And live they must, while God is just, Among these "damned," over whose fate the poet gloats in this way, he is careful to include all unbaptized infants as well as "civil honest men, That loved true Dealing and hated Stealing, Nor wronged their brethren," but whose righteousness had not been preceded by "effectual calling," in the grotesque phrase of the time. To modern ears this seems comic. But men of that day preferred Wigglesworth's ghastly doggerel to Milton; and, as Lowell says with biting satire, the damnation scene was "the solace of every Puritan fireside." madness 3. Another phenomenon connected with the fanaticism of Puritanism in its worst age was the "Salem witchcraft madness" of 1692. Throughout the seventeenth cen- The Salem tury, all but the rarest men believed unquestion- witchcraft ingly that the Devil walked the earth in bodily form and worked his will sometimes through men and women who had sold themselves to him. These suspected "witches," usually lonely, scolding, old women, were objects of universal fear and hate. In Switzerland, Sweden, Germany, France, Great Britain, great numbers of such wretches were put to death, not merely by ignorant mobs, but by judicial processes before the most enlightened courts. In England, in 1603, parliament sanctioned this Common Law process by a statute providing the penalty of death 66 for those who should have "Dealings with evill Spirits." (This law remained on the English statute books until 1735; and in 1711 Jane Wenham was convicted under it of conversing with the Devil in the shape of a cat.") The New England codes contained similar legislation. In Virginia, Grace Sherwood was "swum for a witch" in 1705, and, in as much as she was not drowned, the jury declared her guilty; but she escaped punishment through the enlightened doubts of the gentry Justices. In the more progressive Pennsylvania, the most that could be secured from a jury was a verdict against an accused woman of "guilty of haveing the Common fame of a witch, but not guilty as She stands Indicted." In Maryland a woman was executed on the charge of witchcraft. But most of the American persecutions occurred in New England. Connecticut executed eleven witches, and about as many more suffered death in Massachusetts before 1690. Then came the frenzy at Salem; and within a few months twenty were executed, while the prisons were crammed with many scores more of the accused. The clergy took a leading part in the prosecutions; and the hideous follies of the trials are almost incredible. While the madness lasted, the flimsiest accusations were equivalent to proof. One neat woman had walked some miles over bad roads without getting herself muddy: "I scorn to be drabbled," she said. Plainly she must have been carried by the Devil! And so "she was hanged for her cleanliness." Finally the common sense of the people awoke, and the craze passed as suddenly as it had come. With it closed all legal prosecution for witchcraft in New England, rather earlier than in the rest of the world; but the atrocities of the judicial murders crowded into those few months stand a lasting, and needed, warning against popular frenzy. 4. In the early eighteenth century the reaction against the witchcraft delusion, the general decline of Puritanism, and the influx of dissenting Baptists and Episcopalians into New England greatly lowered the old influence of the Puritan clergy in society and in politics. There began, too, here and there, a division within Puritan churches, foreshadowing the later Unitarian movement. This loss of religious unity brought with it for a time some loosening of morals, and part of the people ceased to have any close relation to the church, though all were still compelled to go to service each Sunday. "The Great About 1735 a reaction from the religious indifference of the day manifested itself in "the Great Awakening." The powerful preaching of Jonathan Edwards and the impassioned oratory of George Whitfield, one of Awakenthe founders of English Methodism, caused for a ing" of time a powerful revival movement in America characterized by the features that later movements of a like kind have made so familiar. 1735 5. Of the original immigrants below the gentry class, a large proportion could not write their names; and for many years, in most colonies except Massachusetts and Schools Connecticut, there were few schools. Parents were sometimes exhorted by law to teach their children themselves; but all lacked time, and many lacked knowledge. Mary Williams, wife of Roger Williams, signed by her “mark." So, too, did Priscilla Alden in Plymouth; and in 1636 the authorities of that colony excused themselves to critics in England for having as yet no school, on the plea of poverty and the pathetic fact that "Divers of us take such paines as they can with their owne.' The closing years of the seventeenth century, in particular, were a period of deplorable ignorance, the lowest point in book education ever reached in America. With the dawn of the eighteenth century, and its greater prosperity, conditions began to improve. In Pennsylvania, parents were required, under penalty of heavy fine, to see that their children could read, and several free elementary schools were established. In Maryland the statute book provided that each county should maintain a school, with a teacher belonging to the established Episcopalian Church; but, since most of the inhabitants were Catholics or Protestant dissenters, the law was ineffective. In Virginia, in 1671, Governor Berkeley had boasted, "I thank God there are no free schools here nor printing," and had hoped that for a hundred years the province might remain unvexed by those causes of "disobedience and heresy." Half a century later another governor of Virginia complained bitterly that chairmen of committees in the Assembly could not write legibly or spell intelligibly. But by 1724, twelve free schools had been established by endowments of wealthy planters, and some twenty more private schools were flourishing. South of that colony there was no system of schools whatever. Here and there, however, the churches did something toward teaching children; and of course the wealthy planters of South Carolina, like those of Virginia and Maryland, had private tutors in their families, and sent their sons to colleges in their own or neighboring colonies or to the English universities. In New York, the Dutch churches had begun free schools; but at a later time, because of the connection with the church, these almost disappeared. Massachusetts and Connecticut from the beginning had a remarkable system of public education (below); and the other New England colonies gradually followed in their footsteps. By 1760, though the actual years of schooling for a child were usually few, an astonishingly large part of the population could read, many times as large, probably, as in any other country of the world at that time; but there was still dolefully little culture of a much higher quality. Between 1700 and 1770 several small colleges were established, in addition to the older Harvard (page 155) and William and Mary, in Virginia, 1696: Yale, 1701; Princeton, in New Jersey, 1746; King's, in New York (now Columbia), 1754; the University of Pennsylvania (through the efforts of Franklin), 1755; and Brown, in Rhode Island, 1764. South of Virginia there was no educational institution of rank; and none of the colleges just named equaled a good high school of to-day in curriculum, or equipment, or faculty. With a few notable THE PURITAN SCHOOLS 153 exceptions, the only private libraries of consequence were the theological collections of the clergy. In 1698 the South Carolina Assembly founded at Charleston the first public library in America, and about the middle of the eighteenth century Franklin started a subscription library at Philadelphia. In 1700 there was no American newspaper. The Boston News Letter appeared in 1704, and, by 1725, eight or nine weeklies were being published, pretty well distributed through the colonies. Ten years later, Boston alone had five weeklies. It should be noted clearly that in New England such education as there was, was open to all on fairly equal terms; while south of Maryland, education, high or low, was practically only for the few. On the other hand, the great planters of the south were by all odds the best educated men in America, acquainted with literature, history, politics, and law, and with such science as the age had, and more or less in touch with European culture and habits of thought. The schools of early Massachusetts and Connecticut demand a longer treatment. Here was the splendor of Puritanism, — a glory that easily makes us forget the shame of the Quaker and witchcraft persecutions. The public school system of America to-day, in its essential features, is the gift of the Puritans. In Massachusetts, private schools were found in some villages from the building of the first rude cabins. In 1635, five years after Winthrop's landing, a Boston town meeting adopted one of these private schools as a town school, appointing a schoolmaster and voting from the poor town treasury fifty pounds (some twelve hundred dollars to-day) for its support. So Salem in 1637, and Cambridge in 1642. Such schools were a new growth in this New World, suggested, no doubt, by the parish schools of England, but more generously planned for the whole public, by public authority. They were free in the sense of being open to all. Commonly they were supported in part by taxation, but tuition was charged also to help cover the cost. |