and burned. One has only to recall the fate of the Maid of Orleans, who "heard voices" and was supposed to be in communion with the spirits of darkness. Men of such profound minds as Sir Matthew Hale and Sir Thomas Browne and that great legal writer, Blackstone, believed in witchcraft, and so did the gentle John Wesley and Martin Luther. Mather, as might have been expected, was convinced that the devil assumed human form.1 "Flashy people," he says with scorn, "may burlesque these things, but when hundreds of the most sober people in a country, where they have as much mother-wit certainly as the rest of mankind, know them to be true, nothing but the absurd and froward spirit of Sadducism can question them." We have no exact statistics, but probably not more than a dozen people were put to death in New England on the charge of witchcraft (some writers, however, estimate the number as high as thirty), while Fisher,3 in his History of the Christian Church, says that prior to the witchcraft epidemic in Massachusetts 30,000 persons were put to death in England, 75,000 in France, and 100,000 in Germany. Incredible almost as these figures appear, there is reason to believe they are not exaggerated. Between 1580 and 1680 there are said to have been 3400 executions in Scotland, and in a single year, 1645–

1 Magnalia, vol. i, p. 186 et seq., and vol. ii, p. 388 et seq.

Magnalia, vol. i, p. 187.

Fisher: History of the Christian Church, pp. 479-483.

1646, in one of the eastern counties of England, 200 persons were put to death because they were accused of practicing the black art. It was often a convenient way of disposing of an obnoxious person. It was easy enough to find evidence to support a prima-facie case, and the burden of proof was not on the prosecutor, but it was the accused witch who had to bring evidence in the vain hope of being able to prove a negative. Before a packed court and a prejudiced jury the instances of the acquittal of witches are so rare as scarcely to be noted. When a case could be proved by the admission of "spectral evidence," conviction was always certain.

A distinguished American writer, Brooks Adams, has reflected more harshly on Massachusetts than even the most biased foreign critic. Writing of the court created to try the witches, which was presided over by William Stoughton, he says: "Even now it is impossible to read the proceedings of this sanguinary tribunal without a shudder, and it has left a stain upon the judiciary of Massachusetts that can never be effaced"; and again he says: "Stoughton was already at work, and certain death awaited all who were dragged before that cruel and bloodthirsty bigot; even when the jury acquitted, the court refused to receive the verdict. The accounts given of the legal proceedings seem monstrous.” Later, somewhat grudgingly, it would

1 Adams: The Emancipation of Massachusetts, p. 225.

Op. cit., p. 266.

1

seem, he finds excuse for these monstrous proceedings, for in a brief note 1 he retracts much that he has previously written and is able to extenuate what Massachusetts did. "In England," he says, “throughout the eighteenth century, counsel were allowed to speak in criminal trials, in cases of treason and misdemeanor only. Nor is the conduct of Massachusetts in regard to witches peculiar. Parallel atrocities might probably be adduced from the history of every European nation, even though the procedure of the courts were more regular than was that of the Commission of Phips. The relation of the priest to the sorcerer is a most interesting phenomenon of social development; but it would require a treatise by itself."

Another count in the indictment brought against the Puritan is the ferocity with which he warred against the Indians and the "Cromwellian thoroughness" with which he used the sword and the torch. It is only necessary to admit the truth, but no excuses are needed. It was a day of stern reprisals, when lex talionis was the code observed by men in Old England as well as in New England, in all parts of the world wherever the sword was drawn and the fiery cross was raised. When white men warred against men of their race they found it more convenient to put their captives to death than to make them prisoners, and as a military and economic measure it was often impossible for the 1 Op. cit., p. 310.

victor to burden himself with a defeated army. In making war against savages extermination was the object sought to be attained, and no consideration of humanity softened the unloosed wrath. To have been merciful would have been regarded as a sign of weakness. The Indians were killed to strike terror in the hearts of other tribes, exactly as sepoys were blown from the muzzles of cannon after the Indian

Mutiny. It was punishment swift and horrible, but all punishment, to be effective, must act as a deterrent to the living. It was effective.

CHAPTER XII

THE PURITAN HATRED OF COLOR A MYTH

IN continuation of the purpose of previous chapters to clear away the fiction that has grown up about the character of the Puritan and present him as he really was, because, as I have already pointed out, of the importance of a proper interpretation of the Puritan if the character of the present-day American is to be correctly understood, it becomes necessary briefly to consider the Puritan in his home.

Fiction has given us the sombre-clad man and woman, to whom color was hateful, enjoyment of recreation an abomination in the sight of the Lord, and discomfort and voluntary hardship evidence of a saintly nature, who by his transplanting to America lost his sense of innocent pleasure and became a different being from what he had been in England. A careful reading of the chronicles of those days fails to reveal any evidence of this transformation. That the Puritan both in England and America was austere and looked with disgust upon the licentiousness that prevailed both in the church and society we know and has already been referred to, but the Puritan by his passage across the Atlantic did not become a man of gloom or frown upon the things that constituted the pleasures of