An Excerpt from Remaking Friends: How Progressive Friends Changed Quakerism & Helped Save America, 1822-1940

By Chuck Fager

FIVE: “Oh! No, It Cannot, Cannot Be –
My Darling Babe Will Live . . .”

As we turn to spiritualism, it is worth recalling that in one sense, there was not much new about these soon-notorious manifestations. “It would be possible,” wrote Rufus Jones in 1921, “to fill an entire book with instances of remarkable “leadings” and “openings” which marked the lives of the [leading Quietist] ministers. They saw, or seemed to see, the inner state and condition of persons before them. . . . They were more telepathic than the rank and file of the membership were. . . . Samuel Emlen of Philadelphia (b. 1730, d. 1799) was considered by many to be a seer. He was remarkably favored with insight into character and conditions of life, and he was so unerring in his revelations that many persons were afraid to meet him for fear that he would see through them and uncover the secrets of their lives.”

And such phenomena among Friends goes back to the very beginning: British Friend John W. Graham, in his 1927 book, The Divinity In Man, said of George Fox that he was “not the first, nor the last outstanding religious leader through whom ‘mighty works’ and unusual powers have been manifested.” He then cited Fox’s own statements to show that “he had trances and visions, had telepathic faculties and premonitions, effected spiritual healing . . .” Then, of course, there was Fox’s own Book of Miracles, which was suppressed but the substance of which was recovered in the last century by the intrepid scholarly detective work of Henry Cadbury.

To be sure, 19th-century spiritualism reflected its very different social context, and many orthodox believers would indignantly reject any connection between its raps and writings and the “signs and wonders” of their preferred saints, classing it with the “witchcraft and sorcery” that were forbidden by the Bible. But one need only note, as does Amelia Mott Gummere in her book, Witchcraft and Quakerism, that the opponents of Fox and early Friends said the same things about them.

Actually, spiritualism and “the Divine Law of Progress” went together like peanut butter and jelly.

How do I know? Because George Fox himself told me.

Well, at least “George Fox” did.

And he didn’t actually say it to me, but rather to Isaac Post, a Progressive Friend from Rochester, New York, who wrote it down in 1851. Here’s some of the message:

“Fox”: “I labored earnestly to gather together a people that I hoped would regenerate the world. I endeavored to so form our agreements that none could feel restricted by our articles of faith.
“These were only intended to set bounds to outward conduct; always intending that progression should be our motto– advancement our life; and wherever an evil was perceived, duty called us to assail it.  . . .
“Much that I left on record was penned as it were, from the first dawnings of Light upon my mind–I was in a progressive state, and as things opened I penned them; many of them being much in advance of my former views. Instead of taking my writings for a guide, they should be considered as helps marks for encouragement, and never for a moment as laws to govern others.”

Spiritualism leaped into public attention among Americans in 1848, that manic year of revolution and Progressive Quaker exodus. Three teenage sisters in western New York,  Margaret, Leah and Katherine Fox, began hearing and producing strange rapping noises, which were soon interpreted as communications from disembodied spirits. As fame –and controversy– began to swirl around them, they were taken in by Isaac and Amy Post, and supported as well by Rhoda deGarmo, who was soon to become the Co-Clerk of the Waterloo Progressive Yearly Meeting.

The Posts not only believed in and defended the Fox sisters. Isaac Post soon followed their example, becoming a medium himself, with whom the “spirits” communicated by automatic writing. It seemed he had a knack for attracting the ectoplasmic attention of many famous persons, getting messages from George Washington, Ben Franklin, Voltaire and others, as well as numerous prominent Quakers. By 1852, he had enough such material to fill a book, called Voices From the Spirit World, from which the Fox quotes above are taken.

Many of the leading abolitionists were also spiritualists. Progressive Friends too: besides Rhoda de Garmo, Joseph Dugdale, and many others. Several of their yearly meetings adopted resolutions, called “Testimonies,” commending it to the attention of others.

It’s important to note that Spiritualism, while definitely religious and theological, was not a new denomination. One did not “join” it, get baptized or sign a creed. When a seance was held, believers and non-believers alike often attended, and participants were called “investigators.” Nor was it an exclusive practice; many who talked with spirits also maintained their conventional church connections, Methodist, Baptist, even Quaker.

The “investigator” label points to another way Spiritualism aligned with the Progressive Friends: their commitment to “Progress” was heavily weighted toward science, and the burgeoning benefits of empirical investigations and experiments. And the new variety of seances and trance medium sessions offered a kind of pseudo-empirical study: one came, one listened and watched, gathered experiential “evidence,” and one drew one’s own conclusions. Many investigators were convinced; others not.

One Progressive Friend who stayed in the latter category was Lucretia Mott; her hardheaded realism was never moved by the raps or by Isaac Post’s writings. But she did have considerable confidence in phrenology, another pseudoscience of the day, which purported to reveal much about a person by the shape of his or her head.

Two other features of spiritualism’s appeal deserve mention here: perhaps above all, it gave solace to the bereaved, that dead loved ones were at ease, and not beyond the love of the living. And in that era, when deaths from illness were much more common than now, especially among the young, this was no small thing.

A striking example of this is our Rhode Island renegade, Elizabeth Buffum Chace. She was the wife of a prosperous textile manufacturer; but all her affluence and “privilege” did not save her first child, born in 1829, or the next four after him: all five died in infancy or shortly afterward.

As the fifth one faded, she penned a rhymed plea

“Oh! no, it cannot, cannot be;
My darling babe will live.
He must not go away from me,
He is the last of five. . . .

And, much and often have I prayed,
That so it might not be;
That in a little coffin laid
This one I ne’er might see.

“Oh! Father, spare him longer yet,
Our lonely home to cheer.
We’ve often said it was for this
That Thou hast sent him here.”

But it was not to be. Then, says her biographer:

Elizabeth Buffum Chace
Elizabeth Buffum Chace & a grandchild

“It was almost inevitable that Spiritualism, in its dawning day, should attract the yearning interest of a woman, five of whose babes had wandered into the forest of Unknown Wilderness. Mrs. Chace saw a pillar of cloud taking shape before her on her darkened pathway and followed it for a score of years, sometimes believing, sometimes doubting, sometimes hoping that messages floated backward to her from her lost children. For two or three years in the early period a sweet young girl dwelt in her home, who had or seemed to have the mysterious power of a “medium.” Later, a younger son of Mrs. Chace’s seemed also thus endowed.

“Certainly, these things did happen when there was no possibility of intentional fraud; namely, Mrs. Chace and a few intimates, including the ‘medium,’ would sit around a small but not too easily moved table; they would place their hands upon it, and, after two or three minutes of silent waiting, the table would begin to rock, and, so far as concerned the consciousness of the sitters, without their muscular effort.

“Then Mrs. Chace would repeat the alphabet, and the table would stand still and only tip to call attention to particular letters. The letters taken in that designated order did spell words, and the words did come in proper sentence relation to each other, and the sentences did carry rational significance.

“Mrs. Chace, certainly, for a time, believed quite simply in it all as genuine revelation. She taught her living children [she had five more] that there were no fairies, but that the spirits of their own dead brothers and sisters whom they had never seen were their special guardian angels. It was a pretty faith, a real household cult, and, since it was taught and accepted sincerely, it did no harm, were it true or were it only one of the numberless human imaginations of the truth.

“I think Mr. Chace never quite accepted the Spiritualistic faith. The Quaker Inner Light sufficed for him, but he was not opposed to his wife’s opinion and perhaps his own sometimes approached it.  . . .

But in later life, Spiritualism, as such, ceased to influence her. She never quite disavowed belief in it; she said only, “It used to seem true when we were receiving those communications from the children.” In the last twenty years of her life she said little about that long, noonday passage of her soul through a valley wherein dreams and hopes moved like almost visible phantoms beside her.”

Besides the crushing feelings of loss, Elizabeth Chace also had to contend with the lingering legacy of New England Puritan theology. Its stern predestinarian vision dictated that most humans were doomed to spend eternity in the torment of hellfire, regardless of their personal innocence or guilt. Babies too? Some said yes, others squirmed and fudged. The uncertainty was a torment to many who did not consider themselves of Puritan stock, yet still lived and breathed in that atmosphere.

Pioneer Wesleyan writer Charles Wesley excoriated this dismal doctrine in a 1741 poem, “The Horrible Decree”:

   O HORRIBLE DECREE
Worthy of whence it came!
Forgive their hellish blasphemy
Who charge it on the Lamb . . . .

The righteous God consigned
Them over to their doom,
And sent the Saviour of mankind
To damn them from the womb . . . .

They think with shrieks and cries
To please the Lord of hosts,
And offer thee, in sacrifice
Millions of slaughtered ghosts:

With newborn babes they fill
The dire infernal shade,
“For such,” they say, “was thy great will,
Before the world was made.”

Spiritualists vociferously rejected this notion, and claimed that their spirits confirmed their rebuttals. And comforting the bereaved was a steady draw for new “investigators” as Americans passed the midpoint of the century.

One other important point: many of the early stars of the Spiritualist movement were also strong supporters of most of the Progressive reforms: abolition, women’s rights, temperance. That and their combination of a “scientific” performance and an affinity for the new lecture circuit that the Progressive groups offered was an irresistible combination.

But all was not roses for spiritualism and reform. Not a few of the “investigators” became utter devotees, forgetting about any other concern. This was the case when Boston abolitionist Parker Pillsbury sent this gloomy report from the 1857 Michigan Friends of Human Progress session:

“The greatest good accomplished at this meeting, perhaps, was to separate the Anti-Slavery cause from a morbid, mawkish Spiritualism, that had infested it like the potato-rot, and was almost working its ruin. . . . There were some gone-to-seed, professed Abolitionists among them, whose anti-slavery seemed not to have been very vital, for they have mostly discontinued their anti-slavery papers, too often leaving arrearages of from one to five or six dollars unpaid.

“These disciples of Spiritualism appeared much annoyed, all of them, at the introduction of anti-slavery into our discussion. Many of them seemed to assume the meeting as their own . . . . Some would not hear us patiently, if at all; and others declared they would not have come to the meeting, if they had known it was to be open to any thing but their favorite idolatry. It is certainly not too much to say, that there is not a more bigoted and intolerant class in the whole sisterhood of sects, than this type of so-called spiritualists.”

While wildly popular at mid-century, spiritualism never really became entirely respectable. In the decades after the Civil War, its mass appeal began to decline, and it drops out of the records of the surviving Progressive groups. But it never really went away, and persists among Friends today, as will be noted later.

Leave a comment