It was at Boston that Anne Hutchinson marshaled her forces.  It was at peace-loving Salem that the Devil marshaled his witches in a last despairing onslaught against the saints. To many of its readers there seemed to be little or no connection between witchcraft and religion; but an investigation of the facts leading to the death sentence of the various martyrs to superstition at Salem will convince the skeptical that there was a most intimate relationship between the Puritan belief and the theory of witchcraft.

 
Looking back after the passing of more than two hundred years, it was said to believe the bizarre explanation, skilled and thoroughly intelligent folk as the Puritans could have believed in the possession of this evil power. It especially appeared incredibly when it was remembered that here was a people that came to this country for the exercise of religious freedom, a citizenship that descended from men trained in the universities of England, a well-built band that under extreme privation has created an institution within sixteen years after the settlement of wilderness. It was borne in the mind that the Massachusetts colonies were not alone in this belief in witchcraft. It as common throughout the world, and was as aged as humankind. Deprived of the aid of modern science in explaining odd methods and activities, man had long been adapted to fall back upon devils, witches, and evil spirits as premises for his arguments. While the execution of the witch was not so common an event elsewhere in the world, during the Salem period, yet it was unknown among ‘so-called’ open-minded people. In 1712, a woman was burned near London for witchcraft and several city clergymen were among the prosecutors.

The religion of Salem and Boston was well fitted for developing this very theory of hateful power in “possessed” persons. The teachings that there was a personal devil, that God allowed him to tempt mankind, that there were myriads of devils under Satan’s control at all times, ever watchful to trap the innocent, that these devils were rulers over certain territory and certain types of people. These teachings naturally led to the assumption that the goblins chose certain persons as their very own. The constant reminders of the danger of straying from the strait and narrow way, and of the tortures of the afterworld led to self-consciousness, introspection, and morbidness. The idea that Satan was all times seeking to weaken the Puritan church also made it easy to believe that anyone living outside of that church was an agent of the devil or bewitched. As it is only the useful that survives, it was essential that the army of devils be given a work to do, and this work was evident in the spirit of those who dares to act and think in non-con-formity to the rule of the church. The devil’s ways were beyond the comprehension of man, sneakiness, smooth, sly; the godliest might fall a victim, with the terrible consequence that one might become bewitched and know it not. At this stage it was the bounden duty of the unfortunate being’s church brethren to help him by remind him to confess the indwelling of an evil spirit and thus free himself from the great impostor. And if he did not confess then it were better that he be killed, in case the devil through him contaminate all.

Why, says Mather, in his Wonders of the Invisible World: “If the devils now can strike the minds of men with any poisons of so fine a composition and operation, that scores of innocent people shall unite in confessions of a crime which see actually committed, it is a thing prodigious, beyond the wonders of the former ages, and it threatens no less than a sort of dissolution upon the world.”
 

We cannot doubt in most instances the sincerity of these men and women, and in later days, when confessions of rash and swift charges of action were made, their regret was in fact just as sincere. Judge Seawall, for instance, read before the assembled congregation his petition to God for forgiveness. “In a short time all the people recovered from their madness, [and] admitted their error…In 1697 the General Court ordered a day of fasting and prayer for what had been done amiss in the ‘late tragedy raised among us by Satan.’ Satan was the scapegoat, nothing was said about the designs and motives of the ministers.” Possibly it was just as well that Satan was blamed; for the responsibility is thus shifted for one of the most hideous pages in American History.