Salem Witchcraft Trials Ends

Today’s installment concludes Salem Witchcraft Trials,
our selection from History of the United States by Richard Hildreth published in 1877.

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Previously in Salem Witchcraft Trials.

Time: 1692
Place: Salem, Massachusetts

The court then proceeded to Charlestown, where many were in prison on the same charge. The case of a woman who for twenty or thirty years had been reputed a witch, was selected for trial. Many witnesses testified against her; but the spectral evidence had fallen into total discredit, and was not used. Though as strong a case was made out as any at Salem, the woman was acquitted, with her daughter, granddaughter, and several others. News presently came of a reprieve for those under sentence of death at Salem, at which Stoughton was so enraged that he left the bench, exclaiming, “Who it is that obstructs the course of justice I know not; the Lord be merciful to the country!” nor did he again take his seat during that term.

At the first session of the Superior Court at Boston the grand jury, though sent out to reconsider the matter, refused to find a bill even against a confessing witch.

The idea was already prevalent that some great mistakes had been committed at Salem. The reality of witchcraft was still insisted upon as zealously as ever, but the impression was strong that the devil had used “the afflicted” as his instruments to occasion the shedding of innocent blood. On behalf of the ministers, Increase Mather came out with his Cases of Conscience concerning Witchcraft, in which, while he argued with great learning that spectral evidence was not infallible, and that the devil might assume the shape of an innocent man, he yet strenuously maintained as sufficient proof confession, or “the speaking such words or the doing such things as none but such as have familiarity with the devil ever did or can do.” As to such as falsely confessed themselves witches, and were hanged in consequence, Mather thought that was no more than they deserved.

King William’s veto on the witchcraft act prevented any further trials; and presently, by Phipps’ order, all the prisoners were discharged. To a similar veto Massachusetts owes it that heresy and blasphemy ceased to appear as capital crimes on her statute-book.

The Mathers gave still further proof of faith unshaken by discovering an afflicted damsel in Boston, whom they visited and prayed with, and of whose case Cotton Mather wrote an account circulated in manuscript. This damsel, however, had the discretion to accuse nobody, the spectres that beset her being all veiled. Reason and common-sense at last found an advocate in Robert Calef, a citizen of Boston, sneered at by Cotton Mather as “a weaver who pretended to be a merchant.” And afterward, when he grew more angry, as “a coal sent from hell” to blacken his character — a man, however, of sound intelligence and courageous spirit. Calef wrote an account, also handed about in manuscript, of what had been said and done during a visitation of the Mathers to this afflicted damsel, an exposure of her imposture and their credulity, which so nettled Cotton Mather that he commenced a prosecution for slander against Calef, which, however, he soon saw reason to drop.

Calef then addressed a series of letters to Mather and the other Boston ministers, in which he denied and ridiculed the reality of any such compacts with the devil as were commonly believed in under the name of witchcraft. The witchcraft spoken of in the Bible meant no more, he maintained, than “hatred or opposition to the word and worship of God, and seeking to seduce therefrom by some sign” — a definition which he had found in some English writer on the subject, and which he fortified by divers texts.

It was, perhaps, to furnish materials for a reply to Calef that a circular from Harvard College, signed by Increase Mather as president, and by all the neighboring ministers as fellows, invited reports of “apparitions, possessions, enchantments, and all extraordinary things, wherein the existence and agency of the invisible world is more sensibly demonstrated,” to be used “as some fit assembly of ministers might direct.” But the “invisible world” was fast ceasing to be visible, and Cotton Mather laments that in ten years scarce five returns were received to this circular.

Yet the idea of some supernatural visitation at Salem was but very slowly relinquished, being still persisted in even by those penitent actors in the scene who confessed and lamented their own delusion and blood-guiltiness. Such were Sewell, one of the judges; Noyes, one of the most active prosecutors; and several of the jurymen who had sat on the trials. The witnesses upon whose testimony so many innocent persons had suffered were never called to any account. When Calef’s letters were presently published in London, together with his account of the supposed witchcraft, the book was burned in the college yard at Cambridge by order of Increase Mather. The members of the Boston North Church came out also with a pamphlet in defense of their pastors. Hale, minister of Beverly, in his Modest Inquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft, and Cotton Mather, in his Magnalia, though they admit there had been “a going too far” in the affair at Salem, are yet still as strenuous as ever for the reality of witchcraft.

Nor were they without support from abroad. Dr. Watts, then one of the chief leaders of the English Dissenters, wrote to Cotton Mather, “I am persuaded there was much agency of the devil in those affairs, and perhaps there were some real witches, too.” Twenty years elapsed before the heirs of the victims, and those who had been obliged to fly for their lives, obtained some partial indemnity for their pecuniary losses. Stoughton and Cotton Mather, though they never expressed the least regret or contrition for their part in the affair, still maintained their places in the public estimation. Just as the trials were concluded, Stoughton, though he held the King’s commission as lieutenant-governor, was chosen a counsellor — a mark of confidence which the theocratic majority did not choose to extend to several of the moderate party named in the original appointment — and to this post he was annually reëlected as long as he lived; while Moody, because he had favored the escape of some of the accused, found it necessary to resign his pastorship of the First Church of Boston, and to return again to Portsmouth.

Yet we need less wonder at the pertinacity with which this delusion was adhered to, when we find Addison arguing for the reality of witchcraft at the same time that he refuses to believe in any modern instance of it; and even Blackstone, half a century after, gravely declaring that “to deny the possibility, nay, actual existence of witchcraft and sorcery, is at once flatly to contradict the revealed word of God in various passages both of the Old and New Testament.”

This ends our series of passages on Salem Witchcraft Trials by Richard Hildreth from his book History of the United States published in 1877. This blog features short and lengthy pieces on all aspects of our shared past. Here are selections from the great historians who may be forgotten (and whose work have fallen into public domain) as well as links to the most up-to-date developments in the field of history and of course, original material from yours truly, Jack Le Moine. – A little bit of everything historical is here.

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