What Goes around Comes around

Author(s): John Demos

Source: The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Jul., 2008), pp. 479-
482
Published by: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25096808
Accessed: 22-05-2019 02:17 UTC

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 What Goes Around Comes Around
John Demos

PAUL Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum's Salem Possessed was, and

remains, a landmark in early American historical studies.1 The
chance to salute it here is welcome.
Its very making was extraordinary. Consider ... It was the product
of genuine collaboration (a rare occurrence among professional histori
ans). Both its authors' areas of expertise lay outside the colonial period.
It was conceived and developed as part of undergraduate teaching. And
students contributed in significant ways to the research behind it.
Its importance for scholarship seems no less clear. Indeed its tim
ing?publication in 1974?was impeccable. The foundations of a new
social history had been laid some ten years earlier, and the edifice was
still building. But to that point the new work had been focused on one
or another kind of measurement and largely framed as community
studies with much emphasis on social boundaries and structures, demo
graphic rates, household and family systems, prevalent styles of
mentality, and the like. What had not yet been accomplished or even
(for the most part) attempted was the resolution of specific, event
centered historical problems. In that regard Salem Possessed proved an
absolute breakthrough. Certainly, it was event centered. (It helped that
the event in question was old and endlessly intriguing, indeed among
the oldest of all old chestnuts in the entire landscape of American his
tory.) Now the new approach, these new methods and concepts, could
be seen fully applied as means to the end of explanation. Hence the
book might stand as a kind of capstone on a large and broadly influen
tial scholarly enterprise.
For this reason it has endured through more than three decades,
and for other reasons as well. Its architecture, the arrangement of its
various parts, was nothing less than elegant. Likewise its prose qualities:
elegant for sure, also arresting, nuanced, with fast (but not too fast)
pace, and richly resonant tone. (The metaphor of a "lightning flash,"
dropped strategically into the preface to identify both the book's

John Demos is Samuel Knight Professor of History at Yale University.

1 Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of
Witchcraft (Cambridge, Mass., 1974).

William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Series, Volume LXV, Number 3, July 2008

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 48o WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

method and its result, was an especially fine authorial stroke.2 And
there were other, similar strokes scattered throughout.) Which is almost
to say that Salem Possessed succeeded on aesthetic grounds alone, never
mind its substantive contents.
The Forum essays are not, to be sure, concerned with aesthetics.
Instead they mount a detailed, empirical challenge to some (far from all)
of the book's leading contentions. To wit: a map designed to show pat
terns of accusation and defense in the witch trials contains many inaccu
racies and must be "corrected." Moreover a set of tables, based on local
tax assessments, is insufficiently developed and contextualized and thus
misrepresents the actual economic profile of Salem residents at the time
of the trials.3 These are possibly valid criticisms (to which I will return).
But there is much more to Salem Possessed than a single map and set of
tables. Three powerfully constructed chapters trace a history of village
conflict that, even if it were found not to reflect property differences,
was surely central to the witch hunt. From there the spotlight moves to a
pair of leading families, the Porters and the Putnams, with their various
clashing interests brilliantly exposed, and then to a further, still deeper
discussion of conflict internal to the Putnam clan. The final step in this
zoom-lens sequence is a superbly insightful essay on the life and psycholo
gy of the Reverend Samuel Parris. It is, finally, the convergence of theme
and content?as seen from all these different vantage points?that
makes the book's underlying argument so compelling.
Returning now to the offending map and tables, one can see some
point to the critiques presented by Benjamin C. Ray and Richard Latner.
But it's not a large point and it runs more to tactics than to strategy or
outcome. That Boyer and Nissenbaum should have interpreted factional
division along spatial and economic lines seems logical, since the rest of
their analysis pointed that way. That they should have started with
Charles W. Upham's map and the 1695 tax list also seems logical; they
took what lay most readily at hand. Where they fell short, perhaps, was
in the way they deployed these materials. What their critics here have
demonstrated is at most a need for more refined handling of the evi
dence. The broad categories of accuser, witness, and defender (A, W, D)
themselves need refinement. Accusers participated in the trials at widely
varying levels of intensity, which should be taken fully into account. The

2 Ibid., xii.
3 Benjamin C. Ray, "The Geography of Witchcraft Accusations in 1692 Salem
Village," William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 65, no. 3 (July 2008): 449-78 (quota
tion, 458); Richard Latner, "Salem Witchcraft, Factionalism, and Social Change
Reconsidered: Were Salem's Witch-Hunters Modernization's Failures?" ibid.,
423-48.

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 WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND 481
same applies to witnesses and defenders. In the social sciences, our clos
est disciplinary neighbors, such matters are handled through careful
efforts of scoring. Impartial evaluators are invited (trained and hired) to
assess the pertinent evidence for each individual case; the result is a
score along a range, for example, of one to ten. It isn't hard to imagine
transposing the same approach to the Salem materials to distinguish the
most strongly involved accusers, witnesses, or defenders (thus scored at
nine or ten) from others whose participation was marginal (perhaps one,
two, or three).
So much for the challenge to the map. With the corresponding eco
nomic analysis?the tables based on tax assessments?one can certainly
appreciate the inclusion of additional listings from the years both before
and after the trials. But this should be simply the start of another, more
extended investigation. Ranking the economic position of Salem
Villagers could easily include a variety of evidence besides their taxes;
probates come first to mind. A further refinement might involve some
assessment of an individual's market orientation. The entire array of
these elements could then be used in another effort of scoring.
With so much accomplished, a suitably revised map and a much
expanded set of economic rankings could be refocused on the task of
explanation. In short the critics of Salem Possessed have (somewhat unwit
tingly) shown a need for closer, more detailed study along the same lines
as those that were key to the original analysis. But they have not damaged
the basis of that analysis with their own patently incomplete efforts. One
cannot say what the results of a refined reanalysis might look like. It seems
quite possible, perhaps even likely, that the central conclusions of Salem
Possessed would be sustained or even strengthened.
Margo Burns and Bernard Rosenthal's Forum contribution is very
different; it throws no light on Salem Possessed but instead announces the
imminent completion of a large editorial project.4 If the other two con
stitute small, and somewhat misconceived, steps forward, this one is
potentially major. A new and improved Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt
surely deserves loud applause. Indeed this edition of the records could
well prove invaluable for the additional investigative efforts of the sort
proposed above.
Who knew that more than three centuries after the event the Salem
witch hunt would spark such broad public and scholarly interest? And

4 Margo Burns and Bernard Rosenthal, "Examination of the Records of the

Salem Witch Trials," ibid., 401-22; Rosenthal et al., eds., Records of the Salem Witch
Hunt (Cambridge, forthcoming).

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482 WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY

who could imagine that more than three decades after publication a sin
gle book on Salem might prompt an entire Forum's worth of academic
discussion?

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