Samuel Sewall - Views and Writings

Views and Writings

Apart from his involvement in the Salem witch trials, Sewall was somewhat liberal in his views for the time. In The Selling of Joseph (1700), for instance, he came out strongly against slavery, making him one of the earliest colonial abolitionists. There he argued, "Liberty is in real value next unto Life: None ought to part with it themselves, or deprive others of it, but upon the most mature Consideration." He regarded "man-stealing as an atrocious crime which would introduce amongst the English settlers people who would remain forever restive and alien," but he also believed that "There is such a disparity in their Conditions, Colour, Hair, that they can never embody with us, and grow up into orderly Families, to the Peopling of the Land." Although holding such segregationist views, he maintained that "These Ethiopians, as black as they are; seeing they are the Sons and Daughters of the First Adam, the Brethren and Sisters of the Last ADAM, and the Offspring of God; They ought to be treated with a Respect agreeable."

His essay "Talitha Cumi", first published in 1725, refers to the "right of women."

When the periwig became fashionable in New England, Sewall condemned the fashion vehemently, in contrast to Cotton Mather, who saw no reason why a Puritan should not wear a wig.

His Journal, kept from 1673 to 1729, describes his life as a Puritan against the changing tide of colonial life, as the devoutly religious community of Massachusetts gradually adopted more secular attitudes and emerged as a liberal, cosmopolitan-minded community. As such, the diary is an important work for understanding the transformation of the colony in the decades before the American Revolution.