Killing the Witches: The Horror of Salem, Massachusetts

In 1722, a young man named Benjamin Franklin was writing a satirical series of letters under the name Silence Dogood, making fun of Cotton Mather and the Puritan Church. Franklin’s own brother James was the unknowing publisher of the wildly popular series. Boston was in the midst of a smallpox epidemic, and James Franklin used his Courant newspaper to critique Cotton Mathew and offer support for inoculating against the disease. His younger brother, Benjamin, seemed destined for the ministry, but his family could not afford to send him to Harvard. The young man worked odd jobs and eventually joined his brother at the printer’s office. He favored Mather’s stance on inoculation, but he “no longer believes in the divine birth of Jesus Christ, the power of God to answer prayers, or that a supreme deity controls the fate of mankind” (149). His Dogood letters stopped when his brother found out, and the 17-year-old fled to New York.

Franklin eventually settled in Philadelphia, where he visited a Quaker meetinghouse: “Quakers believe in waiting for the Holy Spirit to speak to members of the Congregation individually, inspiring them to rise and share their faith one by one” (156) rather than place authority in a minister.