Chief of a Nation of Ghosts: Images of Abraham Lincoln's Spirit in the Immediate Post-Civil War Period.

The article discusses Spiritualism in the United States, focusing on the period after the U.S. Civil War when images of the assassinated U.S. President Abraham Lincoln were widely available in popular culture. The 1870 meeting between former first lady Mary Todd Lincoln, a strong believer in the occult, with spirit photographer William Mumler in Boston, Massachusetts is recounted. Other topics include sisters Kate and Maggie Fox notable for communicating with the dead, the 1869 novel "The Gates Ajar" by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and the social impact of large-scale loss and grief due to the Civil War on the American public.