James rosen looks at former Vice President dick cheneys time serving in the bush ministration. And this weekend, Michael Marmon will report on the factors contribute to Americas Health and wellness. Im talking about the way we organize our affairs in society, which impact on health and the unfair distribution of health, health and quality is judged by reasonable means to be avoidable. After words airs on book tv every saturday at 10 00 p. M. And sunday at 9 00 p. M. Eastern. You can watch all previous after words programs on a website, book tv. Org. Stacy schiff is next on book tv. Her book, the witches looks at the salem witch trials. Stacy schiff received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the humanities. And untoward in literature from the american had a mate of arts and letters. Her latest book, the witches salem, 1692 when a ministers daughter began to scream and convulse and ended less than a year later, but not before 19 million women had been hanged in an elderly man crushed to death. The panic spread quickly involving the most educated men and prominent politicians of the colony. And curious ways, the trials which shape the future republic. As psychologically thrilling as it is historical seminal, the witches is stacy schiff account of this story. Please join me in welcoming stacy schiff. [applause]. Thank you. Dont worry about the signing, i am a slow writer, but i will get to signing for everyone. Working on this book i went to see one of the great 17th century experts, some i thought who had written the best pages we have on salem because i wanted advice about the archives and when i left that afternoon he as an afterthought offered another little piece of advice. I should probably warn you, he said, strange things tend to happen to you when you work on witchcraft. It was a crisp day. I walked often researched and wrote the book and delivered it more or less on schedule. The publisher was pleased with it and they were more pleased when they discovered that the book industry publication was going to be doing a feature on me this fall and with that they would include a full page full bleed photo and indeed they did and it looked like this. [laughter] as you might notice, stacy schiff is not i. Thanks to twitter it took about 90 seconds to learn that that stacy schiff is the novelist amy stewart and she is a book out this fall which i will also sign after this talk. [laughter] when i asked my publisher to send this over so i could show it to you i also asked for it image of the magazines adlib context, which i had not yet seen and they said did and here it is and it announces my turn to fiction and my forthcoming novel. You can imagine my surprise that learning that the four years i spent the archives under deciphering and squinting and corralling my imagination and triple checking details was also that imy imagination and triple checking details was also that i could write a novel. Indeed, strange things happen to you when you work on witchcraft. The witches is not a work of fiction, but instead a attempt to grapple with what happened in eastern massachusetts in 1692 and among the more disturbing moments in our history and they qualify as the best known least understood chapter in americas past. Partly because it seemed so unprofitable, partly become a comes to as large a Throop Hawthorne and Arthur Miller who were writing fiction and partly because new englands enemies seem to have made out that the story. Here we are about halfway between Plymouth Rock and paul revere and it all seems to go entirely off the rails. Salem offers several kind of stories and once i will make clear in a few minutes, but all of that in early nine short months. Its a tragedy to which we regularly return. Few quarters of American History have been so ask have been so often explored and if you dont believe me take a look at this local Library Shelves of the 17th Century America and by the way these are my office shelves when i finished the book and youll notice those little volumes at the top, green and red volumes, those are the Classical Library refugee from the cleopatra years and only recently did i look up and wonder what cicero must think to be surrounded on all sides by puritans. [laughter] salem is a bit our National Campfire tale, one of the rare moments in our history when the candles are knocked out and everyone seems to grope around the dark. If the place where all good stories begin. In the dark we believe most fervently and imagine most vividly. In the dark we contemplate our mistakes and wrestle with our fears. In the dark, goes the time problem, every cat is a leopard and if you read the court papers of 17th century, six county, you begin to notice that new england lived anxiously and attentively in the dark. Women stumbled into bed to find stranger sleeping there. Then trip home through the night and discover familiar landmarks have moved in their lust in their own backyard. Young men report they are weak kneed at the thought of writing through town to their familys farm after sundown and when the devil offers to company them they accept his offer. In a dark burn the candle knocks over and a teenage girl informed the man who attempts to it assaulter and i quote i would rather be cored by the cows than to file by such a rubbish you. I read every 17th century account of the new england merck of the howling wolves and the lurking native americans, but it took me a very long time to realize how dark dark chili can be. Our world is utterly electrified in their world is physically black. In fact, it took me until this is Downtown Manhattan 2012, in the wake of Hurrican Sandy i was driving friends home when the power was out and i turned off the headlights and suddenly all of those accounts of the new England Wilderness so we made sense to me. Seventeenth century dark was a very different dark hence the line in chapter one, the sky over new england was crow black, pitch black, viable black, so black it could be difficult at night to keep to the path, so black a line of trees might freely migrate to another location. Or that you might find yourself pursued after nightfall by a rabid black called leaving you to crawl home bloody and disoriented on all fours. I should mention also, Court Testimony the early american often mentioned he had been an ear witness to something. Word and sound careened supreme. It was really really quiet. The testimony, by the way about the rabid black called is from a september wit which trial, the hog was no hog at all it was the devil and had caused him to trip flashing his leg with his knife and he knew who it was. It was a witch, he swore, and he could identify her, the woman who had come into the tavern where he was drinking with a friend a few nights earlier and told the friend he should not have been out so late in the woman hanged for witchcraft two weeks after that testimony. The basic salem facts are simple. In early 1692, over eight harsh winter a nine and 11year old girl began to shudder and scream they happen to have been the niece and daughter of Salem Village minister, samuel and this is him before the move to salem when he wouldve been in his late 30s. The cousins complained something vivid choked them in their bodies twisted in the attempted to fly through the air, they lunged into fireplaces, one of them disappeared halfway down a well. We have a number of descriptions of their symptoms, but obviously we have no image. This is the closest we can come. This is from a 19th century french text on the faces of hysteria where an Emotional Trauma and its physical manifestation, so arched back, the rigid limbs are very much what people who observed the paris girls described and remember that no one in the 17th century distinguished between overtaxed nervous system within a matter of weeks to other village girls began to compose, all of them soon learned from Samuel Parris from other authorities that they were bewitched and with that diagnosis you could very well yes what happened, their symptoms began to deteriorate. Soon enough all four of them revealed to bewitched him. We dont know why they named the names they did, but think about it for second. To the question, who annoys you, who unsettles you, who irritates you, we all have an answer. So did the girls. About a month or so ago my credit card was hacked and when i called American Express to report it, my first question was did you ledger card to anyone in the second question was do you know anyone who might have done this to you. All i could think was i know that question. It turned out there was not one, but three witches flying around Salem Village. Words when out at the end of february for their arrest. The suspects appeared before the authorities who interrogated them in the manner of the date, which is to say a local beggar woman, the first woman deposed was asked when she signed a contract with the devil, why she heard the girls and what creatures she had dispatched to do so. Those questions came to her from important welldressed man who lived in stately homes and owned significant businesses who spoke with weight and 40. To know the words, the context was asymmetric and i should say that the story has something for everyone and here it begins to mutate. If it started as a fairytale, once upon a time, a wicked witch cast a spell on two little girls, it turns soon enough into a courtroom drama. Lets me talk for a few minutes about witchcraft. And how it worked. Not every 17th century new englander was clear on the subject, but those who were were exceedingly clear. To the early american, in which existed as plainly as heat or light, as one authority had it, it was as obvious the spirit could convey many women through the air as it was the wind could flatten a house. The early american which, i should add, did not look like this. Although, there is a great deal of the wizard of oz in this story about which and more in a minute. Nor did the 17th century which look like this. This is the original wicked witch of the west from the 1900 addition the wizard of oz and i am partial to that in the entirely unexpected stat. This is an early american halloween witch, which came late to the holiday and we really dont even know how they were involved with halloween in the first place, but when they first appeared they dress colorfully and seem to have reverted to basic black only after Margaret Hamilton in the 1939 movie. The which is a 17th century new englander to her with something who performed a natural by virtue of her contract with the devil. From that packed, she drew the power to transform herself into cats, walls, rabbits and of course into rabid blackhawks. In which could be a man or woman , the more often she was female. She maintained a menagerie of ends or familiars, demonic mascots that did her bidding and were often turtles, weasels, cats, dogs and told were prevalent and as you can see this 17th century woman is reportedly feeding her blood to her diabolical toad. This is a woman with her great black hat and her demon familiar and she illustrates a 1621 english witchcraft case and this woman was acquitted of all charges. These are more diabolical familiars and youll see the range from your basic standard issue barnyard animal to fantastical gargoyle type creatures. Black cats were a particular favorite and turned up regularly throughout the salem testimony. Black dogs recur in the salem record also, but historically english witches tended to prefer feline two to canine form. This is not a witch is familiar. This is our family. [laughter] looking, i hope, ever so vaguely demonic here. A witch could be a maturin contentious malcontent or she or he could be an explicitly strong or unaccountably smart. Both kinds of witches would turn up in salem as would well fee merchants who were witches, sea captains work witches, ministers and homeless by bill girls who were wishes. Witchcraft tended to running families along when nero lines and there would be a reason why some and have the were the related related to earlier witchcraft stuff specs or above. While her power was supernatural, the witchs crime was religious. In new england, her ultimate target was the sole rather than the body. Her connection to those convulsing girls in salem, every englishman had long known what enchantment look like. According to the legal guide, on many salem desks which was about to land on Samuel Parris desk, witchcraft manifested a senseless transit paralyzed limbs, compulsions, jaws clenched shut, shaking and in other words the symptoms of the girls to a t. Among the abundant proofs of a witches existent was the biblical injunction against her. Now shalt not suffer a witch to live command scripture and im sorry to have to share with you the basic english translation of axes to a two eighteen. Any woman using a natural powers were secret arts is to be put to death. That pretty much applies to everyone i know. [laughter] when massachusetts established a legal code, First Capital crime was the dollar tree. The second was the witchcraft. In the years since those laws have been codified new england indited at 100 witches, one quarter man, but massachusetts had hanged only six. Beside the mystery of the Salem Village symptoms, there is the arguably greater mystery, wyeth 6092, the hasty and merciless prosecution. The charges were familiar from earlier cases, casting spells on livestock was a common one. Salem witches cast spells on cattle, hey, wagons and muskets and enchanted fireplaces and sent dishes sailing. This was cut from an Early English case appeared to these women did not fare well. They were writing a pig because they had been accused of pig bewitching. New england witches do a great deal of flying down shimmies and through apple trees and ultimately the diabolical diabolical sabbath carried the english which did not fly. Continental witches, however, did which would provide clearly what happens in salem and 6092. Nor had there been ghost which began to slither around the courtroom in salem. Most but not all are women who come back from the dead who avenge themselves. Those who confessed to witchcraft were mentioned having flown, i should add, on the devils shoulders or on polls or branches or sticks and no new england which will ever fly on a broom. These are english flyers no, those are not english flyers. There are english flyers and seemed to be recruiting the women on the ground this one comes later, probably 18th century and as far as broomsticks go, this one is my favorite. Leave it to a french woman to fly gracefully. These are 15th century french broomsticks. That accepted logic on the phenomenon went like this. Witches existed in all caps of places. House at possible that imagination, which was so personal and unpredictable could deliver the same conceit across cultures, and all eras . In other words, witchcraft was so preposterous, so improbable that had to be true, could it make this stuff up. To the impossibility of a shared delusion was at in most compelling reason to believe in witchcraft, not to subscribe to it with heresy. Minds did not make sport of the invisible world especially in light of the evidence, noted cotton matter that young influential often minister at the center of the crisis. Without mistry there is the faith. To deny ritually witchcraft was to deny region religion. To deny witchcraft was to advocate it. The first arrest surprise no one. The three suspects counted among the unlikely people to be voted off the island. Let me talk for a few seconds about the next one. About the fourth accused which. I think part of what fascinates us about 1692 is the randomness of the accusations, what if the next knock were to land on your door . In the case of martha correia, very pious stiff spine farm woman in her 60s, we know precisely what happened. When the knock came about midafternoon on march 12. Her name first uttered by a 12year old village girl surprise everyone. Because it did, a course deacon and another villager made a call on her as a kind of courtesy and first they stopped off to see that accusing girl. Could she be mistaken . Could she described the clothes her tormentor were . A girl could not because she explained the witch had also that morning blinded her temporarily. The main road often found martha at home. She welcomed them with a smile and also anticipated their question. I know what you have come for. You have come to talk to me about being a witch, she said. She was not a witch and could not stop her neighbors from gossiping. Had i know this . The two men later wrote out a detailed deposition and i show this to you so you will feel sorry for me. This is vintage 17th century handwriting. When the cars revealed a bewitched girl had named her martha was prepared, but does she tell you what close i had on , she asked. Did the men were flabbergasted by the question and she seemed to have some kind of supernatural knowledge, so they asked her to repeat it and she assured them she had no cause for concern because everyone knew how devout she was. She was a bit given to lecturing and was not surprised the devil had recruited the first three women accused. In her estimation, they were idle slothful people. Remarkable thing i should say about him is that even those who believed themselves to be innocent think the other accused witches to be guilty. That afternoon martha corey promised to open the eyes of the magistrates and ministers so they might locate the real witches, another comment that would backfire. Within the week, not only her 12year old accuser and the girls mother was also afflicted. She nearly 12 the older corey to shreds offering her a diabolical pact to sign. The warrant for coreys arrest without immediately. She stood accused of having committed acts of witchcraft on a grown women and on for youngsters, one of them Samuel Parris 12year old niece. The note in black at the bottom is a salem constable that they arrested corey and she is in custody, but this document is dated march 19, which was a saturday and because of the sabbath the next day she could not immediately be apprehended. That left her time to attend meeting alongside her accusers. Before the pulpit that sunday, you have five spellbound girls and women and it which suspect. They stood in close proximity. Here is a reconstruction of the village meetinghouse and you can get an idea of how small those windows are by how dark it was inside, often suspects had to be taken outside to be properly identified. The minister began the service and he was interrupted by rising in the pews. The girls demanded he named his texan complained it was too long. One pointed to the ceiling and she could see martha corey sitting out in the pews, but on the beam above nursing a diabolical canary. The next day khoury returned to the same room to defend herself. It was strong with spectators and there was a terror in the small space, the kind we tend to feel around contingent in the minister said he could really make out the hammering hearts in the raised hair on the back of next. She insisted before the authorities on her innocence and appealed to the lord to open the eyes of the magistrate. They do not appreciate the implication that they were not already there cited. When asked the question that not on everyones mind, how had she know she would be asked about her clothing. She tried to explain, but was interrupted in the girls are frantically pointed out the devil in the room, whispering in martha coreys here. What did he say to you, as the justice and she said she had no not seen nor heard a thing. He urged to her to confess and she would not. One of the oddities i should also mention in 1692, those who refused to confess would hang and while those who would confess would be spared which is to say the most printable the noblest and the least well. She was pelted with questions which she did not answer. As one of the justices reminded her, everyone else around her believed that girls were bewitched. She posed a question herself, kevin is the person, she has to guilty. This is the account of her deposition in the first lines are youre now in the hands of authority. Helming now why you hurt these persons and she replies i do not and as if she can pray. She asks three times in three times the request is denied and she insisted she had nothing to do with witchcraft, a statement that incensed at the crowd of the girls began to yelp and snap and marco replies. And she bit her lip, teeth marks a bloomed on the eyes arms of her accusers and seemed she worked her witchcraft before the court size. To adult women were bewitched also and in the course of her testimony one of them, a 4year old, began to howl and pain and could feel martha corey reaching into her body to her current and she threw her musk across the courtroom at corey and failed to hit her, so the woman leaned down to take up one of her shoes and hit corey squarely in the head. A pin she stuck in one of her victims turned up in a childs hair and here are some pins reportedly preserved from the same courtroom. Over the next weeks they would protrude from girls legs, hands and one girl would turn up with a ping pin puncture biting her lips together so she could not testify. Had we know this . From two sources, a former village minister was on him and take and published his wideeyed account of the in the sense in the station in the title page and did nothing to alleviate symptoms and we have a lot of the paperwork. This is the deposition of one of martha coreys accusers, a 17year old named Elizabeth Hubbard and it seems martha urged her to sign a pack with the davol devil. The girl displayed the bruises she gave her and she said i believe in my heart that martha corey is a dreadful which. As you can see the words from the ink were added later. After the pack, this is Samuel Parris deposition against martha corey and you can see in the second and third line he has added the local innkeeper later after he has already written out the account. Corey went to jail that day and would spend the next six months in chains awaiting trial. Six days after her hearing her minister delivered the sermon, also in the meetinghouse. This is march 27, sermon titled christ knows how many devils there are in his churches and who they are and it begins occasions by deb paul witchcraft. One member of this church, thats corey, and another of salem suspected for she witches and upon a committed. Its a fingerpointing sermon in which he stakes out a position that was solidifying the weeks to come. We are either safe or devils, he preaches. The bible offers a middle ground. You can imagine what happened next. People remember to things they could not explain and often decadesold things they could not explain. Then began to see neighbors flying through the streets. One mansoor his neighbor with staff passed him swift as a bird in another rustled with a black called one. Again and again while working on this book i thought of dumbledore in the seventh harry potter book. Of course its happening inside your head, harry, but why does that mean its not real. Of fingers pointed right and left and 60 people were soon jailed. The first case came to trial in june and the first suspect hanged a week later protesting her innocence to the end. Events moved quickly. It was a plague involving 100 witches, a number that grew to 307 and later to 500. Here is where the courtroom drama mutates again. Now into a horror story, not only for those who spend months roasting and a starving in airless filthy prisons, several suspects would either and others would give birth their. But begins to emerge from the testimony are details of the diabolical plot. Seems that the witches have a ringleader, a minister who was arrested in may. They are intent on a rather grandiose conspiracy. Beginning with the Salem Village the witches intend to destroy every search in massachusetts bay. While they are at it the intent to subvert the government also. By late july, the authorities had pieced together the tale of this diabolical sabbath to which witches. All over by various forms of conveyance, often three will fall to a poll. Again, you can reconstruct this, but we have no image here instead is a 17th century engraving of a german witches sabbath. Certain themes are familiar to what the salem confessors will mention. Winged lions and goblins. A woman tumbles with an andover woman that would crush on her polar she flew to salem. You remember that i said there had been no fine in massachusetts before 1692, suddenly everyone is aloft. Here is an illustration of 22 years earlier from a swedish witchcraft epidemic and from the book you will see why sweden is essential of what will happen in salem. This woman flies with her children in massachusetts, a girl of eight or nine accused mothers of coursing them to sign pacts with the devil and by late summer daughters accused mothers, brothers accused sisters, parishioners accuse ministers and nearly one in 10 people work his. Service accuse mistresses although mistresses did not accuse. A widow came before the justices in april. She wasnt a witch. She had the bad luck to be how can you know youre not a kitchen. The story is one part faust, one part brothers grimm and one part kafka. What we have on our hands is not entirely a fairy tale nor a courtroom drama nor a horror story but a thriller. Presumably they were no flights through the air, or killer cats. Presumably no witch stuck pins in the girlsment presumably there was no sat tannic celebration in the meadow. How do these things seem to happen . When you take the whole episode apart you see it makes imminently modern and uncanny sense. The clues to what drives salem forward and makes grown men see goblins and what results in 100 conviction rate and the only witchcraft panic in American History, a wove a strand of time into each chapter. The story is a thriller and is meant to read like one. The unlikeliest of heroes will emerge. We go back to salem again and again, for the same reason that it came to pass in the first place, that irksome lack of closure. We shared the villagers need for resolution but we go back to the trials for another reason. Were happenlessly drawn to disasters, and as crackups go, this one counts among the more sensational in American History to which so many later missteps would be compared. Less on account of the scale than the circumstances. The 1692 Witchcraft Court was considered the best and the brightest. It was the state in the broad liability o dame in in the name of god, who sent innocent people to their deaths. When friends and acquaintances came before the authorities the authorities doubted not the girls but thunder longtime friends. This chief justice headed the court. He is not the hero of the story. He is every bit as starchy as he looked here, the most imminent of new england legal authorities and also died at home nine yours after the trials without a word of regret or apology. Few men in 17th century massachusetts new legal code as well as he did, which is something crucial about the panics. The colony qualified as the best educated community in the history of the world until that time. The new england ministers especially increasing cotton mather, the father and son to whom any number of civic authorities appealed for guidance, devoured libraries on the subject of witchcraft, if anything they may have read too much. They knew with inning iprosecutions and continental variations and what the skeptics argued, enough what a swedish witchs staff looks like. But let me make clear issue while this was a deranged moment in our history it was also profoundly significant. When the spell breaks, the very idea of confession essential to puritanism would be tainted. Massachusetts leaders would never again apply to the church for advice. Its come plinthsty cracks open the door to religious toleration and the trials would change the way the country saw new england and the way new england saw itself. No one did more to keep them alive than the south, which later would shame new england with its witch prosecuting. Today the trials endure as a moral guardrail. This where is salem mutates yet again to become cautionary tale. They stop it when we overreacted, overcorrect sparks fear overpowers reason and the experts are less expert. They remind us of the risk of thinking ourselves exceptional. Where will the devil show most malice than where he is hated the most. Cotton mathers asked. Satans appearance in massachusetts was a badge of honor, further proof that new englanders qualified also the chosen people. I just want to add to that see almost feels deeply and eerily firm in an age of crowd source stories and public shaming and oral culture bears a remarkable resemblance to internot, feeding 0 rumor no use for throughout. The internet is a brilliant tool for sowing mass hysteria. The virallity isnt something i saw at the outset or how much class has to do with the story. At its heart, salem too resembled a fairy tale. Sexual undercurrentses and restaurant terror, features flying monkeys and village tailors, enchanted apples and evil stepmothers, it happens when for 23 years you have been dying to tell a neighbor what you think of her but find as good christian woman you just cant. And in 1692 you suddenly could. Its about what we see when we close our eyes, and about how those images evolve, and times they mutate from this into that. Like a fairy tale, the story of women, or in which women play the starring roles, but one written by men. Strange things happen when you start to write about witchcraft, but strange things happen anyway and often our efforts to make sense lead us astray into the wilderness of error. This is one of the five file drawers of salem material. I suppose what i hope you take from a book is a reminder the importance of humility, and of how easily the moral can skid into the sanctimonious, its essential we keep our heads and question our ideas, even if that leaves us bewildered and an uncomfortable state but as a later sometimes bostonian noted. It is crucial and we would be lost without it. Seems probable, wrote henry james, almost exactly 200 years after the trials, that if we were never bewildered, there would never be a story to tell about us. Thank you. [applause] i think we have time for some quick questions, comments, corrections. Thank you so much. I heard you in barnes noble interview, mentioned that 1692, which is removed from all the public record, from diaries and different sources. Were these just torn sunset was it visible they were ripped from the pages . What did this look like . Its a great question. The Church Record books 1692 goes missing in a way that leaves one to become conspiracy minded ones self, not that would happen to any historian or anything. The church book is rewritten. Not the first time the book would be rewritten to cover up an illinois an embarrassing history. A minister skipped from over the summer of 1692 as though he never gave a sermon. Diaries have gone missing. Same all perris did not record the death of people who died, only those who died of natural causes. The trial record disappears and and we dont know the reason. Theres a blanket of shame on the entire episode and thats clear from recriminations and the infighting afterwards but hard to say there was an orchestrated attempt at remaining silent and its clear its a generation is uncomfortable speaking about. Wanted to ask quickly, any thought given to ol ore organic, or lsd. Sounds like everyone is tripping. Those theories have been put forth as the fungal, and lsd idea was from 1976. The series has been repeatedly the theories have been put forth and debunked for the following reasons. Children in the household suffer but some do not. You think an entire household would be afflicted. More to the point, the girls are hallucinating or claiming they see diabolical can anywhere canaries and they seem robust from the beginning of these afflictions to the end, and at one point it will be explained they do so because the compact with the devil the diabolical magic, the work, affects them like a steroid so they dont get worn down by this but nothing has ever entirely explained why they would be not only sometimes afflicted but also when they are in the grips of this whatever it is this force why they happen to be seeing exactly what theyve heard from the pulpit theyd should be seeing. So if your under the instance influence youd be talking about turtles or something that wasnt part of your diet, your normal ministerial diet nothing explains it. The lovely thing about the theories they absolve anyone of any illdoing. Thank you. How do you feel about the degree of sincerity and earnest belief that these really witches by the part of the people who were essentially prosecuting them, for their politics involved or what . I go entice this at great length in the book. There is clearly a tapestry of agendas at work here. And when the justices perhaps most of all. Again, also i say, the larger mystery is why are they so intent on prosecution here . Snowden, of whom you saw the image, feels himself on a crusade. He feels he is theres a moral obligation here to cleanse society of these elements, and he does seem to believe that evil is at work. However, theres also every reason at this moment massachusetts has been in a state of total political dislocation a new government installed in may of 1692. A new governor had been put in place not knowing there has been he just came from england and had not heard there was a witchcraft epidemic with which he had to content, and then cleaning this up speedily is very important, as is proving that this new government has a legitimacy and can enforce order because the previous couple of years have been anarchic, so theres an incentive to prop the fledgling administration but for the civic and religious authorities to remap hand in glove and no one to dissent one from the other and that may account for much of what happens that summer. Did it stop abruptly or gradually, and does the record show why . Great question. A number of factors. So nice to have a simple answer. Earlier in the year, if you had expressed any doubt about the proceedings, if you expressed doubt about skepticism of witchcraft you generally were reward with a witchcraft accusation. By the end of the summer, tentatively and anonymously, various people have begun to express their concern, and it tells you something about the climate of the times that even an influential massachusetts minister had to make the comments anonymously and by a piece of psalm without concern. An jail petition, the crushing of a man under stones which was a particularly gruesome ordeal 0, would combine, as did the sure number of accused people there werent prisons large enough to accommodate them. So the terror seems to burn out, as i fear we are now doing, so thank you all for coming. Thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations]po n
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