FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO AMY POST

[Rochester, N.Y. 5 April 1850].¹The date of this letter has been approximated as 5 April 1850 because, in that day’s issue of the North Star, Douglass commented that he had heard the alleged spirit rappings in Rochester and had found little evidence that the sounds came from an unearthly source. NS, 5 April 1850.

DEAR AMY,

I own that I wholly misapprehended the object of the meeting at your house last night.²Although an exact date and agenda cannot be determined from existing sources, the meeting undoubtedly involved a séance led by the Fox sisters, teenage mediums who communicated with spirits through rapping sounds. In 1848 the Fox family began hearing mysterious raps, supposedly made by spirits, emanating from the walls and floors of their home in Hydesville, New York. After causing a sensation among their neighbors, the family moved out of their home, and Kate and Margaret Fox went to live with their sister Ann Leah Fish in Rochester. Seemingly attracted to the sisters, spirits continued to rap in Rochester. Amy and Isaac Post numbered among the first converts to Spiritualism and became mentors to the Fox sisters. Later, Isaac became a writing medium and published a book containing spirit messages. Members of the Rochester community debated the validity of the visitations, and in 1850 D. M. Dewey published at least two editions of History of the Strange Sounds or Rappings, Heard in Rochester and Western New-York, attempting to verify the inexplicable happenings. Within months of the sisters’ arrival in Rochester, thousands across the North and East had heard of the sisters’ abilities and had become interested in Spiritualism. Those associated with religious and social reform movements, such as abolition and women’s rights, found the alternative religion particularly appealing. NS, 21 December 1849, 12 April 1850; D. M. Dewey, History of the Strange Sounds or Rappings, Heard in Rochester and Western New- York, rev. ed. (Rochester, 1850), i—ii; Earl Wesley Fornell, The Unhappy Medium: Spiritualism and the Life of Margaret Fox (Austin, Tex., 1.964); Ann Braude, Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America (Boston, 1989), 10-l9; Bret E. Carroll, Spiritualism in Antebellum America (Bloomington, Ind., 1997), 47; Alex Owen, The Darkened Room: Women, Power, and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England (Philadelphia, 1990). I supposed that it would be in order to test the genuniness of the rapping in any form within the bounds of order. Such proved not to be the case—and since yourself and Husband have thought me reprehensible for my conduct I make a statement of the facts. You misunderstood me in supposing—that I applied the term atrocious to the company. That term was applied to the rapping when it refused to answer the question of Mr. Dick³John M. Dick. when that question was the only one put—which would test the intelligence of the agent by which the rapping was made. I certainly meant no disrespect to yourself or husband.

Yours sincerely

FRED’K DOUGLASS

ALS: Post Family Papers, NRU.