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Horace Greeley (February 3,1811-November 29, 1872) was born in Amherst, New Hampshire (Webster 420). At age 31 he went to New York and with Jonas Winchester founded and edited the New Yorker , a weekly, from 1834-1841. Later in 1841 he started the New York Tribune, which he edited for thirty years (Hart 598). The journalistic standards of this Whig paper were high, and its influence was strong in molding Northern thought (Webster 420). Indeed, the New York Tribune was the finest in New York and became the most influential newspaper in the United States (Merrill V 155). Greeley favored abolition of slavery, reforms in dress and diet, and a free common school education (Webster 420) as well as labor organization, temperance, women's suffrage, and a homestead law (Hart 330; Frost 417). In support of women's rights he published a number of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's essays (Frost 417); and to further the success of the homestead law, he formulated the famous advice, "Go West, Young Man" (Hart 330). Greeley opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Compromise of 1850, and the Mexican War because they aided slavery. He used his influence to help Lincoln in the presidential election (330).
After the war he supported amnesty and suffrage for all. Willing to defy public opinion he, like Gerrit Smith, signed a bail bond for Jefferson Davis (Webster 420.
In 1872 Greeley became a presidential candidate for the Liberal Republicans but was defeated by Ulysses S. Grant. With the double crushing blows of this defeat and his wife's death, he became mentally ill and died in the same year (Hart 330).
An account of a Greeley mass meeting in Beaver Falls appears as a newspaper clipping in Milo Townsend's scrapbooks. It was written by Milonius (Milo) and dated August 20, 1872.
What follows is a three letter exchange between Milo and Greeley, Milo's letters being his own copies of the ones he sent. The issue is Spiritualism. This thread of Spiritualism runs through the period. Many of the abolitionists took an interest in it.
Editors N.Y. Tribune:
While I am writing you, I wish to offer a few brief animadversions upon the discourse of Rev. T.L. Harris1 concerning the Spiritualists of America, which in your last weekly issue you copy without comment from the London Advertiser. And first, I would like to ask you, if it was the inspiration of such noble sentiments, as are set forth in the following extract from Charles Hammond (once the popular Editor of the Cincinnati Gazette) that prompted you in giving the wide currency your Journal is capable of, to these unworthy accusations of Mr. Harris.
"The legitimate vocation of a Newspaper," says Charles Hammond, "is," etc. [Milo did not here copy the whole of what he included in the original letter.]
Is it your sober conviction Messrs Editors, that T.L. Harris truthfully represents the character of the Spiritualists of this country, when he says, "They are utterly selfish, as well as sensual and grossly immoral, and that they are destitute of all human sympathies, and were never known to perform a single benevolent action"? Your publication of this, without comment, will be regarded by many as tantamount to its endorsement.
Those who are familiar with the erratic course of Mr. Harris for the last dozen years, feel assured that the "gall and wormwood," with which this London discourse is so highly seasoned, are but the legitimate fruits of disappointed personal ambition. Mr. H. aspired to leadership among the Spiritualists-- sought to be regarded by them as an oracle and the mouth-piece of the Lord. But, as Spiritualists came to regard him only as one of their human brothers, and consequently not infallible, and as they had no present use for a leader, he was disappointed; and hence, treats them in the unbrotherly manner indicated. Mr. Harris has seasons of the highest poetic inspiration-- as may be seen by a perusal of his "Lyric of the Morning Land" and more especially, the "Lyric of the Golden Age," which truly seems but "the echoes of the eternal harmonies." But, while its author has noble impulses, and a large development of ideality and veneration, he yet lacks in that answering adherence to principle which is ever solicitous of dispensing justice to all men.
No man possessing that "charity which suffereth long and is kind" (and without which Christianity is of little value) would have given utterance at the time and place, to such charges as are reported of Mr. H.,-- to talk about love to God, when one is "bearing false witness" against his brother man, is sheer cant and folly, and that Mr. Harris has done so against the great majority of Spiritualists, is sufficiently evident to need [no] proof.
"They that murder fame kill more than life-destroyers."
Feb. 28, 1860
Yours for justice to all,
[Milo A. Townsend]
1 According to A. Conan Doyle in his History of Spiritualism (I 119-121), Thomas Lake Harris was a Jekyll and Hyde in whom it was difficult to determine which of the two personalities predominated. Originally a Universalist minister, Harris later adopted the teachings of Andrew Jackson Davis.
He became a fanatical megalomaniac, who came to consider himself an appointed autocratic ruler of the souls and purses of a group of colonists at a place called Mountain Cove. When the colonists rebelled against his rule, he went to New York and began preaching, making extravagant claims for himself. He also claimed to be a poet, producing "A Lyric of the Golden Age," and "The Morning Land," and other verse, a few of which were held by some to be good literature, at least in part. When the New York Spiritualists would not acknowledge his claims for himself, he went to England, where he gained some fame for his eloquence and managed to ensnare two wealthy and influential people, whom he brought back to America to live in poverty and slavery to his will.
Greeley replied to Milo's letter as follows:
Letter 72
from Horace Greeley
Daily Tribune $6 per annum
Semi-Weekly Tribune $3 per annum
Weekly Tribune $2 per annum
New York, Mar. 1, 1860
Mr. Townsend,
When we were publishing Judge Edmond's series of articles commending and extolling Spiritualism, I never heard complaints from you or other Spiritualists that we did not comment on and dissent from their inculcations. I do not see why we should do so when it proves to be your bull that is gored and not t'other fellow's ox. Your letter is arrogant in its tone and sheds no light on the subject; so I have thrown it aside. I do not take ground for or against what is called Spiritualism, but it is my definite judgment that the abominable sophistry and lechery termed "Free Love" has received decided aid and comfort from Spiritualism. That I don't like; and it is my sorrowful conviction that there are more adulterers and libertines, harlots and false wives in the country today than there was before or would have been but for the advent of Spiritualism. If there be any truth in Spiritualism, I am afraid the spirits who visit us mainly tenanted bad bodies while on earth and have not improved since.
Yours
M.A. Townsend,
Horace Greeley
New Brighton, Pa.
Milo replied as follows:
New Brighton, Pa.
March 6, 1860
Friend Greeley:
I very much regret having expressed myself in such a manner as to give a tone of "arrogance" to my letter. I certainly did not intend to manifest any such spirit. My letter was written hurriedly in the intervals of business in the way of waiting on customers, and I may have been abrupt, as I strove to condense what I wished to say in as few words as possible.
It troubles me that I should have given occasion to call out a reflection of this kind from one whose general course with conduction of the N.Y. Tribune has inspired my admiration.
If I know myself, I have a strong and abiding aversion to anything like an arrogant and ostentatious spirit. Heaven knows that the wisest have little to boast of in the way of knowledge, and that "a meek and quiet spirit," that is free from every thing like arrogance or self-sufficiency, is such as will always characterize all receptive and truth-loving souls. Whatever there may be in my letter which seems to partake of anything adverse to this, I here beg leave, in the name of my own better instincts and pacific inculcations of the Society of Friends (in which I was educated) to contend ignorance and to offer any apology that may be due from any apparent lack of courtesy and kindness.
Concerning Spiritualism, I desire not to make it, or any thing else a hobby to the exclusion of other matters. I would like to be able to take such a view of things as to see whatever there may be of truth in all systems and theories, and to reject none merely because they are old , nor accept them because they are new .
After ten years investigation of Spiritualism, I see that it embodies great and important truths, while I am aware that numberless follies and errors have been committed in its name. But true Spiritualism, as I apprehend it, so far from inculcating anything like sensualism, grossness or animality, leads away from all these to a life of purity, righteousness, and spiritual aspirations. It is in keeping with the scriptural test: "To be carnally minded is death: to be spiritually minded is life and peace."
Spiritualism seems to me as coming to do away with no truth, but to vitalize and to bring to light all truth.
Perhaps a better or more comprehensive synopsis of what Spiritualism teaches cannot be found, than that contained in the "American Christian Record," a work recently published by Clark and Merker of your city, which comes thro' an Orthodox channel and is somewhat similar to Ruck's Theological Dictionary. If you have the work at hand, please read from page 323 to 329. Then on page 224 is a brief reference to the subject also, in which the author says, "In some respect, the Society (Spiritualist) has been misrepresented-- innocently we trust. Its members have been charged as a body, with countenancing Free Love doctrines: a mistake probably arising from the fact that most Free Lovers-- whose total numbers in the U.S. we cannot by any possibility with the utmost inquiry and liberality of margin bring up to 800-- are also believers in Spiritualism."
Did the Press generally manifest half the willingness or anxiety to publish any thing in defense of Spiritualism that it does against it, there would be little cause of complaint from Spiritualists. But, for my part, I am content to leave it to the verdict of the future knowing that whatever is truth, however unpopular now, will survive, while whatever is error, must pass away, however strongly fortified by worldly wealth and power.
The usual manly and independent course of the Tribune leads us to expect from it more than we would from almost any other Journal-- not directly identified with the subject. We are not disappointed to see the vilest things in the infamous Herald and kindred sheets. But from you, friend Greeley, we look for that treatment which is marked by a spirit of magnanimity and impartial justice.
With friendly regards, I am
Faithfully yours in the search for whatever is right and true--
Milo A. Townsend
F. & F. - I did certainly expect some kind of response to my letter and that one of the "Voices of the Million" might still be heard through your columns. I regret for Humanity's sake that any avenues for Freedom of Speech should be clouded up and hedged in, instead of made wider and deeper, broader, according to the demands of a Progressive Age-- Mar. 17, '60
Sallie Erwin, a school-girl relative of Milo's, shared Greeley's view on free love as an integral part of Spiritualism.
She wrote,
"Oh how earnestly my tired Soul yearns for a resting place-- a religion. It is so tossed about by the surging waves without a helmsman-- It is wandering, seeking, but not finding. Spiritualism is a beautiful, a glorious, sublime religion, yet even it is contaminated by a low, ignoble creed-- that of Free Love! There are other things connected with it so foolish, so contemptible, that I am almost tempted to scorn the whole. Perhaps, though, I don't view them in a right light."
Greeley's and Sallie Erwin's views on free love in its relationship to Spiritualism gain some probable support from Milo's correspondence with Frances Rose MacKinley (Psyche), who was probably a Spiritualist and who was certainly a strong proponent of free love, who wrote to him after his defense of Victoria Woodhull, to which he had signed the nom de plume, Orpheus , had been published. (See chapter 23). Psyche's second and third letters are quoted below.
Letter 136
From Psyche [Frances Rose MacKinley]
San Fran., Apr. 29, 73
My Dear Friend
I was delighted to receive your very kind and approbatory letter. It gives me great pleasure to know, that a spirit so developed as yours appreciates my "Chant of Love and Freedom." How differently the same thought influences different minds! This production of mine causes you to esteem me the more highly; whereas in the eyes of this community, among whom it has been generally distributed, I am stigmatized as worse than a prostitute, as a she-monster, the day of whose birth should be held accursed. Because of my outspoken free love thought in this benighted region, I was threatened with an unbecoming application of tar and feathers. The gods saved me this backward transmigration into fowldom; but in lieu thereof I was so befowled with abusive epithets by the press, that by those sensitive to that enfledged opinion, I am feared as a thing of contamination. Believe me, that not for an instant am I daunted in my work. Every moment of my existence I am more grateful to the fate directing powers, that they have given me the light to see as clearly as I do. Every day I am more confirmed in my thought and more devoted to that which seems to me the truth. I know of course, why unspiritualized worldlings, who have no key wherewith to judge of my opinions, persecute me, while you, a thinker, reformer and progressive soul, estimate me rightly, and are in rapport with my thought. This wide difference in the thought spheres of this planet which has caused such terrible persecution, is being lessened continually, under the approximating and blending influences of free speech and thought so characteristic of this era. In this incipient affinitization or crystallization, which is indicated in all reform movements in the last few years, one begins to discern, as it were, the nucleus of the millenium. The continuous upward and onward cry of Victoria's Weekly1, the spirit of Internationalism and the many Cooperative Homes on the Harmonic Basis in operation, formation, or prospection, with the growing sympathy in all humanitarian ideas and movements, are cheering indications. I hope to live to see many of these perfected into successes.
I have just completed a rhapsody entitled "Psyche to Coitive Prostitutes." I have sent it to Victoria for publication. I am not sure that she may not deem its freedom of expression an over stepping of the bounds of discreet progress. She is, in her own conception, up to the highest thought of any time; but she sometimes fears that all her subscribers may not be prepared for the fierce outflash of unveiled truth. The thought I have expressed in this poem is out of the mental range of those who pretend to be the most radical reformers; and I am sorry to think that they will not open their minds to the verities of nature, before deciding against me. Some pseudo reformers say that it is well that a woman should give herself in sexual relations for love; but to demand money for this exchange is criminal. I have prayed for light to decide this subject, and the response I received is that it is no more a radical wrong for a woman, under present conditions, to obtain her subsistence in this way, than it is for a man to gain a living by any of the methods which he adopts. I believe that not only should the sexual act be accorded freely for love, but that any service or pleasure, that human beings give to each other, should be spontaneously yielded, without demand for compensation; but as along as money is the material basis for all exchange, why denounce prostitutes for demanding the indispensable equivalence? If you do not see this thought as I do, I am sure your enlarged mind will at least consider it charitably. I would here say, that I am a born free lover, and have not had these opinions thrust upon me by a conscious life experience for I am now only in my 27th year. In my youth, I speculated instinctively on these social theories. I was born outside of all the social conventionalisms that obscure the pure intellect. My mother was an Octoroon and slave, and I illegitimate, and held in bondage by my father until my sixth year; when her earnings purchased her and my freedom. My father, a genuine Henry VIII in type, is today, I believe, one of the wealthiest men in New Orleans. In every sense, you will perceive, I am an outcast and true to the instincts of my birth, in my present protest against all conventionalisms. Yet you must know also, that of all these circumstances, so degrading in the view of the world, I have the weakness to be unmitigably exultant, so that Carlyle's rebuke... might apply to me, "Beware of spiritual pride."
I thank you for sending me Mr. Bradford's letter. It was highly consoling to me. I shall be glad to write to him, for it is my effort and aspiration to do all that I can to bring about that mental and spiritual accord among reformers, which is the necessary preliminary of outward action and organization.
I will send you soon a more satisfactory photograph of myself than the one you have already received. If my poem appears in the Weekly, let me hear from you, your frankest criticism upon it. Do not fear to express any sense of dissent that may occur to you.
I hope soon to receive one of your graceful epistles, and remain in the mean while
Your sister in reform
Psyche
DA Smith Hygeian Home
635 - Calafornia [sic.] St.
1See chapter 23.
Psyche wrote to Milo again as follows:
Letter 135
San Fran. June 30 73
My Dear Orpheus,
One of the greatest pleasures of life is to receive letters from sympathetic friends. The kindly feeling of your favor of 18th inst, for which you make unnecessary apology, bethought me of reperusing all those I have previously received from you, among them that of Dec 26, 1871, wherein you assume the name wherewith I have addressed you in this. I read, with a glow of accordant enthusiasm, your admirably expressed letter full of truth and earnestness in Woodhalls of the 21st. You are of the sort, through whom the world is to be regenerated. As the Orpheus of old dared Pluto in search of Eurydice, you front the hell of to-day, conservative public opinion, in search of the goddess Truth-- in whose service you knightly flourish the modern weapon of the chivalrous, the steel pen.
I would gratefully thank you for the pleasure and comfort you have afforded in making me acquainted with the "Sage of Buttonwood," as you term him. He has written me so good and friendly a letter, that it has stirred all my tenderest emotions. I have just replied to it. You tell me, that he is heart starved, and that your chief want is spiritual companionship. I am very much in the same condition; so that we may commiserate each other's deprivations. While not totally in want of Spiritual or intellectual companionship, yet am I not, as it is always my highest aim to be, with head exalted, and all the idealism and poetry of every sort excited, by some particular object, representative to me of humanity in the abstract.... I feel, psychometrically in union with the Sage and I am sure, should I become personally acquainted with him, I should be, as the young ladies say, "Smitten." I can almost see him standing before me, this moment. He speaks of his age, and short white hair. Dear me! For these two I have had a predilection from my youngest days. When a girl of 12, at the Catholic Convent at San Jose, where I was educated, I became violently enamored of my confessor, an aged priest of more than three score, whose handsome, pallid face, of marble hue, almost unwrinkled and surrounded by long snowy hair, pendant to his shoulders, won my youthful and susceptible heart, to the disgust and horror of the nuns. In this detestable abode of superstition, where my wounded spirit rebelled against so false, forced, and ascetic a life; where the nuns were soured and desiccated, as women must be, who have never had their natures rounded, by the warm infusion of sexual magnetism; this good man, whom I only met in the confession bar, was always so fatherly, called me his daughter, with so much love and tenderness, and gave me advice, with so much gentleness and wisdom that I clung to him, as an only refuge, in this Purgatory of restraint, repression, and restriction. Age and white hair have always been to me symbols of the wisdom and learning to which I constantly aspire. How I should love it if it were possible, by fortuitous time destroying, and space annihilating cap, to transport you and the dear Sage, this moment to my side! For myself, I should ask permission to rest serenely under the shadow of the goddess Tacita, and all yourself and friend to be incontinently voluble. I would drink in greedily your sapient discourse, since to my mind, I have not seen or heard speak this side of New York, a whole souled or inspired reformer. I would welcome you to my cosy little room adorned only with books and various portraits of my friends of the Spirit, from whose magnetic impress, I derive inspiration-- the harmonious visage of the immortal Mozart, of celestial notes; the grandly inspired countenance of Gluck, with heavenward glance; Pompadour of wondrous loveliness-- O what thrilling beauteousness! I can well understand, looking on the transcendent incarnation of the very principle of beauty in this woman, how she swayed Europe, and was the cause of wars, like the luscious Helen of Troy.
Old Plutarch's profile meets my eye as I write, who, great historian that he was, I consider but a bigot and an imbecile, like Boswell, whose sycophancy made him a good biographer; for forsooth, he (Plutarch) praises to the sky one of his heroes who had naught to do with woman, before he married his wife, and with no other woman, except her afterwards; whose only merit, like George III was "That virtue, most uncommon of constancy, to a bad, ugly woman."
Tomorrow, I shall order, from existing negatives, some excellent photos of myself, and will send you specimens, as soon as I receive them
When I read, at the head of your letters, the name of the locality, where you reside, there are presented, to my imagination, delightful views of river scenery, and foaming cascades, and visions of that sagacious and quaint tenant of primeval forest scenes, the ancient dam builder; who now, inhabits some corner of the brains of engineers and millwrights.
I regret, that we were not better acquainted, one year ago about the time of my journey to this city. I paid a visit, in the month of May, to that charming spot, Williamsport; remember one night in Altona [sic.], and passed through Pittsburg, on my way to Chicago.
Were I not so busily occupied, I should be disconsolated in this out of the way place, but I hope to return East, in the Fall, if passes are obtained for me by friends, as I am promised.
"Archy Moore," I have never read. Your vivid comment, thereupon, excites my desire to do so, albeit that my mother's life is as thrillingly interesting, as any romance I can imagine. I have condensed it into a poem, a copy of which I hope to send you, as soon as I have the vulgar wherewithal to put it in print. You may laugh at my immense faith; but I am working on a couple of books, which, the spirits tell me, when completed, they will see to it, that they are published.
I regret your having been in the valetudinarian condition, and with so painful a disease. I hope you are now experiencing the glorious compensation of convalescence. That, among the other consolations of being sick, have not been sufficiently dwelt upon, though Charles Lamb, in his "Elia," has eloquently touched thereon, and Shakespeare has curtly expressed them in the words: "The mind may banquet, though the body pine." In the intervals of pain, visions the most ecstatic oftimes visit the patient and, I am sure, your developed spirit has partaken of this encouraging solace.
The telegraph announces the triumphant acquittal of Victoria. This will be a damper to the enemies of freedom and progress.
Free speech may now have sway, without fear of laws; or the stupid charge of obscenity.
The Poem on "Coitive Prostitutes," I should like to see committed to the public arms, as a nurseling, that would find friends and adherents. It is the expression of the boldest thought about these women who have hitherto, been condemned by those who are no better than they; and who really subserve a greater purpose in the large economy of Providence, than they have ever been credited with. If Victoria does not give it publicity, I shall do so, at some time. If you were to read it, I am sure you would appreciate and agree with its philosophy. It is not by an attenuated homage to a purely ideal love that humanity is to be developed into vigor and virtue as that word was understood by the ancient Romans. God knows, we have had enough of this love of the puppyhood of the races, in poetry and romance; in which last, marriage is the grave of all passion and idealism is the intercourse of the sexes, all other amatorial passages being considered unworthy and derogatory. This is the very evil, which I wish to boldly strike at. The Institution of Marriage, like the Religion of Modern Christendom, to which it is a tender, is a failure; as far as is concerned, the production of wholesome, whole souled men and women, with animal bodies and ethereal minds; a race, such as, when Thought, Science, and True Religion, as the Art of Life, shall reign, must people the planet. I believe, the Religion of True and Free Love, is the next mythonomy, in the Law of Spiritual Development. That Pompadour, whom I have already mentioned, who protected Philosophers, and banished Jesuits, and treated great noblemen, with the same freedom, as artists, and who had much to do in promoting the French Revolution, wrote as follows, "The ancient Germans used to say that there was something of divinity in a beautiful woman. I am almost of their opinion, and I think, that the greatness of God is more visible in a beautiful face than in the genius of Newton."
I would introduce the worship of the sexual Impulse and Act, as the most immediate expression of the creative Energy of Nature. The adoration of the Venus Anadyomene by the ancient Greeks; of Mary in the Catholic Church, is an intimation of this sentiment in the human mind. Now the act of coition, which should be the sublimest of which mortal is capable, is made by a false modesty, the result of a false worship and a purely male government-- ignoble and ludicrous, a thing to be laughed at, ridiculed and despised or else, so under the ban of church and State as only to be performed with their sanction; so that, at this time probably all the various diseases, to which humanity is subject, may be traced to repressions or improper use caused by repression of this function. I would teach men worship and reverence for this Act, not only as the possible generation of an immortal soul, but, as a means of restoring the odic power of the perisprit. The relations of the Sexes are the Symbolic foundation of all religious veneration and venery; being only the opposite poles of the human battery. As long as human beings are as low in the scale of development as they now are they must remain sunken in their present condition, and continue to propagate a race unworthy to live; but in the ensuing centuries, when Science shall explain all that Reason can fathom, the mystery of generation, whereby only is consciousness created, will be the only worship of man.
I hope I have not tired you with this long letter; but you yourself suggested the flow of thought which has produced it. I should like you and the Sage to read it together, and know of your comments thereupon.
Your sister
Psyche
679 Mission St.
Psyche's letters seem to vindicate Greeley's belief that Spiritualism and free love went hand in hand,, for her references to spirits appear to imply that she was a Spiritualist, as was Victoria Woodhull.
If there were any further letters from Psyche, they have not survived. Perhaps the letter above persuaded Milo to abandon the correspondence.