Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft

Written by Stephen Nissenbaum and Paul S. Boyer

Narrated by Norman Dietz

Tormented girls writhing in agony, stern judges meting out harsh verdicts, nineteen bodies swinging on Gallows Hill. The stark immediacy of what happened in 1692 has obscured the complex web of human passion which climaxed in the Salem witch trials.



From rich and varied sources—many neglected and unknown—Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum give us a picture of the people and events more intricate and more fascinating than any other in the massive literature. It is a story of powerful and deeply divided families and of a community determined to establish an independent identity—beset by restraints and opposition from without and factional conflicts from within—and a minister whose obsessions helped to bring this volatile mix to the flash point. Not simply a dramatic and isolated event, the Salem outbreak has wider implications for our understanding of developments central to the American experience: the disintegration of Puritanism, the pressures of land and population in New England towns, the problems besetting farmer and householder, the shifting role of the church, and the powerful impact of commercial capitalism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Apr 17, 2018
• ISBN: 9781977375742

Reviews for Salem Possessed

[9inchsnails · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Read for graduate Historiography. Honestly, the Salem Witch Trials have never been of historical or academic interest to me; I was surprised to enjoy this as much as I did. Well-researched and lively.

[setnahkt · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Everybody knows about the Salem witch trials – if for no other reason than their constant use as a metaphor for everything from the McCarthy hearings to the War on Terrorism. However, that knowledge generally starts and stops with the trials and hangings. The authors of Salem Possessed, using a prodigious amount of research on obscure original sources (church records, land titles, wills, etc.) plausibly contend that the witch trials were the culmination of years of controversy and infighting in Salem Village, most of which had nothing to do with witches.
First off, the authors set the background by pointing out that the trials were held in Salem Village, not Salem Town. If you’re not from the eastern US, you should note that “town” is a political subdivision smaller than a county, which may or may not be associated with a particular conglomeration of buildings. As it happened, most of the population of Salem Town lived in the built up zone, but most of the actual town area was rural farmland. This dichotomy was the original cause of conflict. The rural farmers lived some distance from the town center (up to 20 miles), yet were supposed to pay town taxes, appear in town when it was their turn to participate in the watch, and attend church in town.
Authors Boyer and Nissenbaum go into detail over the difference between attending church – in 17th century New England, everybody attended church – and being a member of a church. Church membership was supposedly limited to a fraction of the community. I had never heard of this distinction before, but it figures in the subsequent history. (Annoyingly, Boyer and Nissenbaum don’t specify what someone had to do to become a church member). The residents of Salem Village (once again, there’s just a scatter of farm buildings, with a slight concentration along the Ipswich Road) wanted their own church, so they wouldn’t have to trudge all the way to Salem Town (technically, this was to be a “meetinghouse” rather than a “church”). However, only church members could “call” a minister, and almost all the church members lived in Salem Town and had no particular interest in losing the tax revenue from Salem Village (a good chunk of the taxes went to pay the minister’s salary, and if Salem Village had their own minister they wouldn’t be paying that part of the taxes to Salem town any more). As a result, in 1672 the inhabitants of Salem Village petitioned the General Court of Massachusetts Bay Colony to allow a vote by all the inhabitants on a minister, rather than just the church members. And the General Court granted the request. This set up Salem Village as a unique political entity; with a small degree of independence from Salem Town, but without political institutions – the only power the village had was to elect a five-member Committee, and the only power the Committee had was to collect the minister tax. Nevertheless, the village tended to treat the Committee as if it was a governing body, and the Committee tended to act that way. And, in the American tradition, the village immediately split into two contending political parties; those who supported the current minister (first James Bayley (1672-1679), then George Burroughs (1680-1683), then Deodat Lawson (1684-1688), then Samuel Parris (1689-1697)) and those who opposed him.
Samuel Parris, then, was the village minister when Satan showed up in 1692. Everybody probably knows the witchcraft part of the story; three preadolescent girls (one of them Parris’s daughter and another his niece) undertook an apparently innocent attempt to predict their future husbands by observing the shape of an egg white dropped in a bowl of water. One of the girls was frightened when her egg white looked like a coffin. Shortly afterwards, the girls began exhibiting “strange” behavior; disordered speech, random motions, and “fits”. This is what got Parris into trouble; what he should have done was call in the legal authorities – witchcraft was a civil crime, not a religious one. What he did instead was hold prayer meetings and give sermons. This gave ammunition to his opponents, who began arresting and jailing suspected witches themselves. (Many previous commentaries have cast Parris as some sort of evil inquisitor, while in fact he was clearly very reluctant to let matters go to the civil authorities. However, once the trials started he participated). Matters were further complicated because at the time Massachusetts Bay Colony had no legal government; the previous Royal Governor had been deposed in the aftermath of The Glorious Revolution and no new one had been appointed. Thus the accused witches (including a four year old girl) were held without trial until it could be done legally.
There were six accused witches in jail by the end of March, 22 more in April, and 39 more in May (interesting numbers considering the Salem Village population was just over 200). In June the new Royal Governor arrived and trials and executions began. Apparently the witches were not impressed and accusations continued until the authorities no longer bothered to keep track of them. In total, 19 people died; one in prison, one by pressing to death for refusal to plead, and the remainder by hanging (nobody was burned at the stake, despite numerous movies to the contrary). One of the fatalities was George Burroughs, the former minister who hadn’t lived in the village for 9 years (he was serving as a minister in Maine). However, after testimony that he had done wizardly feats while in the village (“picking up a heavy gun using only his finger thrust in the barrel”) and had appeared as a specter to some of the afflicted girls in Salem Village while his physical body was in Maine, he was arrested, brought back to Salem, tried, and hanged.
Contrary to the popular myth of inquisitorial religious persecution, it was two of the prominent religious figures in Massachusetts Bay Colony – Increase Mather and his son Cotton Mather – that finally slowed down and stopped the trials and executions, mostly by casting doubt on the reliability of evidence. I was especially surprised by Cotton Mather, since he’s always been cast as one of the villains in the whole episode (see the Stephen Vincent Benét poem). The author’s yeoman work on available documentary evidence suggests what was actually going on. Most of the accused – and there are maps showing where everybody lived – were not neighbors of their accusers but lived at some distance; people’s immediate neighbors tended to defend them in court rather than accuse them. Interestingly, this seems to conflict with another of the authors’ claims – that people tended to accuse those toward whom they had behaved in an un-neighborly fashion – for example, those that the had refused to lend equipment.
Not the world’s easiest read; the text tends to jump around chronologically depending on what point the authors are making – but interesting from a historical debunking standpoint.

[aliform · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An impressive book. Unlike most accounts of the trials, this takes social and political factors into consideration when explaining possible causes for the dramatic and tragic turn of events.

[heidilove_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

my first book about the witchcraze in the colonies, boyer does a fine job of introducing the subject and the scenery. good for novice and scholar alike.