Spirits and Abraham Lincoln Letters to President...

In the late nineteenth century, American spiritualists maintained that Abraham Lincoln had been a spiritualist too. Whenever they drew up lists of prominent believers, Lincoln was foremost among the reformers, judges, governors, senators, and scientists whose stature lent credence to their movement. In this paper, I look at letters written to President Lincoln by spiritualists or about spiritualism, but it is not my aim to determine whether or not Lincoln was a spiritualist. Instead, I use these letters to reflect on spiritualism as a cultural phenomena. It captured the imaginations of many Americans in the years leading up to the Civil War, drawing them to sà ©ance rooms, to mediums, or to their family parlors to commune†¦show more content†¦I have drawn upon these ten letters, along with others by the same author or on related topics, for a total of about twenty letters. Spiritualism did not simply arise out of the blue and the letters to Lincoln reflect this. Although believers pointed to a specific event that inaugurated the dawn of â€Å"Modern Spiritualism†Ã¢â‚¬â€the infamous raps heard by the Fox sisters at Hydesville , New York , in 1848—spiritualism drew upon many precedents, particularly the traditions of clairvoyant somnambulism, mesmerism, and second sight. The earliest letters to Lincoln concerning spiritualism warn him of danger. An anonymous writer, one G. A., â€Å"A Wide Awake,† wrote from Cleveland in December, 1860, to warn Lincoln of a plot to murder him by poison upon his arrival in Washington D.C. G. A. wrote, as he explained it, because â€Å"as a good Republican, I deem it my duty, to communicate the following facts.† A young local girl, a somnambulist and clairvoyant, â€Å"not a Spiritualist† (he hastened to add), had requested his presence and then, while entranced, told o f the scheme. The clairvoyant girl had specifically requested G. A. to inform Lincoln . She supplied an antidote as well: should Lincoln feel ill, he must drink â€Å"hot milk in Large quantities† to foil the plot. Obviously uncomfortable with the new trend attributing predictions to spirits, G. A. assured Lincoln that â€Å"the undersigned is no Spiritualist,† but he vouched for â€Å"the absolute verity of manyShow MoreRelatedLogical Reasoning189930 Words   |  760 Pages because it says right here in the encyclopedia that he was assassinated in Memphis in 1998. c. The Republican Party began back in the 1850s as a U.S. political party. Abraham Lincoln was their first candidate to win the presidency. d. I don’t believe you when you say Martin Luther King Jr. could have been elected president if he hadn’t been assassinated. Try to discipline yourself to read and answer these sample exercises before looking up the correct answer in the footnote below, and before