John Legg

He/him

Education: Bachelor of Arts in history (August 1998)

McNair Project: "A King in Satan's Kingdom [soon] to be Erected:" George Burroughs, Minister and Witch of Salem Village (1998)

Mentor: Louise Breen, Ph.D.

On August 19, 1692, five convicted witches were carted to their executions through the streets of Salem, Massachusetts. Such a sight was not out of the ordinary at the height of Salem's deadly witchcraft crisis. But this day of execution differed from others in that four of the five condemned malefactors were men; and one, George Burroughs, was a minister. Upon reaching the hanging tree, Burroughs made a speech that proclaimed his innocence, and then recited faultlessly the Lord's Prayer, a feat widely regarded as impossible for a witch. The scene was so affecting that many spectators began to question the justice of the verdict. Authorities, however, eager to still the crowd, explained that a "black man" sat next to Burroughs and told him what to say. The preeminent minister Cotton Mather rode up on horseback, and reminded onlookers that Burroughs did not deserve their sympathy. Though a preacher, Burroughs had not been properly ordained; and, besides, "The devil has often been transformed into an Angel of Light." Mather's presence and authority appeased the crowd and the execution proceeded without incident. After being cut down, the "witch" was stripped of his clothes, dragged by a halter to the outskirts of town, and dumped unceremoniously into a hole between some rocks. An old pair of trousers covered his nakedness, and his hands and chin were left sticking out from the make-shift grave. What was it that made a Harvard-educated clergyman vulnerable to charges of witchcraft?

In the last decade of the seventeenth century Massachusetts Puritans felt threatened both by meddling imperial officials and frontier "savages." Indian wars raged on the frontier; and, in 1691, the home government in London altered the colony's charter, diminishing local control and disallowing laws that provided for the persecution of Anabaptists and Quakers. The fears generated by the flexing of the imperial muscle, and the resistance of indigenous peoples, shaped the pattern of witchcraft accusations in Salem, and made Burroughs a likely suspect. In the last decade of the seventeenth century Massachusetts Puritans felt threatened both by meddling imperial officials and frontier "savages." Indian wars raged on the frontier; and, in 1691, the home government in London altered the colony's charter, diminishing local control and disallowing laws that provided for the persecution of Anabaptists and Quakers. The fears generated by the flexing of the imperial muscle, and the resistance of indigenous peoples, shaped the pattern of witchcraft accusations in Salem, and made Burroughs a likely suspect.

As the people of New England urgently sought to expose the witches who they thought must somehow have caused God to abandon his chosen ones, thereby allowing these tragedies to unfold, suspicion usually fell upon elderly women of low social standing. But this did not hold true in the case of George Burroughs, whose contentious personality and occupation of a whole series of sensitive social boundaries made it seem likely that he had forged an alliance with Satan -- an alliance that would culminate with the destruction of the godly society of Massachusetts and its replacement with a hellish "Devil's Dominion."

At a time when the ordinary young men of Salem were dying in the Indian wars, Burroughs lived in frontier villages and mysteriously emerged unscathed from devastating raids. At a time when elites feared the religious apostasy that would be unleashed when toleration became the law of the land, Burroughs was suspected of harboring Anabaptist views. And at a time when people of all social ranks saw the well ordered family as a bulwark against change and ungodliness, Burroughs proved unequal to his patriarchal duties and was even accused of having murdered a wife. The witchcraft trials, seen from this perspective, emerge not as the work of over-zealous ministers and magistrates, but as the product of a society bent on re-gaining a sense of control, and united in the effort to eliminate internal enemies believed responsible for unwanted social and political change.