Since it was very easy for an accuser to become the accused, many people who had been accused of witchcraft in the past began to accuse others. In addition, if a person were to withdraw their accusation, they could be accused of witchcraft themselves. Therefore, the magistrates who presided over the trials both encouraged solidarity among the afflicted and they were a major cause of the fast expansion of accusations of witchcraft from outlying areas. Add to this a willingness to believe any accusation,21 and it becomes evident that the adults and magistrates play an extremely important part in the story.
To understand the most important piece of the puzzle, one must first realize that Salem was a divided community. It was divided into Salem Town, which was a port Town to the southeast, and Salem Village, bordering the Town, was a farm Town to the west. Founded in the 1630s, by 1672 the two communities were different socially and economically, but politically they were considered one unit. To worship, the Villagers had to travel to the Town, as the Village had no meeting house of its own. For many years the Village agitated for independence. The Town, however, which collected taxes from the Village, constantly managed to prevent it. By 1672, a compromise was reached: the Village could have its own meeting house and pastor, but it was still politically connected to the Town. This situation bred serious tension which would erupt with a vengeance twenty years later in 1692.22
By 1692 Salem Village was poisoned by factionalism. Samuel Parris arrived in Salem Village in 1691 to be its new minister, and only two weeks later, he managed to gain the support of one faction, and the enmity of another. In a question over taxes for his support and other issues, the Village took either Pro-Parris sides or Anti-Parris sides. For most of 1692, the supporters of Parris held political control of the Village, and it was they who were in charge of the witchcraft trials. What began as a political controversy soon became a search for witches. "The witchcraft episode did not generate the divisions within the Village, nor did it shift them in any fundamental way, but it laid bare the intensity with which they were experienced and heightened the vindictiveness with which they were expressed."23
Why was this factionalism so viscous in Salem? To answer this question, the first place to begin is an examination of the characteristics of the two factions. First, it is apparent that membership in the Salem Village church had a clear connection with support for Parris. An overwhelming number of church members supported Parris, while Villagers who held membership in other churches did not support him. Second, in terms of wealth, the more wealthy a Villager was, the more likely he was to oppose Parris, while poorer Villagers supported Paris. Third, and perhaps most importantly, the geography of a person tended to indicate his support or lack of support for Parris. Those Villagers living in the eastern end of the Village, or perhaps even in the Town, opposed Parris; those who lived in the western edge of the Village supported the minister. We will examine this aspect in more detail below.24
As we have stated, although the first accused witches conformed to the established pattern of witchcraft, soon all classes of people began to be accused of witchcraft, first with the arrest in March and subsequent execution of Rebecca Nurse. Nurse was married to a man with a valuable estate in the Village, and she had acquired a reputation of unquestioned piety in the community. The accusations also spread beyond the bounds of Salem itself. The arrest and execution of George Burroughs, a former minister of Salem Village who, by 1692, resided in Maine was just one example of this phenomenon.25 As the summer progressed, accusations quickly spread out of the Village. For example, the community of Andover was hit particularly hard by accusations. The success in accusing those of other communities only encouraged the afflicted persons to continue their accusations.26 As the trials progressed, the patterns of accusation, especially after May 31, began to be generated independently of the Salem factions.27 One explanation of the expansion to people of very high social status (such as Governor Phips' wife in Boston) could be that the accusers were attacking people who resembled those they had real grievances against (to be discussed later), but not the actual people. The people with real power in Salem Village, such as the wealthy Israel Porter, were not attacked. This could be because those people were too important to the community, and were both psychologically and politically "off limits" to the accusers.28
The pace of the Salem trials was extraordinary. Although there had been witchcraft trials in New England since 1647, only about fifteen people had reached the hangman's noose. When the first three witches were accused in February, 1692, it appeared that this would just be a continuation of the pattern. But, as we have seen, this was not the case. We have already stated that accusations moved into communities surrounding Salem, most notably Andover. An interesting and revealing fact is that while the accusers were still predominantly afflicted girls, it is clear that they were not acquainted with many of the people they were accusing. Often, an adult would suggest a name to a possessed girl, and she would confirm that name. With this in mind, a geographic pattern begins to emerge. In Salem Village itself, there were fourteen accused witches; twelve of them lived in the eastern part of it. Thirty two adult Villagers supplied testimony against them. Of these, only two lived in the eastern part of the Village. Twenty nine Villagers either publicly showed skepticism about the trials or defended some of the witches. Twenty four of them lived in the eastern section of the Village. The pattern that emerges is: for the most part, the western half of the Village was accusing the eastern half of the Village of witchcraft.29
It is true that no community is without conflict. Why would the factionalism present in Salem Village lead to an outbreak of witchcraft accusations? To answer this question we must remember all of the pieces of the puzzle which we have already examined, and now explore a new one. While Salem Village and Salem Town were extremely dependent on each other, the cultures of both areas by 1692 were diverging. The western part of the Village had a much more rural base than the eastern part of it, which was becoming more aligned with the commercial center of Salem Town. As the eastern end of the Village was becoming more involved with the commercial world of the Seventeenth Century, the Village was not. In fact, land was becoming more scarce in the western part of the Village, as fathers continued to divide their lands among their children. In effect, the later generations of Villagers had much less of a chance of acquiring economic prosperity than their fathers. The resentment of the western end of the Village was only exacerbated by the presence of the Ipswich road, which was the boundary between the Village and the Town. Those Villagers living along the road (which passed by the Village rather than through it) had important commercial interests with the Town, and sometimes Boston. These Villagers were the solid base of the Anti-Parris faction. Meanwhile, the Village church was the bulwark of Pro-Parris sentiment, and a hotbed of resentment towards the Town and those Villagers whose interest was concerned with the Town. If the Town had had its own political autonomy, perhaps the tensions could have been eased through governmental action. As it was, the western Villagers were becoming to feel that their interests were being neglected by the Town and its supporters, creating an almost under siege mentality.30
While the Village was becoming less prosperous, the Town was enjoying the benefits of the British commercial world. By 1683, the Town was so prosperous that the General Court of Massachusetts designated Salem Town, along with Boston, as one of its "ports of entry." As the Town's economic interests expanded, so did its political influence, relative to the Village. People who lived in the Town were over represented as Selectmen in Salem's government. The rise of a pre-capitalist class in the Town fueled the resentment of the more rural Villagers.31 The anxiety of the Village towards the Town and its interests ran extremely deep, so deep, in fact, that in 1752 Massachusetts finally granted Salem Village full political autonomy (Salem Village then acquired the new name of Danvers).32
As Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum point out, however, to understand that there were two factions which bitterly quarreled with each other is not enough to explain the Salem trials. Local factions, or economic disputes do not have to be resolved with appeals to fears of witchcraft. The struggle involved all of these things, but, above all, it was "a mortal conflict involving the very nature of the community itself." The residents of Salem were Puritans, and to Puritans, a community was not just a collection of people, it was an entire living organism, living under a covenant with God. If a person were to pursue a private interest, perhaps at the expense of the good of the community, they were not "behaving properly." In this society, where images of a tightly knit community were slowly being replaced by an image of a society where individual achievement was stressed, the commercial outlook of Salem Town represented "a looming moral threat with implications of the most fundamental sort." In recognizing this conflict between a world view which was fading and a world view which was on the rise, the true nature of the bitterness and animosity with which the two sides viewed each other finally emerges. The western group of Villagers were engaging in an ultimately doomed attempt to preserve a rural and Puritan ideal.33
By several means, many of the accused witches confessed, especially after the Court of Oyer and Terminer declared that those witches who confessed would not be executed. These confessions were often attained by harassing witness, sometimes bordering on torture. However, the act of confession held a much larger significance than simply adding one more guilty name to the list. For a Puritan to renounce the Devil and regenerate himself or herself, in an important way allowed the community to regenerate itself. Confession allowed the community to restore its belief in its covenant with God, against an evil, demonic conspiracy.34 I believe that it also allowed them to purge their own guilt over their actions during these trials. The conversion of a "Puritan" society to a "Yankee" society produced these tensions which ripped apart the fabric of Salem, Massachusetts.35
There is one last piece to add in order to complete the puzzle. These types of tensions (Puritan versus Yankee, diminishing availability of land, and so on) existed throughout New England. However, these tensions hit Salem at quite possibly the worst time they could have. Salem Village, surrounded by neighboring communities, could not send its younger generations west to seek new lands. The Village, as we have noted, did not the full political autonomy necessary to resolve its factional quarrels. It did have, however, what Boyer and Nissenbaum call a "taste of autonomy." If the Village had remained completely dependent on the Town, it would have had no formal institutions through which to express their differences. Their lack of representation in the politics of the Town only added to the resentment in the Village. Finally, the authorities in Boston did little to resolve the serious factional disputes in Salem. This did not cause the witch trials, but it allowed them to happen.36
While there are several other minor pieces of the puzzle which could be added, we have examined the major ones. There are several pieces: medieval witchcraft beliefs, unexplainable (at the time) psychological phenomena, resentment towards women owning land, and, most importantly, severe, obsessive factional disputes. Any of these factors alone would not have caused the witchcraft trials; but the convergence of all these factors in the same place and the same time produced one of the more tragic episodes in colonial American history. The answer to the question of how did the Salem witch trials occur is a complex one. It cannot be explained in a simple sentence, such as: "It was caused by Pro-Parris versus Anti-Parris factions doing battle with each other," "It was caused by a historical tradition of witch hunts." "It was caused by the pre-modern tradition fighting against a coming modern tradition." "It was caused by an ignorant reaction to a psychological problem." The Salem witch trials occurred because all of these things interacted with each other, producing a sad and terrible result.
Works Cited
Boyer, Paul and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974.
Burr, George Lincoln, LL.D., Litt.D., ed. Original Narratives of Early American History: Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases, 1648-1708. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1914.
Caporael, Linnda R. "Ergotism: The Satan Loosed in Salem." Science 192 (April 1976): 21-26.
Davidson, James West and Mark Hamilton Lytle. After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982.
Demos, John Putnam. Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982.
Karlsen, Carol F. The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1987.
Klaits, Joseph. Servants of Satan: The Age of the Witch Hunts. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985.
MacDonald, Michael. "New England's Inner Demons." Reviews in American History 11 (September 1983): 321-325.
MacFarlane, Alan. Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England: A regional and comparative study. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970.
Thomas, Keith. Religion and the Decline of Magic. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1976.
Weisman, Richard. Witchcraft, Magic, and Religion in 17th-Century Massachusetts. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1984.
Notes
1 John Putnam Demos, Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 17.
2 Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1976), 436-437.
3 Ibid., 444-448.
4 Ibid., 470-471.
5 Alan MacFarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England: A regional and comparative study, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970), 14-15.
6 Joseph Klaits, Servants of Satan: The Age of the Witch Hunts (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 1.
7 Michael MacDonald, "New England's Inner Demons," Reviews in American History 11 (September 1983): 323.
8 Carol F. Karlsen, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1987), 115-116.
9 Ibid., 212-213.
10 Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974), 1-9; MacDonald, 321.
11 Richard Weisman, Witchcraft, Magic, and Religion in 17th-Century Massachusetts (Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1984), 148.
12 George Lincoln Burr, LL.D., Litt.D., ed., Original Narratives of Early American History: Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases, 1648-1708 (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1914),161-162.
13 Ibid., 163.
14 Karlsen, 235-236.
15 Linnda R. Caporael, "Ergotism: The Satan Loosed in Salem," Science 192 (April 1976): 23.
16 Ibid., 25-26.
17 MacDonald, 321-322.
18 Klaits, 12.
19 James West Davidson and Mark Hamilton Lytle, After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), 37-44.
20 Boyer and Nissenbaum, 23-24.
21 Weisman, 144-146.
22 Boyer and Nissenbaum, 42-45.
23 Ibid., 65-69.
24 Ibid., 81-86.
25 Weisman, 136-138.
26 Ibid., 143-144.
27 Ibid., 134.
28 Boyer and Nissenbaum,, 186-189.
29 Ibid., 30-36.
30 Ibid., 92-103.
31 Ibid., 86-92.
32 Ibid., 102.
33 Ibid., 104-107. It is important to note that this conflict cannot accurately be described as two completely polarized groups doing battle for control of Salem. Rather, it was a conflict between two groups who each exhibited different tendencies which would become more apparent in the next century.
34 Weisman., 154-159.
35 Demos, 385.
36 Boyer and Nissenbaum, 107-109.
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