Although the eminent nineteenth-century public figure John Edmonds communicated extensively with family and friends, knowledge-seeking dominated his documented communication with the dead. John’s brother Francis died on February 7, 1863. John claimed to have first established communication with Francis’ spirit on April 1, 1863. The communications medium was Mrs. Hayden and raps on a table. John published a transcript of the communication because he thought it provided useful knowledge about life beyond the grave. John described the start of communication thus:

Very soon the raps came on the table, rapid, distinct, and cheerful.
Mrs. H. asked the spirit to give his name.
It was spelled out, “Francis Edmonds.”
I said there was a middle letter.
It rapped out “W.”

One might have expected from John exclamations of joy at the first indication of communication with his dead brother. But John spoke with lawyerly precision to confirm the identity of the witness. John continued in this manner:

I asked who was with him?
He rapped out, “Sarah” (my wife), “Samuel” (my father), “John” (my brother), “Lydia” (my mother).

John now understood himself to be communicating with five dead members of his immediate family. John’s next words were a question regarding the phenomenology of dying:

I asked him if, when dying, he was conscious he was going?

After a two more exchanges concerning the phenomenological details of dying, Francis, unprompted by a “how are you?,” declared that he was “much happier than I can express.” Francis then immediately apologized for opposing John’s evidence concerning spiritual communication:

As you are aware I was always opposing you in this theory {spiritualism}, and now in all due honor to you, I feel it no more than duty to return and tell you that I was terribly mistaken, brother, while you were and are correct; and I crave your forgiveness, if I might unwittingly or though ignorance have opposed you, so as to have made myself disagreeable to you or your, and which I sincerely acknowledge to be wilful stubbornness on my part, fighting against well-authenticated facts.^

This apology and request for forgiveness are neither common substance nor in typical style of ordinary communication with family members. That John would publish this text indicates his concern for knowledge.

Edmonds documented relatively little communication with dead friends and family. Edmonds’ first published communication with the dead appeared in early 1852 in the spiritualist journal The Shekinah. Edmonds stated in that publication that he communicated with several dead family members:

I recognized my father, my mother, my children, and my brother and sister, some of whom had been thirty years in the Spirit-World.^

Edmonds, however, sparsely documented his communication with family. He seemed reluctant to even print his wife’s name: he usually referred to her in his spiritual transcripts only as “S–”. In this same article, Edmonds more extensively documented his communication with authoritative figures: William Penn, Isaac Newton, Emanuel Swedenborg, and Benjamin Franklin. Edmonds’ weightiest publication, Spiritualism, included a record of Edmonds’ spiritual communication from April 3 to August 28, 1853. That book primarily documented communication with Swedenborg and Bacon. Edmonds noted that he omitted records of spiritual communication that were not “of general interest.”^ Edmonds seems to have considered ordinary communication with dead family and friends not to be of general interest. But that is the type of spiritual communication that historically has been the most popular.

Edmonds argued that spiritual communication served the public interest as a source of knowledge. He asserted that knowledge from such communication, to the extent it could be developed, promoted private and public goods:

Distorted sometimes by the imperfection of the mediums through which the intercourse comes, and sometimes perverted by the passions of those who receive it, yet, carefully considered and patiently studied until understood, I can safely assert, after nearly nine years’ earnest attention to the subject, that there is nothing in it that does not directly tend to the most exalted private worth and public virtue.

For those who did not see any such development, Edmonds counseled patience:

its progress is slow; not from want of power to communicate, but from want of capacity to comprehend.^

Edmonds was aware of hostility to spiritual communication, but he considered the knowledge that it provided to have “immense consequences”:

I am fully aware of the strong prejudice there is in the public mind against spiritualism in all its aspects. …

But having imbibed my belief, after a most careful and painstaking examination of the whole subject in all its bearings – having satisfied alike my conscience and my judgment that I had found in it a religion fraught with immense consequences to mankind, I felt that I ought not to, that I could not, withhold the expression of my views frankly and fearlessly.^

As interests in spiritualism rapidly grew, Edmonds recognized media frauds and abuses, but never doubted that spiritualism offers the world “glorious truth”:

oh! amid what discouragements! With the subject so dear to me, tainted with man’s folly and fraud; destined to see fools run mad with it, and rogues perverting it to nefarious purposes; meeting in its daily walks, (owing to the sad imperfection of the instrumentalities used) much that was calculated to discourage and dishearten; and beholding how the world for whom this glorious truth comes, turns from it and reviles it, I have never for one moment, faltered from that hour in my belief.^

Edmonds did not specify systematically spiritualism’s distinctive truths and consequences. What these were was a matter of intense but unstructured controversy. To demonstrate the value of spiritualism as a source of knowledge, Edmonds published new texts from dead authorities and made ad hoc claims to knowledge. What made Edmonds spiritualism extraordinary was these claims to such knowledge.

John Edmonds, who served as a judge on New York State’s highest court of law, considered punishment policy from a spiritualist perspective. In a public lecture given in 1860, Edmonds criticized a text from Washington Irving’s Sketchbook that examined grief by describing grave decorations.^ Edmonds considered this text to illustrate “popular theology.” Edmonds himself favored a more direct approach to examining the effects of a death sentence:

When himself administering the government, and before he had received the light of spiritualism, the plea of death as a punishment appeared to him absurd. How could we know that death would be the ultimate punishment? Since his reception of the light of spiritualism, he had received confirmation of his thoughts. He condemned nearly a score of persons to death in the course of his judicial career, and he had been visited by two who were executed in pursuance of that sentence. He had learned, to his satisfaction, at least what was the effect of the penalty of death.

Edmonds reported that one of the spirits of the executed had come to him “full of hatred and revenge.” Edmonds told the spirit, “You suffered in consequence of the crime that you had committed, but the spirit replied, “No matter. I was not prepared to leave life – I enjoyed it, and I hate you.” In contrast, the other spirit volunteered that he had in life acquired bad habits, fallen into temptation, and killed a man. That spirit thanked Edmonds:

You have carried me beyond the reach of temptation by the execution that you condemned me to. You improved my condition. I thank you for taking my life.^

Edmonds argued that “governments and priests” had fostered fear of death as “an instrument of power” and “an instrument of mental subjugation.” Edmonds favored humane, reformative imprisonment over the death penalty.^ Spiritual communication provided Edmonds with knowledge he considered useful for rational, consequential analysis of punishment practices.

In 1869, the mayor of New York City, a prominent figure in the Tweed Ring, arranged to have William H. Mumler charged with two felonies and a misdemeanor for selling a dozen “spirit photographs” for $10. Eminent jurist John Edmonds testified for the defense about spirits. Mumler or his supporters seem to have arranged to have a spirit photograph of Edmonds taken in order to get Edmonds involved in the case.

Edmonds testified carefully about communication with spirits. He was cautious in expressing a definite opinion about spirit photographs:

we spiritualists reason that these pictures are spirit pictures, but we do not know it; I am myself not yet ready to pronounce a judgment on the matter; I believe that in time its truth or falsity will be fully demonstrated, as spiritual intercourse becomes more apparent.^

Edmonds, however, testified forthrightly about his experience only a few days earlier:

I was in a court in Brooklyn, when a suit against a life assurance company for the amount claimed to be due on a certain policy was being heard. Looking toward that part of the court-room occupied by the jury, I saw the spirit of the man whose death was the basis of the suit. The spirit told me the circumstances connected with the death; said that the suit was groundless, that the claimant was not entitled to recover from the Company, and said that he (the man whose spirit was speaking) had committed suicide under certain circumstances; I drew a diagram of the place at which his death occurred, and on showing it to the counsel, was told that it was exact in every particular.

I had never seen the place nor the man, nor had I ever heard his name until I entered that Court-room

The prosecution suggested that Edmonds experienced hallucinations, as, it added, did other intelligent and accomplished persons, such as Ben Jonson, Byron, Cellini, Castlereagh, Goethe, and Cowper.^ The prosecution proposed to call as a witness a physician from the Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island to testify the Edmonds was suffering from hallucinations that lead to insanity. The judged responded, “I would suggest not to do it. …I would not like to hear such a witness upon the stand.”^

The closing arguments considered the reasonableness of seeing spirits. The defense argued that seeing spirits was not incredible or unusual:

Spiritualists found their belief on the Bible. Throughout that book we find mention of spirits. Balaam and his ass furnish {a} familiar instance, and counsel thought that the people of these times were possessed of fully as much intelligence as Balaam’s ass, which saw a spirit.^

The prosecution described as hallucinations the spirits that Edmonds and another witness testified to having seen. The prosecution noted, “Let me not be misunderstood. I do not assert that they {Edmonds and other defense witnesses} are insane.” The prosecution described Edmonds thus:

A gentleman who has adorned the Bench, ever kind and obliging to his juniors at the Bar, and who is, perhaps, second to no one in the city of New York as an able jurist, certainly not surpassed by any as a criminal lawyer^

While showing due respect to Edmonds, the prosecution responded sharply to the defense’s invocation of Balaam’s ass:

Equally unfortunate is his {the defense attorney’s} allusion to the case of Balaam’s ass, for he seems to concede that an ass would be more likely than an ordinary man to perceive a spirit, and I concur with him in this view. This present case proves that there are more asses existing at the present day than there were in the days of Balaam.^

Being an ass, was not, of course, the charge at issue in this case.

The judge’s decision turned out to be judicious. The judge prefaced his decision by noting “however I may be morally convinced there may have been trick and deception practiced by the prisoner.”^ Or perhaps the judge said, “however I am morally convinced that there may be fraud and deception practiced by the prisoner.”^ Whatever the judge actually said, he undoubtedly dismissed the charges against Mumler.

A reasonable evaluation of the Mumler case should consider its place in the structure, conduct, and performance of public discourse more generally. The Tweed Ring instigated the Mumler case while it was practicing enormous financial fraud at high political levels in New York City. Public reasoning is costly. The Mumler case wasn’t an efficient use of public reason for improving public governance. The Mumler case was an effective way to provide public entertainment. It perhaps also served to distract the public from perceiving Boss Tweed’s large-scale fraud.

The spiritualist communication that John Edmonds and others championed gained extensive popularity in mid-nineteenth century America. According to Edmonds, by 1853 several hundred thousand mediums for spiritual communication served the U.S. He also stated that 10-12 newspapers were devoted primarily to reporting about spiritualism. Moreover, about 100 books, some with circulation exceeding 10,000 copies, provided readers with information about spiritualism.^ By 1860, the number of persons in the U.S. who practiced spiritualism was probably at least four million. The number of spiritualists plausibly amounted to more than one third the number of Christians.

Spiritualism had broad social reach. An elite journal in London about this time lamented the mass market for spiritualist communication:

Among the distinguishing differences of classes, none are more characteristic than their pleasures; but now great and little, rich and poor, learned and ignorant, professional and non-professional, cleric and laic, peer and proletaire, were brought to the same level of enjoyment, — all absorbed in one universal pastime.^

A prominent New York City lawyer recorded in 1855 his astonishment at this development:

What would I have said six years ago to anybody who predicted that before the enlightened nineteenth century was ended hundreds of thousands of people in this country would believe themselves able to communicate daily with the ghosts of their grandfathers? – that ex-judges of the Supreme Court, senators, clergymen, professors of physical sciences, should be lecturing and writing books on the new treasures of all this^

John Edmonds similarly described the social scope of spiritualism:

Besides the undistinguished multitude, there are many men of high standing and talent ranked among them—doctors, lawyers and clergymen in great numbers, a Protestant bishop, the learned and reverend president of a college, judges of our higher courts, members of Congress, foreign embassadors, and ex-members of the National Senate.^

Extensive demand for communication with dead ancestors is not surprising. That new media would seek to serve these demands also is not surprising. The surprising feature of nineteenth-century American spiritualism is that it modeled itself as science and made claims to public knowledge.

Compared to spiritual communication with the dead in mid-nineteenth-century America, spiritual communication at the beginning the twenty-first century has thrived with much less emphasis on claims to public knowledge. The New York Times in the year 2000 reported on a growing use of media:

“Without a doubt, visiting spirit mediums is becoming amazingly popular,” said Cathy Cash Spellman, whose novel, “Bless the Child,” about a spiritually gifted little girl, was made into a film with Kim Basinger that was released over the summer. …

Ms. Spellman attributed the heightened interest in mediums – or spiritists, as they like to call themselves – to a spillover from the growing interest in alternative medicine and Eastern spirituality. “We live in a world where many people have an acupuncturist. understand that there is energy and practice the martial arts,” she said. “People are so much more open-minded about the unseen.”

The article highlighted the appeal of communication with the dead to persons associated with film, publishing, and fashion industries:

“Quite a large number of people in the fashion world are paying visits to people they have lost,” said Nadine Johnson, a New York publicist with clients in fashion and publishing. …

“To hear from people I know,” she added, “mediums are a hotter commodity than the Prada bowling bag.”^

The New York Times article included some skeptical views, but on the whole was sympathetically uncritical. It presented seeking to communicate with the dead as an activity with no more consequences for public welfare than seeking to buy a Prada bowling bag. One insightful media critic noted the communication style of modern media:

today’s spirits — whom John Edward and his fellow mediums supposedly contact — seem to have poor memories and difficulty communicating. For example, in one of his on-air séances (on Larry King Live, June 19, 1998), Edward said: “I feel like there’s a J- or G-sounding name attached to this.” He also perceived “Linda or Lindy or Leslie; who’s this L name?” Again, he got a “Maggie or Margie, or some M-G-sounding name,” and yet again heard from “either Ellen or Helen, or Eleanore-it’s like an Ellen-sounding name.” Gone is the clear-speaking eloquence of yore; the dead now seem to mumble.

In the nineteenth century, leading American spiritualist John Edmonds published extensive, verbatim texts from dead authorities. Modern media show much less representational power:

The spirits also seemingly communicate to Edward et al. as if they were engaging in pantomime. As Edward said of one alleged spirit communicant, in a Dateline {performance}, “He’s pointing to his head; something had to affect the mind or the head, from what he’s showing me.” No longer, apparently, can the dead speak in flowing Victorian sentences, but instead are reduced to gestures, as if playing a game of charades.^

Such communication poses no threat to established interests in knowledge and is perceived to have little consequence for public welfare. It thus attracts scant concern in public deliberation.

In the mid-nineteenth century, John Edmonds’ study of spiritual communication generated intense criticism and personal hostility. Edmonds published his book Spiritualism even though he understood that doing so would cost him renomination to the New York Supreme Court. He stated:

I was, week before last, …requested to withhold publication of my book, and was assured that if I would do so, my nomination and election would be secured. I declined to withhold it, and my defeat there {at the convention of one part of the Democratic Party} was not at all unexpected to me^

The difficulty apparently was not Edmonds’ spiritualist beliefs, but his publishing a book on them. Edmonds subsequently withdrew from seeking re-nomination to the New York Supreme Court.

After Edmonds’ no longer sought judicial re-election, the New York Times harshly attacked his book and his intellect. The New York Times affirmed Edmonds’ judicial merit and concurred with his judicial decisions:

We concur fully in the general concession that no Judge upon the bench has been more careful, conscientious and fearless in his office than Judge Edmonds, and his decisions have been moreover very able and correct.

But such judicial merit, it argued, now should be recognized as an aberration that provides no basis for continuing confidence in Edmonds’ judicial ability:

But this fact is, to our minds, even more remarkable than that he should have embraced his present notions, just as it is more wonderful that an insane man should act rationally on certain subjects, than it is that he should be insane. And such mental habits, opinions and lines of study as those to which Judge Edmonds is now surrendered, must render the operations of his intellect utterly unreliable, and destroy all confidence in the continued justice and correctness of his judicial actions.

The article provided what many readers today probably would consider to be an accurate description of Edmonds’ book:

The whole collection is a jumble of commonplaces, puerilities, and absurdities; and the claim that they come from men to whom they are ascribed, is an attempt on popular credulity too audacious for the most comprehensive charity. …

the whole troop of spirits all talk just alike, — in English equally bad, in style equally affected and equally stuffed with attempts at poetic finery; — they all talk about the same things, in the same way: and not one of them utters a sentence which any man of ordinary brains and literary practice could not shape….

The New York Times complained that Spiritualism was united by a “steady hostility to the essential elements of Christian faith” and compared its doctrines unfavorably to that of the “Mahomedans, the Mormons, and other imposters.” It concluded that, if read, the book will hurt the “weak-minded and credulous” while prompting “disciplined and healthy minds” to commiserate with Edmonds. It also concluded that the book was “too dull and uninteresting to attract many readers. “^ About two weeks later, it published a short, biting parody of Edmonds’ book.^

Not only did spiritualism attract many adherents, it also generated a large, scholarly styled polemical literature. Some books scientifically attacked spiritualism, e.g. Modern spiritualism, scientifically demonstrated to be a mendacious humbug (1856), and Spiritualism answered by science (1871). Publications attacked spiritualism as being counter to biblical religion, e.g. Spiritualism an old epidemic under a new phases (1857), Spiritualism, a Satanic delusion, and a sign of the times (1857), and Spiritualism identical with ancient sorcery, New Testament demonology, and modern witchcraft; with the testimony of God and man against it (1866). Some publications attacked spiritualism as being counter to both Scripture and known facts, e.g. Spiritualism being examined and refuted: it being found contrary to Scripture, known facts and common sense (1893), and Spiritualism exposed giving Scriptural evidence and facts of experience, showing the evil nature and awful tendencies of spiritualism (c. 1900). Businessmen attacked manipulative tricks of media, e.g. Spiritualism and charlatanism; or, The tricks of the media. Embodying an exposé of the manifestations of modern spiritualism by a committee of business men of New-York (1873). The New York Times suggested that Edmonds’ book was an indication of insanity. Later anti-spiritualist books argued that study of spiritualism produces insanity, e.g. Spiritualism and insanity: an essay describing the disastrous consequences to the mental health which are apt to result from a pursuit of the study of spiritualism (1909), The philosophy of spiritualism and the pathology and treatment of mediomania (1874), and Spiritualism and insanity (1877). Spiritualism was a popular topic in public deliberation. It was commonly dismissed as fallacious. But it was not successfully cast out of public discourse.

Spiritualism became a serious concern to important authorities. Controversy over spiritualism didn’t come merely from a monomaniacal fringe or from elites exploiting otherwise insignificant subjects for larger political purposes. Prominent political and religious leaders were concerned about spiritualism’s consequences. For example, in 1854 in Trinity Church in Washington, D.C., a prominent clergyman preached about the risks that spiritual communication posed to public deliberation and to persons’ souls. The preacher was Reverend Clement Moore Butler. He served as U.S. Senate Chaplain from January, 1850, through December, 1853. He entitled his sermon “Modern Necromancy.” Attacking Judge Edmonds and other spiritualists, he pointed to the problem of conflicting testimony:

On one occasion in the same room, a departed spirit through a Roman Catholic medium declared that there was a purgatory, and that it was essential to pass through its cleansing fires; while another Spirit through a Protestant medium insisted, by the most energetic raps, that there was no purgatory.

Communication with spirits did not help to bring deliberation to agreement or mutual understanding; rather, such communication created additional conflict and confusion. Such communication also belittled dead authorities:

It is amazing that any person in his right mind should believe that these great {dead} men could be, at the same time, answering the summons of every ignorant and credulous person from California to New York and from Maine to Georgia, and that they should spend whole evenings in slowly rapping out a few sentences of unimportant intelligence, or of sentimental and mystical absurdity, of which they would have been ashamed on earth.

Noting weighty motivation for his sermon, Reverend Butler strongly condemned communicating with spirits:

I have brought this subject to your attention because much interest has been excited in regard to it in this community {Washington, D.C.}, and because I have been requested to express my views, and because I fear that some of you may be led, thoughtlessly, from curiosity, and with no idea of its impropriety, to tamper with this impious delusion of communicating with spirits, to the injury of your own souls and the souls of others.

As an Episcopal priest, Reverend Butler was a member of a community that, at least formally, valued prayer and believed in the Holy Spirit, the resurrection of the dead, Heaven, Hell, and eternal life. The spiritual communication of Judge Edmonds and other spiritualists seems to have concerned Reverend Butler because he believed that it threatened important knowledge and good order in deliberation.^

Edmonds’ efforts to serve the public with knowledge about spiritualism caused him considerable personal suffering. In further elaborating upon spiritualism in 1859, Edmonds described his personal situation:

I have been sorely tried, temporally and mentally. I have been excluded from the associations which once made life pleasant to me. I have felt, in the society which I once hoped to adorn, that I was an object marked for avoidance, if not for abhorrence. Courted once, and honored among men, I have been doomed to see the nearest and dearest to me, turn from me with pity, if not disgust. Tolerated, rather than welcomed among my fellows; at an advanced age, and with infirm health, compelled to begin the world again;^

Edmonds could have practiced forms of spiritualism without seeking to serve the public with knowledge about spiritualism. He could have discretely offered his wife’s spirit food and money. He could have burnt incense or candles before an image of her, or placed flowers on her grave. He could have called out to all holy deceased men and women to pray for her soul. Many persons around the world, including highly respected public figures, do such activities today. Edmonds’ encountered harsh criticism and personal contempt not because others found his actions incomprehensible, but because they perceived that Edmonds’ attempts to promote knowledge through spiritualism threatened the public good. Creating through spiritual media new texts from authorities like Francis Bacon and Abraham Lincoln posed much greater risks to public deliberation than non-semantic, personal communion with dead ancestors.

Ideals of public deliberation and the marketplace of ideas are no substitute for historical evidence indicating how public deliberation actually works. Symbolic competition, like competition to sell goods and services, can perform badly.

At his death in 1874, John W. Edmonds was honored as an eminent public figure. Edmonds’ funeral, held in New York City, was a major public event:

A large gathering of our leading citizens, and a number of persons from abroad, viewed the remains, and followed them to the tomb. The floral decorations on and around the casket were profuse and elegant, and among them was a magnificent cross and crown, inscribed, “The Gazette’s Tribute to John W. Edmonds, its First Editor.” The procession that the followed the remains to the grave was one of the largest ever seen in this city.^

Edmonds had been a prominent public supporter of spiritualism since 1853. Surely among the leading citizens at Edmonds’ funeral were some who considered spiritualism to be utter nonsense. They probably came because they had long been among Edmonds’ friends.

How Edmonds’ life was remembered depended on the field of communication. Upon Edmonds’ death, a New York lawyer recorded in his diary:

Died, John W. Edmonds, father of “Spiritualism.” I think he was foolish and sincere. According to his own pneumatology, he must be drumming under Miss Fox’s dinner table^

Such text would not be appropriate as an obituary in a newspaper or a biography in a book. Those genres provide a publicly relevant record of a person’s life. Edmonds had a distinguished career of public service that culminated in his service as a judge on New York State’s highest court. He subsequently was widely attacked and ridiculed in print for his spiritualist beliefs.

Edmonds’ spiritual activities challenged writers of obituaries and biographies. Was Edmonds’ communication with the dead a religious belief, such as those that had a well-recognized position in public life? Edmonds described spiritual communication in terms of empirical science and a trial court. That wasn’t the typical style of religious expression. Describing Edmonds as having gone insane with grief over the death of his wife in 1850 contradicted the experiences of those who knew him and the documentary evidence of his subsequent legal writings. Communication with the dead in ways that did not advance knowledge claims was widely accepted. Yet communication with the dead that produced knowledge claims seemed counter to public welfare. The combination of its referents, style, and publicity made Edmonds’ spiritual communication with the dead extraordinary and incongruous.

Writers of Edmonds’ obituaries obscured the peculiar form of his spiritualist claims. Edmonds died at age seventy-five in 1874. The New York Times, which had ridiculed Edmonds’ spiritual claims, allocated about 9% of the words in Edmonds’ obituary to his spiritual activities. It associated his spiritual claims with doctrine and belief:

In his latter years Judge Edmonds was generally known for his advocacy of what is called “spiritualism,” having made a public avowal of his belief in that doctrine in 1853. In support of his belief he wrote several works, the most elaborate of which was a work entitled Spiritualism, issued in 1853.^

The Albany Law Journal’s obituary included these two sentences verbatim as its description of Edmonds’ spiritual activities. However, because the Albany Law Journal described more expansively Edmonds’ public and legal service, the word share devoted to Edmonds’ spiritualist activities in its obituary fell to about 5%.^ The Central Law Journal, which acknowledged the notoriety of Edmonds’ spiritual beliefs, gave them a word share of 24%. This obituary emphasized professional respect for Edmonds:

Judge Edmonds’ name is doubtless familiar to most of the lawyers throughout the country, not only from the fact of his acknowledged ability and purity as a judge, but also from the fact that his name has been frequently brought before the public in connection with his peculiar religious belief. He was a firm believer in spiritualism, and, as he supposed, held constant communication with departed friends. So far as we are aware, there never was any complaint that these vagaries, if such we may be privileged to call them, influenced in any way his professional conduct.

While Edmonds did retain considerable professional respect, his published spiritualist writings emphasized communication with dead authorities, not departed (personal) friends. In addition, Edmonds and the New York Times vigorously disputed whether Edmonds’ spiritual communication with Francis Bacon had affected one of his judicial decisions.^

Biographical reference works changed over time to diminish the importance of Edmonds’ spiritual beliefs. Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography (1887) allocated about 33% of the words in Edmonds’ biography to Edmonds’ spiritual beliefs:

Judge Edmonds became a convert to the doctrines of spiritualism in 1851, and in 1853 openly avowed and defended them, believing himself to be in almost constant communication with departed spirits. His peculiar views were sustained with the greatest courage and persistence, and it was said that they cost him his place on the bench of the supreme court. He was a jurist of unquestioned ability, and the honesty of his convictions was never doubted. Besides his contributions to periodicals in favor of his belief, he published “Spiritualism” in connection with George T. Dexter, M.D. (2 vols., New York, 1853-‘5);…and “Letters and Tracts on Spiritualism” (London, 1874).

The National Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900) gave Edmonds’ spiritual activities a smaller word share (13%), but accurately indicated that Edmonds understood spiritualism as empirical science:

After making many experiments, with Dr. George T. Dexter as the chief medium, he became convinced that the living could communicate with the dead. He openly avowed his belief, and in 1853-55 he and Dr. Dexter published a volume entitled “Spiritualism.” This work evoked much criticism, but no one questioned the honesty of Judge Edmonds’s convictions or the correctness of his record of the happenings at his spiritualistic sittings.

This text’s rather charitable third sentence might best be interpreted to describe Edmond’s convictions and records in terms of his subjective experience. The Dictionary of American Biography (1931) reduced Edmonds’ spiritual activities to an 8% word share with an adaptation of the previous text:

He had for some years conducted investigations in the subject of spiritualism. In 1853, becoming convinced that the living could communicate with the dead, he openly announced his belief, and, in collaboration with Dr. Dexter, published Spiritualism, a work which provoked much comment, though the honesty of his convictions was never impugned.

This adaptation de-emphasized empirical facts and analysis: the word “experiments” became “investigations,” “criticism” became “comment,” and the second sentence omitted an ending phrase that asserted that no one questioned “the correctness of his record of the happenings at his spiritualistic sittings.” Perhaps indicating biographical difficulty, Dictionary of American Biography (1931) tracked much more closely the prior biographic treatment of Edmonds’ spiritualism than it did any other aspect of Edmonds’ biography.

John W. Edmonds is now a largely forgotten figure in American history. American National Biography (1999), the most current reference source for American biography, does not include John W. Edmonds. It does, however, include Edmonds’ brother, the artist Francis William Edmonds. In the nineteenth century, John Edmonds was much more prominent than Francis William Edmonds. The public difficulty with John W. Edmonds’ biography indicates failure of critical self-consciousness in public deliberation.

Even after he began communicating with spirits in 1851, John W. Edmonds contributed significantly to legal knowledge. In the introduction to a book that he published in 1863, Edmonds observed that persons seeking to know the law of New York had to search for statutes through fifty volumes “with slovenly indexes” and uncover relevant adjudications in two hundred volumes of reported cases. Edmonds condensed the statutes into five topically organized volumes that included references to relevant adjudications. Edmonds described the enormous work involved:

the perusal of some 45,000 pages of Statute law, about one half of which I have gone over eight or ten times, and the examination of some 25,000 reported cases – half of which I have had to examine twice over.^

While leading public authorities regarded his spiritual communication as incredible, absurd, and perhaps a sign of insanity, Edmonds’ compilation of law became the standard authority:

So accurately and systematically was the work performed that it at once superceded the former editions of the Statutes and was adopted as the standard authority. He has since added two supplemental volumes and an index.^

Edmonds had served as a state circuit judge in 1845-47 before he went on to serve on the Supreme Court of New York State in 1847-52 and on the Court of Appeals for New York State in 1852-53. Other than his spiritualist claims, Edmonds was a highly credible legal authority.

Edmonds wrote other important legal reference works in addition to his condensed laws of New York State. In 1868, Edmonds published a 631-page volume reporting selected cases that had come before him as circuit judge, but which heretofore had not been reported or reported only partially. At Edmonds’ death in 1874, a second, unfinished volume of such cases was in progress through the press. This volume, of 493 pages, was published in 1883 along with republication of the first volume.^ Edmonds’ case reports were not merely vanity publications. They contributed to legal knowledge.

Edmonds practiced law successful as a spiritualist. Well after Edmonds became a leading exponent of spiritualism, he continued to work as a name partner at the New York law firm Edmonds, Bushnell, & Hamilton. Edmonds about 1860 provided an important legal opinion concerning the disposition of dividends by the New York Life Insurance Company, a leading insurance provider.^ Edwards spiritualist beliefs were incredible. His outstanding record as a lawyer and jurist was beyond question. In technical matters of law, his spiritualist beliefs seemed to have mattered little.

John W. Edmonds thrived in a wide range of communicative circumstances. He grew up in large, two-parent family; he lived for years with his wife, three children, and his widowed mother; and he spent years actively participating in communal life in the place of his birth. Edmonds surely had considerable practice in ordinary communication among family and friends. Edmonds also served in the military and spent time living among native Americans. In those circumstances he would have been exposed to much different practices of communication. As an active participant in the Democratic Party and the New York State legislature, as a lawyer who built a successful law practice in New York City, and though his experience as a Circuit Judge, a Supreme Court Justice, and a judge for the Court of Appeals, Edmonds would have acquired familiarity with different styles of public speaking and their effects. Edmonds was highly capable socially and communicatively.

Edmonds claimed to communicate with spirits of the dead. Much more astonishing than this claim was Edmonds’ public presentation of communicating with the dead. Despite his diverse practices of communication, Edmonds publicly emphasized knowledge-seeking in communicating with the dead. As a leader of the Prison Association of New York, Edmonds also publicly emphasized knowledge-seeking in communicating with prisoners. Within his extraordinary life, Edmonds’ public emphasis on knowledge-seeking indicates a fundamental bias in public values.