The Witchcraft Delusion in Colonial Connecticut Part 3

[Footnote D: Fifty-five persons suffered torture, and twenty were executed before the delusion ended. _Ency. Americana_ (Vol. 16, "Witchcraft").]

Upham in his _Salem Witchcraft_ (Vol. II. pp. 249-250) thus pictures the situation.

"The prisons in Salem, Ipswich, Boston, and Cambridge, were crowded. All the securities of society were dissolved. Every man's life was at the mercy of every man. Fear sat on every countenance, terror and distress were in all hearts, silence pervaded the streets; all who could, quit the country; business was at a stand; a conviction sunk into the minds of men, that a dark and infernal confederacy had got foot-hold in the land, threatening to overthrow and extirpate religion and morality, and establish the kingdom of the Prince of darkness in a country which had been dedicated, by the prayers and tears and sufferings of its pious fathers, to the Church of Christ and the service and wors.h.i.+p of the true G.o.d. The feeling, dismal and horrible indeed, became general, that the providence of G.o.d was removed from them; that Satan was let loose, and he and his confederates had free and unrestrained power to go to and fro, torturing and destroying whomever he willed."

The trials were held by a Special Court, consisting of William Stoughton, Peter Sergeant, Nath. Saltonstall, Wait Winthrop, Bartho'

Gedney, John Richards, Saml. Sewall, John Hathorne, Tho. Newton, and Jonathan Corwin,--not one of them a lawyer.

Whatever his a.s.sociates may have thought of their ways of doing G.o.d's service, after the tragedy was over, Sewall, one of the most zealous of the justices, made a public confession of his errors before the congregation of the Old South Church, January 14, 1697. Were the agonizing groans of poor old Giles Corey, pressed to death under planks weighted with stones, or the prayers of the saintly Burroughs ringing in his ears?

"The conduct of Judge Sewall claims our particular admiration. He observed annually in private a day of humiliation and prayer, during the remainder of his life, to keep fresh in his mind a sense of repentance and sorrow for the part he bore in the trials. On the day of the general fast, he arose in the place where he was accustomed to wors.h.i.+p, the old South, in Boston, and in the presence of the great a.s.sembly, handed up to the pulpit a written confession, acknowledging the error into which he had been led, praying for the forgiveness of G.o.d and his people, and concluding with a request, to all the congregation to unite with him in devout supplication, that it might not bring down the displeasure of the Most High upon his country, his family, or himself. He remained standing during the public reading of the paper. This was an act of true manliness and dignity of soul." (_Upham's Salem Witchcraft_, Vol. II, p.

441).

Grim, stern, narrow as he was, this man in his self-judgment commands the respect of all true men.

The ministers stood with the magistrates in their delusion and intemperate zeal. Two hundred and sixteen years after the last witch was hung in Ma.s.sachusetts a clearer light falls on one of the striking personalities of the time--Cotton Mather--who to a recent date has been credited with the chief responsibility for the Salem prosecutions.

Did he deserve it?

Robert Calef, in his _More Wonders of the Invisible World_, Bancroft in his _History of the United States_, and Charles W. Upham in his _Salem Witchcraft_, are the chief writers who have placed Mather in the foreground of those dreadful scenes, as the leading minister of the time, an active personal partic.i.p.ant in the trials and executions, and a zealot in the maintenance of the ministerial dignity and domination.

On the other hand, the learned scholar, the late William Frederick Poole, first in the _North American Review_, in 1869, and again in his paper _Witchcraft in Boston_, in 1882, in the _Memorial History of Boston_, calls Calef an immature youth, and says that his obvious intent, and that of the several unknown contributors who aided him, was to malign the Boston ministers and to make a sensation.

And the late John Fiske, in his _New France and New England_ (p. 155), holds that:

"Mather's rules (of evidence) would not have allowed a verdict of guilty simply upon the drivelling testimony of the afflicted persons, and if this wholesome caution had been observed, not a witch would ever have been hung in Salem."

What were those rules of evidence and of procedure attributed to Mather?

Through the Special Court appointed to hold the witch trials, and early in its sittings, the opinions of twelve ministers of Boston and vicinity were asked as to witchcraft. Cotton Mather wrote and his a.s.sociates signed an answer June 15, 1692, ent.i.tled, _The Return of Several Ministers Consulted by his Excellency and the Honorable Council upon the Present Witchcrafts in Salem Village_. This was the opinion of the ministers, and it is most important to note what is said in it of spectral evidence,[E] as it was upon such evidence that many convictions were had:

"1. The afflicted state of our poor neighbors that are now suffering by molestations from the Invisible World we apprehend so deplorable, that we think their condition calls for the utmost help of all persons in their several capacities.

"2. We cannot but with all thankfulness acknowledge the success which the merciful G.o.d has given unto the sedulous and a.s.siduous endeavors of our honorable rulers to detect the abominable witchcrafts which have been committed in the country; humbly praying that the discovery of these mysterious and mischievous wickednesses may be perfected.

"3. We judge that, in the prosecution of these and all such witchcrafts there is need of a very critical and exquisite caution, lest by too much credulity for things received only upon the devil's authority, there be a door opened for a long train of miserable consequences, and Satan get an advantage over us; for we should not be ignorant of his devices.

"4. As in complaints upon witchcraft there may be matters of inquiry which do not amount unto matters of presumption, and there may be matters of presumption which yet may not be matters of conviction, so it is necessary that all proceedings thereabout be managed with an exceeding tenderness toward those that may be complained of, especially if they have been persons formerly of an unblemished reputation.

"5. When the first inquiry is made into the circ.u.mstances of such as may lie under the just suspicion of witchcrafts, we could wish that there may be admitted as little as possible of such noise, company and openness as may too hastily expose them that are examined, and that there may be nothing used as a test for the trial of the suspected, the lawfulness whereof may be doubted by the people of G.o.d, but that the directions given by such judicious writers as Perkins and Barnard may be observed.

"6. Presumptions whereupon persons may be committed, and much more, convictions whereupon persons may be condemned as guilty of witchcrafts, ought certainly to be more considerable than barely the accused persons being represented by a spectre unto the afflicted, inasmuch as it is an undoubted and notorious thing that a demon may by G.o.d's permission appear even to ill purposes, in the shape of an innocent, yea, and a virtuous man. Nor can we esteem alterations made in the sufferers, by a look or touch of the accused, to be an infallible evidence of guilt, but frequently liable to be abused by the devil's legerdemains.

"7. We know not whether some remarkable affronts given the devils, by our disbelieving these testimonies whose whole force and strength is from them alone, may not put a period unto the progress of the dreadful calamity begun upon us, in the accusation of so many persons whereof some, we hope, are yet clear from the great transgression laid to their charge.

"8. Nevertheless, we cannot but humbly recommend unto the government, the speedy and vigorous prosecutions of such as have rendered themselves obnoxious, according to the directions given in the laws of G.o.d and the wholesome statutes of the English nation for the detection of witchcrafts."

[Footnote E: An ill.u.s.tration: The child Ann Putnam, in her testimony against the Rev. Mr. Burroughs, said that one evening the apparition of a minister came to her and asked her to write her name in the devil's book. Then came the forms of two women in winding sheets, and looked angrily upon the minister and scolded him until he was fain to vanish away. Then the women told Ann that they were the ghosts of Mr.

Burroughs' first and second wives whom he had murdered.]

Did Longfellow, after a critical study of the original evidence and records, truly interpret Mather's views, in his dialogue with Hathorne?

MATHER: "Remember this, That as a sparrow falls not to the ground Without the will of G.o.d, so not a Devil Can come down from the air without his leave.

We must inquire."

HATHORNE: "Dear sir, we have inquired; Sifted the matter thoroughly through and through, And then resifted it."

MATHER: "If G.o.d permits These evil spirits from the unseen regions To visit us with surprising informations, We must inquire what cause there is for this, But not receive the testimony borne By spectres as conclusive proof of guilt In the accused."

HATHORNE: "Upon such evidence We do not rest our case. The ways are many In which the guilty do betray themselves."

MATHER: "Be careful, carry the knife with such exactness That on one side no innocent blood be shed By too excessive zeal, and on the other No shelter given to any work of darkness."

_New England Tragedies_ (4, 725), LONGFELLOW.

Whatever Mather's caution to the court may have been, or his leaders.h.i.+p in learning, or his ambition and his clerical zeal, there is thus far no evidence, in all his personal partic.i.p.ation in the tragedies, that he lifted his hand to stay the storm of terrorism once begun, or cried halt to the magistrates in their relentless work. On the contrary, after six victims had been executed, August 4, 1692, in _A Discourse on the Wonders of the Invisible World_, Mather wrote this in deliberate, cool afterthought:

"They--the judges--have used as judges have heretofore done, the spectral evidences, to introduce their farther inquiries into the lives of the persons accused; and they have thereupon, by the wonderful Providence of G.o.d, been so strengthened with other evidences that some of the witch-gang have been fairly executed."

And a year later, in the light of all his personal experience and investigation, Mather solemnly declared:

"If in the midst of the many dissatisfactions among us, the publication of these trials may promote such a pious thankfulness unto G.o.d for justice being so far executed among us, I shall rejoice that G.o.d is glorified."

Wherever the responsibility at Salem may have rested, the truth is that in the general fear and panic there was potent in the minds, both of the clergy and the laity, the spirit of fanaticism and malevolence in some instances, such as misled the pastor of the First Church to point to the corpses of Giles Corey's devoted and saintly wife and others swinging to and fro, and say "What a sad thing it is to see eight firebrands of h.e.l.l hanging there."

This conspectus of witchcraft, old and new, of its development from the sorcery and magic of the ancients into the mediaeval theological dogma of the power of Satan, of its gradual ripening into an epidemic demonopathy, of its slow growth in the American colonies, of its volcanic outburst in the close of the seventeenth century, is relevant and appropriate to this account of the delusion in Connecticut, its rise and suppression, its firm hold on the minds and consciences of the colonial leaders for threescore years after the settlement of the towns, a chapter in Connecticut history written in the presence of the actual facts now made known and available, and with a purpose of historic accuracy.

CHAPTER V

"It was not to be expected of the colonists of New England that they should be the first to see through a delusion which befooled the whole civilized world, and the gravest and most knowing persons in it. The colonists in Connecticut and New Haven, as well as in Ma.s.sachusetts, like all other Christian people at that time--at least with extremely rare individual exceptions--believed in the reality of a hideous crime called witchcraft." PALFREY'S _New England_ (Vol. IV, pp. 96-127).

"The truth is that it [witchcraft] pervaded the whole Christian Church.

The law makers and the ministers of New England were under its influences as--and no more than--were the law makers and ministers of Old England." _Blue Laws--True and False_ (p. 23), TRUMBULL.

"One ---- of Windsor Arraigned and Executed at Hartford for a Witch."

WINTHROP'S _Journal_ (2: 374, Savage Ed., 1853).

Here beginneth the first chapter of the story of the delusion in Connecticut. It is an entry made by John Winthrop, Governor of the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Colony, in his famous journal, without specific date, but probably in the spring of 1647.

It is of little consequence save as much has been made of it by some writers as fixing the relative date of the earliest execution for witchcraft in New England, and locating it in one of the three original Connecticut towns.

What matters it at this day whether Mary Johnson as tradition runs, or Alse Youngs as truth has it, was put to death for witchcraft in Windsor, Connecticut, in 1647, or Martha Jones of Charlestown, Ma.s.sachusetts, was hung for the same crime at Boston in 1648, as also set down in Winthrop's Journal?

"It may possibly be thought a great neglect, or matter of partiality, that no account is given of witchcraft in Connecticut. The only reason is, that after the most careful researches, no indictment of any person for that crime, nor any process relative to that affair can be found."

(_History of Connecticut_, 1799, Preface, BENJAMIN TRUMBULL, D.D.)