As a story of witchcraft, without any poetry in it, without any thing
to amuse the imagination, or interest the fancy, but hard, prosy,
and accompanied with all that is wretched, pitiful and withering,
perhaps the well known story of the New England witchcraft surpasses
every thing else upon record. The New Englanders were at this time,
towards the close of the seventeenth century, rigorous Calvinists,
with long sermons and tedious monotonous prayers, with hell before
them for ever on one side, and a tyrannical, sour and austere God
on the other, jealous of an arbitrary sovereignty, who hath "mercy
on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth." These
men, with long and melancholy faces, with a drawling and sanctified
tone, and a carriage that would "at once make the most severely
disposed merry, and the most cheerful spectators sad," constituted
nearly the entire population of the province of Massachuset's Bay.
The prosecutions for witchcraft continued with little intermission
principally at Salem, during the greater part of the year 1692. The
accusations were of the most vulgar and contemptible sort, invisible
pinchings and blows, fits, with the blastings and mortality of cattle,
and wains stuck fast in the ground, or losing their wheels. A
conspicuous feature in nearly the whole of these stories was what
they named the "spectral sight;" in other words, that the profligate
accusers first feigned for the most part the injuries they received,
and next saw the figures and action of the persons who inflicted them,
when they were invisible to every one else. Hence the miserable
prosecutors gained the power of gratifying the wantonness of their
malice, by pretending that they suffered by the hand of any one whose
name first presented itself, or against whom they bore an ill will.
The persons so charged, though unseen by any but the accuser, and
who in their corporal presence were at a distance of miles, and were
doubtless wholly unconscious of the mischief that was hatching against
them, were immediately taken up, and cast into prison. And what was
more monstrous and incredible, there stood at the bar the prisoner
on trial for his life, while the witnesses were permitted to swear
that his spectre had haunted them, and afflicted them with all manner
of injuries. That the poor prosecuted wretch stood astonished at what
was alleged against him, was utterly overwhelmed with the charges,
and knew not what to answer, was all of it interpreted as so many
presumptions of his guilt. Ignorant as they were, they were unhappy
and unskilful in their defence; and, if they spoke of the devil, as
was but natural, it was instantly caught at as a proof how familiar
they were with the fiend that had seduced them to their damnation.
The first specimen of this sort of accusation in the present instance
was given by one Paris, minister of a church at Salem, in the end
of the year 1691, who had two daughters, one nine years old, the other
eleven, that were afflicted with fits and convulsions. The first
person fixed on as the mysterious author of what was seen, was Tituba,
a female slave in the family, and she was harassed by her master into
a confession of unlawful practices and spells. The girls then fixed
on Sarah Good, a female known to be the victim of a morbid melancholy,
and Osborne, a poor man that had for a considerable time been bed-rid,
as persons whose spectres had perpetually haunted and tormented them:
and Good was twelve months after hanged on this accusation.
A person, who was one of the first to fall under the imputation, was
one George Burroughs, also a minister of Salem. He had, it seems,
buried two wives, both of whom the busy gossips said he had used ill
in their life-time, and consequently, it was whispered, had murdered
them. This man was accustomed foolishly to vaunt that he knew what
people said of him in his absence; and this was brought as a proof
that he dealt with the devil. Two women, who were witnesses against
him, interrupted their testimony with exclaiming that they saw the
ghosts of the murdered wives present (who had promised them they would
come), though no one else in the court saw them; and this was taken
in evidence. Burroughs conducted himself in a very injudicious way
on his trial; but, when he came to be hanged, made so impressive a
speech on the ladder, with fervent protestations of innocence, as
melted many of the spectators into tears.
The nature of accusations of this sort is ever found to operate like
an epidemic. Fits and convulsions are communicated from one subject
to another. The "spectral sight," as it was called, is obviously a
theme for the vanity of ignorance. "Love of fame," as the poet
teaches, is an "universal passion." Fame is placed indeed on a height
beyond the hope of ordinary mortals. But in occasional instances it
is brought unexpectedly within the reach of persons of the coarsest
mould; and many times they will be apt to seize it with proportionable
avidity. When too such things are talked of, when the devil and
spirits of hell are made familiar conversation, when stories of this
sort are among the daily news, and one person and another, who had
a little before nothing extraordinary about them, become subjects
of wonder, these topics enter into the thoughts of many, sleeping
and waking: "their young men see visions, and their old men dream
dreams."
In such a town as Salem, the second in point of importance in the
colony, such accusations spread with wonderful rapidity. Many were
seized with fits, exhibited frightful contortions of their limbs and
features, and became a fearful spectacle to the bystander. They were
asked to assign the cause of all this; and they supposed, or pretended
to suppose, some neighbour, already solitary and afflicted, and on
that account in ill odour with the townspeople, scowling upon,
threatening, and tormenting them. Presently persons, specially gifted
with the "spectral sight," formed a class by themselves, and were
sent about at the public expence from place to place, that they might
see what no one else could see. The prisons were filled with the
persons accused. The utmost horror was entertained, as of a calamity
which in such a degree had never visited that part of the world. It
happened, most unfortunately, that Baxter's Certainty of the World
of Spirits had been published but the year before, and a number of
copies had been sent out to New England. There seemed a strange
coincidence and sympathy between vital Christianity in its most
honourable sense, and the fear of the devil, who appeared to be "come
down unto them, with great wrath." Mr. Increase Mather, and Mr. Cotton
Mather, his son, two clergymen of highest reputation in the
neighbourhood, by the solemnity and awe with which they treated the
subject, and the earnestness and zeal which they displayed, gave a
sanction to the lowest superstition and virulence of the ignorant.
All the forms of justice were brought forward on this occasion. There
was no lack of judges, and grand juries, and petty juries, and
executioners, and still less of prosecutors and witnesses. The first
person that was hanged was on the tenth of June, five more on the
nineteenth of July, five on the nineteenth of August, and eight on
the twenty-second of September. Multitudes confessed that they were
witches; for this appeared the only way for the accused to save their
lives. Husbands and children fell down on their knees, and implored
their wives and mothers to own their guilt. Many were tortured by
being tied neck and heels together, till they confessed whatever was
suggested to them. It is remarkable however that not one persisted
in her confession at the place of execution.
The most interesting story that occurred in this affair was of Giles
Cory, and Martha, his wife. The woman was tried on the ninth of
September, and hanged on the twenty-second. In the interval, on the
sixteenth, the husband was brought up for trial. He said, he was not
guilty; but, being asked how he would be tried? he refused to go
through the customary form, and say, "By God and my country." He
observed that, of all that had been tried, not one had as yet been
pronounced not guilty; and he resolutely refused in that mode to
undergo a trial. The judge directed therefore that, according to the
barbarous mode prescribed in the mother-country, he should be laid
on his back, and pressed to death with weights gradually accumulated
on the upper surface of his body, a proceeding which had never yet
been resorted to by the English in North America. The man persisted
in his resolution, and remained mute till he expired.
The whole of this dreadful tragedy was kept together by a thread.
The spectre-seers for a considerable time prudently restricted their
accusations to persons of ill repute, or otherwise of no consequence
in the community. By and by however they lost sight of this caution,
and pretended they saw the figures of some persons well connected,
and of unquestioned honour and reputation, engaged in acts of
witchcraft. Immediately the whole fell through in a moment. The
leading inhabitants presently saw how unsafe it would be to trust
their reputations and their lives to the mercy of these profligate
accusers. Of fifty-six bills of indictment that were offered to the
grand-jury on the third of January, 1693, twenty-six only were found
true bills, and thirty thrown out. On the twenty-six bills that were
found, three persons only were pronounced guilty by the petty jury,
and these three received their pardon from the government. The prisons
were thrown open; fifty confessed witches, together with two hundred
persons imprisoned on suspicion, were set at liberty, and no more
accusations were heard of. The "afflicted," as they were technically
termed, recovered their health; the "spectral sight" was universally
scouted; and men began to wonder how they could ever have been the
victims of so horrible a delusion. [227]