Welcome, everyone, to another episode of Then again brought to you by the Northeast Georgia History Center. My name is Leslie Jones and I'm the archives and collections manager at the Northeast Georgia History Center. And today I have a very, very special US. I'll try not to fangirl too much about dr. Lewis Kaplan. Could you introduce yourself and what you do?

Oh, thank you, Leslie. My name is Lewis Kaplan. My formal title is professor of History and Theory of Photography and New Media at the University of Toronto.

Thank you so much for being here and agreeing to be with us today.

Oh, my pleasure. Always a great time to talk about spirit photography, particularly when October rolls around.

Right?

That's exactly what I was thinking on the same page. So I wanted to talk to you a bit about spirit photography. I know what it is, and obviously you know what it is, but could you tell our audience what it is?

Well, spirit photography is something that was developed, pun intended in the 1860s by a gentleman from Boston named William Mumbler. But there were many practitioners in that era, and the idea was that the photographic camera could capture the spirits of the dead. And so that's very supernatural sounding from the start. But you have to understand that this was in the context of a religious movement called spiritualism. So in order to understand the history of spirit photography, we also have to understand the history of spiritualism.

Right. And for those of you who know me and have listened to any podcast or episode that I do, I always talk about spiritualism since it's my thing. But for those who don't know, it's basically people talking to the dead. But mostly in the Victorian period, they were talking to their loved ones. It wasn't anything like the exorcist.

Yeah, that's a good point.

Yeah.

Well, so let's tie that together now.

Right.

So we have this religious belief system called spiritualism that believed that not only that well, it works both ways, right. Communication. It's not only that people could get in touch with the dearly departed, but the idea was that spirits could communicate with people, right. The spirits of the dead could come back. And this, of course, happened primarily starting in the 1848 with the Fox sisters and then into the 1850s and 60s through Seances. So the idea would be then that spirit mediums could channel the voices of the dearly departed to come back and give messages and give comfort to the living. And so that's why we really need to understand and see spirit photography as the extension of this desire and of this practice into the visual realm.

Right.

So we're moving, in a sense, from the spirit communication via mediums through a kind of the voice and sound and now moving into the visual. And that's really where we can understand the birth of spirit photography in 1862.

Right. And then in the it was more than you just couldn't say, I feel a presence. They wanted visual proof that something there. So I think that also helped with spirit photography.

Get it going and make absolutely, yes. And let's remember, right, photography, let's give a little bit of photo history background here, right? That photography was a medium that was only invented. The red letter date is 1839, right? So we're talking here, spirit photography coming into the world about one generation after. And photography was turned to, from the very beginning, as providing proof, right. As providing evidence as being this thing, this amazing new technology that could reproduce reality. And so we obviously are Photoshoppers, and we have a very doubtful and skeptical view of images and their truth value and their truth claims. But at that time, right, the idea was, if you have a photographic image, then it must be the case, it must be the facts. And so you could say that those who were engaged in spirit photography were really riding on that attitude in order to be convincing to people that they were showing off the spirits of the dead.

Right. And it goes to show that photography was so important, not just the technology, but through that spiritual aspect that's one of the reasons I love spirit photography is just seeing I can't imagine that day and age seeing someone that had passed away on your photo just right.

And, of course, the other thing to remember, Leslie, is that in terms of there are other genres and other practices in the history of photography at the time that are allied to spirit photography, really, particularly memento mori.

Right.

The idea was that we have here was very common, particularly because of the high infant mortality rates at that time, to take images of the child who had just passed away, a kind of a death portrait, right. A memento mori, literally a memory of the dead. And that might be the only photograph that a parent would have as a keepsake.

Right.

And so, again, you could say that the spirit photograph is an extension of that idea. And the key to remember here, right, and I think you've touched upon it already, is that you need to understand spirit photography in relationship to grief and mourning.

Right.

It's all about the ways in which it can console people in order to deal with death. And the many cases that we have in relationship to William mumbler's photography. And I know you want us to talk about and maybe we'll get into that a little later. The case of the most famous Mumbler photograph of Mary Todd Lincoln and the ghost of President Abraham Lincoln is all wrapped up in this whole idea of providing consolation to those who are in mourning after the deaths of their loved ones. And what they call what Freud called in German dorch abeitn. Right. Working through the grief and spirit photography, the spirit photograph became a help in that regard. So it's serving very important psychological functions.

In that era as spiritualism does.

Absolutely. Spiritualism, absolutely.

I think we definitely should get into the, I guess, creator, if we want to say that, of photography, who was William Mumler?

Well, when you say creator, I must pause there, because I always know, depending on your position, did William Mumbler discover spirit photography or did William Mumler invent spirit photography or of course, it depends what your position is, right, in terms of whether this was a complete fabrication or whether this was a scientific discovery, right? Whether you're a skeptic or a believer on the issue in terms of what you're going to call him. But everyone agrees in terms of history, that William Mumbler was born in 1832 and his first profession in the Boston area was as a jewelry engraver, all right? That's where he got it, right? He didn't start out as a photographer. He was a jewelry engraver in a successful company called Bigelow and Canard. And you could say that he was a hobbyist, right in terms of starting to get into photography, circa 1860 or 61, right around the time the beginning of the Civil War. And he worked in the studios of a Mrs. Helen F. Stewart, or that's where he did his work in learning about the craft. Some say he might have even taken lessons with her. And one day, I think we dated to the summer of 1862, probably in August, he developed a picture where there was that they called at that time, a spirit extra, right? And that was one of the terms that they used. And he was like, wow, how did this happen? What's going on here? And at first, Mumbler was a bit skeptical, right, about it, and said, well, maybe it was just a mistake, right? Maybe it was just some kind of technical error. Maybe there was this image, this latent image that was left over from a previous sitting on my glass plate, and that's the way I should account for it. But again, then that story gets interesting, right, because there were spiritualists in that environment who saw this and got Mumbler around to thinking that, no, it wasn't just something technical, it actually was a new spiritualist discovery that he had made, that somehow he had revealed to us here the spirit of his dead cousin, right? Then he started to say, hey, wait a minute, this one looks like this image looks like my dear dead cousin who died, like, ten years ago, and she must be coming back to give me messages. Excuse me.

It has to be.

It has to be, right? So it's interesting because then the story really turned, right, because there was a way in which Mumler started as a skeptic, but then he started to buy into it. And of course, if you want to be cynical about right, you could say, oh, well, Mumbler saw an amazing money making opportunity here in order to find a new line of work, and he ran with it, right? And let's not forget, Leslie, right, that in order to have a spirit photograph made for yourself, to come into Mumbly studio, it wasn't cheap, right? I mean, charged $10, right? And you know what the value was of $10 in those days. It's crazy. Lot of money.

Right.

So there was really a class thing going on where you really needed to be either a celebrity or you needed to be. And that's why there are so many celebrities that sat for Mumbler. We can talk about some of them, right, in the American cultural and political scene of that day in order to have your photo taken. But people would be willing to give up to pay out of pocket if they could really be in the presence of this new technological miracle, right, and.

If they truly believed it, then of course they would spend as much money as possible to see their loved. Right?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

I didn't know that William Mumbler wasn't a spiritualist. I just assumed that he found spirit photography.

Again, if you read his autobiography, the Personal Experiences of William Mumbler initially, no. But then he says that he became converted and he came around to it because there was no other way that he could explain what was the results of his.

And.

And this really was really one of the key players who convinced Mumbler and then started to become almost like a spokesman for him and to spread the word and to spread the images, right? So the stories and the images started to get published in spiritualist newspapers like The Banner of Light in Boston, like The Herald of Progress in New York, and that really, again, once the word is out, all press is good press. People started not flocking to his door and he basically said, well, what I thought was just a sidelight now became my own profession in full, and he became a full time spirit photographer.

So I think going on to that and how he started doing it all the time. So could you explain to everyone what a double negative is? Like, how it was made? How did he do it?

Okay, so now you want me to put on the skeptics cap, right?

All right.

Well, you know, it's I want to give you a direct quote, right, because I want to talk about it in terms of the when I'm jumping ahead now. So when Mumbler went on trial and now we're going to talk about some of the celebrities involved because it's a very sensationalist event in New York. In 1869, the prosecutor who was named Elbridge Gary, he proposed at the trial that there were nine distinct methods that one could use in order to produce a spirit photograph by purely mechanical means, right. That in other words, you didn't need to say it was divine intervention, right. And the first one that he brought into evidence at the trial is what you're talking about, which is the process by a positive in the slide.

Right?

So the first method they thought could be the way that he did it was a glass plate containing a previously prepared positive is placed in the plate holder in front of the sensitive plate so that the image on the glass will be taken with that of the sitter. At the same time, the distance between the plates varies the size and the distinctness of the form. So that was considered to be the most common or easiest way in which he could do it.

Right?

So it's basically this double negative which comes out of a previously prepared positive.

Right?

Okay. But there are other theories, right? And one of those theories is this idea, and this is very interesting to think about, right, that spirit photography is also allied to stage magic, right? And that's the history we can trace, right? And so there is also the view that Mumbler was a master of leisure domain, right, of sleight of hand. And there was always people talk about how you would wave his hands in front of the camera like a magician, right? Like he was invoking the spirits and doing that kind of also, you might say, distraction for those who were looking at him, right? And so some people believe that as a sleight of hand artist, he was able to slip in a kind of microscopic picture of the spirit and drop it in. And this is number three on the list here that I'll read to you from Elbridge Gary's list, where he says that what Mumbler may have done was this. A microscopic picture of the spirit form can be inserted in the camera box alongside of the lens in one of the screw holes, and by a small magnifying glass, each image can be thrown on the sensitive plate with that of the sitter. So if people would observe the glass plate negative and to see that it was clean, right, then Mumbler still could have a special compartment where he could slip in the microscopic spirit and then through the mirrors have it be thrown onto the image that he actually was taking. So that's another, more devious way of thinking about how Mumbler did the trick, honestly.

Kind of genius, though, if you think about it. I mean, no wonder he was so popular if that's something that he did, because that's amazing.

Yeah. Well, again, there are many theories about how Mumbler did it, right? There's also even the first I mentioned this in my book, that the Know History of Photography textbook that gave Mumbler his place and his due was Robert Hirsch's seizing the light. And Robert Hirsch has this theory, and other people as well, that Mumbler this is crazy that Mumbler managed somehow to get access to actual photographs of sitters. Almost like a burglar, right. Going into people's houses rifling through, getting these photos, bringing them back, and then using them as the basis for sleight of hand that we talked about before. And that that's the way people would recognize.

Right.

Because the question is, how did people recognize these images?

Right.

So there's two theories. One is, well, if it was done through this kind of thievery, well, obviously that's how they recognize it, because they were based on pictures that they themselves own.

Right.

But another theory and you've seen spirit photographs, right? Some spirit photographs, the countenances the faces are distinct, but in others they're quite hazy and blurry.

Right.

And then if that's the case, well, then the theory is that all Mumbler needed to do was to draw out the information. And here, of course, Hannah Mumbler was an assistant and helped with this to draw out, okay, the person that you want to be in touch with.

Right.

Well, what was their age and what did they look like? And then they would get the specs.

Right.

And then he had what you might call in today's language a stock imagery.

Right.

He had images from all different types of people and ages and weight and height, and then those would be the ones. Therefore, once you knew right. You would take the stock image and then you would slip it in in order to become the basis of the spirit.

So essentially, with the Mary Todd Lincoln photo and Lincoln.

Yeah.

So he probably had a pose already done and then just superimposed his faith on that.

Right.

That's right.

That's the thinking there. But we should probably talk about the Mary Todd Lincoln photo some more in depth, because, after all, it is the most famous image and it's also an amazing story.

Yeah. So let's talk about Mary Todd Lincoln and maybe some of his other clients that he had.

So Charles Lemore is a really interesting guy, right. Because he was a successful New York banker and also known for his abilities to also be involved in the stock exchange right. In the sort of rise of speculation in the New York stock market.

Right.

He was right there, and he was very, very wealthy. But in his personal life, very sad story because his wife died young.

Right.

And I believe her name was Estelle. And around 1860 or so, she passed and he was very distraught.

Right.

And he immediately got into Spiritualism and started to attend seances.

Right.

And he actually was involved with one of the Fox sisters, I think it was Katie, who sat for him countless times in the period that runs parallel to the Civil War. And these were very successful seances.

Right.

And so, again, we see the connection between the seance world and the spirit photographic world. And so he was very pleased right, that he could be back in touch with his deceased wife. And then the idea came up when Mumbler moved to New York around 1868 that Livermore would be happy to sit for him because he again felt that, okay, well, now let's get some visual proof, right? And there are three known photographs that are discussed at the trial. One of them is extant, right. One of them is in the collection of the Getty Museum, and it's published in my book that show us a photograph of a spirit behind him, comforting him, perhaps even putting a wreath on his head. And Livermore positively identified this spirit as his wife, Estelle. Now, what are you going to do in a situation like that, right? And Mumbler wanted, like, $10, and Livermore was like, well, no, money is not the issue. I think he paid Mumbler maybe like, $100 right, for these images. And so he testified, and the defense is like, Whoa. The prosecution is like, whoa, what are we going to do with this?

Right?

This well known New York banker coming up to defend Mumbler, and what do you see? You're going to say he's crazy, right? So this is the kind of dilemmas that were happening in terms of those who were the satisfied customers of Mumbler, right?

Okay.

Now we want to talk about Mary Todd Lincoln, too. So should we get into that story?

Now, I think it's important for people to know that Mary Todd Lincoln also performed seances at the White House.

And why? And why do we know exactly why? My understanding is that because one of her sons, Willie, died in the White House in 1862, and she was totally depressed and trying to figure out, well, how do I get comfort? And that's why she turned at that time to spiritualism, and that's why there were these infamous seances in the White House, right. Which supposedly has a history. And I read somewhere that Nancy Reagan also had seances in the house. Yeah, you can read up on that. So it's kind of a tradition. Right, but that's where it started.

Right, okay.

Yeah. So then she became very interested in spiritualism, and of course, there was so much death in her know, and obviously the most catastrophic one, know, the let's not forget she was sitting next to her husband, right, in Ford's Theater when Lincoln was assassinated. You can imagine what a traumatic experience that was.

Right.

And how could she have ever gotten over this, right. So the question is always raised when was and what were the circumstances for the production of the photograph of Mary Todd Lincoln with the ghost of President Lincoln? And I want to clear up on your show, on your podcast, because there's a lot of misinformation out there on the web.

Right.

So let's set the record straight.

Okay.

So it did not happen right after the president was assassinated. No, that is not the case. Some people believe that. No, that's not true. So the key is that it happened, and some say it happened in 1869. That's also false. It happened in probably February of 1872.

Right.

Now, why is it so late? Right, well, here's the key. The key is that there was another son, right, pad, who was, I think, around 18, which is, again, another very sad story, prime of his youth when he died in 1871. So he died in July of 1871, and again, she was completely devastated.

Right.

Another death in the family. And what is she going to do? So that's what prompted her to go visit William Mumbler's new studio. You can see it on the back of the card, which was, I believe it was either called Springfield Street or Springfield Avenue in Boston. And that's where she sat for Mumbler in early 1872. And that's why, if you look closely at that spirit photograph, you will see the very distinct face of Abraham Lincoln on the right side, but you also see another form on the left side behind her, and that is presumably the ghost of Tad.

Wow.

Yeah. Look closely at the photograph and you'll again. But that's what's so fascinating, because everybody remembers it, of this is the photograph where the President came back to comfort her, because you see right. His hands are behind her, comforting her on her shoulders, basically, kind of like saying, hang in there. I'm here to help you, to comfort you, and you'll join me one day.

Right.

That's all the messages that are there. But the reason is because he's comforting her about not only his own death, but the death of the recently deceased son, Tad.

Now, I need to go look at it again. All I ever see is Abraham Lincoln there. And you're right, he does that like comforting it'll be okay. Kind of pose. But I don't think I've ever seen her son in there.

Yeah, absolutely. But again, it's very indistinct. You can't really pick out a face there.

Right.

So that's in one image, you have the two things I was talking about. You have the very identifiable ghost, and then you have the very blurry, blobby ghost that you can read into it whatever you want.

Right.

And if she was forced, she, of course, is reading into it. Oh, that's tan.

Right.

That's usually the norm.

Right.

Is very blurry, with maybe some little itty bitty feature like, oh, there's a nose. That has to be my.

Right.

I can recognize that nose anywhere.

So I think something really important with Mumler's story is that he actually did go on trial for yeah.

Do you want to talk about that a little bit? Absolutely. Oh, it's a great trial. Let's talk about it. And again, it's sort of positioned between the death of Abraham Lincoln and then the visit from Mary Tod in 1872.

Right.

So Mum decided with Hannah to move and relocate and to set up shop in New York. And one of the reasons behind that is because there was a scandal or a couple of scandals already happening in Boston where people were able to identify living sitters, right, or living ghosts. Very bad. Bad PR, not good for business.

Hey, that's Ted from down the right?

Right, exactly. So that was bad news. So Mumbler had to then set up shop in a fresh space, right, a fresh clientele. And that was in New York City.

Okay?

So at the beginning of 1869, mumbler was plying his wares and there was coverage in the newspapers already. And this was also, you have to understand, the time of the great tabloid like Journalism Wars for Market share. So you had a lot of newspapers in New York, right? You had The New York Sun, The New York World, The New York Times, of course, which still remains. But the other ones are gone, right? So I think what happened was The Sun did a report on him that gave him good PR, but they said, well, we can't decide yet whether this guy is a phony or whether he has discovered some new supernatural power, right? And then it was at that time that the science editor of The New York World, who was a guy named Hickey, mr. Hickey, he got wind of the story and he's no, this is bad news, right. He was really on the side of science and he wanted to expose Mumbler as a fraud. So he went there and then he wrote a story and then he reported Mumbler to the mayor's office. And they brought out this marshal named Tucker, marshal Tucker, who went to sit for Mumbler and did a kind of incognito and obviously didn't say, I'm the marshal from the police.

No.

He said, Well, I'm a fellow whose father in law just died recently and would you please I hear you have these magical powers and can you bring him back for me and I'm happy to pay you, and so on. And then Mumler produced an image and said, well, here, this is it, right? This is your father in law. And Tucker said, no way in hell. That is not my father in law. By the way, my father in law is still alive. And boom. Put the handcuffs on him and basically charged Mumbler with two counts of fraud and larceny.

Right?

Larceny and trick, right. And they put him into the Tombs, which, know, not the nicest place to be in terms of one of the jails in New York City, in Gotham at the time. And they brought him to a trial in April and early May of 1869, okay? And the judge was named Dowling. And as I said already, the prosecuting attorney was Elbridge Gary, and I think I forgot his first name, but Townsend was his defense. And this became a very sensational trial, right? And every day in the newspapers in New York, you had blow by blow coverage. You had basically the transcripts of the witnesses, right? Because it was very colorful and very sensational. And also know it was more than just Mumbler, right. It was the idea that with Mumbler's trial, spiritualism itself was on, and spiritualism, you know, millions of people in the United States at that time, or at least so spiritualism claimed were interested or devotees of the spiritualist movement, so became a really big deal. And the most famous coverage was from Harper's, right? Harper's Great Humumbler was on the COVID of Harper's Weekly, right, in early May of 1869. So that's the sort of to give you more of a sense of, what do you call it, the high visibility, right, and the sensational coverage of Mumbler's trial in 1869.

And I think that is one of the reasons why PT Barnum was one of the clients, maybe like witnesses.

Witnesses. Witnesses.

He was one of the witnesses because it was sensational and at that time, he was one of the biggest muckrakers in journalism at that time. So do you want to talk about PT Barnum and what he said?

Oh, it's so yeah, the fact that P T Barnum became the star witness for the prosecution is, again, it just added even more sensation and scandal and reasons why people got excited and all worked up about this trial. So we know that PG Barnum was the greatest impressario of his era, and he really understood and really was really one of the founders of this idea of visual entertainments, right, and of things that stretch the imagination, right, like the precursor of Ripley's Believe It Or Not, right. Like giving us all of these exhibits, right, at his shows, where people would say, oh, yes, this is the person who's half the mermaid, right, the person who's half fish and half human, right, and it would test the beliefs. And that's why PT Barnum said, I know a humbug when I see one, I know a hoax when I see one, because I'm the master, right? I do it all the time and I'm a celebrity, right? So again, the question then becomes like, well, then, excuse me, if you wanted to defend Mumbler, you would say, well, excuse me, then, what's the difference between what Mumbler did and what PT Barnum did? And why is Mumbler on trial and not PT Barnum? Because he's a big liar.

Right?

So that, of course, also was part of an interesting issue that was raised at the trial, right? But here's the thing. What PT Barnum said was, know, and I think part of it has to do with this relationship between the secular and the sacred, right? Because P t Barnum always said I'm a secular kind of guy. I give people their money's worth for their entertainments, and I make no pretenses that what I'm doing is something that's supernatural. I make no pretenses that religion is involved in anything I do. And for me, that is a crime. It's a crime the way in which Mumbler is invoking the spirits and invoking religion, in. Order to pull off his scam.

Right.

That troubled.

Right.

That was one. And then the other thing was that he really didn't like the way in which mumbler was taking advantage of people's grief right. And capitalizing it on it and making money out of it. So it's kind of interesting because this is where it gets again, everything gets kind of warped here, because you could say that PT. Barnum actually the two rationales for why he was so dead set on throwing mumbler into jail were actually ethical reasons.

Right.

Because this is where it's kind of a twist in the plot, because it was like, I don't like the fact that when people are at their most vulnerable when they're in grief, and then you're taking advantage of them. And I don't like the fact that you're invoking God and you're invoking religion in order to do something which can be explained purely by mechanical means.

Right.

And what Jennifer Minukin, a scholar who's worked on the mumbler case, calls mechanical illusionism.

Right.

Like, again, like a magic trick that everything can be explained via material, mechanical rationale for how the result came about and that there's no reason to invoke the supernatural.

Right.

So that's pretty much where Peachy Barnum was coming from.

Yeah. And that's just like in the future with Harry Houdini, how he at first know, I'm going to do Seances. If they can do it, I can do it. And then when his mom passed away, he realized that you shouldn't profit off someone's grief, just like PT. Barnum, and he spent the rest of his life trying to debunk all these spiritualists that were doing harm to you.

Are you are right on there. I mean, I couldn't have said it better. And as a matter of fact, I carry through that threadline in another article that I published in a volume called Photography and Doubt, and it's called Houdini's Doubt. And it takes up exactly this and thinks about Houdini as a kind of threadline. If you go to the Library of Congress website, houdini's papers are all there and a number of the images that he made. And when Houdini wanted to like Peachy Barnum, we didn't talk about that. Houdini also produced fake spirit photographs right. In order to show how easy it was to do it. And there's a series that he did where he's talking to Lincoln.

Yeah.

Right.

So that's also very important to mention. Right. And I didn't mention this, but now it gives me a chance to double back that. One of the ways in which P t. Barnum wanted to debunk mumbler was he worked with a photographer named Abraham Bogartis, who was one of the leading New York photographers of the day. And they made a fake spirit photograph that they brought as evidence in the trial to show how easy it was to make fraudulent photographs where the ghost of Abraham Lincoln appears over the head of Peachy Barnum. And of course people make a joke and say, oh, maybe Mumbler was sitting there at the trial and saying, wow, that's a great idea, but Barnum, I got to try that one day, right? So the story gets very entangled.

I think leading with that court case, we can talk about what was the fate of Mumbler? What happened? Did he get accused? Was he guilty?

He was acquitted. And I know your audience has probably got their jaws are dropping right now, right after what we've been saying here. And it's like, what? So I wanted to cite from my book again, because it's good to bring in the primary source, right? So Judge Dowling, you know, basically had to acquit Mumbler and then the question is why? Right, or why? Because the point is that even though the judge says knew that Mumbler is a fraud in terms of these photographs, they weren't able to prove the prosecution was not able to prove how he did it, right? And that's the key. You can propose as many up to nine ways in which you think he did the trick, but if you can't prove exactly how he did the trick, you couldn't convict him. And that was the problem. So it's almost like it was a loophole, right? And so Judge Dowling, therefore I say here in my book, had no choice but to acquit Mumbler and to acknowledge the force of the anti evidentiary position. The anti evidentiary position was this idea, right, that unless you could prove the evidence of how he did the trick, you couldn't convict him, right. And despite his moral qualms about his own decision, as he proclaimed in his verdict, quote, after a careful and thorough analysis of this interesting and if I may say, extraordinary case, I have come to the conclusion that the prisoner should be discharged. I will state that however, I may be morally convinced that there may have been trick and deception practiced by the prisoner. Yet as I sit as a magistrate to determine from the evidence given by the witnesses, according to the law, I am compelled to decide the prosecution have failed to make out their complaint. So that's a very interesting twist here in the plot, you might say, and it enabled Mumbler to go back into business and to basically say, I'm exonerated, right? You know how it goes, right? I've been acquitted. What's your problem? So he goes right back into business and that's what allows him only a few years later to make his most famous photograph of Mary Todd Lincoln, of his most famous spirit photograph.

Well, I think we're just going to need a part two because we just are great at talking about this stuff and I love talking with you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for being here with us. We'll see you next time everybody.

Okay, thank you again.

Then again is a production of the Northeast Georgia History Center in Gainesville, Georgia. Our podcast is edited by Andrews Gilles. Our digital and on site programs are made possible by the Ada May Ioster education center. Please join us next week for another episode of Then again.