winter of 1865-'66 to
postpone the enfranchisement of the freedmen ten years, until 1876.
(See _Atlantic Monthly_, June, 1875). Subsequent events have shown his
judgment to have been correct and far-sighted. He believed the
conferring of suffrage upon the negro, dim-visioned in the sudden
light of a new liberty, to be a most dangerous experiment; he foresaw
that the ballot which the North gave to them as a protection against
their arrogant masters, would prove a two-edged sword with a terrible
reactionary force in the hands of an untrained race just freed from
mental leading-strings; he knew the difficulty to be inherent, a
difficulty which the existence of slavery must necessarily have
produced. He maintained that although the sword had struck off the
outward chains, the white-heat of ire kindled in the hearts of the
conquered had not fused the inward shackles of the slave, but had
riveted them the firmer, and that the invisible fetters welded by
revengeful hate should be broken most carefully.

In the latter years of his life my father gave his entire attention to
the study of Modern Spiritualism, or rather to the study of
Spiritualism in both its ancient and its modern phases. He published
two works on this subject, "Footfalls on the Boundary of Another
World," and "The Debatable Land between this World and the Next." In a
letter written shortly before his death, he expresses himself as
follows: "I hope, my child, that you will never, at any period of your
life, be less happy than you now are. If you cultivate your spiritual
nature rationally, I feel assured you never will. For one effect of
rational Spiritualism is to make one more satisfied the longer one
lives, and to make the last scenes of life, hours of pleasant
anticipation, instead of a season of dread, or, as with many it has
been, of horror." It would be well for non-investigators who maintain
that my father's belief in Spiritualism necessarily proves him to have
been illogical, to see to it that they are not falling into the
inconsequence which they are ascribing to him. Reasoning _a priori_,
should we not believe that the man who saw so clearly the dangers
which were unperceived by some of our keenest statesmen, could not
become, except in a rare instance and for a short time, a misled dupe?
Has any one the right to condemn such a man unproved?

While my father was exerting his energies for the welfare of the
nation, my mother was giving her life to he