Part 34

1680. WILLIAM MORSE, in his home, where lived his good wife, who had been called a witch, saw pots, andirons, tools, and household furniture generally, seem to take on wills of their own, and rudely play many a lively gymnastic game.

1688. JOHN GOODWIN saw four of his children subjected and tortured immediately subsequent to the scolding of one of them by a wild Irish woman; and the same one afterward was made to play the deuce in Cotton Mather's own house. Mrs. Glover was hanged for bewitching; and also she continued to torture the same children after her spirit had left its outer form.

The above cases occurred prior to the holding of "The Circle" at Salem, before the establishment of a school at which the arts of "necromancy, magic, and spiritualism" might be learned. Generally the performers named thus far had no visible confederates. If sole actors, their geniuses were vast, and the fonts of malice or of benevolence in some of them were both very capacious and copiously overflowing.

1692. TITUBA, the slave, avowed having been forced by something like a man, and his four female spectral aids, to pinch the two little girls in her master's family at the very time when they were first mysteriously afflicted. She furnished strong evidence that a tall man with white hair and serge coat, invisibly to others, frequently visited her, compelled her aid, and kindled and long kept adding fuel to the fires of witchcraft at Salem Village. For this she was imprisoned thirteen months, and then sold to pay her jail fees.

SARAH GOOD was seen as a specter, was accused of hurting by occult organs and processes; became invisible by those standing guard over her; announced to the magistrates the great explanatory fact that none but the accusers and the accused, that is, none but clairvoyants, could see the actual inflictors of the pains endured. Also she fore-sensed a fact that occurred when Mr. Noyes died in an after year. She was hanged.

DORCAS GOOD, not five years old, was big enough to have her specter seen, to have her spirit-teeth bite, and also to see clairvoyantly. The little witch was sent to jail.

SARAH OSBURN was sighted by the inner optics of the accused, and she heard voices from out the unseen. This feeble one was sent to jail, and soon died there.

MARTHA COREY was charged with afflicting; also she avowed heresy pertaining to witchcraft. Though interiorly illumined far beyond her accusers and judges, and enabled to smile amid their frowns, she was executed.

GILES COREY, seen as a specter, and accused of harming many, would make no plea to his indictment. Pressure, applied for forcing out a plea, extorted only his call for "More weight, more weight,"--and his life went out.

REBECCA NURSE, venerable matron, daughter of a mother who had been called a witch, and conscious of personal liability to then prevalent fits, was seen by, and accused of hurting, members of The Circle. Therefore she must be hanged--though jury first acquitted, and then, under rebuke, called her guilty; and though governor pardoned, and then revoked his clement act. Fealty to witchcraft creed in that case triumphed, though nearly defeated twice.

MARY EASTY, noble woman, sister of the above, and daughter of the same witch-blooded mother, once arrested and discharged, and then re-arrested, because seen by inner eyes and accused of bewitching, rose sublimely above thoughts of self and dread of death, and appealed to the magistrates, in clear, strong, and forceful language, to change their course of procedure, to spare the innocent, and become wisely humane.

SUSANNA MARTIN, spectrally seen, and a reputed witch during more than a score of years, bravely faced the dangers besetting an accused one, was self-possessed before the magistrates, was spicy, shrewd, and keen in her answers to their questions, but failed to descend to confession, and died on Gallows Hill.

MARTHA CARRIER, having been a clear seer for forty years, and long visible by others similarly unfolded, was brave, self-possessed, and ready with pointed retort. Because hard to subdue, accusations came thick and heavy upon her from "The Circle" almost en masse, and she too was doomed to mount the ladder.

SARAH CARRIER, daughter of the above, eight years old, stated instructive facts in her experience as a clairvoyant, and notably said that her own spirit could go forth to others and hurt them; also that her mother's was the only spirit with which she entered into the compact that made her a witch.

REV. GEORGE BURROUGHS, sometimes supernally strong physically, because, as himself asserted, an Indian, invisible by others, helped him; able, by God's help as he claimed, to read his brother's thoughts; A freer and less formal religionist than most clergymen of his day, because of his high spiritual illumination; a humble but beneficent Christian--was, like his exemplar, made to yield up life at the call of such as cried, "Crucify him! crucify him!" If he was luminous, and spoke like an angel of light in the hour of his departure, he was not Satan transformed, but George Burroughs unvailing his genuine self.

1693. MARGARET RULE, the first of afflicted ones noticed in our pages, endured her strange experiences last. The evening before her fits came on she had been bitterly treated and threatened by an old woman whose curings of hurts had put her under suspicions of witchcrafts. Margaret was not a graduate from the Salem school, but was self-taught, if taught at all; and yet she saw many specters--saw, in the night, a young man in danger of drowning who was miles away from her; was lifted from her bed to the ceiling above in horizontal position by invisible beings; fasted nine days without pining; and saw and heard one bright and glorious visitant who comforted and heartened her much. She under the special watch and care of Cotton Mather, was held back, mainly perhaps by his advice, from any divulgences which should endanger the lives of others. No blood was shed because of her afflictions.

Twenty persons were put to death in Essex County, by the direct action of government officials, between June 9 and September 23, 1692. Nearly or quite two hundred were accused, arrested, imprisoned, and many more than the executed twenty were convicted. Numerous arrested ones perished under the hardships of prison life and gnawings of mental anxieties. Others had health, spirits, domestic ties, and worldly possessions shattered to pieces, and the condition of their subsequent lives made most forlorn and wretched. Neither tongue nor pen can possibly tell their tale in its fullness of horrors. Most excessively frenzying and woeful must have been the privations, sufferings, heart-wrenchings, agonies of nearly all the scattered residents of the then wooded region at and round about Salem Village, when Christendom's mighty and malignant witchcraft devil was believed to be prowling and fiercely slaughtering in their midst. No blood, nor any other mark, on the door-posts would effectually warn the fell destroyer to pass by and leave the occupants within unscathed. Mysterious and fearful dangers flocked above, below, around, before, and behind: they lurked here, there, and everywhere continually, so that none could ever be at ease.

And now we ask, whether common sense admits that such credulity and infatuation ever pervaded any hardy, energetic, and intelligent community, in any county of Massachusetts or New England, in any age, as that girls and old women, aided by a very few insignificant men, however bright, cunning, roguish, playful, self-conceited, greedy of notice, or resentful and malicious the leaders might be, could possibly so perform as to induce Rev. Mr. Whiting, Samuel Willard, William Morse, Cotton Mather, Deodat Lawson, Samuel Parris, Rev. Mr. Hale, and scores upon scores of other intelligent, sagacious, and leading men, to present to the public, in writing, such narratives as they did, and to essentially vouch for their own belief in the positive occurrence of such "amazing feats" as they described? We ask also, whether such frail enactors as a band of mere girls and a few women must have been, could possibly devise and manifest such tricks, and put forth such accusations, from any motives whatsoever, as would cause the leading minds throughout a large section of the state to regard the accused ones as allies of beings rising up from regions of darkness, and making malignant and most baneful onslaught upon the children of God and Christ, and upon the families and possessions of men, in such numbers and with such force, that the civil power of the land was urged and helped to put the gallows in use upon every one whose specter was said to be seen and to torment? The amazing feats are well attested. The more amazing deviltries both of the accusers and of courts and executives, no one can doubt, if all the feats were offspring of mere juvenile and senile cunning, fraud, and malice.

In the cases of Margaret Jones, Ann Cole, Elizabeth Knap, John Stiles, and Martha Goodwin each, there is distinct mention of the presence, the speech, or the action of some spirit. We found Tituba distinctly stating that she saw, heard, and was made to help a nocturnal visitant whose doings indicate that he was the originator of the vast Salem Tragedy: that visitant was a spirit. Mr. Burroughs said, in explanation of his feats of strength, that an Indian, invisible by others, was his helper. Margaret Rule, as had Mercy Lewis the year before, saw, and each was infilled with bliss by, a most glorious bright spirit. In our own day, in every city, town, and hamlet of our land, as well as on the opposite shore of the Atlantic, spirits are widely recognized as the authors of performances alike strange and amazing in themselves, as those described in the seventeenth century, which are there called witchcrafts. The primitive records of American witchcrafts show that portions of it, and especially that Salem witchcraft feats, were devised in supermundane brains, and enacted under their supervision.

THE CONFESSORS.

When persons arraigned for specific offences plead guilty, their pleas generally are deemed conclusive evidence that the accused have performed the special deeds set forth in the allegations. Many of the accused in witchcraft times made statements which have ever since been called confessions. Inference from that has long been general and wide-spread, that nearly such witchcraft as the creed of our fathers specified had positive manifestation in their day. But we seriously doubt whether any record of statements made by an accused one exhibits distinct admission that he or she had entered into covenant with that devil which one must have been in league with to become such a witch or wizard as the laws against witchcraft were intended to arrest.

Such confessions as were recorded may have been true in the main, but they fall short of confessions of the special crime alleged; they amount to little, if anything, more than admissions and statements that the confessors had seen, been influenced by, and had acted in company with apparitions or spirits all of whom were of earthly origin, and were members of the human family; they confessed only to being, or to having been at times, clairvoyants.

The circumstances under which even such confessions were generally made, need to be carefully viewed before just estimate can be placed upon the worth and significance of the recorded statements.

Hutchinson supposed that "those who were condemned and not executed, all confessed their guilt," ... and that "the most effectual way to prevent an accusation" (of one's self) "was to become an accuser." Strange--strange--and yet obviously true. An accused one, then, could look for escape from death--the legal penalty of witchcraft--only by pleading guilty to the charge. Confession of guilt, and nothing else, then, purchased exemption from capital punishment. This becoming obvious, all natural instincts for preservation of one's life, and all possible entreaties, urgings, and commands of friends and relatives, forcibly tended to extort confession even from the innocent. Husband or wife, children, parents, brothers, sisters, and trusted advisers, often all conspired in urging an accused one to plead guilty--yes, even a condemned one, for that plea was as efficacious after conviction and sentence as before. It is said that many did confess. Confessed to what? Never to having made a covenant with the great witchcraft devil nor any formidable imp of his, but generally to clairvoyant visions, to mental meetings with the specters of friends, neighbors, and other embodied mortals, and to some compacts and co-operative labors with such personages,--never with the devil. They did not confess to witchcraft itself as then defined. The clear-headed Mary Easty besought the magistrates "to try some of the confessing witches, I being confident there is several of them has belied themselves and others." Her clear and calm brain perceived the broad distinction existing between clairvoyance and witchcraft. So, too, did Martha and Giles Corey, Jacobs, Proctor, Susanna Martin, George Burroughs, and others; these, and such as these, did not confess, while many weaker and more ignorant ones did.

Little Sarah Carrier, only eight years old, whose testimony we adduced in part, when presenting the case of her mother, throws much light upon some confessions of that day. Simon Willard, who wrote out and attested to "the substance" of her statements, heads his record, "Sarah Carrier's Confession, August 11th." The girl's confession? No; it was simply a frank statement of facts in her own experience, which lets us know that when she was about six years old her own mother made her a witch, and baptized her. But "the devil, or black man, was not there, as she saw," when she was made a witch. She afflicted folks by pinching them; went to those whom she afflicted; but went only "in her spirit." Her mother was the only devil who bewitched her, and the only being whom her baptism bound her to serve. Such was her witchcraft. That plain statement is refreshing and valuable. It shows that when about six years old this mediumistic girl had become so developed that her spirit could commune with her mother's, independently of their bodies. She then became a conscious clairvoyant, and could trace felt influences, issuing from her mother, back to their source. Thenceforth mother and daughter could conjointly place themselves on the green at Salem Village, ten miles off, or in any pasture or any house whither thought might lead them. The mother's stronger mind had but to wish, and the child must go with her and do her bidding; and when the two were in rapport, any stronger spirit controlling the mother could make the child co-operative in pinchings or any other inflictions of pains. Because the little girl had set her hand to a red book presented by her own mother, and thus, by implication, bound herself to be obedient to that mother, her statement of the fact was labeled a confession of witchcraft, and deemed damaging to her mother. Three or four other children of Mrs. Carrier were able to sense spirit scenes. Her home was a domestic school of prophets, and her own children were apt pupils in it. Her moral character and influence do not here concern us.

Abigail Faulkner was condemned, and two of her children, "Dorothy ten, and Abigail eight years old, testified that their mother appeared and made them witches." That mother was daughter of Rev. Francis Dane of Andover, some of whose other children and grandchildren were accused, which suggests, though it fails to prove, that much medianimic susceptibility was imparted through either him or his wife, or both, to their offspring. His descendants attracted the notice of clairvoyants. Hutchinson states that Mr. Dane himself "is tenderly touched in several of the examinations, which" (the tenderness?) "might be owing to a fair character; and he may be one of the persons accused who" (the accusation of whom) "caused a discouragement to further prosecutions." "He," being then "near fourscore, seems to have been in danger." Internal luminosity and copious radiations from their interior forms probably rendered Rev. Mr. Dane, Rev. Samuel Willard, Mrs. Hale, wife of the minister at Beverly, Mrs. Phips, wife of the governor, and many others of high character or standing, visible by mediumistic optics, and presentible apparitionally where spirits were wont to congregate, consult and manipulate instruments for acting out--not for learning--the "wonders of necromancy, magic, and Spiritualism."

Witch meetings, as they were called, or congregated spirits or apparitions on the green, or in the pasture of the minister at Salem Village, are mentioned more frequently and with more particularity and concordant specifications, than would naturally be looked for if they had no basis on fact. That Spirits in vast crowds have more than once been seen in modern times by a seer looking up from High Rock in Lynn, can be learned by perusal of A. J. Davis's visions there. But he was the observer of departed ones only, while the apparent personages at witch meetings of old were partly either the spirits of embodied persons or their apparitions. The fact of apparitions being present thereat in those days proved the persons themselves apparitionally seen to be the devil's allies. Some confessors of witchcraft intended to verify the truth of their statements by describing whom they had seen, and what they had observed at such meetings. And it is not without interest that some people now read confessions like the following from Ann Foster of Andover, viz.: "That she was at the meeting of the witches at Salem Village when about twenty-five were present; that Goody Carrier came and told her of the meeting and would have her go, and so they got upon sticks and went the said journey, and being there did see Mr. Burroughs the minister, who spake to them all;... that they were presently at the Village," when they rode on the "stick or pole"; and that she heard some of the witches say that there were three hundred and five in the whole country, and that they would ruin that place--the Village. Also that there was present at that meeting two men besides Mr. Burroughs, the minister, and one of them had gray hair.

Not without interest are such things read, because they prompt to fancyings of things possible in an unseen sphere which hangs over and enfolds all mortals. Could Ann Foster's gray-haired man have been Tituba's white-haired visitant--the originator and enactor of Salem witchcraft? Who knows? Could not he and such as he have searched out and numbered many persons in the land who were adapted to be facile instruments for his use, and found three hundred and five in all? Had not his will power to call instantly together, that is, to arrest and concentrate the attention of as many of them as were at the moment impressible by him, either directly or through other plastic mortals, from any part of the region between the Penobscot and the Hudson, or even further, and thus collect a band, that is, arrest and fix the attention, of twenty-five of them, more or less, to whom inklings of his plans for the future might be given, and whose relative rank, efficiency, or importance could be foreshadowed? Through either unconscious apparitions or conscious spirits of mortals, or of both classes commingled, might he not enact scenes which it pleased him to have certain witnesses behold, and to proclaim, so far as he judged best, his purposes, his doctrines, or aught else it should be his pleasure to divulge or enforce? Possibly. Those witch meetings may have been much more than mere fictions.