Occult America_ The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation - Mitch Horowitz [29]
Given Spiritualism’s nationwide range of clubs and publications—including a peak of sixty-seven newspapers—it is reasonable to estimate that the population ran into hundreds of thousands and, depending on how stringently one defines a follower, possibly a million or higher. In a nation that counted its overall population at thirty to thirty-five million in the mid-nineteenth century, it is likely that almost one in ten free adults considered themselves believers, of one degree or another. The numbers were so large that, by the close of the 1850s, the Burned-Over District had become eclipsed by the movement it spawned and would no longer serve as the laboratory of mystical religion in American life. Chicago, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and many towns and cities had Spiritualist societies, newspapers, and congregations and soon produced innovations of their own. Spiritualism was not a regional sensation but a national movement.
“He Was Too Good for This Earth”
When facing the tragedies of death, many families were remarkably alike. In this sense, the Spiritualist experience was typified by the household of the most famous family in the nation: the Lincolns. Several months after occupying the White House in March of 1861, Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln experienced the nightmare of so many mid-century parents: Their eleven-year-old son, Willie, was gripped by a serious fever, probably from typhus. A sensitive, precociously religious child with a keen mind and a love for adult company, Willie was the family favorite. He was seen holding hands with his father, whom he sometimes accompanied on official trips, the two sharing a room together. After illness struck, weeks of struggle and bedside vigils did no good. In February of 1862, the boy died late one afternoon.
“My poor boy,” Lincoln said at the bedside. “He was too good for this earth. God has called him home. I know that he is much better off in heaven, but then we loved him so. It is hard, hard to have him die!” For Mary Todd, the loss was too great. She began to frequent trance mediums in desperate hope of contact. And, in the aggrieved mother’s heart, contact did occur. One evening she rushed into the room of her half sister, who had served as a nursemaid to Willie. “He lives, Emilie!” the first lady exclaimed. “He comes to me every night and stands at the foot of my bed, with the same sweet, adorable smile he always had.” Mary Todd’s was the kind of story told time and again, repeated in newspapers and letters by people from every walk of life who eloquently, if agonizingly, testified to the reality of another world. For those Americans who ardently believed, Spiritualism provided some of the most moving and deeply affecting experiences of their lives.
Mary Todd Lincoln, Spiritualist
For Mary Todd Lincoln, Spiritualism was a lifelong interest—and sometimes a public embarrassment. Seven years after her husband’s assassination, she was the subject of bruising articles in February 1872 in both the Boston Herald and The New York Times. Each reported that the veiled widow clandestinely sought out the mediumistic services of the older Fox sister, Margaret. The New York Times, in “A Curious Story About Mrs. Lincoln Reiterated,” obliquely called Margaret Fox “a well-known lady medium on Washington-street” in Boston. Knowledgeable readers immediately understood the reference to the Spiritualist pioneer. Margaret was a no-longer-young woman suffering family fissures and heated charges and countercharges of fraud, and now earning her living at the séance table. Mrs. Lincoln had made the insufficient effort of disguising herself on a Boston hotel registry as a “Mrs. Linder.” The most famous widow in America joined others at a public sitting in Margaret’s parlor, where, reported The Times, “the spirit of her lamented husband appeared and, by unmistakable manifestations, revealed to all present the identity of Mrs. Lincoln, which she had attempted