deceased first wife and little Matilda, all now spirits in a better land. Then she moved on to the practical suggestion that Amy visit William Fishbough. BothFishbough and Samuel B. Brittan, his colleague, were early associates of the mystic Andrew Jackson Davis as well as editors of a short-lived but influential journal called The Univercoelum and Spiritual Philosopher. Former Universalist ministers on a quest for an âinterior and spiritual philosophy,â the two men believed in spirit communication; however, their philosophical focus had drawn little popular attention, particularly in contrast with the excitement generated by the theatrical raps. The magnetized Leah, or a politic spirit, was gently suggesting that the esteemed Amy Post could help forge an alliance between these formidable men and the Fox girls. 15
After predicting that Frederick Douglassâs struggling newspaper, the abolitionist North Star, stood a good chance for survival, she concluded with a juicy bit of clairvoyant gossip. She confided that Dr. John Hardenbrook, a man accused of a murder splashed across all the newspapers, had actually tried to poison his victim, the husband of his lover, twice before succeeding. And there was more: the good doctorâs lover had been his accomplice, Leah revealed, and the means had been arsenic rather than strychnine. As it turned out, this information was either so secret or so inaccurate that it never came out at Doctor Hardenbrookâs trial. 16
In July 1849 Isaacâs friend John S. Clackner wrote to him from Ohio to ask whether the spirits, as rumored, had expressed the wish to dictate a book to Leah, who would record it with the assistance of another friend from Rochester, Mrs. John Kedzie.
How do âLeah and the Spirit get along with the manuscript in Contemplation?â Clackner asked. Kate and Maggieâs oldest sister had now laid her own claim to the spirits. 17
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The spirit world that summer seemed filled with a promise reflecting the changes in the material world. At the conclusion of the Mexican War in 1848, Mexico had ceded land to the United States, territories that would become the states of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and parts of Colorado and New Mexico. Earlier that year prospectors had discovered gold in California. By the summer of 1849 news of the windfall had spread across the continent, and more people were heading west than in all of the nationâs brief history. The term manifest destiny, coined by a journalist, justified expansion as something divinely ordained.
Expansion, however, exacerbated sectional conflict. With the balance of power between the agrarian South and the industrializing North dependent in part on whether new states were admitted to the union slave or free, the organizing of each new territory and the admitting of each new state became a battle. In 1820 the Missouri Compromise had established a boundary north of which slavery was to be banned, but Southerners argued that the settlers of each prospective state should have the right to make up their own minds. California was admitted as a free state, but the decision about the other territories acquired in the Mexican War was postponed.
If manifest destiny found an echo in the expansive world of the spirits, and if slaveryâs abolition was a common bond among many believers, cholera helped create the circumstances in which a movement that promised immortality could grow. In 1849 an epidemic broke out in Europe, and newspapers tracked the diseaseâs advance as it moved across Canada and the United States. Although its impact in Rochester was less severe than expected, there were fifty deaths a week that summer in Albany, and in Cincinnati so many died that carts piled high with scores of bodies rumbled through the streets daily. 18
Whether in search of safe harbor from the plague or simply for a family visit, Kate, Maggie, and Leah returned to Wayne County that August, most
After predicting that Frederick Douglassâs struggling newspaper, the abolitionist North Star, stood a good chance for survival, she concluded with a juicy bit of clairvoyant gossip. She confided that Dr. John Hardenbrook, a man accused of a murder splashed across all the newspapers, had actually tried to poison his victim, the husband of his lover, twice before succeeding. And there was more: the good doctorâs lover had been his accomplice, Leah revealed, and the means had been arsenic rather than strychnine. As it turned out, this information was either so secret or so inaccurate that it never came out at Doctor Hardenbrookâs trial. 16
In July 1849 Isaacâs friend John S. Clackner wrote to him from Ohio to ask whether the spirits, as rumored, had expressed the wish to dictate a book to Leah, who would record it with the assistance of another friend from Rochester, Mrs. John Kedzie.
How do âLeah and the Spirit get along with the manuscript in Contemplation?â Clackner asked. Kate and Maggieâs oldest sister had now laid her own claim to the spirits. 17
Â
The spirit world that summer seemed filled with a promise reflecting the changes in the material world. At the conclusion of the Mexican War in 1848, Mexico had ceded land to the United States, territories that would become the states of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and parts of Colorado and New Mexico. Earlier that year prospectors had discovered gold in California. By the summer of 1849 news of the windfall had spread across the continent, and more people were heading west than in all of the nationâs brief history. The term manifest destiny, coined by a journalist, justified expansion as something divinely ordained.
Expansion, however, exacerbated sectional conflict. With the balance of power between the agrarian South and the industrializing North dependent in part on whether new states were admitted to the union slave or free, the organizing of each new territory and the admitting of each new state became a battle. In 1820 the Missouri Compromise had established a boundary north of which slavery was to be banned, but Southerners argued that the settlers of each prospective state should have the right to make up their own minds. California was admitted as a free state, but the decision about the other territories acquired in the Mexican War was postponed.
If manifest destiny found an echo in the expansive world of the spirits, and if slaveryâs abolition was a common bond among many believers, cholera helped create the circumstances in which a movement that promised immortality could grow. In 1849 an epidemic broke out in Europe, and newspapers tracked the diseaseâs advance as it moved across Canada and the United States. Although its impact in Rochester was less severe than expected, there were fifty deaths a week that summer in Albany, and in Cincinnati so many died that carts piled high with scores of bodies rumbled through the streets daily. 18
Whether in search of safe harbor from the plague or simply for a family visit, Kate, Maggie, and Leah returned to Wayne County that August, most
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