The Salem Witch Trials, The World Behind The Hysteria

Between June 10 and September 22, 1692, 20 people were put to death in Salem Massachusetts for witchcraft. Neighbors turned on neighbors, women turned on women. Nobody was necessarily safe from being accused of witchcraft. During the time of the 1600s many English immigrants arrived in New England, a number of them being Puritans. They came to New England to practice Christianity in ways they felt were pure. To help guide the Puritans through life, they read the bible. Whatever the bible said, they believed and one subject was about the Devil. One of the tricks the Devil used, was to enter a normal person’s body and turn that person into a witch. A witch could cause terrible damage. Of course, the Puritans believed it, so every bad act they saw, they often accused the person of being a witch. What

In the 1600’s, a group called the Protestant Christians also known as the Puritans immigrated to New England (modern day east United States) to break away from the Church of England. The Puritans were hoping to improving Christianity and to worship the Lord. As days went by, the Puritans started to make progress on their settlement that they started building when they arrived called Salem. Years and years were the same old lifestyle in the Puritans colony. But in the fall of 1692 a lot of things went wrong. The trouble began when a group of young girls began to show strange behavior. These girls started accusing people of bewitching them and that is what started the Salem Witch Trials Hysteria. Gender roles and

During the summer of 1692, 19 women and men were hung in Salem for being accused of having practiced witchcraft. These people were the Puritans, immigrants from England who had come to the United States in search of a land that wasn’t influenced by Protestant Christianity. Being fundamentalists, the Puritans believed that every word of the bible to be the truth, hence, they believed in witchcraft, evil spirits, and the devil. This interpretation of the Bible, though, allowed them to persecute innocent people for being witches that caused havoc in their society. Although there were many, the three main causes of the hysteria in the Salem Witch Trials were the Puritans’ everlasting belief in the Bible, the power of suggestion, as well as the

A quote from the King James Bible, Exodus 22:18, states that “thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Doc A). Puritans, who made up the majority of the Massachusetts colony, were fundamentalists. Fundamentalists believed that everything the Bible said must be followed to the letter. When people were being accused of witchcraft and were found guilty, the Puritans sent them to Gallows Hill to be hanged, because the Bible said to kill witches. Respected church officials like Cotton Mather, who was a respected minister and intellectual, wrote, “Go tell mankind, that there are devils and witches” is a quote from one of his written works (Doc C). There were many other powerful leaders like Cotton Mather who were tied to the church and could spread word of the ‘evil sorcery’. Again, the fundamentalist Puritans obeyed the religious leaders because they were God’s messengers, and God’s word was the law. A large part of the Massachusetts colony life was religious belief, and the rush of the Salem Witchcraft trials was largely because of it. However, there was one more thing that caused the Salem Witchcraft trials - personal relationships between two families and the two sides of the

The 1690s were a terrible time, full of accusations, lies and death, a scary time for all those in New England, especially in Salem, Massachusetts. The Salem Witch Trials were a result of a Puritan theocracy, in which the Puritans destroyed the lives of innocent women all the while believing they were doing the right thing. A Puritan theocracy meant that all aspects of the ruled area were controlled by the church. The Puritans were extremely strict about creating a perfect Puritan society, the oppression of women was prominent during this time and there was intense pressure to be a model citizen, making no mistakes. Religion ruled the life of a Puritan, it controlled every aspect of their lives.

 The Salem Witch Trial consisted of heinous accusations implicated by Cotton Mather which effected society as a hole and gave reasoning to the numerous amount of witch stories we hear today. Cotton Mather was the eldest son of Increase Mather, Massachusetts most influential and well known Puritan minister, and the grandson of John Cotton, Salem’s spiritual founder. Cotton Mather was born in Boston Massachusetts and attended Harvard University, receiving an honors degree from Glasgow University. Mather was pastor of Boston 's second protestant church and began his journey into politics in 1689.

The hysteria of the Salem Witch Trials commenced in the spring of 1692 when, the daughter of Reverend Parris, Elizabeth Parris, the niece of Reverend Parris, Abigail Williams and Ann Putnam a girl who associated herself with Elizabeth and Abigail and began to act strange and have bizarre fits. This was nowhere near ordinary to the villagers and the word began to spread through the village. After a doctor visited the girls to see the reasons for their strange attitudes, he concluded that the reason behind all of it was due to something unnatural. The doctor determined that the girls were being bewitched by someone. Soon after recovery the girls began to blame women of witchcraft causing an uproar in the village (1).

The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 was first brought about as a game by young adolescent girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts. The young girls had falsely claimed they were possessed by devilish beings which were innocent men and women of Salem Village causing an uproar of witchcraft in their village. I believe the great hysteria of the Salem Witch Trials was solely out of boredom, meaning it was a break from the norm and caused excitement quite easily. Those who were accused went to “trial” but given the behavior of the young girls who had claimed to be possessed made it impossible to walk free. Those who went to trial were hanged at the hanging tree for the practice of witchcraft whether there was proof or not.

A vast amount of trials was held in Salem, Massachusetts due to social and religious aspect during the 16th century, and made the received punishment based on if one was to confess or deny of being a witch. The general public in Salem branched off of the Christian primary belief into a religious group called the Puritans, which was a new practice to purify the church from all sins and the devil. The trials came about from an upbringing of unanswered question and unexplained acts of a person that went through seizures spoke of blasphemy, and trance-like states (Sommerville). These social predictions of unanswered reasons and act arose to religious factors of explaining all acts as part of the devil. The accusers were mainly made up of females

The Salem Witch Trial hysteria of 1692 caused 20 people to be hung or pressed to death and 4 perished in jail. In addition, 200 people in Salem were accused of being witches. On June 10 of 1692, Bridget Bishop was charged with practicing witchcraft and she was also accused of bewitching her husband to death. The result of her not confessing was that she was hung to her death. All of this frenzy started in the house of Samuel Parris. His daughters were consumed by the bizarre tales told by their Indian slave, Tituba. Over the next several months, the girls array strange behavior. After arriving at court, the young girls accused two white women and Tituba of practicing witchcraft. After this strange incident, the people of Salem started to

Between the 1300s and 1600s, there had been an uprising of witch accusations in Europe. When it finally died down, the craze soon followed into the colony of Massachusetts Bay. While in the 1690s, the Salem Witch Trials threatened New England’s freedom of religion and conservative beliefs; the evil entity as well threatened the country’s political and economic system, giving the government a reason to get involved. Because Massachusetts Bay was filled with religious refugees from England, a lot of tension formed between the colonies, England, and France. The King Williams War between France and the English colonies had put a tremendous strain on the Salem resources and its people. The colony was barely able to support itself and when more refugees fled to Salem from sounding areas, it came close to collapsing. Within the Puritan community, there had been a lot of hardship and strenuous issues mainly due to the shift between the people in society at the time. The Salem Witch Trials were not influenced by the presence of witchcraft but rather the exhausting hardships, the societal changes and the desire for complete control of the Puritan community.

Introduction - The Salem Witch trials was a time of hysteria and confusion. People were being accused and giving false confessions of witchcraft being performed on the people of Salem, Massachusetts.

The Salem witch trials were a result of mass hysteria. It was caused by false accusations. On May 1693, fourteen women, five men, and two dogs were executed for supposed supernatural crimes. The Salem trials have a unique place in our collective history today. (" Saxon, V,Procedure Used in...").

In 1692-1693, the Salem Witch Trial Hysteria occurred, resulting in 20 deaths out of the 200 accused of practicing the Devil’s magic, a practice that women were commonly accused of. Salem, Massachusetts, was a colony that consisted of Puritans, both Separatists and non Separatists alike. From the start, the Puritans believed that the Bible was true in all aspects: every word, every idea, every thought--was true. The Puritans also had minimal understanding of science, which led them to believe that phenomenon was an act of the Devil. Thus, when three young girls admitted to seeing demons and started behaving strangely, the Puritans grew progressively hysterical because they became more convinced that witches existed within Salem as they had little scientific knowledge. In a nutshell, the cause of the Salem Witch Trial Hysteria were Puritan fundamentalism, misogyny, and hysteria.

Throughout history, there have been many cases of discriminatory accusations of people, including the Salem Witch Trials. The Salem Witch Trials were a string of trials, hearings and prosecutions of many people accused of witchcraft in Massachusetts between the dates of February 1692 and May 1693. The trials ended up leading to the execution of twenty people, men and women, but mainly women. The Salem Witch Trials that took place about three hundred years ago affected the lives of everyday civilians during that time in ways such as politically, religiously, economically, fearfully, mentally, and sometimes in other various other ways.