Picking on Molly McGarry

It really isn't fair. She's at the tail end of a read that includes Barbara Weisberg's Talking to the Dead and a lot of the animus here really should be directed as Weisberg -- but, for pity's sake, do we need more text churned out on the Foxes?

McGarry writes, in service of her assertion that Modern Spiritualism was an effect of the Victorian cult of the dead (unevidenced) and the mass trauma of the Civil War, as follows:

The Shekinah, one of the first Spiritualist newspapers, included pages of letters from readers to the editor, Samuel B. Brittan, asking for comfort, consolation and sometimes assistance in contacting dead loved ones. Likewise, beginning in the late 1850s, the Spiritualist newspaper The Banner of Light published a regular column "The Messenger," which included communications to readers from the spirits of the dead through the mediumship of Mrs. J. H. (Fannie) Conant, whose services were engaged "exclusively for the Banner of Light."

Though I am sure her defenders will deny it, the implication is that we will find in the pages of the BofL more evidence of the "comfort, consolation and sometimes assistance" and the "cult of the dead" hoo-hah in "The Message Department" section of the BofL.

So I decided to look at every message in that section for January of 1863, for evidence of "comfort, consolation and sometimes assistance", the cult of the dead, war trauma, etc. And rather than just give you sweeping conclusions, I'll let you count, along with me. Here are summaries of each communication in that section of the BofL for the five issues in January of 1863:

January 3, 1863
 - question "what is to be done with traitors (to the Union)?" answered
 - question "what is conscience?" answered
 - question "please explain the sacrament of the Lord's supper" answered
 - question about a passage attributed to Christ in the New Testament answered
 - FH Rogers, deceased second officer aboard the SS Golconda returns in an attempt to clear his murderer of responsibility for his death
 - Francis Elizabeth Gordon returns to testify to the peace she has experienced in the spirit world after a "wild and disordered state of life on earth"
 - Hattie A. Burroughs returns to communicate with her mother
 - question on the stability of the US constitution answered
 - question about the nature of "familiar spirits" as defined in the Bible answered
 - question about why spirits who have promised after-death communiques have not produced same answered
 - Col. Thomas Jones, Confederate, killed at "the battle of Roanoke" and who wishes to free some of his slaves, asks his son Thomas to receive communication from him in the form of automatic writing.

January 10, 1863 (issue that reproduces the Emancipation Proclamation)

 - Hulda Drew wishes to communicate with her sons that she is happy and was with them when they were told of her death.
 - George Briggs, a ten year old boy, wishes to communicate his father's death (in a PoW camp) to his mother, who is unidentified
 - Mary Eldredge wishes to communicate to her children that she has heard their requests, but (in effect) declines to comply with their wishes
 - question what shall I do to be saved? answered
 - Edward Kendall returns to "give to my friends and my acquaintances a test of spirit power"
 - Lavinia S. Mitchell, a medium, returns to identify for her friends a secret compartment in her 'work box' containing a document in her handwriting specifying the time and manner of her death (in effect, a test)
 - Michael Sweeney writes to complain that he died in the Union Army and that his wife, Mary Anne Sweeney, has received no compensation from the government
 - An unnamed son returns to communicate a long discourse on the nature of life, death and the cosmos to his unnamed father
 

January 17, 1863

 - question "Must there not have been a material world before there could have been a spiritual world?" answered
 - Captain Samuel J. Locke, dead at 71 (not a war casualty), returns to announce that he is intent on discharging his mission to "return to earth and enlighten poor and ignorant humanity" and that "I may be obliged to take away (my friends) Bible, but if I do I'll pledge myself to give them a better one"
 - Horace Mason, a 14 year old who ran away, joined the Union Army, and was killed in action, returns to communicate with his mother and father, that latter of whom he was at odds with, and whom he forgives.
 - 
 - Lieutenant Benjamin Gaines, killed at the Battle of Shiloh, returns to speak with his son, to communicate with certain friends who mistakenly believe he was compelled to join the Confederate Army (he volunteered),  and to describe the details of his wound and death (as a test)
 - Jane Van Buren, dead at Kinderkermack NJ in 1838, returns to ask her kin to start a private circle so that she may communicate with them
 - Isaac Summer, 22, killed in the war, returns to tell his wife Caroline that he is "here today, and a little unhappy, just a trifle so" and that he will meet her in a place in New York that she already knows of

January 24, 1863

 - question "Are the spirits in favor of war?" answered
 - question "Have you at any time seen Jesus Christ?" answered
 - Felix K. Zollicoffer (Confederate general who has appeared in the circle before) returns to comment on the current political situation and to propose immediate rapprochement between the North and South
 - Florence Reed, an 11 year old girl from Baltimore, dead a week, to assure her mother and father that there is a spirit world, because they were not believers
 - Philip Guinon, apparently a soldier, returns to thank his unnamed friends for looking after his unnamed wife.
 - question of the spirits' position on the Constitution's usefulness answered
 - General Villelegue, Confederate of Camden, SC, returns to admonish Abraham Lincoln and deliver a short homily about duty to unnamed friends
 - Loammi Baldwin, "celebrated" engineer, death 24 years, returns to seek communication with a Robert Lee, the son of a deceased friend
 - John Dixon, an eight year old boy whose father was killed at the battle of South Mountain, returns to deliver a message to his mother -- his father is dead, and not drinking in the spirit life -- through the BofL, to one of its readers, Jane Edgerton, who will in turn carry the message to his mother
 - Edward Semmes, son of the captain of the ship Alabama, returns to communicate a message -- listen to the voices, essentially -- to his father.

January 31, 1863

 - Stephen A. Douglas returns to discuss the possibility of foreign intervention in the war
 - Benjamin Creggen, killed at Bull Run, returns to communicate with his mother in "Bellows Falls" and to say that he, an atheist, is doing well in spirit life
 - Clara Pillow, daughter of a Confederate General Pillow, and dead 17 years, returns to tell her father that the Yankees are his brothers
 - David Daniels, a six year old who died in Danvers, Massachusetts, solicits a medium to control, in order to communicate with his friends
 - an unnamed control gives a long discourse on the philosophy of memory, the location of the organ of memory, and to answer a few memory-related questions
 - Jane Alden returns to provide a proof promised to her friends while in life.
 - Milo S. Davis, the nephew of Jefferson Davis, returns to speak to an uncle of his (a brother of Jefferson Davis?) living in Boston under an assumed name and to indicate that had he to do it again he would not be a Confederate
 - Benjamin Powers, returns to ask his sister's husband to seek out a medium "in the West" (Ohio), and to give various tests to the circle

(It's perhaps worth mentioning that by column-inch, the BofL devotes more space to fiction this month than it does to messages of all types, and as many column-inches to alternative medical practice advertisements.)

There are so many things worth noting in this small sample of messages, but "comfort and consolation" messages are, in my opinion, in the minority. When the fully-disambiguated (name, and details of life and death) return, they often do so to promote Spiritualism -- to encourage often unnamed "friends" or "kin" to consult mediums. Or to lecture and correct opinions. Or to right wrongs committed while living. Or to explicitly give "proofs" in the context of the Spiritualist "test." This sample, I think, is noteworthy for the number of Confederates who appear in a public circle (it's important to keep that fact in mind -- there is zero evidence that communications received via Mrs. Conant were pandering to people in the audience in need of "comfort and consolation") in the flaming heart of Abolitionism, to testify (surprise surprise) to their doubts about the war, the Confederate cause, etc. Also interesting to note the number of famous spirits -- Zollicoffer, Stephen Douglas, the son of the captain of the Alabama (much in the news, and the circle's communications, this month), the nephew of Jefferson Davis (oh, you know I am going to dig into that one) and the niece of Confederate General Gideon Pillow.

Bottom line -- this small sample does not bear out McGarry's implicit assertion, and I'd argue that a larger sample would fail to do so as well. Really, I doubt she read much of The Shekinah or the BofL before making the assertions she made.

If you'd like to test McGarry's assertions against The Shekinah, you can do that here. Look for the standing section called "The Comforter" (fancy that!) and in particular for the statement by SBB that the comfort supplied is to the ill and the dying, in many cases -- that is, that there is a spirit world, and that personality survives. If you'd like to test her assertions against the BofL, you can read the first several years of it online at IAPSOP.