The Witches

In 1692, the Massachusetts Bay Colony executed 14 women, five men, and two dogs for witchcraft. The sorcery first materialized in January; the first hanging took place in June, the last in September. Between 144 and 185 people were formally accused across 25 villages and towns, and 55 confessed. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Stacy Schiff reconstructs the crisis from its origins in a minister's household through the hangings, the dissolution of the court, and the halting reckoning that followed.

The colony that produced the trials was a homogeneous Puritan society perched on the edge of a wilderness, its settlements fragile and isolated. Nearly every resident subscribed to a rigorous Calvinist faith in which the supernatural was eminently real, the devil an active adversary, and biblical texts the lens through which all events were interpreted. The colonists had recently endured the revocation of their charter by the English Crown, the imposition and overthrow of a royal governor, three years of political anarchy, and devastating Indian attacks on the frontier.

The crisis began in the household of Samuel Parris, the beleaguered minister of Salem village, a small farming community distinct from the more prosperous port of Salem town. In late January 1692, Parris's 11-year-old niece Abigail Williams and 9-year-old daughter Betty began to bark, yelp, convulse, and complain of bites and pinches by invisible agents. William Griggs, the village's sole physician, concluded the disorder was diabolical. On February 25, while Parris was away, a neighbor instructed his slaves to bake a "witch cake," mixing the girls' urine into rye flour and feeding it to the family dog, a folk remedy meant to reveal the guilty party. Within days, Betty and Abigail named three witches: Sarah Good, a semi-itinerant beggar; Sarah Osborne, a frail, bedridden villager embroiled in litigation with the powerful Putnam family; and Tituba, Parris's own Indian slave.

Formal hearings began on March 1 before justices Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne, who presided less as judges than as prosecutors. Good was sullen and defiant. Osborne denied the charges. Tituba, however, delivered a spellbinding confession, describing a tall white-haired man in a dark serge coat, animal familiars, flights on a pole, and a diabolical book bearing nine signatures. Her testimony changed everything: it assured the authorities they were on the right track, doubled the number of suspects, and raised the specter of a wider conspiracy.

Accusations multiplied rapidly. 12-year-old Ann Putnam Jr. named Martha Corey, a church member in good standing, who was remanded to prison after a punishing hearing. Next came 71-year-old Rebecca Nurse, a devout great-grandmother who assured a visiting delegation she was "as innocent as the child unborn" but was jailed despite widespread community sympathy. Warrants also went out for five-year-old Dorothy Good, who confessed to having a familiar snake and was put in heavy irons for nine months.

Thomas Putnam, Parris's stalwart supporter, wrote a letter to the justices hinting at a mastermind behind the conspiracy. His daughter soon identified the ringleader: George Burroughs, a Harvard-educated minister who had served the village from 1679 to 1683 before departing amid salary disputes. Burroughs was arrested on the Maine frontier and transported to Salem. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Procter was reluctantly identified by the girls, and her husband John Procter, a bluff 60-year-old farmer who had insisted the girls should hang, was suddenly accused as well. By mid-May, over 54 witches had been named, and the frail Sarah Osborne became the first casualty of the crisis, dying in prison.

Governor Sir William Phips arrived in Boston on May 14 with the prominent minister Increase Mather and a new charter. Finding over 60 suspects jailed, Phips established a Court of Oyer and Terminer, a special court "to hear and determine" the witchcraft cases, appointing nine justices with William Stoughton as chief justice. Stoughton, a 60-year-old Oxford-educated political survivor who had served in four different regimes, had every reason to prove the new government's legitimacy.

Bridget Bishop, a Salem town widow with a prior witchcraft accusation and a long history of provocative behavior, was selected as the first defendant and hanged on June 10. Cotton Mather, the brilliant young Boston minister and the colony's best-known clergyman, advised the court to exercise caution regarding spectral evidence, testimony about visions visible only to the bewitched, but also endorsed "speedy and vigorous prosecution." Justice Nathaniel Saltonstall resigned from the court after the hanging, dissatisfied with the proceedings.

In late June, the court tried five more women, including Susannah Martin, a steely, 71-year-old Amesbury widow who openly mocked the magistrates and faced decades-old charges of bewitchment, and Elizabeth How, who had 12 witnesses in her defense. Rebecca Nurse's trial was the most contested: the jury initially returned a not guilty verdict, but Stoughton directed their attention to an ambiguous remark Nurse had made, and they reversed their verdict. On July 19, all five women were hanged. Sarah Good delivered a searing curse to Reverend Nicholas Noyes from beneath the gallows.

The crisis then engulfed Andover, north of Salem. A desperate farmer sent for the Salem girls to diagnose his ailing wife; they named Ann Foster, a quiet widow in her seventies, who confessed to flying on a pole to a witches' meeting. Foster's daughter and granddaughter confessed in turn. From the proliferating confessions emerged a picture of a vast diabolical assembly: witches flew from across Massachusetts, summoned by a trumpet; Burroughs officiated over a satanic communion; the plan was to destroy every church in the colony. Martha Carrier, an abrasive Andover mother of five, saw her teenage sons tortured until they confessed. John Procter, shackled in prison, composed a petition warning of a miscarriage of justice and reporting the torture of suspects.

Burroughs's August 5 trial drew the largest crowd. From the ladder with a noose around his neck, he flawlessly recited the Lord's Prayer, a feat supposedly impossible for a wizard. Mather intervened from horseback to calm the spectators. On August 19, Burroughs, Procter, and Carrier were hanged alongside George Jacobs, a jaunty, elderly farmer who had scoffed at his accusers, and John Willard, a deputy constable who had initially helped arrest suspects before turning against the trials and attempting to flee. In September, Giles Corey, Martha Corey's husband, refused to enter a plea and was pressed to death under stones. Mary Esty, Rebecca Nurse's sister, submitted a petition asking the judges not for her own life but for fairer procedures for the remaining accused. On September 22, eight more people were hanged, including Martha Corey, Esty, and Samuel Wardwell, who recanted his confession on the gallows.

The tide turned as critics spoke out. Thomas Brattle, a Harvard-educated merchant, composed a devastating letter demolishing the court's assumptions. Increase Mather completed Cases of Conscience, arguing that spectral evidence was insufficient for conviction. On October 29, Phips disbanded the Court of Oyer and Terminer. A new court, instructed to disregard spectral evidence, acquitted nearly all remaining suspects. Stoughton signed execution warrants, but Phips countermanded them. By February 1693, Phips declared the epidemic over. Tituba, the first to confess, was the last released.

The aftermath proved excruciating. Dorothy Good, imprisoned at five years old for nine months in miniature manacles, went insane. Estates had been looted; reputations were ruined. On January 14, 1697, Massachusetts observed a province-wide fast of repentance. Samuel Sewall, the only judge to apologize publicly, stood in his pew and had his minister read aloud his statement of guilt. Twelve Salem jurors begged pardon. In 1706, Ann Putnam Jr. confessed she had acted "ignorantly and unwittingly" as an instrument of "the powers of darkness." Stoughton died in 1701 without ever addressing the trials.

Schiff argues that the crisis arose from a convergence of forces: the genuine distress of the Parris girls, whose symptoms conform to what would later be called conversion disorder, a condition in which suppressed distress translates into physical symptoms; the machinations of adults who attached political agendas and theological obsessions to adolescent afflictions; a chief justice determined to prove a new government's legitimacy; and a clergy unable to undermine an administration they had themselves installed. The trials produced no heroes, no consequences, and only the devil as a culprit. Salem endures as America's cautionary tale, a reminder that extreme right can blunder into extreme wrong and that fear paralyzes reason.