Civil War-era spiritualists have often endured a stigma as eccentric spirit-rappers, but Mark Lause argues that their movement “merits reconjuring” (2). Rather than dismissing spiritualists as mere cranks, Lause portrays them as the numerical and ideological engine behind critical Civil War-era reform, and he bestows power and respect upon their movement.
But, yes, spiritualism began with spirit-rapping. In 1848, the Fox sisters learned how to crack their toe knuckles under the table, and they quickly became a sensation for their supposed ability to reach spirits of the dead. From this, Lause traces spiritualism as it evolved into a sizeable movement with conferences, periodicals, and traveling lecturers. Lause makes two major points about this movement: first, spiritualists embraced radical political reform; and second, the movement was largely responsible for the progressive impulse of the era, particularly regarding race. The first is more persuasive than the second.
Lause leaves little doubt that spiritualists and radical reform walked hand in hand. He portrays spiritualism as a bottom-up movement that challenged the “established order” (19), and a particularly interesting interpretation gives these devotees of the occult a rational, scientific side that demanded physical, tangible liberty. Without concreteness in this world, they said, freedom has no reality. Consequently, spiritualists typically supported reform for Native Americans, African Americans, and women, and Fourierists and other communalists embraced the movement. Spiritualists, then, were political outsiders committed to remaking their society with greater equity.
The second argument—spiritualism was so large and powerful that it formed the basis of Civil War-era reform—is more difficult. Regarding size, Lause maintains that by the mid-1850s, “vastly larger numbers” (35) joined the movement, and that at their peak, spiritualists became a “mass, pervasive preoccupation” (148), claiming between 780,000 and five million believers.
This “pervasive preoccupation,” then, drove significant reform, especially in race. Lause places spiritualism's first steps toward racial reform with the Free Democrats. Salmon P. Chase, Frederick Douglass, Joshua R. Giddings, Gerrit Smith, Sojourner Truth, and Harriet Tubman were among the committed spiritualists who joined this early anti-slavery third party. Soon, prominent senators “with ties to spiritualism themselves or through their families” (37)—Hannibal Hamlin, William H. Seward, Charles Sumner, Benjamin F. Wade, and Isaac P. Walker—attacked the Kansas-Nebraska Act. (Lause sometimes uses family connections to hint at affiliation with spiritualism when the evidence points instead to a family member.) Then, says Lause, a few years later spiritualists cum Free Democrats significantly contributed to the emergent Republican Party. They “made vital decisions that marked the emergence and triumph” (24) of the new party and “spiritualism exploded onto the scene simultaneously with a mass Republican Party and in the same regions” (43). Lause's emphasis on Free Democrats in the founding of the Republican Party overlooks the role of former Whigs, whom he does not mention, nor does the book cite the pivotal role of Free Labor, a mainstream concept, as the ideological cornerstone of the new party.
When Abraham Lincoln moved into the White House, spiritualists, quintessential outsiders, became insiders with the power to reform. Lause concedes that the President and Mary Todd Lincoln were marginal participants in the movement, but he then dismisses the image of Lincoln as a “particularly tall Whig railroad lawyer fond of spinning yarns [as] veneer lathered on by Gilded Age Republicans and their successors.” Instead, Free Spirits claims that Lincoln “retained a vast residue of folk beliefs, sharing many of the fundamental assumptions of spiritualism” (146). The First Family held a séance in the White House, and Mrs. Lincoln was a regular and the President an occasional participant at the Georgetown home of a committed spiritualist. According to Lause, Lincoln's closeness to those who communed with the dead “almost personalizes” (146) the validity of spiritualism's claims of influence.
In this portrayal of Lincoln as member of the religious fringe, Lause seriously revises current Lincoln scholarship. Ronald C. White, Jr., in A. Lincoln: A Biography (Random House, 2009), emphasizes Lincoln's Old School Presbyterianism and fondness for Phineas Densmore Gurley, an intellectual Calvinist who filled the New York Avenue pulpit in Washington D.C. Allen C. Guelzo, in Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President, identifies within Lincoln “distance from religion” (328) and “Calvinized deism” (447), a belief in a mysterious, judgmental God who controls history (Eerdmans, 1999). Lause ignores both Lincoln's attendance at New York Presbyterian and his conviction in mysterious providence, which he powerfully articulated in his second Inaugural Address.
Joining this near-spiritualist president was a spiritualist “network well integrated” (72) among Lincoln appointees, further evidence of the ability of spiritualists to forge reform. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles and his wife, Mary Jane, for example, lost children and “consulted” spiritualists, and Edwin M. Stanton's cousin had “mediumistic abilities,” which supposedly ran in families and led spiritualists to suspect that Stanton himself might also have this gift, enough evidence, apparently, that the Secretary of War contributed to the “truly daunting” (71) number of persons in the executive branch who communed with the dead.
The legacy of this powerful reform movement is the “genuine Left” (158). Though Lause concedes that in the end, spiritualists misunderstood the world, they nevertheless had positive impact and demonstrated that ideas coming from the disorganized and powerless can be nonetheless influential. Amidst the dark chaos of the world, it remains possible to find a “quiet space” (159) where the imagining of something better is possible.
Free Spirits is intriguing, and Lause deserves credit for a well-researched study of a neglected group. The book is a worthy companion to Cathy Gutierrez, Plato's Ghost: Spiritualism in the American Renaissance (Oxford University Press, 1999). Give Lause credit: He goes out on a limb with a bold argument, a tactic this reviewer considers a compliment.
