Herald of Progress, The.
Devoted to the Discovery and Application of Truth.
Love, Wisdom, Liberty
1860-1864 Weekly
New York, NY. Publisher: A.J. Davis & Co.. Editor: Andrew Jackson Davis (1826-1910) and Mary F. Davis.
Succeeds: Spiritual Telegraph and the Principle (inherited subscriber lists) Succeeded by: The Friend of Progress

1/1, February 4, 1860-July 2, 1864. $2.00 a year, 8-4pp. While Davis's name should have been a guarantee of success, the journal never lived up to expectations, perhaps because, as a contemporary noted, of the "stilted" style. S.B. Brittan, referring to the journal's acquisition of the mailing list of the Spiritual Telegraph (which he had helped edit) called it "magni nominis umbra." The journal regularly carried Davis's "Brief Answers" to correspondents on issues ranging from Biblical conundrums to the nature of vampires, and his didactic expositions on medical matters and on the nature of the universe, but was as much a "progressive" paper as a spiritualist one, stressing science over the miraculous and emphasizing fraternity and anti-sectarianism. The journal printed communications from the likes of Mrs. F.O. Hyzer, Selden J. Finney, Emma Tuttle, Cora Hatch, Addie Ballou, Henry T. Child, L. Maria Child, and, occasionally, Emma Hardinge. It covered the ongoing War Between the States from the Radical Republican, progressive point of view, carefully debating issues whether it would be "safe" to free the slaves and whether naturalization or colonization was the preferable solution. When the journal failed in mid-1864, Davis opined that the world was not inclined to support so high-minded a paper and instead yearned senselessly for "phenomena." Davis also attributed the failure of his journal to his unwillingness, unlike the publishers of more phenomenal spiritualist journals, to print the more outrageous sorts of advertisements for quack medicines and healers. These, he noted, were always more remunerative. NYPL; LOC; University of Texas, Austin; University of Rochester; Boston Athenaeum; Lily Dale Assembly.

Some materials courtesy of the Post Collection at the University of Rochester.

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