This work was originally constructed, and in previous editions appeared, in the form of Lectures. The only vestiges of that form, in its present shape, are certain modes of expression. The language retains the character of an address by a speaker to his hearers being more familiar, direct, and personal than is ordinarily employed in the relations of an author to a reader. The former work was prepared under circumstances which prevented a thorough investigation of the subject. Leisure and freedom from professional duties have now enabled me to prosecute the researches necessary to do justice to it.

The "Lectures on Witchcraft," published in 1831, have long been out of print. Although frequently importuned to prepare a new edition, I was unwilling to issue again what I had discovered to be an insufficient presentation of the subject. In the mean time, it constantly became more and more apparent, that much injury was resulting from the want of a complete and correct view of a transaction so often referred to, and universally misunderstood.

The first volume of this work contains what seems to me necessary to prepare the reader for the second, in which the incidents and circumstances connected with the witchcraft prosecutions in 1692, at the village and in the town of Salem, are reduced to chronological order, and exhibited in detail.

As showing how far the beliefs of the understanding, the perceptions of the senses, and the delusions of the imagination, may be confounded, the subject belongs not only to theology and moral and political science, but to physiology, in its original and proper use, as embracing our whole nature and the facts presented may help to conclusions relating to what is justly regarded as the great mystery of our being, -- the connection between the body and the mind.

It is unnecessary to mention the various well-known works of authority and illustration, as they are referred to in the text. But I cannot refrain from bearing my grateful testimony to the value of the "Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society" and the "New-England Historical and Genealogical Register." The "Historical Collections" and the "Proceedings" of the Essex Institute have afforded me inestimable assistance. Such works as these are providing the materials that will secure to our country a history such as no other nation can have. Our first age will not be shrouded in darkness and consigned to fable, but, in all its details, brought within the realm of knowledge. Every person who desires to preserve the memory of his ancestors, and appreciate the elements of our institutions and civilization, ought to place these works, and others like them, on the shelves of his library, in an unbroken and continuing series. A debt of gratitude is due to the earnest, laborious, and disinterested students who are contributing the results of their explorations to the treasures of antiquarian and genealogical learning which accumulate in these publications.

A source of investigation, especially indispensable in the preparation of the present work, deserves to be particularly noticed. In 1647, the General Court of Massachusetts provided by law for the taking of testimony, in all cases, under certain regulations, in the form of depositions, to be preserved in perpetuam rei memoriam. The evidence of witnesses was prepared in writing, beforehand, to be used at the trials they to be present at the time, to meet further inquiry, if living within ten miles, and not unavoidably prevented. In a capital case, the presence of the witness, as well as his written testimony, was absolutely required. These depositions were lodged in the files, and constitute the most valuable materials of history.

As the object of this work is to give to the reader of the present day an intelligible view of a transaction of the past, and not to illustrate any thing else than the said transaction, no attempt has been made to preserve the orthography of that period. Most of the original papers were written without any expectation that they would ever be submitted to inspection in print many of them by plain country people, without skill in the structure of sentences, or regard to spelling which, in truth, was then quite unsettled. It is no uncommon thing to find the same word spelled differently in the same document. It is very questionable whether it is expedient or just to perpetuate blemishes, often the result of haste or carelessness, arising from mere inadvertence. In some instances, where the interest of the passage seemed to require it, the antique style is preserved. In no case is a word changed or the structure altered but the now received spelling is generally adopted, and the punctuation made to express the original sense.

About Author:

Charles Wentworth Upham (May 4, 1802 - June 15, 1875) was a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts. Upham was also a member, and President of the Massachusetts State Senate, the 7th Mayor of Salem, Massachusetts, and twice a member of the Massachusetts State House of Representatives. Upham was the cousin of George Baxter Upham and Jabez Upham.

Biography

Charles Wentworth Upham was born in Saint John, New Brunswick on May 4, 1802.

Upham married Ann Susan Holmes March 29, 1826. She was the daughter of Rev. Abeil Holmes and Sarah Oliver Wendell. Ann was the sister of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Charles and Ann had 15 children all born in Salem, Massachusetts and only four lived to adulthood; Charles Wentworth Upham Jr. born in 1830 and died at the age of 30 in Buffalo, New York, married to Mary Haven, no children; William Phineas Upham born in 1836 and died in 1905, Newton, Massachusetts, married to Cynthia Bailey Nurse and had two daughters; Sarah Wendell Upham born 1839 and died unmarried at 25; and Oliver Wendell Holmes Upham born in 1843 and died in 1905, Salem, Massachusetts, married to Caroline Ely Wilson, one daughter (Dorothy Quincy Upham, b. 1881) and one son (Charles Wentworth Upham, b. 1883).

He attended Harvard in the class of 1821, and was a member of the Porcellian Club. A classmate and former friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Upham was an opponent of the burgeoning Transcendentalism movement and later engineered for Nathaniel Hawthorne to be dismissed from his job at the Salem custom house. He also arranged for Jones Very to be institutionalized at McClean Asylum. Senator Charles Sumner once referred to Upham as "that smooth, smiling, oily man of God".

In 1858, Upham was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society.

Upham died on June 15, 1875, in Salem, Massachusetts.

Publications

- "Life, Explorations, and Public Services of John Charles Fremont". Ticknor and Fields, Boston, MA. 1856
Salem Witchcraft with an account of Salem Village and a history of opinions on Witchcraft and Kindred Subjects. Frederick Unger, New York, 1978 (Reprint), 2 vv.
- "Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather A Reply". Morrisania, N.Y. 1869. Public Domain. Project Gutenberg free eBook.
- Lectures on Witchcraft Comprising a History of the Delusion in Salem in 1692 (1831) Kessinger Publishing (Reprint), 2003. ISBN 978-0-7661-8088-8
- A Discourse Delivered on the Sabbath After the Decease of the Hon. Timothy Pickering. Kessinger Publishing, United States, 2010 (Reprint). ISBN 978-1-163-74927-2
- Eulogy on the Life and Character of Zachary Taylor. BiblioLife, LLC, USA (Reprint), 2009. ISBN 978-1-117-40148-5
- Memoir of Francis Peabody, President of the Essex Institute. Pranava Books, 2008 (Reprinted on demand from 1868 edition.
- Letters on the Logos (1828) Kessinger Publishing, 2003 (Reprint). ISBN 978-0-7661-4679-2
- Life of Sir Henry Vane, Fourth Governor of Massachusetts in the Library of American Biography, conducted by Jared Sparks Vol IV.

Source: wiki