Mather racialized political threat by casting dissenters as Black Devil agents to control crowds.

Evidence

Mather watched Burroughs plead his innocence at the execution site, and stir the “very great number” of spectators when he recited the Lord’s Prayer, something the judges said witches could not do. … The black Man stood and dictated to him!” Burroughs’s accuser shouted, trying and failing to calm the crowd. Mather heard the ticking time bomb of the spectators, sounding like the unruly masses during the 1689 revolt. As soon as Burroughs was hanged, Mather sought to quell the passions of the crowd by re-inscribing the executive policies of his ruling class into God’s law. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 155

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Kendi’s core inversion: racist policy/elite interest produces racist ideas (Black Devil) to justify executions — a pure instance of the causal structure the reader is testing. Also echoes Germantown antiracism thread from earlier chapters.