Occult America_ The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation - Mitch Horowitz [30]
And this, at last, is the image with which most historians are comfortable: the widow Lincoln, famously nervous and often depressed, her mind loosened from too much loss, seeking final solace in the darkened séance room. But less understood is that President Lincoln himself may have taken more than a passing interest in Spiritualism. In April of 1863, in the presence of a reporter from the Boston Gazette, Lincoln hosted a séance in the Crimson Room of the White House. Attending were Mary Todd, two cabinet secretaries, and a trance medium, Charles E. Shockle, who seemed more nervous than anyone else during the whole affair (twice during the evening he fainted and had to be revived). Once everyone was seated at the table, according to the Gazette’s correspondent, Prior Melton, Lincoln gamely pitched political questions to Shockle, the “spirit visitors” who spoke through him, and the two cabinet members, while Mary Todd looked on silently.
As with all such episodes in Spiritualist history, this one raises the question of which sources to believe. Historian John B. Buescher noted that no trance medium named Charles E. Shockle appeared in any of the Spiritualist newspapers of the day, which suggests the Gazette’s correspondent may have invented the whole affair. Several days after the Gazette article’s publication, however, The New York Herald reprinted the evening’s account (“which we presume to be true,” stated an adjunct note) and added its own news analysis about Spiritualism’s popularity. Several other newspapers followed suit in reprinting the piece. There is no record of the White House ever disputing the report. Lincoln biographer Carl Sandburg took note of the affair and wondered why the president permitted a reporter to be present at all. The likelihood is that the White House séance served a shrewd political end. Lincoln used the encounter to show the public that, even in the midst of the Civil War, the commander in chief could sit back and sample the same kind of parlor-room novelty that other Americans were marveling over. The Gazette story presented Lincoln as relaxed, good humored, and not excessively encumbered by wartime command. In something of a White House propaganda coup, at least one paper of the Confederacy, Georgia’s Macon Daily Telegraph and Confederate, reprinted the Gazette piece in full.
Whether elements of the story were fabricated—such as the mysterious, possibly pseudonymous Mr. Shockle—the dialogue does suggest vintage Lincoln. When the medium told the president that an Indian spirit wished to convey a message, Lincoln replied: “Well, sir, I should be happy to hear what his Indian Majesty has to say. We have recently had a visitation from our red brethren, and it was the only delegation—black, white or blue—which did not volunteer some advice about the conduct of the war.” In other settings, the president had often—and humorously—complained of how visitors liked nothing better than to bestow advice about the war, when what he needed were victories.
When Shockle’s spirits did get around to giving their inevitable military advice—through the channeled words of no less than Henry Knox, secretary of war to George Washington—Lincoln was unimpressed: “Well, opinions differ among the saints as well as among the sinners. They don’t seem to understand running the machine among the celestials much better than we do. Their talk and advice sounds very much like the talk of my Cabinet.” Lincoln then asked his discomforted cabinet secretaries whether they agreed that the spirits knew little better how to proceed than the mortals—which elicited stammering assurances from Navy Secretary Gideon Welles that, uh, well, sir, he would certainly consider the matter.
Supernatural Politics
If the Gazette had intended to expose Lincoln as a Spiritualist, it more fully captured him as a good-humored skeptic.