When persons arraigned for specific offences plead guilty, their pleas
generally are deemed conclusive evidence that the accused have performed
the special deeds set forth in the allegations. Many of the accused in
witchcraft times made statements which have ever since been called
_confessions_. Inference from that has long been general and wide-spread,
that nearly such witchcraft as the creed of our fathers specified had
positive manifestation in their day. But we seriously doubt whether any
record of statements made by an accused one exhibits distinct admission
that he or she had entered into covenant with that devil which one must
have been in league with to become such a witch or wizard as the laws
against witchcraft were intended to arrest.
Such confessions as were recorded may have been true in the main, but they
fall short of confessions of the special crime alleged; they amount to
little, if anything, more than admissions and statements that the
confessors had seen, been influenced by, and had acted in company with
apparitions or spirits all of whom were of earthly origin, and were
members of the _human_ family; they confessed only to being, or to having
been at times, clairvoyants.
The circumstances under which even such confessions were generally made,
need to be carefully viewed before just estimate can be placed upon the
worth and significance of the recorded statements.
Hutchinson supposed that "those who were condemned and not executed, all
confessed their guilt," ... and that "the most effectual way to prevent an
accusation" (of one's self) "was to become an accuser."
Strange--strange--and yet obviously true. An accused one, then, could look
for escape from death--the legal penalty of witchcraft--only by pleading
guilty to the charge. Confession of guilt, and nothing else, then,
purchased exemption from capital punishment. This becoming obvious, all
natural instincts for preservation of one's life, and all possible
entreaties, urgings, and commands of friends and relatives, forcibly
tended to extort confession even from the innocent. Husband or wife,
children, parents, brothers, sisters, and trusted advisers, often all
conspired in urging an accused one to plead guilty--yes, even a condemned
one, for that plea was as efficacious after conviction and sentence as
before. It is said that many did confess. Confessed to what? Never to
having made a covenant with the great witchcraft devil nor any formidable
imp of his, but generally to clairvoyant visions, to mental meetings with
the specters of friends, neighbors, and other embodied mortals, and to
some compacts and co-operative labors with such personages,--_never with
the devil_. They did not confess to witchcraft itself _as then defined_.
The clear-headed Mary Easty besought the magistrates "to try some of the
confessing witches, I being confident there is several of them has belied
themselves and others." Her clear and calm brain perceived the broad
distinction existing between clairvoyance and witchcraft. So, too, did
Martha and Giles Corey, Jacobs, Proctor, Susanna Martin, George Burroughs,
and others; these, and such as these, did not confess, while many weaker
and more ignorant ones did.
Little Sarah Carrier, only eight years old, whose testimony we adduced in
part, when presenting the case of her mother, throws much light upon some
_confessions_ of that day. _Simon Willard_, who wrote out and attested to
"the substance" of her statements, heads his record, "Sarah Carrier's
_Confession_, August 11th." The girl's confession? No; it was simply a
frank statement of facts in her own experience, which lets us know that
when she was about six years old her own mother made her a witch, and
baptized her. But "the devil, or black man, was not there, as she saw,"
when she was made a witch. She afflicted folks by pinching them; went to
those whom she afflicted; but went only "_in her spirit_." Her mother was
the only devil who bewitched her, and the only being whom her baptism
bound her to serve. Such was her witchcraft. That plain statement is
refreshing and valuable. It shows that when about six years old this
mediumistic girl had become so developed that her spirit could commune
with her mother's, independently of their bodies. She then became a
conscious clairvoyant, and could trace felt influences, issuing from her
mother, back to their source. Thenceforth mother and daughter could
conjointly place themselves on the green at Salem Village, ten miles off,
or in any pasture or any house whither thought might lead them. The
mother's stronger mind had but to wish, and the child must go with her
and do her bidding; and when the two were in rapport, any stronger spirit
controlling the mother could make the child co-operative in pinchings or
any other inflictions of pains. Because the little girl had set her hand
to a red book presented by her own mother, and thus, by implication, bound
herself to be obedient to that mother, her statement of the fact was
labeled _a confession_ of witchcraft, and deemed damaging to her mother.
Three or four other children of Mrs. Carrier were able to sense spirit
scenes. Her home was a domestic school of prophets, and her own children
were apt pupils in it. Her moral character and influence do not here
concern us.
Abigail Faulkner was condemned, and two of her children, "Dorothy ten, and
Abigail eight years old, testified that their mother appeared and made
them witches." That mother was daughter of Rev. Francis Dane of Andover,
some of whose other children and grandchildren were accused, which
suggests, though it fails to prove, that much medianimic susceptibility
was imparted through either him or his wife, or both, to their offspring.
His descendants attracted the notice of clairvoyants. Hutchinson states
that Mr. Dane himself "is _tenderly_ touched in several of the
examinations, which" (the tenderness?) "might be owing to a fair
character; and he may be one of the persons accused who" (the accusation
of whom) "caused a discouragement to further prosecutions." "He," being
then "near fourscore, seems to have been in danger." Internal luminosity
and copious radiations from their interior forms probably rendered Rev.
Mr. Dane, Rev. Samuel Willard, Mrs. Hale, wife of the minister at Beverly,
Mrs. Phips, wife of the governor, and many others of high character or
standing, visible by mediumistic optics, and presentible apparitionally
where spirits were wont to congregate, consult and manipulate instruments
for acting out--not for learning--the "wonders of necromancy, magic, and
Spiritualism."
Witch meetings, as they were called, or congregated spirits or apparitions
on the green, or in the pasture of the minister at Salem Village, are
mentioned more frequently and with more particularity and concordant
specifications, than would naturally be looked for if they had no basis on
fact. That Spirits in vast crowds have more than once been seen in modern
times by a seer looking up from High Rock in Lynn, can be learned by
perusal of A. J. Davis's visions there. But he was the observer of
departed ones only, while the apparent personages at witch meetings of old
were partly either the spirits of embodied persons or their apparitions.
The fact of apparitions being present thereat in those days proved the
persons themselves apparitionally seen to be the devil's allies. Some
confessors of witchcraft intended to verify the truth of their statements
by describing whom they had seen, and what they had observed at such
meetings. And it is not without interest that some people now read
confessions like the following from Ann Foster of Andover, viz.: "That she
was at the meeting of the witches at Salem Village when about twenty-five
were present; that Goody Carrier came and told her of the meeting and
would have her go, and so they got upon sticks and went the said journey,
and being there did see Mr. Burroughs the minister, who spake to them
all;... that they were presently at the Village," when they rode on the
"stick or pole"; and that she heard some of the witches say that there
were three hundred and five in the whole country, and that they would ruin
that place--the Village. Also that there was present at that meeting two
men besides Mr. Burroughs, the minister, and _one of them had gray hair_.
Not without interest are such things read, because they prompt to
fancyings of things possible in an unseen sphere which hangs over and
enfolds all mortals. Could Ann Foster's gray-haired man have been Tituba's
white-haired visitant--the originator and enactor of Salem witchcraft? Who
knows? Could not he and such as he have searched out and numbered many
persons in the land who were adapted to be facile instruments for his use,
and found three hundred and five in all? Had not his will power to call
instantly together, that is, to arrest and concentrate the attention of as
many of them as were at the moment impressible by him, either directly or
through other plastic mortals, from any part of the region between the
Penobscot and the Hudson, or even further, and thus collect a band, that
is, arrest and fix the attention, of twenty-five of them, more or less, to
whom inklings of his plans for the future might be given, and whose
relative rank, efficiency, or importance could be foreshadowed? Through
either unconscious apparitions or conscious spirits of mortals, or of both
classes commingled, might he not enact scenes which it pleased him to
have certain witnesses behold, and to proclaim, so far as he judged best,
his purposes, his doctrines, or aught else it should be his pleasure to
divulge or enforce? Possibly. Those witch meetings may have been much more
than mere fictions.
We will look now at other and quite different confessions, or rather at
what reputed confessors afterward said in explanation and defense of their
own admissions. Six well-esteemed women of Andover conjointly subscribed
to the following account:--
"We were all seized, as prisoners, by a warrant from the justice of
the peace, and forthwith carried to Salem. And, by reason of that
sudden surprisal, we, knowing ourselves innocent of the crime, were
all exceedingly astonished and amazed, and consternated and affrighted
even out of our reason. And our nearest and dearest relations, seeing
us in that dreadful condition, and knowing our great danger,
apprehended there was no other way to save our lives, as the case was
then circumstanced, but by our confessing ourselves to be such and
such persons as the afflicted represented us to be: they" (our
friends), "out of tenderness and pity, persuaded us to confess what we
did confess. And indeed that confession, that it is said we made, was
no other than what was suggested to us by gentlemen, they telling us
that we were witches, and they knew it and we knew it, which made us
think that it was so; and our understandings, our reason, our
faculties almost gone, we were not capable of judging of our
condition; as also the hard measures they took with us rendered us
incapable of making our defense; but said anything and everything
which they desired, and most of what we said was but, in effect, a
consenting to what they said. Some time after, when we were better
composed, they telling us what we had confessed, we did profess that
we were innocent and ignorant of such things....
"MARY OSGOOD, ABIGAIL BARKER,
MARY TILER, SARAH WILSON,
DELIVERANCE DANE, HANNAH TILER."
That document no doubt describes very accurately the mental condition and
pressing circumstances under which a very large number of the confessions
were made. There existed some cases, however, which differed from the
above. Samuel Wardwell, represented in some accounts as insane, confessed,
and afterward recalled his confession, and was executed. Margaret Jacobs,
perhaps under pressure and bewilderment as great as those attendant upon
the Andover women, made confession, in which she accused both her
grandfather and Mr. Burroughs; but compunctions of conscience forthwith
came over her, and she most fully and humbly recalled her confession,
choosing rather to die on the gallows than not to confess and repent
before the God of truth.