Mrs. Eddy in Wilmington, North Carolina— Redux

Mrs. Eddy told interviewer Henry Robinson about 1894 that when she lived in the South she published anti-slavery articles that caused threatening locals to want to find who would write such a thing. She later made similar comments to others. It is routinely stated by historians that such articles never appeared, and it is certainly true that no record of any such articles has been found. What has been completely ignored in this discussion is the critical point that Mrs. Eddy wrote somewhat extensively and exclusively for the Wilmington Messenger, a short-lived newspaper which is not extant today, nor was it extant when the early Christian Scientists ca. 1904 spent so much time researching Mrs. Eddy’s history in Charleston and Wilmington. Thus, no biographer of Mrs. Eddy has ever been able to research that paper for 1844 when Mrs. Eddy was there. (While the history of Mrs. Eddy in Wilmington prepared by Elizabeth Earl Jones—which includes the work of many other early Christian Scientists in the area about 1904 and later—mentions the Messenger a few times, a close reading shows conclusively that the source was simply clippings of her poems that Mrs. Eddy had pasted into her scrapbook. Jones wrote in her historical work, “Mrs. Eddy in North Carolina” (May 1938), a copy of which is now in the New Hanover County Library in Wilmington, North Carolina, p. 48, lamenting the fact that only the Wilmington Chronicle had survived for her and other researchers to examine and the Messenger was no longer extant.)

Historian Alan D. Watson gave a brief history of that newspaper, “Sometime in the early 1840s a paper titled the Messenger appeared to accompany the Chronicle. It was sold in 1844 to David Fulton and Alfred J. Price, who founded the Wilmington Journal, . . .” (See Watson’s book, Wilmington, North Carolina to 1861. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., [ca. 2003], p. 170.)  The Messenger was a “Democratic sheet” as Watson called it (which matched the political leanings of the Glovers and Bakers) while the Chronicle avidly supported the Whigs. About all that we know today of that newspaper comes from a few poems that Mrs. Eddy preserved that were written for or published in the Messenger (as so stated on the clipping), and occasional comments that appeared in the arch-rival, cross-town Chronicle.

Robert Peel—who missed the fact that early researchers did not have access to a file of the Messenger—mistakenly wrote in Discovery, p. 322: “An exhaustive search of the Charleston and Wilmington newspapers has not brought any such [anti-slavery] articles to light. Southern newspapers were definitely not publishing anti-slavery views in those days.” While Peel’s assumption was understandable (and his view that Southern newspapers were not publishing abolitionist articles in those days matched the Bates-Dittemore coverage of the issue), it is an assumption that needs to be examined more closely, for the Peel and Bates-Dittemore comments that Southern papers were not printing anti-slavery views in the antebellum days appears to be too facile of a determination.

Back on December 13, 1843, the Chronicle, for example, printed this statement of alarm regarding a letter from twelve Rhode Island citizens:

“The leader of the small band of Abolitionists in Rhode Island was Thomas W. Dorr, he having been their candidate for Governor and member of Congress, and also a Vice President of the American Anti-Slavery Society. The People refused to elect him by triumphant majorities and would give no countenance to that mover of SEDITION, who now stands charged with TREASON against his native state. He however appears to have excited the special sympathies and admiration of the Editor of the ‘Wilmington Messenger,’ who recently extolled him as an ‘individual espousing the cause of LIBERTY.’. . .”

While the Dorr Revolution was not directly about abolition but rather about Rhode Island enfranchisement laws (which included his personal desire to allow black citizens to vote even if political expediency forced him to drop that plank), Thomas Dorr was a nationally noted anti-slavery advocate. That the editor of the Messenger would extol a noted anti-slavery advocate as a proponent of liberty—even if the editor was only focusing on the populist enfranchisement objective of the Dorr Rebellion—suggests the editor of the Messenger might have been more broadminded and less subject to single-issue bias than has been presumed by later historians.

Even the Chronicle, though in no way anti-slavery, was not against printing the anti-slavery views of John Quincy Adams in its issue of December 20, 1843. Adams at that time opposed a specific motion to propose abolition at the same time that Congress, of which he was a member, was wrestling with the question of what to do with the annexation of Texas and the question of slavery in the District of Columbia. However, as reported by the Chronicle, Adams made his personal views and goals known: “On the subject of Abolition, Abolition societies, Anti-slavery societies, or the Liberty Party:— I have never been a member of either of them. But in opposition to slavery I go as far as any of these; my sentiments, I believe, very nearly accord with theirs. That slavery will be abolished in this country, and throughout the world, I firmly believe. Whether it shall be done peaceably or by blood, God only knows, but that that it shall be accomplished I have not a doubt, but by whatever way, I say let it come.” Adams then said that while he did not want to impose abolition on the District of Columbia for constitutional reason, he fully expected the citizens to vote to abolish it.

While it might be shown that the Messenger was not afraid to take a controversial stand, does that mean that it might have accepted anti-slavery messages from Eddy, as she later alleged? We cannot know for certain. Mrs. Eddy later told of sending in such messages using a nom de plume. The Chronicle on May 1, 1844, published this intriguing slap at its rival regarding one of that rival’s pseudonymous contributors:

“The last communication of Laicus, in the Messenger, convinces us of what we before suspected, that he is an impertinent, mischief-making intermeddler, without the countenance of those for whom he pretends so much zeal. We therefore spurn alike his arguments and his counsel.—We have no other answer for him.”

Mrs. Eddy claimed to have published pseudonymous anti-slavery pieces that turned the local population against her. Could she be the “impertinent, mischief-making intermeddler” that aroused the Chronicle’s ire? Mrs. Eddy claimed that her articles were considered to be from an outsider (a “Yankee”) on behalf of the slaves. It is at least intriguing that Laicus also appears to have been viewed as in intermeddler, which suggests an outsider attempting to meddle in the affairs of the locals. Also Laicus was advocating something on behalf of others “for whom he pretends so much zeal.”

If Mrs. Eddy was not Laicus, was she by chance a different correspondent who wrote under a nom de plume? Without an extant file of the Messenger, we obviously cannot know. But we can say, based on the above, that it is not possible to say that all of the Wilmington papers have been searched, or even to state that the Messenger would have automatically refused such articles if they were offered to it. We do not know what Laicus specifically was writing about—and the phrase “last communication of Laicus” strongly suggests that he|she had more than one communication published in the Messenger. Other than attacking slavery, it might be argued that there were probably few other topics that would have drawn forth such a notice and phrase from the Chronicle other than perhaps a sharp-tongued attack of the Chronicle itself (which seems unlikely given the context) or of the Chronicle’s much-favored Whiggery, which is a possibility but sharp political comments would not likely have earned the term “mischief-making intermeddler.”

The above will appear in my book on the Quimby debate and the histories of Quimby and Mrs. Eddy, including a discussion of Mrs. Eddy's comments about having freed her husband's slaves (when historical evidence suggests that the George Glover, at least at the end, did not own slaves). The above issue about writing anti-slavery articles presupposes that Mrs. Eddy had anti-slavery|abolitionist views in 1844, while she supported political candidates who did not support the abolitionists. All of this I believe needs a fresh look, and I will be discussing that at some length in my book, which I hope to publish in 2012.

 

Comments

[Tim Leech]

Excellent post. Some very good sleuthing work evident here. There is so much about Mrs. Eddy's early life that we just haven't yet located good evidence for one way or another. As more an more historical material becomes available on-line who knows what might crop up.

[Craig Beardsley]

Thanks so much for the excerpt and a promise of fine work to come. A quick look at sources that readily come to mind--and I can only find one title from Robinson (Biographical Sketch) and one from Jones (Language of Color)--leads me to again ask if you'll share your research work with us. I suppose the Jones findings come from a local source in the Wilmington area and the Robinson from New Hampshire, perhaps the Historical Society or State Library in Concord?

[Keith]

Thanks for the comments. The E.E. Jones document exists in a couple of versions. There is a version at the New Hanover County Library in Wilmington. There is also a version that exists at the Mary Baker Eddy Library.

At the New Hampshire Historical Society is a version of the interview with the Henry Robinson. It is typewritten with Mrs. Eddy's handwriting on it. Based on the internal comments in the interview, I would date it at 1894.

[Keith]

Hello, all. Additional research in the microfilm of the early North Carolina newspapers yielded a better copy of the article in the Chronicle about the correspondent to the Messenger. The actual pseudonym was "Laicus." I have made that change above so that now it reads correctly. In the newspapers I also discovered some references to what appear to be George Glover's commercial vessels traveling to Wilmington and then on to CUBA ( and maybe Haiti) in January 1844, which is earlier than is normally suspected. A review of the Chronicle and later cross town Journal for periods before and after Mrs. Eddy was in the area (including a newspaper in Fayetteville) did not turn up any other references to Laicus.