Accusation And Defense Of The Salem Witchcraft Trials

In January 1692, when a group of juvenile girls began to display bizarre behavior, the tight-knit Puritan community of Salem, Massachusetts couldn’t explain the unusual afflictions and came to a conclusion. Witches had invaded Salem. This was the beginning of a period of mass hysteria known as The Salem Witch Trials. Hundreds of people were falsely accused of witchcraft and many paid the ultimate price of death. Nineteen people were hung, one was pressed to death, and as many as thirteen more died in prison. One of the accused Elizabeth Bassett Proctor, a faithful wife and mother, endured her fictitious accusation with honor and integrity.

Neighbors accused neighbors of witchcraft, and the fright was mounting. (Sutter par. 4) The accused were mostly women, and to make them confess, different methods of torture were used. The confessions and trials of the accused witches were nonsense. Often, torture would continue until the victim had no choice but to confess of being a witch, and most of the confessions were forced. Trials and hangings continued and by the early autumn of 1692, doubts were developing as to how so many respectable people could be guilty. The educated elite of the colony began efforts to end the witch-hunting hysteria that had enveloped Salem. Increase Mather then published a work entitled Cases of Conscience, which argues that it were better that ten suspected witches should escape than one innocent person should be condemned. This urged the court to exclude spectral evidence. With spectral evidence not permitted, the remaining trials ended in acquittals and all the convicted and accused witches were let out of jail in May of 1693. By the time the whole witchcraft incident ended, nineteen convicted witches were hanged, at least four accused witches had died in prison, and one man, Giles Corey, had been pressed to death under rocks. About one to two hundred other people were arrested and imprisoned on witchcraft charges. The witchcraft accusations in Salem had taken the lives of at least twenty-four people.

The Salem Witchcraft trials was an outrageous event that began in 1692, and ended May of 1693 seeing the execution of many people. Unfortunately most of the victims of this phenomenon were women. For the most part these women were accused for very trivial reasons, such as for being widowed, being of old age and living alone, or for simply collecting herbs and other plants. During this time in history women and men were treated very differently both as they should contribute in the home and in society, this would have presented reasons as to why women were predominantly accused of witchcraft, along with any religious beliefs. The Crucible by Arthur Miller takes place at a time of a patriarchal society, the roles of men and women were different, along with how they were treated overall in society. This contributed to the stereotype of women being the ones predominantly associated with witchcraft.

Scholars also believed that Mathers dramatic description of the devil's activity on the Goodwin’s young children might have caused the first act of witchcraft among the young girls in the Salem Village. Mather was not involved in the trials, but he wrote a letter to John Richards, one of the magistrates in the trials, persuading caution in the use of spectral evidence. Mather also wrote “Return of the Several Ministers”, a report sent to the judges of the Salem court. It was a carefully worded document that persuaded caution in the use of spectral evidence , suggesting that the devil could change his shape, or denounce the use of spectral evidence in the trials, though he was warning the judges, they saw it as him saying it was okay to move forward and they approved the trials to do so. Eyewitnesses have thoughts that Mather was more involved in the trials. Mather, is preyed upon in history, because of the information in Robert Calef’s book, “More Wonders of the Invisible world” of his actions while at the hanging of George Burroughs, a former Salem minister. Calef had said that Burroughs perfectly recited the Lord's Prayer, while on the wooden structure, being fitted for his noose, Mather thought this was impossible for anyone who was guilty of a friendship

Witch trials are not new to people who know or enjoy history, in fact, they are a staple of Early Modern European history. It is a common misconception that witch trials were nothing but an excuse to hunt shadows and get back at people they did not like, that there was a sense of mad hysteria like in The Crucible. The Trial of Tempel Anneke is a trial record from 1663 that on the surface does not have much too it, but in fact shows the reader a lot of the inner psyche of common people from this time as well as how empirical the courts were in these court trials

The Salem Witch Trials was a very dark period in our history that occurred in the colony of Salem, Massachusetts. These trials began in February 1692 and ended in May of 1693. There were over two hundred individuals who were accused of practicing witchcraft. Of those two hundred accused, nearly twenty innocent souls were lost. This was one of the most severe cases of mass hysteria in recorded history. There was a great effort exhorted by the Massachusetts General Court to declare a guilty verdict, that the framers of the United States Constitution went to great lengths to never let this type of tragedy occur again; commonly known as the eighth amendment. Remarkably so, some may argue that there were similarities in Salem and the

The Salem Witch Trials began during the spring of 1692 after a group of young girls in Salem Village, MA, said they were being possessed by the devil and accused local women of witchcraft. With chaos running around the village, the special court began taking on cases. Bridget Bishop, the first convicted witch, was hung that June month. Many people of the Salem community had major consequences including death and harrassment. Belief that the devil could give certain humans, or witches, power to harm others in return for their loyalty emerged throughout europe as early as the 14th century. All of this chaos and phenomenon led to a pointing fingers game of who is guilty. Chaos also brought up the question of why it happened, malice, spite, or

My friend Cotton Mather and two other judges came to my house, the day before my first case, to talk about the conflict with the Indians. Also, he talked about his new published book, Memorable Providences, in which he described the suspected witchcraft of an Irish woman in Boston (Linder). In his book, it is stated that the Goodwin children, who were afflicted by witchcraft, were of good character and “it was perfectly impossible for any dissimulation of theirs to produce what scores of spectators were amazed at (Rosenthal 2). Then Mather gave me a paper and said that it has the information that I would need for my case. I thanked him for that because he is an expert in the matter of witch craft. After they left my house, I went to my neighbor’s house to visit my ill friend and his family. He had two daughters and I feared that they would show the behavior of the afflicted children

The Salem Witch Trials, also know as the Salem Witchcraft Trials were legal proceedings which took place of course in the Salem Village of Massachusetts. These trials began during the spring of 1692, after a group of young girls in the village, claimed to be possessed by the devil accusing several local women of practicing the craft. Victims were prosecuted and executed for reputedly practicing witchcraft, when little to no evidence of the act itself existed. This historical period resulted in twenty people, mostly women, being hung for black magic conspiracies. Neighbors accused neighbors; even church members accused other church members of witchcraft. Others were accused, but fled the area before they could be arrested. During this time

In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, he writes, “We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!” (Miller 77). This partially fictionalized tale of the Salem Witch Trials points to one of the causes of the trials, vengeance, but the over dramatized tale 's early stages were quiet. The Salem Witch Episode had humble beginnings in the town of Salem Village, Massachusetts, but evolved into one of the most widely known witch trials in American History. The gallows in Salem claimed the lives of nineteen men and woman during the spring and summer of 1692 due to the accusations of witchcraft with over a hundred people who were accused. After all the terror and the uproar of the trials occurred, everything came to a screeching halt (Linder 1). Due to the unique circumstances of this particular set of witch trials, from the rampant accusations to the discontinuation of the trials mass hysteria does not seem to be fault as with other witch trials, but a variety of factors. The Salem witch trials were not just a simple case of mass hysteria, but a combination of factors ranging from poisons to superstitions to scapegoats, resulting in the outbreak of the Salem Witch episode.

History shows the remarkable things that society has done over the years, it also shows where society failed and mistakes were made. This is the case of the Salem Witch Trials. The people of Salem experienced an event that would change them and the course of this country forever. The mass hysteria and rampant paranoia that swept New England in 1692, is what turned neighbor against neighbor. The Salem villagers would accuse one another of casting spells, consorting with the devil, and being witches, all of which was a punishable crime in the 17th century. ("Search")

The Salem witch trials were a difficult time for the citizens of the Massachusetts Colony in the late seventeenth century. They were accused of practicing the Devil’s magic, which many believed to be real; so real that people were being imprisoned and executed for it. Between the years 1692 and 1693 there were over two hundred accusations and about 20 people and two dogs were killed altogether.

History generally regards the period of Salem witchcraft trials as a radical instatement of religious zeal which favored superstition over reason and targeted a large number of women over a much smaller number of men. Admittedly, the 1692 witchcraft crisis is a very complex historical episode, yet seeing as the majority of the people involved were women, it can be perceived as a gender issue, and illustrative for the definition of the role of women in New England. The present work's aim is to outline the colonial mindset concerning women and present relevant theories by means of analyzing three cases of witchcraft accusation together with delving into the accusers' perspective.

The parallel continues in regards to the presentation of evidence. In modern child abuse cases, authorities historically tended to believe what children said because they did not want to believe that they could make up such harsh accusations. However, this blind faith in a child’s testimony has recently been challenged as children have been increasingly educated on the warning signs of abuse and are, therefore, more capable of making fake accusations. Much the same, the authorities in Salem did not want to believe the girls could make up such severe claims of witchcraft, even though they had been increasingly made aware of the folklore and, therefore, able to “fake the symptoms.”

During the seventeenth century, many Puritans became fed up with the Church of England and its devilish ways. They wanted to break free from it, and make changes elsewhere. They got permission to set up a colony in Massachusetts Bay, and soon after that, over twenty-thousand Puritans fled from England to America. They decided to base their colony on the word of God, and believed God would protect them if they followed his commandments. This meant that if anyone were to sin, “they didn’t want God to protect them because they already worshiped the devil,” and “anyone who worshipped the devil was a witch who used witchcraft to possess others.” Because of this theory, many people were accused of being witches and using witchcraft. The most notorious series of hearings and prosecutions for those accused of witchcraft took place in Salem Village, Massachusetts, known as the Salem Witch Trials.