14 When the Spirits Did Abound

At the beginning of their rebellion against Mormonism, Harrison and Godbe hoped to blend their old Mormon beliefs and their new spiritualism into a “spiritual Mormonism.” But as the movement progressed, the emphasis changed to become “Mormon spiritualism.” Still later, the Mormon elements were washed out further. Harrison and Godbe became unqualified advocates of spiritualism, although they still revered much of their Mormon heritage. President Young had not been far wrong when he had warned that the protests of Harrison and Godbe against him and Mormonism would eventually lead them to a denial of all organized religion.

The result was an unusual chapter in Utah’s cultural history—“when the spirits did abound.” During the 1870s, Utah, like the nation itself several decades before, became the scene of enthusiastic séances and wonders. On one level, the territory witnessed table-moving, rapping noises, and the use of the planchette. There was more serious-minded spiritualism as well: leading spiritualist lecturers and spiritualist mediums, including the renowned Charles Foster, visited the territory. It is difficult to gauge the popularity of this activity. With Mormonism so strongly opposed to it, Utah spiritualism probably never gained the foothold that it did elsewhere in the United States. Still, spiritualism touched the Utah landscape with more than a light caress.1

Harrison and Godbe probably envisioned few of these results at the beginning of their movement. In early 1870, when arch-opponent Orson Hyde traveled through the territory to raise the cry of “spiritualism” against the reformers, Harrison had responded cautiously. At the time, Harrison was not drawn to the spiritualist movement’s fads—table-moving and the use of planchettes. These modes were just the ABCs of the science, Harrison explained. In contrast, the Church of Zion relied on the higher order of phenomena, such as the “power of seership, vision, inspired dreams, and inspirations.”2 These latter sources, more than the mere phenomena, brought truth and spirituality, Harrison explained. This was the meaning and purpose of the Church of Zion.3

Harrison made other declarations of belief. The heavenly world had specialists, he told followers. Jesus was the “Apostle of Love” (love was the most important department of learning), and He would visit those seeking his advice when this speciality was required. On the other hand, if the heavens wanted to teach mortals about astronomy or history, or to present “grander conceptions” of music or another science, Jesus would “bring out and honor his brethren” in their own areas of distinction. In those cases one should expect a visit from a Newton, Herschel, von Humboldt, Haydn, or Handel—those who had become expert in their chosen fields after a lifelong study, both on earth and in the world beyond.4

Notwithstanding Harrison’s attempts to cast faddish spiritualism aside, Godbeitism inevitably stirred the spirits in Utah. In April 1870, Ellen Pratt McGary reported spiritualistic activity as far south as Beaver, Utah. There, several people had moved tables by commanding the spirits, but the use of the planchette had proven a disappointment: no messages were received. “Is it true that the Godbeites get their revelations through the Planchette & that Charlotte is their medium?” McGary asked a Salt Lake City correspondent.5 The unidentified “Charlotte” of southern Utah rumor almost certainly was Godbe’s vivacious and cultured new wife, Charlotte Ives Godbe.

There were other indications that the Godbeites were becoming interested in spiritualistic phenomena. Early in 1870, Frederick Perris published an article in the Mormon Tribune that foreshadowed the New Movement view of Joseph Smith. The Mormon prophet, Perris hinted, was a spiritualistic medium whose revelations were nothing more than an ordinary part of transcendental or universal truth.6 Having come to this understanding, Perris and his friend John Lindsay were prepared to receive further light. En route to Europe, they visited a practicing medium’s salon in New York City and received great manifestations. An unnamed relative of one of the men told them “great truths.”7

In the late summer of 1870, William Shearman was dispatched to visit California spiritualists. “The really spiritual among them are dissatisfied with so-called Spiritualism,” he reported hopefully to the Salt Lake City headquarters. According to Shearman, the spiritualists wanted “something better and higher.” They were looking for the “development of a system that shall unite them, give them power, and satisfy their higher natures.”8

Shearman’s comments reflected Godbeite hopes. From the beginning of the New Movement, there had been hints that Godbe and Harrison’s mission involved more than the reform of Mormonism. Amasa Lyman later confirmed this. Shortly after taking the reins of the Church of Zion, Lyman had spoken expansively of extending the local movement “through our Territory and the world.”9 Shearman’s trip to California was undoubtedly the first attempt to realize Godbeitism’s greater goal. The Utahns intended to give the disorganized spiritualists the advantage of the Godbeite-reformed Mormon system of organization.10 With this structure in place, spiritualism could be reborn and Harrison’s promise fulfilled: that Mormonism would yet “sweep Spiritualism within its ample folds” and that a nation could be “born in a day.”11

Shearman’s ministry bore some fruit. The missionary advised Lyman that some of the most “progressive” California spiritualists had become impressed with the Utah movement and planned to visit Salt Lake City.12 However, Shearman’s hope of converting California Mormons to the New Movement met with greater opposition. Only Agnes Coolbrith Pickett, former wife of Don Carlos Smith, the founding prophet’s brother, seemed interested in the New Movement message. Pickett’s daughter, Ina Coolbrith, would become California’s first poet laureate.13

Shearman later proclaimed the New Movement message in New York City, where some mediums were already speaking favorably of New Movement spiritualism, including no less a commanding figure than Andrew Jackson Davis. Davis believed that the Utah New Movement had the promise of repossessing and purifying the Mormon soul, and he predicted that a reformed Mormon church would yet “become a very powerful movement.”14 Whether it was Shearman’s mission that prompted these remarks is unclear.

After Shearman’s ministry to the West and East Coasts, a stream of itinerant spiritualists began to visit Utah. Among the first was John Murray Spear, who during the next several years would return to Utah repeatedly. Spear had a reputation that defied easy analysis. As with many of his colleagues in spiritualism, Spear was an iconoclast, and because of this tendency, rumors and slander accompanied him as naturally as the spirits themselves.

Spear was most recently from the spiritualistic Lyceum of Self-Culture at Dashaway Hall in San Francisco. His roots in American spiritualism, however, went deeper. As early as 1853, he had achieved fame in Chautauqua, New York, where he had led a communal society that sought to extract wealth from what was reportedly a recently discovered mine. The group’s alleged sexual experimentation led to public outrage and to the society’s eventual collapse. Either during the commune’s existence or soon after its failure, Spear announced that the world of spirits was organized in a series of distinct societies. There were “governmentizers,” “educationizers,” “agriculturalizers,” “heathfulizers,” and more relevant to his concern, “electrizers.” The electrizers had told Spear how to construct a new electric motor—itself a living organism endowed with a living spirit. The motor promised to revolutionize industry and to shorten the workday. The existence of the device was a matter of public controversy; some viewed it as a fraud, while others claimed that the machine existed in a well-guarded shed. Challenged to produce it in public, Spear disclosed that a mob had destroyed it. Moreover, he said that the “Association of Electrizers,” disappointed by the conduct of Spear’s enemies, had concluded that humanity was not ready for the device and had forbidden Spear to rebuild it.15

Spear’s missionary efforts had reportedly produced an “Order of Patriarchs” in Cincinnati. Yet another experimental commune, the “Order” claimed that a marble slab containing strange writing had been found. The message on the slab, deciphered by clairvoyance, told of the need to reestablish Hebrew polygamy. The group attempted to do this but was forestalled by unsettled and angry neighbors.16 Spear was undeterred by the setback. “No set of men, no church, no state, no government shall withhold from me the right to re-beget myself when and under such circumstances as to me and any true woman seems fit and best,” another spiritualist reported Spear as saying.17

Many nonspiritualists regarded Spear as bizarre, and even within the movement he had detractors. His belief that spiritualism should be linked to religious ideals and to a church organization angered the secular wing of the movement. But Spear also had many admirers, who viewed him as a man of unusually high character, believing he was “one of the most attractive figures” in modern spiritualism, having a “childlike simplicity.”18

This was the perception of the Utah Godbeites. On 9 September 1870, Lyman, who was then ministering in southern Utah, received a telegram urging him to return immediately to Salt Lake City because Spear had arrived from California. Several days later Lyman recorded the excitement of discovery in his diary: “Mr. S. is a Spiritual medium,” Lyman wrote. For the next several months, the traveling spiritualist met often with Lyman and the other Godbeites. In one séance Spear purportedly received a message from Joseph Smith. On another occasion, he blessed and named Mary Godbe’s newborn child. And most impressive to Lyman, Spear, while in “the entranced state,” gave Lyman a spiritualistic character sketch. “One must know this gentlemen long and intimately to judge of his real character,” proclaimed the blessing. It concluded as favorably: “These [admirable] characteristics as thus combined render this gentleman in the noblest sense a Man.” Lyman sent a copy of Spear’s blessing to one of his plural wives to verify the truthfulness of his new faith.19

These were private matters. Spear’s ministry in Utah also had a public side. During his first Utah visit, Spear spoke at the Corinne Opera House and lectured on the relations between Great Britain and the United States at Ballou’s Hall in Salt Lake City. He also addressed Church of Zion meetings and was present when the Godbeites laid the cornerstone for their new meetinghouse. His remarks on that occasion indicated that he felt a kinship with the Utah reformers. He had traveled widely, he told his audience, searching for an elusive “something” that he seemed to have found in Utah. It was not anything that might be found written in books; rather it came from “heart speaking to heart,” as friends joined in a universal, world concern. After having learned so much in Utah, Spear promised to speak favorably of the Utah movement wherever he might travel in the future.20

Spiritualists Dr. Roberts and Dr. Goss also arrived in the territory during the latter part of 1870. These two doctors used medicine only when “absolutely necessary.” They preferred to heal by the Swedish Movement Cure, a technique otherwise not defined, and by laying their hands on the afflicted person and then driving the illness from the body by “physical” or “animal” magnetism. One patient provided a certificate of testimony: for eighteen years he had suffered from “demoniacal possession.” However, two weeks of treatment had brought a cure: “I am all right now, thank God” read the certificate. As further testimony, the Ogden Junction reported that Roberts and Goss had remedied several serious cases in Ogden City. With their practice burgeoning, the men remained in Utah long past their original 1 October departure date. In late January 1871, Roberts elucidated on his theory of healing before a New Movement audience. Three months later Roberts was still advertising his services in the local press.21

The arrival of professional spiritualists in Utah encouraged Harrison to speak publicly once more on the topic of spiritualism. He was increasingly frank. The New Movement encouraged spiritualism for the same reason that it encouraged the study of chemistry or astronomy, Harrison said. It was a science that contained truth. But Harrison cautioned that private circles or séances were not an official part of the New Movement and should be participated in only with care. The value of such sessions, he warned, were like the pronouncements of Mormonism: they mixed truth and untruth; validity rested with a person’s rational judgment.22

Harrison’s statement on spiritualism further discounted Joseph Smith’s mission. The Mormon prophet, so far as “spiritual manifestations” went, was hardly unique, Harrison now argued. Smith was “simply a medium,” and, candidly, was not as talented as many modern practitioners. He had seen spirits, comparatively speaking, only rarely. In contrast, Harrison said that “hundreds of mediums” could now see and talk with “spiritual beings at any moment.”23

The ministries of Spear and Roberts, and Harrison’s public endorsement of professional mediums, set Godbeitism on a new course. All that had been theoretical and latent in Godbeitism now became openly practiced. Church of Zion president Amasa Lyman led the way. When first appointed president, Lyman attended numerous public devotionals and executive council meetings, but soon these institutional duties gave way to private séances. Facilitating these spiritualistic circles, Lyman had the good fortune to find that several of his children—Hila, Josephine, Lorenzo, and Lelia—had mediumistic talent, and this increased his testimony. His mediums were family members, of whose honesty “we had no doubt,” Lyman told a disbelieving sister. Moreover, the information revealed in these private circles was remarkable. When the spirit of Lyman’s daughter Ruth Adelia appeared, she related details that Hila, the medium, could not have known. Ruth had died at the age of four when the family had journeyed to Utah—years before Hila’s birth.24

These family séances marked the beginning of an extraordinarily productive spiritualistic era for Lyman. During the next several years, he recorded almost two hundred mediumistic circles. Some months, he was engaged in a séance every night. Sometimes he was involved in several in a single day. The “appearing” spirits were often deceased family members. “At night [I] attended a séance at br. Mannings,” reveals one diary entry, “at which my Aunt and Daughter made communication[.] [It was] the first that have reached us from them.” Three weeks later: “At night held private Séance[.] Br. Joseph [Smith] and Father Tanner and my Son Roswell came and talked with us by entrancement and [by] the Table[.]” And the next day: “My Father was with us for the first time[.] Also Mother Phelps and Mother Turley and Sister Flake[,] all of whom brought us words of kindly greating [sic].”25

The appearance of Lyman’s father was particularly meaningful. Roswell Lyman had disappeared two years after Amasa’s birth and had not been heard from since. Now came the reassuring news of his happiness—and his untarnished honor. He had not abandoned his family, it was learned, but had been “foully murdered.”26 To obtain further information concerning his father, Lyman sent an inquiry to Charles Foster, who continued his New York City spiritualistic practice. Foster replied that not only was Roswell “very happy” but other Lyman relations—Amasa’s mother, uncle, grandfather, and daughter—also sent greeting. According to Foster, each of these family members was “near” Lyman, and they promised to help and prosper him in his New Movement work.27

Lyman recorded one message from Joseph Smith that was received through Mrs. Crouch, whose husband helped edit the Tribune. “I am happy to meet you this morning in the capacity of a circle,” said Smith, who was aware of Lyman’s dissent from Mormonism: “You are doing just what a good many others ought to do [at] the present time[.] Remember what I told you before concerning your own council[.] All will come out right. . . . Now a little word of caution[.] Patience, Patience, Patience, is a grand secret of all perfection[.] Nothing was ever discovered and investigated and done well in a hurry[.] We are around you and will try to help everybody who tries to help humanity[.] Our kindest love to those engaged in the same cause as yourself.” The message was signed by Smith, Heber Kimball, Smith’s brother Hyrum and “many friends,” presumably other LDS leaders who had passed to the world beyond.28

The messages received at séances often seemed secondary to the excitement of the moment. Lyman recorded such things as table rappings, slate writing, and “spirit touches,” during which a small human hand carrying flowers appeared. Lyman also told of a moving table that was suspended in air; the table was controlled by the presiding medium’s “light touch.” Such phenomena, according to Lyman, were physical demonstrations of “spirit presence and power” and evidence of “purpose and design.”29

Lyman was not alone in his séances. Many family members and neighbors from central Utah joined him, no doubt recruited and initiated into the spiritualistic mysteries by Lyman himself. Participants also included such estranged Mormons as Sarah Pratt (Elder Orson Pratt’s first wife and the mother of Godbeite Orson Pratt Jr.) and D. F. [Frederick] Walker, one of the merchant Walker brothers. In addition Lyman experienced séances with Godbeites T. C. Armstrong, Eli Kelsey, Henry Lawrence, Frederick Perris, Emily Teasdale, and William Shearman, some of whom had their own regular private circles. More frequent were Lyman’s joint séances with Godbe and especially Harrison. For instance, Lyman was present when Harrison’s mother greeted her son; when William and Annie Godbe’s recently departed daughter, Clara, came to comfort her parents; and when Harrison and Godbe’s deceased friends came with “kindly greetings” from their “bright home in the better life.”30

Clearly, less than two years after their break with Mormonism, the Godbeites were deeply involved in spirit phenomena. In late summer of 1871, the dissenters publicly declared its allegiance. With Spear once more on hand to render advice, they drafted a petition in which they sought official recognition from the National Convention of Spiritualists, scheduled to meet in Troy, New York, in the second week of September. On 3 September, Harrison read the document to the assembled reformers, and after this, the Weekly Tribune attempted to get as many individuals as they could to sign the petition. The next day, Spear, speaking “in the entranced condition,” addressed the inner group of New Movement leaders and apparently gave them added encouragement.31

The petition frankly declared the reformers’ spiritualistic faith. It also acknowledged Godbe and Harrison’s long-standing but concealed design to overthrow traditional Mormonism. “Unlike Movements started by the Spirit World elsewhere,” the petition admitted, the Utah branch had had to “adapt itself to the mental growth of the [Utah] people.” Utahns believed in “divine leadership” and “priestly organization.” Hence the spirit world had counseled Godbe and Harrison to establish a “temporary institution,” namely, the Church of Zion, which was meant as a “stepping stone to greater liberties.” While this organization was speedily outgrown, during its brief career it had taught its members principles that were “as high and as broad as the most advanced conceptions of Spiritual Philosophy.” In the process, the Utah spiritualists had defied “One-Man power,” opened the territory to mining and to the march of civilization, and gathered hundreds of people into spiritualism.

The future also seemed promising, and here the Godbeites announced their towering ambition. According to the petition, the Utah movement was destined to become “one of the largest centres of Spiritualistic power” in the world. This movement existed among a “purely inspirational people,” among whom were more “mediumistic persons in proportion to the population” than any other region or nation. Once these Mormon converts, already believers in “doctrine of revelation and angelic intercourse,” fully experienced spiritualist power, they could help transform the world. Here was the larger and more important Godbeite mission.32

To speed this work, the Utah spiritualists invited the movement’s “best mediums and speakers” to come to Utah. They also formally enrolled themselves into the “Utah Spiritual Movement.” The movement’s thirty-member executive council included nine women, an expression of the group’s commitment to feminism.33

Godbe, Harrison, and Shearman traveled to New York to present the petition to the national convention. Distrust of Mormons in general and Godbeite polygamy in particular temporarily threatened to dissuade the delegates. But the free-wheeling spiritualists, usually willing to challenge social conventions, quickly warmed to the men from the West. One woman reminded her associates that spiritualism’s central belief was uncomplicated: It swept into its fold all who believed in the communication of “disembodied spirits with embodied Spirits [mortals]”; and further, it was “none of the business of spirits to inquire how many wives a man has, or what his previous beliefs were.” Another delegate, agreeing with the woman’s sentiment, insisted that morality was a personal matter and therefore beyond the proper consideration of the convention and of society. Still another delegate adopted a more extreme position. “Down with law, down with institutions, down with government,” he reportedly declared. He would receive a petition for membership from “the lowest depths of hell” even if brought by the devil himself. This odious comparison was offset by results: the assembled spiritualists welcomed the Utahns into their group.34

Having accomplished their purposes with the spiritualists in the United States, the Godbeites turned abroad. In what appeared to be the second step in a concerted plan, later that year Godbe traveled to Great Britain to address the British spiritualists. Once more the hope was to advertise the Utah movement and attract to Utah the best spiritualistic talent to “educate” and “lift” the Mormon community. But also implicit in the plan was the Godbeites’ broader goal: if the Utahns were to help organize and carry the spiritualists to new heights, they must first make themselves known.

Godbe’s address, delivered in the heart of British spiritualism in the movement’s Cavendish rooms in London, provides the clearest statement of Godbe’s views about spiritualistic reform. Godbe began by describing Mormonism in terms that the Godbeite lecturers had already presented in Utah. Joseph Smith, rather than an imposter, was a spiritual medium. Because he lacked “intellectuality,” Smith had misread his mission and placed his spiritual communications within the biblical context of his culture. Brigham Young, Smith’s successor, was at first “conservative, kind, and fatherly.” But as the years advanced, Young’s practical and “Mosaic” tendency—and his desire for accumulation—recast a religion that had once abounded with spiritual manifestations into a “complete theocratic despotism.” This rule took its most extreme form in Young’s program to control the territory’s trade.

Perhaps most fascinating to the Cavendish audience were Godbe’s references to Harrison and himself. Although Godbe spoke autobiographically, the Mormon reformer used third person pronouns: “Those who dared to think freely—and therefore honestly” had finally rebelled against Young’s policy. For their efforts, they were rewarded by “tangible, conclusive evidence” of a future life, an experience that Godbe refused to describe any further than one of “no ordinary character.” As a result of this experience, the reformers were freed from the “chief of all soul-dwarfing dogmas, Divine authority in the form of erring man.”

Godbe emphasized the role of religious or spiritual feeling in the unfolding of the Utah movement. According to Godbe, he and Harrison had been impelled to undertake their “noble cause” by “that dauntless courage which an enthusiasm high and holy alone can give.” So armed, the Utah spiritualists had achieved concrete results—unlike spiritualism’s usual dismal record. The Utah movement had established a free press, built a large assembly hall, and helped open Utah mineral resources to development. In doing so, it had successfully resisted “one of the most complete priestly despotisms the world had ever saw.”

Godbe also spoke revealingly about his beliefs. Perhaps eager to show the Utahns’ relationship to the larger spiritualist movement, Godbe emphasized that men and books, including prophets and scriptures, had inevitable flaws. What, then, could be believed and where could faith be rooted? The answer, said Godbe, lay in the “infallibility of the Creator as He has revealed Himself in His holy book—the book of universal nature.” This source of truth, which alone was divine, had two parts: the external or natural world and the internal or spiritual realm within each man and woman. “Blessed are those who have studied both these parts with minds unwarped by prejudice and free from dogmatic bias,” said Godbe.

There were several corollaries of belief. Godbe stressed the Utah spiritualists’ acceptance of the “purest morals in all matters of conduct.” Likewise, nothing should inhibit the “universal fraternity” of men and women. But the capstone of conduct was “love,” the “world’s redeemer,” the “mightiest” and “most beneficent” of all “saviours.” The divine injunction to “Love thy neighbour as thyself” (Lev. 19:18) remained all important.35

The London spiritualists received Godbe’s remarks warmly. As Godbe left the hall, well-wishing admirers hemmed him in, congratulating him on his remarks. So reluctant their adieus, it took the American half an hour to make his way from the rostrum to the exit. The next issue of the Medium, one of spiritualism’s leading periodicals in Great Britain, was equally enthusiastic. Godbe’s address, the magazine reported, had been characterized by “a clear philosophy, intelligence, promptness, energy, and a hearty philanthropic enthusiasm, aided and enlightened by spiritual truth.” Moreover, the magazine was ready to reconsider its views of Mormonism. Clearly, the LDS community had been engaged in the important work of harmonizing social and political institutions with spiritual principles. While Young and his followers had erred in particulars, yet in “the ashes of their defeat,” Utah might still in the future build “a structure to which the eyes of the world will in admiration be directed.”36 If Godbe had come to England hoping to convert the British spiritualists to his cause, he had taken an important and successful first step.

The appearance of the Godbeites before the American and British spiritualists in the closing months of 1871 signaled the final eclipse of the Church of Zion by “free-thought spiritualism.” Henceforth, such expressions as “the Church of Zion,” “the New Movement,” or even “Godbeitism” were increasingly replaced by “liberalism,” “radical reform,” and “freethinking.” And the Utah reform movement began to display its spiritualism more openly: spiritualistic public events began to be held in addition to private séances.

How many Utahns accepted the tenets of spiritualism and became devotees is uncertain. The Godbeite petition to the National Spiritualists in 1871 contained only 160 names drawn from the entire territory.37 These represented the Utahns’ willingness to declare their allegiance openly and enroll in a formal organization. At the other extreme, a correspondent to the Salt Lake Tribune in 1873 optimistically claimed that Utah’s capital city alone had five thousand informal investigators.38 The actual number lay between these figures, and probably was much closer to the lower end of the two sums.

Whatever the actual numbers, spiritualism had become a part of Deseret. One index of its spread was the speeches of LDS churchmen. Beginning in May 1870, President Young repeatedly denounced the twin evils of free-thinking and spiritualism, though he never mentioned the Godbeites by name. Young continued to emphasize Mormonism’s superior organization. “Here are system, order, organization, law, rule, and facts. Now see if they [the spiritualists] can produce any one of these features.” Young believed that he knew the reason why spiritualism was chronically unstable: spiritualism was of the devil, Mormonism from God.39

The comments of the Mormon leaders were not confined to Salt Lake City. In distant Parowan and Beaver, two hundred miles south, church leaders were upset by the inroads that spiritualism was making within the flock. President William H. Dame declared that “many” members of the local School of the Prophets were tinctured by “spirits.” Another speaker spoke of spiritualism’s “avalanche.”40 Still further south, at the ephemeral mining town of Iron City, there were other spiritualists. “Spiritualism was pretty well accepted,” remembered one Iron City citizen, “almost every gathering would try a séance.”41 Perhaps the unusually high incidence of spiritualism in southern Utah was due to Lyman’s preaching in the area.

As spiritualism became more openly practiced, certain incidents reflected the times. After a California troupe of actors became interested in the workings of a planchette, the spirits instructed them to go to Salt Lake City. Although there were restive Indians on the trail, the actors were forbidden to bring arms or ammunition. Each morning and evening after the camp’s mess, the actors met around the planchette for further instructions. “We passed deserted ranches, deserted and burned settlements, and went over hundreds of miles of trackless desert in which not a blade of vegetation or [a] drop of water was present,” recalled one of the travelers, but always the planchette directed them safely. Arriving in Utah, the members of the camp received a final message: they were to visit Brigham Young and receive his counsel. Young responded with typical pragmatism. He reportedly told the actors to be baptized into Mormonism, and then he engaged them at the Salt Lake Theatre. Thus recruited to Mormonism, the Cogswells and Carters became regular Salt Lake City dramatic performers, though most eventually drifted from Utah and Mormonism.42

The planchette was also the instrument through which a lengthy message was sent to Young by his predecessor. In January of 1871, an anonymous couple from Nevada wrote to inform Young that the peripatetic spirit of Joseph Smith had contacted them. A disaster awaited the Mormons, Smith warned, but he had been unable to contact Young, undoubtedly due to Young’s lack of interest in using the planchette. Smith therefore had to wander the land until his message could be conveyed. The Nevada mediums promised to pass on further information if Smith should contact them again.43

David Hyrum Smith, the eighth and posthumous son of Joseph Smith who was rumored to be the heir apparent of either the LDS or RLDS movement, was also contacted by the spirits. Arriving in Salt Lake City as an RLDS missionary in midsummer 1872, Smith was immediately contacted by Amasa Lyman, who then sometimes listened to Smith’s preaching. “I had no deep interest [in the discourse],” Lyman dismissed one RLDS sermon, “beyond the hope that it might agitate thought [among the Saints] and thus conduce[?] to more freedom from error.”44

Lyman’s main interest in Smith of course was furthering the cause of the New Movement: the conversion of a son of Joseph Smith might give the Utah reform a much-needed boost. David’s investigation of plural marriage helped prepare the way. David had come to Utah steadfastly believing the RLDS tenet of belief that his father had not been involved in polygamy, but the weight of evidence that he encountered in Utah seemed otherwise. By July, the likelihood of his father’s participation in plural marriage had become “too great” for David to ignore, and with that private admission, his susceptibility to Lyman’s spiritualistic ideas seemed to grow.45

During the fall and winter of 1872–73, the two men met often, usually to discuss ideas but also to participate in séances. The relationship may have led Smith to write an undated letter to Joseph III that explored the assumptions of organized religion. Its arguments seemed taken from a “Reformed Mormon” primer. “Reason is our only guide,” Smith wrote. “Intelligence is never required to give credence to, or act upon, any proposition unless it is capable of demonstration.” In contrast, Smith claimed that organized religion required a man or woman to express belief or faith “without actual demonstration or knowledge.” To his mind, that process was “absurd.”

The more Smith probed, the less confidence he had in faith as a means of knowledge. Didn’t each movement within Mormonism use “personal revelation” to justify its own belief—whether “Brighamites,” “Josephites,” “Strangites,” or “Morrisites?” How could these various claims be substantiated? “We are thrown back upon our reason again,” Smith concluded. Moreover, he was disturbed by the characteristics of those who were most earnest in their faith. These “true believers” tended to be “the weak, ignorant, prejudiced laity” who mistook their own “internal emotion, superstition, and misguided, but honest consciences for the eternal spirit of God.” In contrast, Smith believed that those who bore weakest testimony were often “the cultivated, well-developed, experienced, [and] observant reasoners”—in short, those who used reason.

While nothing in Smith’s often rambling letter betrayed Mormonism or his Reorganized Mormon mission, many of the ideas seemed to have the imprint of Lyman’s freethinking. Smith seemed to be expressing sentiments that the Godbeites called “universalian”—they were neither sectarian nor exclusive. The RLDS missionary now appeared ready to downplay many traditional Christian teachings and to discount the claims of any church that asserted a monopoly on truth.

When Smith returned to Salt Lake City in the fall of 1872, he resumed his close association with Lyman. The two met on 29 October for another of their lengthy discussions, and three days later Lyman’s diary recorded: “At night had a séance with D. H. Smith and company.”46 Yet when Smith wrote to his brother two and a half weeks later, David’s commitment to the RLDS movement seemed firm. “Amasa Lyman wishes me to say that he would be with us and help us do a good work provided a few eccentricities of doctrine in him be borne with. He is a good man and very moral. Seems to be returning to Christ again. I advise his acceptance. He will be of great influence if with us.”47

Was Smith trying to convert Lyman, just as Lyman was trying to convert Smith? How fully had Smith expressed his views? Answers to these questions lay only within Smith, who probably felt himself torn between his old and new worlds of thought. There was, however, enough of the “new” within Smith to ask whether his appeal for a tolerance of Lyman’s doctrinal “eccentricities” did not include an unconscious plea for himself. Could Joseph accept the “rational” ideas now swirling within David?

When Smith recommenced his public Salt Lake City ministry, there were signs that his religious views were no longer mainstream RLDS. The Tribune, usually no friend of the Reorganization’s claims, lauded Smith’s sudden and growing sophistication. “Mr. Smith’s ideas are original and brilliant, his eloquence fluent, and his views cosmopolitan,” the newspaper applauded. “When his father declared before his advent to our atmosphere that he [David] should lead ‘Israel,’ it was one of the truest inspirations he ever had.”48

The Tribune’s praise probably reflected not so much Smith’s progress as a philosopher and elocutionist as his growing commitment to the “freethought” ideas that often accompanied the “harmonial” movement. By the end of 1872 Smith’s discourses were increasingly filled with such themes, and when “eternal judgment” was announced as the subject of an upcoming lecture, the Tribune predicted that Smith’s address would not be “as orthodox as its title would imply.”49

For the moment the spiritualists may have believed that they had the good fortune to be supported by Mormonism’s crown prince. But Smith was not physically and emotionally well; he had long been subject to illness and dark moods. Now, the strain of séances, the conflict between important old and new ideas, and the split loyalties of family and new friends must have weighed oppressively on him. The somber poems he wrote at this time reveal his struggle with afflicting phantoms:

Heed not thou the dark sad spirit
     That would speak to thee of death!
Turn away and do not hear it,
     There is weakness in its breath.50

Several weeks later, in “Song of Endless Life,” Smith again tried to look past death’s shadow:

Though the waves of death flow o’er thee,
     ’Tis the rest that gathers power
For the endless life before thee;
          Fear no dying;
Like the resurrection flower,
          Death defying.51

In early February 1873, Smith experienced a “severe” attack of “brain fever,” a nineteenth-century phrase for emotional illness. For several days he alternated between insanity and lucidity. Rumors swept the city in late February that Smith desired to be baptized into the LDS faith—and one witness said he was.52 Several weeks later David penned a formal revelation in which he counseled Joseph III to invite new men into the leading councils of the Reorganization, not knowing that Joseph had already done so. Joseph, separated from David by slow mail and not fully aware of the seriousness of his illness, had called him into the RLDS First Presidency two weeks before.53 It was a revelation whose promise was difficult to keep. After David’s nervous collapse in Salt Lake City, he would eventually be institutionalized the rest of his life.

Joseph later spoke of the events that led to his brother’s confinement; and his account summarized, from his own perspective, what had taken place. During his 1872–73 mission, David had become acquainted with a group of “freethinkers” and spiritualists. According to Joseph III, these men had given David “much flattering attention” and had “insidiously” put into his mind the idea that his father, Joseph Smith Jr., had taught and practiced plural marriage. They had also involved David in their séances and had made him subject to the spirits who “lurk around in the twilight zone of human consciousness ready to take advantage of people still tabernacled in the flesh.” In Joseph’s view, the Salt Lake City spiritualists—and spirit possession—had caused David’s destruction.54

With the departure of the ill-starred Smith from Utah, spiritualism lost what might have been its most significant convert. There were, however, important new additions to the Salt Lake reform group. In April 1874, George D. Watt, Mormonism’s first European convert, Brigham Young’s former secretary, and longtime church recorder, announced his new allegiance before a large audience at the spiritualists’ one-thousand-seat meeting hall. Hundreds reportedly were turned away.

The title of Watt’s address said everything: “Why I Became a Mormon, and Why I Left That Church and Became a Spiritualist.” Watt complained of the “utter lack of ‘power’” now found in the LDS priesthood. It was “nothing tangible, nothing real.” In contrast, Watt portrayed himself as having always been a “spiritualist,” or a believer in spiritual communication, even when he had been a Mormon. He concluded his lecture by condemning Young’s Order of Enoch, which he claimed undermined personal freedom. During the next year Watt continued to explore these themes in lectures to spiritualists in Salt Lake City and Ogden.55

Before Watt became a spiritualist, he obviously had struggled with his religious faith. He had left Young’s employment in the late 1860s after the two had supposedly quarreled over Watt’s demand for an increase in salary. Watt then entered an unsuccessful mercantile venture. In the summer of 1870 he described himself as having been on the “devil’s harrow” for two years—perhaps an allusion to his business debts and to the growing distance he felt between himself and church leaders. When Young had formed the ZCMI, Watt complained that Young was being too accommodating to successful LDS merchants like Hooper and Jennings and not sufficiently helpful to the average Saint. It was probably these murmurings that had led Young to include Watt’s name along with the those of the Godbeite reformers in the original proscription against the Utah Magazine in October 1869.

While Young had backtracked and worked to keep Watt in the church, Watt was stung by the incident—and by the whispers that circulated behind his back because of it. He was English and Scotch, Watt told his brethren of the Salt Lake School of the Prophets. His heritage and personality would not allow him to be traduced and coerced. On the other hand, the “kindness and sympathy” of church leaders and neighbors could easily persuade him.56

During the years leading up to his excommunication, Watt voiced similar assurances—and pleas. “As to [the] new Movement and old movements,” he once wrote Young after the “teachers” from the ward had interrogated him about his orthodoxy, the dissidents had “no more of my fear or regard than the pooting[?] of a mouse a day old.” Watt vowed to stand by his leaders, although in practice he apparently continued to criticize Young’s cooperative plan.57 On another occasion, Watt admitted that he had associated with several Godbeites and had been cordial to them. He had known Lyman and Godbe for years, Watt explained, and he did not think that their new religious views justified his discontinuing the relationship. In making these defenses, Watt probably was not entirely honest: he was in fact weighing his beliefs. It is also true that, whatever his inner turmoil, it was not helped by the surveillance of his neighbors. “Espionage or adversity only stiffen[s] my neck and sets one in defiance,” Watt wrote to one of his plural wives.58

The situation of Bishop Andrew Cahoon of the South Cottonwood District was similar to that of Watt. His faithfulness was questioned in an October 1870 meeting of the Salt Lake City School of the Prophets. While admitting that he had made “unguarded and unwise expressions,” perhaps concerning Young and church policy, Cahoon denied that he had apostatized and become a Godbeite. Six months later, another charge surfaced: Cahoon had been overheard to say that he believed neither in “all the bible” nor in a devil. Defending himself, Cahoon admitted that he had taken the first volume of the Mormon Tribune. He had also read spiritualist tracts and had attended a Church of Zion meeting. These activities had challenged his Mormon faith and led him to begin a quiet study of the Bible and of Mormon scripture in his home. In the meantime, he assured the School that he sustained the Mormon leadership and priesthood.59

This seemed a tepid confession of faith for a Mormon bishop, and Elder George Q. Cannon wanted something stronger. If Cahoon didn’t know that the religion of Jesus Christ was true, said Cannon, the man should promptly resign his office. Cahoon should be praying, not reading spiritual tracts. Two weeks later, Cahoon’s avowals before the school were stronger, but he strongly denounced the faultfinding and persecution that he felt he was being subjected to. Church secretary A. M. Musser’s outspoken crusading was especially offensive. After Musser’s remarks at a meeting at the local chapel, Cahoon complained that some members of his congregation treated him like chopped up “mince meat.”60

There were, then, similar threads in the experiences of Watt and Cahoon. Both men had felt uncertain about some Mormon beliefs, and both had explored ideas on the periphery. In the rigidity of the time, this searching was met by a lack of understanding by some of their neighbors, and this in turn deepened their alienation. Finally, both sensed that they might be more comfortable outside the LDS communion. Cahoon was released from the office of bishop in 1872, and two years later he was cited for exerting a “very baneful influence among the people of his neighbourhood by teaching false doctrines.”61 In 1876, Cahoon, forty years a Mormon, followed Watt’s pattern by declaring his new faith in a public meeting of the spiritualists.62

The men and women who became involved in Utah spiritualism provided one measure of the movement’s influence. Another indication was the number of itinerant practitioners who, responding to the Utah reformers’ ministry in California, New York, and London, visited Utah during the 1870s and early 1880s. Almost fifty spiritual professionals can be identified by name, although the actual count may have been much higher. These included some of the most celebrated spiritualists of the time: Emma Hardinge Britten, DeRobigne Mortimer Bennett, Hannah F. M. Brown, Warren Chase, William Denton, J. R. Newton, James Martin Peebles, Dr. Joseph Simms, Cora L. V. Tappan-Richmond, and Victoria Claflin Woodhull.

In addition, other outsider spiritualists, less well known, came to Utah and remained for several months and in some cases many years. Several of these played a continuing role in the radical and philosophical phase of the New Movement: M. M. Bane, J. C. Clayton, O. H. Conger, W. H. Holmes, Dr. Holland, and Mr. Slocum, who became one of the chief writers for the Tribune.

None of these itinerants apparently accepted the early Godbeite hope of a Mormonlike system of government for their movement. That proved a New Movement chimera: spiritualism was too diverse, spontaneous, and fractious to accept any regulating authority; most spiritualists did not want any priestly mediators or “standards” standing between themselves and their phenomena. Yet, if the traveling spiritualists failed to accept Godbeite organization, many national and international practitioners left the territory impressed with the results achieved by the Utah branch. Bennett spoke of “hundreds, and possibly thousands” of Mormon apostates, many of whom had become “Liberalists and Spiritualists.”63 Peebles was also impressed. He had found in Utah a “noble self-sacrificing band of independent thinkers,” the more enthusiastic being former Mormons. Their “devotion to the principles of harmonial philosophy ought to inspire, if not shame, many Eastern [spiritualist] organizations.”64

The most extraordinary of the spiritualist visitors may have been Charles Foster, whose presence had apparently loomed over the movement from the beginning. In November 1873 Foster was en route to Australia on one of his extended tours and stopped in Salt Lake City. If Foster had served as Harrison’s and Godbe’s medium in New York five years earlier, neither of the reformers took the occasion to announce it, though Harrison did make Foster the subject of one of his lectures. The lecture, titled “Witches, Wizards and Spirit Mediums, versus Prophets and Apostles, or Charles H. Foster, the Medium,” unfortunately was not reported in the Salt Lake City press.65

However, there were hints of a possible Godbeite connection with Foster. The medium was met at the railroad station by an unnamed delegation of “gentlemen who had met with him elsewhere,” said the Tribune. Moreover, Foster seemed unusually well posted on Utah and Mormon matters. “He knows as much about our prominent men and our political condition as many who have lived months amongst us,” marveled another Tribune report. Perhaps most revealing, while in Salt Lake City, Foster replicated one of the central features of Godbe’s and Harrison’s New York City experience. “No man but Heber C. Kimball could have talked as Mr. Foster did,” claimed one astonished individual after observing Foster in trance produce the voice and mannerisms of Kimball. Obviously, Kimball’s spirit was a part of Foster’s repertoire.66

The Tribune advertised the New York medium as an antidote to LDS spiritual pretension. “The great Foster has come amongst us,” the paper boasted, “to show the Latter-day Saints that some things can be done as well as others; that revelations from above are made to other people than the Utah Prophet.” Later the paper trumpeted the visitor’s successes: Foster read personal character at a glance. He sensed visitors’ thoughts. He received spirit messages on his arm. Indeed, he gave more revelations in “ten minutes” than Brigham Young had issued in twenty-five years. The newspaper claimed that nine out of ten Utahns left Foster’s rooms at the Walker House satisfied.67

Even the Salt Lake Herald, usually eager to challenge its journalistic rival, felt the need to admire Foster’s talents. After observing the light-hearted and charismatic Foster, the newspaper found it difficult to call the New York medium a simple fraud. Foster was probably an honest man, said the Herald begrudgingly; he probably used the power of “electro-biology” and “unseen influences” to summon spirits. But the newspaper was less sure of Foster’s message. The spirits that he summoned were not always who they represented themselves to be, the newspaper claimed, and they brought news from the other world that did not seem important. “We do not see anything gained by their communication, except, perhaps, the idea of one being surrounded by his relatives, whom he might otherwise imagine were harping in heaven.” Such was the Herald’s mild counterattack, rumored to have been written by Orson Pratt.68

One man named Myers, after visiting Foster in his salon and apparently being overcome by the reality of spirits and the world beyond, committed suicide. “I’m sure I don’t know why he should have done so,” Foster later said cavalierly; “perhaps he believed in the spirit world.” The matter, said Foster, was “no consequence” to him.69

Notwithstanding this event, Foster’s visit to Salt Lake City was generally described as a success. The traffic to Foster’s hotel room was so great that soon clients made formal appointments. Foster recognized this growing interest by extending his Salt Lake City stay for a few extra days. He had come to Utah, he said, to show Mormons that their leaders were not the only ones who communicated spiritually. By doing this, he hoped to counteract their “pernicious influence.” On other occasions, he was more kind. Seeking common ground with Utahns, he conceded that Joseph Smith was a talented medium—like himself; and if Brigham Young was a “fraud,” at least he had “done as well as he could.” Young was simply “the uninspired successor of an inspired man.”70

By the early 1870s, spiritualism had found a Utah following. To meet the needs of the local and itinerant spiritualists, liberal freethinking centers emerged in Park City, Cottonwood, Jordan, Beaver, Logan, Ogden, Mt. Pleasant, and Salt Lake City; at least the latter four communities had their own assembly halls.71 The Ogden contingent, led by T. J. Stayner, met in Cordon’s Hall, and then, beginning in January 1874, at the new Liberal Hall. The inaugural services, which were reportedly “crowded to excess,” featured Watt as the speaker; afterward, local and traveling spiritualists continued the Ogden ministry.72

The spiritualists in Mt. Pleasant—the heart of LDS Scandinavian country—were also a part of a larger movement. The Tribune, eager to capitalize on LDS dissent, claimed that as many as eight hundred Scandinavian “reformers” were scattered throughout the territory. For a time these dissenters published their own short-lived spiritualist-reform newspaper, the Scandinav.73

The Salt Lake City spiritualists also occasionally met in neighborhood groups. “Prof. W. H. Holmes delivered on Sunday evening last the first of a series of open air lectures, in the garden of Mr. Lloyd, in the Tenth Ward,” proclaimed one notice. Holmes, a fellow of the “Religio-Philosophical Society,” later addressed the “East End Association of Salt Lake City Spiritualists.”74 But most of the Salt Lake City spiritualist activity was located at the Liberal Institute, where the public ministry of Utah reform was centered and where the important events of the spiritualists’ liberal program were acted out. It has a story of its own.