Our Nig

by Harriet E. Wilson

  And now I would say, I hope those who call themselves friends of our dark-skinned brethren, will lend a helping hand, and assist our sister, not in giving, but in buying a book; the expense is trifling, and the reward of doing good is great. Our duty is to our fellow-beings, and when we let an opportunity pass, we know not what we lose. Therefore we should do with all our might what our hands find to do; and remember the words of Him who went about doing good, that inasmuch as ye have done a good deed to one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it to me; and even a cup of water is not forgotten. Therefore, let us work while the day lasts, and we shall in no wise lose our reward.

  MARGARETTA THORN.

  MILFORD, JULY 20th, 1859.

  Feeling a deep interest in the welfare of the writer of this book, and hoping that its circulation will be extensive, I wish to say a few words in her behalf. I have been acquainted with her for several years, and have always found her worthy the esteem of all friends of humanity; one whose soul is alive to the work to which she puts her hand. Although her complexion is a little darker than my own, I esteem it a privilege to associate with her, and assist her whenever an opportunity presents itself. It is with this motive that I write these few lines, knowing this book must be interesting to all who have any knowledge of the writer’s character, or wish to have. I hope no one will refuse to aid her in her work, as she is worthy the sympathy of all Christians, and those who have a spark of humanity in their breasts.

  Thinking it unnecessary for me to write a long epistle, I will close by bidding her God speed.

  C. D. S.

  The End of the Facsimile Edition

  APPENDIX 1:

  Harriet Wilson’s Career as a Spiritualist

  This appendix traces Harriet Wilson’s career in spiritualism in Boston after 1867 and explores how it might shed light on her earlier life and the sources of her literary creativity.

  We know that Harriet Wilson arrived in Boston in early 1867. In May the important Boston spiritualist weekly newspaper, the Banner of Light, began to make multiple references to her, the first of these noting a speaking appointment in Chelsea, Massachusetts, on May 18, 1867. Not long afterward, in June, the Banner recounted her contribution to a spiritualist convention. Describing her as “the earnest and eloquent colored trance medium,” it detailed how “The President [of the Convention], on taking the Chair, called upon Mrs Wilson, the colored speaker, to occupy the platform.… She improved the opportunity, or rather the intelligence controlling her, by delivering a fluent speech in favour of labor reform and the education of children in the doctrines of spiritualism.”1 In this account, the spirit that speaks through Wilson advocates both labor reform and educating children in spiritualist precepts—the first being a cause dear to Wilson, after her experiences with the Haywards, the second even dearer to her spiritualist audience’s hearts.2 Wilson in her various careers always had to keep one eye on what her market wanted.

  The Banner of Light is an important source for understanding Wilson’s spiritualist career over several decades. She is listed in the June 29, 1867, issue as living in “East Cambridge, Mass., for the present” (she soon moved to Boston). At the end of August, she was “excit[ing] thrilling interest” at a “Great Spiritualist Camp Meeting at Pierpont Grove” by making an “eloquent appeal for the recognition of the capacities of her race, the sentiment and philosophy of progress, under the figure of a moving camp tenting each night ‘a day’s march nearer home.’ ” By October 19, the Banner provides a quite long list of lecturing appointments that Wilson holds: “Mrs. Hattie E. Wilson (colored), trance speaker, will lecture in Lynn, Mass.… Hartford, Conn.… Stoneham, Mass.… [and] Stoughton.”3

  That this list includes Lynn, Massachusetts, for a long time the seat of the Hutchinson Family Singers, suggests the family may possibly have been sponsors of Wilson’s move to Cambridge. (The Hutchinsons were related by marriage to the Haywards, for whom Wilson had been a servant in Milford.) It is, however, perhaps more important to note that on numerous occasions in these early days Wilson’s name was accompanied by that of the prominent spiritualist C. Fannie Allyn, which suggests a close association between the two, making her Wilson’s most likely sponsor. Allyn had spoken in both Milford and Worcester in the mid-1860s. Also, the Banner’s first record of Wilson notes that she had arranged to speak in Chelsea at a “Spiritualist Meeting” on three dates, “June 2, June 9 and June 26,” 1867, and in “Charlestown, May 19 and 26,” when, only a few weeks previously, it had also noted that “Mrs. C. Fannie Allyn” would be speaking in Chelsea (on March 17, 24, and 31) and in Charlestown “during April.” Soon after that, when reannouncing Wilson’s engagement to speak in Chelsea, the Banner also notes that Allyn is returning there: “Meeting and Lyceums … Chelsea … Mrs H. E. Wilson speaks for us the first three Sundays in June and Mrs. C. Fannie Allyn the last two.”4 Similarly, when Wilson made her address at Pierpont Grove in August 1867, Allyn was also a speaker. All this suggests that Allyn may have been recommending Wilson to her patrons.

  Certainly, during the late 1860s, Wilson begins to be regularly listed in the Banner’s directory of spiritualist speakers (often with details of speaking engagements) and also (less often) in the “Movements of Lecturers and Mediums.” Her rising profile in spiritualist circles was confirmed in January 1868 by her election at the “Third Annual Convention of the Massachusetts Spiritual Association” to the MSA’s “Finance Committee” to look after “the monetary matters of the Convention.”5 This report also identifies her as volunteering to lecture “gratuitously” for the association. On May 30, 1868, the Banner lists her attendance at an executive committee meeting of the MSA. The MSA was by its own description a “liberal Christian” organization.6 Its espousal of the abolition of slavery worldwide, successful reconstruction in the South, women’s rights, temperance, and abstinence from tobacco would certainly have appealed to Wilson, while reminding us how constructive and socially engaged the spiritualist movement could be at its best.7

  In August 1868 she attended a “Spiritual Camp Meeting at Cape Cod,” undoubtedly one of the pinnacles in her career as a spiritualist platform speaker. At this camp meeting she spoke three times. First she addressed the theme “Who and what is God, and in whom and how are His powers and goodness most manifest?” The Banner describes this lecture as “spirited and contain[ing] many good points” and as being delivered “through” her while in a trance. The second, addressed to an audience of “twenty-five hundred,” considered the “practical uses of spiritualism,” while the last, a “short and pithy” speech, took as its subject “the general theme of spiritualism, its teachings and lessons, and especially … the power of love to conquer and subdue all the evil passions of the world.”8 During this Cape Cod gathering, Wilson shared the stage with such prominent Boston spiritualists as Dr. H. B. Storer and (again, significantly) C. Fannie Allyn. She then traveled on to Maine to keep speaking appointments there, and from Maine sent a letter to the Banner, published on October 10, 1868, offering a glowing tribute to the spiritualist enterprise and praising in particular the Cape Cod meeting: “Mrs. Hattie Wilson, writing from Garland, Maine … says: ‘I have been a labourer in the spiritual ranks for seven years, and if their platform is known to me, it is no bond, no sect, no creed, no dogma and no caste. Never have I seen it so practically illustrated, either in public or private, as at the Cape Cod Meeting. May the Gods of Knowledge and Wisdom protect that spirit gained until another year, when the principles that inspired us may have become eighteen carats more refined, spiritually’ ”9

  Wilson’s sentiments again shed light—in her own words—on why spiritualism was such a powerful progressive and liberal influence. In particular it provided some African Americans and a substantial number of women with a platform, making this movement an important sociocultural phenomenon, disturbing conventional gender and ethnic hierarchies.10 Notice how Wilson slips in an oblique reminder about the shortcomings of the Christianity she had encount
ered in Milford, by way of her reference to “the Gods of Knowledge and Wisdom” (our italics)—hearkening back, as this does, to the way that “a devout Christian exterior” masked the unsteadiness of Frado’s embrace of institutionalized religion and her preference for “the value of useful books,” apparently rather than the Bible, in Our Nig (this page). By making such an open remark, pluralizing the word “Gods,” Wilson is also showing confidence that the Banner will not object to such an unconventional sentiment. She also suggests that the Cape Cod spiritualist camp offered her much greater tolerance than that which she had previously encountered. In these ways spiritualist circles indeed offered her “no sect, no creed, no dogma and no caste.” Spiritualists also proudly pointed to their movement’s nonelite origins, depicting it as popular, even populist: “Modern Spiritualism began its rich unfolding amongst the common people instead of starting among the leaders of the Orthodox Churches.”11 Even if this claim is not entirely accurate—spiritualism being largely a white middle-class preserve—such sentiments must have appealed to Wilson.

  Wilson’s embrace of spiritualism was wholehearted enough for the Banner to praise her as a “valued friend” when promoting her forthcoming tour: “We learn that our valued friend, Mrs. Hattie E. Wilson, the colored medium, will probably visit Maine and the West during the Summer. She has been constantly and successfully engaged the past year in the vicinity as a healing medium and trance speaker and now has a host of friends. We cordially commend her to the hospitality of the spiritual brotherhood everywhere.”12 Wilson, however, does not seem to have traveled on west; instead, from October 1868 through the end of the year, Maine remained the location given for her in the Banner until she reappears in Boston.

  After her return to Boston, Wilson continued for a short while to be in some demand, speaking, for example, to the Boston Christian Spiritualists on March 7 and 14, 1869. The source of her success was, as one Banner correspondent noted, her ability to give “utterance to many great truths of Spiritualism in a manner that reached the comprehension at once … her lecture was superior to the efforts of the reverend-divines in that place.”13 Wilson’s facility with language, as displayed in Our Nig, helped her greatly in her spiritualist activities, and she flourished because of her much praised oratorical skills.

  The following year Wilson addressed the “Massachusetts Spiritual Convention at Haverhill … October 22 and 23.” Others appearing on this stage included the well-known Massachusetts spiritualists Dr. H. B. Storer and Isaiah C. Ray. At this event, Wilson again spoke three times. On the first occasion she merely became “entranced” and “spoke briefly.” The next two contributions, however, were more substantial. Her second was, according to the Banner, a “deeply affecting” address, winning “implicit confidence in its truth, by the simple natural manner in which all its details were presented.” The third and final contribution demonstrates another sign of her growing prominence by the way it was reported in the Banner of Light—a report that (in typical Banner fashion) slides into direct paraphrase:

  Mrs. Hattie Robinson [Wilson] followed in deeply interesting remarks, based upon her experience as a medium, affirming the prominence of the relations between parents and children, although death might apparently divide them. Invisible to you, fathers and mothers, are the children, given to you to educate, and your influence affects them spiritually, after they have gone out of your sight, as truly as though they had remained upon the earth. You may be angels to them as well as they to you. If your spiritualist eyes could be opened, as mine frequently are, you would know this to be true. In our homes and in our midst are our children, our parents, our friends, and we mutually act upon each other.14

  These are, on the one hand, conventional enough sentiments, rooted in mainstream spiritualist tenets. However, in Wilson’s words perhaps also reside traces of the sadness she felt about the loss of her father (accepting Our Nig’s account of Frado’s father’s death as autobiographically accurate) and, perhaps more emphatically, regret about the fate of her child, who was abandoned for so many years by necessity in Milford before dying prematurely. This is one way of understanding how she became engaged with spiritualism. In 1868 she claimed to have been “a labourer in the spiritual ranks for seven years”15 (Banner of Light, XXIV, no. 4 [October 10, 1868]: 4), which dates her initial involvement to circa 1861—some time after Our Nig’s publication but not that long after her son’s death. It also underlines how spiritualism offered consolation to the bereaved and why it proved so popular in postbellum America. Spiritualism’s swift spread to all quarters of New England at this time can be seen as offering solace to the many soldiers’ families in mourning for their dead, many of whose bodies were never recovered from the battlefields.16

  After this Haverhill event, Wilson faded from prominence as a platform speaker. Her career, however, can still be traced in the Banner, for she instead gradually developed a significant role in the Boston spiritualist “lyceums” (as the Sunday schools intended for the children of spiritualists and fellow travelers were called). This reorientation may have started as early as July 1870, with an address at the Boston Mercantile Hall Lyceum. The transition from touring speaker to Boston lyceum stalwart then continues by way of a relatively long-lasting involvement with the spiritualist Boylston Street Association at Temple Hall (her first sustained involvement fixed with just one spiritualist organization). At first, she “occupie[s] the platform” in September 1871, presumably as just another touring speaker, to the “general acceptance of those attending.” Shortly after this, however, following the departure of the regular, resident Temple Hall trance speaker, Mrs. Bowditch, Wilson becomes something like her replacement, and for the next twelve months or so she is mentioned as addressing the Temple Hall meetings with some regularity:17 “The meetings at Temple Hall still continue with unabated interest.… Mrs. Hattie Wilson gives general satisfaction.”18 However, within eighteen months Wilson is clearly no longer the resident medium, being only one among several speakers, and the following week she is instead listed as elected to be one of the “Leaders” to a group of pupils attending the Temple Hall Association’s “Independent Children’s Progressive Lyceum.” An important transition has been completed. Wilson has switched from being a touring platform speaker to displaying a commitment to Boston spiritualist children’s education. Tellingly, in this same issue of the Banner she is also mentioned as speaking at the wedding of the Children’s Lyceum “conductor” (as lyceum heads were called) at Boston’s Eliot Hall;19 henceforth the Banner’s mentions of Wilson revolve almost exclusively around her involvement in the Boston children’s lyceum movement.

  Wilson remained with the Temple Hall lyceum only for a short time, soon transferring her labors instead to the “Children’s Progressive Lyceum and Library Association No. 1,” to which she was elected as a “Supplementary Leader” at a meeting on September 2, 1873.20 It is not clear why she made this move from Temple Hall. However, it worked out well for her because this lyceum was poised to become the most energetic and prominent of the spiritualist lyceums in Boston. Perhaps Wilson saw how things were developing; perhaps, less voluntarily, she had exhausted her opportunities at Temple Hall, after losing her place as its leading trance medium.21

  Wilson in the Spiritualist Lyceum Movement

  The “Children’s Progressive Lyceum No. 1,” as it was commonly called, had been formed “seven or eight years” earlier (in Boston’s Mercantile Hall, circa 1865), making it one of the earliest “progressive lyceums” to be founded after the movement began in 1864.22 It was generally regarded as Boston’s “Mother Lyceum.”23 Wilson was for some time after September 1873 regularly named in the Banner as one of this lyceum’s “group leaders.” For example, the September 12, 1874, issue noted how “Mrs. Hattie Wilson” was elected as the leader of the “Lake” group in the lyceum. Group leaders were seen as crucial to a lyceum’s success: “The most important position in this school is that of the Leaders of the Groups.… The leaders must
interest the children, and the children should work in unison with them.”24 Wilson’s election as a leader is a sure sign of her integration into the Children’s Progressive Lyceum No. 1. She had networked hard to secure this position: for example, on February 13, 1874, she held a gathering that included her new lyceum’s officers in her residence at 46 Carver Street, “in honor of her spirit father … after which the company adjourned to John A. Andrew Hall,” where Dr. H. B. Storer and others “offered” some “remarks appropriate to the occasion,” with “the hostess (entranced) making due reply.” She participated in a series of such gatherings, the like of which were mentioned with some frequency in the Banner in the coming years.25 Luther Colby, the Banner of Light’s editor, was deeply committed to the lyceum movement and, being familiar with Wilson’s work, was in a position to advance her lyceum career and monitor its progress in the pages of the Banner.

  By 1873 the Children’s Progressive Lyceum No. 1’s importance had grown so much that it organized Boston’s most significant anniversary celebrations for the “Advent Day of Modern Spiritualism,” commemorating the 1848 “Rochester rappings,” as they are commonly called, heard through the “mediumship” of two sisters, Kate and Margaret Fox, at Hydesville, New York.26 The Banner covered the “Twenty-Sixth Anniversary” events held at the John A. Andrew Hall and “at New Fraternity and the Parker Memorial,” which included not only speeches by prominent Boston spiritualists, including Lizzie Doten, I. P. Greenleaf, and Dr. H. B. Storer, but also, during the second, children’s day, a “speech … to the children” by Hattie E. Wilson (among others). Wilson at this time spoke in some other Boston venues as well, including Nassau Hall on July 19, 1874, and she made a “vigorous and entertaining” contribution, “under direct spirit control,” at a camp meeting at Silver Lake sponsored by the Lyceum No. 1.27