Eve LaPlante

Featured on NPR's "Here and Now" with Alex Ashlock (Oct. 31), in The Boston Globe (Living/Arts, Oct. 29) and on Comcast CN8's "Your Morning" (Oct. 30). [NPR interview is at http://www.here-now.org/shows/2007/10/20071031_17.asp]

Winner of the Winslow House Book Award "for the best book published in 2007 concerning the interaction of early New England (1620-1852) with the wider Atlantic world."

"Much as she did in American Jezebel, the marvelous biography of her 12th-generation ancestor Anne Hutchinson, LaPlante, who counts Sewall as her sixth-great-grandfather, richly narrates his life... drawing on Sewall's diaries and stories told by her Aunt Charlotte.... LaPlante's splendid biography brings a personal touch to Sewall's story."


"Salem Witch Judge upends popular stereotypes about Puritans.... LaPlante's touching biography of Samuel Sewall... seems hauntingly familiar. Beneath the sensational title is a figure more familiar than we realize."


"A Highly Recommended Book of 2008"


"Compelling... fascinating... Salem Witch Judge offers an intriguing journey into a world as far away as colonial America – and yet at the same time as close as the human heart."


"Affectionate and affecting... LaPlante's portrait of a man whose second act became one of atonement as well as contrition is finely drawn..."


"The toughest thing in politics is to admit you were wrong and to do something about it. That, remarkably, is what Samuel Sewall did, and in so doing, he fundamentally changed the debate over witchcraft forever. At a time when at least some Americans are arguing that we have to cut back on our civil liberties in the interest of national security, LaPlante’s biography of Sewall profiles an early American politician whose example stands out for its courage and its wisdom."


"Well researched, readable, and engaging.... fascinating.... Recommended."


"Insightful... vivid... A reformative, assenting spin on Salem's hellfire and brimstone history."


"Sympathetic and richly detailed..."


"Eve LaPlante recounts the life of her ancestor lovingly, but meticulously. In the process, she expertly guides us through the religious life of colonial New England, from well before the 1692 Salem witchcraft episode to long after Samuel Sewall's somber reflections on - and his apology for - his role in that hysteria. LaPlante also reveals the ever enlarging magnanimity of Sewall's spirit, specifically with respect to slaves, Native Americans, and women. His life - and her book - deserve our total and grateful attention."


In 1692 Samuel Sewall, a forty-year-old father of five, sat on the colonial court that tried hundreds of people accused of witchcraft. Believing the girls who claimed their neighbors bewitched them, Sewall convicted and condemned to death more than thirty women and men, including two of his friends. He and the court executed twenty people before public opinion turned and the governor halted the proceedings. Sewall struggled internally for years before publicly assuming "the blame and shame" for the wrongful convictions and deaths. He went on to compose America’s first antislavery tract and a revolutionary essay portraying Native Americans as virtuous inheritors of God’s grace. In a period when women were considered inferior to men, Sewall publicly affirmed the fundamental equality of the sexes. Through his long repentance Sewall became America’s most surprising moral hero.


Contents

Introduction
1. I Have Sinned Against the Lord
2. Symptoms of Death
3. Have Mercy Upon Me
4. Deadly Enemies
5. The Devil Amongst Us
6. Original Sin
7. My Children Were Dead
8. Glorious Revolution
9. Great Heaviness on My Spirit
10. In Satan’s Grip
11. Speedy and Vigorous Prosecutions
12. Reign of Terror
13. God Save New England
14. I Am Beyond Conception Vile
15. The Blame and Shame of It
16. Wisdom and Revelation
17. Evil Must Not Be Done
18. Chief Justice, Paterfamilias
19. Maiden, Arise
20. Fit Me for My Change
Epilogue
Exploring Samuel Sewall’s America and England
Time Line
Writings of Samuel Sewall
Genealogy
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index