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

Charles Colbert

On completing the plaster model for his California (Fig. 1) in 1855, Hiram Powers (1805-1873) remarked to a prospective patron that he hoped his statue would be placed at the spot where gold had been initially discovered. [1] The notion that Sutter's Mill or, as Powers called it, "Sutter's run," would be the most appropriate site for a work that celebrated the promise of wealth that had lured so many adventurers to the newly formed state was not a passing fancy, for it reappears in his letters with some frequency in subsequent years. While sculpture is often commissioned to commemorate hallowed places, Powers stated that he "took the risk" of modeling California before receiving an order to do so. [2] The degree of risk entailed can be fully appreciated by contemplating the location. A contemporary wrote that "Sutter's Creek [flowed] in a little valley, settled by miners. A number of tents were pitched along the stream, and some log houses for the winter were in the process of erection." [3] One can only imag ine how the men of this remote and rudimentary community (Fig. 2) would have greeted the arrival of Powers's nude figure. While Powers could reasonably anticipate that his America (Fig. 3) would be placed in the Capitol even though Congress had not allocated funds at the time of its commencement, he began California with far fewer assurances. [4] His pursuit of this undertaking despite its dim prospects suggests he was driven by convictions that ran deeper than mere financial calculation. One means of discerning the larger implications of this episode is to view it in the context of other works and the circumstances that surrounded their creation and exhibition. In doing so, we learn that the meaning of a particular piece was not fixed inalterably in the sculptor's mind at any one moment; rather, it evolved continuously according to his beliefs about the operation of spiritual agents in the mundane realm. Beginning with a review of Powers's faith, then, this article surveys a number of his statues before devo ting an extended analysis to California as one of his most comprehensive statements about the nature of inspiration and its relationship to the supernatural.

The contribution made by Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) to Powers's creative deliberations has received considerable attention. [5] This Swedish mystic sought to reverse the decline of Christianity by revealing the spiritual meaning hidden beneath the historical narratives of the Bible. [6] These tales appalled many inquiring minds, and for such individuals the symbolic readings offered by Swedenborg fortified faith against the assaults mounted by the philosophes. Anyone troubled by the image of Jehovah breathing into the nostrils of Adam (Gen. 2:7), for example, could learn that this action really signified the heightened understanding that comes to "keen-scented" persons. [7] The methods employed to validate such interpretations were to have a profound impact on the religious discourse promoted by liberal thinkers in the nineteenth century.

Swedenborg answered those who questioned his authority by remarking that his words came from the angels themselves. By closing down the senses and opening an inner, spiritual faculty, he was capable of falling at will into an ecstasy. While in this condition he conversed about the true meaning of the Bible with angels and notables from the past. During dreams and reveries Swedenborg toured the several heavens, perceived events that transpired at great distances, and performed such minor miracles as reading minds and locating lost objects. These talents were engendered by "influx," a psychic essence that emanated from God and permeated all creation. Communication with the spirits was achieved by influx, but this contact was not random; only when souls were united by mutual affection could the exchange take place. These affinities were called correspondences; all worldly beings corresponded to kindred entities in the spiritual realm by means of an influx that came either from heaven or hell. Hence, the resembl ance of the next world to this was complete, except for two important qualities: neither time nor space as we know them existed in the spiritual realm. Relieved of the difficulties associated with travel in the mundane sphere, souls were placed immediately in proximity to one another by their corresponding affective states. And, whether aware of the fact or not, mortals were also surrounded by communities of spirits drawn to them by the similarity of their moral constitutions.

The last decades of the eighteenth century saw the establishment in the United States of Swedenborgian congregations, most of them organized under the auspices of the New Jerusalem Church. [8] Powers embraced the religion in the early 1820s while he was living in Cincinnati and remained an adherent to the end of his days. [9] Once aware of the tenets of his faith, we can readily recognize their influence on his thought. He believed in internal sight and wrote that slumber made the mind conducive to communications from the dead. [10] Indeed, one brush with the paranormal about 1840 impressed him indelibly. He related that he was in bed when the room suddenly filled with a brilliant light that revealed two figures, male and female, clad in red or purple gowns. They gazed tenderly on the artist's sleeping baby for some five minutes and then vanished as abruptly as they had appeared. While their gentle demeanor convinced Powers of their benign intentions, his wife's anxieties on learning of the apparition were o nly allayed when no subsequent misfortune befell the child. [11] Swedenborg's angelic guardians were often dispatched to protect dreamers from the infestation of evil spirits, [12] and these visitants answered to the description given such beings, down to the colors of their robes. [13] Although Powers insisted he was wide awake during this particular numinous encounter, he also maintained that dreams warranted serious consideration; the body might be dormant, he remarked, but the soul remained alert and free to wander at will. [14]

Given these convictions, it is easy to understand why Powers became involved with spiritualism at least as early as 1850. [15] The advent of what was called modern spiritualism took place in 1848 near Rochester, New York, when two girls, Kate and Margaret Fox, were alerted by a series of mysterious raps to the presence of the spirit of a murdered peddler who claimed his remains were buried beneath their house. [16] News of this incident quickly spread through the nation, and soon spiritualism, an informal religion centered on the seance, vied with the more established denominations for followers.

The discoveries of Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815) provided a foundation for much that transpired under the auspices of spiritualism. [17] His "animal magnetism," a vital essence that granted the subject of a "mesmeric" trance various clairvoyant powers, including the ability to read minds, see distant people and events, and converse with the dead, proved crucial to the new faith. By integrating the trance with Swedenborg's accounts of his heavenly journeys, spiritualism sought to create a religion based on vitalism and personal experience rather than dogma. Spirits communicated either through a medium or by physical manifestations such as moving tables and chairs. The disputes that arose between the spiritualists and the Swedenborgians often revolved around the question of evil; to members of the former faith it had no actual existence, while devotees of the latter affirmed that hell was as real as heaven. Hence, although the Swedenborgians were willing to accept the claims of spiritualism, they distrusted t he messages received from the other world because they were usually presumed to be the workings of malevolent, deceitful spirits. [18] Despite these differences, many individuals managed to reconcile the two creeds, borrowing something from each as suited their purposes.

One such person was Hiram Powers, who, to best meet the demands of his profession, had moved to Italy in 1837. During the 1850s his house in Florence served both as a place of worship for the Swedenborgians and as the headquarters of Daniel Dunglas Home, the most acclaimed medium of the day. [19] After attending a number of seance presided over by the latter (whom Powers called Hume), the sculptor concluded that Home was in touch with "superior powers" despite his occasional reliance on deceptive practices. What troubled Powers, as it did many Swedenborgians, was the possibility that these beings were minions of the Prince of Darkness. How else could one explain Home's sympathy for the doctrines of Andrew Jackson Davis, a psychic who scoffed at the claims of Christianity and advocated a loosening of marriage vows? [20]

Despite these reservations, Powers never doubted the authenticity of the phenomena he witnessed and in 1852 even attempted (unsuccessfully) to invoke the spirits himself. [21] Of particular importance for my thesis is the sort of evidence adduced. We have seen that he had a Swedenborgian vision before turning to spiritualism; seances not only made such visitations routine, they also enhanced the performance by conjuring up physical manifestations. These effects had grown from the simple raps that had originally alerted the Fox sisters to an array of disturbances calculated to impress members of an enthralled circle. On one occasion, for example, Powers witnessed a hand emerge from beneath the table, seize a fan, and proceed to fan all the sitters. [22] Completely disembodied shadows, of course, were incapable of such feats; only spirits composed of a refined substance could grasp things and move them about. The spiritualists sought to undo old assumptions about the hostility of spirit to matter. They thought the two had been reconciled by recent scientific discoveries regarding the nature of electricity; the soul must be composed of this "imponderable fluid" or something very much like it. This soul stuff was in turn identified with the "influx" of the Swedenborgians and the "animal magnetism" of the Mesmerists. Where these disciplines converged there arose a "physical metaphysics" devoted to the study of properties that beings of this world shared with those of the next; it was anticipated that science would join the campaign and assist theology in answering questions that had perplexed humanity since the dawn of history. [23]

This expectation accounts for Powers's interest in imponderable fluids. In a letter to the well-known Unitarian minister Dr. Henry Whitney Bellows, the sculptor exhibits some of the millenarian enthusiasm that often consumed individuals who contemplated these matters. Expressing, again, misgivings about mediums, he goes on to affirm his belief in the fact of spiritual manifestations and the accompanying feats of animal magnetism; the movement of solid bodies during seances, he notes, has yet to be explained by purely scientific men. He infers from this fact

that we are now at the threshold of a new era of discoveries, very unlike the past--that is to say--we have thus far for the main part been examining the outside of creation. The material part in short, but now we are to enter in gradually to the spiritual part or[,] as it were[,] the soul of the universe where causes exist. [24]

In another letter Powers discusses these matters in relation to his Infernal Regions, an enactment of the torments of hell performed by automata he devised in 1828 for Dorfeuille's Museum in Cincinnati. [25] To keep spectators from pressing too closely, Powers connected a strong battery to the iron rail that surrounded the scene; anyone touching the bar received a powerful shock. Even this clever device, the artist observes, failed to equal the ingenuity presently being exhibited by the spirits in making tables dance. Expanding on the issues raised by imponderable fluids, Powers reflects that until a few years ago the Salem witchcraft trials were thought absurd, but now animal magnetism proves that one person can possess another, and "what is this," he asserts, "but witchcraft." [26] This remark addresses an issue dear to the spiritualists; the forces associated with "physical metaphysics" had always existed, they maintained, but only in an enlightened society, one free from the shackles of dogmatic religion , could the principles governing such phenomena be examined dispassionately. [27] The notion that popular "superstitions" might have a basis in scientific fact was, as we shall see, a concept that intrigued Powers.

His mental habits depended increasingly on the precepts of Swedenborg and spiritualism. The doctrine of correspondences, for example, assured him that mortal minds could communicate over great distances by means of animal magnetism in a manner that resembled, however imperfectly, the principles of spiritual discourse. [28] As we have seen, dreams provided glimpses into this reality. When Edward Everett, famed politician and orator, telegraphed to inform him that the government had commissioned statues of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson (1861-62 and 1860-62, United States Capitol, Washington, D.C.), Powers replied that his "wife dreamed of receiving the dispatch. She dreamed also of receiving several letters,--one of them from you stating that all had been arranged." [29] To appreciate the implications of this response fully, we need to abandon the inclination to regard this dream merely as a metaphor of wishes postponed; Powers saw it as a literal premonition made possible by the sleeper's inward jour ney to "the soul of the universe." Nor should we consider it incongruous that business matters were the subject of psychic communications; as the term "physical metaphysics" implies, the affairs of this world were deeply implicated in those of the next; money was a source of well-being, and material comfort honestly gained ultimately led to contentments of a higher kind. What follows is a review of a number of works considered in the light of Powers's belief in the supernatural. This analysis will serve as a prelude to an extended examination of California, a piece that ties together the strains present in his earlier creations.

The breaching of boundaries constituted one such strain in Powers's imagery; "physical metaphysics" encouraged him to believe in the integration of the spiritual with the material so that even the silence of death was not absolute. These ideas underlie Loulie's Hand (Fig. 4), a likeness executed in 1839 of the hand of his infant daughter, Louisa Greenough Powers. Such images were popular in the Victorian era owing largely to the contention by phrenologists that character shaped every portion of the body and not just the head. [30] Other, more personal, meanings also accrued to this piece. It may be related to Powers's vision of two figures hovering over his bed, since Louisa was the recipient of their benediction and at least one telling of the event places it in 1839. [31] The decision to include sunflower petals reflects the artist's faith, for the heliotropic nature of this plant made it an emblem of devotion. The Swedenborgians placed particular emphasis on the sun as a symbol of God because its warmth a nd light corresponded to divine love and wisdom, the primary components of the creative principle. Loulie's conception, then, was the outcome of the penetration of this influx (represented in Powers's vision by embracing female [love] and male [wisdom] spirits) into the mundane world. The little carving expresses the idea that children are the gift of a God who regards their begetting as a sacred duty. [32]

Another occurrence that befell Powers is also relevant in this context. While traveling west with his family on a flatboat in 1817, he noticed through the cracks in the deck the arm of a child who was drowning beneath the raft. Acting with great dispatch, he managed to rescue and resuscitate the infant. Late in life, Powers could still recall the incident vividly, remarking, "It seemed to me directly providential, and made a deep impression on my mind." [33] After reading this narrative it is difficult to regard Loulie's Hand without seeing in the mind's eye the surface of the Ohio River suddenly broken by an arm emerging from its depths. Even before his turn to Swedenborgianism, Powers could consider himself an instrument of providence, recalling to life a soul on the brink of eternity. [34]

Powers was not yet entirely done with grasping infantine hands under extraordinary circumstances; during a seance, presumably in the 1850s, one emerged from the thin air and patted him on the cheek. He then held the warm, disembodied hand until it simply faded away. Encounters of this kind prompted him to speculate further on the close proximity of the spirit world to his own. [35] We have no program for Loulie's Hand, but the sculptor's repeated references to children's hands extending across the boundaries between life and death is suggestive when considered in relation to his religious inclinations. Perhaps Powers created the original version to reassure his wife, Elizabeth, about the apparition that hovered over their child, and the couple must have relished the additional significance it acquired as a consequence of their spiritualist experiences. This process, then, illustrates another significant feature of his work that we shall again encounter: meaning was mutable, circumstances could expand the imp lications of any piece because sublunary events had supernatural causes.

Loulie's Hand proved to be a perennial favorite with visitors to the studio. In all likelihood, copies of it were sold to many who were neither Swedenborgians nor spiritualists. Powers could not pursue a successful career by appealing solely to members of these creeds, a fact that merits consideration when evaluating his imagery. He did not enjoy the prerogatives of a Bernini, whose parameters were clearly defined by papal Rome; the approval Powers sought came from a public of diverse persuasions, and he could not afford to alienate any portion of it by introducing his beliefs obtrusively. [36] He was obliged to choose subjects that permitted a variety of readings; like Harriet Hosmer, a prominent sculptor who was also a spiritualist, he could attach personal meanings to works that attracted clients for reasons other than his own. [37]

Premonitions, with their implied transcendence of time and space, contribute to the ideals informing the Fisher Boy (Fig. 5), a figure carved in the early 1840s. Standing on the shore, his right hand holding a tiller or rudder, a youth of twelve or thirteen years listens to the roar of the surf resounding in a conch. Initially Powers believed the practice of hearkening to shells to be confined to the United States, but visitors to his studio informed him that the custom was common to many societies. He described the immature figure as "a kind of Appollino" with a modern identity, remarking that artists should respect their own age and religion by eschewing the habit of depicting the absurdities of pagan times. [33] The intriguing turn of phrase here involves the inclusion of religion as a value the statue honors; this allusion suggests that more was at stake in the choice of subject than a simple desire to illustrate the lot of contemporary laborers.

A hint of deeper purpose appears in Powers's remark that the face betrays "doubts[,] he is not satisfied at the omen. He fears an-approaching storm, a superstition that the sound of the conch denotes the state of the sea." [39] While some unclarity surrounds the use of "doubts," it seems to indicate that the boy believes the "omen" and therefore questions the wisdom of braving the perils of the deep. This interpretation is supported by the sculptor's subsequent remark that the figure was intended "[t]o represent this peculiar superstition [of sounds in a shell] (if indeed it be all superstition)."40 The studied ambiguity of this remark epitomizes the approach to religion he adopted in much of his work. In essence, those who regarded "superstition" a thing of the past could view the statue as a genre piece devoted to the quaint activities of exotic people, while those who maintained that the very universality of such practices vouched for their truth might find in the boy's attentive expression the intimation of an oracle that was not "all superstition."

To Henry T. Tuckerman, the pensive mood of the Fisher Boy lent it an "air and aspect suggestive of the mystery of life that connects its outset with eternity." [41] Contemporaneously, Thomas Cole investigated a similar theme in The Voyage of Life, with a comparable earnestness and ecumenicalism. [42] Like the statue, this series of paintings is about the tempests that buffet us on life's journey, and both counsel resignation to the dictates of divine wisdom. The whisperings of Providence, however, are audible to Powers's voyager; if he listens to his intuition he may enter the "soul of the universe" and so avoid the harsher blows fate might otherwise have dealt him.

The tragic end of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, author and close friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson, acquainted Powers with the consequences of premonitions unheeded. After she perished at sea on returning to the United States in the summer of 1850, the sculptor reflected that "Madam Ossoli--the last time I saw her--appeared gloomy and thoughtful--as one who had a presentiment of evil, and from some cause or other, I know not what. I have been unusually anxious about her and others who accompanied her on board--perhaps it was owing to the disaster of the 'Westmorland." [43] Powers had thought the Elizabeth, the ill-starred ship taken by the Ossoli family, seaworthy at the time of her departure, but in retrospect the auguries were there for those who could read them, and in this light Margaret Fuller Ossoli's emotions must have resembled those harbored by the Fisher Boy. [44]

Besides his concern for the Ossolis, Powers had a personal stake in the fate of the Elizabeth, since his statue of John Calhoun was also on board. The allusion to the Westmorland is a reference to a ship that foundered earlier in the same year with his Eve in the hold. Yet another work was consigned to the depths when, in 1857, his Webster went down with the Oxford. Such disasters were not uncommon in the premodern era of travel, and the sculptor was resigned to the fact that losses were inevitable. Powers attributed the disappearance of the Webster to the "ways of Providence," adding that all seeming mishaps were actually integral parts of "the great scheme of the Creator." [45] Elsewhere, he elaborated on this idea, stating,

There are links in every man's life, which form the chain of his destiny, on looking forward we see no connection, but a backward view presents the ties which connect events and things apparently accidental often form prominent features in the whole. Groping in darkness, we seem to have stumbled upon the right path and are led out of the labyrinth by the thoughtless hand of chance. But in reality there is no such thing as accident, nor is any thing, however small, suspended upon the hair of chance. [46]

This belief nourished his inclination to attribute the incidents that befell his works after they left the studio to something more than mere happenstance.

We have seen that Swedenborg instilled in Powers the notion that time and space were but dim reflections of the spiritual affinities that existed in heaven. Mortals had access to these realities in dreams and visions, but the premonitory nature of such moments was often imperfectly understood and only fully recognized after the events to which they referred had transpired. Further, the doctrine of correspondences assured Powers that every incident was intelligible because it mirrored a spiritual condition; this pertained not merely to the conception of statues but also to their ongoing engagement with the world beyond the studio, and in this process resided the potential for an almost endless proliferation of meaning.

Circumstances associated with the American tour of the Greek Slave (Fig. 6) demonstrate that premonition entailed more than simple acquiescence to the dictates of fate. [47] After the statue commenced its travels in 1847, Powers reminisced about a childhood dream in which "a [naked] female figure ... [that] did not seem alive" stood on a pillar near the river that ran through his hometown of Woodstock, Vermont. Only when he began to model clay did this recurring image cease to enchant his slumbers. [48] Given Powers's predisposition in these matters, we can understand why he was so moved when he learned that the Greek Slave had been exhibited briefly in Woodstock in 1850: [49] the prophecy had been fulfilled. [50] One especially vivid account of his ruminations merits quoting:

When a child in Woodstock and for years afterwards in Ohio I was haunted in dreams with a white figure of a woman [,] white as snow from head to foot and standing upon some sort of pedestal below Uncle John's house on the opposite side of the Quechee. I could not get near to it for the water which seemed deep and roaring but my desire was always intense to come nearer. The figure seemed most lovely but not of a living person.

At the time I knew nothing of sculpture nor had I ever read a word about it or even formed an idea upon the subject. I doubt if I had ever even seen a doll's head. This dream ceased when I began to model--and you know that a white figure of a woman has since been seen in Woodstock and answering in some respects at least to the vision of my childhood. I know not when I first conceived the idea of the "Greek Slave." I only know that it was on my mind long before I began it, just as you have seen it--and the dream occurs to me whenever I think of it. Did the swollen river signify the Atlantic which I should cross to produce it? and did the dream cease after I had taken the first steps as an artist because it was no longer necessary to stimulate me on the way I should go? [51]

We find Powers pondering here the significance of a dream he considered oracular. In the mind of God no doubts arose because past, present, and future were all one; it was the lot of mortals, however, to remain "confused" because they were so deeply immersed in the flow of time. [52] However circuitously, the slave eventually made her way back to the spot she had so readily visited in her preexistence. The lesson imparted by the fulfillment of these premonitions was surely intended by Powers to answer expectations integral to the culture of his native land. In effect, he was updating old Puritan teachings on grace, redemption, and calling according to the principles of Swedenborg and spiritualism. The sanction of supernatural authority was invoked to legitimize a vocation previously thought marginal, but the prophecy would have been of little consequence had Powers refrained from proclaiming it to the world. [53] By releasing his narrative to the press, including the details of his dream and the subsequent a ppearance of the Greek Slave in Woodstock, the sculptor sought to convince the public, which had grown increasingly accustomed to news bulletins concerning the latest happenings among the spiritualists, about the purity of his motives and the worthiness of the nude for their consideration. [54] This agreement between spirit (his dream) and fact (the exhibition in his hometown) was a manifestation of the doctrine of correspondences, and from the intricate web of circumstance woven by time and space emerged a moral truth (the uplift that attends modeling and viewing the ideal figure) that enhanced the statue's ethical implications.

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]

As the Civil War drew to a close in the early months of 1865, however, Powers came to see America in an entirely different light. The manacles could now be identified precisely with principles previously denied; hence, in again urging Congress to place his statue at its destined site, Powers promoted an

America with broken chains of slavery under foot, the union unbroken and crowned with victory and herself thanking God for all. It may turn out in the end that the rejection of this statue by President Pierce, and Buchanan was providential. The time for it had not come. It represents our country with her foot on slavery, broken and destroyed forever. It is quite true that I did not comprehend our slave system purposely in the design. The broken chains referred to the way in which we got our national liberty. But the statue itself fully comprehends both. I claim no merit by fore-knowledge, for its present signification. [62]

As an instrument of divine will, Powers occasionally received personal intimations about the purposes he was serving, as was the case with the Greek Slave, but America addressed the fate of the union, and he was obliged to await the unfolding of national events before its implications were fully realized. Similar reasoning appears in a conversation recorded by Nathaniel Hawthorne about the possibility of flying as a future mode of transportation; Powers told his listener that the prospect would eventuate only when "the moral condition of mankind is so improved as to obviate the bad uses to which the power might be applied." [63] According to this idealistic reading of history, the demise of slavery represented just such a step forward in humanity's "moral condition," an advance, Powers hoped, that would now alert his fellow countrymen to the true value of his statue and induce them to purchase it. If the intentions of the individual corresponded to celestial ideals, matters of state were no less encompassed b y the same principle. [64]

Powers addressed the latter tenet in his California (Figs. 1, 7), a personification of the state in the form of a Native American. Here, the legibility of the symbolic content varies; it is most obvious in the descending divining rod and thorns clasped behind the maiden's back, objects devised to signal the rewards and perils that await the forty-niners; less apparent are the moral implications that reside in the figure's physical constitution. [63] What follows is an examination of Powers's urge to have California placed at Sutter's run and the predilections this act was intended to answer; these include childhood memories, folk customs, imponderable fluids, consecrated places, phrenology, spiritualism, and Swedenborgianism. It is the confluence of these currents that make the statue an especially comprehensive exposition of the diverse beliefs associated with the doctrine of Manifest Destiny and the closely related concept of American exceptionalism, which identified the United States as a land free of the iniquity and corruption of the Old World.

Powers compounded the implications of California's ethnic identity when he made her face "broad at the temples, the head small and round." [66] Given his enthusiasm for phrenology, these words constitute an abbreviated delineation of her character (Fig. 8). [67] Roundness was a positive attribute in the female skull because it denoted a uniform development of all the faculties; excessive reliance on one or a few of them to the extent that they protruded noticeably was the prerogative of males, who were obliged by the demands of their profession to devote specific mental organs to a particular activity. The diminutive head, which contributes to the attenuated proportions of the figure, [68] is due to assumptions about race. For phrenologists, size was a measure of strength, and in this respect the aboriginal inhabitants of the New World simply could not match the prowess of those who had arrived from Europe. The diminished mental capacity of the former, signaled by the smallness of their skulls, caused whites to wonder whether the tribes of the American West would ever accept the benefits of "civilization." [69] Size alone, however, was not the sole test of sagacity. The phrenological examiner also had to take into account the development of the "intellectual" faculties relative to those that governed the "animal" functions. Obviously, one hoped the former region was sufficiently large to dominate the latter, and an authority noted that "the Caucasian race is superior in reasoning power and moral elevation to all the other races, and accordingly, has a higher and bolder forehead." [70] Residing in that brow were the intellectual and spiritual faculties that accounted for the triumphant expansion of Western society. The rapidly retreating forehead of Powers's The Last of the Tribes (Fig. 9), for example, expresses as poignantly as her headlong flight that "[s]he is hopeless and knows not whither to turn." [71] The sinister though unobtrusive message of this work derives from the contention that the mental constitu tion of races prevented their affiliation or amalgamation; Indians were bound by their innate propensities to eschew the heralds of progress. [72] The brow of California, however, "is broad at the temples," and the reasons for this departure from conventional expectations deserve further consideration.

By representing his figure with a broad forehead, Powers gave her the sensitivity requisite to respond to the promptings of a divining rod. Low-browed individuals were deficient in the faculties that would enable them to feel the subtle attractions exercised by imponderable fluids on the rod. An ample "Spirituality," the organ that governed intuition, was not uncommon among high-browed Anglo-Saxon American women (Fig. 10), but one would seldom find similar endowments in those of a less-favored ethnicity. Merely grasping a nugget from California placed an especially gifted clairvoyant en rapport with the 'diggins' whence it was taken, and she would go on to describe them in detail." [73] At the "diggins" themselves, one D. M. Cook, a successful prospector, relied on the "interior promptings" that came to him during dreams to stake his claims. He soon discovered by experiment "that the same prescient faculty exists in many other individuals, and is available for like purposes." [74] Another contemporary source describes a particularly adept "rodsman" as possessing "a full, broad forehead, the mark of intellect." [73] Despite the race of his figure, Powers was obliged to acknowledge these considerations if he wished his audience to believe that his figure of California was actually capable of discerning hidden wealth.

The divining rod enjoyed wide popularity during the gold rush, and procuring one with the requisite qualities could cost the prospective Argonaut as much as twenty-five dollars, a substantial sum for a forked twig. [76] The inclusion of this device in California recalls the conch shell employed in the Fisher Boy; both were objects sanctioned by a venerable lore that endowed them with supernatural powers, and if Powers was inclined to give credence to the latter, no great leap was required to accept the claims advanced on behalf of the former.

Powers's awareness of the miracles performed by the divining rod certainly began during his childhood years in Woodstock. The instrument was used not merely for water witching, a common means of locating wells, but also in the quest for pirate treasure and mines abandoned by Spanish explorers. This activity flourished in Vermont in the early decades of the nineteenth century despite the improbability of either Captain Kidd or Coronado ever having made his way to the remote regions of New England. At the turn of the century Nathaniel Wood and an accomplice named Wingate established a cult in Middletown based on the oracular wisdom dispensed by the divining rod, which answered the "yes" or "no" questions put to it by followers with its downward bobs. This same device was expected to provide the gold that members anticipated would pave the streets of their "New Jerusalem." The dashed hopes and rapid dissolution of this community did little to reduce the gold fever; in Windsor, a town only a few miles from Power s's home, one source claimed in 1830 that he could name some five hundred men who believed that "immense treasures" were hidden in the Green Mountains. Even after Powers settled in Cincinnati, the migration of other Vermonters to Ohio in the 1820s kept him in contact with this element. [77] Where this passion raged in New England, the landscape was so pocked with excavations, according to one contemporary, that it resembled the gold-fields of California. [78] Just as Powers had turned to childhood experiences when contemplating Loulie's Hand and the Greek Slave, so, when he began his California this source imbued him with an appreciation for the occult forces locked in the divining rod that complemented his Swedenborgianism and growing interest in spiritualism. Catholic Italy offered little to capture the imagination of this transplanted Yankee, so he sought his sources of inspiration elsewhere, searching his memory and the doctrines that were currently enthralling his native land for material.

His early encounters were also likely to have acquainted him with the dowser's place in the belief system of many Vermonters. Alan Taylor notes in his study of treasure seeking that its upsurge in backwoods New England was an outgrowth of frontier conditions, which released marginal members of society from the surveillance of their more respectable neighbors. Puritanism frowned on magic, and gentlemen of the Enlightenment were equally hostile to "superstition"; freed from this oversight, rural Yankees could indulge in folk customs that had never quite disappeared. From mainstream culture they inherited the notion that material good fortune was a sign of God's favor, a conviction that persisted despite the harsh climate and poor soil of an environment that offered little chance of success. The devotion to treasure hunting, Taylor states, formed the basis of a "supernatural economy" whose participants "yearned for a religion that they could experience physically. For some, no experience with the supernatural s eemed more tangible than the pull of a divining rod." However fraught with cupidity, the endeavor inspired sincere feelings of reverence. [79]

These sentiments governed the ritual followed by the rodsman as he prepared to "swear the rod." Before embarking on his quest, "he raised the talisman before him, and looking reverently upwards, administered in a solemn tone the usual form of an oath; directing it to tell him the truth to such questions as he should ask." The treasure hunter's trials did not end, however, when the divining rod finally dipped downward, for malevolent spirits, usually the tormented souls of persons murdered by pirates and buried with their loot, often lingered over the site to ward off intruders. [80] Washington Irving satirized these beliefs in his Tales of a Traveler, and John Quidor's illustration of the moment when "the grim visage of the drowned buccaneer, [appeared] grinning hideously upon" Wolfert and his companions effectively captures the mood of nervous excitement that prevailed during such enterprises (Fig. 11). The expedition usually commenced under the cover of night, with the venturers maintaining absolute silenc e lest the guardian spirit take umbrage and cause the trove to disappear. [81] In this instance, the specter is a decidedly mortal interloper and the credulity of the protagonists the butt of much humor. Nevertheless, if we bear in mind that such scenes were not mere figments of the author's imagination but crucial components of the nation's "supernatural economy," then the intended impact of California becomes clearer. She, likewise, is a capricious sprite who presides over an enchanted spot, promising wealth with one hand while concealing in the other the bitter disillusionment she bequeaths with equal alacrity to her votaries.

The growth of Swedenborgianism, Mesmerism, and spiritualism toward the middle of the century entailed a refinement of the more extravagant features associated with the "supernatural economy." Gone were the secret incantations and gothic tales of interred bodies, but the divining rod remained, now viewed as a conductor of imponderable fluids. Its success was attributed to the animal magnetism exhaled by the ore, "while the peach twig in ... [the rodsman's] hands answers to the points of the iron lightning rod." [82] An article entitled "Wands, and the Divining Rod" explains that "every form in being, whether found upon the human, the animal, the vegetable, the mineral, or the cosmical plain of existence, is surrounded and pervaded by an imponderable element of a nature corresponding to the tangible material itself, in all its parts." It was precisely this "peculiar magnetism or soul essence" of things that enabled persons of a "peculiar nervous or physical susceptibility" to locate metallic veins "by means of a forked stick cut from a hazel or peach tree." [83] This vital element was especially concentrated in "distinct and large crystals," which produced, "though less powerfully, the same effects as magnets, or as the human hand." [84] The Swedenborgians meditated on the metaphysical implications of this phenomenon, ascribing it to the influx that descends into the dead earth "and fills and moves the materials which are there, acting upon and in and through each subject in exact accordance with its internal form and purpose and function; and crystallization begins its wondrous work." [85] The spiritualists assessed their prospects more pragmatically; whenever they perceived "the mineral emanations that rise flame-like, and ... the wave-currents of magnetism that sail like sheeted clouds over given districts of the country," they could "find the treasure" and thus "vindicate the truth of spiritualism." The wealth so acquired could be devoted to "the erection of halls, sustaining genuine media, and putting into th e field more lectures upon the Spiritual Philosophy" [86]

The transformations in the nation's "supernatural economy" affected Powers's outlook in a number of ways. In his youth, dowsing offered neighbors the hope of escaping from the hardscrabble existence of northern New England by means of a sudden windfall; as these notions were absorbed into the discourse about imponderable fluids, the folkloric elements gave way to natural law and seemingly became more scientific and universal. As we have seen, he considered the table-tipping miracles of the seance superior to the contrivances he devised for the Infernal Regions, and this comparison reflects a parallel evolution in his own thought. He initially viewed electricity with an eye to its potential for monetary reward, employing its novel sensations to enhance the spectacle he offered Cincinnatians; later, as his views approached those of the spiritualists, he likened the brain to a battery and the nerves to electric wires. [87] It was the refined mental and nervous organization of his figure of California that enabl ed her to sense the aura emitted by the gold beneath her feet; observers, who believed in animal magnetism and such related disciplines as phrenology--a not inconsequential portion of the population--would regard her divining rod neither as an archaic conceit nor as a curious vestige of folk custom, but rather as the emblem of an ameliorative philosophy that sought to quicken the pace of progress by reconciling science and religion.

Powers's intent to have California placed at Sutter's run, then, reflected his sense of the powers residing in the divining rod. Although statues were often designed for specific sites, the ramifications of this practice would have been greatly multiplied if California's divining rod had actually dipped toward the mother lode, to the site of a dense concentration of imponderable fluids. This setting was not simply sanctified by historical associations, it pulsated with the same vital energies that sustained the body electric. Without this reinforcement, the emblematic content was merely a conceit--interesting, but bereft of the profound resonance that accompanied its placement at one of the nodal points in the spiritual/material evolution of the republic.

Swedenhorg's teachings about spiritual affinities and their correspondence to the imponderable fluids on earth encouraged Powers on several occasions to designate a location for his work before having received a commission. His conception of causality modernized the Puritan doctrine pertaining to the "special providence"; the latter "differed from a miracle in that God wrought it through or with means, by natural instruments, by arranging the causes or influencing the agents, rather than by forcible interposition and direct compulsion." [88] The emotional capital Powers had invested in Woodstock resulted in an accumulation of imponderable fluids at that locale; through this natural means, and through various human intermediaries, the Greek Slave was obliged to find its way home, guided by the "sense of latitude and longitude" that operated throughout creation with a "power like that of a magnet." He committed his statues to "the soul of the universe where causes exist," firmly believing that the "Divine Laws which rule the Heavenly bodies in their grand revolutions descend into the minutest particulars--and human affairs are not left out." [89] Human affairs did not always live up to Powers's expectation, but his faith never wavered; California would align her divining rod with the magnetic attractions of Sutter's run, prevailing over all adversities the primitive site posed, because it was her manifest destiny to do so.

Although California gestures with her divining rod, she does not pick up the gold or examine it; Powers might, after all, have dispensed with the rod entirely and placed a nugget in her hand, but to do so would have altered the implications of the work considerably. [90] The significance of the pose appears in his contention that "[t]he gold in California glittered at the feet of the inhabitants for a century or more without being seen--no one thought of looking for gold in the earth and therefore no one saw it." He continues by claiming that discoveries are not made by the eye alone and, in fact, they occur only with the soul's recognition. [91] This notion places the statue, and the events surrounding the gold rush, within the context of destiny as Powers understood it; there was a time and place for everything, but only the inner person was endowed with the ability to know precisely when and where. California does not grasp the riches of her land, nor does she claim them for her people, who for generation s had wandered heedlessly over the goldfields and thus had relinquished their rights to them; Rather, she glances toward the recent arrivals, her Anglo-American "friends," who were equipped with the spiritual faculties capable of recognizing the true value of her bounties. This presumed audience was composed of the same people who were then organizing the local government, and Powers even mused that they might adopt his image for the state's coat of arms. [92]

Ideas of this sort were in the air; one contemporary account, for example, states that the Jesuits kept their knowledge of the gold a secret for years because they were unable to use it to benefit the Church. The narrative then reviews the disposition of the races assembled at the fields, describing "the swarthy Mexican, the seemingly passionless and phlegmatic Indian, and the energetic, persevering, go-ahead descendant of the Anglo-Saxon." [93] Despite the ambitions now present in all parties, only the last of them is imbued with the innate capacity to succeed. Neither Powers nor his anticipated audience was immune to racial stereotyping, and in California he effects a remarkable confluence of beliefs about the "supernatural economy" with those relating to Manifest Destiny; since Anglo-Saxons know best what to do with gold, they are fated to take possession of it. [94] The disingenuousness of this argument was invisible to its proponents; they saw themselves as instruments of a divine plan in which the desi re for material gain was merely a means to a greater end.

Paradoxically, this very reasoning stood behind Powers's willingness to change the tide of the figure from California to Australia should the occasion arise. [95] The decision may not be quite as opportunistic as it initially seems; [96] his thinking on the matter included the rather obvious insight that gold is located where it is discovered. The deeper ramifications of this notion appear in an interview with Charles Edwards Lester in which Powers asserts that Americans will find marble fit for statuary in their native soil when the need arises. Providence, he asserts, would not have scattered so many treasures in the land without including marble among them. [97] In other words, the distribution of natural resources is as much teleological as geological. Just as the developments of the Civil War unveiled new content in America, so the discovery of gold in Australia could expand the meaning of California: in vast, seemingly uninhabited portions of the globe, God planted the materials needed by his people to introduce civilization. But who were his people? Beneath an ingrained patriotism, Powers harbored a more comprehensive allegiance to Anglo-Saxonism; only this race, he believed, could "defy the world in regard to power and lead all the nations in the grand march of Christianity, civilization and science." [98] Australia was just another component in a grand design that comprehended California as well. Powers's priorities in this respect coincided with those entertained by most believers in Manifest Destiny: the dynamic growth of American society was held to be less a consequence of the institutions established by the young republic than of the inherent racial characteristics of its citizens. [99]

California and America articulate Powers's response to developments in Europe and the United States toward the middle of the century. As the Old World sank into anarchy and tyranny during the revolutions of 1848, the New, in his eyes, became more harmonious and prosperous. [100] The two works, then, proclaim the republic's mission; in the Capitol, the upward gesture of America would remind legislators that the blessings of union and liberty were heaven-sent; on the other side of the continent, the downward plunge of California's divining rod at Sutter's run would declare to pioneers that material prosperity was also integral to the designs of Providence. Though neither figure was composed on order, habits of thought acquired from Swedenborgianism, Mesmerism, and spiritualism encouraged Powers to designate specific sites for both. The cumulative effect of these doctrines was to reduce or dissolve the traditional dichotomy between matter and spirit, an attitude best described by the term "physical metaphysics. " The two realms were joined in a religion based on experience, one that offered the possibility of seeing, speaking to, and even touching those who had passed on to the next life. Imponderable fluids served as the intermediary, and this principle enabled Powers to update the "supernatural economy" he had known since childhood by moderating its more extreme features. In so doing, he relied on the theory of correspondences to explain how gains in the material sphere might parallel those in the celestial. History bore him out; the great infusion of wealth that accompanied the gold rush was set against a backdrop of spiritual progress inaugurated by Swedenborgianism and accelerated by the advent of spiritualism in 1848. [101] These themes converge in the figure of California; induced to divulge the site of untold wealth by emanations arising from the minerals at her feet, she incorporates phrenological principles of race and Puritan teachings on exceptionalism into a metaphysics based on the doctrines of vitalis m and Manifest Destiny.

Charles Colbert has published numerous articles on American art; his book A Measure of Perfection: Phrenology and the Fine Arts in America (University of North Carolina Press) appeared in 1997. He presently teaches at Portland State University and is preparing a book on the influence of spiritualism on American art [Department of Art, Neuberger Hall, Portland State University, Portland, Ore. 97207-0751].

Frequently Cited Sources

AAA: Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Bellows, Henry W., "Seven Sittings with Powers, the Sculptor," Appletons' Journal of Literature, Science end Art 1 (June 26, 1869), (Aug. 7, 1869), and 2 (Sept. 11, 1869).

Colbert, Charles, A Measure of Perfection: Phrenology and the Fine Arts in America (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1997).

Wunder, Richard P., Hiram Powers: Vermont Sculptor. 1805-1873, 2 vols. (Newark, Del.: University of Delaware Press, 1991).

Notes

(1.) Hiram Powers to William A. Buffum, Oct. 18, 1855, AAA, 1139/1187. For this letter, see also Wunder, vol. 2, 126.

(2.) Powers to Buffum (as in n. 1). For other instances, see Hiram Powers to George T. Marye, Jan. 24, 1861, AAA, 1141/191; Powers to George Gordon, Mar. 5, 1867, AAA, 1143/1793; and Powers to William S. Latham, June 3, 1867, AAA, 1143/968. In these letters Powers discusses the possibility of casting the figure in bronze; elsewhere, he also expressed a willingness to send California to San Francisco or Sacramento, both near, if not precisely on, the goldfields and both still in rudimentary states of development; see Powers to Samson [Powers], Aug. 18, 1850, AAA, 1134/1416; and Gordon to Powers, July 25, 1867, AAA, 1143/1063.

(3.) Bayard Taylor, El Dorado (New York: G. P. Putnam and Sons, 1873), 235.

(4.) Wunder, vol. 1, 158.

(5.) See Donald Martin Reynolds, Hiram Powers and His Ideal Sculpture (New York: Garland, 1977); idem, "The 'Unveiled Soul': Hiram Powers's Embodiment of the Ideal," Art Bulletin 59 (1977): 394-414; Martha Gyllenhall et al., New Light: Ten Artists Inspired by Emanuel Swedenborg (Bryn Athyn, Pa.: Glencairn Museum, 1988); Wunder, vol. 1, 47, 129; and Colbert, 30-38, 172-211, 288-312.

(6.) See Signe Toksvig, Emanuel Swedenborg: Scientist and Mystic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948); Marguerite Beck Block, The New Church in the New World (New York: Octagon Books, 1968); and Scott Trego Swank, "The Unfettered Conscious: A Study of Sectarianism, Spiritualism, and Social Reform in the New Jerusalem Church 1840-1870," Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1970.

(7.) Emanuel Swedenborg, Angelic Wisdom Concerning Divine Love and Divine Wisdom (New York: Swedenborg Foundation, 1982), 227-28.

(8.) Block (as in n. 6), 73.

(9.) At the end of his life, in 1873, it was stated that Powers had been a believer for about fifty years, which indicates that he became a Swedenborgian about 1823. This was the year he entered the employment of Lumen Watson, a Swedenborgian, and there may be a connection between these events. See "New Church Worthies," New Church Messenger, Feb. 18, 1885, Cincinnati Historical Society (hereafter CHS), mss qP888, 6 RM, box 6.

(10.) Hiram Powers to Mr. Tower, Mar. 8, 1864, AAA, 1142/416; and Powers to Mrs. Wise, May 25, 1865, AAA, 1142/1201.

(11.) Hiram Powers to Edward Everett, Sept. 2, 1852, AAA, 1136/173-75. In this letter, Powers remarks that the event occurred ten to eleven years earlier.

(12.) John Worcester, Physiological Correspondences (Boston: New-Church Union, 1931), 387.

(13.) Toksvig (as in n. 6), 313.

(14.) Hiram Powers to Sidney Brooks, Oct. 9, 1856, AAA, 1138/768-70; and Powers to Mrs. Clark, Dec. 19, 1858, AAA, 1139/1291-92. For Swedenborg's thoughts on this matter, see Toksvig (as in n. 6), 258.

(15.) J. M. Bixby to Hiram Powers, Jan. 14, 1850, AAA, 1134/808-9. In this letter he asks Powers's opinion about Daniel Dunglas Home, a medium, and goes on to relate his own spiritualistic experiences. Presumably, he would not be asking this question unless he knew that Powers was already involved in spiritualism. It would seem safe to assume that the sculptor's interest dates from as early as 1849, in other words, just at the time he was conceiving California. In 1852 Powers frequently wrote about spiritualism, which seems to have become a particularly urgent issue in this year and the next; see Hiram Powers to Edward Everett, Sept. 2, 1852, AAA, 1136/173-74.

(16.) Recent literature on spiritualism includes R. Laurence Moore, In, Search of White Crows (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977); Janet Oppenheim, The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Ann Braude, Radical Spirits (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989); Alex Owen, The Darkened Room (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990); Bret E. Carroll, Spiritualism in Antebellum America (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1997); and Barbara Goldsmith, Other Powers (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998). What follows is drawn from these sources.

(17.) For the history of Mesmerism, see Robert Darnton, Mesmerism and End of the Enlightenment in France (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968); Robert Fuller, Mesmerism and the American Cure of Souls (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982); and Alison Winter, Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).

(18.) For a discussion of this belief, see Block (as inn. 6), 131-33.

(19.) Wunder, vol. 1, 290-92.

(20.) Hiram Powers to Ben [Powers], Mar. 24, 1858, AAA, 1139/1704-5; and Powers to Mr. Hazard, Mar. 27,1859, AAA, 1140/3.

(21.) Hiram Powers to Mr. Wilkie, May 1, 1852, AAA, 1138/434-35.

(22.) Hiram Powers to Ben [Powers], Mar. 24, 1858, AAA, 1139/1705. Powers also mentions the movements of a table during a seance, in Powers to Mr. Rymer, Mar. 1856, AAA, 1138/237. Powers discusses disembodied hands and seances in Bellows, Sept. 11, 1869, 107.

(23.) For more on "physical metaphysics" and its implications for the culture of Victorian America, see Colbert, 78, 224-25,282-338.

(24.) Hiram Powers to Rev. Henry W. Bellows, May 18, 1869, AAA, 1144/664. See also Bellows, Sept. 11, 1869, 107.

(25.) A discussion of the Infernal Regions can be found in Wunder, vol. 1, 50-53, vol. 2, 214.

(26.) Hiram Powers to Edward Everett, Sept. 2, 1852, AAA, 1136/175.

(27.) Emma Hardinge [Britten], Modern American Spiritualism: A Twenty Years' Record of the Communication between Earth and the World of Spirits (New York: By the author, 1870), 157.

(28.) Hence, in 1850, William Wetmore Story could express his wish to Powers that they could communicate by "mesmeric means"; Story to Powers, May 12, 1850, AAA, 1134/1154. For Story's interest in spiritualism, see William Wetmore Story, Conversations in a Studio (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1890), vol. 1, 285-300.

(29.) Hiram Powers to Edward Everett, Oct. 27, 1858, AAA, 1139/1204.

(30.) A discussion of the phrenological implications of sculpture that reproduced parts of the body will be found in Colbert, 289-93.

(31.) Powers was not very specific about the date, but in one instance he placed it in 1839 by stating in 1851 that the vision occurred twelve years earlier; see Hiram Powers to Ben [Powers], Nov. 14, 1851, AAA, 1135/2349-50.

(32.) See Emanuel Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, trans. George F. Dole (New York: Swedenborg Foundation, 1984), 98-104. For a discussion of the implications of begetting children within the context of "physical metaphysics" and Swedenborgianism, see Colbert, 294-300.

(33.) Hiram Powers, quoted in Bellows, June 26, 1869, 402.

(34.) Powers's religious orientation early in life is suggested by his remark that his mother was a Universalist and his father did not talk about the subject; see Bellows, Aug. 7, 1869, 595.

(35.) Bellows, Sept. 11, 1869, 107. Mention of the relationship between disembodied hands in seances and Powers's sculpture of body parts is made in Reynolds, Hiram Powers (as in n. 5), 122.

(36.) Powers did plan to do a statue of Swedenborg for the New Jerusalem Church; see Henry T. Tuckerman, Book of the Artists (New York: G. P. Putnam and Sons, 1867), 292.

(37.) The spiritualist content of Harriet Hosmer's Puck (1856, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.) did not preclude a more conventional, Shakespearean reading of this piece; see Charles Colbert, "Harriet Hosmer and Spiritualism," American Art 10 (Fall 1996): 35-39. Powers made several statues of Eve (for example, Eve Tempted, first version, 1839-42, marble, 1873, National Museum of American Art), which could be viewed as expressions of traditional Christian faith or as illustrations of Swedenborg's precepts on Genesis. There is no explicit iconographic detail that links them with the latter to the exclusion of the former. For the temptations of Eve, see Emanuel Swedenborg, Arcane Caclestia (London: Swedenborg Society, 1967), vol 1,146-50.

(38.) Hiram Powers, quoted in Charles Edwards Lester, The Artist, the Merchant, and the Statesman. of the Age of the Medici. and of Our Own Times (NewYork: Paine and Burgess, 1845), vol. 1, 88.

(39.) Hiram Powers to Rev. Philip Slaughter, Apr. 21, 1852, in Wunder, vol. 2, 146.

(40.) Hiram Powers, quoted in Lester (as in n. 38), vol. 1, 89.

(41.) Tuckerman (as in n. 36), 286.

(42.) For more on the expression of religious sentiments in Cole's art, see Alan Wallach, "Thomas Cole: Landscape and the Course of American Empire," in Thomas Cole: Landscape into History, by William H. Truettner, Alan Wallach, at al. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 99.

(43.) Hiram Powers to jeb Cook, Aug. 12, 1850, AAA, 1134/1395.

(44.) For an account of the circumstances surrounding the death of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, see Wunder, vol. 1, 200-203.

(45.) Hiram Powers to "Dear Cousin" [John P. Richardson], Apr. 4, 1858, AAA, 1139/731. For the loss of Powers's Calhoun, see Wunder, vol. 1, 200-203.

(46.) Hiram Powers to "My Dear Friend," Apr. 5, 1855, AAA, 1137/836.

(47.) Discussions of the tour of the Greek Slave will be found in Samuel A. Robertson and William H, Gerdts, "The Greek Slave," Museum 17 (Winter-Spring 1965): 5-19; Linda Hyman, "The Greek Slave by Hiram Powers: High Art as Popular Culture," Art Journal 36 (Spring 1976): 216-33; Wunder, vol. 1, 207-74; and Colbert, 282-315.

(48.) Hiram Powers to Thomas Powers, Dee. 31, 1849, AAA, 1134/1723-29. See also Reynolds, "'Unveiled Soul'" (as in n. 5), 412; and Wunder, vol. 1, 208. Wunder also relates this account to Powers's statue of Eve; see Wunder, vol. 1, 181.

(49.) The Greek Slave was exhibited in Woodstock on Aug. 15, 1850, during a tour conducted by Powers's brother-in-law Henry J. Adams; see Wunder, vol. 1, 243.

(50.) See Hiram Powers to "Cousin Thomas" [Powers], Jan. 8, 1851, AAA, 1135/1756.

(51.) Hiram Powers to "Dear Cousin" [John P. Richardson], Dec. 14, 1853, AAA, 1136/1095-96. Also relevant is the discussion of spiritualism included in this letter.

(52.) Bellows, Aug. 7, 1869, 596.

(53.) Perry Miller remarks of the Puritan conversion experience that "grace never persuades any will except through the agency of some knowledge; grace is not a formless, mystical infusion, but is tied to concrete phantasms." For the Puritans this "concrete" phenomenon was the word spoken in a sermon; for Powers it was an explicit image of his future profession. Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1982), 282.

(54.) Undated newspaper clipping, marked "'Powers, the Sculptor' from the Cambridge Chronicle (Mass), (9 May 1863)." Swedenborg noted, "The angels of the inmost heaven ... are naked"; Swedenborg (as in n. 32), 137. We also find the spiritualists, on entering a haunted house, observing "the figure of a woman destitute of clothing. It answered no questions, but shook its head and hand in a frightful and forbidding way, then suddenly disappeared, how and where we know not"; "The Nashville Ghost," Spirit Telegraph 17 (1855): 232. Powers's reliance on the nude to express religious concepts was reinforced by the religions he personally favored.

(55.) Hiram Powers to "Cousin Susan," Jan. 3, 1853, AAA, 1136/392.

(56.) Hiram Powers to Susan S. Eastman, Dee. 4, 1863, AAA, 1142/253.

(57.) Hiram Powers to Edward Greenway, Sept. 11, 1851, AAA, 1135/2266.

(58.) L. L. Barnes, "26 June 1865, Mr. Hiram Powers' Studio, Florence," AAA, 1146 (in the roll I consulted, the individual entries were not numbered). Powers himself was judged to have the phrenological faculty of "Locality" large; it gave him a "knowledge of places and facility to find... [his] way." His "Inhabitiveness" was also large, making him "very anxious to be settled permanently in one homestead"; L. N. Fowler, "Phrenological Description of Hiram Powers," AAA, 1146. On the phrenological implications of the affinity animals had for places, see George Combe, The Constitution of Man Considered in Relation to External Objects (Boston: Marsh, Capen and Lyon, 1835), 3. Again, Powers's narrative apparently derives from a personal experience; as a child he was rescued from danger and guided home by a dog; see Lester (as in n. 38), vol. 1,28-29.

(59.) Swedenborg (as in n. 7), 68; William Gregory, Animal Magnetism or Mesmerism and Its Phenomena (1909; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1975), 95; and "Effect of Consecrated Places," Spirit Telegraph 3 (1854): 117.

(60.) The iconography and social context for America are discussed in Vivian Green Fryd, Art and Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 205-6; Wunder, vol. 1, 158, 167, 279,304, vol. 2, 118-21; and Colbert, 205-9.

(61.) For Powers's claim, see Hiram Powers to York Atlee, Feb. 10, 1856, AAA, 1138/174.

(62.) Hiram Powers to Sidney Brooks, Mar. 8, 1865, 1142/980; see also Powers to Ben Reilly, June 19, 1865, AAA, 1142/1264-66.

(63.) Nathaniel Hawthorne, Passages from the French and Italian Note-Books (Boston: Houghton, Muffin, 1883), 362.

(64.) Yet if Swedenborg persuaded Powers that history was intelligible because the material world corresponded to the spiritual, this faith must have been tried by the circumstances surrounding the loss of his Calhoun at sea. This statue went down with the Elizabeth in 1850, but the story did not conclude with this episode; it was rescued from the depths and sent on to Charleston. When the work arrived there in November, the citizens were delighted to see that the figure was largely intact, the only damaged portion being a scroll that bore the words "Truth, Justice and the Constitution." Powers himself had selected this motto, taking it from a speech Calhoun delivered in defense of states' rights. Southerners interpreted this as symbolic of the condition of their region of the country, truth, justice, and the constitution being shattered by Congress. To have acceded to this reading of events would have required Powers to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Southern cause, and this he was unwilling to do. Despit e his belief that there were no accidents, that all proceeded according to the designs of a watchful deity, he remained mute about the extraordinary coincidences associated with the salvation of his statue. In one letter, for example, he mentions the desire of some to leave the statue as it was, hut then offers no personal reflections on the subject and simply goes on to discuss his plans for restoring the scroll. Hiram Powers to H. Gourdin, Feb. 22, 1852, AAA, 1135/2550; and Wunder, vol. 1, 197-200.

(65.) The explicit message of California, Powers remarked, was that appearances are deceiving, and the suitor intent on "wooing" her must patiently endure her capricious bestowal of favors. See Hiram Powers to Philip Slaughter, Apr. 16, 1852, AAA, 1135/2709; and Wunder, vol. 1, 162-63, vol. 2, 124-25. The nature of the misfortunes that were symbolized by the thorns is made explicit by the sculptor in a letter to his brother Samson Powers, who had gone to California. He is told to keep out of the water while panning gold because the activity was perilous to one's health. See Hiram Powers to Samson Powers, Jan. 1, 1850, AAA, 1134/0742. Begun in the winter of 1849-50, California originally held an inverted cornucopia, which was changed to a quartz crystal, apparently in 1851, when the artist learned that the gold was located in veins of quartz. See Hiram Powers to Edward Everett, May 23, 1850, AAA, 1134/1168-69. For a contemporary discussion of these matters and the gold in quartz, see Taylor (as inn. 3), 110-1 1. The explicit indication that the figure is indeed a Native American is the style of the hair, which is straight and long. The work was eventually purchased by William Backhouse Astor.

(66.) Hiram Powers to George Gordon, Mar. 5, 1867, AAA, 1143/793.

(67.) For Powers's interest in phrenology, see Colbert, 170-211, 282-315; much of what follows depends on this source. See also Charles Colbert, "'Each Little Hillock Hath a Tongue'--Phrenology and the Art of Hiram Powers," Art Bulletin 78 (1986):281-300.

(68.) This may account for the description of the figure of California as "lithe" in one contemporary source; see "American Artists in Florence," Boston Daily Advertiser 87 (Mar. 14, 1856).

(69.) See Charles Caldwell, Elements of Phrenology (Lexington, Ky: Meriwether, 1827), 239-40. See also Samuel George Morton, Crania Americana: or, A Comparative View of the Skulls of Various Aboriginal Nations of North and South America (Philadelphia: Dobson, 1839); and Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York: Norton, 1981), 57-68.

(70.) O. S. Fowler, The Practical Phrenologist (Boston: O. S. Fowler, 1869), 13.

(71.) Newspaper clipping, no title, no date, CHS mss qP888, 6 RM, box 6.

(72.) George Combe, The Constitution of Man (Boston: Carter and Hendee, 1829), 167.

(73.) W. S. Courtney, "Clairvoyance and Psychomestry," Spiritual Telegraph 3 (1854): 277.

(74.) Untitled entry, Spiritual Telegraph 6 (1855): 372.

(75.) "A History of the Divining Rod; with the Adventures of an Old Rodsman, (Concluded)," United States Magazine and Democratic Review 26 (Apr. 1850):372.

(76.) "A Transparent Humbug," Boston Daily Advertiser 88 (Aug. 16, 1856). For the materials and practices associated with the divining rod, see Sir William Barrett and Theodore Besterman, The Divining Rod (New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1968), 233-40.

(77.) Alan Taylor, "The Early Republic's Supernatural Economy: Treasure Seeking in the American Northeast, 1780-1830," American Quarterly 38 (Spring 1986): 7-34. Much of what follows is derived from this article.

(78.) "A History of the Divining Rod; with the Adventures of an Old Rodsman," United States Magazine and Democratic Review 26 (Mar. 1850): 223.

(79.) Taylor (as in n. 77), 15-22. The quote is on 22.

(80.) "A History" (as in n. 75), 319. See also Taylor (as inn. 77), 11.

(81.) Taylor (as in n.77), 11-14.

(82.) "A History" (as inn. 78), 220.

(83.) "Wands, and the Divining Rod," American Phrenological Journal 18 (1853):127.

(84.) Gregory (as inn. 59), 99-100.

(85.) Theophilus Parsons, Essays (Boston: William Carter and Brother, 1868), vol. 2, 63.

(86.) J. M. Peebles, The Practical of Spiritualism (Chicago: Norton and Leonard, 1868), 10, 58, 61.

(87.) Hiram Powers to Sidney Brooks, Oct. 9, 1856, AAA, 1138/766.

(88.) Miller (as inn. 53), 228.

(89.) Hiram Powers to Hamilton Fish, Feb. 1, 1859, AAA, 1139/1400. This statement is part of a text in which Powers discusses the possibility of establishing an "equilibrium" in California.

(90.) This alternative would have resembled, for example, Erastus Dow Palmer's Indian Girl (1856, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), where the figure picks up a cross left on the ground by missionaries. The gesture represents the first step in her enlightenment and conversion to Christianity. California does not exhibit this sort of awakening (to the potential of wealth); she merely offers the treasures of her territory to others.

(91.) Hiram Powers to Sidney Brooks, Feb. 7, 1860, AAA, 1140/555.

(92.) Hiram Powers to Samson Powers, Feb. 5, 1851, AAA, 1135/1803.

(93.) Henry I. Simpson, Three Wee/u in the Gold Mines, or Adventures with the Gold (Henry I. Simpson, 1848), reprinted in Magazine of History (Tarrytown, N.Y.) 171 (1932): 191, 194.

(94.) Malcolm T. Rohrburgh, Days of Cold (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 221. Rohrburgh discusses the arrival in the goldfields of ideas about Manifest Destiny.

(95.) Hiram Powers to M. M. Holloway, Sep. 23, 1862, AAA, 1141/1141; and Powers to C. B. Holland, Sept. 13, 1863, AAA, 1142/184.

(96.) See William H. Gerdts, American Neo-Classic Sculpture (New York: Viking Press, 1973), 125.

(97.) Lester (as in n. 38), vol. 1, 128.

(98.) Hiram Powers to Collie [Collin?], June 8, 1865, AAA, 1142/1229.

(99.) Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), 1.

(100.) For more on Powers's reaction to political events in Europe in 1848-49, see Wunder, vol. 1, 159-63.

(101.) Hardinge (as inn. 27), 28.

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