Principle, The. Devoted to Mental Freedom. Break from thy body's grasp-the Spirit-trance; Give thy soul room-thy Faculties expanse / Devoted to Mental Freedom / Fidelity to immutable principles of Justice, Truth and Right! Infidelity to all forms of mutable wrong and error. True Spiritual Manhood deals with Principles and avoids Personalities
1856-1860 Monthly
New York, NY, and Baltimore, MD. Publisher: Laning & Conklin. Editor: John B. Conklin and "a corps of spirits in and out of the form".
Succeeds: The Public Circle (?) Succeeded by: Herald of Progress (subscription list "handed over" to, in the hopes that the journal's subscribers would take the Herald as a substitute)
1/1, December 1856-1860. 8 pp., 9 1/2 x 12. Fifty cents a year.

The Spiritual Telegraph for December 20, 1856, says that it has heard of this new monthly just started in New York but not seen it. "It is published by J.B. Conklin, the medium, at 477 Broadway, at the low price of fifty cents a year. We suppose it is designed to take the place of the Public Circle, and will record test facts and communications that are given through Mr. Conklin as medium." U. Clark's Spiritualist Register for 1858 says that the journal is "edited by a corps of spirits in and out of the form" and that it is "radical, earnest, fearless and free in discussing the most delicate and important questions of the day." The New-England Spiritualist's notice of the journal, March 7, 1856, also highlights the elevated plane of its discourse: "Persons who have advanced beyond the phenomenal plane, and are seeking for higher and more interior truth, will find in its columns just the food they crave."

Conklin had earlier been involved in editing the Messenger of Light, and it was one of his seances that introduced Emma Hardinge [Britten] to spiritualism-and frightened her off for a time in disgust because she felt the spirits' teachings conflicted with the Bible. See Emma Hardinge, "My Confession," Spiritual Age 2/5 (January 29, 1859): 1; ibid., "Valedictory," Banner of Light 17/17 (July 15, 1865): 4. At Emma's first seance, Conklin's spirits apparently rapped out: "Immortality in light of Gospel teaching is a fiction." A.B. Child, "History of Mediums. No. 5. Miss Emma Hardinge," Banner of Light 3/18 (July 31, 1858): 7-8. Conklin is also one of the mediums frequently named by later conspiracy lovers as counseling Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. The journal consisted mainly of contributions by Conklin, with advertisements for his services as a test and developing medium, but it also printed occasional articles and letters by J.W. Edmonds and others. American Antiquarian Society; University of Rochester.

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