Changing attitudes to death during the American Civil War

Why the Victorians saw ghosts: four

Approximately 700,000 soldiers and civilians lost their lives in the American Civil War (1861-1864) and some 300,000 others were injured. That's more than a million people in total. Although spiritualism was already popular prior to 1861, the fact that so many families were touched by death during this period is clearly the reason why the number of spiritualist followers grew. So this month I'll be looking at one of the lesser contributing factors instead: how the use of a new technology not only changed the way that everybody perceived war, but, for the first time in human history, offered those who'd lost relatives a way to remember their loved ones in perpetuity.

They say that history is written by the victors. They forget to add that, since the dawn of civilization, history has been drawn, painted, carved and cast in bronze by them too. For millennia artists have strived to immortalize great, heroic battles on paper, metal, stone and canvas. Above you will see such a painting, The Battle of Antietam by Thure de Thulstrup, typical of how war was depicted in the mid-nineteenth century. Take a good look at it, because from the mid-1850's on, prints made by using a photographic process called wet-plate collodion radically altered how war was depicted.

The wet-plate collodion process, which was first introduced in 1851, was the brainchild of a man named Frederick Scott Archer. It had some distinct advantages over its two major competitors. Unlike daguerreotypes, which were one-off originals, collodion plates were negatives that could be printed countless times; unlike calotypes (also known as Talbotypes) whose negatives were made of paper, the glass plates of the collodion process gave sharp prints with an extraordinary tonal range that were rivalled only by daguerreotypes. But it also had one major disadvantage. The plates had to be coated in an emulsion and sensitized in a darkroom, exposed in a camera, then developed in the darkroom before the jellied emulsion dried—all in a matter of ten minutes. While this might seem to make it a strange choice for the documenting of wars, the truth is it was the only choice: daguerreotypes could not be printed, and calotypes were only capable of producing flat, sketch-like images.

 

Even so, it required a great deal of ingenuity, dedication and money to go and work on the battlefield, as each photographer needed a travelling darkroom in which to prepare and develop their plates. The one you see here dates from 1855. It belonged to the English photographer Roger Fenton, who used it in the Crimean War. The man seated in the driver's seat is Marcus Sparling, Fenton's assistant. Although from its inception the wet-plate process was used to record a number of wars, it wasn't until 1861 that it was used in a thoroughly planned and organised way. Mathew Brady, a New York photographer of some standing (it is his portrait of Mary Todd Lincoln in the previous post), came up with the idea of founding a company dedicated to documenting the American Civil War. He received Lincoln's blessing in 1861 on the proviso that he finance the project himself.

Brady employed 23 men, each of whom he equipped at enormous expense with a travelling darkroom. He spent approximately $100,000 on making some 10,000 plates, all of them bearing his name though few were actually taken by the man himself. His first collection of prints, entitled "The Dead of Antietam", was exhibited at his New York gallery in the October of 1862. The effect on the American public could not have been more startling. Where Roger Fenton had deliberately shied away from photographing dead bodies, Brady's employees did not. The dead, in fact, made excellent subjects, as exposure times for this period were upwards of several seconds, which ruled out the possibility of capturing live combat. The grim realities of death that were barely touched upon in painted scenes such as the one that heads this post could no longer be ignored.

 

 

While this caused a massive shift in the public's consciousness and understanding of war, it is probably the carte-de-visite photograph, the wet-plate's smaller, humbler cousin, that contributed more to the spurring on of spiritualism during this period. Cartes-de-visite were made on the same glass plates, but with a special camera that had eight separate lenses, each of which could be uncovered singly to give the sitter eight different poses, or uncovered collectively to give eight practically identical versions of the same pose. Once printed, the photos were cut up and pasted on to sturdy backing-cards, to be sent home to sweethearts, family and friends. As unimaginable as it may seem, this is the first war where ordinary enlisted soldiers were able do such a thing. Prior to this, having a likeness made before going off to die in battle (and remember, as photography was in its infancy, we're talking about drawings or paintings) was beyond the pocket of most.

When the war ended in 1864, the U.S. government declined to buy Brady's extensive collection of photographs, as he had hoped they would. The public, who had had their fill of death, had grown weary of his images. He was forced to sell his New York City studio and go into bankruptcy. Although Congress granted him $25,000 in 1875, for the rest of his life he remained in debt and died penniless in the charity ward of a New York hospital in 1896.

 

Next month: exporting spiritualism abroad

Images:

Battle of Antietam, September 17, 1862.
Thure de Thulstrup (1846-1930); published 1887

The artist's van
Photograph by Roger Fenton (1819–1869), 1855; digital ID cph.3g09240 from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division

Confederate dead at the Battle of Spotsylvania, May 18 1864

Lt. Col. Walter R. Robbins, 1st New Jersey Cavalry, date unknown
Carte-de-visite by Good and Stokes Ltd, Trenton, New Jersey
New Jersey Department of State

Christian A. Fleetwood in uniform, 1884
Carte-de-visite, photographer unknown
Library of Congress

Find out more at michaelgallagherwrites.com and Goodreads


Michael Gallagher is the author of The Bridge of Dead Things and The Scarab Heart.

A séance in the White House

Why the Victorians saw ghosts: three

In the early 1860s, Washington, D.C. was not the place that we picture today. The Washington Canal, which flowed into the Potomac River a little to the south of the White House, was used as a cesspit and sewer, the stench of which permeated the presidential mansion every summer. One contemporary summed it up neatly: "The ghosts of twenty thousand drowned cats come in nights through the South Windows". Pestilence reigned, and not even the White House was exempt from its grip, as Abraham Lincoln and his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, discovered to their cost when their third son, Willie, contracted typhoid fever and died in the February of 1962.

By the start of June, as summer arrived, Mary Lincoln insisted that the family quit the city and relocate to their favourite retreat, a former plantation a few miles north of the capital that had been redeveloped by the banker George Riggs as an estate to house former military men: The Soldiers' Home. It was here that they stayed until mid-November, in the humbly-named but really rather grand Riggs Cottage. Although the cottage was light and airy, as the estate was set on a higher elevation than the neighbouring city, it was often far from peaceful. In addition to the braying of nearly two thousand mules stabled nearby, there was also the din of drums, rifles and band practice to contend with from Lincoln's hundred-strong presidential guard.

Despite the noise and the disruptions of war, the Lincolns entertained regularly. One particular guest that summer, at Mary's invitation, was a man calling himself Lord Colchester, a trance medium who claimed to be the illegitimate son of an English duke. In her desire for some form of contact from her beloved son, Willie, and her second-born, Eddie, who had died some years earlier, Mary was only too keen to avail herself of his services. And so she arranged for a séance to be held in the Riggs Cottage library.

As the participants seated themselves around the table, Colchester produced a number of musical instruments—a banjo, some bells and a drum—and laid them out on top. Everybody held hands and the lights were extinguished. At first nothing happened. Then came some loud raps, some scratching sounds, the twang of the banjo. Strands of hair were pulled; people's skin was pinched. Mary was delighted.

Lincoln was sufficiently concerned by this séance to ask Dr Joseph Henry, first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, to investigate. Unable to determine exactly how Colchester managed to produce his phenomena, he turned to the journalist, Noah Brooks, for help. Brooks, who, after the death of his wife earlier that year, had been sent by the Sacramento Daily Union to cover the Lincoln administration, had been readily accepted into the Lincoln household as if he were a long-lost friend. And quite a friend he proved to be.

That evening in the dimly-lit library, with the medium's selection of musical instruments set out before them, the company once more joined hands and again the lights were extinguished. Suddenly the sound of a drum was heard, hovering high above their heads. This is Noah Brooks's own account of what happened next:

"Loosening my hands from my neighbors', who were unbelievers, I rose, and, grasping in the direction of the drumbeat, grabbed a very solid and fleshy hand in which was held a bell that was being thumped on a drum-head. I shouted, 'Strike a light!' My friend, after what appeared to be an unconscionable length of time, lighted a match; but meanwhile somebody had dealt me a severe blow with the drum, the edge of which cut a slight wound on my forehead. When the gas was finally lighted, the singular spectacle was presented of 'the son of the duke' firmly grasped by a man whose forehead was covered with blood, while the arrested scion of nobility was glowering at the drum and bells which he still held in his hands."

Undeterred by the events at the Soldiers' Home, on her return to the White House in November Mary sought solace at the two-storey Georgetown home of a Mr and Mrs Cranston Laurie and their daughter Belle, at what was then 21 First Street (3226 N Street today). Mr Laurie was chief clerk of the Post Office Service and many of his spiritualist acquaintances held equally high government posts; Mrs Laurie and her daughter were both trance mediums of some renown. On New Year's Day 1863, Mary Lincoln revealed to a friend that she had attended a number of séances there, and that Mrs Laurie had made wonderful revelations to her about her dead son, Willie, and had received communications that her husband's cabinet was full of enemies plotting against him for their own ends.

However, according to Nettie Colburn Maynard in her memoir "Was Abraham Lincoln a Spiritualist?", published many years later in 1891, it was Nettie herself who acted as medium, and not Mrs Laurie or Belle, on the evening of February 5th 1863 when President Lincoln accompanied his wife to one of the Lauries' popular séances. When Lincoln asked the spirit she had channelled about the current situation regarding the war, she writes that he received the following reply:

'…That a very precarious state of things existed at the front, where General Hooker had just taken command. The army was totally demoralized; regiments stacking arms, refusing to obey orders or to do duty; threatening a general retreat; declaring their purpose to return to Washington. A vivid picture was drawn of the terrible state of affairs, greatly to the surprise of all present, save the chief to whom the words were addressed. When the picture had been painted in vivid colors, Mr. Lincoln quietly remarked: "You seem to understand the situation. Can you point out the remedy?"'

The remedy suggested was that he go to the front in person, taking with him his wife and children, and, avoiding the high-grade officers, seek out the tents of private soldiers and enquire into their grievances. In other words, that he should show himself to be "the Father of the People".

Although Nettie Colburn Maynard may have been embroidering the truth somewhat (many if not most of her claims are rather doubtful, and there are reports—though these too are dubious—that it was the Lauries' daughter Belle who acted as medium on that night), in the simple matter of the president's attendance at this séance, I think this at least is true, for something certainly triggered the extraordinary event that came next. Barely seven weeks later, on the 23rd of April, 1863, President Lincoln—a lifelong skeptic—organised his own séance…in the White House.

The evening was attended by his wife, a reporter from the Boston Gazette, two of his Cabinet Secretaries, Stanton and Welles. His medium of choice was a man named Charles E. Shockle. The séance began with a few loud raps and a false start or two, but eventually Shockle came through with a message from Henry Knox, George Washington's Secretary of War: "Haste makes waste, but delays cause vexations". When Lincoln asked when the revolt would be put down, Knox replied that a lively discussion held between Washington, Franklin and Napoleon had produced a variety of answers, which he then went on to summarise for the president. This is reportedly Lincoln's rather wry response:

"Well, opinions differ among the saints as well as among the sinners. They don't seem to understand running the machines among the celestials much better than we do. Their talk and advice sound very much like the talk of my cabinet."

It was a tongue-in-cheek skeptic's comment. Quite why Lincoln held his séance is anyone's guess, but the inclusion of a reporter from the Boston Gazette among the party—and not his trusted friend Noah Brooks—suggests that he may have contrived it as a publicity stunt, and one in which he was unwilling to involve his friend. And yet the article that subsequently appeared in the Gazette was reprinted in Brooks's Sacramento Daily Union some two months later.

Mary Todd Lincoln was to remain in the thrall of spiritualism for the rest of her life, and we will be revisiting her occasionally, as she still has a part to play in its story.

Next month: The Civil War—how the war itself and an emerging technology both contributed to the rising tide of spiritualism

Image:

Mary Todd Lincoln (1818-1882)
Photograph by Mathew Brady (1822-1896), 1861

Find out more at michaelgallagherwrites.com and Goodreads


Michael Gallagher is the author of The Bridge of Dead Things and The Scarab Heart.

Trance lecturers: there’s no business like show business

Why the Victorians saw ghosts: two

Although spiritualism and séances were always to retain a strong domestic, amateur appeal, in that they remained essentially private affairs practised by middle-class enthusiasts dabbling in table-rapping and table-turning in their own homes, they were destined to became public, professional affairs as well.
The small band of pioneers from Rochester (dubbed by many as "the Rochester rappers") received spirit messages urging them to hold an open meeting where their powers could be investigated and tested. This was a risky move, for although the spirits obliged with their normal fare of raps and knocks, the men who were testing the mediums refused to believe that they were caused by any outside agency.
Horace Greeley, the founder and editor of the New York Tribune, published their report, but also appended a note suggesting that their tests were invalid because of the men’s obvious bias. Supporters rallied to the call, giving testimony about the Fox sisters’ abilities. Rather than stifling spiritualism, the report fed the public interest in the girls.

Under the watchful supervision of their mother, the three Fox sisters began giving public sittings at Barnum's Hotel in New York in the spring of 1850. There’s a contemporary description written by a Mrs Emma Hardinge, who was later to become a medium in her own right, which gives us some idea of the pressure the girls faced. She talks of "pausing on the first floor to hear poor patient Kate Fox, in the midst of a captious, grumbling crowd of investigators, repeating hour after hour the letters of the alphabet, while the no less poor, patient spirits rapped out names, ages and dates to suit all comers." Although most of the press reports denounced them as frauds, Horace Greeley published a supportive and sympathetic article in his paper. After a tour of the Western States, the Fox family paid a second visit to New York, which again attracted an intense public interest, both positive and negative.

For some years the two younger sisters, Kate and Margaret, made their living by giving séances. An extraordinary daguerreotype of Kate and Margaret exists in the Missouri History Museum, made by the daguerreotypist Thomas M. Easterly at his studio in St. Louis, Missouri when the sisters stopped off there during their national tour of 1852. Do take the opportunity to click on this link and have a look. A daguerreotype is a photographic likeness made directly onto a sheet of polished silver-plated copper; no intermediary negative is used and no prints can be made, and consequently each daguerreotype is a one-off original. I wanted to use this image to head up this post, but although the copyright on the original expired long ago, the copyright on the reproduction that you see did not.

One of the early communications that the Fox sisters received had claimed that "these manifestations would not be confined to them, but would go all over the world." Their public demonstrations were proving to be so popular that now others began to copy and improve upon their format. In an incredibly short space of time the movement swept across the Northern and Eastern States of the Union, with mediums (or "trance lecturers" as they were known) competing to produce increasingly startling phenomena. A repertoire that had started as a simple series of loud raps and knocks now included the appearance of "spirit-lights" and disembodied hands and faces, automatic writing whilst the medium was apparently in a trance, channelled spirits who spoke to or through the medium, objects that moved by themselves, and even levitation. Spiritualism had become show business.

Prominent practitioners at this point included a certain Mrs Hayden, the two Davenport brothers, and Daniel Dunglas Home (all four of whom I will discuss in greater detail in a later post), the beautiful young Cora L. V. Hatch, Achsa W. Sprague, an abolitionist and advocate of equal rights for women, and Paschal Beverly Randolph, an intriguing man of mixed race who was one of the earliest abolitionists.

Paschal Beverly Randolph was one of this new breed of mediums to rise to prominence in the early 1850s. He was eloquent and good-looking, with a commanding stage presence and a compelling personality to match. From a young age he’d been obliged to make his living as an irregular crewman aboard a number of commercial vessels. His travels had taken him to England and France, and as far east as Persia, and had introduced him to a wealth of new ideas, religions and esoteric beliefs. It was during this time that he developed an deep and abiding interest for gnosticism, freemasonry, sexual magic and the occult.

On his return to America he started writing books (he wrote over fifty of them during his lifetime), many of which were vehicles for his masonic beliefs. Two of these have been lovingly recreated as e-books and are available as free downloads from the wonderful Gutenberg Project (though I warn you now, they are both written in the heavily veiled allegorical style that is typical of most masonic texts). As well as writing, Randolph set up his own publishing house and trained as a doctor. He also established the first Rosicrucian organisation in America, the Fraternitas Rosae Crucis (the Fraternity of the Rosy Cross). All through this period he worked as a trance lecturer, using his stage appearances to argue the case for the abolition of slavery.

As admirable as as all this may be (though it does go some way to demonstrate the strong bond between spiritualism and radical reform), the real reason for his inclusion here is that he provides an interesting link to next month’s post. It is claimed that in 1851, at the age of 25, Paschal Beverly Randolph made the acquaintance of Abraham Lincoln and struck up a friendship that lasted until Lincoln’s untimely death. Despite the fact that Lincoln’s second son, Eddie, had died the previous year from tuberculosis, it’s far more likely that the medium offered the great man his views on abolition, and not some form of spiritualist communion with his dead child. But, as we will see next time, Randolph was not the only medium to make Lincoln’s acquaintance.

Next month: a séance in the White House

Images:

Paschal Beverly Randolph (1825-1875)

Thomas M. Easterly’s Daguerreotype Gallery, St. Louis
Photographer unidentified, but presumably Thomas M. Easterly himself (1809-1882), 1851

Find out more at michaelgallagherwrites.com and Goodreads


Michael Gallagher is the author of The Bridge of Dead Things and The Scarab Heart.