Prophets Over People

in the War of eighteen twelve. He had seen a lot during his military service, and he attended church well religiously in eighteen sixteen, though he no longer believed in deism, the idea that there is a supreme being whose hands off certain the real truth was hidden in the scriptures he searched until he found it in Daniel fourteen, which read unto two thousand days, then shall the sanctuary be cleansed? To Millard, the message was perfectly clear, rapture by the

hand of God. Excited, Miller concluded that doomsday would occur two thousand, three hundred days after a revelation on creation from the prophet James Usher. With time running out, he told neighbors and friends. He talked about his discoveries at church too, and before long locals began to believe him. Though he was never ordained, he had pained a license to preach and took his sermons on the road. He published books and produced pamphlets in just six months. His message,

are You Ready to Meet Your Maker? Gained followers across the country. Of course, not everyone believed him. Angry mobs pelted him with eggs and rotten food, but their attempts to break up his sermons only made him more popular. After three hundred lectures, followers of what had become known as the Millerite movement seated fifty thousand, and with his shouts that the world would soon end, millions more were curious.

If nothing else, Jesus would come for them. He promised he would arrive high on a mountaintop sometime between March twenty one, eighteen forty three and March twenty one, eighteen forty four. When that didn't happen, Miller admitted he may have been wrong and adjusted the date to April eighteenth of eighteen forty four. And when that date came and went, he became certain that the end of the world would

happen on October twenty two of that year. Despite his being wrong multiple times, his followers doubled when they met for services. Their enthusiasm was equal to any big tent revival. Miller's popularity sword One man, a dairy farmer who believed in Miller, gave way all of his cows, the reason there wouldn't be anyone at the farm to care for them once he had gone up ascended. That is, and you wasn't the only one giving away their earthly belongings.

Believers sold their land, gave away their jewelry and animals. They even busted up their furniture that have no use for sofas and beds where they were going. Women cut off their hair and ripped the ruffles from their dresses. Wanting to be properly attired for heaven, they began to wear long, flowing white garments. In the late spring of eighteen forty four, a meteor flew across the sky at noon, and the cosmic event was all the proof the Millerites

needed the end was near. On October one, followers put on their ascension robes, and, believing that Christ had chosen mount, would choose it, climbed to the top and waited. Others who were physically unable to climb that far, felt that

apple trees were the next best bet. An entire family had perched themselves in the tops of trees in a local orchard, and when a pair of travelers passed by a man in the tree asked if they were aware that the world would end by daybreak, one a reverend said that the matter didn't affect him, as he lived in Boston. The second author, Ralph Waldo Emerson, told him, the world doesn't affect me. I can get along without it.

As the sun set, the Millerites waited, eager to meet their maker by sunrise, though it became clear he wasn't coming. The Millerites had just suffered the great disappointment, and now that the world wasn't ending, they began to suffer great depression that had given away everything, and many were now homeless and broke. Newspapers printed their story, or at least some version of it. Many Millerites claim that reporters made up the part about the robes. Today, though the story

is widely accepted as fact. But what happened? How did so many people come to believe Miller Historians speculate that it might have been because powerful leaders and trusted experts hadn't told the public otherwise. No one holding a higher authority than Miller had proved him wrong, and by the time their cognitive biases had hit a fever pitch, such

evidence was dismissed as disbelief and ignorance. You'd think that afterward they'd have gone back to how things were before Miller came along instead of recanting their belief, though they came to what they felt was a broader understanding. They had just interpreted the signs wrong. The world itself hadn't ended because Christ had cleansed heaven, not earth. But of course this isn't the only example of such an event in America. Moments of passionate belief that led people to

do things most would never consider. Time may have distanced us from these movements, but their shadows are still there, painted across the pages of history. I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. Welcome to American shadows. The church goers in the town of Enfield, then still part of Massachusetts, or what their pastor called stubborn and maybe even lacks in changing their less than Christian ways compared to neighboring towns, and with a reputation on the line that wouldn't do the church invited another

preacher to speak. Jonathan Edwards accepted the invitation and took the task seriously. If his speech didn't whip the pastor's flock into shape, nothing would. He stood before the congregation on July seventeen, forty one and read his sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. He had already delivered the speech to his own flock not long before,

and to great success. His vivid descriptions of hell and the evil had observed in the real world, coupled with scriptures showing that certain behaviors were a bee line to Satan's doorstep, had the terrified flock gasping and screaming, there's nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of Hell. Edwards railed, but the mere pleasure of God.

More gasps erupted from the crowd as Edwards continued his seething sermon, informing them that such sinners deserved what was coming to them, that witnessing the bad events in life was just a taste of the horror Satan had waiting for them at any moment. He told them God might allow Satan to seize their souls, but God had given them chance after chance, and now he was furious with them. Not only might he rain down his wrath on them, he'd let Satan have their souls too. The congregation cried

out for help for counsel. Edwards wasn't done, though not by a long shot. He continued to quote scripture and blend it with story after story at a fierce and unrelenting pitch. By the end of the sermon, his shouts were barely heard over the crowd. This type of speech, now referred to as fire in Brimstone, is still studied today. But what made the speech so effective. The trouble began

between the seventeen thirties and forties. New England found itself in the middle of the Great Awakening, one of three distinct periods of widespread spiritual revivals and new denominations and religious movements. The devils and the details they say, and while much of Europe was facing which hysteria, many Americans focused on Satan. Their fear of the devil was part of what made Edward's speech so powerful. Throughout history, some sects of Christianity haven't taken to the idea of letting

judgment day just come and go. They've tried to fight it by identifying potential Antichrists at all costs. The Antichrist, to the belief Goes, would cause the end of the world with catastrophes and a host of other misfortunes. Identify and read the world of them, and all would be well. Wicked behaviors and even thoughts were believed to cause storms, bad crops, stillborn, chill, green mental illness, disease, and any

host of further wicked behaviors. In short, the devil fed off the impure acts of man, gaining more and more power until he could challenge God by bringing about Doomsday. The devil could hide anywhere, too, a cloven hooved man, animals, including black cats, and perhaps especially women, because they were perceived as the weaker sex. Was believed women were more prone to the temptations of the devil. But the deepest pits of hell, Edwards claimed, had been reserved for Native Americans, they,

he claimed were agents of the Antichrist. He wasn't alone in his backwards and bigoted thinking. In early America, some settlers believed the devil had a stronghold over the Native Americans. Their pagan beliefs and their very existence threatened the settler's concept of what Christian life should be on their newly colonized land. Further, these settlers believed that during the colonial era, the Antichrist had control of the Church and the King

of England. In short, some of these Protestant Americans were certain that non Protestants, immigrants, Native Americans, alcohol, and any other obstacle that didn't agree with their ideology was doing the devil's bidding. If the Native Americans wouldn't convert to their way of life and Christian beliefs, if they didn't surrender land for the betterment of mankind, they must be killed to save the world. Inane and racist, absolutely, and

it sadly made sense to them. The colonists were on a new continent, then encountered people unlike them in their speech, apparents, and faith. With a new land and life came tremendous instability and plenty of anxiety to go with it. Humans across the millennia have looked for ways to explain things they didn't fully understand in an attempt to feel in control during times of uncertainty, Fear fueled irrationality and hatred among the colonists. Therefore, it became their duty to protect

the earth at all costs until Christ's return. They believed that they had been uniquely tasked by God to conquer the land so that evil would not prevail. And all this change brought on a lot of experimentation concerning religion. In fact, during the American Revolution to religious revivals were also occurring the First and Second Great Awakenings. Churches offered hope in a world that seemed more than a little hopeless.

But times were changing and religious needs with them, and along the way there were people who capitalized on the darker side of belief. Their message, however, wasn't one of hope. It was one of fear. Grotus Lie was just thirteen when she married twenty three year old Ira Wakeman in eighteen hundred. Over the years, they had fifteen children together, but Ira was not exactly the ideal father and husband. He was a big man who liked to throw his

fists around, especially when drunk, which was quite often. Two things set Ira off the most wrote as attendance at Methodist meetings and reading the Bible, and it was the Bible reading that brought on constant death threats Rhoda believed her husband might kill her any day, and in he tried to go through with it. He had lit a fire and sat her in a chair Before it, he cursed her and God, swearing that the world would never be at peace as long as she were part of it.

The story varies slightly here, depending on who tells it. It goes either that Ira beat her unconscious or that he stabbed her with a piece of burning firewood, regardless of how the assault took place. Row To later claimed that she died. Upon her death, she claimed red eyed imps danced around her when a bright white spirit emerged. Moments later, the imps scattered, and that spirit took her by the hand and escorted her up into the clouds.

Once in heaven, she claimed she met both Christ and God, but after welcoming her as one of their own, the angels returned her to earth and then vanished. Rhoda took her experience as a revelation she was one with Heaven now, and if she had survived her husband, it was God's will. After all, her husband was an agent of the Devil, put on earth to kill her, and he had tried to do just that. He had failed, though, because Rhoda had been chosen by God when she awoke, she left

him and went to live with her daughter Caroline. Determined to spread the word, she began preaching door to door. Certain that she had been chosen as the prophetess of God, she set about convincing others as well. Her half brother, Sammy, whom she also lived with from time to time, had experienced a brain injury that left him more like a child than a grown man, and Sammy above all, believed every word his sister told him. Before long, Rhoda and her followers paid Ira a visit. They tied him up,

and Rhoda stabbed him. She told everyone that would free Ira of the devil. Although he survived the initial attack, he died some time later. Rhoda claimed she had had another revelation, though, that Ira had died when the devil no longer had any wicked plans for him. Her followers agreed, saying that for being in league with the devil, Ira got exactly what he deserved. The wake Knight's message of doomsday continued to gain more followers, but Rhoda had high

standards for her followers. Do and believe as she said and all would be well disagree, though, and she would expose them as being the Antichrist. And that criticism was extended to the churches full of believers around her. Once, after watching people enter one of these churches, she openly wept. She woke her daughter Caroline in the middle of the night, claiming that heavenly spirits wouldn't let her rest. They came to her night after night, she said, begging her to

preach in the churches. In eighteen fifty two, though Caroline's husband Ephraim dared to speak out mother. He said, there is nothing in your doctrines. It's all a delusion. And with that, Rhoda became convinced that her son in law was possessed and wanted to kill her. She was afraid, she told Caroline, and not just afraid of Ephraim. Rhoda claimed another of her son in law's, Charles Willoughby, was

also possessed. According to Rhoda, Charles had not only caused a winter's worth of storms, but it also plagued Sammy with thousands of imps that crawled over his head and back. But like her husband Ephraim, Caroline felt the stories about the imps pushed things too far, and she expressed her thoughts to her mother. As you might expect, Rhoda wasn't at all pleased. Don't call me mother, she shouted. Anybody that wants to kill me needn't call me mother. Rhoda

would disown Caroline. Then she, Sammy and another follower named Thankful Hershey moved to New Haven, Connecticut. There they found a small house by the Grove Street Cemetery, practically under the eaves of Yale University. They sold fruit syrups and herbal medicines, and even boarded children. To earn additional income, Rhoda preached to nearby farmers and workers, meeting with them

every Sunday and once more later in the week. Charles Sandford, fresh from his release at the Hartford Retreat for the Insane, joined them in hopes that Rhoda could cure him of his mental illness. But he wasn't her only new follower. A seventeen year old named Amos Hunt also joined up and quickly rose to the ranks of the wake nights. Some time later, Amos and his wife arrived for a meeting bearing pies and cakes. Rhoda ate a slice of pie, and then polished off one and a half of the cakes,

all on her own. It's probably no surprise that she became sick, but Rhoda claimed that the sweets had been laced with poison and had nearly killed several followers, although there's no record that anyone else fell ill. For days, Rhoda lay sick in bed before visiting her doctor, his diagnosis insanity. Undaunted, she claimed Sammy was having a Yale chemist test the remaining cakes, but even before he announced his findings, she told her followers that enough poison had

been found to kill at least ten men. The poison in question hadn't been arsenic, though she said that as a prophet of the Lord, she was immune to that. No. She claimed the cakes had been made from something worse, a concoction of men's brains, oil of their bones, the eyes of dogs and roosters, basil, topaz, copper, sink, platina, and toad entrails. Some wakem knights thought Hunt and his wife had made the poisonous cakes to determine if Rhoda

was divine or merely human. Hunt, though was instantly accused of being the Devil's agent. Sammy even suggested that Hunt should die for his sins against the Prophetess well that or pay a cash settlement. Perhaps surprisingly, Hunt paid five hundred dollars, and none of this sat well with the rest of the wake Nights. Rhoda's disciples began to wonder how the Prophetess hadn't seen the betrayal coming. But worse than that, they were shocked that she had accepted a

payoff from a man of sin. Rhoda attempted to regain her followers trust with more lies and fear the world would inevitably be destroyed. She told them taking the money had placed an evil influence on every one of them, not just her, for Itightened by the prospect, they wanted to know how to save themselves. Not surprisingly, Rhoda told

them exactly what had to be done. In December of eighteen fifty five, Rhoda and Sammy moved again, settling into a small house that was often crowded with fellow wake nights. It was there that she told the others that the Antichrist had left Amos Hunt and had found its way to a pistol factory worker named Justice Washington Matthews. He had attended a few of their meetings, often accompanying one of their own, Meritable and her sister Polly. Justice didn't

care much for Rhoda, and the feeling was mutual. The damning evidence against Justice had been that his wife had suffered a convulsion around the same time that Rhoda had fallen ill, and the timing, she claimed had not been a coincidence. The Antichrist had taken possession of Justice, and now the wake Nights must wage a battle to rid him of the devil. Oddly, Justice didn't object to their

first attempt at exercising the devil from him. Maybe he felt pressured, or maybe he felt that the tea they wanted him to drink, brood from the bark of a witch hazel tree, wasn't so bad. Afterward, though, Rhoda determined that the tea hadn't worked. Believing that Justice was still possessed. The wakem Knights began to pray over him, but when no one witnessed a spirit leaving his body, they began to plead with him to give up the demon. Rhoda, however,

had a different solution in mind. Blood On December twenty three, she and her followers conducted Sabbath worship in an upstairs bedroom. All told, fifteen people came and went for services that day and throughout the evening. By ten o'clock, Sammy had a nice fire going in the front room. When Justice arrived with his wife and sister in law, he removed his damp boots in front of the fire, and that's

when Rhoda screamed, claiming the demons were torturing her. She wasted no time in instructing Polly to blindfold Justice because eye contact with a man of sin would harm her brother, claiming she feared for her safety. Rhoda also asked Polly to bind Justice's hands behind his back. Not wanting Rhoda to be frightened of him, Justice allowed it. Those present then led him to the day bed and began the exorcism. For two hours, they alternated between praying for his soul

and shouting at him to give up the devil. Rhoda eventually retreated to her room, where she claimed the demons continued to torture her in the most excruciating of ways. After an hour, she said the demons were crawling around inside her and that she would soon die, and that if she did the world would end. Alarmed at her revelation, members raced down the stairs. He's killing her, they out it, He's killing the messenger. The prayers turned into a discussion.

Two attendees said that it would be better to kill Justice than to let Rhoda in the entire world die. The remainder of the group quickly agreed, all except Sammy, who thought they should try one last thing. He ran out into the yard, and when he returned he was carrying a two ft long piece of wood. Perhaps, he suggested they could beat the devil out of him. They secured the doors and shuttered the windows to the room,

and then turned their attention to Justice. The first blow struck him in the right temple, knocking him to the ground. After that, Sammy hit him again and again. Then, claiming some unknown influence was urging him on, he slit Justice's throat with a pocket knife. Not satisfied that the job was done, he retrieved a large oven fork used to lift the stove lit and drove it into justice His chest, not once, but twelve times, in a pattern designed to

make the shape of a cross. The holes, Sammy said would force the demon to leave Justice's brother in law, who had been pushed into another room during the exorcism, heard gurgling noises. He pounded on the door, but others pulled him away, insisting that if Justice died, he'd be raised. The sound of the blows and Justice's cries sent a few scurrying away to a corner to pray. Another hour passed before Sammy finally opened the door at two in

the morning. Sammy's clothes were washed into basin. His sleeves were so stained that they were ripped from the shirt. The floor was then mopped clean, and the piece of wood, still caked with Justice's hair and blood, was dropped down a hole in the front yard. Sammy's pocket knife was placed next to the corpse to make it appear that Justice had killed himself. Then tired from their efforts, the wake nights finally slept The next day. One of them left,

returning with Justice's eldest son. The sight of his father's blooded corpse sent him running to a neighbor, who alerted the authorities. Upon their arrival, the police took in the gruesome scene and then instantly arrested everyone present. Soon enough, they were all in court making their statements. Regarding the possession.

Newspapers were quick to report the trial. The New York Times called the murder a horrible case of fanaticism, adding that it was a frightful event of Millerism, and by then the American public often thought cases of violence or public insanity were due to Millerism. But on the December Sammy confessed and Rhoda's imaginary world collided with reality. She and the others awaited the grand jury's decision from a prison cell. While she did, she took to writing letters

to various ministers and lawyers. Those messages alternated between plea and threats. She would surely die in prison, she claimed, and her death would be avenged by God. It wasn't her own life that hung in the balance, it was the fate of the world that Following January, Rhoda, Sammy, and the other Wake Nights sat in court once more. Rhoda again insisted that the world would end if they found her guilty, though she might decide to permit everyone

to live a little while longer. However, she could call for judgment day whenever she felt like it. The trial dragged on until April. Members of the community, family and experts all took the stand to testify, and it was determined that none of the defendants were competent enough to stand trial. Rhoda and Sammy openly wept, while others had difficulty with the court's finding that she was clinically insane. A New York Tribune journalist sat before her and jotted

down notes. Despite the ruling of insanity, a grand jury still convicted the entire group. Sammy was found guilty of murder, while Rhoda and the other followers were convicted as accessories. Before and after the fact, naturally, Rhoda was happy to tell her side of the story, how her followers were simply trying to save her and all of humanity. Killing Justice had been the only way to rid him of

the evil inside him. She claimed that sadly, when Justice had died, the evil spirit inside him had left and had spread far and wide into the world. She settled back in her seat and offered the reporter one last bit of advice for his readers. Those who remained devoted to her had no need to worry, though. As long as they remained free, they would continue to seek out more men of evil, and if they found them, that

each be put to death. Until then, she cheerfully urged readers should brew a strong cup, of which Hazel t There's more to this story. Stick around after this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. His outfit was colorful. The green military frock coat was made from the finest cloth, lined with silk, patterned with gold braids and of all things frogs. His black silk vest matched the black leather

cap inverted like a cone. His sash was a deep crimson, and his pantaloons, a type of close fitting pant fastened at the calf, were either green or black. The choice depended on the weather, as did his footwear, either sandals or meticulously polished Wellington boots. As eye catching as it was, none of those were as important to him as the fine double edged sword he wore, and even that paled compared to the iron rod he carried, the rod he

believed was instrumental in ruling the world. Orphan at seven and raised by strict elders of the Presbyterian Church, Robert Matthews spent a brief stint as a shopkeeper, a husband, and a father, but all that held him back from what he considered his true calling and pursuit spiritual perfection and religious truth. He preached to anyone whould listen, mostly about doomsday. Customers and then employers found his outbursts and fits of violent rage more than a little frightening, which,

as you might guess, made earning a living difficult. Lack of employment kept his family in poverty, though he was adamant that it was his wife's fault, not his, not just regarding the jobs either. She was his undoing for everything that went wrong, and he kept a rawhide strap to beat her with. He was certain his wife was

filled with evil spirits. He had tried to join an evangelical Christian church in Argyle, New York, but like the customers and employers, the congregation there found his laziness, fits of rage and violence abhorrent. On June eighteen thirty, he was arrested for disrupting service. After his release, he moved to Manhattan, leaving his family behind. He preached on street corners, asking people to address him as the prophet Matthias. His message was that of a male dominated kingdom of God

with him as the king on earth. He had learned of another prophet, though one with a large following so, on the first Saturday in May of eighteen thirty two, Matthias paid him a visit at his apartment on Fourth Street. That's where Elijah Pearson the Tish Bite lived with his servant, a formerly enslaved woman named Isabella Bomfree. Soon enough, Pearson became convinced that he was Matthias's John the Baptist, paving

the way for someone greater than himself. The following Sunday, Pearson gave a sermon to his followers, then turned them all over to Matthias, and the hand off couldn't have been more timely. Soon, Pearson's health began to deteriorate. He found himself experiencing nervous fits that only worsened over time, But Matthias wouldn't allow doctors to treat him, insisting that Pearson's problem was an infestation of demons that must be vanquished.

Pearson never preached again, fully surrendering his pulpit to Matthias. Determined to set up in his own style, Matthias convinced one follower named Benjamin Folger to give him a plot of land just north of the Hudson River. He led his followers to the parcel and christened it Mount Zion. There he assigned sexual partners as casually as dolling out shores. Matthias moved in with Pearson and on July thirty four, fed him two plates of blackberries for his dinner. Immediately,

Pearson fell violently ill. Once more, doctors were turned away, both men stating that only prayer would save Pearson. That night, Matthias left Pearson lying in his own vomit and excrement, and by morning the man was dead. Pearson was autopsied, and doctors determined that he had been poisoned. Matthias, having quickly been abandoned by his followers, found that only two

remained loyal, Benjamin Folger and Isabella bomb Free. In fact, when Matthias was arrested, it was Isabella who helped secure lawyers for him, but Folger had other plans for Isabella. He spread rumors that she had once tried to poison his coffee, trying to throw suspicion on her. Angry Isabella retaliated by filing a slander suit against him. Foulger didn't worry about it much. He was confident that no white male jury would believe the word of a black woman.

But he was wrong about that. Isabella one, and the court granted her a hundred and twenty five dollars, which is roughly four thousand today. During Pearson's murder trial, one of the doctors unexpectedly withdrew his earlier statement of poison, claim ing had found no such evidence of arsenic. Without enough proof against him, Matthias was ultimately released. He quickly fled New York and headed west. Isabella, however, stood her ground and stayed in New York, and she was used

to fighting for herself. The lawsuit against Fulger hadn't been her first either. She had previously sued her former owner, a man who had illegally sold her son, Peter. A white family helped intervene, and together they took the man to court to win her son back. The case made her one of the first black women to take a white man to court and win. In eighteen forty three,

Isabella found a different spiritual calling. She became an activist for women's rights and a staunch supporter of the abolition of slavery, and along the way, she changed her name, a name that just about every history book includes. Sojourner Truth American Shadows is hosted by Lauren Vogelbaum. This episode was written by Michelle Muto with researcher Robin Miniter, and produced by Miranda Hawkins and Trevor Young, with executive producers

Aaron Minky, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. To learn more about the show, visit grim and mil dot com. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.