Samuel Sewall

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Samuel Sewall 1729 (painting by John Smibert )

Samuel Sewall (born March 28, 1652 in Bishopstoke , Hampshire , England , † January 1, 1730 in Boston , Province of Massachusetts Bay ) was a New England merchant and judge . He emerged in the political life of New England as a judge at the Salem witch trials and as a declared opponent of slavery . He also wrote some theological writings. His diaries, of which the years 1674–77 and 1685–1729 have been preserved, are of particular interest for historical and cultural studies, as they give an insight into the everyday life of the Puritans as well as into the political development of New England.

life and work

career

He was born in England to a Puritan family who immigrated to Massachusetts in 1661 and settled in Newbury . 1667-75 he studied at Harvard for the priesthood (his bedfellow at this time was Edward Taylor ), but decided after his marriage in 1677 to embark on a career as a merchant. His wife, Hannah Hall, was the daughter of the Treasurer of the Massachusetts Colony, and his patronage enabled Sewall to hold various important positions in the Puritan community. 1681–84 he was in the Boston printing works, 1691–1725 he was a member of the Governor's council of the Massachusetts colony.

Salem witch trials

In 1692 he was appointed by Governor Sir William Phips to be one of the judges in the Court of Oyer and Terminer , the tribunal of the Salem witch trials . His verdict was decisive for many convictions.

After the end of the witch trials, public opinion was reversed and turned against the judges, who were now held responsible for the events, which were largely seen as misconduct and presumption. Sewall and his family found themselves socially marginalized. In the years after 1692 he suffered blows of fate in his immediate personal environment, two of his daughters died in childbed, and in 1695 his mother. Sewall saw his fate linked to the general sinfulness of the New England colonists: the New England Puritans perceived increasing hardships such as the revocation of the charter of the Massachusetts colony in 1684, Indian raids, an impending French invasion, poor harvests and, last but not least, the witch trials as punishments from God, so that the Magistrates ordered a day of fasting and prayer for all of New England on January 14, 1697, on which repentance for wrongdoings should be publicly testified. Sewall took this day as an opportunity to write a penance. He bowed his head in silence and stood before the crowd, admitting the guilt he had incurred, and asking his fellow citizens to forgive him and to pray for the forgiveness of his sins, those of his family and the entire colony. Until his death in 1730, he put in a fast and prayer day every year and prayed for the forgiveness of his sins in the trials.

Chiliastic writings

Sewall also participated in theological debates of his time. Like many of his Puritan contemporaries, he was particularly interested in the salvation-historical interpretation of historical and contemporary events. His work Phaenomena quaedam Apolyptica , published in 1697, is an important early testimony to American millenarianism . Like many of his Puritan contemporaries, Sewall believed that he was living in an advanced stage of the end times and that five of the seven bowls of God's wrath mentioned in Revelation had already been poured over the earth. The question of where the sixth of the bowls would be poured out and then the New Jerusalem built was therefore the subject of lively debate. At the center of the phenomena is the exegesis of Revelation. 16:12: “And the sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates; and its water was dried up, that the way might be prepared for the kings from the rising of the sun. ” 16.12 EU . Sewall interpreted the Euphrates as a metaphor for the Spanish colonies in America , especially Mexico , which he considered Catholic lands to be the youngest domain of the Pope and thus of the Antichrist . He interpreted news such as that of an earthquake in Lima in 1687 and the planned establishment of a Scottish colony New Caledonia in Panama, which is dominated by Spain, as signs of the imminent return of Jesus Christ . The Phaenomena are, among other things, a response to Joseph Mede's much-discussed Clavis Apocalyptica (1617), which Gog and Magog located in America and thus described the New World as belonging to Hell. Sewall's hope that the New Jerusalem would be built on American soil is an early, quasi-nationalist interpretation of the end times, as it still shapes American exceptionalism , i.e. the idea of ​​America as a promised land, to this day. Sewall's endorsement of the thesis that the Indians were descendants of the lost tribes of Israel , as Roger Williams speculated and John Eliot and Thomas Thorowgood had asserted, should also be seen in this context , since the expectation of Parousia was linked to the conversion of the Jews and so was his presence of Jews in the New World seemed to indicate a special role for the American continent in salvation history.

The final movements of the Phaenomena , in which Sewall describes in a rhapsodic tone the pastoral beauty of Plum Island , an island off the coast of Newport where his parents first set foot on American soil, and their fate with that of Christianity, are famous not least because of their poetic qualities New England linked:

" As long as Plum Island shall faithfully keep the commanded Post; Notwithstanding all the hectoring words, and hard Blows of the proud and boisterous Ocean; As long as any Salmon, or Sturgeon shall swim in the streams of Merrimack; or any Perch, or Pickeril, in Crane Pond; As long as the Sea-Fowl shall know the Time of their coming, and not neglect seasonably to visit the Places of their Acquaintance; As long as any Cattel shall be fed with the Grass growing in the Medows, which do humbly bow down themselves before Turkie-Hill; As long as any Sheep shall walk upon Old Town Hills, and shall from thence pleasantly look down upon the river Parker, and the fruitfull Marishes lying beneath; As long as any free and harmless Doves shall find a White Oak, or other Tree within the Township, to perch, or feed, or build a careless Nest upon; and shall voluntarily present themselves to perform the office of Gleaners after Barley-Harvest; As long as Nature shall not grow Old and dote; but shall constantly remember to give the rows of Indian Corn their education, by Pairs; So long shall Christians be born there; and being first made meet, shall from then be translated, to be made partakers of the inheritance of the Saints in Light. "

For Perry Miller , who drew attention to this passage in his 1956 anthology The American Puritans , these lines on the beauty of earthly America - at the end of a book about the end of the world - represent evidence of the "Americanization" of the Puritans of New England So the moment when the bond with the new home begins to replace the love for the motherland England. Sacvan Bercovitch sees Sewall's endeavor to derive spiritual truths from natural phenomena, here in terms of the history of ideas at the beginning of a specifically American line of tradition culminating in the transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson - in fact, Emerson's contemporary John Greenleaf Whittier undertook a repositioning of Sewall's lines and made them part of his poem The Prophecy of Samuel Sewall, which deals with the fulfillment and perpetuation of Sewall's vision.

Sewall developed a pronounced sense of mission for his theses and gave away numerous copies of the font. Cotton Mather received four copies alone and was evidently also inspired by reading, as the dedication to Sewall in Mather's Theopolis Americana (1710) testifies, which also advocates the thesis of the New World as New Jerusalem. A continuation of his theses wrote Sewall in 1713 with the font Accomplishment of Prophesies Humbly Offered ; In 1727 he initiated a second edition of the Phenomena .

Opponents of slavery

In 1700 he published the treatise The Selling of Joseph , which is one of the first documents of American abolitionism . Sewall used biblical arguments to plead for the equality of all people and thus denied the legality of slavery . In that year, Sewall got involved in a multi-year conflict with John Saffin , one of the wealthiest and most politically influential merchants in New England. Saffin, who had acquired his fortune through slave trade among other things , had promised his slave Adam around 1694 that he would be released within seven years if he showed himself obedient and worked hard. When in 1700 the slave pressed for the promise to be kept, Saffin refused to release him, and so he escaped and sought refuge with Sewall. Sewall and Saffin fought lengthy court cases over the next few years, which ultimately led to the slave's release. In 1701 Saffin published a justification on Sewall's treatise ( A Brief and Candid Answer ).

Works

  • The Revolution in New England Justified , 1691
  • Phaenomena quaedam Apocalyptica ad aspectum Novi Orbis configurata. Or, some few lines towards the description of a New Heaven , 1697
  • The Selling of Joseph: A Memorial , 1700.
  • Proposals Touching the Accomplishment of Prophecies , 1713
  • A Memorial Relating to the Kennebeck Indians
  • Talitha Cumi; or, An Invitation to Women to Look After their Inheritance in the Heavenly Mansions. , 1725.

literature

Editions of the diaries

Secondary literature

  • Judith S. Graham: Puritan Family Life: The Diary of Samuel Sewall . Northeastern University Press, Boston 2000.
  • Mukhtar Ali Isani: The growth of Sewall's 'Phaenomena Quaedam Apocalyptica'. In: Early American Literature , Volume 7, Issue 1, 1972, pp. 65-74.
  • David S. Lovejoy: Between Hell and Plum Island: Samuel Sewall and the Legacy of the Witches, 1692-97 . In: New England Quarterly , Volume 70, Issue 3, September 1997, pp. 355-367.
  • Eve LaPlante: Salem Witch Judge: The Life and Repentance of Samuel Sewall. HarperCollins, Boston 2007, ISBN 9780061539091 .
  • Lawrence W. Towner: The Sewall-Saffin Dialogue on Slavery. In: The William and Mary Quarterly 21, 1964, pp. 40-52.
  • OE Winslow: Samuel Sewall of Boston . Macmillan, New York 1964.

Web links

Wikisource: Samuel Sewall  - Sources and full texts (English)
personal data
SURNAME Sewall, Samuel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American businessman and judge
DATE OF BIRTH March 28, 1652
PLACE OF BIRTH Bishopstoke , Hampshire , England
DATE OF DEATH January 1, 1730
Place of death Boston , Massachusetts