is congress giving away its power comes in its power, something felt abdicating. .. and paul moreno of hillsdale call it is the offer.

>> c-span where history unfolds daily. in 1979 c-span was greater as a public service by america's cable television companies and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. >> [inaudible conversations] hello, everybody. wow. what a treat we have. i am so honored to introduce our next author. she's an elegant and an exciting writer your she's the kind of person that other writers just

adore. stacy schiff. envoy, dishing out to pick a good topic. unbelievable. even jon stewart was interested in cleopatra. she somehow brought to life cleopatra in a way that nobody else had. and by the way, a lot of peoplef new cleopatra for a long time. of course, she has won so many prizes it's fairly ridiculous. when she was a child she won the pulitzer prize for writing about the wife of vladimir noble cough. she was a runner-up for the pulitzer even earlier, in 1995. when she comes up in you see a young she is, it's super a for the rest of us. ron who knows how to write a book himself said this about stacy. to at

even if forced to at gunpoint, stacy schiff would be incapable of writing a dull page for a lame sentence. and david mccullough, you know the guy that always writes bestsellers, just like stacy? i love what he said about her. will history enhance of stacy schiff is invariably full of life, light, shadow, surprise, clarity of insight. and so it is again and then some in her latest work "the witches." few writers combine as she does superb scholarship and an exceptional gift for language with amazing reach and abilityam of mind. it is simply a superb book. i'm going to turn it over, setting the stage, enhance of

stacy schiff. she brings you back to 17th century massachusetts. it's an exceptionally cold winter, and the mystery begins with a ministers of daughter stars to screen your stacy. [applause] >> thank you, mary. if you're here at this hour you're either a diehard or a passionate lover of history, or both, regis also else to walk your dog. [laughter] we would like to think history is eternal and a mobile like mount rushmore but it turns out to be an oddly malleable thing. it has moods and fashions and changes of heart. it is studded with misconceptions and outright

fictions. the pilgrims had never heard anybody talk about plymouth rock, george washington really didn't have any particularar grudge against cherry trees. some of the luscious to fictions were up around our commemorations of the past. which reminds me of the hands down best ever library joke. a man walks into his local vibrant reef -- can tell this with a straight face. a man walks in and asks, can you tell hi why so many major civilr battles were fought on nationall park lands? [laughter]no none of which explains what we have done with this truth. during the summer of 1692, on much deliberation, the massachusetts bay colony executed 19 people for witchcraft. those innocent men and women, 14 women and five men, were convicted in the same

massachusetts courtroom. they hang several miles away on a spot, it is simply something about how the epidemic was viewed in its immediate aftermath come in a spot we can barely locate today. sometimes it seems as if they come of an event can be measured by how long it takes us to commemorate it. and by how thoroughly we mangle it in the process. because he to go back to salem today to get a taste of the strong chapter in our history, you discover the town has embraced its past with what you might call an uncommon for. in 1,692,000,180 people were accused of witchcraft but none of them was a pirate. one of them was a harvard educated minister and another was the richest merchant in salem, but that something is. s for several hundred years same did everything it could, to bury this chapter of its history. as late as 1952 when arthur miller visited to research the crucible, the subject of

witchcraft was taboo. you continuing to say anything about it, complain to miller. stigma lifted only when the same filming of the abc sitcom bewitched. i see some of you remember that show. i can see the official was a modern housewife its supernatural powers and the with a twitch of her knows she did open the garage door, make the vacuum cleaner work, and so i to were very mortal husband. it made since 1970, to shoot another sitcom episodes and save them. allow the town to embrace it's been glorious past. here is how it did so. in 1992 it unveiled this gleaming memorial to elizabeth montgomery, the television show's star. she had effectively laundered the history. over the next years salem vigorously rebranded itself. this is the town paper. this is the football team.

[laughter] and assist the police cruiser.se [laughter] generally it again, turn itself into which a city. every possible slogan, you can see everyone of these when you walk around soon but this is my favorite from this is the t-shirt. [laughter] i after bewitched, picking it up we can establish themselves in salem and it is today a good place to buy crystals or a broomstick or a magic wand. it's also a very good place to get a tattoo. a witch museum opened in a former church. restored home of one of the 6092 judges recast itself as the witch house and, of course, hollowing belongs completely to salem were october 31 is a month-long celebration. this is a product as the puritans in 1692 most of new england was. does have a horror of holidays.o

they denounce christmas and since the and wound up with a calendar that has been described as the dullest in western civilization your in other words, you can leave salem today without a hint of its history but you better now if you want a river next halloween. what precise did happen in 1692? toward the end of january after an especially harsh winter, two little girls began to bark and yelp and showed a. they fell down, they seem to fly across rooms. they lived in what was known as salem village, i am a five miles down the road from salem down and a community today known as its -- danvers. the girls fathers and local was the village of ministers. for some time he resisted what seemed the obvious diagnosis. four years earlier a family of boston job had suffered identical symptoms. they accused a local woman of having cast a spell on them.

she hanged in november 1688. that case was very well-known, probably as much to the village children as to their parents. after weeks of prayer with no change in the girl's condition and no other viable expedition for it, it seemed clear that witchcraft was at work.n the girls assumed name three names and three different women had enchanted them..one one of them quickly confessed that she was, in fact, a which. she did so in kaleidoscopic detail with a story about yellow birds and red cats in blackil hogs. she said she been recruited by the devil and should flow in the wink of an eye to boston. she had several accomplices. three separate reporters to counter testimony which created the sensation.y grown immediately grown men began to o hear unearthly sound. they met with large winning the peace in the moonlight. already federal symptoms had

spread to a cohort of teenagers, many of them servants. they would play the starring role in 1692, identifying the witches, displaying their bruises and their bites and a bloody limbs to the courtroomou ultimate predicting who the witches would attack next. l directions, the epidemic spread to 24 communities. they called them salem witch trial by and over massachusetts was a village most effected. one in ten of its residents would be denounced. so many to accuse that witnesses confused their suspects. the youngest was five and eldest nearly 80. daughters accused mothers. brothers their sisters. parishioner and husbands tended to ashore court that they had long suspected that wives were witches. let me talk for a just few

minutes about witchcraft and how it worked. what exactly was a witch? is the early americans he existed as plainly as a heat or light as one authority had it it was as obvious but theory to convey men through the air that wind would flatten the house. the early american witch i should add did not look like this. although there's something of the wizard of oz about the salem story. nor did the 178th century witch look like this. this by the way is the original wicked witch of the west from the 1900s edition of the wizard of oz i particularly like flying pink tail on unexpected -- this is an early halloween witch. or it should be. there she is. first halloween celebrated without witches and when finally witches appear the scene they're colorful and only dress in black after a the 1939 wizard of oz movie.

the witch is a 17th century new englander knew her with someone who performed unnatural by virtue of her contract with the devil. from that pact she grew power to transform herself into cats, wolves, rabbits which would be a man or a woman though more often female. and she had familiars that did her bidding. those would be turtles or weasels, cats, dogs, toads were prevalent. 17th century woman is feeding her blood to her diabolical toads with a black cat familiar she illustrates 1621 english case mft this woman is acquitted of all witchcraft charges. these are are more diabolical familiars you will see they raise from barnyard pig to fantastic gargoyle like creatures a surprising number of massachusetts men to 1692

assault by cats by oversize cats, killer cats glow in the dark cats or neighbors disguised as cats. black cats with a favorite so they turn up throughout the stey lem testimony. black dogs occur in salem records too although historically they have feline form so family cat -- moose looking i hope just a little bit demonic. a witch enchanted with ointment and could be a muttering contentious or she or he strong and unaccountably start. both kinds of witches turn up in 1692 as wealthy merchants, sea captains who are witches. minister and homeless five -year-old girls who are witches. while her power was supernatural. her crime was religious. and her ultimate target ftion the soul rather than the body.

and her connection to the convulsing children every english man knew what enchantment looked like. according to legal guide on many massachusetts desks in which was about to land on minister's desk this was the volume it manifested as paralyzed limb, crossing gnashing and violent shaking in other words the symptoms of the salem girls to a t. among the abundant proof of her existence was biblical injunction against her shall not suffer a witch i'm sorry to share with you basic english translation of exodus 22:18. any woman using unnatural powers or secret art is to be put to dakota. that pretty much covers woman i know. when massachusetts established a legal code first capitol crime was adultery and second was witchcraft so you know blasphemy

next and murder after blays pany. in years since laws have been caught iffyed massachusetts, however, had hanged only six. so besides the mystery of the salem symptom is really a greater mystery, why in 1692 the hasty and merciless prosecution? the charges were familiar from earlier cases. casting spell on livestock was a common one and enchanted fireplace and wagon, they sent dishes sailing. they bid and claw and bludgeon anyone who refuse to sign devil's book cut us from an early english case. accused women did not farewell and why riding a pig? oh, they're not riding a pig, oh, no they seem to have gone away. oh, well. should have been riding below that. some witchcraft is clearly u at work here accused ofbq witches

and do a great deal of flying down chimney and over apple tree ultimately to a diabolical sabbath and english witch did not fly. continental witches, however, did which will provide a significant clue as to what happened in 1692. those who confess to witchcraft will have flown i should add by their own confession on devil shoalers or pole or branch and sticks. no new england wism would ever fly on a broom. there are possibly there they are -- some french flyers. this 15th century but leave to a french woman to fly gracefully. the accepted logic on phenomenon went like this. witches existed in all time the and places. how was it possible that imagination could deliver the same conceit across cultures and ire are as? in other words, witchcraft was so propows rows you couldn't make it up. so the impossibility of a shared delusion was that of the most

compelling reason and not to subscribe was hair city. in 16 2 then witch could be a foot stamper or troublemaker, but it could also be someone who simply denied the existence of witchcraft. faith aside served a purpose. it made sense of the unfortunate and eerie, sick child, and disappearing kitchen scissor. what else shrugged one husband in court? might have caused those black and blue marks on his wife's arm? one more breathtaking thing about the trials. they came to an end because scope of the crisis tax the imagination could there really be that many witches floating around massachusetts and because of what appeared to be an overzealouses court carefully, quietly, anonymously sane man began to speak up. few of them, however, questioned existence of witchcraft. at issue was simply the difficulty in identifying it.

many would believe that innocence had died in 1692 but most also believe that guilty witches had escaped. to my mind writers can be immensely unhelpful about what nudges towards a particular subject. i can't say precisely where my interest in salem began but u i can report that you don't head off into the long hall of writing a book without some kind of obsession. the kind that wakes you up in night that make you read daily newspaper through eyes of someone who lived centuries or hundred was centuries earlier. so i began thinking about salem began to feel to me eerily, oral culture like internet feeds on rumor. both very effectively so mass astair ya. we too know something about how fear can corrode our thinking. about how raging against the power of darkness can convince us that we stand in the light.

here is an instructive tale about a different war or terror about politics of fear. both of them conducted by enlightened men. because at the center of the events in 1692 were increase matter, the most e ill illustris and had no trouble when i knowing its way through massachusetts. he was convinced that the colony was under assault more to the point he relish that attack and proved colony special status. the epidemic seemed like a badge of honor for their proof but new englanders were chosen people. american exceptionalism really begins here. specific authorities regularly appeal to matters for giants they owned most extensive printed matter in massachusetts. they had devoured library on subject of witchcraft. it was to that we owe our

knowledge of the earlier boston epidemic and he pleasured best selling volume and wrote more about salem and decade afterward puzzling over what could have caused witchcraft epidemic and concluded it was fault of the native americans. one additional thing that may have contradicted to my salem obsession it is not loss that after writing about ben franklin years in france eight years for which two and a half times as many documentation as the rest of franklin's life combined i wrote a life of cleopatra for which no shred of documentation what had so far. so here with salem blessedly was an an archive with diary and sermon and church record best of all a u thousand tripghts arrest warrant, petitions this is a page that best of 17th century penmenship from sermon book of samuel paris the village minister. this is the accounting of many

jail keeps that incarcerated witch suspect. a 17th century prisoner had obligation for paying his ow a 17th century president have the obligation for paying for some charges so the jailers tended to be very meticulous in the records. the trial's instruction is terrifically urgently relevant especially when you factor in the anxiety and the familiar conspiracy theories. we are always obsessed with the origins and thanks in large part to hawthorne and arthur miller,a the trials insert themselveswith into our dna. talking about the witches this past year, it sometimes seemed than half of america that sends him some subtler of 17thth century new england, and the other half start in the crucible in high school. [laughter] let me end with the witchcraft confession of a 72 year old farm woman. for me she was the start of the story and finally of the book. we don't know who initially

accused and foster but we do know that she submitted to thren very intense back-to-back interrogations. initially she denied any involvement with witchcraft but since you began to unspool an astonishing tale. i should say six alleged witches had gained by this time, midsummer. the epidemic takes off at a camp that begins in january or february and constructive finish it lasts only 10 months. the devil, foster admitted, had occurred -- had appeared to her as a bird. she bewitched several children and all. this is the record by the way of a repeated examination. this is not the best of 17th century handwriting. a neighbor who was a which had led her to a diabolical sabbath in they arranging their trip through the air. foster provided precise details of that gathering, to which the witches have flown from all over new england. we can reconstruct the meeting from over 50 sworn testimonies

but we have no image. this is the closest we can come. this is a 17th century engraving of a german which sabbath. it's a far more decadent production. remember i said there had been no flying in massachusetts before 1692. suddenly everyone is all lost -- aloft.nd intersecting interrogation foster revealed she is legitimate on april, when she shared with her neighbor. as they sailed through the air the women had crashed. they took off a second time though although foster had hurt her leg in the fall.s you can see she was not the first woman to plunge to the ground at such a moment. we know about the crash not only from her official account the because a local minister had heard her confess and he questioned her privately afterward in prison. he was ousted by the mechanics

of witchcraft. did she ride can be o on a stic? what had she done a good? she told them she'd carried bread and cheese in her pocket. she described the ground on which she sat. she provided details of the timing of the flight in both directions. as for the accident she claimedd her legs still hurt. she was entirely forthcoming, walking only when asked if it was true that she included her daughter. it hardly mattered she denied that because her daughter immediately confessed come incriminating her mother as she did so. fosters 18 year granddaughter was arrested after that. she is sure to the authorities of her mother and grandmother practiced witchcraft.fo let me go back to ann foster's account. to enter into the world of early americans to grasp what could power a witchcraft epidemic, you have to buy into what we consider a delusion. was a this was a novel narrative

challenge for me. essential of shutting a book of nonfiction that at its cente cer and illusory if it. so in short the challenge was to make a crazy thing seem perfectly rational, and then afterward to show why it had been crazy. fosters crashed seemed to me to point the way. it was a woman who not only believed she had attended a diabolical sabbath ordered reason to leave others to beion shared but envision difficult as getting their and felt she could still feel its after effects. tot the center of the story. it amounted to a full conspiracy against the state. they felt that witches were plotting to overthrow church in newly seated government so this was original plot against america. foster reported there were 25 conspirator, granddaughter said 70 and estimate would soon rise to 500. it is gravity in part explain

the prosecution. witchcraft became a political crisis for a colony that felt vulnerable for any number of reasons nothing to do with witchcraft. all of which convince me that book opened foster's flight. that sends us into the heart of matter and signals to reader that implausible things were afoot. i had to begin with how ann foster was to a diabolical meeting 12 miles away. here was the initial stab at the first line of the witches yes, i write on yellow legal pad it is embarrassing first line of chapter two because i much later wrote an introduction which retitled chapters one because he explained no one reads introduction. should you care to know how long it takes to write a book it seems that i made amendments at opening line on april 8th, 2013, an i did not see my children for the next two years.

by later that day, the line had evolved to this. i had in hand and foster sworn testimony along with the account of that minister who interviewed her in prison but i also had to check number of details. for example, if, in fact, you flew just above tree topover so salem could you see as far as the ocean? how thick were the trees? for this i plague kind enough to take me seriously, and, of course, i needed to verify the night. there upon followed extensive correspondence of my favorite research librarian a man of superu human tenacity to give you some idea. this is one of several multipage e-mails in which he confirmed that, in fact, the night of may 15th, was not inky. a bright moon shown over massachusetts that evening.

so yes you're hearing correctly i spent hours with circumstances underwhich the vent took place which is surely definition of lunacy. let me point out something ems too in trying to recreate foster flight with detail i too landed in the darkness of error. you may have noticed it already but i didn't see it for months. ... i went back and reread every account, not one of the 50

people included the word about the dark or about navigating the dark. in factdark. in fact, no one seemed to affect any trouble seeing at all. some of the sullivans talked about the color of the wind. several confessed they had signed the devil's book and read. details they would've had trouble ascertaining by moonlight. part of the victim of a research i had wanted to tie fosters flight to that of another woman who wrote to the darkness of 70 not afford if on horseback. i had want to stress how much the dark of velvety sound amplifying disappointing terrifying blackness was a player in the story. and after all everybody knows witches fly at night. of course when it went back to look, there it was. foster's granddaughter, very plainly tells the justices thath the meeting had taken place at noon. so ultimate in the final draft from a pledge carpet of meadows

unfurled below as she flies over salem, or swear she did, over red maples and streams. there's a bright moon in the sky which is no longer dark. there were of course no flights through the air in 1692 or goblins in the parlor or supernatural conspiracies in a meadow. how then did these things seem to happen? when you pry the whole chapter apart, you see it makes and candy and wholly modern sense. i tell you about ann foster because i hope he may take from the book what i took from my misreading the a reminder of us with what we jump to conclusions, who easily ignorance and information can lead us astray. airports are thinking, preconceived notions trip us up. would like to link to explanations. the s above all the young history reminds us of the importance of keeping our heads even without leads to a question unresolved, even when it leads us off balance. that's an uncomfortable state

but as a later boss tony noted, bewilderment is crucial. we would be lost in fact without it. it seems probable wrote henry james to a just after the truck if we were never bewildered, they would never be a story to tell us about us. anti. [applause] for q speed and we have time for questions and there are two microphones in the aisles for whoever gets there first. i'm wondering about why people would confess to something that they didn't really do. but, you know, there was this situation in central park with the central park five. these were teenage boys and they

confessed. the police worked them over.y they confessed to crimes that they didn't commit. and i'm wondering what the process is whereby somebody is going to do something like that. >> turns out to be remarkably easy to extract a false confession but in salem, with some of the young men who are accused, they're actuallier tortured and they were hung up in a gross fashion but many of the people who are brought in are women, many of them have never been -- never stood before an authority before. the men who were intergifting them are the best dressed, wealthiest, best spoken men in colony. they're terrified. they often are men who region

logically and nimbly, so a woman who says i'm not a witch, never practiced withcraft. i don't know what a witch is, is immediately asked how can you be certain you're not a witch if you don't know what a witch is? the manner of questioning was rather circular and imprisoning. it's exacerbated by the fact that confession comes naturally to a puritan and the fear that you might actually on some level be complicit is very close to the surface. so that you hear in the some of the testimony people saying, i wasn't able to confess but i don't know if i couldn't because i was innocent or if the devil was stopping my words. so there's a certain confusion. everyone feels they have a spot on his conscious of some kind, and because there's no such thing as a guilty conscious in 17 century, that must fee

diabolical. the admissions became rampant because it became clear to people if you confessed you did not hang. so only the people who revised authority would go to gallows so confession is used as an additional means means of prote, and insidary confession is -- the epidemic spreads. >> so a large part of the whole salem witch epidemic is politics in 17th century massachusetts. i'm interested in hearing your thoughts on arthur miller's later take on the salem witch trials and particularly how it kind of adds to the gender politics in a way that it makes the women, the young girls, who

at the center of the story to be the accusers, the evil ones, rather than the individuals who may simply be trying to assert whatever power or agency they might have. >> i guess a short answer to your question, miller diverges from the actual records in a zillion ways. whatever you think of "the crucible" it's a play, not history. the most interesting thing he does with the girls to sexualize them and sexualize the relationship if john proctor and has to raise the age of abigail. he makes this into sexual politics elm missing piece about salem is did any of these girls actually suffer some kind of sexual abuse? the colony felt vulnerable at this time. the girls felt tremendously vulnerable. living in a world where indian attack is imminent and many of them have survived indian attacks and often be -- girls have often been assaulted by the men in homes in which they live.

most of the girls didn't live at home. they were servants in other people's homes which means they're prey to masters, the boys of the house, other servants in the house. there's a lot of sexual imagery in the accusations but we can't pin any to these particular girls. any number of aggressions, rapes, unwanted advances in the court records but not the salem records. miller took the greatest liberty was in using some of those vulnerabilities and attaching them to the story, where we know a lot about -- the hints these girls had dropped but nothing on the record. >> personal question. in 1953, a fellow from my neighborhood name arthur miller was influenced by the mccarthy era and went to salem because he was looking at an image. did you have something like that, a political thing in your mind that motivated you to go and do that?

>> i don't know if i was clear what -- obviously the mccarthy beat was a perfect analogy in many ways. as i said i'm not particularly adept at being able to say why i wrote something. 'll give you an example of that. only after i finished this book, for reasons which i thought i had just explained, a friend said to me, did you notice that the entire time you were working on the book you were living with an adolescent girl? that was totally lost on me and a girl who was between the -- of the aim of the accusers of these bewitched girls. was reading this material about this subversive, about these -- terrorists in the yard because a lot of this is the is about the indians lurking outside and the nefarious catholics were embarking in boston harbor and take over the puritan establishment. i was reading that in the wake of iraq. and, yes, think i probably saw

an echo of this alien invader idea, invisible enemies among us. all about many ways terrorism and immigration. and those are two issues which we seem to be grappling with still today. so i think that may have been some of it but i didn't really see that in any conscious way at the time. >> thank you. >> i did not act in the to crucible, and actually a direct descendent of one hover the ones killed, so i'm interested in any stores about sure but the lor es was targeted from a widow in a family property dispute. i wrong at the how much you think there was intentional bickering, targeting going on, and whether in a general matter whether new arrivals, the immigrants to the area, or whatever, was there any kind of

rational way that there were certain people being fingered. >> suzanna martin is one of the few of the accused who actually uses sarcasm in the court and she is very disrespectful with the justices. she has been strident and outspoken in the past accused of richcraft in the past. a number of them to. it's undetermined if they've were accused because they were strident or strident because way were accused bet all the former accusations come back to be reactivated by the fury in 1692. no one seems to be prosecuted for reasons of his or her property. many people can be prosecuted -- accused for different reasons. in one case there is a decades old long-standing, unresolved, overlive litigated, familial grudge over a property line and that claims a few lives.

in suzanna martin and other cases there had been previous court cases which people still had bad feelings about in many cases men are accused because they had formerly been officials, and told people what they didn't want to hear and they were accused in one case an an andover constable is accused because he didn't want to round inanymore and after he was done he was accused of witchcraft. >> you showed some notes on a legal pad and the different drafts you had for the -- >> the embarrassing thing i showed you. >> my question is, can you take us through, when you have an idea to finished product. do you have motivation and then outline what the book will be or just start writing and do you allow it just to pivot from point to point? >> in short, because i could do

this for several hours, it usually takes me four to five years, of which i spend the first three years in the archives, so i had no idea where the book begins, what i'm looking for necessarily. i'm just kind of following my way through the archive and just reading as much as i can. for example, didn't know when i starred the book i would be mountains of puritan sermons. had i known that i wouldn't have attempt this book. no good for the soul. i don't start until -- the material starts to in some way marinate or ferment or whatever verb you want to do in my mind. i knew ann foster would be the way into the story, but you're always surprised by what you find, and the whole idea in a funny way to have a very open mind when you first begin a project, because you don't -- if request you follow a thesis through the woods you'll proof your thesis, and specially in this case where i felt it really incumbent on me to leave the

answers to the end of the book so it read as a thriller with a real explanation at the end. that was important 'as was the idea of conveying what it felt like to live and breathe the new england air in 1692. what did these dream about, fear, preoccupations, obsessions, what they were yearning for. i'm being told we have one minute left. >> i was don at thing about -- wondering about the extents of the research. did you find yourself in a courtroom or talking to to a geologist's what the rooks look liked or what kind of wood they used to build the cabin. did you see how that would be displayed even though it was rough. >> i try get as close as i can to ground level. it's hard when you're write agent cleopatra in a world -- her egypt is gone. not even the coast is in the right place and moon is in in

the right place. that's about it. this is easier but very hard to recreate. i said to an archivist, what would the houses smell like? he said go to someone's plantation. brilliant. i hasn't thought of it. i said to the women, what were the worst months of the year and every single one of them said january and february, which is precisely when the witchcraft broke out. just saying. >> thank you very much. [applause] thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> this is a booktv on c-span2. television for serious readers. here's our primetime lineup for