Killing the Witches: The Horror of Salem, Massachusetts

At the book’s midpoint, the narrative takes an unexpected turn, shifting away from the Salem Witch Trials to explore their broader historical impact, particularly their role in shaping the American Enlightenment. The shift from Salem to the American Enlightenment suggests that the trials were not an isolated event but part of a larger historical trajectory—one that ultimately led to a rebellion against religious and political tyranny. The connective tissue of Cotton Mather helps to tie the old world of Salem to the newer one of Benjamin Franklin, highlighting a transition from rigid theocracy to the rise of secular reason and individual liberty. Mather’s influence lingers over this transition, as his role in both the trials and public life embodies the tensions between When Faith Becomes Law: The Dangers of Theocratic Rule. 

Franklin is a fitting subject for this transition—originally destined for the pulpit, he instead became one of the most famous figures of the Enlightenment, a celebration of knowledge and achievement that places human beings, and not God, at the center of the universe. Unlike the Puritans, who saw the world as governed by divine intervention, Franklin’s Deism suggests a universe governed by reason and natural law. The young Franklin “stops going to church on Sunday to make more time for reading, displeasing his parents” (148) and adopts the Deist view that a divine force may exist but does not intervene in human affairs. This intellectual rebellion mirrors the political rebellion to come—just as Franklin rejected religious dogma, the colonies would soon reject the idea of divine-right monarchy.

Given the tendency to view The Founding Fathers as a collective, the authors point out that Franklin’s more liberal attitudes, in part informed by his experience among the Pennsylvania Quakers, was not universally shared. Franklin’s youth coincided with a period of American history known as the First Great Awakening, which likewise rebelled against religious authority, but on behalf of a more personal and emotional form of faith that opposed the rigid structures of established churches. Unlike the Puritans, who enforced conformity through legal and social penalties, these revivalists sought to empower individuals to seek spiritual truth on their own terms. Such people might be seen as dangerous, as they resemble the Puritans in opposing their ostensibly purer form of religiosity against a corrupt establishment. But what they wanted was not power, but rather the right to operate outside of state control. In this way, the Great Awakening can be seen as both a continuation of earlier religious movements and a precursor to the revolutionary ideals that would later define America, emphasizing personal freedom over institutional dominance. This marks a significant shift in American religious life—while Puritanism sought to enforce a single orthodoxy through governance, the Great Awakening promoted religious diversity and personal faith. This is why someone like George Whitefield could befriend Benjamin Franklin, even if he never succeeded in converting Benjamin Franklin’s to Christianity. 

While various established sects (mainly Anglicans and Congregationalists, depending on the state) viciously persecuted a host of minorities, from Catholics to Baptists to the itinerant preachers of the Great Awakening, it was ultimately the financial and political entanglement of the church that drove much of this persecution. Religious enthusiasm was less a predictor of violence than the ties between religion and power. For example, in Virginia, “the Anglican Church is a great source of revenue. Congregants are taxed, ordered by law to pay the church whether they attend services or not…all ministers and church employees get a salary” (171). The financial burdens imposed by state-backed churches demonstrate how religious institutions, when tied to power, become tools of control rather than purely spiritual communities. The Great Awakening is useful insofar as it shows how religion, when separated from government, can become a force for individual expression and personal morality rather than a mechanism of political oppression.

If established churches serve as a pillar of colonial government, then the Great Awakening’s challenge to the churches helped lay the groundwork for the American Revolution. For someone like Patrick Henry, best known to Americans for his impassioned “give me liberty, or give me death” speech, the fight for religious freedom is inseparable from the fight for political independence: “Freedom from tyranny, in whatever form it may take […] unless you wish to fasten the chains of bondage around your own neck, you must make an example […] of the rights of free men to make their own law” (185). By framing his argument in terms of liberty, Henry transforms opposition to religious taxation into a broader ideological struggle against external control—whether from an oppressive church or an overreaching monarchy. The ability to determine one’s own spiritual life is therefore inseparable from political freedom more broadly understood. 

As the fight against the English Crown heated up, colonists considered what kind of society they wanted to create after expelling the colonial power. The authors suggest that the lessons of Salem—how unchecked religious power led to fear, hysteria, and injustice—loom large over this process. Not everyone is squarely on the side of religious freedom—Patrick Henry’s heroics notwithstanding, he continued to support an established church under his own leadership rather than that of the King, revealing the tension between freedom as an ideal and power as a practical concern. However, the logic of freedom that Henry helped to articulate proves too compelling for his attempted inconsistency. His case illustrates a larger theme of revolutionary America: Many leaders initially sought only a transfer of power rather than a radical restructuring of society, but the momentum of their own rhetoric pushed them further than they had anticipated. 

Just as the Salem trials functioned as a tool for eliminating perceived threats, political and social struggles in revolutionary America demonstrate how dissenters can be cast as enemies of the state. The rhetoric of revolutionaries is often righteous, but it also creates an environment where those who oppose independence or resist the dominant ideology can be vilified. This reveals a recurring danger: Even in movements for freedom, there is a risk of turning against those who challenge the prevailing order. The same forces that fueled the witch trials—fear, paranoia, and the consolidation of power—can manifest in different forms throughout history.

With the legendary Franklin still present and exerting leadership at the end of his life, he ensured that “the new constitution, although flawed in some areas, is the most liberating government document in the world” (230), and that the separation of church and state lay at the center of its legal and moral order. This marks the ultimate break from the world of Salem—where religious leaders dictated law and dissenters were executed—to a world where freedom of belief was enshrined as a fundamental right. The book suggests that this transformation was not inevitable but the result of conscious choices made by individuals like Franklin, who refused to be bound by the past. This transition away from a system governed by fear and religious authority reinforces Mass Hysteria and the Perils of Fear-Driven Justice, demonstrating that freedom is only achieved when individuals reject fear-based governance in favor of rational, secular leadership.