had built up
in the church. Over time, with friends like this, Andrew
felt he was ready to become more than just a
trance healer and writer. He wanted to step out from
behind the page, and he decided to start in his
(24:36):
own backyard. In a series of public lectures, he blasted
the teachings of Hartford's most prominent congregational minister. He was
unsound in his teaching, Andrew said, insufficient in his thinking.
His preaching wasn't as rational as spiritualism, which Andrew told
his audiences was invulnerable and satisfying. And As Andrew made
(24:59):
these pronouncements, he suggested that other spiritualists do the same.
Soon enough, the circle in Hartford was regularly attacking the
errors of the church. They even put out a public
challenge to all the pastors in the city to join
them in a public debate about spirituality. Sometimes it seems
like the attacks on spiritualism from the churches was a
(25:20):
symptom of their fear of something new. Sometimes, though, it's
clear that spiritualists were the ones picking the fight. For
Andrew Jackson Davis and the Hartford Spiritualists. This came to
a head at the Bible Convention that they held in
June of eighteen fifty three, they invited reformers and spiritualists
from around the region to come to Hartford and discuss
(25:42):
the history and authority of the Bible. The abolitionist William
Lloyd Garrison came down from Boston, Sojourner Truth made the
trip as well, and they gathered a crowd. Notably, though
all the Hartford ministers and Christian scholars refused their invitations.
One pastor made it no him that he thought spiritualists
were dishonest plagiarizers and that it was impossible to have
(26:04):
a conversation with them. After all, they claimed to have
direct knowledge from the spirits. How could you possibly argue
against anything they would say. No prominent ministers joined Andrew
on stage, but they did send their congregations, and they
didn't come in peace. It started with the heckling. Whenever
spiritualist leaders took their place at the front of the room,
(26:27):
they were met with taunts and shouting. Trader someone screamed
at Andrew blasphemer, and their numbers were growing too. So
much hostility rippled through the crowd that the Hartford mayor
had to call in the police to keep order. That
seemed to hold things back until the final day of
the convention, when the crowds outside the convention hall filled
(26:48):
up the streets. Andrew Jackson Davis and William Lloyd Garrison
found themselves trapped inside. The mayor was so scared of
the potential violence that he declared the convention canceled. The
spiritualist speaker couldn't get out until bodyguards were available to
escort them through the mob of angry Christians. To them,
the links were clear between spiritualism and reform movements like
(27:10):
abolition and women's rights, and it created the kind of
disorder they expected from satanic rituals and atheist freethinkers. And
there were consequences for some of these attendees. Here's historian
Margaret Washington, William Lloyd Garrison's brother in law, as a
matter of fact, for supporting it, lost the new job
that he had ultimately had to leave and take his
(27:33):
whole family to Kansas. They were so ostracized. But that
was a big deal that Hartford Convention because they were
challenging the Bible. But even more devastating to Andrew than
any public outcry about his work was the death of
his wife, Katie. Her health had been slowly declining since
the previous winter. Of course, Andrew had tried multiple times
(27:54):
to heal her through his trances, but nothing made a difference.
He even called upon the spit or to the ancient
physician Galen, but that failed too. When William Lloyd Garrison
stayed with them during the Bible Convention, he saw Katie's
pallid features and began to wonder how sick she really was.
After the scare of the convention, Andrew and Katie moved
(28:15):
to the Massachusetts coast, hoping the sea air would be
a better therapy than the winds blowing off the spirit world,
but she continued to get worse. Finally, her crushing symptoms
forced Andrew to agree to bring Katie to a doctor,
but by then it was too late. Katie died a
short while later in November of eighteen fifty three. Andrew
(28:38):
worked through his grief by loudly proclaiming to others that
he had seen her spirit greeted by relatives in the afterlife.
Then he took to the road, where he tried to
outrun his loss among new, more sympathetic crowds. The power
of Andrew's trances had failed to heal his wife, but
he was still convinced it could remake the nation. Despite
(29:00):
the fury he had faced, he held on to hope
in something that others felt was out of reach, harmony.
Everywhere spiritualism went it met a church eager to stamp
it out, whether it was the Baptists, Presbyterians and Congregationalists
(29:23):
in the United States assorted French priests or the leaders
of the Church of England. Ministers everywhere struggled to maintain
the confidence of their flock. In England, though, the churches
responded with far less venom than their American counterparts. Maybe
that's because the British press was so quick to stab
at the first American mediums, and it probably helped that
(29:43):
there were leaders in the English Church who were actually curious.
It seemed that they were attempted by the news from
spiritualist meetings, as their congregations were. By eighteen fifty five,
three years after Maria Hayden had reached England with spiritualism,
the Yorkshire Spiritual Telegraph reported that ministers of the Church
of England were counted among their spirit circles, and they
(30:06):
said there were ministers from every other church as well.
For some, Briton's contact with the spirit world didn't threaten
their beliefs. Instead, seance after seance, trance after trance, they
found that spiritualism renewed their Christian faith. The tapping, sounds
and messages from beyond represented the proof of the afterlife
(30:26):
that they had always wanted. Roman Catholic Christians had the
same feeling. At first. There were even a few priests
who wondered if they had discovered a link with souls
in purgatory. One priest in Paris even published a pamphlet
declaring that this was a sign that the age of
miracles hadn't ended. With that in mind, the Archbishop of
Paris gave him permission to try out some experiments, and
(30:48):
he got some results. Spirits spoke to him through tapping
and knocking. Tables spun at his request, and this kept
happening even after he poured holy water on the table,
laid a crucifix on it, and said the name of
Christ to him. This was a clear sign that whatever
forces were answering in seances, they weren't demons, as some
(31:09):
priests feared. Spiritualism was popular in Italy too. It popped
up in Venice Milan and Turin, but Italian priests believed
it was a toxic stew of blasphemies and absurdities. A
few years later, Pope Pious the Ninth wede in writing
a letter about the abuses of mesmerism. His memorandum was
circulated to the bishops and inquisitors all over the Papal states.
(31:32):
Spiritualism was to be crushed. That was the official stance
of the Church. It didn't stop adventurous mediums from visiting Italy, though,
especially if they had friends in high places. Our favorite traveler,
Daniel Hume, held seances in Florence, Naples and Rome during
the eighteen fifties, slipping through with his network of high
profile supporters. A group of prominent citizens in turn organized
(31:56):
their own spirit circle in eighteen fifty six, which included
members of the Savoy nobility and even the vice president
of their parliament, but under pressure from the Catholic Church,
that group didn't last more than two years. In Spain,
the response was even more dramatic. There, the Bishop of
Barcelona called on the military to help. He had heard
(32:17):
that a Spanish bookseller ordered a shipment of spiritualist books
from France, and they were arriving on a French steamship
called the L Monarca. They whispered that the captain was
a known smuggler who had used compartments in the ship
to transport government fugitives and forbidden literature. From the bishop's
point of view, El Monarca might as well have shipped
the books direct from the fires of Hell. When the
(32:39):
ship landed, soldiers marched aboard and toward apart. They carted
the books into the city square and threw them into
a bonfire. The drifting spiral of smoke was all the
levitation the bishop wanted, but there were some who claimed that,
just like the mob and Hartford, the book burning had
the opposite effect. When Barcelona citizen realized what was happening,
(33:01):
a crowd gathered. First there were just murmurs, but then
someone shouted down with the inquisition. Soon the boldest people
in the crowd rushed toward the flames and snatched burning
fragments of paper. The declaration of forbidden knowledge ended up
drawing curious citizens like moths to a flame. An underground
(33:24):
network of spiritualist societies had formed, and it was spreading.
While Kate Fox had experienced misadventure at Greeley's, Maggie found
herself in much more dangerous waters. Maggie's reputation had grown
alongside the national acclaim of her sisters. Of course, they
(33:46):
were all in demand. When Leah saw opportunities to spread
their net wider by splitting the sisters up, it just
made sense. So when Maggie received an invitation to visit
family friends in Troy, New York and to hold seances there,
she accepted. Her family expected only friendly faces to be
waiting for her in Troy, so they sent her alone.
(34:07):
When she arrived, she was greeted by a friend, but
on their way into town, they realized that some people
in Troy wanted to give Maggie a Hartford welcome. You see,
they'd arrived at the dock for the Hudson River Ferry,
but what they found was a group of men who
didn't look very friendly. So Maggie's carriage was instead guided
up the riverside and across the Troy Bridge. When the
(34:27):
carriage turned to take the road, though the men followed
at a distance, That's when they went from sinister to
downright threatening. Fortunately, Maggie's friends were quick enough to avoid
the bridge, opting to drive on to an even farther crossing,
but the group of men kept up. Their plan, whatever
it had been, had failed, and now they were angry.
(34:48):
They closed in on Maggie's carriage just as she and
her friend near the house where she would be staying.
The final stretch must have been a mad dash, too,
but Maggie was able to rush inside and bolt the
door before the mob re her. Frustrated again, they surrounded
the house and tried to break down the door. When
that failed, they sent rocks crashing through the windows. After that,
(35:09):
gunfire began and the whole family had to cower out
of sight until dark. Under the cover of darkness, the
family rushed a panic telegram to the Fox family, telling
them that Maggie was in danger. Assassins had laid a
plot to destroy her, it said, and they were back
the next morning. Again they tried to break into the house,
but failed. Over the next few days, Maggie stayed bunkerd
(35:32):
in the house while threatening men were almost always seen nearby.
When Leah received the message, she rushed to catch the
next train to Troy. She arrived to find the house
where Maggie was staying besieged by a crowd in disguise
and surrounded by friends, Leah was able to make it
through the blockade, but only when one of those friends
brandished a pistol to clear the path. On their way through,
(35:56):
they overheard the charges. The group was certain that the
girls were pracked seen witchcraft, just like so many other
times in places, it was an accusation that worked like
a charm. The men were determined that no witchcraft would
come into their town, and they decided to oppose it
with violence. Once she was inside, Leah found Maggie so
overcome by fear that she was sobbing on the floor
(36:18):
and vomiting. That night, Leoh was able to spirit Maggie
away in the dark, leaving Troy to return to Rochester.
Maggie escaped that crowd, but she couldn't escape the sense
of fear that now clung to her. In the aftermath,
her family decided that she should leave the state with
her mother so that she could have time to recover
in new surroundings. In search of a place where Maggie
(36:40):
would be surrounded by friends, they took up an invitation
from the Spiritualist community in Philadelphia. When Maggie arrived there,
she was still shaken. Barely twenty years old. She had
been traveling and giving seances for years under the direction
of her older sister, but she was ready to turn
a page in her story to start a whole new chapter.
(37:01):
What she found in the city wasn't quite what she expected,
but it would also be a pivotal moment in her
life because it was when she arrived in Philadelphia that
Maggie would meet Elisha Kent Kane. Maggie had barely begun
her sittings as a medium when an energetic and intense
man arrived and asked for a private seance. It started
the ordinary way. Elisha introduced himself and said he was
(37:25):
hoping to speak with the spirit of his brother who
had recently died. Maggie agreed, offering Elisha spirit contact through
the knocking sounds, and then he retreated. It was a
session just like most others, and entirely forgettable. That is
until Elishah came back the next morning. This time, when
he walked into the room, he stared at her for
(37:47):
so long that she started to get uncomfortable. Then, looking
down at her from his full heights, he said, this
is no life for you. Whatever the man meant by that,
it didn't stop him from sitting down for another seance,
not that day or the next. In fact, Elisha started
coming to Maggie seances every day. He brought friends and relatives,
(38:09):
and when he started to ask the spirits for clues
about the location of the missing Arctic explorer, Sir John Franklin,
Elisha's life began to come into view. Here's Nancy Stewart
once again. Elishah Cancaine was from an elite Philadelphia family.
His father was a judge and mother was from a
(38:30):
very well to do Philadelphia family and a very distinguished
upstanding citizens. And Elishah Cancaine is a physician, but he's
also an explorer. Like Maggie, Elisha was also a darling
of the press. For years, it had been his obsession
to find John Franklin's lost expedition. Now he thought the
(38:50):
spirits might be able to help. But it quickly became
clear that he had a new obsession when his daily
visits to Maggie Seances became several visits each day. In return,
Maggie began to notice things about Elisha that she liked,
an understated personal style and a tendency to help others.
He was kind, and in Maggie's world, that meant a lot.
(39:14):
By the time Elisha became friends with her mother, Maggie
was smitten. The three of them would spend hours together.
Until that is, Elisha's work took him out of town.
He had lectures of his own to give in Boston,
New York, and Washington. Elishah spoke on scientific subjects and
raised money for his next Arctic expedition, But Maggie and
(39:36):
Elisha didn't allow the distance to keep them apart. They
sent each other a flurry of letters. To Maggie, for
whom so much of life had been consumed with death
and caught up in the teeth of a hotly contested movement,
Elisha offered entry into a prestigious Philadelphia family and a
love unburdened by the schemes of the less honorable. In fact,
(39:57):
as they grew closer to each other, Ali Shaw became
less and less convinced that spiritualism was even real. Soon
he was urging Maggie to give it all up. It
wasn't just because he didn't believe in it, though, It
was also because he had decided that he wanted the
two of them to get married, but he knew that
if his wealthy Christian family was going to accept Maggie
(40:19):
into their fold, some things would have to change. Things
began to blow up. Maggie was under pressure to throw
away the life her family had created in spiritualism. Leah
(40:43):
was furious that her sister might shatter everything they've built
or a potential future with Alisha, so the Fox family
started to interfere with their relationship. Once Maggie was back
on the road, traveling from city to city to give seances,
she was more death spirit than ever to make every
day with Elisha count. They constantly worked to make their
(41:04):
paths cross. Once, when Elisha arrived in New York to
find that Maggie was in the city, he rushed to
the house where she was staying, but it was Kate
and Mrs Fox who met him at the door. They
told him that he was misinformed, Maggie wasn't there. He
was devastated later when he got a letter from Maggie
telling him that she had spent a miserable day waiting
for him, and as far as she knew, he never came.
(41:28):
For years, Maggie had followed Leah from town to town
and show to show. The family's decisions and instructions had
brought her into a life that was now narrowly confining
as the room where she had been locked up in Troy.
With the Troy gunshots still echoing in her ears, she
was now determined to leave the family behind. She and
Elisha plotted their escape. First, they knew that Maggie had
(41:52):
to be educated. Elisha made arrangements to pay for her schooling,
and then he took on the second bigger task, Leah
had to be pacified. All it took in the end
was monthly payments to her in the Family's objections just
sort of faded away. With arrangements made. It seemed like
there was smooth sailing ahead, but there was trouble yet
(42:13):
to come. Elisha had finally gathered enough money for his
next journey into the Arctic. His book, telling the story
of his first expedition, was published to great celebration. People
with deep pockets had lined up to invest in his
new ship and all the supplies that he would need
to brave the ice again. As with all journeys into
the North, there was a chance he wouldn't return. When
(42:35):
he set out. He left Maggie with a pile of gifts.
They were hints of the upper class life she could
look forward to, from lace under sleeves and handkerchiefs to
the central gift that came with the licious promise, a
diamond ring set in black enamel. So Maggie stayed the course.
She lived with elisious friends, studied hard, and agreed to
hold no more seances. Meanwhile, a Aisha's course had already begun.
(43:02):
He wound his way north at the end of the
year as things got colder, until one day they discovered
the ship was locked in ice. He found himself trapped
on the northwest coast of Greenland. Days stretched into months.
Elisha's crew was starving. He sent out scouting parties over
the ice, but they froze. Little by little. His men
were dying, and they began to see strange things in
(43:24):
the drifting snow. Glowing hands floated over the ship. One night,
as the men looked out over the frozen cove, they
saw a shadow flicker in the dark. When they moved
out to investigate, they found nothing, not even a footprint.
Alicia tried to chase away their fears, but there was
no reasoning with the crew. They believed that they had
(43:45):
seen a wraith trapped among the grinding ice. Elisha felt
his hope begin to dwindle. He knew that if he
was ever going to lay his eyes on Maggie again,
something miraculous wouldn't need to happen. But his time, it seems,
was running out. That's it for this week's episode of Unobscured.
(44:09):
Stick around after this short sponsor break for a preview
of what's in store for next week. Next time on Unobscured,
they had hoped the warmer climate might save him, but
the journey to Havannah turned out to be more deadly
than his trip to the Arctic. After he suffered a
stroke at sea, it seemed the only thing Elisha's family
(44:30):
had truly managed to shield him from was Maggie's loving words.
One of the last things he ever wrote was utterly
gut wrenching. It was an urgent plea for his wife
to write him something anything. A second stroke sent him
on his final journey. He passed away on February of
eighteen fifty seven. His body was taken to New Orleans
(44:55):
on a steamship, then up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers
to Cincinnati, whereas Coffin was loaded onto a touring train.
It made stops in Columbus, Baltimore and beyond as it
headed east. An American hero and a son of science,
his corpse was honored, just as his exploits had been
elishah Caine's scientific career was put to rest along with
(45:18):
his remains, although the tide of American science and conquest
rolled on to honor his memory and his wishes. A
grief stricken Maggie was baptized into the Roman Catholic Church
that August, and she swore that she would never hold
another seance again. Unobscured was created by me Aaron Manky
(45:55):
and produced by Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Josh Thayne
in partnership with 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 shows over at History unobscured
(46:16):
dot com, and until next time, thanks for listening. Unobscured
as a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Monkey.
For more podcasts. For my heart Radio, visit the heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Unobscured News
Hosts And Creators
Aaron Mahnke
Matt Frederick
Alex Williams
Carl Nellis
Chad Lawson
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