The hangings of August 19 had offered fresh confirmation of a conspiracy of witches against the people of God. They also removed the last possibility for ambiguity as to who hanged and who did not: No confessor had yet gone to the gallows. A clear message appeared for those accused of witchcraft: Get out of the colony if possible, or, failing that, confess. Some did manage to escape; those who could not generally opted to save their lives by confession. Some even came to believe, under heavy psychological pressure, that they actually were witches.

From the point of view of those who had insisted on the reality of a witchcraft threat, these confessions justified the prosecutions, and the army of the Lord appeared in good shape; but sociologists know of a syndrome called “the failure of success.” As Cotton Mather would record in his Magnalia Christi Americana (1702),