As to the striking feature of the case--the confessions of so large a
proportion of the accused--Mr. Upham manifests the perplexity which we
encounter in almost all narrators of similar scenes. In all countries
and times in which trials for witchcraft have taken place, we find the
historians dealing anxiously with the question--how it could happen that
so many persons declared themselves guilty of an impossible offense,
when the confession must seal their doom? The solution most commonly
offered is one that may apply to a case here and there, but certainly
can not be accepted as disposing of any large number. It is assumed that
the victim preferred being killed at once to living on under suspicion,
insult, and ill-will, under the imputation of having dealt with
the Devil. Probable as this may be in the case of a stout-hearted,
reasoning, forecasting person possessed of nerve to carry out a policy
of suicide, it can never be believed of any considerable proportion of
the ordinary run of old men and women charged with sorcery. The love of
life and the horror of a cruel death at the hands of the mob or of the
hangman are too strong to admit of a deliberate sacrifice so bold, on
the part of terrified and distracted old people like the vast majority
of the accused; while the few of a higher order, clearer in mind and
stronger in nerve, would not be likely to effect their escape from an
unhappy life by a lie of the utmost conceivable gravity. If, in the
Salem case, life was saved by confession toward the last, it was for a
special reason; and it seems to be a singular instance of such a mode of
escape. Some other mode of explanation is needed; and the observations
of modern inquiry supply it. There can be no doubt now that the
sufferers under nervous disturbances, the subjects of abnormal
condition, found themselves in possession of strange faculties, and
thought themselves able to do new and wonderful things. When urged to
explain how it was, they could only suppose, as so many of the Salem
victims did, that it was by "some evil spirit;" and except where
there was such an intervening agency as Mr. Parris' "circle," the
only supposition was that the intercourse between the Evil Spirit and
themselves was direct. It is impossible even now to witness the curious
phenomena of somnambulism and catalepsy without a keen sense of how
natural and even inevitable it was for similar subjects of the Middle
Ages and in Puritan times to believe themselves ensnared by Satan, and
actually endowed with his gifts, and to confess their calamity, as the
only relief to their scared and miserable minds. This explanation seems
not to have occurred to Mr. Upham; and, for want of it, he falls into
great amazement at the elaborate artifice with which the sufferers
invented their confessions, and adapted them to the state of mind of the
authorities and the public. With the right key in his hand, he would
have seen only what was simple and natural where he now bids us marvel
at the pitch of artfulness and skill attained by poor wretches scared
out of their natural wits.
The spectacle of the ruin that was left is very melancholy. Orphan
children were dispersed; homes were shut up, and properties lost; and
what the temper was in which these transactions left the churches and
the village, and the society of the towns, the pastors and the flocks,
the Lord's table, the social gathering, the justice hall, the market,
and every place where men were wont to meet, we can conceive. It was
evidently long before anything like a reasonable and genial temper
returned to society in and about Salem. The acknowledgments of error
made long after were half-hearted, and so were the expressions of
grief and pity in regard to the intolerable woes of the victims. It is
scarcely intelligible how the admissions on behalf of the wronged should
have been so reluctant, and the sympathy with the devoted love of their
nearest and dearest so cold. We must cite what Mr. Upham says in honor
of these last, for such solace is needed:
"While, in the course of our story, we have witnessed some shocking
instances of the violation of the most sacred affections and obligations
of life, in husbands and wives, parents and children, testifying against
each other, and exerting themselves for mutual destruction, we must not
overlook the many instances in which filial, parental, and fraternal
fidelity and love have shone conspicuously. It was dangerous to befriend
an accused person. Proctor stood by his wife to protect her, and it cost
him his life. Children protested against the treatment of their parents,
and they were all thrown into prison. Daniel Andrew, a citizen of high
standing, who had been deputy to the General Court, asserted, in the
boldest language, his belief of Rebecca Nurse's innocence; and he had to
fly the country to save his life. Many devoted sons and daughters clung
to their parents, visited them in prison in defiance of a blood-thirsty
mob; kept by their side on the way to execution; expressed their
love, sympathy, and reverence to the last; and, by brave and perilous
enterprise, got possession of their remains, and bore them back under
the cover of midnight to their own thresholds, and to graves kept
consecrated by their prayers and tears. One noble young man is said to
have effected his mother's escape from the jail, and secreted her in
the woods until after the delusion had passed away, provided food and
clothing for her, erected a wigwam for her shelter, and surrounded her
with every comfort her situation would admit of. The poor creature must,
however, have endured a great amount of suffering; for one of her larger
limbs was fractured in the all but desperate attempt to rescue her from
the prison walls." (Vol. ii. p. 348.)
The act of reversal of attainder, passed early in the next century,
tells us that "some of the principal accusers and witnesses in those
dark and severe prosecutions have since discovered themselves to be
persons of profligate and vicious conversation;" and on no other
authority we are assured that, "not without spot before, they became
afterward abandoned to open vice." This was doubtless true of some; but
of many it was not; and of this we shall have a word to say presently.