The True Story of Salem: Book 1-7. Charles Wentworth Upham
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of our children. I am apprehensive that the community is very superficially acquainted with this transaction. All have heard of the Salem witchcraft; hardly any are aware of the real character of that event. Its mention creates a smile of astonishment, and perhaps a sneer of contempt, or, it may be, a thrill of horror for the innocent who suffered; but there is reason to fear, that it fails to suggest those reflections, and impart that salutary instruction, without which the design of Providence in permitting it to take place cannot be accomplished. There are, indeed, few passages in the history of any people to be compared with it in all that constitutes the pitiable and tragical, the mysterious and awful. The student of human nature will contemplate in its scenes one of the most remarkable developments which that nature ever assumed; while the moralist, the statesman, and the Christian philosopher will severally find that it opens widely before them a field fruitful in instruction.
Our ancestors have been visited with unmeasured reproach for their conduct on the occasion. Sad, indeed, was the delusion that came over them, and shocking the extent to which their bewildered imaginations and excited passions hurried and drove them on. Still, however, many considerations deserve to be well weighed before sentence is passed upon them. And while I hope to give evidence of a readiness to have every thing appear in its own just light, and to expose to view the very darkest features of the transaction, I am confident of being able to bring forward such facts and reflections as will satisfy you that no reproach ought to be attached to them, in consequence of this affair, which does not belong, at least equally, to all other nations, and to the greatest and best men of their times and of previous ages; and, in short, that the final predominating sentiment their conduct should awaken is not so much that of anger and indignation as of pity and compassion.
Let us endeavor to carry ourselves back to the state of the colony of Massachusetts one hundred and seventy years ago. The persecutions our ancestors had undergone in their own country, and the privations, altogether inconceivable by us, they suffered during the early years of their residence here, acting upon their minds and characters, in co-operation with the influences of the political and ecclesiastical occurrences that marked the seventeenth century, had imparted a gloomy, solemn, and romantic turn to their dispositions and associations, which was transmitted without diminution to their children, strengthened and aggravated by their peculiar circumstances. It was the triumphant age of superstition. The imagination had been expanded by credulity, until it had reached a wild and monstrous growth. The Puritans were always prone to subject themselves to its influence; and New England, at the time to which we are referring, was a most fit and congenial theatre upon which to display its power. Cultivation had made but a slight encroachment on the wilderness. Wide, dark, unexplored forests covered the hills, hung over the lonely roads, and frowned upon the scattered settlements. Persons whose lives have been passed where the surface has long been opened, and the land generally cleared, little know the power of a primitive wilderness upon the mind. There is nothing more impressive than its sombre shadows and gloomy recesses. The solitary wanderer is ever and anon startled by the strange, mysterious sounds that issue from its hidden depths. The distant fall of an ancient and decayed trunk, or the tread of animals as they prowl over the mouldering branches with which the ground is strown; the fluttering of unseen birds brushing through the foliage, or the moaning of the wind sweeping over the topmost boughs,—these all tend to excite the imagination and solemnize the mind. But the stillness of a forest is more startling and awe-inspiring than its sounds. Its silence is so deep as itself to become audible to the inner soul. It is not surprising that wooded countries have been the fruitful fountains and nurseries of superstition.
"In such a place as this, at such an hour,
If ancestry can be in aught believed,
Descending spirits have conversed with man,
And told the secrets of the world unknown."
The forests which surrounded our ancestors were the abode of a mysterious race of men of strange demeanor and unascertained origin. The aspects they presented, the stories told of them, and every thing connected with them, served to awaken fear, bewilder the imagination, and aggravate the tendencies of the general condition of things to fanatical enthusiasm.
It was the common belief, sanctioned, as will appear in the course of this discussion, not by the clergy alone, but by the most learned scholars of that and the preceding ages, that the American Indians were the subjects and worshippers of the Devil, and their powwows, wizards.
In consequence of this opinion, the entire want of confidence and sympathy to which it gave rise, and the provocations naturally incident to two races of men, of dissimilar habits, feelings, and ideas, thrown into close proximity, a state of things was soon brought about which led to conflicts and wars of the most distressing and shocking character. A strongly rooted sentiment of hostility and horror became associated in the minds of the colonists with the name of Indian. There was scarcely a village where the marks of savage violence and cruelty could not be pointed out, or an individual whose family history did not contain some illustration of the stealth, the malice or the vengeance of the savage foe. In 1689, John Bishop, and Nicholas Reed a servant of Edward Putnam; and, in 1690, Godfrey Sheldon, were killed by Indians in Salem. In the year 1691, about six months previous to the commencement of the witchcraft delusion, the county of Essex was ordered to keep twenty-four scouts constantly in the field, to guard the frontiers against the savage enemy, and to give notice of his approach, then looked for every hour with the greatest alarm and apprehension.
Events soon justified the dread of Indian hostilities felt by the people of this neighborhood. Within six years after the witchcraft delusion, incursions of the savage foe took place at various points, carrying terror to all hearts. In August, 1696, they killed or took prisoners fifteen persons at Billerica, burning many houses. In October of the same year, they came upon Newbury, and carried off and tomahawked nine persons; all of whom perished, except a lad who survived his wounds. In 1698, they made a murderous and destructive assault upon Haverhill. The story of the capture, sufferings, and heroic achievements of Hannah Dustin, belongs to the history of this event. It stands by the side of the immortal deed of Judith, and has no other parallel in all the annals of female daring and prowess. On the 3d of July, 1706, a garrison was stormed at night in Dunstable; and Holyoke, a son of Edward Putnam, with three other soldiers, was killed. He was twenty-two years of age. In 1708, seven hundred Algonquin and St. Francis Indians, under the command of French officers, fell again upon Haverhill about break of day, on the 29th of August; consigned the town to conflagration and plunder; destroyed a large amount of property; massacred the minister Mr. Rolfe, the commander of the post Captain Wainwright, together with nearly forty others; and carried off many into captivity. On this occasion, a troop of horse and a foot company from Salem Village rushed to the rescue; the then minister of the parish, the Rev. Joseph Green, seized his gun and went with them. They pursued the flying Indians for some distance. So deeply were the people of Haverhill impressed by the valor and conduct of Mr. Green and his people, that they sent a letter of thanks, and desired him to come and preach to them. He complied with the invitation, spent a Sunday there, and thus gave them an opportunity to express personally their gratitude. On other occasions, he accompanied his people on similar expeditions.
These occurrences show that the fears and anxieties of the colonists in reference to Indian assaults were not without grounds at the period of the witchcraft delusion. They were, at that very time, hanging like a storm-cloud over their heads, soon to burst, and spread death and destruction among them.
There was but little communication between the several villages and settlements. To travel from Boston to Salem, for instance, which the ordinary means of conveyance enable us to do at present in less than an hour, was then the fatiguing, adventurous, and doubtful work of an entire day.
It was the darkest and most desponding period in the civil history of New England. The people, whose ruling passion then was, as it has ever since been, a love for constitutional rights, had, a few years before, been thrown into dismay by the loss of their charter, and, from that time, kept in a feverish state of anxiety respecting their future political destinies. In addition to all this, the whole sea-coast was exposed to danger: ruthless pirates were continually prowling along the shores. Commerce was nearly extinguished, and great losses had been experienced by men in business. A recent expedition against Canada had exposed the colonies to the vengeance