Who knows the story of Abraham Lincoln’s brief foray into séances?
In 1862, in the midst of the Civil War, an unsettled Abraham Lincoln found his days and nights haunted by the stresses that come along with leading a country during its darkest hour. Left to ponder a solution for peace, Lincoln decided to turn to the spirit world for answers.
The 16th President’s wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, was known to have an interest in what could generally be called spiritualism.
Originating in the mid 19th-century, spiritualism is a belief that our world contains both matter and spirits. Critical in the practice and understanding, practitioners believe those who have left our mortal coil have the ability to communicate with the living.
The upper-class, in particular, gravitated to the new ideology. Like traditional religions, spiritualism maintained the concept of internal life. However, blind faith was replaced by the far more immediate satisfaction of “proof” – in the form of séances.
After the loss of her second son, Willie, Mary Todd fell into a month-long despair, hardly leaving her bed during the grief-ridden time. Through her social group, Mary discovered Spiritualism. Before long, the tormented women began proclaiming that Willie was visiting her on a near-daily basis.
Civil War era America, with no shortage of grieving mothers, became a fertile ground for Spiritualism to bloom. Desperate for any information about missing soldiers, families all over the country began to look into the religion.
In 1863, along with the First Family, two cabinet members, a medium named Charles Shockle, and a Boston Gazette reporter met in the White House’s red room for the “First” séance.
While the event was extensively covered by outlets across our country, little information about what occurred that night has ever surfaced.
Abraham Lincoln’s assassination only bolstered Mary Todd’s belief in the supernatural, leading to a series of encounters with unsavory charlatans promising a word from the afterlife. She would eventually be institutionalized, at the behest of her worried son.
What became of this son??