The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 by Julian Hawthorne

J >> Julian Hawthorne >> The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1

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Gradually, we may suppose, the idea took form in his mind that if he
could not be a witch himself, he might gain the notoriety he craved by
becoming the denouncer of witchcraft in others. Ministers in that day
still had great influence in New England, and had grasped at temporal as
well as spiritual sway, maintaining that the former should rightly involve
the latter. What a minister said, had weight; what so well-known a
minister as Cotton Mather said, would carry conviction to many. If Mather
could procure the execution of a witch or two, it could not fail to add
greatly to his spiritual glory and ascendency. It is, of course, not to be
imagined that he had any conception, beforehand, of the extent to which
the agitation he was about to begin would be carried. But when evil is
once let loose, it multiplies itself and gains impetus, and rages like a
fire. The only thing for Mather to do was to keep abreast of the mischief
which he had created. If he faltered or relented, he would be himself
destroyed. He was whirled along with the foul storm by a mingling of
terror, malice, vanity, triumph and fascination: as repulsive and
dastardly a figure as has ever stained the records of our country. He was
ready to sacrifice the population of Massachusetts rather than confess
that the deeds for which he was responsible were based on what, in his
secret soul, he unquestionably felt was a delusion. For though he may have
half-believed in witchcraft while it presented itself to him as a theory,
yet as soon as he had reached the stage of actual examinations and court
testimony, he could not fail to perceive that the theory was utterly
devoid of reasonable foundation; that convictions could not be had except
by aid of open perjury, suppression and intimidation. Yet Cotton Mather
scrupled not to put in operation these and other devices; to hound on the
magistrates, to browbeat and sophisticate the juries, and to scream
threats, warnings and self-glorifications from the pulpit. Needs must,
when the devil drives. Had he paused, had he even held his peace, that
noose, slimy with the death-sweat of a score of innocent victims, would
have settled greedily round his own guilty neck, and strangled his life.
But Cotton Mather was too nimble, too voluble, too false and too cowardly
for the gallows; he lived to a good age, and died in the odor of sanctity.

Immediately after the news of William's accession was known in New
England, Mather opposed the restoration of the ancient charter, because it
would have interfered with the plans of his personal political ambition.
He caused the presentation of an address to the king, purporting to
represent the desire of the majority of reputable citizens of Boston,
placing themselves at the royal disposal, without suggesting that the
charter rights be revived. Cotton Mather's father, Increase, was the
actual agent to England; but it was the views of Cotton Mather rather than
his own that he submitted to his majesty. The blatant hypocrite had
dominated his father. The king gave Massachusetts a new charter which was
entirely satisfactory to the petitioners, for it took away the right of
the people to elect their own officers and manage their own affairs, and
made the king the fountain of power and honor. It was identical with all
charters of royal colonies, except that the council was elected jointly by
the people and by its own members. Sir William Phips, at Increase Mather's
suggestion, was made governor, and William Stoughton lieutenant-governor.
The members of the council were "every man of them a friend to the
interests of the churches," and of Cotton Mather. He did not conceal his
delight. "The time for favor is come, yea, the set time is come! Instead
of my being made a sacrifice to wicked rulers, my father-in-law, with
several related to me, and several brethren of my own church, are among
the council. The governor is not my enemy, but one whom I baptized, and
one of my own flock, and one of my dearest friends.--I obtained of the
Lord that He would use me to be a herald of His kingdom now approaching."
Such was the attitude of Cotton Mather regarding the political outlook.
Obviously the field was prepared for him to achieve his crowning
distinction as champion of God against the devil in Massachusetts. In
February of the next year he found his first opportunity.

There was in Salem a certain Reverend Samuel Parris who had a daughter, a
niece, and a negro-Indian servant called Tituba. The children were about
twelve years of age, and much in Tituba's society. Parris was an
Englishman born, and was at this time forty-one years old; he had left
Harvard College without a degree, had been in trade in Boston, and had
entered the ministry and obtained the pastorship of the Congregational
church at Danvers, then a part of Salem, three or four years before. He
had not lived at peace with his people; he had quarreled bitterly with
some of them, and the scandal had been noised abroad. He was a man of
brutal temper, and without moral integrity. These were the dramatis
personae employed by Cotton Mather in the first scene of his hideous farce.

The children, at the critical age between childhood and puberty, were in
a condition to be readily worked upon; it is the age when the nervous
system is disorganized, the moral sense unformed, and the imagination
ignorant and unbridled. Many children are liars and deceivers, and
self-deceivers, then, who afterward develop into sanity and goodness. But
these unhappy little creatures were under the fascination of the
illiterate and abnormal mongrel, and she secretly ravished and fascinated
them with her inexplicable powers and obscure devices. Their antics
aroused suspicions in the coarse and perhaps superstitious mind of Parris;
he catechised them; the woman's husband told what he knew; and Parris beat
her till she consented to say she was a witch. Such phenomena could only
be due to witchcraft. The cunning and seeming malignity of the children
would tax belief, were it not so familiar a fact in children; and notable
also was their histrionic ability. They were excited by the sensation they
aroused, and vain of it; they were willing to do what they could to
prolong it. But they hardly needed to invent anything; more than was
necessary was suggested to them by questions and comments. They were quick
to take hints, and improve upon them. Sarah Good, Martha Cory, Rebecca
Nourse, and all the rest, must be their victims; but God will forgive the
children, for they know not what they do. Presently, the contagion spread;
though, upon strict examination of the evidence, not nearly so far as was
supposed. Hundreds were bewildered and terrified, as well they might be;
the magistrates--Stoughton, Sewall, John Hathorne, poor Octogenarian
Bradstreet, Sir William Phips--these and others to whom it fell to
investigate and pronounce sentence--let us hope that some, if not all of
them, truly believed that their sentences were just. "God will give you
blood to drink!" was what Sarah Good said to Noyes, as she stood on the
scaffold. But why may they not have believed they were in the right? There
was Cotton Mather, the holy man, the champion against the Evil One, the
saint who walked with God, and daily lifted up his voice in prayer and
defiance and thanksgiving--he was ever at hand, to cross-question, to
insinuate, to surmise, to bluster, to interpret, to terrify, to perplex,
to vociferate: surely, this paragon of learning and virtue must know more
about the devil than any mere layman could pretend to know; and they must
accept his assurance and guidance. "I stake my reputation," he shouted,
"upon the truth of these accusations." And he pointedly prayed that the
trial might "have a good issue." When Deliverance Hobbs was under
examination, she did but cast a glance toward the meeting house, "and,"
cries the Reverend gentleman, in an ecstasy of indignation, "immediately a
demon, invisibly entering the house, tore down a part of it!" No wonder a
man so gifted as he, was conscious of a certain gratification amid all the
horrors of the diabolic visitation, for how could he regard it otherwise
than as--in his own words--"a particular defiance unto myself!" Such was
the pose which he adopted before his countrymen: that of a semi-divine, or
quite Divine man, standing between his fellow creatures and the assaults
of hell. And then Cotton Mather would go home to his secret chamber, and
write in his diary that God and religion were perhaps, after all, but an
old wives' tale.

Parris, as soon as he comprehended Mather's drift, ably seconded him. He
had his own grudges against his neighbors to work off, and nothing could
be easier. All that was needed was for one of the children, or any one
else, to affirm that they were afflicted, and perhaps to foam at the
mouth, or be contorted as in a fit, and to accuse whatever person they
chose as being the cause of their trouble. Accusation was equivalent to
condemnation; for to deny it, was to be subjected to torture until
confession was extorted; if the accused did not confess, he or she was,
according to Cotton Mather, supported by the evil one, and being a witch,
must die. If they did confess, they were spared or executed according to
circumstances. If any one expressed any doubt as to the justice of the
sentence, or as to the existence of witchcraft, it was proof that that
person was a witch. The only security was to join the ranks of the
afflicted. In the course of a few months a reign of terror was
established, and hundreds of people, some of them citizens of distinction,
were in jail or under suspicion. Twenty were hanged on Witches' Hill, west
of the town of Salem, while Cotton Mather sate comfortably by on his
horse, and assured the people that all was well, and that the devil could
sometimes assume the appearance of an angel of light--as, indeed, he might
have good cause to believe. But the mass of the people were averse from
bloodshed, and none too sure that these executions were other than
murders; and when the wife of Governor Phips was accused, the frenzy had
passed its height. It was perceived that the community, or a part of it,
had been stampeded by a panic or infatuation. They had done and
countenanced things which now seemed impossible even to themselves. How
could they have condemned the Reverend George Burroughs on the ground that
he had exhibited remarkable physical strength, and that the witnesses
against him had pretended dumbness? "Why is the devil so loth to have
testimony borne against you?" Judge Stoughton had asked; and Cotton Mather
had said "Enough!" But was it enough, indeed? If a witness simply by
holding his peace can hang a minister of blameless life, who may escape
hanging by a witness who will talk? It was remembered that Parris had been
Burroughs's rival, and instrumental in his conviction; and now that the
frenzy was past it was easy to point out the relation between the two
facts. There, too, was the venerable Giles Cory, who had been pressed to
death, not for pleading guilty, nor yet for pleading not guilty, but for
declining to plead at all. There, once more, was John Willard, to whom the
duty of arresting accused witches had been assigned; he, as a person of
common sense and honesty, had intimated his disbelief in the reality of
witchcraft by refusing to arrest; and for this, and no other crime, had he
been hanged. Had it really come to this, then--that one must die for
having it inferred, from some act of his, that he held an opinion on the
subject of witchcraft different from that announced by Mather and the
magistrates?--It had come to precisely that, in a community who were
exiles in order to secure liberty to have what opinions they liked. Then,
it was time that the witchcraft persecutions came to an end; and they did,
as abruptly as they had begun. Mather, indeed, and a few more, frightened
lest the people, in their recovered sanity, should turn upon them for an
accounting, strove their best to keep up the horror; but it was not to be.
No more convictions could be obtained. In February of 1693, Parris was
banished from Salem; others, except Stoughton, who remained obdurate, made
public confession of error. But Cotton Mather, the soul of the whole
iniquity, shrouded himself in a cuttle-fish cloud of turgid rhetoric, and
escaped scot-free. So great was the power of theological prestige in New
England two hundred years ago.

There is little doubt that the sincere believers in the witchcraft
delusion were very scanty. The vast majority of the people were simply
victims of moral and physical cowardice. They feared to exchange views
with one another frankly, lest their interlocutor turn out an informer.
They repeated, parrot-like, the conventional utterances--the shibboleths
--of the hour, and thus hid from one another the real thoughts which would
have scotched the mania at the outset. Once plant mutual suspicion and
dread among a people, and, for a time, you may drive them whither you
will. It was by that means that the Council of Ten ruled in Venice, the
Inquisition in Spain, and the Vehmgericht in Germany; and it was by that
means that Cotton Mather enslaved Salem. The episode is a stain on the
fair page of our history; but Cotton Mather was the origin and agent of
it; Parris may have voluntarily assisted him, and some or all of the
magistrates and others concerned may have been his dupes; but beyond this
handful, the support was never more than perfunctory. The instant the
weight of dread was lightened everybody discovered that everybody else had
believed all along that the whole thing was either a delusion or a fraud.
Until then, they had none of them had the courage to say so--that was all.
And let us not be scornful: the kind of courage that _would_ say so
is the very rarest and highest courage in the world.

But though Cotton Mather is almost or entirely chargeable with the guilt
of the twenty murders on Witches' Hill, not to mention the incalculable
agony of soul and domestic misery incidentally occasioned, yet it must not
be forgotten that he was of Puritan stock and training, and that false and
detestable though his individual nature doubtless was, his crimes, but for
Puritanism, could not have taken the form they did. Puritanism was prone
to brood over predestination, over the flames of hell, and him who kept
them burning; it was severe in repressing natural expressions of gayety;
it was intolerant of unlicensed opinions, and it crushed spontaneity and
innocent frivolity. It aimed, in a word, to deform human nature, and make
of it somewhat rigid and artificial. These were some of the faults of
Puritanism, and it was these which made possible such a monstrosity as
Cotton Mather. He was, in a measure, a creature of his time and place, and
in this degree we must consider Puritanism as amenable, with him, at the
bar of history. It is for this reason solely that the witchcraft episode
assumes historical importance, instead of being a side-scene of ghastly
picturesqueness. For the Puritans took it to heart; they never forgot it;
it modified their character, and gave a favorable turn to their future.
Gradually the evil of their system was purged out of it, while the good
remained; they became less harsh, but not less strong; they were
high-minded, still, but they abjured narrowness. They would not go so far
as to deny that the devil might afflict mankind, but they declared
themselves unqualified to prove it. There began in them, in short, the
dawn of human sympathies, and the growth of spiritual humility. Cotton
Mather, with all that he represented, sinks into the mire; but the true
Puritan arises, and goes forward with lightened heart to the mighty
destiny that awaits him.

As for bluff Sir William Phips, he is better remembered for his youthful
exploits of hoisting treasure from the fifty-year-old wreck of a Spanish
galleon, in the reign of King James, and of building with some of the
proceeds his "fair brick house, in the Green Lane of Boston," than for his
administration of government during his term of office. He was an
uneducated, rough-handed, rough-natured man, a ship-carpenter by trade,
and a mariner of experience; statesmanship and diplomacy were not his
proper business. A wise head as well as a strong hand was needed at the
helm of Massachusetts just at that juncture. But he did not prevent the
legislature from passing some good laws, and from renewing the life of New
England towns, which had been suppressed by Andros. The new charter had
greatly enlarged the Massachusetts domain, which now extended over the
northern and eastern regions that included Maine; but, as we shall
presently see, the obligation to defend this territory against the French
and Indians cost the colony much more than could be recompensed by any
benefit they got from it. Phips captured Port Royal, but failed to take
Quebec. The legislature, advised by the public-spirited Elisha Cooke, kept
the royal officials in hand by refusing to vote them permanent salaries or
regular revenues. Bellomont succeeded Phips, and Dudley, in 1702, followed
Bellomont, upon the solicitation of Cotton Mather; who long ere this, in
his "Book of Memorable Providences," had shifted all blame for the late
tragic occurrences from his own shoulders to those of the Almighty. Dudley
retained the governorship till 1715. The weight of what authority he had
was on the side of restricting charter privileges; but he could produce no
measurable effect in retarding the mighty growth of liberty. We shall not
meet him again.

New Hampshire fully maintained her reputation for intractability; and the
general drift of colonial affairs toward freedom was so marked as to
become a common subject of remark in Europe. Some of the best heads there
began to suggest that such a consummation might not be inexpedient. But
before England and her Colonies were to try their strength against one
another, there were to occur the four colonial wars, by which the
colonists were unwittingly trained to meet their most formidable and their
final adversary.

CHAPTER TENTH

FIFTY YEARS OF FOOLS AND HEROES

When thieves fall out, honest men come by their own. The first clause of
this sentence may serve to describe the Colonial Wars in America; the
second, to point the moral of the American Revolution.

Columbus, and the other great mariners of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth
Centuries, might claim for their motives an admixture, at least, of
thoughts higher than mere material gain: the desire to enlarge knowledge,
to win glory, to solve problems. But the patrons and proprietors of the
adventurers had an eye single to profit. To make money was their aim. In
overland trading there was small profit and scanty business; but the
opening of the sea as a path to foreign countries, and a revelation of
their existence--and of the fortuitous fact that they were inhabited by
savages who could not defend themselves--completely transformed the
situation.

Ships could bring in months more, a hundred-fold more, merchandise than
caravans could transport in years; and the expenses of carriage were
minimized. Goods thus placed in the market could be sold at a vast profit.
This was the first obvious fact. Secondly, this profit could be made to
inure exclusively to that country whose ships made the discovery, by the
simple device of claiming, as integral parts of the kingdom, whatever new
lands they discovered; the ships of all other nations could then be
forbidden to trade there. Thirdly, colonists could be sent out, who would
serve a double use:--they would develop and export the products of the new
country; and they would constitute an ever-increasing market for the
exports of the home country.

Such was the ideal. To realize it, three things were necessary: first,
that the natives--the "heathen"--should be dominated, and either converted
or exterminated; next, that the fiat of exclusion against other nations
should be made good; and finally (most vital of all, though the last to be
considered), that the colonists themselves should forfeit all but a
fraction of their personal interests in favor of the monopolists at home.

Now, as to the heathen, some of them, like the Caribbeans, could be--and
by Spanish methods, they were--exterminated. Others, such as the Mexican
and Central and South American tribes, could be in part killed off, in
part "converted" as it was called. Others again, like the Indians of North
America, could neither be converted nor exterminated; but they could be in
a measure conciliated, and they could always be fought. The general result
was that the natives co-operated to a certain extent in providing articles
for export (chiefly furs), and on the other hand, delayed colonization by
occasionally massacring the first small groups of colonists. In the long
run however most of them disappeared, so far as power either for use or
for offense was concerned.

The attempt of the several colonizing powers to make their rivals keep
out of their preserves was not successful. Piracy, smuggling,
privateering, and open war were the answers of the nations to one
another's inhibitions, though, all the while, none of them questioned the
correctness of the excluding principle. Each of them practiced it
themselves, though trying to defeat its practice by others. Portugal, the
first of the foreign-trading and monopolizing nations, was early forced
out of the business by more powerful rivals; Holland was the first to call
the principle itself in question, and to fight in the cause of free
commerce; though even she had her little private treasure-box in Java.
Spain's commerce was, during the next centuries, seriously impaired by the
growing might of England. France was the next to suffer; and finally
England, after meeting with much opposition from her own colonies, was
called upon to confront a European coalition; and while she was putting
forth her strength to overcome that, her colonies revolted, and achieved
their independence. Such was the history and fate of the colonial system;
though Spain still retained much of her American possessions (owing to
peculiar conditions) for years afterward.

But England might have retained her settlements too, so far as Europe was
concerned; the real cause of her discomfiture lay in the fact that her
colonists were mainly people of her own blood, all of them with an
inextinguishable love of liberty, which was fostered and confirmed by
their marriage with the wilderness; and many of whom were also actuated by
considerations of religion and conscience, the value of which they placed
above everything else. They wished to be "loyal," but they would not
surrender what they termed innate rights; they would not be taxed without
representation, nor be debarred from manufacturing; nor consent to make
England their sole depot and source of supplies. They would not surrender
their privilege to be governed by representatives elected by themselves.
England, as we have seen, contended against this spirit by all manner of
more or less successful enactments and acts of despotism; until at last,
near the opening of the Eighteenth Century, it became evident to a few
far-seeing persons on both sides that the matter could only be settled by
open force. But this method of arbitrament was postponed for half a
century by the Colonial Wars, which made of the colonists a united people,
and educated them, from farmers and traders, into a military nation. Then
the war came, and the United States was its consequence.

The Colonial Wars were between England on one side, and Spain and France
on the other. Spain was not a serious foe, or obstacle; England had no
special hankering after Florida and Mexico, and she knew nothing about the
great Californian region. But France harried her on the north, and pushed
her back on the west, the first collisions in this direction occurring at
the Alleghanies and along the Ohio River. France had discovered, claimed,
and in a certain sense occupied, a huge wedge of the present United
States: an area which (apart from Canada) extended from Maine to Oregon,
and down in converging lines to the Gulf of Mexico. They called it
Louisiana. The story of the men who explored it is a story of heroism,
devotion, energy and sublime courage perhaps unequaled in the history of
the world. But France failed to follow up these men with substantial
colonies. Colonies could not help the fur trade at the north, and the
climate there was anything but attractive; and mishaps of various kinds
prevented the colonizing of the great Mississippi valley. There was a
little French settlement near the mouths of that river, the descendants of
which still give character to New Orleans; but the rest of the enormous
triangle was occupied chiefly by missionaries and trappers, and, during
the wars, with the operating military forces. France would have made a far
less effective resistance than she did, had she not observed, from the
first, the policy of allying herself with the Indian tribes, and even
incorporating them with herself. All converted Indians were French
citizens by law; the French soldiers and settlers intermarried to a large
extent with the red men, and the half-breed became almost a race of
itself. The savages took much more kindly to the picturesque and emotional
Church of Rome than to the gloomy severities of the Puritan Calvinists;
the "praying Indians" were numerous; and the Cross became a real link
between the red men and the white. This fact was of immense value in the
wars with the English; and had it not been for the neutrality or active
friendliness of a group of tribes whom the Jesuit missionaries had failed
to win, the English colonies might have been quite obliterated. The policy
of employing savages in warfare between civilized states was denounced
then and afterward; it led to the perpetration of sickening barbarities;
but it was France's only chance, and, speaking practically, it was hardly
avoidable. Besides, the English did not hesitate to enlist Indians on
their side, when they could. Had the savages fought after the manner of
the white men, it would have been well enough; but on the contrary, they
imposed their methods upon the whites; and most of the conflicts had more
of the character of massacres than of battles. Women and children were
mercilessly slain, or carried into captivity. But it must be remembered
that the American continent, at that time, did not admit of such tactics
as were employed in Europe--as Braddock found to his cost; operations must
be chiefly by ambuscade and surprise; when the town or the fort was
captured, it was not easy to restrain the wild men; and if they plied the
tomahawk without regard to sex or age, the white soldiers, little less
savage, readily learned to follow their example. After all, the wars were
necessarily for extermination, and there is no better way to exterminate a
people--as Spain has uniformly shown from the beginning to the end of her
history--than by murdering their women and children. They are "innocent,"
no doubt, so far as active hostilities are concerned; but they breed, or
become, men and thereby threaten the future. Moreover, not a few of the
women did deeds of warlike valor themselves. It was a savage time, and war
has its hideous side always, and in this period seemed to have hardly any
other.

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