Like most American families in the 1840s and 50s, the Lincolns and the Booths practiced a religion that also embraced aspects of Spiritualism. By using this framework for the biographical history, Alford explores the societal turmoil that allowed Lincoln to become president and John Wilkes Booth to become an assassin.
You heap the logs and try to fill / The little room with words and cheer, / But silent feet are on the hill, / Across the window veiled eyes peer. ~ Hortense King Flexner
The noble dead, the Lost Generation as Gertrude Stein called them. An entire swath of the population was killed in WWI, followed by the deadly Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1918. Death was everywhere. And in the midst of all the mourning, some wise people sought hope. Theosophists and Spiritualists sought to prove that there was merely a thin veil between this world and the next, and those who were willing to listen could speak to the spirits from beyond.
When the 11-year-old Willie Lincoln died in the White House in February of 1862, his parents were inconsolable. Lincoln did no official work for three weeks — a president in the midst of a civil war. Mary was deemed by some to have gone insane. While the president slowly began to accept that his son…
I am fascinated by tales of the ocean, mysteries of the sea (I even have an interest in cryptozoology). The ocean is just so vast and for centuries uncharted. It was the greatest adventure anyone could embark upon. But even with maps and coordinates and best laid plans, ships disappear. What’s significant about the Mary…