Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather: A Reply

by Charles Wentworth Upham

That Cotton Mather continued all his subsequent life to experience the dissatisfaction, and give way to the feelings, of a disappointed man, is evident from his Diary. I have quoted from it a few passages. The Reviewer says it "is full of penitential confessions," and seems to liken him, in this respect, to the Apostle of the Gentiles. Speaking of my having cited the Diary, as historical evidence, he says: "Such a use of the confessional, we believe, is not common with historical writers." I do not remember anything like "penitential confessions," in the passages from the Diary given in my book. The reader is referred to them, in Volume II., Page 503. They belong to the year 1724, and are thus prefaced:

"Dark dispensations, but light arising in darkness."

"It may be of some use to me, to observe some very dark dispensations, wherein the recompense of my poor essays at well-doing, in this life, seem to look a little discouraging; and then to express the triumph of my faith over such and all discouragements." "Of the things that look dark, I may touch of twice seven instances."

The writer, in the Christian Examiner, November, 1831, from whom I took them, omitted two, "on account of their too personal or domestic character."

I cannot find the slightest trace of a penitential tear on those I have quoted; and cite now but one of them, as pertinent to the point I am making: "What has a gracious Lord given me to do for the good of the country? in applications without number for it, in all its interests, besides publications of things useful to it, and for it. And, yet, there is no man whom the country so loads with disrespect, and calumnies, and manifold expressions of aversion."

This is a specimen of the whole of them—one half recounting what he had done, the other complaining, sometimes almost scolding, at the poor requital he had received.

President Leverett died on the third of May, 1724. His death was lamented by the country; and the most eminent men vied with each other in doing honor to his memory. The Rev. Benjamin Colman called him "our master," and pronounced his life as "great and good." "The young men saw him and hid themselves, and the aged arose and stood up." Dr. Appleton declared that he had been "an honored ornament to his country. Verily, the breach is so wide, that none but an all-sufficient God (with whom is the residue of the Spirit) can repair or heal it." The late Benjamin Peirce, in his History of Harvard University, says that "his Presidency was successful and brilliant." He was honored abroad, as well as at home; and his name is inscribed on the rolls of the Royal Society of London. Mr. Peirce says: "He had a great and generous soul." His natural abilities were of a very high order. His attainments were profound and extensive. He was well acquainted with the learned languages, with the arts and "sciences, with history, philosophy, law, divinity, politics." Such, we are told, were "the majesty and marks of greatness, in his speech, his behaviour, and his very countenance," that the students of the College were inspired with reverence and affection. In his earlier and later life, he had been connected with the College, as Tutor and as President; and in the intermediate period, he had filled the highest legislative and judicial stations, and been intrusted with the most important functions connected with the military service. I am inclined to think, all things considered, a claim, in his behalf, might be put in for the distinction the Reviewer awards to Cotton Mather, as "doubtless the most brilliant man of his day in New England."

President Leverett was buried on the sixth of May. Cotton Mather officiated as one of the Pall-bearers, and then went home, and made the following entry in his Diary, dated the seventh: "The sudden death of that unhappy man who sustained the place of President in our College, will open a door for my doing singular services in the best of interests. I do not know that the care of the College will now be cast upon me; though I am told it is what is most generally wished for. If it should be, I shall be in abundance of distress about it; but, if it should not, yet I may do many things for the good of the College more quietly and more hopefully than formerly."

As time wore away, and no choice of President was made, he became more and more sensible that an influence, hostile to him, was in the ascendency; and, on the first of July, he writes thus, in his Diary: "This day being our insipid, ill-contrived anniversary, which we call Commencement, I chose to spend it at home, in supplications, partly on the behalf of the College, that it may not be foolishly thrown away, but that God may bestow such a President upon it, as may prove a rich blessing unto it and unto all our Churches."

In the meanwhile, he renewed his attendance at the meetings of the Overseers; having never occupied his seat, in that Body, with the exception of a single Session, during the whole period of Leverett's presidency. The Board, at a meeting he attended, on the sixth of August, 1724, passed a vote advising and directing the speedy election of a President. On the eleventh, the Corporation chose the Rev. Joseph Sewall of the Old South Church; and Mather records the event in his Diary, as follows: "I am informed that, yesterday, the six men, who call themselves the Corporation of the College, met, and, contrary to the epidemical expectation of the country, chose a modest young man, Sewall, of whose piety (and little else) every one gives a laudable character."