The illustration of the interior of Independence Hall on page 17, was furnished for use in this work by the National Company of St. Louis, publishers of "Our Own Country," a large work descriptive of a tour throughout the most picturesque sections of the United States. The letter-press in "Our Own Country" was written by the author of this work, and it is one of the finest tributes to the picturesqueness of America that has ever been published. Other illustrations in this work were also kindly supplied by the same publishing house.
[CHAPTER II.]
THE WITCHES OF SALEM.
A Relic of Religious Bigotry--Parson Lawson's Tirade Against Witchcraft--Extraordinary Court Records of Old Puritan Days--Alleged Supernatural Conjuring--A Man and his Wife both put to Death--Crushed for Refusing to Plead--A Romance of the Old Days of Witch Persecution.
Among the curiosities of New England shown to tourists and visitors, is the original site of some of the extraordinary trials and executions for witchcraft in the town of Salem, now known as Danvers, Mass. Looking back upon the events of two hundred years ago, the prosecution of the alleged witches appears to us to have been persecution of the most infamous type. The only justification for the stern Puritans is the fact that they inherited their ideas of witchcraft and its evils from their forefathers, and from the country whence most of them came.
One of the earliest precepts of religious bigotry was, "Thou shalt not allow a witch to live," and from time immemorial witchcraft appears to have been a capital offense. It is on record that thousands of people have, from time to time, been legally murdered for alleged intercourse and leaguing with the Evil One. The superstition seems to have gained force rather than lost it by the spread of early Christianity. As a rule, the victims of the craze were women, and the percentage of aged and infirm women was always very large. One of the greatest jurists of England, during the Seventeenth Century, condemned two young girls to the gallows for no other offense than the alleged crime of having exerted a baneful influence over certain victims, and having, what would be called in certain districts, "hoodooed" them.
In Scotland the craze was carried to still further lengths. To be accused of witchcraft was to be condemned as a matter of course, and the terrible death of burning at the stake was the invariable sentence. Most of the victims made imaginary confessions, preferring to die at once than to be tortured indefinitely. In the year 1716, a wealthy lady and her nine-year-old daughter were hanged for witchcraft, and even thirty or forty years later the records of Great Britain are sullied by another similar case of persecution.
These unsavory records are given in order to correct a misapprehension as to the part the old Puritans took in the persecutions. Many people seriously believed that the idea of witchcraft, as a capital offense, originated in Salem, and attribute to the original witch-house the reputation of having really given birth to a new superstition and a new persecution. As we have seen, this is entirely erroneous. The fact that the Puritans copied a bad example, instead of setting a new one, should, at least, be remembered in palliation of the unfortunate blot upon their otherwise clean escutcheon.
In the year 1704, one Deodat Lawson, minister at Salem during the last sixteen or seventeen years of the Seventeenth Century, published a remarkable work, entitled "Christ's Fidelity, the only Shield against Satan's Malignity." In this work appears a record of the so-called calamity at Salem, which the author tells us was afflicted, about the year 1692, "with a very sore and grievous infliction, in which they had reason to believe that the Sovereign and Holy God was pleased to permit Satan and his instruments to affright and afflict those poor mortals in such an astonishing and unusual manner."
The record of Parson Lawson is so realistic and emblematic of the times in which he lived, that we reproduce some of his own expressions. Thus, he says, "Now, I having for some time before attended the work of the Ministry in Salem Village, the report of those great afflictions came quickly to my notice, the more so, because the first person afflicted was in the minister's family, who succeeded me after I was removed from them. In pity, therefore, to my Christian friends and former acquaintance there, I was much concerned about them, frequently consulted with them, and (by Divine assistance) prayed for them; but especially my concern was augmented when it was reported at an examination of a person suspected for witchcraft, that my wife and daughter, who died three years before, were sent out of the world under the malicious operations of the infernal powers, as is more fully represented in the following remarks. I did then desire, and was also desired by some concerned in the court, to be there present that I might hear what was alleged in that respect, observing, therefore, when I was amongst them, that the case of the afflicted was very amazing and deplorable, and the charges brought against the accused such as were grounds of suspicion, yet very intricate and difficult to draw up right conclusions about them. They affirmed that they saw the ghosts of several departed persons, who, at their appearing, did instigate them to discover such as (they said) were instruments to hasten their death, threatening sorely to afflict them if they did not make it known to the magistrates.