ABSTRACT
Between the 1790s and 1830s, both historical and literary treatments of Puritan witch-hunting, particularly the infamous episode at Salem, were saturated with words such as "bigotry" and "superstition," or "zeal," "delusion," and "infatuation." As much a product of the period in which it was written as the period being written about, this language of irrationality reflected the political and social anxieties rampant in the early republic. These anxieties derived from both the rise of modem political parties and the gradual democratization of politics. If such trends led to "witch-hunts," such as the Federalists' passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, they also produced the first truly popular political campaigns during the 1820s and 1830s, Jacksonian spectacles the zealous excesses of which conservatives viewed with horror. In the midst of this uneasy transition to modem politics, historical and literary writers, both traditionally responSible for inculcating virtue in republican citizens, turned to Salem for proof of the dangers inherent in the people's unbridled "passions." The success of the writers' mission, however, was complicated not only by a shifting political environment but also by emerging literary trends as well. By excavating and analyzing such complications, we can develop a more sophisticated historical and literary understanding of the genre of witchcraft writing, and by viewing a number of early texts-the anonymous The Witch of New England (1824) and James Nelson Barker's The Tragedy of Superstition (1824), as well as John Neal's Rachel Dyer (1828) and John Greenleaf Whittier's Legends of New England (1831)-in their own terms, we can take proper measure of their value beyond the usual standard that has been applied, namely, the degree to which they influenced Hawthorne's subsequent treatment of the subject.
