Come at your own peril

What happened

The Salem witch-hunt of 1692 was not a mob. Magistrates ran the examinations, ministers backed them, and a special court tried the accused; Rothbard says the whole affair was led and directed by the elite of the colony. Joseph Putnam was twenty-three, a half-brother of Thomas Putnam, whose household held the loudest of the accusing girls, Ann Putnam. He wanted no part of it. Rothbard writes that he offered his home as refuge to any accused witch and announced, with loaded guns, that anyone who came to arrest him for witchcraft would come at his own peril. Family tradition adds that he kept horses saddled for months, ready to ride at a moment's notice. He was never accused. By the spring of 1693 the revulsion of ordinary people had caught up with the court: juries began to acquit everyone brought before them, the remaining prisoners were released, and the Salem reign of terror was over. Rothbard's point is simple. A witch-hunt needs neighbors who go along, and the men who ran this one counted on fear. In one farmhouse in Salem Village a young man refused, armed himself, and said so out loud.