Spiritual Currents and Manifest Destiny in the Art of Hiram Powers - Critical Essay

The special place of Woodstock in Powers's emotions was also a matter of public record; the same article that recounts the particulars of his dream also relates that he returned to Vermont in 1837 after an absence of twenty years and viewed the scenes of his childhood with tears in his eyes. Powers often expressed this sentiment, writing to one correspondent that the town was a "dear old place which comes up in my dreams oftener than any other spot of this earth that I know of." [55] He wrote elsewhere that "fancy lends to me wings at night and I seem to fly along the banks of the Quechee over the dear village and the meadow around." [56] These words express poetically what their author believed literally; during slumber the spirit takes leave of the body and travels at will. [57] The affinities between Powers and Woodstock played themselves out in a variety of ways; he returned there once in body and many times in spiritual transports fueled by imponderable fluids. Indeed, so magnetic was the town's allure that even the Greek Slave came under its sway and thus fulfilled the prophecy of youthful dreams.

The idea that occult powers heightened one's ties with a particular place was a significant component of Powers's thought and warrants further attention here by reason of its contribution to the creation of California. An especially revealing passage on the subject appears in an address Powers delivered to a group that was discussing the phrenology of animals. In explaining why the homeward instinct exists throughout creation, the sculptor fell into a reverie, leaning

back with his arms folded against one of his fine statues (a tall noble looking man, with a fine shaped head; having on his sculptor's working dress, and cap.) He seemed to be deeply thinking and at last said "This sense that we have now, what shall I call it"? "A sense of latitude and longitude! a sort of power, like that of a magnet which draws creatures towards their old haunts and homes when carried far away. . .it is simply impossible for them to take a wrong direction, because they would then be going against, as it were, this magnetic sensation." [58]

It was not only souls that were united by Swedenborg's spiritual affinities; places could likewise emit imponderable fluids that exercised a powerful draw. The Swedish mystic mentioned the homeward migration of birds as evidence of spiritual causes having their effects in the material world. To the Mesmerists, a dog's uncanny ability to find its way home was due to "mesmeric sympathy," while the "consecrated places" identified by spiritualists were the result, they claimed, of the residual magnetic or "odic" fluids left by visitants. [59] These same forces guided the wanderings of Hiram Powers's soul and, since he believed there were no accidents, also affirmed his conviction that each of his statues would reach its destined site.

If precognition contributed to the unfolding of the Greek Slave's meaning, Powers recognized the larger implications of his America (Fig. 3) only by hindsight, the "backward view [that] presents the ties which connect events and things apparently accidental" mentioned above. Like California, America was undertaken on the artist's own initiative, and he again had a destination in mind, in this instance, the rotunda of the Capitol. Conceived at the end of 1847 as a personification of Liberty, the title and attributes changed and evolved in the last years of the decade. The surviving plaster model represents a half-nude woman whose heavenward gesture indicates the source of freedom. A crown of thirteen stars symbolizes the original states, while the laurel draped over the fasces celebrates the invincibility of union. The marble figure, destroyed in a warehouse fire in 1865, was completed by 1855 in anticipation of a commission from the government. The funds, however, were not forthcoming because President Frankl in Pierce objected to the manacles Powers had placed beneath the left foot to signify the ultimate triumph of democracy over the despotism that prevailed in Europe. Politicians in Washington worried that this attribute might be taken as an allusion to our "peculiar institution" and thus offend constituencies from the slave-holding states. [60] Despite Powers's vociferous rejection of this interpretation, which he accompanied with denunciations of abolitionism, the statue never managed to win official approval. [61]