Witch Hunts
The 2024 election, Puritan assholes, accountability, and a forgotten hero.
I started this essay before the election, thinking about those asshole Puritans and now, staring another Trump presidency in the face, I’m once more considering whether or not cruelty is our heritage. Oh, those Puritans! We all think about them, our pilgrims, every fall. The Day of Mourning also referred to as Thanksgiving is their big holiday, but Halloween gets us warmed up with fond memories of the Salem witch trials. Characterized by a Calvinistesque belief that only a random few would be fortunate enough to get into heaven and the rest of us would suffer no matter our virtues (but that you should still toil and try and resist temptation anyway instead of just rock out and have fun, because God says so, and also wouldn’t it really suck to find out you’d blown your shot at being one of the measly fifty allowed to pass the pearly gates?), a staunch refusal to accommodate other practices (to be clear, other Christian ones, including the previously mentioned Calvinists, their way or the highway… to hell! Bazinga), their drive to start a new godly nation (on the hill, you might say), a gorgeous roster of names, and penchant for following April showers, they were heavy contributors to our cultural landscape.
My mother always taught me that most people in the world are good, but that bad voices can often be louder. And I’ve always been inclined to agree with her. But I’ve come to realize that cruelty and assholery have less to do with being bad. Not everyone who does bad is bad. Good people can be dangerous too, particularly when they are unable to examine themselves, and more so when they cannot admit fault.
Americans are ridiculed for being assholes. I’m sure we’ve all seen some meme or op-ed at some point in our lives about their obnoxious behavior in foreign countries, about an entitled parent throwing a tantrum at a mall, or even just about the blunt New York humor I’ve grown familiar with since departing the west coast for college. But there’s another quality I associate with our nation that we may be able to thank our Puritan grandfathers for too, and that’s moral panics.
We are currently in the midst of several seething moral panics. As a transgender individual, I am especially aware of the the mass fear of children transitioning. While I would be sympathetic to parents seeking a deeper physiological understanding of medical transitioning (that would actually benefit us older transfolk too!), this frenzy has skyrocketed to the genuine belief that schools are pressuring and providing children with the actual resources to transition without parental consent. There are ridiculous media storms about immigrants committing mass crime and eating beloved pets. And of course, horror concerning vaccinations that go range from autism development to microchips -- all based on nothing. Trump ran on a platform of moral panics, promising to persecute made-up villains to appease a hysterical public, and he won. One could argue that Harris’s platform was based on the opposite -- the idea that there are no villains lurking in our nation’s civilian public -- and that platform lost.
If you don’t believe that moral panics like these are a constant in our culture, allow me to convince you. How often do you recall seeing frightening articles about innocuous tactics to mark targets for human trafficking? Do you remember when people said pedophiles were using the Talking Angela game to kidnap children? Have you ever found a razor blade in a piece of halloween candy? Do you know why the government wants to shut down TikTok? Those are all smaller and somewhat more personal, and might even sound believable at a glance, but there are some more outlandish ones. Music genres that encouraged crime or sin. Gay men that secretly spread AIDs. Satanists using day cares to harm children.
Our most famous moral panic, though, is certainly the aforementioned Salem witch trials. The final witch, Elizabeth Johnson Jr., was exonerated of her crimes a mere two years ago in 2022, a little over three centuries from her conviction. In our present day, it’s easy to look back on this as part of a pattern of witch hunts, but this tradition was actually dying out in Europe when the so-called New World was rocked by one of its earliest hysterias.
But treating these witch trials as mere hysteria is a gross oversimplification of Salem’s tense political situation. The colony of Massachusetts had dealt with serious conflict between Protestants and Catholics on both American and British soil, with the influential Increase Mathers obtaining a new charter that appointed his good friend governor within the same year the trials began. It was this new governor who appointed the new council of justice, and Mathers (who, by the way, had previously needed to flee the region to avoid accusations of treason, and also, it turns out, was an early president of Harvard?) who quite literally wrote the book on witchcraft and witch hunting. Tensions constantly ran high between Salem Village and Salem Town (which, yes, were different places) and as if this all weren’t enough, this moral panic came hot on the heels of King Philip’s War, one of the deadliest conflicts in colonial America, and fights with the French-allied native population continued. So you see why the population -- governing and governed alike -- may have all felt increasing paranoia with very little useful direction. During the witch trials over two hundred people, primarily women, were accused. Thirty “witches” were found guilty, with nineteen being hanged, and more convicts died in prison due to poor conditions. As I mentioned, the final witch was exonerated extremely recently, generations after her death. It’s not a very satisfying end to a moral panic. But then, they never are.
Still, was there any justice within the lifetime? Did anyone take action within living memory of the victims executions?
Enter: Samuel Sewall.
Sewall is a hero to me for many reasons. For starters, he kept a prolific diary, and I am forever grateful that he so graciously documented such a momentous historic event with such detail for us! A judge in the trials, Sewall was aware of the growing unease amongst the public, and also noticed that one of the children who accused witches of harming her was no longer “afflicted” now that she had moved into a new home environment, which happened to be with Sewall’s brother. Sewall, as far as I know, may have been the first amongst the Salem judges to doubt the truth of the accused’s guilt. He was the only member of the court to express regret for his actions, and took it upon himself to publicly repent. He began to recognize the witch trials as the culmination of the political turmoil and dismissed the plausibility of witchcraft entirely. His minister read out Sewall’s confession of guilt while he stood up in his meeting house. None of the other judges ever repented.
Samuel Sewall wrote the first abolitionist document in America, The Selling of Joseph, directly leading to the release of a Black indentured servant named Adam. He defended women’s rights to vote, sit on juries, and hold office. I admire him for his willingness to publicly interrogate not only the society he lived in, but his actions within it.
Fred Rogers said, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” I agree wholeheartedly with this as a statement of hope. But in times of moral uncertainty and political unrest, it is important to look to those who stand apart in their willingness to take accountability. Ask yourself too, who is apologizing? Who matches empathy with action?
It is easy to be complicit. It is easy to fall for a moral panic, or to believe a conspiracy theory. Viewing these hysterias as ridiculous and unfounded is dangerous, because it makes us confident that we would never fall prey to them. We all like to believe that we will be brave when the time comes, but more often than not the problem is not that we are cowards, but that we are duped. Sometimes we are duped into believing that our voices and actions lack power, and sometimes we are duped into believing there is someone out to get us, someone who need to punch down. It’s not mere stupidity. It’s not just fear.
We don’t know where the next four years will take us. We do know that Trump’s administration is threatening fascism, tyranny, and a huge step backwards in our civil rights. I’m here to tell you something scary. You might fall for it. So keep questioning yourself, and keep questioning our country, and if you come to realize you’ve made a mistake: admit it and do something.
Samuel Sewall, sensible of the reiterated strokes of God upon himself and family; and being sensible, that as to the guilt contracted upon the opening of the late commission of Oyer and Terminer at Salem (to which the order for this day relates) he is, upon many accounts, more concerned than any that he knows of, desires to take the blame and shame of it, asking pardon of men, and especially desiring prayers that God, who has an unlimited authority, would pardon that sin and all other his sins, personal and relative; and according to his infinite benignity, and sovereignty, not visit the sin of him, or of any other, upon himself or any of his, nor upon the land. But that He would powerfully defend him against all temptations to sin, for the future and vouchsafe him the efficacious, saving conduct of his word and spirit.
Amazing and poignant perspective and YES!!! ALWAYS QUESTION especially ourselves. 👏👏👏👏👏
Outstanding piece! Anyone can fall for a con under the right conditions. Now more than every we need to be vigilant, not just with the world out there, but with ourselves, our emotions, and our reactions.