Outcomes, Causes And Forms Of The Salem Witch Trials

First to know is what exactly a puritan is. A puritan is a member of a group of English Protestants of the late 16th and 17th centuries who regarded the Reformation of the Church of England under Elizabeth as incomplete and sought to simplify and regulate forms

The Salem Witch Trials have gone down in history as a very brutal and cruel time, due to the fact that several innocent people were convicted and murdered because of false accusations. Today we look back on the trials seeing that it has not only affected our mentality, but incredibly so, our government as well.

There seems to be something important missing here. The people of Salem believed in God and the devil just as fervently a few years later, when they looked back on their witchcraft hysteria with shame. The insidious nature of an accusation such as witchcraft is missing--there was no defense, only throwing oneself on the mercy of the court, and ingratiating oneself by accusing others. The people who confessed did so in the expectation that they would be granted their lives. The accused who in turn accused others did so for the same reason. This was what fueled the hysteria--the pressure to confess and to implicate others. Those who claimed to have met the devil alone were pressured to name accomplices. The same technique has been used in other

In Rosalyn Schanzer’s Witches! The Absolutely True Tale of Disaster in Salem, the town of Salem, Massachusetts, falls into a desperate frenzy of witchcraft accusations. During the cold winter months of early 1692, two young girls became afflicted with an unknown, dread disease. With a lack of technology and an abundance of superstition, they are diagnosed as bewitched! Desperate for a cure as the illness spreads, the townspeople embark on a witch hunt. In the end, twenty-five lives were lost due to the hysteria. However, the lessons learned during the Salem Witch Trials have helped to shape the modern American legal system for the better. For example, the trials changed the lack of defense provided to the accused, the protocols and policies

In the early seventeenth century many practicing Christians and those of other religions believed that the Devil could grant “witches” the ability to hurt people in return for their loyalty. From the 1300s to early 1600 the “witch craze” (Blumberg) struck Europe accusing many of being witches. In 1889 King William of England pronounced a war with France in the American colonies known as King William’s War. The war hit regions of New York, Nova Scotia, and Quebec, sending refugees to the Essex County and Salem Village in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This caused the spread of hysteria from Europe to the American colonies. Accusations of witches drove Salem, Massachusetts into a state of hysteria causing the

Throughout history people have turned to events to distract themselves from what was going on in their lives. The ways that they distract themselves could be something as simple as doing a puzzle or as extreme as blaming others for something to create drama, the Salem Witch Trials were no different. The Salem Witch Trials served as a way for the colonists to distract themselves from the struggles that they were facing such as economic hardships, teenagers being bored, and the feuds between people in the colony, these things ultimately lead to this terrible tragedy.

Puritans were English Protestants that wanted to purify the Church of England and were an unsuitable piece to the Roman Catholicism. The Puritans

Because the Puritans believed that Native Americans should convert to Christianity it lead to “Religious differences between the two groups prevented each group from having a common understanding of another and led to each one seeing demons and devils in the other”. The Puritans thought it was their job to tell the Native Americans about the Bible and the Christian God. The Puritans were very narrow-minded when it came to religion. They claimed the religious beliefs and the rituals of the Indians were the ways the devil and witches act.

The trial begins in 1692, in Massachusetts. After three young girls in the Salem village claimed to be possessed by the devil, they accused other individuals of witchcraft. A hysteria began in September of 1692 and everybody started turning on eachother. Several people were charged with witchcraft and either got hung or served time in jail. Although the Massachusetts General Court later annulled guilty verdicts against accused witchcraft. According to others, the devil gave number of people (witches) the ability to harm others. Soon three little girls began to throw fits, such as violence and uncontrollable outbursts of screaming. They were diagnosed with bewitchment and soon others started growing the same symptoms. Later on, in February, arrest warrants were taken place with three other adults.

Devastation come in all shapes and forms. Whether it is a hurricane that has destroyed a whole city or a plague that’s whipped out a whole country. In today’s society, we are able to track a hurricane and evacuate all nearby populaces before it arrives and a plague is highly unlikely due to our modern medicines, many different vaccines that have been and still are being created. However, in Salem Massachusetts, a devastation occurred that was unprecedented. It was not a hurricane or even a plague that had killed innocent people, but a group of girls. Could this have been prevented and lives saved? This paper will discuss the events that occurred in Salem in 1692 and the impact it had on the community.

Puritanism arose in the late 16th century, when a religious reformation was going on with the Church of England. The Puritans believed that society should be pure and they strove to live for God. The Puritan culture and way of life was heavily based upon what the Bible said and the word of God. Puritans were a very strict group of people in every aspect of their lives, from the way they held church, to what they did on certain days of the week. As a whole, the Puritan society emphasized the righteousness and the sovereignty of God, moral values and the belief of predestination, and lived their lives according to the scripture in the Bible as Godly examples in society.

There has been a lot of historic events take place in the United States that made it

People fear what they don't understand. We as a people are very superstitious and bias toward certain ideas, places, or people. One thing that has unsettled humans throughout all the ages is magic and the unexplainable. It may not freak us out as much as it did in 17 century but the supernatural still spooks us. An infamous example is the Salem Witch Trials, “Between 1692 and 1693, more than 200 people in colonial-era Salem, Massachusetts were falsely accused of practicing witchcraft, and 19 of them were executed.” (Kiger 1) The implications of this historical event reflect the social, political and religious tensions of that day.

We all know the state of Massachusetts, and it’s famous town of Salem. However, do we know what really happened and why it happen for it to be known as the “town of witches”? I started wondering, what did make Salem, Massachusetts such an attraction and what are the historical factors behind it.

Trials illustrated the fault of a legal system that depended on rumor evidence and promoted