Mary Beth Norton is a well-known historian of women and early American history at Cornell. She played a cameo role in Jon Wiener’s Nation article on Bellesiles’ critics, where Wiener quotes her as concluding “that Bellesiles’s interpretation of the documents was “‘just as plausible’ as that of his critics, ‘if not more so.'” (In his critique of Wiener, Prof. Jerome Sternstein finds her support of Bellesiles more problematic.)
Norton has an OpEd in today’s New York Times drawing some lessons from the Salem witch trials of 1692, based on her new book. She argues that the hysteria that broke out in Salem was a result of the strains and stresses resulting from the violent war against the Indians in neighboring Maine. The Indians, the evil ones of their day, were thought to have the Devil on their side. “Witchcraft,” she writes, “explained why they were losing the war so badly.”
After the war the hysteria declined. “Slowly, northern New Englanders began to feel more secure. And they soon regretted the events of 1692.” Over the next years restitution was given to the families of some of those executed. Norton concludes:
And last year, more than three centuries after early Americans reacted to an external threat by lashing out irrationally, the convicted were cleared by name in a Massachusetts statute. It’s a story worth remembering — and not just at Halloween.”
For Norton, the moral of this sad tale is clearly one that we need to remember right now: “lashing out irrationally” at “external threats” produces witch hunts at home.
I agree. Will someone please tell President Bush that, whatever he does, he must not attack the Indians in Maine.
Just based on her quote, you seem to be misinterpreting it. The “lashing out irrationally” refers to the witch hunts, not the external threat. In other words, she appears to be saying that faced with an external threat (e.g. terrorism), people might lash out irrationally (e.g., deploy spy planes to solve a serial murder, turn in their neighbors who are a little “strange,” inch closer to a police state, and the like).
Lonewacko: You certainly have a point, but, perhaps too stubbornly, I’m going to stick with mine. MBN has announced publicly that she opposes Bush’s Iraq policy (by signing a petition that can be found here). Her point in the OpEd, and in the book from which it is drawn, is that the war against the Devil-driven Indians, the axis of evil of their time, is what produced the hysteria. Interestingly, the hysteria was far broader than simply witch hunts. One of its most interesting features is that so many people confessed to being witches! No hunt necessary. It’s my view, based on some of her other writing as well as this, that MBN thinks the Indian Wars could and should have been avoided. Given her stated opposition to Bush’s Iraq policy, and features of her political approach to to other issues that I’ve seen first hand, I have no doubt that the lesson she wants us to learn from Salem goes beyond simply being careful of civil liberties as we deal with the “external threat.”
I think both John and Lonewacko are slightly offbeam, actually. My reading of this paragraph, despite its porridgy prose, is that today’s Indians are “the terrorists” and the irrational lashing out is the threat to beat “the Devil” Saddam Hussein. The reason this may be irrational is because, as far as I can ascertain, it seems unlikely Iraq, and not, say, Saudi Arabia, is the demonic spirit egging on al-Qaeda.
Of course, I don’t believe it’s irrational at all. Just that its strategic to pick Iraq, admittedly run by a very evil person.
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My reading of this paragraph, despite its porridgy prose, is that today’s Indians are “the terrorists” and the irrational lashing out is the threat to beat “the Devil” Saddam Hussein.