Mediums Rare (4 page)

Her eyes jumped open and she looked directly into Lincoln’s eyes.

No longer was her expression or voice those of an embarrassed schoolgirl. Now they were strong and forceful as she spoke to him.

“After the disaster at Fredericksburg,” she said, Dr. Bamford said, “it is essential that you bolster the sagging morale of the Army.”

The President watched intently as she continued. “Go in person to the front,” she told him, “taking with you, your wife and children, leaving behind your official dignity and all manner of display.”

“Resist the importunities of officials to accompany you and take only such attendants as may be absolutely necessary.

“Avoid the high grade officers to tents of the private soldiers. Inquire into their grievances. Show yourself to be what you are—the Father of your people.

“Make them feel that you are not unmindful of the many trials which beset them in their march through the dismal swamps, whereby both their courage and their numbers have been depleted.”

She fell silent and the President cleared his throat to answer. “If that will do any good,” he said, “it is easily done.”

The voice of Dr. Bamford instantly replied. “It will do all that is required. It will unite the soldiers as one man. It will unite them to you in bands of steel.”

“And now, if you would prevent a serious if not fatal disaster to your cause, let the news be promulgated at once and disseminated throughout the camp of the Army of the Potomac. Have it scattered broadcast that you are on the eve of visiting the front.

“Not that you are merely
talking
of it but that it is settled, that you are
going
and are now getting into readiness.

“This will stop insubordination and hold the soldiers in check, being something to divert their minds and they will wait to see what your coming portends.”

“It shall be done,” the President said.

Everyone started as Nettie Colburn stood. Looking down directly into Lincoln’s eyes, she spoke to him with the utmost force and solemnity.

“You must not abate the terms of the issue uppermost in your mind,” she declared.

The President’s features tightened, the directive was so unexpected. He stared at the young woman’s face as though it were the face of someone else.

“You must not delay its enforcement as a law beyond the opening of the year,” Nettie told him. “This act will be the crowning event of your administration and your life.”

The President twitched as Nettie placed her right hand on his shoulder. “You are being counseled by strong parties to defer the enforcement of it,” she continued, her voice sounding too deep and resonant to be emerging from such a young, female throat. “These parties hope to supplant it by other measures and to delay action. You must, in no wise, heed such counsel but stand firm in your convictions, fearlessly perform the work and fulfill the mission for which you have been raised up by an overruling Providence.”

Nettie Colburn fell silent then. Everyone stared at her expectantly.

Several moments later, she blinked and, seeing where she was, standing in front of the President, she started and, blushing, retreated so abruptly that she would have fallen back across the ottoman had Mr. Laurie not grabbed her suddenly by the arm.

The President stood, making Nettie cringe as he towered above her. Once more taking her small hands in his, he said, “My child, you possess a very singular gift. I thank you for coming here tonight. It is more important than perhaps anyone present can understand.”

“Thank you, sir,” she replied, feeling ill-at-ease.

While Mrs. Lincoln was thanking her profusely, Nettie was able to hear what Mr. Newton was saying to the President even though he spoke in a confidential tone of voice.

“Mr. President,” he asked, “would it be improper for me to inquire whether there has been any pressure brought to bear upon you to delay the enforcement of the proclamation?”

“It is taking all my nerve and strength to withstand such a pressure,” Nettie heard the President answer.

As they were exiting the parlour, Mr. Newton said to Lincoln, “Did you notice, Mr. President, anything peculiar in the method of address when Miss Colburn was addressing you in trance?”

“Yes, and it is very singular,” Lincoln replied.

As they spoke, both men were looking at a full-length portrait on the wall.

That of Daniel Webster who had died in 1852.

Both injunctions given to the President that night by the twenty-year old medium were followed.

Lincoln’s visit to the front, rallying the weakened Army of the Potomac, was a turning point in the Civil War.

And, on January 1, 1863, President Lincoln formally issued the Emancipation Proclamation, hastening the end of slavery in America.

Had the mediumship of this slender young woman altered the course of American history?

So great was the interest in Spiritualism in the middle and latter half of the nineteenth century that some outstanding mediums became internationally known figures.

One of these was Andrew Jackson Davis.

Born in 1826, Jackson became noted for his clairvoyant ability, at one time giving an accurate description, cellar to garret, of a distant house.

He heard voices which imparted medical and spiritual counsel.

He—apparently—transmitted an extended discourse by the celebrated Greek physician Galen.

His “dictations” from the other side lasted from forty minutes to four hours, often spoken in languages and displaying a Biblical and scientific knowledge he knew nothing about in his conscious state.

Fourteen months and one hundred and fifty seven sittings resulted in a 782-page book entitled
The Divine Revelation
.

The book included an enormous amount of material from half a dozen sciences including astronomy, geology and archaeology.

All this from an uneducated, nineteen-year-old boy.

Another famous medium of this period was a Universalist preacher named John Murray Spear who became well-known for his gift at spiritual healing.

On one occasion, directed (according to him) by the spirits of Swedenborg and Benjamin Franklin, he was “led” sixteen miles without knowing why, finally ending up at the house of a woman recently struck by lightning.

His presence gave her immediate relief.

In addition to his continued healing accomplishments, Spear also delivered public lectures while entranced.

The Koons family of Ohio became famous briefly for the so-called Spirit Room which—under spiritual “advisement”—they constructed in their house.

The room was in a log cabin twelve by fourteen feet with a seven foot ceiling.

It was furnished with seating for twenty people in addition to two tables and a rack for such instruments as a bass drum, two fiddles, a guitar, a French horn, a triangle, and a tambourine.

Conducting public seances, the mediumship of the Koons produced “spirit” concerts as well as lengthy communications from the Other World.

Reports indicated that the instruments, playing by themselves, gyrated wildly above the heads of the spectators.

The Davenport brothers became widely known when, at the ages of sixteen and fourteen, they appeared in a public séance during which hands and arms were materialized and floating instruments played by themselves—despite the fact that both boys were carefully bound with ropes.

These séances were repeated for many years.

Famous author Richard Burton (translator of the
Arabian Nights)
attended four of the Davenports’ séances and reported seeing musical instruments fly and play and feeling a “dry, hot and rough” materialized hand pull at his moustache and pat his head.

Arguably the greatest physical medium in the history of Spiritualism, however, was Scotch medium Daniel Douglas Home.

Home counted among his supporters Count Tolstoy, Napoleon III and the Empress Eugenie as well as many of the crowned heads of Europe.

Literary figures who sat with him included William Thackeray, Anthony Trollope, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Alexander Dumas.

Of Home’s work, the famous British physicist, Sir William Crookes, wrote:
The phenomena I am prepared to attest are so extraordinary and so directly oppose the most firmly rooted articles of scientific belief—amongst others, the ubiquity and invariable action of the force of gravitation—that, even now, on recalling the details of what I witnessed, there is an antagonism in my mind between reason which pronounces it to be scientifically impossible and the consciousness that my senses, both of touch and sight, are not lying witnesses
.