The Salem Witchcraft, the Planchette Mystery, and Modern Spiritualism: With Dr. Doddridge's DreamStowe, Harriet Beecher
History
The Salem Witchcraft, the Planchette Mystery, and Modern Spiritualism: With Dr. Doddridge's Dream
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Spiritualism; Upham, Charles Wentworth, 1802-1875. Salem witchcraft; Witchcraft -- Massachusetts -- Salem
"I intended no otherwise than as they were prisoners with us, and
therefore did then, and yet do, judge them not legal evidence against
their fellow-prisoners. And I being something hard of hearing and full
of grief, none informing me how the Court took up my words, therefore
had no opportunity to declare what I intended when I said they were of
our company." (Vol. ii. p. 285.)
The foreman of the jury would have taken the favorable view of this
matter, and have allowed full consideration, while other jurymen were
eager to recall the mistake of their verdict; but the prisoner's
silence, from failing to hear when she was expected to explain, turned
the foreman against her, and caused him to declare, "whereupon these
words were to me a principal evidence against her." Still, it seemed too
monstrous to hang her. After her condemnation, the Governor reprieved
her; probably on the ground of the illegality of setting aside the first
verdict of the jury, in the absence of any new evidence. But the outcry
against mercy was so fierce that the Governor withdrew his reprieve.
GOODY NURSE'S EXCOMMUNICATION.
On the next Sunday there was a scene in the church, the record of which
was afterward annotated by the church members in a spirit of grief and
humiliation. After sacrament the elders propounded to the church, and
the congregation unanimously agreed, that Sister Nurse, being convicted
as a witch by the court, should be excommunicated in the afternoon of
the same day. The place was thronged; the reverend elders were in the
pulpit; the deacons presided below; the sheriff and his officers brought
in the witch, and led her up the broad aisle, her chains clanking as she
moved. As she stood in the middle of the aisle, the Reverend Mr. Noyes
pronounced her sentence of expulsion from the Church on earth, and from
all hope of salvation hereafter. As she had given her soul to Satan,
she was delivered over to him for ever. She was aware that every
eye regarded her with horror and hate, unapproached under any other
circumstances; but it appears that she was able to sustain it. She was
still calm and at peace on that day, and during the fortnight of final
waiting. When the time came, she traversed the streets of Salem between
houses in which she had been an honored guest, and surrounded by
well-known faces; and then there was the hard task, for her aged limbs,
of climbing the rocky and steep path on Witches' Hill to the place where
the gibbets stood in a row, and the hangman was waiting for her, and for
Sarah Good, and several more of whom Salem chose to be rid that day. It
was the 19th of July, 1692. The bodies were put out of the way on the
hill, like so many dead dogs; but this one did not remain there long.
By pious hands it was--nobody knew when--brought home to the domestic
cemetery, where the next generation pointed out the grave, next to her
husband's, and surrounded by those of her children. As for her repute,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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