Comparing The Salem Witch Trials And The Kent State Riots

The Salem Witch Trials and the Spanish Inquisition were both the outcomes of religious fears. These events in history share several similarities, including the way people were accused and punished. The witch trials and Spanish Inquisition were used to cleanse the people. In both cases the accused did not have fair proceedings which resulted in wrongly accused innocent people. Although the Spanish Inquisition was more gruesome due to the horrific torture prisoners went through they both resulted in many unjustified deaths.

How is the Kent State Shootings similar to The Salem Witch Trials? Both events are similar because innocent lives were lost, arrests were made, people were scared for their lives, and there were trials held for both events. Both left a mark on American history.

Many people are only familiar with the Salem witch trials that were held in Massachusetts, however this book “Escaping Salem: The Other Witch Hunt of 1692” by Richard Godbeer sheds light and explains the witch hunt that took place in Stamford Connecticut in 1692 in a normal colonial home. The story that many people are not familiar with is that a young 17 year old maidservant by the name of Katherine Branch was accused of witch craft when she began to show the town of Stamford her possession. Kate worked for Danial and Abagail Wescot who were the first to witness these “fits” that soon traveled to their daughter. It was not long until accusations and rumors flooded this colonial town. This story goes into depth of the trial, court systems, religion and the colonial period as a whole to allow us individually to make our own decisions on the alleged accusations against Katherine Branch.

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.

Do The Salem Witch Trials and The Scottsboro Trials relate? The Salem Witch Trials and The Scottsboro Trials represent people that were blamed for things that they didn’t do. The consequences consisted of jail time and even murder.

During the Salem Witch Trials, young women were accused of conjuring evil spirits.(Salem Witch Trial) Several local women were accused of performing witchcraft in the woods of their town.(Salem Witch Trial) Not all of the girls confessed to being in the wood conjuring so they started accusing others to make them seem innocent.(Salem Witch Trial) All of the accusers appeared in the courtroom to retrieve question to find the truth.(Salem Witch Trial) By the time the court came to a conclusion the trial was ruled unlawful.(Salem Witch Trial)

Compare and Contrast Essay Between Two Cultures What was it like during the Salem Witch Trials compared to our culture? In this essay, I will be comparing and contrasting what the culture was like during the Salem Witch Trials from our culture, based on the non-fiction book Witches! The Absolutely True Tale of Disaster in Salem.

The Salem Witch Trials is know for its hunt of supposed witches. The occurrence first began with the appearance of certain symptoms in a little girl, Betty Parris. The high superstition was immediately taken advantage of by adults, with the leaders being Samuel Sewall, Samuel Parris, Governor Phipps, William Stoughton, and John Putnam. Its origin belonged to the boredom of three teenage girls, Betty Parris, Ann Putnam, and Mercy Lewis, who was diagnosed by the doctor as having been influenced by witchcraft. The first person accused of witchcraft was Tituba, who soon confessed about seeing the devil, despite being innocent. This caused an outrage and fully launched the witch hunt(Douglas).

“Witch Hunt” is a term often thrown around whenever a group of people is being sought out and punished for their actions, regardless of whether they are actually guilty or not. Throughout history, there have been hundreds of different “witch hunts”, and not all of them have been hunting for witches. A few examples include the persecution of Muslims in post-9/11 USA, the sexual assault allegations of male celebrities and politicians being brought to light in 2017, and the search for communists through McCarthyism in the 1950’s. The most famous witch hunt that involved witches, though, occurred in a small village in Massachusetts called Salem, in 1692. But what caused these trials, and what made them so different from all of the others? There were no witches in Salem, but there was the impact of a sexist society on teenage girls, a desperate grab for land, and a malfunctioning legal system that allowed innocent people to be put to death. These are the three main causes of the famed Salem Witch Trials.

The Salem witch trials were a dark time in American history. It all started when Reverend Parris’ daughter and niece were acting strangely after spending time with Parris’ slave Tituba. For example, “They were believed to have danced a black magic dance in the nearby woods. Several of the girls would fall to the floor and scream hysterically” (“Witchcraft in Salem”). Parris then believed that Tituba along with two other women had bewitched his daughter and niece, thus starting the witch hunt.

The Salem Witch Trials occurred in seventeenth century Massachusetts. The small Puritan town of Salem was first burdened with the accusations of witchcraft in January of 1692, according to the article “Salem Witch Trials” on “History.com.” The article also states that two local girls, Elizabeth Parris and Abigail Williams, began having violent fits accompanied with bloodcurdling screams (“Salem Witch Trials). When the girls never healed, the town doctor, William Griggs, was called to the girls’ homes says the article “The 1962 Salem Witch Trials.”

Nineteen people were hung, four people died in jail, and one man was pressed to death during the Salem Witch Trials Hysteria of 1692. (Document A) Because of actors and attention seekers, neighbor conflicts, and gender, marital status, and age, many people were executed. (video notes) The Salem Witch Trials Hysteria of 1692 was a tragic period of time when many innocent people lost their lives and people lived in fear. (video notes) In England, Pope Innocent VIII had declared heresy to witchcraft. (video notes) Since then, witch hunts had been held for over 300 years. (video notes) During this time, around 40,000-50,000 people were executed due to witchcraft accusations. (video notes) The most tragedies happened in the small community of Salem. (video notes) This was known as the Salem Witch Trials Hysteria of 1692. (video notes) So what caused these innocent people to die?

Witch hysterias have occurred around the world, however, there are many variations of how and why suspected witches were tried. Although they occurred a few decades apart, the Salem Witch Trials and the witch trials in Great Britain have a variety of parallels.

This started the hysterical beginning of the Salem Witch trials, which resulted in many women, men, and children being accused of practicing witchcraft. Out of the one hundred fifty people accused in Salem, twenty of them were executed as witches, while others rotted away and died in jail. The people of Salem did not discriminate who they executed or who they sent to jail so the result was a diverse range of citizens being accused.

Many people know of the Salem witch trials that took place in Salem, Massachusetts in the year 1692 spilling over into the year 1693. But for those who do not know, the Salem witch trials were a series of trials against men, women, and children accused of being a witch and or practicing witchcraft. In “The Devils Snare: The Salem Witch Trials of 1692” by Mary Beth Norton, the author recollects the stories of real life accounts of those accusers and the accused in Salem during that time. Mary Beth Norton explains the Salem witch trials differently than other books and articles by giving wide-ranging background on incidents leading toward the trials and how events in history were related to the trials.