Four other accused and an infant child died in prison. When I put an end to the Court there ware at least fifty persons in prision (sic) in great misery by reason of the extream cold and their poverty, most of them having only spectre evidence against them and their mittimusses being defective, I caused some of them to be lettout upon bayle and put the Judges upon consideration of a way to reliefe others and to prevent them from perishing in prision, (sic) upon which some of them were convinced and acknowledged that their former proceedings were too violent and not grounded upon a right foundation ... The stop put to the first method of proceedings hath dissipated the blak cloud that threatened this Province with destruccion. —Governor William Phips, February 21st, 1693[2] The episode is one of the nations most notorious cases of mass hysteria, and has been used in political rhetoric and popular literature as a vivid cautionary tale about the dangers of isolationism, religious extremism, false accusations and lapses in due process.[3] It was not unique, but simply an American example of the much broader phenomenon of witch trials in the Early Modern period. Many historians consider the lasting effects of the trials to have been highly influential in subsequent United States history. More than once it has been said, too, that the Salem witchcraft was the rock on which the theocracy shattered. —George Lincoln Burr, pg. 197[4]
Posted on: Sun, 11 Jan 2015 23:57:10 +0000
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