January 27, 2006
Sam the Man Posted by Frederic D. Schwarz at 03:45 PM EST The other day I was looking for a quote by Samuel Eliot Morison. In it he was discussing the Salem witchcraft frenzy of 1692, and as I recalled he said something like, “There are few sections of the historical literature more tedious than those that show how every responsible citizen of the seventeenth century believed wholeheartedly in witchcraft.” I wanted it for an item about the Supreme Court, believe it or not. I was going to introduce the topic by saying that in similar fashion, I’m sure we are all bored to tears at being told over and over that Supreme Court selections have always been political, so I won’t bore you with that. Then I would go on to say that we might as well be open about it instead of pretending, and the more political the confirmation process the less political the court, and so on. But you’ve heard all that too, so I’ll spare you. Anyway, I couldn’t find the quote. In fact, in the witchcraft section of the book I was looking for (The Intellectual Life of Colonial New England, 1964), Morison includes just such a passage himself, so I must have been thinking of some other historian. But Morison is always interesting to read, and I was amused to encounter, after he tells how the Salem episode began with a small group of girls who started twitching and shrieking, the following: “At this point a good spanking administered to the younger girls, and lovers provided for the older ones, might have stopped the whole thing.” True, perhaps, though depending on the quality of the lovers, it might simply have stimulated more such outbursts. But it made me reflect that you don’t see many serious historians writing sentences like that today. Whether that’s good or bad, I leave to others to decide. On the other hand, you do see serious historians writing passages like this: “Hence [here Morison is paraphrasing the historian J. G. Palfrey], many people who knew perfectly well that the court was condemning innocent people held their tongues, lest they bring the judges and the government into contempt. How true that analysis is, and how it recalls the actions of wise and good people in the same commonwealth, in the Sacco and Vanzetti case!” The only trouble with Morison’s remark is that Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty. Even a hack propagandist like Upton Sinclair knew that, or at least had very serious doubts—though, in a mirror image of what Palfrey wrote, Sinclair held his tongue because he did want to bring the judges and the government into contempt (see this which is mildly corrected by this). Indeed, from Sacco and Vanzetti to the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss and on to today’s celebrity Death Row murderers, “wise and good people” have been glorifying, excusing, and covering up for politically sympathetic criminals for generations. That’s a mass delusion that has lasted much longer than the Salem tragedy—and will take a lot more than spanking and lovers to correct.
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