Liberty
This chapter examines the spiritualists' belief that emancipation represented a generational landmark for liberty, which they saw as essential for the well-being of the human spirit. Spiritualists generally understood emancipation within a wider, rational, and scientific way of understanding the world and rejected a liberty that did not have its own concrete materializations in that world. The federal adoption of an end to slavery as a war goal generally overwhelmed their reservations about the merits of the conflict. At the same time, they saw liberty as having clear social and economic dimensions. As such, they espoused a liberty that foreshadowed the emergence of postwar radical resistance to the power of capital. The chapter considers spiritualism's views on science and religion, slavery and emancipation, property, and liberty for working women. It also discusses the spiritualist radicalization in the course of the Civil War.