USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Salem > Short story of three centuries of Salem : 1626-1926 > Part 3
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How searching an observation this seems to be. To show how the moral nature of the Massachusetts Pu- ritans was distorted, how the heart became sinister and, for a closer understanding of the frenzy that possessed them, we have but to think of Ann Coleman, the Quaker, "naked from the waist upward, and bound to the tail of a cart", the constable with his "whip of knotted cords" giving the "ten stripes in Salem, ten in Boston and ten in Dedham".
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The ministers who led this flock must be pointed to as proximate causes of it all. Channing preaching in Salem in 1815 at the ordination of John Emery Abbott on "The Design and Duties of the Christian Ministry" said "may I be permitted to say that perhaps one of the greatest defects in our preaching is that it is not sufficiently directed to ennoble and elevate the minds of men ; it does not breathe a sufficiently generous spirit; it appeals too constantly to the lowest principle of human nature; I mean the principle of fear". And he speaks of terror as "that passion which, more than any other, unsettles the intellect". The Puritan ministers needed some such thought as this instilled into them. They held them- selves too close to God and too far from man ; they gave too unerringly an interpretation of His will; they con- founded principle and precept ; they had too intimate and detailed a knowledge of Hell and pouring forth the prom- ise of dire punishments to come, they added mental suf- ferings to great physical privations, broke the spirit and unbalanced the minds of those who heard and believed.
The Puritan catechism contained a cut of the Devil which was supposed to be a "correct likeness". Increase and Cotton Mather were erudite; they easily found cause for many things; they looked with suspicion and gravity on progressive thought and advancing ideas, fires were traced to the "sin of Sunday labor" and when vaccination was suggested at a later period the ministers thought it would "thwart God's will".
Increase and Cotton Mather were prodigious writers and set down their conclusions on the certainty of "dem- oniac possessions". It would be charitable to say of them that they were demented; it would doubtless be true to mildly say of them that they were counterfeits in reli- gious leadership. Sad faces from the dead past come and go today. As mute and motionless we seek to
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weigh and consider them as they pass before us, very charitably must we cover their faults and very proudly write their manly virtues. There will be one sad con- clusion, however, in which all those who review these days in our history will be in accord, and that is, that no frenzy like religious frenzy so denudes the heart of all its tender feelings, so crushes instinctive pity, so de- stroys the Godly image, so arouses the savage beast in human form. For half a century the Puritan leaders and the ignorant and unlettered among them, went stark mad on religion.
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GALLOWS HILL, SITE OF LOCUST TREES
1281945
CHAPTER III.
GALLOWS HILL
"I will not plead. If I deny I am condemned already In courts where ghosts appear as witnesses And swear men's lives away".
T WO periods, after the period of our settlement, seem to stand out and distinguish us; the Witchcraft pe- riod-when people were charged with signing contracts with Satan and women confessed to riding through the air on broomsticks-and the Shipping period, of which we may be justly proud.
Our Witchcraft period is often spoken of as the Witch- craft Delusion, and by general authority delusion and in- sanity are convertible terms. Many have wished they could blot out in some way this page of our local history but there it stands forever on the record. When we persecuted the Quakers it could be said that it was for violations of laws and religious regulations from which no dissent was allowed; for overt acts, for breaches of the peace, acts of disorder, all of them visible to the eye, and for the conviction of which there could be offered competent evidence. When we murdered those accused of Witchcraft, our defense rests only on insanity and that being always a defense we can only note the course it took and the extremes to which it led and mark the causes of it if we can.
Witchcraft was not peculiarly local; it had world wide manifestations and was accredited by the great and
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small. John Wesly and Martin Luther, religious leaders, and Sir Matthew Hale and Sir Edward Coke, luminaries of the bench, believed in it. And statutes in the reign of Henry VIII and that of James I provided the death penalty for anyone "invoking any evil spirit or consult- ing, covenanting with, entertaining, employing, feeding, or rewarding, any evil spirit or killing or otherwise hurt- ing any person by such infernal arts". But stronger than any statute law was the scriptural injunction to "suffer no witch to live".
The Puritans were inclined to "unduly exalt the letter of the Bible" and found, or tried to find, in the Old Testament the rules to guide them in their daily life, and this injunction to suffer no witch to live may be found away back in the Book of the Covenant in Exodus. This is a collection of judgments arising out of the needs of a simple community of agricultural people. This was a period of combination and adjustment between the va- rious tribes of Israel tending toward a national unity. At that time civil and criminal justice were compre- hended under the two heads of retaliation (an eye for an eye) and pecuniary compensation. It devolved upon Moses, the first great law giver of the chosen nation, to establish a central authority for the administration of justice, accessible and recognized, and he placed the judi- cial system upon the basis of an appeal to religion.
Witchcraft was thought to be something of a super- human power and by its methods an attempt was made to gain knowledge of the future or assistance in the af- fairs of life, and it was consistently prevalent in the lower stages of civilization and religion. In the "region of myths where nature has no laws and imagination no lim- its", Medea, the sorceress and witch, flourished ten or eleven centuries before Christ. When Jason sought the Golden Fleece in the ship with the speaking oak in its
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prow, she aided him. It has been observed that "she didn't add much to the harmony of society in her day". Her career was stimulating enough; she dismembered her young brother, restored Jason's father to his youth by bleeding him and then filling his veins with her magic concoction of herbs; she poisoned her rival, killed her children, set fire to her dwelling and entered Athens in a chariot drawn by serpents.
Speaking of witchcraft generally, there are facts of some interest. It was thought to be more natural tof women than to men and famous trials involved Rose Cullenden and Annie Duny of England, Margaret Wallace and Bessie Dunlop of Scotland, and Alice Kyteler of Ireland. In very many cases children were the alleged victims and accusers, and their recovery after the trial was rapid and complete, indicating that the basis of the accusation and injury was hysteria. The sudden recoveries in our day from cases of traumatic hysteria have been noted when the suit for damages on account of injury received was ended either favorably or un- favorably to the plaintiff.
Since the witch was supposed to have immunity from, or a fortitude to bear, ordinary punishment and pain, resort to extreme torture was justified, and in punish- ment for conviction the extreme penalty was demanded by burning, hanging and crushing to death.
In Scotland they had what was known as the "Devil's bridle", a kind of iron collar with a gag attachment, and in England there were what is known as witch finders or pin prickers, whose occupation was raised to the dig-, nity of a profession and whose testimony was given special credence. These witch finders pricked the bodies of the accused until they found, or thought they found, an invulnerable or insensible spot and this was known as the Devil's mark. They were paid by the government
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and had a fee for conviction. ¿ In one year, 60 died under the hands of these crafty torturers. Seemingly the cases were always indictable at common law and then by stat- ute making the crime a felony and imposing the death penalty. The ecclesiastical courts had original and ex- clusive jurisdiction but the secular courts very early took original or concurrent jurisdiction. A witness in- competent in an ordinary case was heard in a trial for witchcraft but always, and only, against the accused. The venue was fixed so that if a person was bewitched in one county and died in another, the accused might be tried in the county where the death occurred.
Like the religious and legal outlook, the medical view was restricted to the times. Sir Thomas Brown was the medical expert in an English case and testified that the natural cause for the physical condition of the victim "was heightened to great excess by the subtlety of the Devil's co-operation with the witch".
Akin to witches and of a different species, were con- jurers, sorcerers, soothsayers, magicians and fakirs, viewed in modern days as demented persons or frauds. Witchcraft is considered a survival of paganism, cul- tivated assiduously and attaining vigorous growth in the mental darkness of early days.
Belief, therefore, in Witchcraft was very general at the time it occurred here. Belief, simply, in anything however extravagant, by any body of individuals, may not work grievous harm to the individuals or to society. For those who had and still have belief in danger from water, open and closed doors, open and crowded spaces, and the like, we do not need the gallows or confining prison bars. Many such may be useful and distinguished members of society, as indeed they have been. The trouble comes when some influence or force moves this belief to violent and bloody action. Fear was cultivated
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among the Puritans, fear of a personal devil, lurking in many hiding places, and manifesting himself in many ways and through many persons ; in proof of this "trifles light as air, were confirmation strong as Holy Writ".
Demoniac possession, that is the presence in, and dominion over, one by the evil spirit was an affliction from within, due to brooding and introspection, inherited belief and distorted minds, but the Puritans suffered also an affliction of the evil spirit from without. They might have vanquished one or the other as a single force but joint action of the forces overwhelmed them. Their mental state was not so much a derangement of the faculties as it was an inability to see clearly because of the persistent gloom and darkness surrounding them and created for them. The Puritans needed to be reasoned out of their belief by superior minds and by calm coun- sel; instead of this the belief in evil spirits was pressed upon them by their religious leaders. The spirits really attacking them from within were abnormal fear, melan- choly, superstition and ignorance; the outer spirits at- tacking and inflaming them were the ministers from whom there was no escape. One must go to church or be whipped, and a stick brought in contact with their heads if they went to church and nodded a little, kept the congregation awake and open eyed and listening. The cure for the idea of demoniac possession was light, amusement and joy reasonably and regularly indulged in, and love and beauty and hopeful vision ; and a change of thought and outlook was necessary and, emphatically, a change of ministers. The Puritans lost their balance from repeated overdoses of what has been called "sul- phurous theology".
So the soil here was well prepared for witchcraft. It Lis customary to state that witchcraft started in 1692 in the home of Rev. Mr. Parris. It would be more accurate
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to state that it started with Parris himself. It has been said that the line which divides sanity from insanity is shadowy; this is because accurate and arbitrary classi- fication is difficult. There can be no doubt that Parris was deeply in the shadow. "Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time" and among the strangest is the fan- atical religious leader. He furnishes often the best and only evidence of demoniac possession. Tituba an old Indian servant in the house of Parris was accused of witchcraft because the daughter and niece of Parris were cutting up and having childish capers, hiding under the tables and making noises like dogs and cats. He beat the old servant and made her confess. John, her hus- band, accused others to save Tituba and himself and, as the thing progressed, there were many, doubtless, who with feelings of dislike or hatred for their neighbors, seized upon this means as effective for revenge or pun- ishment or as a means of escape for themselves.
Out of the fullness of the heart and mind the mouth speaketh and Parris made a record which speaks for him. It was entered as of March 27, 1692 and reads as follows :
"It is altogether undenyable that our great and blessed God hath suffered many persons in sev- eral Families of this little village to be grievous- ly vexed and tortured in body and to be deeply tempted to the endangering of the destruction of their souls, and all these amazing facts (well known to many of us) to be done by Witchcraft and Diabolical Operations. It is also well known that when these calamities first began, which was in my own family, the affliction was several weeks before such hellish operations as Witch- craft was suspected. Nay, it never broke forth to any considerable light until diabolical means was used by the making of a cake by my Indian
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man who had his directions from this our sister, Mary Sibley; since which, apparitions have been plenty and exceeding much mischief hath followed. But by this means it seems the Devil hath been raised amongst us and his rage is vehement and terrible; and when he shall be silenced the Lord only knows".
Bridget Bishop was the first victim of Witchcraft. As she was being dragged to the court house for trial, Cot- ton Mather was a close observer, watching for demons and noting their conduct. He set down this happening.
"As this woman was under a guard passing by the great and spacious meeting house, she gave a look towards the house; immediately a demon invisibly entering the meeting house, tore down a part of it; so that though there was no person to be seen there, yet the people, at the noise running in, found a board which was strongly fastened with several nails, transported into an- other quarter of the house".
Such were the conclusions of these clerics, pitifully gone wrong on religion and inflaming and terrorizing an ex- cellent people.
Accusations fell frequently and were of a varied and interesting nature. The alleged victims of witchcraft operations and demoniac possessions not only suffered in their person by being "scratched, choked and bitten" but also in their property in that "hens had died, animals became lame and carts were upset by devilism".
Fear was operating, and fear of being accused of de- moniac possession led many to accuse others, feeling a complainant was safe with the judges where a defendant could never be; for the judges harmonized with witch- craft as fully as the ministers until the mania touched them in their close friendships and affections or until
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those in high station were in danger. Parris might ac- cuse and scourge poor Tituba but when the wife of Gov. Phips was hinted at as a witch, demoniac possessions did not seem so real a thing. Such victims as the Gov- ernor's wife must be saved at any cost, and church and state put their heads together.
Witchcraft raged and the devil played havoc here from March until September. Salem jail was full and Boston jail contained many more, and twenty execu- tions occurred here. We are told that pity is the sweet- est and best of all human passions ; let us, therefore, pity them all, the victims and their accusers as well. We may, also, reverence a little, George Burrows and Giles Corey, one for his calmness and the other for his cour- age, that superhuman courage that defies all descrip- tion, occurring here and there in history to edify and in- spire us. It was charged that Burrows' fine physique was "lent him from the devil", because the people wavered a little when they saw him, a former minister of Parris' church retain his dignity and calm. His simple trust in God never left him. As one of the tests of innocence or guilt, the accused were sometimes asked to repeat the Lord's prayer. Though Burrows did this correctly, though he offered documentary evidence and cited au- thority against the existence of Witchcraft, the scaffold claimed him. Giles Corey, eighty-one years old, refused to plead, scorning a trial by such a jury as the times furnished in such a case, and he was cruelly pressed to death. Poor old Giles is centuries dead but let us hope, as we think we may, that his fine spirit lives. When fear was on every side he was fearless. Weakened physically with the weight of years upon him, he flung defiance in the face of the Judge and jury. His case is said to be the only one in this country where what was known as extreme torture was resorted to. In the intensity of his
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TRIAL OF GEORGE JACOBS
suffering, when his tongue protruded and was pushed back by the cane of the officiating sheriff, he refused to admit his guilt. With the Christian martyrs who faced in the Roman arena the beasts whose jaws dripped hu- man blood, with every victim of the burning stake who would not fetter his free soul, with every chained and bruised and mangled victim of religious or political ty- ranny, old Giles Corey has taken his honored place. By such a spirit as his tyranny died and liberty was born. Liberty and democracy need such a spirit today, today after all the centuries. Prof. Seligman of Columbia in a commencement address said, "the besetting danger of democracy is the intolerance of the crowd and the thrall- dom of an unenlightened public opinion ; ideal democracy learns to honor the leader who refuses to pander to pop- ular prejudices and who stresses the need of tolerating opinions which, however heretical or distasteful, may some time win their way to a general acceptance".
Commenting on this address a writer says, "it was not the Romans who thirsted for the execution of Christ but the mob and these, be it noted, were led by those whose control was threatened by His preachings ; we are rid of many ancient fetishes as the new wave of democracy has rolled across the nations but we are still unfortunate prey to the limitations we put to our mental growth; if we join the action and reaction of the mob spirit not ex- cellence, alone, loses ; everybody loses".
Cotton Mather was a kind of a religious mob leader. He "was present at the gallows and restored the crowd to faith by reminding them that the Devil had the power to dress up like an angel of light". He "spoke com- fortably to the perplexed multitude, telling them that all had been religiously and justly done and that Satan's power shall this day receive its death blow in New Eng- land". Mather was in step with all the religious fanatics
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before and after him who fed and enslaved or fed and in- flamed the simple hearts in their keeping. So across the centuries we shake hands today with old Giles Corey who would not plead in courts where "ghosts appear as witnesses and swear men's lives away" and by whose martyrdom, with that of others, the Puritans very soon abrogated the old law of Moses to suffer no witch to live.
Moses put upon witchcraft the death penalty. In his time, the law confronted the sinner with his sin but the sinner was given no real help to overcome it. There was the pitiless "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not" and obe- dience to law and religion was not far removed from, if indeed it was not wholly akin to, bondage and fear. Though the Puritans lived long after Moses and in a Christian age, the mercy that Christ brought formed a small part of their equipment. A little of the New Testa- ment might have softened them. They might have profited by reading, if they pondered upon them, the. tender passages in the eighth chapter of the Gospel ac- cording to St. John, telling how the Scribes and the Pharisees brought the woman taken in adultery before Christ and said to Him, "Now Moses in the law com- manded us that such should be stoned"; but Christ did not condemn her ; he only told her to go and sin no more.
Moses in Exodus 18-15 explains "When they have a matter they come unto me; and I judge between a man and his neighbor and make them honor the statutes of God and his laws". But sin was never removed merely by law, or morality established by it. Moses gave the law but Christ brought mercy, grace and truth. The impossibility of ever fulfilling the Mosaic law brought despair, the demon and destroyer of all spiritual effort. The law was inadequate because it was external and did not appeal to man's highest nature or spring from his own heart. The law lacked what Hawthorne called the
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"original and spiritual source". The sacrificial system, the blood of bulls and goats and men left sin untouched and the prophets realized its inadequacy and prophesied of the New Covenant when God's laws should be written in the heart, and all elements of servile fear removed. It was to be a spiritual covenant between God and man and was to set aside the legal and conventional.
To suffer no witch to live was law and religion and in the early period of Israelitish history there were divina- tions, the interpretation of dreams, and necromancy, be- sides the authorized means of inquiry of God. The law was given by Moses but it was as hard and cold as the tables upon which it was inscribed. In desperation the law convicted sinner looked for a Savior, and Christ came, but not to the hearts of the Puritans or to many before or since then. They banished His cross and did not know His sin forgiving grace. Truth, Justice, Beauty and all the perfections have their source and complete- ness in God and are eternal. Moses fell short in giving and administering the law. Christ's fulfillment of it necessitated the abrogation of many defective statutes.
The abrogation of many laws and ordinances and cus- toms of the past mark so many milestones in the pro- gressive journey of mankind, so many steps upward and onward toward the attainment of equity, justice, and per- fection. To keep any statutes of law or religion eternally and rigidly the same, to keep things changeless in a changing world, would be to restrain that persistently active thing we call the spirit and to submit to the im- perious mind or the ignorant one. Corey would have none of this.
A pursuit of the subject of witchcraft only leaves one depressed and revolted. Narration of the details is of small interest in these days and nothing new can be said
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here about it. A briefing of the subject must, however, include the only thing of present interest.
As bearing on the medical view of the time, Prof. Beard, member of the New York and American Neuro- logical Associations, quotes what he calls "the very best words in Upham's History of Witchcraft in Salem"; "Great ignorance prevailed in reference to the influence of the body and mind upon each other. While the im- agination was called into more extensive and energetic action than at any preceding period, its properties and laws were but little understood; the extent of the con- nection of the will and the muscular system, the recip- rocal influence of the nerves and the fancy, and the strong and universally prevailing healthy condition of physical and moral constitutions, were almost wholly unknown". Observing on his own account, and with special reference to the Salem witchcraft, and penetrating probably to the remotest cause of the delusion, the pro- fessor says: "Why do we believe in witchcraft, in astrol- ogy, in alchemy, in spiritualism, and why have these be- liefs been stronger forces in society than all the sciences of all ages? Phenomena which at one time are referred to religion, at another are referred to delusion, still later to science ; superstition or delusion being reli- gion out of fashion, and science the organized knowl- edge of nature. ** *** Science can make no ad-
vance except at the expense of delusions or of the un- demonstrable; wise, therefore, are the instincts of delu- sionists in their hereditary dread and dislike of science, for it is their one and only enemy; the instinct of self' preservation being as strong in delusions as in realities. The weaker and more immature the mind, the farther it extends its imaginings and the less it heeds what is immediately above us. **** * The ragged beggar is a millionaire, scattering millions; the tramp,
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an emperor, or emperor of emperors, the king of kings. ******** The law of the correllation of feebleness of mental force with immensities of imaginings, is uni- versal; the less we know the more we dream, such is the psychology of reverie. as building castles in the air ; such is the psychology of witchcraft. For the undeveloped mind, nature is too mean or small a thing; only in the supernatural-the infinite above and outside matter-can there be found proper food for emotions that are ever hungry for what cannot be proved. As a minute object held close to a lamp casts a long shadow on a distant wall, so a little thought projected into infinity becomes infinite in extent. Such a shadow was witchcraft which for centuries darkened our civilization".
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