Various
Historic Towns of New England
For the thrilling story of these trials and their wretched victims the student should turn to Mr. Upham’s authoritative and popular volumes upon Salem Witchcraft. The reader can never forget the tragic fate of the venerable Rebecca Nurse, George Burroughs, a former clergyman of the church in Salem Village, and the other victims. Here we can review only the trial of the Corey family, a fitting climax to this scene of horror.
Two weeks after the trial of Tituba and her companions, a warrant was issued for the arrest of Martha Corey, aged sixty, the third wife of Giles Corey, a well-known citizen. She was a woman of unusual strength of character and from the first denounced the witchcraft excitement, trying to persuade her husband who believed all the monstrous stories, not to attend the hearings or in any way countenance the proceedings. Perhaps it was her well-known opinion that directed suspicion to her. At her trial the usual performance was enacted. The girls fell on the floor, uttered piercing shrieks, cried out upon their victim. “There is a man whispering in her ear!” one of them suddenly called out. “What does he say to you?” the judge demanded of Martha Corey, accepting without any demur this “spectral evidence.” “We must not believe all these distracted children say,” was her sensible answer. But good sense did not preside at the witch trials. She was convicted and not long afterward executed. Her husband’s evidence went against her and is worth noting as fairly representative of much of the testimony that convicted the nineteen victims of this delusion:
“One evening I was sitting by the fire when my wife asked me to go to bed. I told her I would go to prayer, and when I went to prayer I could not utter my desires with any sense, not open my mouth to speak. After a little space I did according to my measure attend the duty. Some time last week I fetched an ox well out of the woods about noon, and he laying down in the yard, I went to raise him to yoke him, but he could not rise, but dragged his hinder parts as if he had been hip shot, but after did rise. I had a cat some time last week strongly taken on the sudden, and did make me think she would have died presently. My wife bid me knock her in the head, but I did not and since she is well. My wife hath been wont to sit up after I went to bed, and I have perceived her to kneel down as if she were at prayer, but heard nothing.”
It is hard to believe that such statements, most probable events interpreted in the least probable manner, should have had any judicial value whatever. Yet it is precisely such a mixture of superstition and stupid speculation about unusual or even daily incidents that was regularly brought forward and made to tell against the accused.
Soon after his wife’s arrest Giles Corey himself was arrested, taken from his mill and brought before the judges of the special court, appointed by Governor Phipps but held in Salem, to hear the witch trials. Again the accusing girls went through their performance, again the judges assumed the guilt of the accused, and tried to browbeat a confession from him. But in the interval between his arrest and trial this old man of eighty had had abundant leisure for reflection. He was sure not only of his own innocence but of his wife’s as well, and it must have been a bitter thought that his own testimony had helped convict her. Partly as an atonement for this offense and partly to save his property for his children, which he could not have done if he had been convicted of witchcraft, after pleading “not guilty” he remained mute, refusing to add the necessary technical words that he would be tried “by God and his country.” Deaf alike to the entreaties of his friends and the threats of the Court, he was condemned to the torture of peine forte et dure, the one instance when this old English penalty for contumacy was enforced in New England. According to the law the aged man was laid on his back, a board was placed on his body with as great a weight upon it as he could endure, while his sole diet consisted of a few morsels of bread one day and a draught of water the alternate day, until death put an end to his sufferings.
The execution of eight persons on Gallows Hill three days later, September 22, were the last to occur in the Colony. Accusations were still made, trials were held, more people were thrown into jail. But there were no more executions, and the next spring there was, according to Hutchinson, such a jail delivery as was never seen before.
“The smith filed off the chains he forged,
The jail bolts backward fell;
And youth and hoary age came forth
Like souls escaped from hell.”
The tragedy was at an end. It lasted about six months, from the first accusations in March until the last executions in September. Nineteen persons had been hanged, and one man pressed to death. There is no foundation for the statement that witches were burned. No one was ever burned in New England for witchcraft or any other crime. But hundreds of innocent men and women were thrown into jail or obliged to flee to some place of concealment, their homes were broken up, their property injured, while they suffered great anxiety for themselves and friends.
It was an epidemic of mad, superstitious fear, bitterly to be regretted, and a stain upon the high civilization of the Bay Colony. It is associated with Salem, but several circumstances are to be taken into consideration. First of all, note the fact that while the victims were residents of Essex County, of Salem and vicinity, and the trials were held in Salem, yet the special court that tried them was appointed by the Governor; the Lieutenant-Governor of the Colony, Stoughton, presided; and Boston ministers, notably Cotton Mather, the influential minister of the North Church, were interested observers. Boston as well as Salem is responsible for the tragedy. In the second place, remember that this dramatic event with all its frightful consequences led to a more rational understanding of the phenomena of witchcraft. By a natural revulsion of feeling future charges of witchcraft were regarded with suspicion, “spectral evidence” was disallowed, and there were no more executions for this crime in New England.
Various explanations of the conduct of the “afflicted children” have been offered. One writer has suggested that they began their proceedings in jest but, partly from fear of punishment if they confessed, partly from an exaggerated sense of their own importance, they continued to make charges against men and women whom they heard their elders mention as probable witches. In that little settlement there were property disputes, a church quarrel, jealousies, rivalries, and much misunderstanding, which had their influence. Another writer lays stress upon “hypnotic influence” and believes these young girls and nervous women were improperly influenced by malevolent persons, probably John and Tituba the Indian slaves. But a more natural explanation is that they were the victims of hystero-epilepsy, a nervous disease not so well understood in the past as to-day, which has at times convulsed the orderly life of a school or convent, and even a whole community. Then, too, the belief in witchcraft was general. Striking coincidences, personal eccentricities, unusual events and mysterious diseases seemed to find an easy explanation in an unholy compact with the devil. A witticism attributed to Judge Sewall, one of the judges in these trials, may help us to understand the common panic: “We know who’s who but not which is witch.” That was the difficulty. At a time when every one believed in witchcraft it was easy to suspect one’s neighbor. It was a characteristic superstition of the century and should be classed with the barbarous punishments and religious intolerance of the age.
Eventually, justice, so far as possible, was done to the survivors. The Legislature voted pecuniary compensations and the church excommunications were rescinded. Ann Putnam, one of the more prominent of the “afflicted children,” confessed her error and prayed for divine forgiveness. Rev. Samuel Parris offered an explanation that might be considered an apology. Judge Sewall, noblest of all the civil and ecclesiastical authorities implicated in this tragedy, stood up in the great congregation, Fast Day, in the South Church, Boston, and acknowledged his error in accepting “spectral evidence.”
“Spell and charm had power no more,
The spectres ceased to roam,
And scattered households knelt again
Around the hearths of home.”
Salem grew in wealth and population slowly but substantially. In 1765 there were only 4469 inhabitants. With the rest of the Colony she was putting forth her strength in the French-Indian wars and also resisting what she termed the usurpations of the Royalist governors or English Parliament. It was a public-spirited as well as high-spirited life. Soldiers and bounties and supplies were generously furnished for the wars. Pirates were captured or driven from the coast. A valuable commerce was developed, churches were built and schools increased. In 1768 the Essex Gazette was founded, with the motto, “Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci,” – a motto that measures the social changes from the time of Endicott and Williams.
The citizens of Salem were not wanting in patriotism or courage in the years immediately preceding the Revolution. They met in the old town-house to protest against the Stamp Act, to denounce the tax on tea and the closing of Boston port, and in 1774, in defiance of General Gage, to elect delegates to the First Continental Congress about to meet in Concord. As early as 1767 a committee had been appointed “to draft a subscription paper for promoting industry, economy and manufactures in Salem, and thereby prevent the unnecessary importation of European commodities which threaten the country with poverty and ruin.” The report of the committee was not accepted but the movement was characteristic of the attitude of Salem.
A just claim is made that the first armed resistance to the British government was made in Salem at the North Bridge, Sunday, February 26, 1775, when the citizens assembled and took their stand on the north bank of the river to prevent Colonel Leslie and his three hundred soldiers from marching into North Fields in search of cannon supposed to be concealed there. The British officer thought of firing upon the citizens who, after crossing the bridge, had raised the draw and now stood massed on the opposite bank. But a townsman, Captain John Felt, said to the irate officer who had looked for an unimpeded march, “If you do fire you will all be dead men.” His prompt utterance appears to have restrained the firing. Tradition says that there was a struggle to capture some boats, one of which at least was scuttled. After an hour and a half of delay, in which time Rev. Mr. Barnard of the North Church was conspicuous for his moderate counsels, the vexed and defeated Colonel Leslie promised that if the draw were lowered and he were permitted to march his men over it a distance of thirty rods, he would then wheel about and leave the town, an agreement fairly carried out. A commemorative stone marks this place and significant event at the beginning of the Revolution.
The years from 1760 to the War of 1812 were the period of commercial prestige. At the beginning of the Revolution Washington turned to the coast towns for a navy, and Salem answered by furnishing at least 158 privateers. Many were the prizes brought into the harbor as the war continued, and, as a result of this seamanship, an immense impetus was given to ship-building and the development of foreign commerce. This may be called the romantic era in the life of the venerable town. At the close of the war the town could boast of its great merchants and adventurous captains whose vessels were found in every port. Where did they not go, these vessels owned by Derby, Gray, Forrester, Crowninshield, and many another well-known merchant!
Under the stern rule of Endicott the old Puritan town had banished Quakers and Baptists and Episcopalians, but in the early years of this century her sons were intimate with Buddhist and Mohammedan and Parsee merchants. In 1785 “Lord” Derby, as Hawthorne called him, sent out the Grand Turk which, nearly two years later, brought back the first cargo direct from Canton to New England. At this time it is with peculiar interest we read that in 1796 this same “Lord” Derby sent the Astrea to Manila, which returned the following year with a cargo of sugar, pepper and indigo upon which duties of over $24,000 were paid. That was the time when a sailing-vessel after a long voyage might enter the harbor any day, and therefore the boys of the town lay on the rocks at the Neck, eager to sight the incoming ship, and earn some pocket-money for their welcome news. Significant is the motto on the present city seal: Divitis Indiæ usque ad ultimum sinum. They were a hardy race – these Vikings of New England – bold, self-reliant, shrewd, prosperous, equally ready to fight or trade, as occasion might demand. The sailors of that day were the native sons of Salem, sturdy citizens, often well-to-do, who might have an “adventure” of several hundred dollars aboard to invest in tea or sugar or indigo. At fourteen or fifteen the Salem boy went out in the cabin of his father’s vessel, at twenty he was captain, at forty he had retired and in his stately mansion enjoyed the wealth and leisure he had bravely and quickly earned. In 1816 Cleopatra’s Barge, a vessel of 190 tons burden, was launched in the harbor, and George Crowninshield went yachting in the Mediterranean in this luxurious vessel, – perhaps the first American pleasure yacht, as much admired in Europe as in New England. Many are the traditions of this romantic and prosperous era. Many are the famous names of merchants and sailors – men of great wealth and public spirit, mighty in time of war and influential in affairs of state, as Colonel Timothy Pickering, and Benjamin W. Crowninshield, esteemed at home and abroad for their enlightened, progressive, humane, public-spirited services to town and State.
Many of their stately mansions still remain to attest the wealth and fashion and gracious hospitality of that period. The spacious rooms, rich in mahogany furniture, carved wainscoting, French mirrors, and Canton china, were the scenes of elegant and memorable entertainments when Washington, Lafayette, and many other celebrated men of Europe and America visited the old town. As regards the beautiful objects of interior decoration, – now so eagerly sought, and often purchased at high prices, – Salem is one vast museum, almost every home boasting its inherited treasures, while a few houses are so richly dowered that the envy of less fortunate housekeepers can be easily pardoned.
The commerce in time went to Boston, and many of the sons of Salem followed it to help build up the wealth and character of the larger city. In fact where have not the sons, like the vessels, of Salem gone? Their memory is green in the old town and the citizen points with pride to the former residence-site of many a distinguished man she calls her son; of Bowditch, mathematician and author of the famous Navigator, of Judge Story and his no less eminent son, the poet and sculptor, of W. H. Prescott, the heroic historian of Spain, of Jones Very, poet and mystic, and of many another man of mark in law and literature.
But of all the distinguished sons of Salem no one makes so eloquent an appeal to the popular heart as Nathaniel Hawthorne. Visitors are particularly interested in the places associated with his life and romances. Of these there are many, for the novelist lived at one time or another in half a dozen Salem houses, while several are identified with his stories. To appreciate Hawthorne one should read him here, in the old Puritan town with its ancient houses, several of which date from the seventeenth century, its commemorative tablets, ancient tombstones, family names, and the collections of the Essex Institute. With magic pen he traced the greatness and the littleness of the Puritan age, its austere piety, its intolerance, its stern repression of the lighter side of human nature, its moral grandeur and its gloomy splendor. He did for our past what Walter Scott did for the past of the mother-country. Another “Wizard of the North,” he breathed the breath of life into the dry and dusty materials of history; he summoned the great dead again to live and move among us.
The visitor will be interested in all the houses associated with his name, – the modest birthplace on Union Street, the old residence on Turner Street popularly but erroneously called the House of the Seven Gables, the Peabody homestead, beside the Old Burying Point, where he found his wife and also Dr. Grimshawe’s Secret. The visitor will be most interested, however, in the three-story, wooden building with the front door opening into the little garden at the side, after the fashion of many Salem houses, where he lived when Surveyor of the Port and wrote the immortal romance of Puritan New England. Here his wife wept over the woe of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale, and hither came James T. Fields to hear the story which he so eagerly accepted. After one has read the facts of history in Felt and Upham and the diaries and chronicles of the seventeenth century, it is well to turn to Hawthorne for the realistic touch that makes the Puritan characters live once more for us. His sombre genius was at home in the Puritan atmosphere. How clearly its influence over him is acknowledged in the Introduction to The Scarlet Letter! He had the literary taste and the literary ambition, and he found his material in the musty records of the Custom-house, in the town pump so long a feature of Salem streets, in the church steeple, the ancient burying-ground, the old gabled houses, even the Main Street that had witnessed the varied pageants of more than two centuries. He was always leaving Salem and always returning, drawn by the “sensuous sympathy of dust for dust.” Here his ancestors lay buried, and here, although he has said he was happiest elsewhere, lay his inspiration. The strange group of Pyncheons, Clifford, Hepzibah and the Judge, the Gentle Child, the Minister with the Black Veil, Lady Eleanore in her rich mantle, and the tragic group of The Scarlet Letter– these are not simply the creations of a delicate and somewhat morbid imagination, even more are they the marvellous resurrection of a life long dead.
The old town has a genuine pride in her great son whose fame, assured in England as in America, has added to her attractions. But owing to his invincible reserve and long absences he had only a limited acquaintance in Salem, and there is comparatively little of reminiscence and anecdote among those who remember him. He chose his companions here, perhaps in reaction from the intellectual society he had had in Concord, perhaps in search of literary material, from a jovial set with many a capital tale to tell of the old commercial days when the Custom-house with its militant eagle aloft was the centre of a bustling, cosmopolitan life that surged up and down its steps and over the long black wharves of Derby Street. Like many men of genius his character had more than one side and can now be studied in the abundance of material which the unwearied industry of his children has given us.
The novelist has gone, as the merchant and sailor went, as the Puritan magistrate and minister went. Another set of priceless associations is added to the old town which now must confess to factories and a foreign population like many another New England seaport. The resident of Salem lives in a modern, progressive, handsome city, made the more attractive by eccentric roofs, “Mackintire” doorways, carved wooden mantels and wainscoting, ever suggestive of the venerable and impressive past, a past that may well serve as a challenge to the children of Viking and Puritan, inviting them to a fine self-control and a broad public spirit.