This is the fascinating story of Samuel Sewall, who was both a product of his time and very much ahead of it. He was one of nine judges who sat on the court that conducted the Salem Witch Trials. But five years later, he had regrets and publicly repented for his participation, the only one of the judges to do so. Very unusually for his time, he believed that slavery was morally wrong, that men and women were fundamentally equal, and that Native Americans were the equals of the Puritan settlers and had rights that needed to be respected.

The year of 1692 was a big one for Massachusetts, which received a new charter and a new royally-appointed governor, as well as the year the Salem witch court was created, held its trials, ordered executions, and then permanently adjourned. Before reading this, I hadn’t really thought about how long the witch hunt lasted but given its prominence in American history and culture I had thought it had lasted a lot longer than the five months it actually did. Basically, the entire history of the Salem witch hunt can be traced to the arrival of Governor William Phips in 1692. He believed that one of his duties as governor was to drive the devil out of the colony, as the jails of Salem, Ipswich, other North Shore towns, and Boston were filled with suspected witches. The new charter gave Phips the authority to create courts with the consent of the legislature, and so he created a Court of oyer and terminer (Latin for “it listens and decides”). Courts of oyer and terminer with similar powers also existed in England at the time, so this was not unusual. Today the name is still used in certain US states as the title (or part of the title) for a state trial court having criminal jurisdiction.

Phips’s newly created Court of Oyer and Terminer became commonly known as the Salem witch court. It had nine judges: William Stoughton (the court’s chief justice), Wait Still Winthrop, Jonathan Corwin, Bartholomew Gedney, John Richards, John Hathorne (an ancestor of Nathaniel Hawthorne, who inserted the “w” as a way to distance himself from his family’s participation in the witch trials), Nathaniel Saltonstall (who resigned from the court when he believed its activities became immoral), Peter Sergeant, and Samuel Sewall. Other than Saltonstall, Sewall is the only one who is recorded as coming to believe that what the court did was wrong.

What bothered Saltonstall and, much later, Samuel Sewall, the most was the court’s admission of spectral evidence. In fact, many people were convicted based on spectral evidence alone. Spectral evidence was testimony that a witness had seen the ghost of an accused person committing a crime, even though the accused was not physically present. The Salem witch court admitted this evidence even though there was no basis in either English common law or in the Bible for it. However, William Stoughton, as chief justice, strongly argued in its favor and urged the other judges to accept it. Interestingly, not even all Puritan religious leaders were on board with the use of spectral evidence. Many ministers argued that the Devil could assume the shape of even an innocent person, and some even questioned the legality of the court’s proceedings because of its extensive reliance on this kind of evidence – indeed, most of the court’s convictions were based solely on spectral evidence. Saltonstall felt so strongly against it that he resigned, explaining that, “I am not willing to take part in further proceedings of this nature.” In response, gossip began to circulate that Saltonstall himself was a wizard. I will note here that “wizard” is actually the masculine form of “witch,” and a few men were tried, convicted, and executed for being wizards during the Salem witch trials. To me, the wildly different connotations that “witch” and “wizard” have today is an appalling example of sexism hidden in plain view. The next time you hear someone described as a “wizard with technology,” substitute “witch” for “wizard” and you’ll see what I mean.

John Proctor was one of the few men to be executed as a wizard – and centuries later Arthur Miller made him the heroic protagonist of [b:The Crucible|17250|The Crucible|Arthur Miller|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1447764813s/17250.jpg|1426723] – although the love triangle between the Proctors and Abigail Williams was the playwright’s invention. If you haven’t seen the play or the movie, you should – but be forewarned that it is incredibly intense. The reason that the Lord’s Prayer was so prominent near the end of the movie was because at the time of the trials, it was believed that a witch or wizard could not pray correctly, and a small mistake would prove he or she was in league with the Devil. In fact, one of the things that helped turn the tide of public opinion against the witch trials was the fact that a minister convicted and executed as a wizard was nevertheless able to recite the prayer correctly immediately before he was hanged. Many more people in power also began to question the value of spectral evidence, especially because there was no legal justification for using it and it could be easily fabricated. Near the end of the witch trials, accusations were being made against the governor’s wife and Judge Jonathan Corwin’s mother-in-law – and it was then that Governor Phips decided to put an end to the executions. On September 22, 1692, America’s final executions for witchcraft were carried out, and the witch court adjourned, never to meet again. For comparison, America was about ten years behind England, but in Scotland executions for witchcraft continued until 1727, and in France the last execution for witchcraft took place in 1745.

On November 25, 1692, Phips formally created the Superior Court of Judicature, which was America’s first judicial institution that was independent of other government bodies. The newly created court handled major civil and criminal cases, while smaller matters were left to local justices of the peace. While local justices’ decisions could be appealed to the Superior Court of Judicature, its decisions could only be appealed to the Privy Council in England. After the Revolutionary War, Massachusetts converted the Superior Court of Judicature into its state supreme court. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, as it is now known, is over three hundred years old and the oldest continuously serving court in the hemisphere. The creation of the Superior Court of Judicature as an independent court is now considered the first step in the formation of the separation-of-powers legal doctrine that is currently enshrined in American government. In the Constitution of the United States the separation of powers is implied, but almost all state constitutions contain language that explicitly spells it out – the relevant language in the California Constitution is: “The powers of state government are legislative, executive, and judicial. Persons charged with the exercise of one power may not exercise either of the others except as permitted by this Constitution.” (Article 3, section 3). And the idea of the separation of powers is so important that the Supreme Court has consistently opposed the construction of a tunnel between its building and the nearby Capitol for years, at least partly on the basis that connecting the two would symbolically violate the separation of powers between the judiciary and the legislature.

After Phips created the Superior Judicial Court, both collaborated to quickly end the witchcraft crisis. The court held its first meeting in Salem in January 1693, when there was still a steady stream of witchcraft accusations. The court heard fifty indictments that day and acquitted forty-seven people. This time, the court ignored all spectral evidence and ordered that the three people it did convict not be executed. In the spring of 1693, Phips issued a general pardon and signed an order to release all witchcraft suspects who were still alive. However, it took until 2001 for the last five victims of the Salem witch hunt to be exonerated – a legislative act to pardon Susanna Martin, Bridget Bishop, Alice Parker, Margaret Scott, and Wilmot Reed was signed by the governor of Massachusetts on Halloween. Unfortunately for history, most of the documents relating to the Salem witch trials were destroyed soon after the witchcraft crisis: “Unlike most colonial court records, which have been carefully preserved, the journal of the Court of Oyer and Terminer disappeared. The parish records for Salem Village contain a thorough accounting of every other period in the church’s history but no mention of the witchcraft trials or executions.” (Page 178).

In 1697, Samuel Sewall publicly repented, in front of his entire church, for having participated in the witch trials. “In looking back on his work on the witchcraft court, Samuel felt he had violated the laws of humanity and the laws of God. There was no question that in accepting spectral evidence the Court of Oyer and Terminer had violated the laws of England. Far worse, though, was Samuel’s violation of the law of God. In convicting and condemning suspects without solid evidence, he had broken God’s commandment, “Thou shalt not bear false witness.”” (Pages 185-186). The moment is now commemorated in a mural in the Massachusetts State House, entitled 1697, Dawn of Tolerance in Massachusetts: Public Repentance of Judge Samuel Sewall for His Action in the Witchcraft Trials.

But as much as Samuel Sewall was a product of his time, he was also very much ahead of it. For example, he believed that the Native Americans and Puritan settlers were equal in the eyes of God. He also believed them to be intellectual and social equals. When some Native American teenagers expressed interest in a European-style education, Samuel hosted them in his own home while they went to Boston Latin and then prepared for Harvard. After they were admitted, he paid their tuition, and, true to his expectations, they succeeded. And when the keeper of a local tavern announced that he refused to host a travelling Indian, Samuel Sewall invited him into his own house.

He also wrote and published the first anti-slavery tract in America, The Selling of Joseph in the fall of 1700. It was published not only in America but also in a London magazine. The complete text was included at the end of the book.

In 1724, he also wrote a work called Talitha Cumi, or an Invitation to Women to Look After Their Inheritance in the Heavenly Mansions in which he argued that women could also be resurrected and go to heaven. Not only that, but he argued, “If any controversy shall be moved injurious to the right of women before ancient or modern men, in my opinion their safest and surest way is to plead that they are Coram non judice,” a legal phrase that means “not before a judge or the proper tribunal,” and thus to be dismissed.” (Page 257). In other words, women could properly argue that men had no jurisdiction to judge them. “Most historians have assumed that Sewall’s essay on gender equality was never published in its entirety. However, in January 1725 Samuel recorded in his ledger that he paid two pounds to Bartholomew Green, his niece’s husband, “for printing and folding 3/2 sheets Talitha Cumi.” No copies of this twenty-four-page octavo remain.” (Page 258). The complete text was also included in this book.

Many literary scholars also believe he laid the foundation for American literature in his work Phaenomena quaedam Apocalyptica – there are signs it was conscious of itself as American rather than European and it had a positive view of the land instead of seeing it as a howling wilderness. In this work he argued that it was possible that Christ would return in the New World, and specifically in New England, and part of his argument was based on the beauty of the land. His praise of the natural beauty of the area is so strong that his work is “now considered a harbinger of the environmental movement.” (Page 217). Today, the area he praised the most is a nature preserve and can be seen much as he would have seen it.

I also learned that, contrary to popular belief, the Puritans had a deep appreciation for music. Samuel Sewall himself was a singer, and served as a deacon in his church, where he led the congregation in song by “lining out” the melody of the psalm selected for that day. The first English settlers had brought over a dozen tunes for psalms with them, and they valued these so much that the first book ever printed in the New World was the 1640 Bay Psalm Book (The Whole Book of Psalms, Faithfully Translated into English Meter). It was similar to a hymnbook, although it did not contain any musical notes because people were already expected to know the tunes, each of which had a specific name.

One final note: The author is one of Samuel Sewall's lineal descendants (a sixth great-granddaughter), which makes it even more interesting and likelier that she cared enough to accurately research the book. ( )

I picked this up as a, Amazon Kindle Daily Deal. I am fascinated with the Salem Witch Trials so always on the look out for new books on the subject.

Samuel Sewall was the judge who presided over the deaths of 20 innocent people who were accused of being witches. Sewell later in life publicly apologized for his actions and spent his remaining years atoning for what he did. An interesting history of the period and of the man who acknowledged his misdeed and what he did to atone.

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I found the book difficult to read. I think there was an organization to it, but I was not able to follow it. Normally I would stop reading such a book, but there was great information in it. I got a picture of life in that time that was worth the effort. I cannot say that I liked the book, but I will say that it is worth reading for the content. ( )

LaPlante, a descendant of Judge Samuel Sewall, studied his life in an effort to understand more of the man who was her ancestor. She begins with his marriage and the life which eventually led to his being selected to sit on the court as one of the judges for the Salem trials. She does a great job presenting his family life and the struggles he had with Puritanism and his own family's misfortunes. She shows his repentance of his involvement in the trials and his subsequent life. The reader is given a glimpse into what it was like to live in New England in the 17th and early 18th centuries. Drawing from Sewall's own journals as well as other primary and secondary sources, the author has successfully painted a portrait of her ancestor that will be studied for years to come. ( )

This is an extremely detailed biography of Samuel Sewall, written by one of his descendants. He was an interesting man. Of all the officials involved in condemning accused witches to death, he was the only one to publicly repent of his actions. He later became a supporter of Native American rights and sponsor of a scholarship fund for Native Americans (though largely because he wanted to convert them), and wrote the first abolitionist tract (long before popular sentiment in the North turned against slavery). and also argued in a manner for the spiritual equality of women.

When I say this is detailed, it is sometimes painfully so. I found that the early chapters dragged as they spelled out seemingly arcane details about his youth and family background. Things picked up when the narrative reached the witch trials, but I found the account of that disaster (the focus of the title) less detailed than I would have expected, especially given the excruciating detail about other matters. This is probably due to Sewell's reluctance to discuss the trials in his diary, as noted by the author. (The diary was major primary source material for the book.)

There were also some times when the narrative was a bit difficult to follow. One example is Sewall's trip back to England. LaPlante hops around in time talking about certain political events that led to other events while he was abroad; by the time she returned to the main thread of the story, I had to go back and re-read to see "when" we were at.

It was rather fascinating to catch a glimpse of Puritan piety through the eyes of an intelligent man. There was a lot about Sewall's faith and how it informed his decisions for better or (in the case of his work in the witch trials) for worse.

The story is also a reminder of how challenging life often was for the colonists, even those who were well off financially and socially.

I kind of wonder who the target audience was for this book. If for scholars, why no footnotes? If for popular consumption, why not written more accessibly? However, there is an extensive bibliography, and LaPlante does frequently name sources of information within her text. And she says up front that most of the material is from Sewall's diary.

This was the story of an interesting man, but I feel it could have been told more effectively. I suspect that the fact that the author is a descendant of her subject may have actually had a negative impact on the project. ( )