and excited passions hurried and drove them on. Still, however, many
considerations deserve to be well weighed before sentence is passed
upon them. And while I hope to give evidence of a readiness to have
every thing appear in its own just light, and to expose to view the
very darkest features of the transaction, I am confident of being able
to bring forward such facts and reflections as will satisfy you that
no reproach ought to be attached to them, in consequence of this
affair, which does not belong, at least equally, to all other nations,
and to the greatest and best men of their times and of previous ages;
and, in short, that the final predominating sentiment their conduct
should awaken is not so much that of anger and indignation as of pity
and compassion.

Let us endeavor to carry ourselves back to the state of the colony of
Massachusetts one hundred and seventy years ago. The persecutions our
ancestors had undergone in their own country, and the privations,
altogether inconceivable by us, they suffered during the early years
of their residence here, acting upon their minds and characters, in
co-operation with the influences of the political and ecclesiastical
occurrences that marked the seventeenth century, had imparted a
gloomy, solemn, and romantic turn to their dispositions and
associations, which was transmitted without diminution to their
children, strengthened and aggravated by their peculiar circumstances.
It was the triumphant age of superstition. The imagination had been
expanded by credulity, until it had reached a wild and monstrous
growth. The Puritans were always prone to subject themselves to its
influence; and New England, at the time to which we are referring, was
a most fit and congenial theatre upon which to display its power.
Cultivation had made but a slight encroachment on the wilderness.
Wide, dark, unexplored forests covered the hills, hung over the