The Salem Witchcraft: Cotton Mather and Stoughton

Of the presentments, the grand jury dismissed more than half; and, if it found bills against twenty-six, the trials did but show the feebleness of the testimony on which others had been condemned. The minds of the juries became enlightened before those of the judges. The same testimony was produced, and there, at Salem, with Stoughton on the bench, verdicts of acquittal followed: "Error died among its worshippers." Three had, for special reasons, been convicted: one was a wife, whose testimony had sent her husband to the gallows, and whose testimony had sent her husband to the gallows, and whose confession was now used against herself. All were reprieved, and soon set free. Reluctant to yield, the party of superstition were resolved on one conviction. The victim selected was Sarah Daston, a woman of eighty years old, who for twenty years had enjoyed the undisputed reputation of a witch; if ever there were a witch in the world, she, it was said, was one. In the presence of a throng the trial went forward at Charlestown: there was more evidence against her than against any at Salem; but the common mind was disenthralled, and asserted itself, through the jury, by a verdict of acquittal.

Cotton Mather endeavored to cover his confusion by getting up a case of witchcraft in his own parish, the imposture of which was exposed to ridicule by Robert Calef, an unlettered but intelligent man. Parris was indignantly driven from Salem. Others begged forgiveness.

Stoughton and Cotton Mather never repented. The former lived proud, unsatisfied, and unbeloved; the latter attempted to persuade others and himself that he had not been specially active in the tragedy. His diary proves that he did not wholly escape the rising impeachment from the monitor within; and Cotton Mather, who had sought the foundation of faith in tales of wonders, himself "had temptations to atheism, and to the abandonment of all religion as a mere delusion."

The common mind of New England was more wise. It never wavered in its faith; more ready to receive every tale from the invisible world than to gaze on the universe without acknowledging an Infinite Intelligence. But, employing a cautious spirit of search, eliminating error, rejecting superstition as tending to cowardice and submission, cherishing religion as the source of courage and the fountain of freedom, it refused henceforward to separate belief and reason.