And these mystic shadows, flitting about in the thick grayness, were unbodied souls; not like visitants from the bright summer land, nor yet beings resembling the dark, undeveloped “dwellers on the threshold,” whom earthly crimes held bound near their former homes, but they seemed as if they were misty emanations of unripe human bodies, scarcely conscious of their state, yet living, actual individualities, once resident in mortal tenements, but torn from their sheltering envelope too soon, or too suddenly, to have acquired the strength and consistency of a fresh existence. And yet the numbers of these restless phantoms were legion, and their multitude seemed to be ever increasing, when, lo! this weird phantasmagoria too passed away, but not before the seeress had, with entranced lips, described to the listeners every feature of the scene she had witnessed.
Then the influence seemed to deepen upon her, and she pronounced words which the young Scotchman, Mr. Waters, a phonographic writer, transcribed upon the spot to the following effect:
“Woe, woe to thee, Alabama!
“Fair land of rest, thy peace shall depart, thy glory be shorn, and the proud bigots, tyrants, and cowards, who have driven God’s angels back from thy cities, even in this chamber, have sealed thy doom, and their own together.
“Woe to thee, Alabama! Ere five drear years have fled, thou shalt sit as a widow, desolate.
“The staff from thy husband’s hand shall be broken, the crown plucked from his head, the sceptre rent from his grasp.
“Thy sons shall be slain, thy legislators mocked and bound with the chains thou hast fastened on others.
“The blind ones, who have proscribed the spirits of love and comfort from ministry in thy homes, shall be spirits themselves, and ere those five years be passed, more spirits than bodies shall wander in the streets of Alabama, homeless, restless, and unripe, torn from their earthly tenements, and unfit for their heavenly ones; until thy grass-grown streets and thy moss-covered dwellings shall be the haunts of legions of unbodied souls, whom thy crimes shall have violently thrust into eternity!”
When this involuntary prophecy of evil import was read by the young scribe to the disenthralled medium, her own horror and regret at its utterance far exceeded that of any of her aghast listeners, not one of whom, any more than herself, attached to it any other meaning than an impression produced by temporary excitement and the sphere of the unholy legislative chamber.
How deeply significant this fearful prophecy became during the ensuing five years, all who were witnesses to its utterance, and many others, to whom it was communicated in that same year, can bear witness of.
Swept into the red gulf of all-consuming war, many of the unhappy gentlemen who had legislated against “the spirits in Alabama,” became, during the ensuing five years, spirits themselves, and have doubtless realized the inestimable privileges which the communion they so rashly denounced on earth was calculated to afford to the inhabitants of the spheres.
In other respects, the fatal prophecy has been too literally fulfilled. Many a regiment of brave men have marched out of the city streets of Alabama, only to return as unbodied souls, and to behold the streets grass-grown and deserted, and the thresholds which their mortal feet might never again cross, overspread with the moss of corruption and decay.
Alabama has truly sat “as a widow, desolate.” Her strength has been shorn, her beauty gone. No State has sent forth a greater number of brave and devoted victims to the war than Alabama; no Southern State has suffered more fearfully. May God and kind angels lift the war curse from her widowed head!
The following extract from a letter, written by Mr. Adams, one of the witnesses of the above scene, to the author, in 1864, from New York, during a temporary sojourn there, will carry its own comment on the fulfilment of the fatal prophecy:
“Now that my two poor boys are in daily danger of themselves becoming ‘unbodied spirits,’ Emma, I continually revert to that terrible prophecy of yours uttered in the assembly chamber at Montgomery. Heaven knows I was then so little prepared to expect war or any reasonable fulfilment of the doom, that I could only look to see some great pestilence, fire, or other sweeping calamity falling on poor Alabama. Last night, when I read in the Herald of the sweeping extermination that had visited those two fine Alabama regiments, I could not help going to Mrs. Adams’s desk, where she keeps the copy that young Waters made us of your prophecy, and reading it aloud to the whole company.
“Our friend J. B., who was present, insisted upon seeing the date, and when he saw that it was January, 1860, they were all fairly aghast, and said if ever there was genuine prophecy it was contained in that paper.”