Welcomed unobscured a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky. He rushed to embrace his father, but as he neared the figure, it faded and disappeared. All of it was a shock, of course, because Henri's father was dead. He collected himself and moved forward, but the experience left outs. You see, before this moment, Henri hadn't believed in spiritualism. He'd heard the stories and visited a seance once to
see if there was anything to it. He, even so, his story goes, managed to levitate a table at that sitting, but he walked away unconvinced that there was something supernatural going on the madness of some people, he laughed. After his father's death, though, that encounter with the vanishing figure made him reconsider. It made him go back and start to think again about what he had experienced in that seance.
It made him decide to turn to it. He scheduled an appointment with a New Orleans medium who called herself Sister Louise. When they finally sat down together and formed a harmonious circle, Sister Louise said she felt something. Ri's hand was trembling, so she handed him a pencil, then any other context to shaky hand might be a reason to stop writing. But sister Louise saw things with the eyes of a spiritualist. As soon as the pencil was in his fingers on reset and invisible hand wrapped around
his own and then started to write. Here's historian Emily Clark, and at his first meeting with Louise, he just writes and writes and writes and writes and writes, all under the powerful influence of spirits. And as he starts to get tired, I mean, we don't do a lot of handwriting anymore. We're always on our computers. But handwriting pages and pages and pages, your arm gets tired. He begins to get tired. In the spirit of his father, Bartholomy comes to him and assures him, you can keep writing.
You're not really tired. Me and the other spirits will sustain you. And so it's sort of this progression of experiences that convinced him Henri would follow the spirit's command to write for the rest of his life. At first, his seances were private. He started recording messages from the spirits in a registered book marked Soul or Solo, but he quickly received instructions to open his visitations to others. You see, Henri was part of the Afro Creole community
in New Orleans. They spoke French, where Catholic educated, and came mostly from families who were freed from slavery during the colonial era. Both of Andre's parents had come from Haiti after the revolution and became some of the most
respected among their Catholic neighbors in New Orleans. They found that they enjoyed some of the freedoms denied to other black neighbors, like owning property and serving as witnesses in court, but they were subject to many of the same disc dominations that made publishing black newspapers and organizing religious groups illegal. Even so, on Re followed the instructions of the spirits,
obeying their voices. He held a series of seances with Sister Louise for members of his social circle, and soon enough spiritualism was bridging divides in New Orleans. Spiritualists around on reconnected with mediums like JB. Valmore, who had been holding seances in the city for years, and the spirits came to speak. But the entries and on Ree's registered book came to an end in April of eighteen sixty and we know why too. The voices of the spirits had been drowned out by the march of boots and
the shouts of officers as the Southern States seceded. A battle for a different nation and a different world swept over them. In the opening clashes of conflict. The Civil War had begun. This is unobscured. I'm Aaron Manky. They were scattered to the winds of war. But the New Orleans Sean Circle was only one of many things that broke apart when shells fell on Fort Sumter in eighteen sixty one. When the fighting began, un Re walked into the crowded room at a school his father had founded.
The other leaders there of the Afro Creole community had gathered to decide how to wield their resources in the coming conflict. They had also been teachers and administrators in the school. Now they would be soldiers. Henri and a thousand other free men of color joy into the Native guards for on Re. This brought him a captain's commission
with the Confederacy. Here's Emily Clark once again. So on Re and his brother Octave and others, many other Afro Creole men in the city joined the war effort, but intel New Orleans was seized by the Union in eighteen sixty two. When they joined the Louisiana Native Guards the Black Regimen for the city, they had to muster for
the Confederacy, which was not what they wanted. That much was clear when the officers and staff of the regiment gathered to celebrate Christmas at the end of the year, their service was compelled again to serve a social power built to exploit them. Their property, their families, and their lives were subject to violent retaliation if they didn't step forward for service. But when they gathered on re raised
his glass and a toast to all revolutions. He said, for they give birth the progress of man and lead him on the way of true fraternity. It was a message that had come to him straight from beyond death, against the institution of slavery that structured Southern society. On ri and Valmore received from the spirits what they called the idea. They received so many messages that made mention of the idea, And when you put all these together, it becomes clear that this was a concept that meant
humanitarian progress, brotherhood, egalitarianism, equality, harmony. It was similar to some other ideas that are going around nineteenth century America, ideas of millennial progress. This desire to build the Kingdom of God here on earth in the US, the idea would require work to make. The idea of reality on Earth would not just happen. The triumph of the idea would require free thought, democracy, equality, The progressive march of
humanity is not going to happen on its own. Gathered around that revolutionary idea, they took an aim for themselves that represented the world they fought for. They became the Cirque Harmonique. To them, spiritualism was the key to making a fair and just world. It opened the doors to the revolutionary leaders and thinkers who had otherwise been lost to time. The idea, the revolutionary spark of the cirk Harmonique, was lit from the flame of the Haitian Revolution, but
was smothered by the darkness of war. But it's still smoldered under the cloak of Confederate service. In the coming months, on Ri would publish a letter in the Afro Creole newspaper The Union that celebrated the Native Guards. He wrote that anyone watching his troops in parade, would see men of all races carrying the same bayonets, gleaming in the sun. Be informed. He wrote that we have no prejudice. We receive everyone in the camp, but that the sight of
a human salesman of flesh makes us sick. Statements like that were clear challenges to the white supremacy of slave power, and once the Native Guards were armed and trained, those challenges became more frequent and more fierce. Their agenda was to defend their families and homes from whoever threatened them, once more from Emily Clark. They joined the war effort because they felt strongly about defending their home, but they
disobeyed the Confederacy's orders. As the Union was approaching the city in eighteen sixty two, the Confederacy orders all of the troops out and the Black troops stay. They disobey, and they want to stay with their homes and protect their homes and protect their families. A committee of four in the Louisiana Native Guards, including Onri and his brother Octave, were the group that surrendered their weapons to the Union
when the Union comes into New Orleans. But then they quickly got them back because now they were able to serve on the side they wanted to, so Onri and the Louisiana Native Guards took up the work of supporting the Union army in their region, and that's when on Re met Colonel Nathan Daniels, the white Union officer given command of Henri's regiment. You see, Daniels was a spiritualist, and his diary includes the notes of his many sittings
with mediums throughout the city. It's through Daniels that we learned that even though the Sir Carmonique wasn't meeting during the years of war service, that didn't stop on Ree's work as a medium, and an excellent one. In Nathan's words, the Native Guards worked as engineers for the Northern troops. They built fortifications, chopped wood, fetched and carried Daniels wasn't able to keep his command, though he was arrested and discharged.
The official military record says it was for mishandling lumber used in construction. Daniels believed that was because he defended his black troops against the racism of their white officers. After his discharge, though Daniels continued to sit for seances with Henri and velmore while they waited to see if the Native guards would be used for anything other than manual labor by the Union Army. They were no killer angels, but the spirits continued to speak throughout the war, and
as they did, thousands were added to their number. Nettie was close to spiritualism's beating heart. That is, she was in Albany, New York, when troops clashed at bull Run Creek near Manassas Junction. It was July of eighteen sixty one. As Nettie recalled it, The air in New York was full of heady optimism. The call had gone out for
seventy troops to join the Union Army. Despite the previous efforts of New York City political and business leaders to oppose the war, they sent eight thousand volunteers to the front. Once the fighting began. Nettie wasn't far from those concerns. In fact, she was close to the Governor of Connecticut, Thomas Seymour. It was after sitting with him that Nettie received entry into the capital of New York State. Nettie Colburn was a twenty year old medium in the Fox
Sisters Mold. Her story began as so many others did, with a spirit rattling through her family's house. It began when her grandmother died, and they guessed that it was the old woman's spirit, striking dead clocks and frightening Nettie's grandfather with ghostly whispers, inviting him to join her in death. Others answered that call as well, though, when the Civil War started, her father and all four brothers were enlisted. Soon enough, they were preparing to head south towards Virginia
and the coming fight. By that time, Nettie had become well known. One of her first supporters was a local silver plater and merchant who put his money behind her mediumship. In that way, Nettie's rise looks a lot like that of Daniel Hume, when she found powerful, willing friends to lift her into the world of the upper crust, and once she was sitting with governors and their cohorts, she found herself controlled by prominent spirits to deliver lectures, give advice,
and even make political predictions. She was the kind of spiritualist and elected official could love. But even though there was optimism in the air, the spirits wore Nettie against a sunny disposition. She didn't record which voices warned her away from celebrating the war's beginning, but she remembered them telling her that the war would last for four years. With her family at the front, this would have been a chilling thought. In the following months, Nettie started to
get messages describing a congress of spirits. There were statesmen and public figures who wanted to return to the material world and offer their guidance over the affairs of a nation at war. Nettie started telling people in her Albany circle that the spirits were demanding she speaked directly with the President. The messages Nettie shared with her friends told her to arrange a trip to Washington. The instructions were too ridiculous to obey, though, so Nettie stayed in New York.
It wasn't until she received a note from her brother the following November that she decided to go south. He was in a war hospital and the waves of injured soldiers coming back from the front meant that he was poorly cared for. He needed someone to help him get a military furlough, and that was the spur she needed. Nettie set out for Baltimore and then on to Washington. Through spiritualist connections, she met Thomas Gayle's Foster, a spiritualist lecturer who also happened to be a clerk in the
War Department. Foster welcomed Nettie to Washington and hosted her in his home. He heard her case and her brother's position, and got to work turning the wheels of bureaucracy in their favor. Soon enough, Nettie was catching a train to the war hospital to pass along the good news to her brother in person. That night, when she returned to the Foster's house, Nettie joined a seance that included officials from across the government. During that session, Foster turned to
her while in a trance. Through him, the voices of the spirits told Nettie that she would succeed in sending her brother home, but that she had other greater work to do in the capital. In the following days, he pressed the furlough order from official to official, while in
the evening, the spirit messages became more insistent. During these sittings, Nettie said she met the most powerful physical mediums in Washington through introductions to Foster's friends, until finally Nettie herself was overcome During a seance, an unknown spirit announced to the circle that Nettie should go to Lincoln herself. The officials in the seance circle took this message seriously, as
they had all the other lectures and communications. They urged Nettie to arrange a meeting with the presidents, and they even offered to help her. She's still declined, but they were convinced of the faded nature of the spirit's instructions. It was only a matter of time before the circle made the arrangements anyway. Among Nettie's new spiritualist acquaintances were the medium's Cranston Laurie and his daughter Belle Miller, who
knew the Lincoln's personally through Kentucky friends. Cranston had worked in the Post Office when it was building experimental telegraph lines between baltim Or and Washington. By befriending Nettie, it seems that he also decided to open a depot in his own home for a spiritual telegraph between heaven and Earth, and it was through Cranston that Nettie finally received word Mary Todd Lincoln had asked to see a trance medium.
Nettie could not be pushed. That much was clear, but this was a poll and one that she could not decline. As far as Cranston and Bell were concerned, Nettie Colburn's moment had arrived. Spiritualists had to keep up the fight even as the war raged on Ohio. Spiritualist author Hudson Tuttle wrote Reams of anti radical, anti reform articles in May of eighteen sixty two. He complained that the universal grasp of spiritualism has gathered the floating rubbish of the
seas of mankind. This was his view on spirit messages that argued for liberty. The land reformer was sure the spirits were land reformers, he wrote. The advocate of women's rights was equally sure that they advocated his hobby. And even in the midst of the conflict, The Banner of Light published Tuttle's opinions. He wasn't alone north or South
on the matter of slavery and abolition. Reformers like Sojourn or Truth and the Posts faced comments from Christian spiritualists who believed that God permitted slavery and that it was part of a divine law. They were the kinds of positions that had pushed Isaac and Amy Post out of their religious tradition in the first place. The anti reform impulse of men like Tuttle was echoed and reinforced among
many of the mediums we've already met. Cora, for example, hosted the spirit of Thomas Jefferson at One Spirit Lecture in May of eighteen sixty one. Through her, his voice criticized radicals and told them to stop fighting against slavery. When his persona argued that the war was the result of slaveholders bigotry clashing with the reformers fantasism, Cora's Thomas Jefferson offered listeners the sort of blame for both sides
that's all too familiar and disheartening today. And just like the pulpits and public squares across the nation, the seance table and the Spiritualist lecture were battlegrounds. The grip of slaveholder power and white supremacy still choked out real condemnations of the expansion of slavery that came with the Kansas Nebraska Act, the Fugitive Slave Act, the Annexation of Texas, and the Mexican War, and everywhere it traveled. Both in
the United States and across oceans. Spiritualism was deeply and inescapably political. As the question of slavery split the nation, so it split spiritualists as well. So it's not so strange, after all that spiritualist believers in positions of power would turn to the other world for guidance. In Washington, d c. Those spiritualists heard the voices of dead soldiers, dead presidents,
and lamenting profits. But when Cranston Laurie pulled up to the Foster's house in an unusually elegant carriage to bring Nettie to a seance, it was a surprise to her. Cushioned by Crimson Satin on the road, Nettie would later write that she should have known what was coming, but she was so distracted by the trouble of getting her brother the proper travel papers that she barely noticed that the carriage door was opened for her by a well
dressed footman. When she arrived at the Laurie's house, Nettie was greeted by a circle of new faces. The Secretary of Interior, the Chief Clerk of the Treasury, a Commissioner of Agriculture, a congressman from Maine, and of course Mary Todd Lincoln. From their very first meeting. The thing that Nettie remembered was Mary Lincoln's eagerness. She was determined to
hear from the spirits. In fact, it made Nettie so nervous that Mrs Lincoln spent the first few minutes trying to calm the medium by assuring her that her family would be taken care of. Her brother was sure to get his furlough and travel home. When Nettie had settled into a seat and the believers gathered around her, a new and powerful influence took possession of her body. It spoke,
she later wrote, with great clearness and force. When Nettie finally came back to herself, Missus Lincoln was exclaiming to the men in the room, this young lady must not leave Washington. She must stay here, and mister Lincoln must hear what we have heard. To keep Nettie in the capital, Mary Lincoln turned to the Commissioner of Agriculture and told him to find Nettie a position in his department, but
she hardly had time to claim the role. Two days later, Nettie received a second invitation from the First Lady, this time to hold a seance inside the White House, if her memory was right. When she finally wrote her memoir, she arrived in the Red Parlor for the first time in December of eighteen sixty two. When the group filed in, Mary Lincoln met them. Cranston Laurie's daughter, Bell was with them, and while the group talked, she sat down at the piano.
A march began to play, and soon, as the piano so often did under Bell's hands, the whole instrument began to rise from the floor, but everything fell silent, and the instrument landed back on the floor the moment Abraham Lincoln stepped into the doorway. One by one, the mediums were introduced to the President. As Nettie describes it, he laid his hands on her head, saying, so this is our little Nettie. Is it that we have heard so
much about? The pair talked for a few minutes, Lincoln asking about Nettie's understanding of spiritualism, although she was hardly able to squeak out more than a yes or no. Cranston Laurie stepped forward to explain how they ordinarily conducted their seances, but even as he did, Nettie fell into a trance, it was time for the Congress of the
Spirits to be heard. In her memoir, Nettie wrote that the spirits lectured through her for more than an hour, and they urged the President to go forward with something
that he was already considering, the Emancipation Acclamation. He was charged, she later wrote, with the utmost solemnity and force of manner, not to abate the terms of its issue, and not to delay its enforcement as a law beyond the opening of the year, and he was assured that it was to be the crowning event of his administration and his life. Nettie never forgot what she saw when she came back
to herself. She stood in front of the President, who was sitting back in his chair with his arms folded on his chest, looking intently at her. Silence had settled like a blanket over the room. Eventually the others began to question Lincoln. They circled him and muttered commentary that Nettie couldn't hear, but Lincoln said very little until the flurry died down. Then he approached Nettie and thanked her. He shook her hand, kindly, bowed to the rest, and
then vanished from the room. It wasn't the last time Neddie would see Lincoln. Of course, there was no question that it was Mary Lincoln who was the most enthusiastic about spirit communication, but that impulse had been planted by her friend Elizabeth Keckley. Here's historian Margaret Washington. Abraham Lincoln, after his son Willie died, went to a spiritualist. His wife convinced him to go, and she became interested in spiritualism because her what would you call this woman dressmaker?
She was more than a dressmaker. She was a confidance. She was a dressmaker. She dressed her hair. But she was a former slave. Her son had passed for white so he could join the Union Army at a time when they weren't taking black people, and and he was killed almost immediately. And that was her only child. So spiritualism was very important to her. And then after Willie Lincoln died, then she introduced Mary Todd Lincoln to spiritualism,
and Mary Todd Lincoln took it very seriously. Lincoln, for his part, seems to have indulged his wife's enthusiasm at times. He even made playful examinations of the spirit manifestations in Cranston Laurie's circle. Most famously, in the winter of eighteen sixty three, he appeared with Mary unexpectedly at a seance
circle that was being hosted at the Laurie's home. Neddie was there that night too, and she was controlled by the spirit of a doctor who recommended that Lincoln take a tour of the battle front to raise the dwindoline morale of the Union troops. But she wasn't the only medium working that night. Cranston's daughter Bell had once again sat down at the piano. As she played, under the control of the spirits, her piano began to rise and
fall in time with the music. Then Bell stood up and rested an outstretched arm on the piano as it continued to move on its own. That's when Lincoln stepped toward it. He leaned down to see what he could detect beneath it. He swept his arm under the raised legs of the piano, but didn't find anything. Turning to the group with a mischievous smile, he said, I think we can hold down that instrument, and he turned and
jumped on top of the piano. A congressman from Mayne followed his lead along with a few others, but even with the added weight, the piano kept rising and falling in time with the music. No one in the group could find a hidden device causing the motion either. The spiritualists there later remembered hearing Lincoln say that he was perfectly satisfied that the movement was caused by some invisible power.
In a later conversation with Cranston Laurie, Lincoln would say that he could neither confirm nor deny the spiritual origin of the powers he had seen, whether they spoke through Nettie or levitated a piano. From time to time, though he would pause from his duties to hear a spirit lecture from Nettie if she was visiting Mary Lincoln in the White House. In his loyally way, this was the most Lincoln ever seemed to say about the question of spiritualism. Usually,
it seems he was merely a silent spectator. Looking back, we can see how other concerns must have required his full attention. The word eventually got out, though, that the President was sometimes willing to hear from the spirits. Even before that, rumors with a venomous tone were often launched by his critics who saw an opportunity to accuse the
president of demonizing the country. In eighteen sixty three, one anonymous author published a short book under the title Interior Cause of the War, The Nation Demonized and its President a spirit Rapper. It may have pushed some away from Lincoln,
but it also brought spiritualists to his cause. The various camps, from trans lecturers to the traveling healers and the private mediums, finally drew together enough to hold a National Spiritualist Convention in eighteen sixty four, bringing members from across the Northern States, and it served a fuel Lincoln's reelection campaign because it wasn't just one meeting, but tides of rallies and conventions
that gathered spiritualists together. And once they were under one roof, they talked just as much about politics as they did about theology. Just as they had in Rochester in eighteen forty eight, the Spiritualists agreed on a thunderous call for perfect and entire equality of rights between the sexes. Liberty was the responsibility of the harmonious men and women who
followed the spirits. Like the front page of Frederick Douglas's North Star from sixteen years before they rejected the idea that sex, in any instance whatever confers the slightest authority. The remaining spiritualist who rejected the reform causes of Lincoln's platform withdrew from the public meetings as the war advanced, but some warmed up to his leadership. Cora, who had begun the war by channeling a Thomas Jefferson who pitted
both sides against each other, was channeling different voices. By eighteen sixty three. She found herself frequently under the control of a popular Boston abolitionist who had died in eighteen sixty one of the men whose fantasism had been condemned by her, Thomas Jefferson. By eighteen sixty three, with two years of the war behind her, Cora now channeled the spirit that cried out for and I quote, a holy crusade to eliminate slavery and redeemed the land from its
bondage and its sin. This new message directly aligned her with the radical Republicans and their liberal social reforms, and with President Lincoln's rhetoric about the war. In fact, Lincoln spoke of the fighting as a national blood sacrifice that might cover the nation's sins of slavery, which of course
had been sojourner Truth's message for years. In fact, few traveling speakers campaigned harder for Lincoln's reelection than she did, but other spiritualists did join her at meetings across the Northeast. Once Neddie Colburn was a featured speaker at a camp Pane rally. In her trance, the Spirits offered his gathered supporters the kind of certainty that forecasters today are always
hoping for. The spirits were certain that Lincoln would win. Later, Sojourner traveled to Washington and met with Lincoln, but their conversation, as far as we know, was little more than a brief exchange of courtesies. Other mediums, though, would get far closer to the president, and not always for the best. His first seances were sensations. They were less your loving father wants to tell you he loves you, and more a wealthy murder victim can guide you to their buried treasure.
But the instructions he offered led his visitors to nothing more than New York dirt. In his early days as a medium, John Conklin was an object of mockery, but he blamed the impish spirits. They were tricking him as well as his visitors, or so he said, at least the dead word. Just having a laugh at the expense of the living. That was what Conklin claimed about the spirits. But I think it tells us more about his own
way of thinking. Even though he tried to pass the buck, John still got out of town and he made his way to New York City. That's where, in his first campaign for the presidency, Abraham Lincoln anonymously visited John Conklin several times. It might have been just a meaningless lark, but a report on this visit was published in December eighteen sixty as one of the early attempts to discredit
Lincoln by connecting him to spiritualism. Some of lincoln spokespeople denied the stories, of course, but Lincoln himself never tried to fight them, and why should he. There were plenty of people who spent a free afternoon or two sitting with a medium in New York City. For his part, John Conklin had managed to work his way into a mix of mediums and performers who entered tourists with their seances.
It hadn't been easy, but he had a special talent for it and a taste for magical performances that outpaced the religious devotion of other spiritualists. Here's historian John Busher. He was sailor baker. He had various odd jobs. He was born well and up in New York I mean Upper New York City, near Bronx, and spent a long time working on the docks and in the ships. And he'd always been fascinated by magic performing magic. Apparently he was an early adopter and transformed himself into a medium
who used it to make a living. He also set up a kind of exhibition space, performance space, I guess quite near Arnemus Museum, and he would come to that as part of their experience of the big city. They would visit Arms Museum, uh, they might take in some other sites, but they would also visit his spirit room. John Conklin's spirit room would become the place where plenty of curious visitors would have their first encounters with the spirits.
In fact, it was at John Conklin's table that Emma Harding had sat for that shocking seance that sent her running from the room in horror. While some spiritualists turned their attention to troubling national matters. New York was different. John and others joined together to put on a sort of spiritualist variety show. One medium might give a lecture, then a performer like Emma would play some music. Someone like John Conklin might even step up and invite some
audience participation. John's spirit demonstrations always came with a dramatic twist. When he received spirit messages, they were written backwards on sheets of paper, so they'd have to be held up to the light, and when the spirits would tilt and turn tables around him. They would also ask him to do other things like open combination locks, channel spectral winds, and answer questions that curious visitors carried and sealed envelopes, lead boxes, or inside bars of soap, as you might
be able to tell. His claims about spirit power were more than a little slippery, but they were also undeniably fun. By the end of the eighteen fifties, though, John Conklin wasn't just doling out his blend of performance, magic and spiritual assayance in New York City. He had stints in Philadelphia, Boston, Cleveland, and more. He even took a short trip south to Nashville.
In eighteen sixty two, Conklin followed the Congress of the Spirits and the rumors of Influence to Washington, d C. At least once he'd heard generals and other government officials tried to use Neddie Coulvern as a means of getting their concerns in front of President Lincoln. John Conklin thought that he had an even better idea, So he sat down at his desk in his boarding house room and
started to write. Somehow, perhaps through one of Mary Lincoln's spiritualist friends, Conklin got a letter dropped into Abraham Lincoln's hand. It was written backwards, of course, and it was signed by Colonel Edward Baker, a senator who had died while commanding Union Army forces. His seats in the Senate had been Oregon's, but he had started his political career in Illinois, where he and Lincoln had been close friends. Apparently that
note was enough to get Conklin a meeting with Lincoln. Soon, other mediums and writers were reporting that the New York magician turned spiritualist showman was in the circle of mediums who made regular trips to the White House. In later years, Conklin and his friends would make some outlandish claims. Conklin said that he held as many as thirty private seances
at President Lincoln's request. Later, he would even go so far as to tell Emma that through him, the spirits had dictated the Emancipation Proclamation to Lincoln, letter by letter. It's the kind of preposterous claim that highlights Conklin's theatrics with a pen and paper. In the context of his lifelong passion for tricks and sleight of hand, it's easy
to laugh them off. But more reliable documents, like the private diaries of other politicians, confirmed that he offered Lincoln messages from his dead friend more than once, and those letters did encourage Lincoln to end slavery. So maybe it's more a matter of exaggeration than outright lies. The stories took real seances that Conklin held with Lincoln and used them to the medium's advantage. But when it comes to disreputable kN men, Conklin was far from the worst who
entered Lincoln's White House. No, for that particular mark of distinction, we need to turn to someone new. Allow me to introduce to you Charles J. Colchester. Charles Colchester rivaled Conklin for theatrics. He could read sealed letters, he could turn on the flash and style, crying out the names of visitors deceased friends. Drums and banjo's would float around in the dark during his more public displays, making loud, annoying music.
During his seances, his writing wasn't just lines of backward script. No. When Colchester did it, blood read letters would appear on his arms and forehead. There were many believers among those who sat with Charles Colchester for his seances too. By all accounts, he was charming and probably used the mark of his English birth to good effect as Emma Head, But there were plenty more people who saw something more
sinister in him. They saw him as the worst kind of fraud ster, someone who took advantage of grieving people to fill his pockets with cash. He began his march to the White House by befriending the First Ladies dressmaker and confidante, Elizabeth Keckley. Once he gained hurt trust, he leaned on her to put him in front of Mrs Lincoln. All he needed was an introduction and then he could
rely on his plentiful arsenal. Mary. Lincoln's beloved son Willie, was Colchester's first spirit manifestation, and soon enough he was exerting so much control over Mary that the President became concerned, so he called in some favors. Specifically, he asked the
head of the Smithsonian Institution to investigate Colchester. When a test wrapped up, he told the President that he couldn't find any illegal fraud in Colchester's displayed but just because there wasn't any evidence didn't mean everyone's suspicions went away. Lincoln next turned to his friend Noah Brooks, who pulled Colchester aside and threatened to harm him if he didn't leave Mary alone. He had good reason to be concerned too,
you see. Even though they weren't able to collect good evidence to charge Colchester in court, the man had been blatantly open about his frauds. It was usually when he got drunk a couple of pints in, and Colchester would start to make light of his spiritual consultations. He would start loud to mocking conversations with the spirits about how many more drinks he ought to have, and then he would start talking about his real motive, the way he
constantly worked his seance audiences for cash. He admitted to one politician that he often cheated fools. He laughed and said that it was so easy, but that's the problem. Colchester was constantly flying through his money. He made friends with the host of Washington's hard Party years, and was always on the lookout for the next mark who might be flush with cash and vulnerable to a conman's overtures. Despite all of this, it seems Colchester did have Lincoln's ear.
At least once or twice. Noah Brooks continued to watch the predator. He dropped in on his seances and hung around to undermine his meetings and conversations. It infuriated Colchester so much that, once during a seance that Brooks had forced his way into, Colchester physically attacked him. Even so, something must have changed after that. Maybe at some point Colchester dropped the cheery charisma that was the cover for all of his deceptions. Maybe he just became more insistent.
Maybe he finally had a message to pass on that was actually believable. Whatever the case, at some point in the spring of eighteen sixty five, in the days leading up to the signing of the treaty that would end the war. At Appo Mattos, Lincoln got one of the many warnings from a government official that his life was under threat. It was, sadly nothing new, but this time Lincoln responded with the strange message. Yes, he said, Colchester has been telling me that it would be natural for
Lincoln to have ignored the warnings. From the time he took office, Spiritualist had been flooding his mail room with letters of warning alongside demands, request for favors, and plenty
more too. A correspondent secretary responsible for checking the president's mail later remembered that and I quote, Spiritualist favored him constantly, and I still have in my possession urgent epistles signed with the facts simile signatures of half the dead worthies in our history, not to speak of sundry communications from the Apostles and the Angel Gabriel. Of course, most of these letters ended up in the trash, although a few still remain. Among them are dire warnings of plots against
Lincoln's life. So yeah, it only made sense for the president to dismiss the eager ramblings of a man he distrusted as much as Colchester but despite the con man's litany of frauds, this was one case in which Lincoln would have done well to take his words to heart.
Not because of any kind of spiritual wisdom or special revelations. No, the voice murmuring in Colchester's ear was far more mundane than that, and it was also more dangerous because Colchester was in a unique position to know precisely what he was talking about. You see, one of Colchester's closest friends, a drink partner and an associate, on his late nights of carousing with someone who had been telling Colchester about plans so dark that even the compulsive trickster himself couldn't
help but fill the chill of fear. And this drinking associates name will sound all too familiar to most of us, an aggrieved Maryland actor named John Wilkes Booth. That's it for this week's episode of Unobscured. Stick around after this short sponsor break for a preview of what's in store
for next week. Next time on Unobscured. Without her father's schemes, placebos, and outright poisons rattling on the margins of every seance, Victoria was able to give her full attention to her clients and the spirits, and those clients paid for nothing but her time, her words, and her sympathetic ear. From our vantage point today, it's easy to see her work
as something psychotherapy. But while the physical wounds of war were terrible, Victoria was most haunted by the stories she heard from women whose lives sounded so much like her own. Victoria would go on to spend the coming decades writing down accounts of abuse of marriages and terrorized wise women who hated their husbands but were forced into sex and motherhood. They didn't want young women who were abandoned to fend for themselves, And in all these dark mirrors Victoria saw
the suffering of her own life reflected back. Perhaps that's why it didn't take much encouragement from James for Victoria to turn her talents away from personal consultations. She had started thinking about how a larger platform as a spiritualist might give her the chance to fight for the rights of all women. As a former army officer, James could see it too. The fight for reform would indeed be a battle, necessary but difficult, and Victoria, he believed, would
lead the charge. Unobscured was created by me, Aaron Mankey and produced by Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Josh Thane in partnership with I Heart Radio. Research and writing for this season is all the work of my right hand man Carl Nellis and the brilliant Chad Lawson composed the
brand new soundtrack. Learn more about our contributing historians, source material and links to our other shows over at history unobscured dot com, And until next time, thanks for listening Unobscured as a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Monkey. For more podcast for My Heart Radio, visit i heeart Radio, app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.