The Torturer's Dilemma: Analyzing the Logic of Torture for Information

came to an end. Misogyny was all too present in Salem – it was in fact a constant – but no more so in
1692 than during any of the other witch trials that also occur in New England. 57 The considerable
political uncertainty had an ambiguous effect on the trials: the lack of a constituted authority before the
arrival of the new charter meant that the Court was not convened until more than three months after the
first accusations were leveled, delaying the trials but also allowing the backlog of accused to
accumulate. Nor was the witchhunt a reaction to the threatened loss of theocratic power: the new
charter lifted the Jamesian ban on office holding by non-conformists. The argument that the trials were
a diabolical pact made between blood-thirsty young girls and unscrupulous ministers runs aground
when we consider that the Court was not controlled by the religious authorities – they were instituted
by a Governor whose loyalties were to himself, and certainly not to Salem Village's Church.
The argument that the trials were so destructive due to the tensions unleashed by the integration
of Salem Town and Village into the Imperial trans-Atlantic economy is considerably stronger. These
tensions certainly did exist, and the factions lined up on either side of the trial do appear to replicate the
split between the older agrarian interests (represented by the Putnam family and their assorted faction)
and the newer mercantile interests (represented by the Porter and Proctor families). Certainly the fact
that Ann Putnam, Sr. played such a pivotal role as an accuser lends itself to the interpretation that she
saw the fear of witchcraft as an opportunity to wrest some power back towards her own people. But
the attempts to locate the witch-trials as part of a larger story about the transition from an agricultural
world to one based on merchants, trade and capital tell only part of the story. That transition had
already occurred – by 1665, merchants outnumbered farmers among Salem Town's selectmen by a ratio
of six to one. (Boyer and Nissenbaum, p. 87) By the time of the trials, the better lands in the village, as
well as the stronger links to the larger Empire through Salem harbor, resided in the hands of the Porter
faction: if the witch-trials were a dying gasp of the Putnam family's agrarian domination over the
village, then it was a dying gasp that came after the corpse was already cold. Doubtless, these tensions
did exist, and for the reasons outlined above – but why did these tensions boil over well past the point
where they could have done any good? And why would the colonial government, headed by men such
as Phips (who was the Platonic ideal of the self-made man) have collaborated with economic interests
57 When men were accused they tended to be either 'cunning men' like Samuell Wardwell (already identified with magic
and socially marginal) or relatives (fathers, sons, husbands, etc.) of those already accused. That the only person
acquitted during examination was a man (Nehemiah Abbott Jr.) can hardly be seen as coincidental. (Roach, p. 90 – 1)
But the Salem trials were not unique in this regard.
58