Book Review: Salem Witch Judge

Salem Witch Judge: The Life and Repentance of Samuel Sewall
Eve LaPlante
Biography, history

Samuel Sewall was the only one of the Salem judges to publicly repent. An image of the event is now in the Massachusetts State House:

Image hosted at malegislature.gov

It's a significant turning point: an insider, a member of the governing class, acknowledging not just his own personal failure, but the failure of the institutions of authority. So much for the divine right of anybody in particular. To think of it another way: Samuel Sewall was born in 1652, when people who knew William Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth were still alive. When he came to New England as a boy, a few of the original Pilgrims were still around. When he died in 1730, Samuel Adams was eight and Benjamin Franklin already 24 years old. His life bridged two different worlds: the world of witches and devils and kings who could cure scrofula with their magic touch, and the world of Jefferson and the Enlightenment and all men being created equal.

LaPlante's biography, it must be said, doesn't really delve into those larger meanings. It's a nice, readable write-up based on Sewall's own extensive diaries, rather like the better class of Wikipedia article done up to book length. It's at its strongest when it recreates the extraordinary physical and mental worlds of late-17th-century New England. It's at its weakest when LaPlante resorts to wholesale quotations from other authors (a venial sin that's hardly unique to her). I was especially intrigued by the period hymns sprinkled through the pages, but unfortunately I don't read enough music to really get the feel of the pieces.

LaPlante also argues that Sewall's repentance moved him towards a kind of pre-Enlightenment position vis-a-vis women, slaves, and Indians. Based on the writings of his that she includes, that's a little generous. However, Sewall--though his understanding of the world is stunningly alien--seems to have been a pretty decent fellow, overall, so I'll give him and LaPlante the benefit of the doubt.