Friday, June 16, 2017

Witch Hunt?

1692 Indictment against Mercy Disborough for the crime of Witchcraft


To whom it may concern (may I suggest that is all of us),

Yesterday (15 June 2017) President Trump tweeted: "You are witnessing the single greatest WITCH HUNT in American political history - led by some very bad and conflicted people!” Today’s tweet clarified that he was referring to an investigation of his activities, again calling it a “Witch Hunt."[1]

Mr. Trump’s words are powerful. The carry great weight. They are also untrue.

I am an avid reader of American history, and a descendant of Mercy Disborough, who was convicted of witchcraft in Connecticut in 1692.[2]

I have learned several interesting lessons from studying my 7th great-grandmother and the times she lived in, and wish to share those lessons and how they apply to Mr. Trump’s tweets.

A witch hunt, political or not, contains at least three elements:

1.      A Vulnerability Victim. The accused must have certain characteristics that make him/her vulnerable to persecution. A typical 17th century victim was abrasive, contentious, stubborn, and tangled in disputes.[3] This of course fits Mr. Trump perfectly. But being abrasive and litigious is not enough, or far more witches would have been tried and convicted in 1692! Persecution did not succeed unless the accused lacked recourse to combat the claim. Convicted witches were typically not only friendless but also poor, or of low social position. [4] This could keep a victim from getting legal counsel, for example. Mercy Disborough had no lawyer, the court apparently finding the Devil was a good enough advocate if she was guilty, and no advocate was needed if she was innocent.”[5] In contrast, Mr. Trump claims to be one of the wealthiest men in the world. He has decades of experience with litigation, and a fine team of lawyers defending him at every turn.

Mr. Trump is also powerful. In fact, Forbes Magazine recently declared Mr. Trump the second most powerful man in the world, second only to Vladimir Putin.[6] As such, Mr. Trump is far better positioned to stop injustice rather than be subjected to it. The Salem trials ended only after the wife of the Governor of Massachusetts was herself questioned about witchcraft, at which point her husband prohibited further arrests.[7] Enough was enough, the powerful said.

2.      Persecution without guilt. It is generally accepted that the witchcraft prosecuted in 1692 simply did not exist. Individuals subjected to a witch hunt are inherently innocent, and the hunt for proof is inherently flawed. In the 17th century, most colonists believed in witchcraft, since the Devil’s work could account for many unexplainable events.[8] But witchcraft was hard to prove, so powerful men created a list of “evidence.”

      
Did the defendant float on water? Mercy Disborough did. Were there odd marks on the accused’s body? Neighboring women found some on Mercy. Did the accused get into quarrels? Mercy most certainly did. Were those quarrels followed by damage? Cows and sheep belonging to neighbors died following arguments, and a new pot purchased from Mercy magically turned old after the sale.

The hysteria in sister colony Massachusetts eventually led to a realization that the so-called proof of so-called supernatural behavior was simply unsound. What happened to Connecticut’s Mercy Disborough? She was convicted of witchcraft, sentenced to death, and spent more than a year in jail, until influential ministers began speaking out against the standard of proof used in witch trials. Mercy’s case was ultimately dismissed on a technicality, and her life was spared.[9] Many in Salem were not so fortunate.

Joseph Welch far left, McCarthy far right
When applied to “political” witch hunting, it follows that the investigation into guilt must go at least beyond the norms of decency, inconsistent with an established process and a rational search for truth. For example, during congressional hearings begun in 1953 by Senator Joseph McCarthy, the lives of many were upended when the brand of “communist” was recklessly applied. Hundreds were accused and paraded before the Senator, who ran the sometimes televised spectacle with his chief aid. They worked with little opposition until they took on the Army in 1954. Finally, on 9 June 1954, a Boston lawyer named Joseph Welch (who trained for the law at Harvard, also the alma mater of William Stoughton, the lead Salem trial judge) famously said to McCarthy, "Have you no sense of decency, sir?”[10] The tide was turning.

McCarthy and Cohn
Ironically, when Welch said those words to Senator McCarthy, who was at the Senator’s side? McCarthy’s chief aid, his partner in the persecutions, a young man named Roy Cohn.

Mr. Cohn went on to become one of Mr. Trump’s most influential advisors. [11]

In easy contrast, consider the Watergate Hearings.[12] In those hearings, just cause to search for truth existed, and that truth proved guilt. An orderly process of investigation based on just cause is no witch hunt. Otherwise, criminals would never be held accountable.


Trump with mentor Cohn
Mr. Trump has no reason to cry “Have you no sense of decency!” Or to cry “Witch Hunt.” Today he admitted he was subject to an investigation. If that is the case, he has no one to blame but himself. Where an investigation might lead we do not know, but calling it a witch hunt is not only inaccurate but cruel when one thinks of those who suffered vicious persecution in real witch hunts, political or otherwise.

3.       A Community in Upheaval. Witch hunts occur during periods of great uncertainty, times of stress or fear, where community upheaval and failed institutions lead to a hunt for someone to blame. This was the case in Salem, where communities and families were fighting against one another, and government in Massachusetts was powerless to redress wrongs.[13] Things easily got out of hand. In contrast, in Connecticut, where Mercy Disborough was accused of witchcraft, a calmly applied rule of law (faulty as it was) prevailed, and no mass hysteria occurred.[14]

Most Americans know of the 17th century Salem trials through Arthur Miller’s play “The Crucible.” It told the tale of Salem, but was more importantly an allegory, a play about McCarthyism, written by Miller “in desperation.”[15] The McCarthy hearings occurred at a time in America where Communism was on the rise across the globe, and Americans were fearful. Into that fear came Joseph McCarthy, a Senator from Wisconsin, and his aid Roy Cohn, and a witch hunt began.

To conclude, Mr. Trump is, first, not vulnerable. Second, if indeed he is subject to an investigation, I suspect it stems from evidence he himself provided.

But what about the third element? How different are we now from how we were in 1692 and 1954? Are we as ripe today for a witch hunt as we were then, should vulnerable innocents be found and America’s institutions be unable to cope?[16]

Arthur Miller’s play was an allegory, but also a parable. The 1692 trials and McCarthyism are also moral tales. What is their message? In 1992, on the 300th anniversary of the Salem witch trials, Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel dedicated the Salem Witch Trials Memorial. In remarks made to the Washington Post, he said: "If I can't stop all of the hate all over the world in all of the people, I can stop it in one place within me…. [W]e still have our Salems…. For me there is only one word that characterizes what happened here, and that word is fanaticism."[17]

Arthur Miller was also interviewed during that memorial year, and warned:

"They come, these surges of intolerance, usually where there is a social dislocation beforehand, they do not come to a healthy society. When a society is sick, and it has run out of solutions, and it doesn’t know where to look, that’s when the demagogue can get up and start evoking vague dangers from vague quarters, in other words, a plot."[18]

Now that’s worth pondering. And perhaps a tweet or two.

Mercy Disborough, this one's for you. 


Part of the Witch Trials Memorial, Salem, MA




[3] John Demos’ excellent scholarship on the characteristics of the accused is presented in “Entertaining Satan” (Oxford Press 1982), with characteristics summarized pp 93-94.
[4] Id.
[5] Marcus, Ronald, “Elizabeth Clawson thou Deseruest to Dye” (from Stanford Historical Society 1976, available online at http://ketchcetera.com/ARTIFACTS/Elizabeth_Clawson_Witchcraft_Trial.pdf).
[8] Hall, David, “Worlds of Wonder; Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England” (Harvard Press 1989).
[9] Marcus, supra, and Godbeer, Richard, “Escaping Salem: The Other Witch Hunt of 1692” (Oxford Press 2005).
[13] Boyer, Paul, and Nissenbaum, Stephen, “Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft” (Harvard Press 1974).
[14] Godbeer, supra, at 116.
[15] Arthur Miller writing in The New Yorker, 21 October 1996.  http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1996/10/21/why-i-wrote-the-crucible.
[16]
Perhaps one group has already been identified, if one accepts that Mr. Trump’s immigration ban was indeed targeting members of the Muslim faith, as is now suggested by both the 9th and the 4th Circuit Courts of Appeal.
  [17] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1992/09/13/a-cauldron-of-controversy/1bd6dd24-602c-4f20-b273-4a9a0acb2cb9/?utm_term=.3fd6c2794e15.
[18] From the documentary “Days of Judgment: The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 (produced for Essex County in 1993 by Osram Sylvania Inc., distributed by Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.)
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