The minister of the church in the village of Salem, who had had a bitter strife with a portion of his congregation, got up this accusation of witchcraft, as a means of vengeance in which he was both accuser and witness, prompting the answers of other witnesses and acting as recorder to the magistrates, in which he was supported throughout by Cotton Mather. Within less than two months twenty persons were tried, condemned, and hanged, among them five women of blameless lives, all declaring their innocence. A minister was hanged as a witch for declaring that there could be no such thing as witchcraft, “an opinion,” says Bancroft, that “wounded the self-love of the judges, for it made them the accusers and judicial murderers of the innocent.” Fifty-five persons were tortured or terrified into confession. “With accusations,” continues the historian, “confessions increased, and with confessions new accusations.” The jails were full. No one that confessed after condemnation was hanged, but those who retracted after confession were. A minister of the gospel is recorded as saying: “There hang eight firebrands of hell!” pointing to the bodies swinging on the gallows,[5] and the writer of a production which exposed the whole proceeding to ridicule, and was chiefly instrumental in putting an end to it, was denounced as “a coal from hell” by Cotton Mather, who, through religious vanity, credulity, self-righteousness, ambition, or all combined, while he ceased subsequently to repeat the statements or accusations, unlike Sewall, made no acknowledgment thereafter of his error. This striking example of judicial conscientiousness on the part of Sewall was not a single characteristic of this Puritan chief justice, for in addition to being an able man, he was also a benevolent one, whose warmest sympathies were with the down-trodden and oppressed. In 1700 he published a tract entitled “The Selling of Joseph,” in which he advocated the rights of the slaves in the Colonies, and to that extent may be regarded as one of the pioneers in this country in the long struggle for negro emancipation. He was the author of several publications upon religious subjects, and of one upon the Kennebec Indians, but at the present day is chiefly known for a diary published by the Massachusetts Historical Society that he kept during the larger part of his life, which, in addition to being entertaining, sheds much light upon the manners, habits, and social state of New England at that period. It may fairly be assumed that what he protested against did not take place, for if the play had been acted in the Council Chamber some account of it or reference to it would, in all probability, have come down to us.