THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG 394
ee ee ES a a
The attention of students has been called to the fact that those first charged with active agency in the Satanic persecution of the girls were persons of little standing in the community, or even of disre-
pute; that the next stage was accusa- 6. The tion of those who for property or other Later Stages reasons were persone non grate either and End. in the community or to the girls. Then the accusers became bolder; those who under other circumstances could not have been thought of were charged with this guilt, and of especial significance is the fact that those who opposed or denounced the proceedings were noted and pursued with vindictiveness by the band of girls. Particularly noteworthy in this last relation was the ease of John Proctor, whose entire family, including his wife’s relations, were brought into the scope of the proceedings and suffered great personal and property damage. Among those who were assailed by these terrible experiences were Dorcas Good, a child between four and five years of age, Rev. Samuel Willard of the Old South Church, Boston, John Alden, and finally Mrs. Hale, the wife of the minister of the First Church of Beverly. The virtues of the last-named were so eminent and her services so distinguished that the accusers at last overreached themselves, people came to their senses, and the delusion was dispelled. While arrests continued in 1693, in January of which year fifty indictments were found though only three convictions resulted, yet Chief Justice William Stoughton maintained to the last his position respecting the evidence to be admitted and his prejudice against all who were accused. In April of the same year the governor by proclamation set free all who were imprisoned on this charge, and in 1711 there was issued a legislative reversal of attainder in favor of those who had suffered, or their surviving relatives, and compensation to them or the survivors was ordered to the amount of £578 12s. Thus ended the Salem delusion. That sporadic cases of prosecution and even of execution elsewhere should occur was natural. In July, 1706, at Princess Anne Court House, Va., Grace Sherwood suffered the ordeal by water and was committed to jail in fetters, though the final disposition of the case is not recorded. In 1712 in South Carolina a vigilance committee is reported to have seized and “ roasted ”’ several witches (whether to death is not clear), and a jury refused to award damages to the sufferers or their representatives. And in Illinois, under the jurisdiction of Virginia, as late as 1790, negro slaves, male and female, were done to death under legal prosecution by burning, hanging, or shooting.
_ The dire results of the outbreak appear only partially in the executions. Hundreds were put under arrest and confined in fetters, some died in prison, others were laid under suspicion with all the natural consequences thereof in communities which under
} _ _ the superstition developed a cruel fa-
7 Financial naticism. Even where conviction was
and Moral not reached, the victims were often
Effects. mulcted in heavy costs for the trial
which had issued in their release. Some broke prison and fled from the places where they had by hardship won a home from the forest and had to
begin again in fresh surroundings. Others, though not convicted, were banished, or suffered under the unjust avoidance of their neighbors. The families of the victims suffered under the legal attainder which rested on them for eighteen years. These are but the most obvious of the consequences to the victims and their families. Others were those which came to the community in the demoralization caused by the excitement of passions and the yielding to the opportunity for fevenge. This does not overlook the deception of the group of girls and women to whose action the Salem outbreak was due, as they played on the sympathies, superstitions, and animosities of the neighborhood. While all classes, and especially the learned in law, medicine, and theology, were caught in the epidemic, obloquy rests in large measure upon the ministers who were so active in the affair. Much has been written both in accusation and defense of thisclass. Yet after two centuries the verdict, in view of the almost preponderating influence wielded in society by the clergy, must be that had they been free from superstition the outbreak could not have occurred, even with the physicians pronouncing in favor of witchcraft. Their prepossessions supporting the possibilities of compact between a physical Satan and men and women cast the deciding vote, and in this relation the influence of Cotton Mather was not the least. On the other hand, many of the clergy, from the first, labored mightily against the proceedings, mitigated the severity where possible, and finally aided in bringing about recovery from the delusion.
The attendant circumstances present many problems to the psychologist. The first set of questions focuses upon the circle of girls and women who were
regarded as bewitched. Many elements
8 Psycho- of trouble were present; the knowledge logical concerning the Goodwin children was Problems. doubtless a primary stimulus; there was the intent to study occult phenom-
ena which was the purpose of the meetings; also the presence of the possibly half-witted Tituba with her Indian-negro proclivities acting on the minds of the others, which were gardens evidently tilled for that kind of growth; not to be forgotten is the impressionability of the members of the circle, who were clearly open to suggestion and self-suggestion, and were probably nervous in temperament; the wonder that they excited awakened, stimulated, and ministered to a desire for notice which grew as it fed; and this developed into a craving for publicity and an astonishing boldness, together with a precocious cunning and a progressive callousness and vindictiveness which at the last overreached itself; finally, there was the predisposition of the community to accept at its face value every claim and assertion made by the “afflicted.”’ The second set of problems is raised by the last condition noted. How could the ideas of justice of all classes, the common sense of the ordinary man and woman, the medical knowledge of the physician, the legal perception of the magistrate, and the acumen of the minister be so obscured as to permit the orgy of prosecution to continue for a year? The credulity evinced, the silliness of the beliefs publicly owned, seem at this date almost impossible. This lack of restraining sensi-
SS