THE SALEM WITCHCRAFT
[1675]
The home life of colonial New England was unique. Its like has appeared
nowhere else in human history. Mostwise it was beautiful as well. In it
religion was central and supreme. The General Court of Plymouth very
early passed the following order: "Noe dwelling-howse shal be builte
above halfe a myle from the meeting-howse in any newe plantacion without
leave from the Court, except mylle-howses and ffermehowses." In laying
out a village the meeting-house, as the hub to which everything was to
be referred, was located first of all. The minister's lot commonly
adjoined. Then a sufficiency of land was parcelled off to each
freeholder whereon to erect his dwelling. Massachusetts from the first,
and Plymouth beginning somewhat later, also made eminent provision for
schools--all in the interest of religion.
The earliest residences were necessarily of logs, shaped and fitted more
or less rudely according to the skill of the builder or the time and
means at his disposal. There was usually one large room below, which
served as kitchen, dining-room, sitting-room, and parlor, and on the
same floor with this one or two lodging-rooms. An unfinished attic
constituted the dormitory for the rising generation. A huge stone
chimney, terminating below in a still more capacious fireplace, that
would admit logs from four to eight feet in length, conveyed away the
smoke, and with it much of the heat. This involved no loss, as wood was
a drug. Communicating with the chimney was the great stone baking-oven,
whence came the bouncing loaves of corn-bread, duly "brown," the
rich-colored "pompion" pies, and the loin of venison, beef, or pork.
Over these bounties--and such they were heartily esteemed, however
meagre--often as the family drew around the table, its head offered
thanks to the heavenly Giver. Each morning, after they had eaten, he
read a goodly portion of God's Word, never less than a chapter, and
then, not kneeling but standing, led his household in reverent and
believing prayer for protection, guidance, stimulus in good, and for
every needed grace. What purity, what love of rectitude, what strength
of will did not the builders of America carry forth from that family
altar! He who would understand the richest side and the deepest moving
forces of our national life and development must not overlook those New
England fireside scenes.
[1688-1700]
Prayers ended, the "men folks" went forth to the day's toil. It was
hard, partly from its then rough character, partly from poverty of
appliances. For the hardest jobs neighbors would join hands, fighting
nature as they had to fight the Indians, unitedly. Farming tools, if of
iron or steel, as axe, mattock, spade, and the iron nose for the digger
or the plough, the village blacksmith usually fashioned, as he did the
bake-pan, griddle, crane, and pothooks, for indoor use. Tables, chairs,
cradles, bedsteads, and those straight-backed "settles" of which a few
may yet be seen, were either home-made or gotten up by the village
carpenter. Mattresses were at first of hay, straw, leaves, or rushes.
Before 1700, however, feather beds were common, and houses and the
entire state of a New England farmer's home had become somewhat more
lordly than the above picture might indicate. The colonists made much
use of berries, wild fruits, bread and milk, game, fish, and shellfish.
The stock wandered in the forests and about the brooks, to be brought
home at night by the boys, whom the sound of the cow-bell led. In autumn
bushels upon bushels of nuts were laid by, to serve, along with dried
berries and grapes, salted fish and venison, as food for the winter.
Every phase and circumstance of this pioneer life reminded our fathers
of their dependence upon nature and the Supreme Power behind nature,
while at the same time the continual need and application of neighbor's
co-operation with neighbor brought out brotherly love in charming
strength and beauty.
But to old New England religion, as a clerical, public, and organized
affair, there is a far darker side. In the eighteenth century belief in
witchcraft was nearly universal. In 1683 one Margaret Matron was tried
in Pennsylvania on a charge of bewitching cows and geese, and placed
under bonds of one hundred pounds for good behavior. In 1705 Grace
Sherwood was ducked in Virginia for the same offence. Cases of the kind
had occurred in New York. There was no colony where the belief in
astrology, necromancy, second sight, ghosts, haunted houses and spots,
love-spells, charms, and peculiar powers attaching to rings, herbs,
etc., did not prevail. Such credulity was not peculiar to America, but
cursed Europe as well. It seemed to flourish, if anything, after the
Reformation more than before. Luther firmly believed in witchcraft. He
professed to have met the Evil One in personal conflict, and to have
vanquished him by the use of an inkstand as missile. Perhaps every land
in Europe had laws making witchcraft a capital crime. One was enacted in
England under Henry VIII., another in James I.'s first year, denouncing
death against all persons "invoking any evil spirit, or consulting,
covenanting with, entertaining, employing, feeding, or rewarding any
evil spirit, or taking up dead bodies from their graves to be used in
any witchcraft, sorcery, charm, or enchantment, or killing or otherwise
hurting any person by such infernal arts." A similar statute was
contained in the "Fundamentals" of Massachusetts, probably inspired by
the command of Scripture, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." This
law, we shall see, was not a dead letter.
No wonder such a law was of more effect in New England than anywhere
else on earth. The official religion of the Puritans was not only
superstitious in general but gloomy in particular, and most gloomy in
New England. Its central tenet, here at least, seemed to be that life
ought to furnish no joy, men seeking to "merit heaven by making earth a
hell." Sunday laws were severe, and rigidly enforced from six o'clock
Saturday evening till the same hour the next. Not the least work was
allowed unless absolutely necessary, nor any semblance of amusement.
Boys bringing home the cows were cautioned to "let down the bars softly,
as it was the Lord's day." Sunday travellers were arrested and fined.
Men might be whipped for absence from church. A girl at Plymouth was
threatened exile as a street-walker for smiling in meeting. Increase
Mather traced the great Boston fire of 1711 to the sin of Sunday labor,
such as carrying parcels and baking food. In Newport, some men having
been drowned who, to say good-by to departing friends, had rowed out to
a ship just weighing anchor, Rev. John Comer prayed that others might
take warning and "do no more such great wickedness."
Sermons were often two hours long; public prayer half an hour. Worse
still was what went by the name of music--doggerel hymns full of the
most sulphurous theology, uttered congregationally as "lined off" by the
leader--nasal, dissonant, and discordant in the highest imaginable
degree. The church itself was but a barn, homely-shaped, bare, and in
winter cold as out-of-doors. At this season men wrapped their feet in
bags, and women stuffed their muffs with hot stones. Sleepers were
rudely awakened by the tithing-man's baton thwacking their heads; or, if
females, by its fox-tail end brushing their cheeks. Fast-days were
common. Prayer opened every public meeting, secular as well as
religious. The doctrine of special providences was pressed to a
ridiculous extreme. The devil was believed in no less firmly than God,
and indefinitely great power ascribed to him. The Catechism--book second
in authority only to the Bible--contained of his Satanic Majesty a cut,
which children were left, not to say taught, to suppose as correct a
likeness as that of Cromwell, which crowned the mantels of so many
homes.
[Illustration: Increase Mather.]
In a people thus trained the miracle is not that witchcraft and
superstition did so much mischief, but so little. Had it not been for
their sturdy Saxon good sense its results must have proved infinitely
more sad. The first remarkable case of sorcery in New England occurred
at Boston, in 1688. Four children of a pious family were affected in a
peculiar manner, imitating the cries of cats and dogs, and complaining
of pains all over their bodies. These were the regulation symptoms of
witch-possession, which presumably they had often heard discussed. An
old Irish serving-woman, indentured to the family, who already bore the
name of a witch, was charged with having bewitched them, and executed,
the four ministers of Boston having first held at the house a day of
prayer and fasting.
[Illustration: Cotton Mather.]
Young Cotton Mather, grandson of the distinguished Rev. John Cotton, a
man of vast erudition and fervent piety, was at this time colleague to
his father, Increase Mather, as pastor of the Boston North Church. His
imagination had been abnormally developed by fasts and vigils, in which
he believed himself to hold uncommonly close communication with the
Almighty. His desire to provide new arms for faith against the growing
unbelief of his time led him to take one of the "bewitched" children to
his house, that he might note and describe the ways of the devil in her
case. The results he soon after published in his "Memorable Providences
Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions." This work admitted no doubt as
to the reality of the demoniac possessions, which indeed it affected to
demonstrate forever. All the Boston ministers signed its preface,
certifying to its "clear information" that "both a God and a devil, and
witchcraft" existed. "Nothing too vile," it alleged, "can be said of,
nothing too hard can be done to, such a horrible iniquity as witchcraft
is." The publication excited great attention, and to it in no small
measure the ensuing tragedy may be traced.
[Illustration: Old Tituba the Indian.]
In February, 1692, three more subjects, children of Rev. Mr. Parris,
minister at Danvers, then called Salem Village, exhibited bad witchcraft
symptoms. The utmost excitement prevailed. Neighboring clergymen joined
the village in fasting and prayer. A general fast for the colony was
ordered. But the "devilism," as Cotton Mather named it, spread instead
of abating, the children having any number of imitators so soon as they
became objects of general notice and sympathy. Old Tituba, an Indian
crone, who had served in Parris's family, was the first to be denounced
as the cause. Two other aged females, one crazy, the other bed-ridden,
were also presently accused, and after a little while several ladies of
Parris's church. Whoso uttered a whisper of incredulity, general or as
to the blameworthiness of any whom Parris called guilty, was instantly
indicted with them.
On April 11th, the Deputy Governor held in the meeting-house in Salem
Village a court for a preliminary examination of the prisoners. A scene
at once ridiculous and tragic followed. When they were brought in, their
alleged victims appeared overcome at their gaze, pretending to be
bitten, pinched, scratched, choked, burned, or pricked by their
invisible agency in revenge for refusing to subscribe to a covenant with
the devil. Some were apparently stricken down by the glance of an eye
from one of the culprits, others fainted, many writhed as in a fit.
Tituba was beaten to make her confess. Others were tortured. Finally all
the accused were thrown into irons. Numbers of accused persons, assured
that it was their only chance for life, owned up to deeds of which they
must have been entirely innocent. They had met the devil in the form of
a small black man, had attended witch sacraments, where they renounced
their Christian vows, and had ridden through the air on broomsticks.
Such were the confessions of poor women who had never in their lives
done any evil except possibly to tattle.
[Illustration: Lieutenant-Governor Stoughton.]
On June 2d, a special court was held in Salem for the definite trial.
Stoughton, Lieutenant Governor, a man of small mind and bigoted temper,
was president. The business began by the condemnation and hanging of a
helpless woman. A jury of women had found on her person a wart, which
was pronounced to be unquestionably a "devil's teat," and her neighbors
remembered that many hens had died, animals become lame, and carts upset
by her dreadful "devilism." By September 23d, twenty persons had gone to
the gallows, eight more were under sentence, and fifty-five had
"confessed" and turned informers as their only hope. The "afflicted" had
increased to fifty. Jails were crammed with persons under accusation,
and fresh charges of alliance with devils were brought forward every
day.
[Illustration: Fac-simile of Sheriff's Return of an Execution.]
Some of the wretched victims displayed great fortitude. Goodman Procter
lost his life by nobly and persistently--vainly as well,
alas!--maintaining the innocence of his accused wife. George Burroughs,
who had formerly preached in Salem Village, was indicted. His physical
strength, which happened to be phenomenal, was adduced as lent him from
the devil. Stoughton browbeat him through his whole trial. What sealed
his condemnation, however, was his offer to the jury of a paper quoting
an author who denied the possibility of witchcraft. His fervent prayers
when on the scaffold, and especially his correct rendering of the Lord's
Prayer, shook the minds of many. They argued that no witch could have
gotten through those holy words correctly--a test upon which several had
been condemned. Cotton Mather, present at the gallows, restored the
crowd to faith by reminding them that the devil had the power to dress
up like an angel of light. Rebecca Nurse, a woman of unimpeachable
character hitherto, unable from partial deafness to understand, so as to
explain, the allegations made against her, was convicted notwithstanding
every proof in her favor.
Reaction now began. Public opinion commenced to waver. No one knew whose
turn to be hanged would come next. Emboldened by their fatal success,
accusers whispered of people in high places as leagued with the Evil
One. An Andover minister narrowly escaped death. The Beverly minister,
Hale, one of the most active in denouncing witches, was aghast when his
own wife was accused. Two sons of Governor Bradstreet were obliged to
flee for their lives, one for refusing, as a magistrate, to issue any
more warrants, the other charged with bewitching a dog. Several hurried
to New York to escape conviction. The property of such was seized by
their towns. A reign of terror prevailed.
People slowly awoke to the terrible travesty of justice which was going
on. Magistrates were seen to have overlooked the most flagrant instances
of falsehood and contradiction on the part of both accusers and accused,
using the baseless hypothesis that the devil had warped their senses.
The disgusting partiality shown in the accusations was disrelished, as
was the resort that had been had to torture. One poor old man of eighty
they crushed to death because he would plead guilty to nothing. The
authorities quite disregarded the fact that everyone of the
self-accusations had been made in order to escape punishment. These
considerations effected a revolution in the minds of most people.
Remonstrances were presented to the courts, securing reprieve for those
under sentence of death at Salem. This so irritated the despicable
Stoughton that he resigned.
The forwardness of the ministers therein turned many against the
persecution, After the first victims had fallen at Salem, Governor Phips
took their advice whether or not to proceed. Cotton Mather indited the
reply. It thankfully acknowledges "the success which the merciful God
has given to the sedulous and assiduous endeavors of our honorable
rulers to defeat the abominable witch crafts which have been committed
in the country, humbly praying that the discovery of those mysterious
and mischievous wickednesses may be perfected. It is pleasant to note,
after all, the ministers' advice to the civil rulers not to rely too
much on "the devil's authority"--on the evidence, that is, of those
possessed. The court heeded this injunction all too little, but by and
by it had weight with the public, who judged that, as the trials
appeared to be proceeding on devil's evidence alone, the farce ought to
cease. The Superior Court met in Boston, April 25, 1693, and the grand
Jury declined to find any more bills against persons accused of sorcery.
King William vetoed the Witchcraft Act, and by the middle of 1693 all
the prisoners were discharged.