A Fever in Salem

A New Interpretation of the New England Witch TrialsBy Laurie Winn Carlson

Ivan R. Dee Publisher

Copyright © 2000 Laurie Winn Carlson
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9781566633093

Chapter One

The Witch Craze in Seventeenth-century New England

* * *

‘Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes
out
Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot
blood,
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on.

?Shakespeare (1564-1616), Hamlet

John Hale, a pastor in Beverly, Massachusetts, a town justnorth of Salem, in 1702 wrote an overview of the events relatedto the witch craze in New England. He resided in thearea and knew many of the Salem Village residents, as severalof them had attended his church in Beverly before thevillage established its own church. Satan had raised muchtrouble, Hale observed, “the beginning of which was verysmall, and looked on at first as an ordinary case.” From thefirst one or two persons examined for suspected witchcraft,the problem expanded until “a multitude of other personsboth in this and other Neighbour Towns, were Accused,Examined, Imprisoned, and came to their Trials, at Salem, theCounty Town, where about Twenty of them Suffered asWitches; and many others in danger of the same TragicalEnd: and still the number of the Accused increased untomany Scores.” Many of the accused, Hale pointed out, werepersons of “unquestionable Credit, never under any groundsof suspicion of that or any other Scandalous Evil.”

    Not everyone was comfortable with the events as theyunfolded: “this brought a general Consternation upon allsorts of People, doubting what would be the issue of such adreadful Judgment of God upon the Country.” Their fearssubsided when the accusations diminished in the autumn of1692. Still, bitterness and fear lingered: “it left in the mindsof men a sad remembrance of that sorrowful time; and aDoubt whether some Innocent Persons might not Suffer,and some guilty Persons Escape.” Twenty had been hangedand dozens of others released only after confessing to witchcraft.Perhaps, Hale wrote, there had been many mistakesmade by the judges and juries in their zeal to punish sin. Hereasoned with hindsight that the “Laws, Customs, and Principlesused by the Judges and Juries in the Trials of Witchesin England,” which the colonists had used as “patterns” inNew England, may have been “insufficient and unsafe.” Atthe time, witchcraft was a capital crime in every one of theNew England colonies, just as it was in England.

    The ideology of witchcraft had evolved from beginningsas an ancient fertility cult. It was modified in the sixteenthcentury when agrarian peasant societies assimilated a varietyof popular beliefs into an increasingly diabolical witchcraftculture. As earlier folk beliefs changed, benevolent witcheswere replaced by evil entities. Since the Enlightenment,scholars have rarely been interested in the afflicted butrather in the witches and their confessions, and they haveconcentrated on the barbarity and irrationality of the prosecutionsfor witchcraft. Yet few studies until the late nineteenthcentury connected witches’ confessions to hallucinatorydrugs or pathological states, particularly hysteria. Inthe mid-twentieth century a revival of interest in witchcraftprompted a new flood of interpretations of witch trials.

    Because outbreaks of witchcraft were centered in ruralagrarian communities, in both the North American coloniesand in western Europe, settings where collective cooperationwas imperative for survival, these communities werevulnerable in a way that more densely settled urban areaswere not. Stresses related to warfare, both the Thirty Years’War in Europe and the French and Indian Wars of New Englandin the latter 1600s, have also been thought to haveplayed a part in the appearance of witches. In small communitieswhere residents relied on one another, everyone’s fatewas intertwined, and if someone within the community?afriend or neighbor?had the ability and motive to cause afflictionand death, the horror was intensified. Whom couldone trust?

    Historically witches are not the giggly Samanthas of1960s television shows or the cartoonish characters we see intoday’s Halloween decor. Through the centuries witchcrafthas meant horror and violence, torture and execution of innocents,and an unresolved fear of the unknown. Inseventeenth-century New England villages those fears werenot unfounded: chubby “thriving” babies were in the throesof heart-rending convulsions; suddenly blinded farmerswere unable to work (in an era with no social safety net);precious, well-behaved children were suddenly uncontrollable;and nearly everyone knew someone who had gonemad from a “distemper” and died inexplicably. These losseswere harsh reality, but what made them more difficult to acceptwas the absence of explanation for the “afflictions.”Without one, the reason came to be evil in the form of theDevil. A lurking, sinister, unexplainable presence had to beto blame. And how could anyone know exactly where orhow Satan might appear? One’s neighbor, spouse, parent?anyonemight be culpable. Fear ran rampant through NewEngland, and in 1692 events moved quickly beyond anyone’scontrol.

    Besides John Hale, many other disgusted and disapprovingresidents of the Salem region knew too well that thewitch-hunts, trials, and executions had gone too far. Lookingback at the events after the crisis period, people were morelikely to regret the brutal treatment and hangings. But onlymonths earlier, a different atmosphere had permeated NewEngland towns and villages. A fierce, implacable foe appearedto have been loose, and the residents seemed helplessto understand or end the rampant incidents.

    Salem’s witch trials are etched in American history almostas folklore; yet the persecution of witches in Americaextended over time, from the 1640s to 1692, and geographicallybeyond Salem to include surrounding New Englandtowns. During this period something unexplainable and distinctfrom known illness caused people and domestic animalsto behave strangely. This unseen force caused peopleto fall into fits, feel pains in their arms and legs like bitingand pricking, bark like dogs, grovel on the ground like hogs,and even turn suicidal. Psychotic hallucinations were frighteningenough, but when an individual’s eyes twisted to theside, and arms and legs stiffened in awkward postures forhours, or blood wept from marks on the skin that clearlylooked like bites, everyone knew that something was terriblywrong. Even the colonists’ animals were struck with unusualsymptoms and sudden death at the same time thevillagers were suffering.

    In reaction to these behaviors, the community firstturned to its educated leaders: physicians and ministers.Medical practitioners?”doctors of physick”?tried variousremedies but could offer no explanation beyond that the afflictionswere “otherworldly.” Ministers were called in to determinea spiritual course of action, which includedcommunal prayers and fasting.

    In a community based on law, the Puritans turned nextto their court system to resolve the situation. Hearings, heldpublicly and recorded, brought everyone involved into thepublic eye. Accused witches were questioned; afflicted personswere brought forward to tell who caused their pain;family members testified about those who might wish toharm them or others. Magistrates listened, questioned, anddismissed or convicted. One by one, those individuals foundguilty of causing the problems?guilty of the crime of witchcraft?werehanged by the neck.

    But executions did not still the outbreak of complaints.Throughout the summer of 1692, more and more peoplecame forward to accuse and testify against others. In Salemthe hanging of witches began to resemble human sacrificesto an angry god who would not halt the fits, convulsions, andterror. Twenty accused witches were executed, and fourdied in prison that summer. By October more than a hundredstill lingered in jail, but by then the siege was over. Inthe last weeks of October, as a hard frost hit New Englandgardens and ice etched the rims of ponds, a group of ministersled by Increase Mather petitioned Massachusetts GovernorPhipps to close the court. By the spring of 1693 all theaccused had been released; the Salem witch trials were over.It was the last of the New England witch-hunts; the horrorand strife seemed to end as quickly as it had begun.

Continues…
Excerpted from A Fever in Salemby Laurie Winn Carlson Copyright © 2000 by Laurie Winn Carlson. Excerpted by permission.
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