Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather: A Reply

by Charles Wentworth Upham

Mistakes in names and dates—always provoking, often inexplicable—are a fate to which all are liable. In a friendly, elaborate, and able notice of my book, in a newspaper of high character, it is stated that Salem Village, was the home of the family which gave General Rufus Putnam to "the War of 1812;" and George Burroughs is called "John" Burroughs.

It is sometimes as hard to correct an error, as it is easy to fall into one. In pointing out my inadvertent mistake, the Reviewer unwittingly reproduces it. His sentence, just quoted, is liable to convey the idea that William Brattle was "a merchant of Boston." As he has been kind enough, all through his article, to tell what I ought to have read, and seen, and done, I venture to suggest that his sentence ought to have been constructed thus: "Thomas Brattle, a merchant of Boston, (not William, as Mr. Upham says.)"

A queer fatality seems to have attended this attempt to correct my error.

A reader of the North American Review cannot fail to have noticed the manner in which the late Rev. Dr. Peabody, as well as myself, is held up to ridicule, for having called Cotton Mather, "Dr." when referring to any thing previous to his having received his Doctorate. Perhaps we were excusable. By usage, such honorary titles, and indeed all titles, are applied retrospectively, running back over the life, indefinitely. The Encyclopædia Americana, Eliot's Biographical Dictionary, and one of the last numbers of the Historic Genealogical Register, all give that title to Increase Mather, referring to a period anterior to its having been conferred upon him. The title was given by the learned editor of the Massachusetts Historical Collections, to Cotton Mather, in the caption of his letter to Governor Dudley. In the Mather Papers, letters written a score of years before that degree had been conferred on him, are endorsed "Doctor Cotton Mather." If the high authority of the North American Review is to establish it, as a literary canon, that titles are never to be given, except in relation to a period subsequent to their conferment, writers must, hereafter, be very careful, when cursorily alluding to anything in the earlier lives of the Duke of Marlborough, Lord Castlereagh, the Duke of Wellington, Doctor Franklin, Doctor Channing, or Doctor Priestley, to say, Mr. Churchill, Mr. Stewart, Mr. Wellesley, Mr. Franklin, Mr. Channing, or Mr. Priestley.

What renders this making of a great matter out of so trivial a point, by our Reviewer, amusing, as well as ridiculous, is that he is the first to break his own rule.

"'Tis the sport to have the engineer
Hoist with his own petard."

The critic is caught by his own captions criticism. In the passage, pointing out the error in the name of Brattle, he calls him, "at the time" he wrote the account of Salem witchcraft, "the Treasurer of Harvard College." Brattle held not then, and never had held, that honorable trust and title, though subsequently appointed to the office.

It is not probable that Cotton Mather will ever find a biographer more kind and just than the late W. B. O. Peabody, whose mild and pleasant humor was always kept under the sway of a sweet spirit of candor and benevolence, and who has presented faithfully all the good points and services of his subject—Sparks's American Biography, Vol. VI. But the knight errant who has just centered the lists, brandishing his spear against all who have uttered a lisp against Cotton Mather, goes out of his way to strike at Doctor Peabody. He inserts, at the foot of one of his pages, this sneering Note: "Mr. Peabody says; 'Little did the venerable Doctor think,' etc. The venerable Doctor was twenty-nine years of age! and was no Doctor at all."

Let us see how the ridicule of the Reviewer can be parried by his own weapons. Indulging myself, for a moment, in his style, I have, to say that "this Reviewer has never seen" Worcester's Dictionary, nor Webster's Dictionary, in neither of which does time or age enter into the definition of venerable. The latter gives the sense as follows: "Rendered sacred by religious associations, or being consecrated to God and to his worship; to be regarded with awe, and treated with reverence." Further: "This Reviewer should have been familiar enough with the original sources of information on this subject," to have known that it was common, in those days, to speak and think of such persons as Cotton Mather, although not old in years, as "venerable." All the customs, habits, ideas, and sentiments of the people invested them with character. Their costume and bearing favored it. The place they filled, and the power they exercised, imparted awe and veneration, whatever their years. All that age could contribute to command respect was anticipated and brought, to gather round the young Minister, when hands were laid upon him, at his ordination, by the title he thenceforth wore, of "Elder." By his talents, learning, and ambition, Cotton Mather had become recognized as a "Father in the Church;" and his aspect, as he stood in the pulpit of "North Boston," fulfilled the idea of venerableness. And we find that this very term was applied to the representative centre of a consecrated family, in the "Attestation" to the Magnalia, written by John Higginson, venerable in years, as in all things else, in some Latin lines of his composure: "Venerande Mathere."

In the popular eye, Cotton Mather concentrated all the sacred memories of the great "decemvirate," as Higginson called it, of the Mathers, who had been set apart as Ministers of God; and he was venerable, besides, in the associations connected with the hallowed traditions of his maternal grandfather, whose name he bore, John Cotton.