Contemporary and early Histories

Hmmmmm.....I think it's pretty obvious here who the slackest in the class is.....

Anyway, I'm on my fourth cup of tea for the day, and Extension History has finally come up in my extensive homework schedule. I've read quite a bit of Frances Hill's The Salem Witch Trials Reader, so I figured i'd do you all a favour and tell you about it.

There is almost 90 pages dedicated purely to what different historians have to say on the trials. They range from contemporary sources to late 20th century ones. What I've read are interesting...and some of them are just a tad ridiculous.

I'm going to start with the more early sources, because it's getting late and my bed is beckoning me to a swift sleep. (alliteration for the win!)

Cotton Mather, The Life of His Excellency Sir William Phillips, Knt (London, 1697)

* Attempts to explain why the trials happened- but his explanation blames purely the devil, the 'invisible world' and by the fact that people were practising 'detestable conjurations' in Salem, and throughout much of New England.
*This approach is not surprising however. Mather was also a key player in the trials themselves, and was a strong advocate for the admission of spectral evidence (though he did originally say it should not be the convicting evidence). Of all the principle actors in the trials whose lives were documented afterwards, Mathers was one of only two who did not admit to any guilt.
*Was an influential Puritan Minister who was deeply concerned with the lack of piety in New England. His essay Illustrious Providences (1684) set out to prove the existence of the spiritual side of the world.
* After the Trials, Mather wrote many works defending the trials. His own father publicly burnt his work Wonders of the Invisible World. Ouch.

Mathers accounts are interesting because they are so contemporary. He was there, he resided in the actual trials. However, it is also very clear that his history of the trials is extremely bias. He seeks to blame the Devil and sorcery for what happened because it would
a) Support his defense for Spectral Evidence
b) Explain would could not be (and still has not been) explained
c) Demonstrate the Devil's active work, and thus encourage belief in the Lord Jesus Christ
d) Perhaps because he honestly believed that's what it was- He certainly wrote enough about it to be convincing of his own convictions.


Thomas Hutchinson, The History of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay (London, 1765)

* A man of the Enlightenment- his history is therefore very different to Mather's. He had no time for superstition, and instead oversimplified by ascribing the whole witch-hunt to fraud and conspiracy.
* His strengths (looking past the religious, superstitious aspect for other possible factors) were his weaknesses. Like other Enlightenment historians such as Gibbon, his dismissal of religion affects the credibilty of his work. Whilst I do not believe that real witches can be blamed as the cause of the witch trials, I understand that God-fearing Puritans in 17th century New England certainly believed it to be plausible- and we have to understand that to try and understand them (Ive been listening in class! Perhaps a little sentient empathy? or mentalities anyone?)
* reproduces original documents, including examinations and confessions. He also utilises already written histories on the trials, and books on witchcraft that existed pre-Salem.
*Suggests that the reason the afflicted's behaviour matched that of the Goodwin children (whom Mather's investigated for his Illustrious Providences because of their strange aflictions in Boston, in 1688) so closely was because books on witchcraft were readily available to those in New England, and they could therefore be copied.
* Accuses the girls of fraud- 'So much notice taken on the children, together with the pity and compassion expressed by those who visited them, not only tended to confirm them in their design, but to draw others into the like'.
* And then it arcs into a conspiracy where once started, no-one had the courage to back out. He surmises the trials 'proceeded from the reluctance in human nature to reject errors once imbibed.'
* Was one of the first to question 'whether the the afflicted were under bodily distempers, or altogether guilt of fraud and imposture' rather than 'preternatural or diabolical possession.'


Coming up tomorrow.....

George Bancroft, The History of the United States of America (1834)

Charles W. Upham, Salem Witchcraft, (Boston, 1867), part 3: "Witchcraft in Salem Village"

Samuel G. Drake, Annals of Witchcraft in New England (New York, 1869)

M.V.B Perley, A Short History of the Salem Witchcraft Trials (1911)

Good-night!!!!!