Mystery and Possibility: Spiritualists in the Nineteenth-Century South

722 Pages·2010·5.823 MB·English

by  Nancy Gray Schoonmaker

MYSTERY AND POSSIBILITY:
SPIRITUALISTS IN THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY SOUTH

Nancy Gray Schoonmaker

A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the
Department of History.

Chapel Hill
2010

Approved by

Donald G. Mathews

W. Fitzhugh Brundage

William R. Ferris

Malinda Maynor Lowery

Harry L. Watson
© 2010
Nancy Gray Schoonmaker
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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ABSTRACT

Nancy Gray Schoonmaker
Mystery and Possibility: Spiritualists in the Nineteenth-century South
(Under the direction of Donald G. Mathews)

Spiritualism, the belief that people could communicate with the spirits of the
dead, swept through the United States and western Europe in the 1850s. Rooted in
mankind’s timeless yearning to understand what becomes of the human spirit after death,
it was complicated by the mid-nineteenth century’s urge to explain the world rationally
and scientifically. The rage for scientific explanation was complicating the need to
understand life and death within the comforting tenets of unquestioned Christian faith.
Spiritualism promised what traditional religion could not: By asking questions of the
dead through a medium, people sought proof that the spirits of departed loved ones—and
personal immortality—awaited them in heaven. This dissertation examines the
interpretation of this phenomenon, long thought by scholars to have been unattractive to
southerners because of its association with northeastern reform movements, by
individuals in the South. It explores and explains the extent to which white southerners
incorporated Spiritualism into their folk, cultural and religious belief systems. It sketches
a map of how Spiritualism spread through the South along networks of commerce,
community and kinship. Perhaps most significantly, this project brings to light the social,
geographic and racial diversity of southerners who took an active interest in parting the
veil between this world and the unknown. Did it matter, does it now? Beyond
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denominational monographs, the history of the South must include studies of southerners’
examination, construction, modification and uses of belief if we are to understand what
being human meant to them and in turn see more clearly how the South was a part of the
national discourse. At the same time, while their northern counterparts were linking
Spiritualism with abolition and a host of other reforms, most southerners who communed
with spirits seem to have believed that—whatever might be said to the contrary—doing
so was every bit as orthodox as evangelical Christianity.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The road to a completed dissertation is no simple highway, but I had a lot of fun
along the way. Thanks to everyone responsible for making it so. I thank my
undergraduate adviser for telling me not to pursue a graduate degree in English. He did
not think I would like it, and he may have been right. Time there was and plenty to find
direction; circumstances did in time show me the way and leave no doubt. I thank my
mother, Ruth Verhulst Gray, for introducing me to family history. Learning that both my
husband and I had family living near here in the eighteenth century ignited my curiosity
and I began reading American history. One day I looked up from Albion’s Seed (thank
you, David Hackett Fischer, for making me wonder why you thought your book would
infuriate some people) and said, “Dave, I want to go to graduate school.” Might as well. I
thank my husband, David R. Schoonmaker, for his unwavering support. He is, in the best
ways, my enabler and a creature of infinite jest. Most of all, I thank Donald G. Mathews.
In 2001 when I said Spiritualists, he said Methodists. It took several years of research to
come to that conclusion on my own. I am grateful for his wisdom, patience and
friendship. The generous gift of his time and experience coaxed coherence from words
half spoken and thoughts unclear.
Our children are my life’s raison d’ être. They have been curious, bored, caustic,
enthusiastic, annoyed and tolerant as they grew to adulthood during this project; you
know who you are. Mom loves you all. Just the way you are.
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The Center for the Study of the American South provided two summer research
grants during the course of my graduate work, as well as employment. Harry L. Watson’s
work ethic, attention to detail, academic rigor and kindness to all as director set high
standards for the Center.
The first days were the hardest days, but the last months were spent trying just a
little bit harder, just a little bit more. Many people were funny and supportive, helpful and
generous along the way. Those who gave significant scholarly assistance are, I hope,
acknowledged in the text and footnotes. To name all the people who made graduate
school such fun would be impossible. Cheryl Junk is a reliable source of laughter,
friendship and good advice. Two members of my second writing group, Laura Micheletti
Puaca and Pamella Lach, gave me an understanding of what lay in store when I finally
started writing in earnest. Kim Hill offered a new perspective on race, gender and
religion. Tim Williams and Dwana Waugh, the ultimate writing group, nudged me closer
to real productivity. The Beta Theta chapter of Delta Gamma at Duke University never
let me forget that a woman can concurrently embrace a full social life, sincere dedication
to philanthropic projects and academic excellence. You have a special place in my heart.
Finally, thanks to Connie Nelms Diederich for decades of imagining that I was a
professor somewhere.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures .................................................................................................................. viii

Introduction ........................................................................................................................ ix

Chapter 1: Northeastern Beginnings, Southern Borrowings..............................................17

Chapter 2: Abijah Alley and Moseley Baker .....................................................................65

Chapter 3: Early Years in the South, 1850–1854 ............................................................114

Chapter 4: Jesse Babcock Ferguson .................................................................................172

Chapter 5: 1854: The Petition and The Christian Spiritualist .........................................221

Chapter 6: 1855–1860: Spiritualism in Southern Cities ..................................................287

Chapter 7: 1855–1860: Investigation and Opposition .....................................................340

Chapter 8: Impending Crisis and Civil War ....................................................................388

Chapter 9: Reconstruction................................................................................................445

Chapter 10: Samuel Watson: Spiritualism Through a Methodist Lens ...........................496

Chapter 11: Samuel Watson: The Waxing and Waning of Christian Spiritualism ..........563

Conclusion .......................................................................................................................616

Bibliography ....................................................................................................................630

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure

1. The Fox Family cottage, birthplace of Modern Spiritualism ....................22
2. The Fox Sisters: Margaret Fox, Catharine Fox and Leah Fox Fish ..........23
3. Four States from The Magic Staff (1857) .................................................32
4. Celestial Spheres from The Magic Staff (1857) ........................................39
5. American Phrenological Journal (March 1848) .......................................62
6. A Séance .................................................................................................128
7. Mary Ann Maverick and Her Children ...................................................154
8. Distribution of 1854 Petitioners in Slave States .....................................225
9. Distribution of 1854 Petition Signers In Kentucky ................................231
10. Distribution of 1854 Petition Signers In Tennessee ...............................233
11. Steamboats on the Mississippi River ......................................................317

12. “Cemetery in New Orleans—Widow and Daughters in
Full Mourning,” engraving, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated
Newspaper (April 25, 1863) ...................................................................441

13. Photograph of Samuel Watson and his spirit mother by
William Mumler (1876). .........................................................................587
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INTRODUCTION

This project examines previously unexplored aspects of Spiritualism—the belief
that one might communicate with the spirits of the dead—that were Christian,
metaphysical and southern. Historical discussions of Spiritualism have made the
assumption that it found little purchase in the South, and was therefore not worth the
effort required to understand it there. To be sure, Spiritualism did not have the same
cachet among southerners that it did in the rest of the country; but there is considerable
evidence that there were enough Spiritualists in the South to make them a visible and
articulate minority well worth investigating. Valuable work on Spiritualism has
insightfully linked it to feminism, abolitionism and other reform movements, taking as a
given the statements of earlier scholars about its failure to achieve influence in the
nineteenth-century South. While it is true that Spiritualism was never a major religious
movement in the American South, it was nonetheless a movement. Prominent and
ordinary southerners were Spiritualists. They printed newspapers, recruited members, and
developed a sense of local and extended community with others who thought of
themselves as participants in a religious movement seeking not to break with traditional
Christianity but to reform it from within, as part of a progression to a new and more
compelling religious enterprise. They drew on the expectations of religious reformers
who had gone before, including Emanuel Swedenborg, Mother Ann Lee and John
Wesley. When we acknowledge the very real presence of this community of believers in
the South, every generalization about “Spiritualists” must be reexamined.
To understand Spiritualism in the nineteenth-century American South requires a
knowledge of its antecedents. The phenomenon known as Modern Spiritualism dates to
1848, but the belief in spirits and angels communicating with mortals is intertwined with
the religious traditions on which most American religions are constructed. Spiritualism
was preconditioned by a particular set of religious and folk perspectives, not only in the
North. The religious who were open to communing with spirits as an extension of their
faith tended to embody elements of receptiveness to the miraculous, experiential religion
authenticated by testimony, perfectionism, religious innovation and personal interaction
with the Spirit as affirmation from the beyond. Spiritualism’s antecedents—
Swedenborgians; Shakers and other religions that grew out of European pietism;
phrenology; animal magnetism—were also a presence in the South and so there was also
a nascent tradition of spirit communion among whites there even before the rage for
Modern Spiritualism began in the North and trickled southward. Not only before
Spiritualism emerged, but throughout the nineteenth century, these antecedents remained
a part of the southern repertoire of religious possibility. All over North America,
evangelical revivals heightened awareness of the soul and its eternal destiny. Competing
religious discourses reconceptualized heaven and hell, and murky language conflated
heaven with the spirit world. Receptiveness to the Holy Spirit opened people to new ways
of imagining their own dead, especially as having becoming loving, watchful angels.
Progress as a paradigm in all aspects of society merged in religion and millennialism.
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