The Spirits of ’76: Antislavery Seances and the Legacy of the American Revolution

During the first half of the nineteenth century, Americans began to worry that their country was losing its way. As Revolutionary War heroes grew older and died, politicians and popular writers urged the public to rekindle the “Spirit of ’76”: that mix of liberty-loving, tyranny-hating, and plucky patriotism that catalyzed the War for Independence. Most Americans viewed this mandate metaphorically. Abolitionists took it literally. Between the 1840s and 1860s, they held regular seances to channel the “Founding Fathers.” These communications prompted a discovery: the nation’s most illustrious leaders had become abolitionists in the afterlife. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and more—all renounced their views on slavery and embarked upon a post-mortem project of spiritual regeneration. Even notorious enslavers like Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun realized the error of their ways. They were now reaching out as representatives of a “Spiritual Congress” convened to help activists fulfil the American Revolution’s egalitarian promise. Although scholarship on abolitionism has emphasized the importance of religion, most histories highlight the contributions of Quakers and Unitarians, Protestant “Perfectionists,” or denominations like the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. Fewer works focus on Spiritualism: a theology premised on the notion that the living could communicate with the dead. Yet this religion was popular in progressive circles, attracting prominent abolitionists and women’s rights activists. When Spiritualism surged in the 1850s, abolitionists felt haunted by the specter of slavery in the nation’s legal and political system. But seances empowered them to non-consensually convert dead politicians into post-mortem mouthpieces of abolition. If their embrace of Spiritualism reveals the lack of power they felt in the earthly realm, it also demonstrates their skill at coopting the American Revolution’s legacy—and their faith that even the most brutal enslavers might become reforming spirits.