Part 31

Thomas Putnam deservedly held high position among the inhabitants there, and possessed the esteem, respect, and confidence of the whole community around him. How came it that this very intelligent, influential, and useful citizen, then a little more than forty years old and in the full vigor of manhood, was prominent among the foremost and most pertinacious prosecutors? Why was such a one an enterer of complaints against neighbors, whether high or low, good or bad? Our response is, that in his home a loved and loving wife, cultured, refined, and of acute sensibilities,--a daughter, twelve years old, bright and charming,--and also Mercy Lewis, a young domestic, were all so mysteriously tortured at times, that no doubt existed in a mind which comprehended the creed of that day, that the devil was author of the abnormal torments. That enemy must be getting access to these innocent and loved ones, the creed said, through some neighbors--at least some living mortals--who had made covenants with the Evil One, and thus become his agents. Imbued and bound by the creed of his day, this husband and father could cherish no expectation that his wife and child could be shielded, or that comfort, tranquillity, and peace could come to him and his dear ones, so long as such covenanters were allowed to live. His creed--the general creed of the times--called upon him to invoke the law's aid, since by help from no other source could he hope to reclaim wife, child, and domestic from the clutches of hell's sovereign, and save his own fireside from continuing on indefinitely a frenzied pandemonium. The higher his manhood, and the deeper his love for wife and children, the more vigilant, resolute, and untiring would be his purpose and his efforts to use any and every available means for delivering his family from the hell which had been thrust in under his roof.

The sufferings of his dear ones, then necessarily operative upon his mind and affections, we presume were the chief prompters of his course and incentives to his perseverance in it. Defense and protection of wife, children, and all within his household are incumbent on any one worthy to be called a _man_. Think not the worse of Thomas Putnam because of his resolute purposes and speedy as well as prolonged efforts to rescue from sufferings and perdition wife, child, and domestic. Because a prominent sufferer, he became a prominent prosecutor--yes, the most prominent. Though that fact stands boldly out on the pages of history, no one in his time or since, so far as we have noticed, ever imputed to him an unworthy motive, or annexed a disparaging epithet to his name. Perhaps he, as well as Mr. Dane of Andover, was "tenderly touched" because of "a fair character."

In part the same can be said in defense of Rev. Samuel Parris as we have adduced in defense of his co-sufferer and co-laborer for relief. During the weeks from January 20 to the end of February, both his little daughter and niece, under his own roof, were so strangely and sorely tormented that he and his whole household must have been wearied, agitated, and rendered miserable. When medical aid and kind nursing had proved abortive, and medical authority announced the working of an _Evil Hand_ there, who can wonder, knowing the creed of the day and place, that Mr. Parris sought the law's aid for bringing relief to the little sufferers and to all beneath his roof? Samuel Parris and Thomas Putnam, the minister and the clerk of the parish, were both the first and the greatest sufferers affectionally at the oncoming of invasion by mysterious tormentors, and both have fair claims to be judged of tenderly in their connection with witchcraft prosecutions. The chief apparent action of the minister was as scribe or reporter for the courts, and this because he was more competent to that work than any other person obtainable there. Such action is surely not censurable. His position and abilities, however, were such that it was quite as much within his power to have stopped the whole proceedings as in that of any man then living; and they, no doubt, had his sanction and efficient support. And yet we find no ground from which inference either must or can fairly be drawn that the motives of the minister's actions _pertaining to that special matter_, both at its commencement and in its subsequent progress, were other than those common to the most enlightened and best members of the community. Still we have not learned to like the _man_. Selfishness, and disposition to rule harshly over his parish and individuals, if not resentfully and even maliciously, are made too manifest in the records for us to hold him in high esteem.

As servants of God and Christ, which they professed and believed themselves to be, the prosecutors entered upon and long followed up war, bloody war,--not against neighbors and men, but against the Devil--the great enemy of God, Christ, and all good Christians. They were true, earnest, resolute, strong, fearless men, waging their fight in good conscience.

The community at large, in which those men lived and held prominent position, was not below most, if below any other of equal numbers on the continent. Intellect there was keen, and morality high. Upham's "History of Salem Village," admirable for its research, its thoroughness, its prevailing accuracy, and its extensive charms, clearly shows that the five hundred people, more or less, residing there in 1692, could scarcely be surpassed by the residents of any other locality in intelligence, mental keenness, moral strength, personal courage, and firmness of purpose and resolve to live up to their convictions of truth, right, and duty. Salem witchcraft was born in the homes of intelligent, brave, honored men,--who, in co-operation with their wives, children, and domestics, contributed to its growth, and elicited its vast and awful power to startle, frenzy, and desolate the region round about. The world at large has never been kept well instructed as to the circumstances amid which that great _delusion_ made its entrance on the field of human vision, nor as to the high standing, intelligence, and character of its first escorts and sponsors. Its victims, too, as a whole, were very respectable. Some of them, it is true, were not high on the social scale, but the most of them were well up, and quite a number ranked high among the intelligent, virtuous, and saintly. The wide-spread and long prevalent notion that the dark doings there were little else than outgrowths from tricks played by a few artful and mischievous girls upon some low-lived and bed-ridden old women, has no foundation on the facts in the case. This most monstrous child of Christendom's creed had begetting and birth, in 1692, amid as reputable circumstances and people, and as religious opponents of Satan, as any marked revival of religion which has anywhere transpired since that memorable day when the leading men of Salem Village, being challenged to defense of their homes, armed themselves with civil law, and bravely, long, and forcefully fought for God and His against the Devil.

WITCHCRAFT'S AUTHOR.

What personality or persons, and of what rank in the scale of being, was or were primal and chief in originating and enacting the famous Salem Tragedy? If, as the generation then living believed, it was a specially great controller and commander of all invisible foes to God, Christ, and Christians everywhere, and who, having been effectually baffled in Europe, resolved to keep America from passing into the control of his enemies, God and Christ, and to thoroughly banish the hated intruders from these his more exclusive and prized domains; if it was that being, his strategy seemingly was to "beard the lion in his den," to make bold and fierce attack on one of the strongest fortresses of Christians, presuming that capture of such a post would lead to easy expulsion of all trespassers from the whole of his broad lands on this side the Atlantic. His apparent policy, judged of by the place and circumstances of attack, was to subdue the strongest first, and thus so intimidate as to frighten all others back to their former homes or the homes of their fathers. But _such_ a devil was not there. Many beliefs prevalent two centuries ago are now obsolete. Such a devil as witchcraft was imputed to, and who was believed to put forth greater power over all Indian and heathen lands than God exercised there, receives cognition in few brains to-day. Nevertheless, faith in the presence, power, and malignity of such a being, present and at work among them, was the main force that enabled his contestants to unwittingly put an end to faith in the existence of any one special foe to all goodness, whose power and dominion over the earth and its inhabitants very nearly rivaled those of the Omnipotent One, and whose malice was a near counterpoise to complete supernal benevolence.

Reason demands that the creature shall be inferior to its creator, that devil shall be less than God; and she in most persons refers all things and all events, in the ultimate analysis of causes and agents, back to One Great Over-Soul--one God.

If an all-wise and omnipotent One, being full of mercy too, proposed to subject an erroneous and enslaving human creed to a strain which should shatter it past restoration to strength, and thus to set its subjected holders free, highest wisdom may have seen that bright intellect, true courage, firm nerves, unfaltering devotion to sense of duty, and strong faith heavenward, were needful instrumentalities for best accomplishment of the design. The abode of people than whom none elsewhere were better prepared, more able, or more willing to fight the devil himself promptly, unfalteringly, and persistently, may have been a spot where supernal prescience saw that men, as blinded instruments, could best be made to effect their own and the world's emancipation from a time-hardened and disastrous public error. The mental and moral strength, and other good _fighting_ qualities of its occupants generally, may have caused the Village to be fixed upon as the most favorable battle-ground available for the projected struggle.

Neither God nor the devil, however, was author in any sense pertinent to the present inquiry. Our _ifs_, and the sentences which follow them, cannot meet the demands nor the needs of modern readers. Faith, in direct personal action upon either individual human beings or communities and nations by any incomprehensibly vast and ubiquitous intelligent being either malignant or benevolent, is not as prevalent now as it was in many generations past. God, or a mighty devil either, as constant, immediate, and personal performer on humanity's stage of operations, is not extensively recognized by the deep thinkers of our age.

Indeed, modern thought has come very low down in its search for witchcraft's author. Turning from God and the devil, the reputed workers of great marvels in ages long past, our interpreters of America's earlier wonders have fancied that they find the former existence of little girls whose powers to sway the human mind and agitate a land, so approximated those of omnipotence, and whose malignities so perceptibly equaled his of Cloven Hoof, that they of their own wills concocted and enacted scenes of simulated pains, distortions, losses of sight, hearing, and speech; and also mimicked the movements of birds and beasts, and performed such impositions and tricks innumerable as made their homes and neighborhood a horrid pandemonium; in doing which they manifested such prodigious power, skill, and perfect acting, that these little untaught and untrained ones outled in skill, all the world's most expert tricksters, and, in malignity, the most devilish human monsters our world ever contained, in any age or land.

Somewhere between the extremes of strength and weakness, of benevolence and malignity, we perhaps can find beings more likely to have directly produced the marvels in question than either God, devil, or little girls. Consciousness and experience indicate to most persons that an all-dominating power exists, and bounds and hedges in the spheres of freedom and ability which are occupied by finite beings. Something above and beyond all finites says to each of them, "Thus far, but no farther, canst thou go." Within spheres thus limited there abide many grades of intelligent and affectional beings, ranging in differences of powers and dispositions as widely as any mortal's thoughts can conceive. Vast, countless hosts of intelligences, though vailed from our outer vision, may be, and evidences are very strong that such ever are abiding dwellers above, below, around, and in the midst of earth's corporeal inhabitants. Within their unperceived abodes such ones may actuate the forces which evolve many less marked events, as well as all special providences, special judgments--miracles so called, and such marvels generally as were formerly imputed to either God or the devil as _immediate_ author. We have no faith that either of the two had any closer or more special connection with witchcraft matters than with the ordinary doings of man.

The undefinable source of all things which are contained in the vast creation, emitted all forth subject to laws, and surrounded and infiltrated by forces which enable the world's progressing inhabitants, visible and invisible, to purchase, through study, toil, absorptions from enfolding auras, and other furnished helps, both knowledge and powers just as fast and great as their advancements and growing needs from time to time call for more light and for augmented powers.

Finite beings naturally gravitate to where every instrumentality needful to their highest well-being can be obtained by the co-operative efforts and aspirations of finites, seen and unseen, for learning laws and manipulating forces which pervade their places of residence. Generations upon generations, whose mortal forms long centuries ago moldered away, may still be active laborers in and about the men of to-day, and may be, and may always have been, the immediate manifesters of all supernal intelligence and marvelous force issuing from regions which the eye of flesh lacks power to scan. One of the old prophets of a prior generation made known to John the Revelator what he recorded; and agents of like nature, that is, departed human spirits, may have been the only revealers of supernal truths, facts, and visions to man, and the only workers of the signs or extra-marvelous manifestations of force and knowledge which have been deemed credentials from the Omniscient and Omnipotent. We believe in God and in the issuance of knowledge and force from him to man, but have not faith in his immediate personal putting forth of either, in accomplishment of such events as are often called special providences. Such events occur--they often come both uncalled for and in response to prayer--to yearnings "uttered or unexpressed;" but the prayers and yearnings reach, stimulate, and help both ambient forces and ascended spirits to let in or to confer the needed protection or restoration. The air all around us is alive with hearers of prayer, and no humble and fervent aspiration for help to come forth from the mystic abodes of spiritual beings and occult forces ever fails to bring aid and elevation. The purer and humbler the aspiration, the nearer does it penetrate toward the Great Source of being, life, and bliss, and the more powerful and beneficent are those whose responses and emanations can reach and aid the petitioner.

The same forces and laws which permit the sensible action of good spirits among men, just as freely and extensively permit the presence and action of malicious ones. God aids the good and restrains the wicked just as much and no more on the other side of the grave than on this. Freedom, whether to comply with or to contend against either natural or moral law, is as great in spirit spheres as in our midst on earth. Any spirit, either benevolent or malignant, is as free to use the forces and laws which permit spirit manifestations, as any navigator is, be he morally good or bad, to avail himself of winds, currents, tides, and the like, for passing over seas to a land not his own, and acting out his characteristic purposes there.

Our position, fortified by the facts and reasonings in the preceding pages, is, that spirits--departed human beings--generated and outwrought Salem witchcraft. That is our answer to the question of its authorship.

THE MOTIVE.

Thus far questions pertaining to the character of the main motives operating in the authors of acts called witchcraft, have purposely been avoided. The actors and their doings have been sought for, irrespective of morality. But the _cui bono_, the what good? must have been asked over and over again by the reader. Why did any intelligent being, whether mortal or spirit, thus woefully invade and disturb the homes of able, honored, worthy Christian men? and especially why perpetrate such agonizing cruelties upon bright, lovely, and promising children?

The spirit-world, as well as ours, holds inhabitants differing widely one from another in character, tastes, propensities, and occupations--it contains yearners to recommune with surviving kindred at the old material home--contains its rovers, its explorers, its scientists, its seekers after novelties, facts, and principles; after new places, scenes, and peoples to visit; after new routes and appliances for travel, and after new applications of known powers and forces. The motives for acting upon and through mortal forms may vary from worst to best, from best to worst.

The moral character of motives can neither invalidate nor confirm what has been adduced. The motives, having been either good or bad, may be ascribed to spirits as well as mortals, and to mortals as well as spirits, for both good and bad beings dwell in mortal forms now, and both classes have left their outer forms behind, and passed into the abiding-place of spirits--have become spirits, and that, too, without necessary alteration of their moral states. Motives in different cases and with different operators were doubtless quite varied. Correct presentation of their qualities in connection with the several cases adduced in the preceding pages is obviously beyond our power. Though conscious that we must probably be mistaken in some instances, we yet are willing to state some of the thoughts which facts and appearances have suggested.

Perhaps no unseen intelligences aided or acted through either Margaret Jones or Ann Hibbins; and, if any did, their performances in and of themselves were never perceptibly harmful to the public. We apprehend, however, that if the whole truth were known, man would now see that kind physicians, who had bid farewell to earth, continued to practice the healing art through the brain and hands of Margaret Jones.

The users of Ann Cole's vocal organs furnished no distinct indication that they were either specially benevolent or the reverse. We are constrained to regard them as having been low, ignorant, willing to excite consternation among men, and very willing to help the lewd Greensmiths on, by the halter's use, to speedy entrance into conditions in which themselves could confer with these debased ones more familiarly than was possible while they remained encased in flesh. Such a view need not imply that they were malicious. Desire to hold closer connection with one's affinities is natural, and not necessarily bad. Communicators from the other side of death's portals generally decline to call any spirits _bad_; they speak of many as being low, ignorant, benighted, undeveloped, &c., but seldom call any one bad. They seem to regard many much as we do green fruits. One omits to call the half-grown apple bad, however sour or crabbed, and says only that it is immature, unripe, &c., implying that, though in its present condition not good to eat, time may come when it will be palatable and nutritious.

Elizabeth Knap's visitant--the one to whom she said, "What cheer, old man?"--who presumably was the chief operator through and upon her form, and lingered about her for at least three years, we regard as a sort of recluse spirit, who kept mainly aloof from other disembodied ones, and found his chief enjoyment in retaining or resuming as close alliances as possible with the outer or material world, and from a selfish desire to secure permanent possession of this instrument, strove through torturings to reduce her to subjection; and this, perhaps, without desire to injure her, but mainly with a view to gratify his own selfishness. The other one--the pretty black boy--of a more lively disposition, found pleasure in playfully bantering the grave clergyman, and probably strove, in playful mood, to teach the honest and good man some lessons in charity and demonology. We see no reason why he may not be regarded as a genial good fellow, desiring to make some gloomy portion of mankind more cheerful and happy.

At Newbury there possibly was nothing more than a playful and self-gratifying exercise of constitutional powers by a band of spirit gymnasts--not malicious, but playful and rude; curious also, it may be, to see how far they might be able to frighten mortals and arouse consternating wonder, while they should be pleasurably exercising their own faculties. We view them as neither specially good or bad, but as heedless and rude in their frolic.

Appearances are different when we look at the Goodwin family. There an embodied old wild Irish woman's spirit was the first to put forth psychologizing power over the children. She was moved by anger, or resentment, or both; her guardian or kindred spirits no doubt helped her, and from motives like her own. Perhaps we may properly call both her and her aids bad. Yet we hear no call to apply that word emphatically. Little Martha had just charged the old woman's daughter with having stolen some of the clothes which the latter was employed to wash; and, if that charge was false, or even presumed by the old woman to be false, she, who was obviously fiery and ignorant, may not have been excessively diabolical in using any process of mental or emotional retaliation which was at her command. Perhaps ignorance and instinctive retaliation were quite as operative in her as malice.

Martha's form, subsequently, when she was residing with Cotton Mather, was often used by one or more spirits who seem to have been bent upon showing the learned man that sport might exist and be enjoyable beyond the confines of mortal life, and that denizens there were disposed to make some at his expense. They soon showed him that linguists unseen could comprehend his meaning, whatever the language he might use for expression of his thought; and also thumped the sectarian by disdaining to read books which he approved, and by reading with ecstatic delight such as he condemned. Nor was this all; they exhibited in his presence feats of strength and agility, and many marvelous antics, which were suited to cause a thinker and scholar to hold on to his belief that others than the guileless miss took part in the performance of such marvels. While amusing themselves, they were exhibiters of instructive facts. Nothing bad in their purposes becomes apparent.