The Pros And Cons Of The Salem Witch Trials

It is often difficult to understand the thought process that other people’s might have had many years ago. A college professor and writer, Richard Godbeer attempts to explain the thought process of the people who were involved in witch trials in the year 1692 in his text “How Could They Believe That?”. He often tells students in college and high school that we can relate to how society was in 1692 and how their views on life, and specifically the supernatural forces, are completely justifiable. In this article he explains the social atmosphere, the environment in which the settlers lived in, as well as how thorough the process of persecution was.

In literature and in life, the opportunity of personal and corporate gain allows for easy manipulation of vulnerable circumstances, as seen primarily by the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. Based upon the accusations of multiple vindictive Salem residents, the lack of empirical evidence, the lack of division in the church and state, and the lack of proper leadership in Salem allowed for certain members of society to claim revenge, manipulate citizens, and gain unprecedented religious influence. The continuation of these incentives caused the Trials to rapidly turn into hysteria, with dozens killed, and hundreds more convicted of faulty acts. In The Crucible by Arthur Miller and “‘Homo Economicus’ and the Salem Witch Trials” by Franklin G. Mixon, Jr., the nature of Salem residents is exposed, explaining how greed and selfishness led to the conviction of multiple men and women in the fall of 1692. Although religion and the Puritan ideology played a major role in these shocking figures, without the motivation of personal and corporate profit, the Salem Witch Trials would not have had the same devastating effects.

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.

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 were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. These trials began after a group of young girls in Massachusetts claimed to be possessed by the devil and accused several other locals of witchcraft. After this broke out a special court convened in Salem to “hear and determine” (Mather 328)

The author focuses on the roles of the ministers in the town, highlighting the corruption in them by utilizing research that proves the ministers that participated in the Salem Witch Trail to be completely driven by money. The author, Ernest King, informs the audience that the reason behind the witch trials is because the ministers used witchcraft as an explanation to get money and land from fellow colonists. King also discusses how the witch-hunt prompted the New England area to transition from a traditional, religion-based society into a community with a more neutral rule system and a higher spirit of unity. Therefore, changing the focus from religious duty of the people to the church to the duties of each person as a citizen. The audience that this article is intended for is people who desire to deepened their knowledge and understanding of the Salem Witch Trials, however people with educational purposes and entertainment can read it. The tone conveyed to the audience is professional, as through the author is lecturing a room full of doctors. The author feels as though the Salem Witch Trials are a serious matter that changed America

The number of different interpretations of the Salem Witch Trials illustrates that historiography is ever changing. The historians, Hale, Starkey, Upham, Boyer and Nissenbaum, Caporal, Norton and Mattosian have all been fascinated by the trials in one way or another because they have all attempted to prove or disprove certain elements about the trials. By analysing their augments about the causes of the Salem Witch Crisis, it is evident that this historical event can be examined from a range of different perspectives and interpreted in a range of

The Salem Witch Trials was an uncanny and eerie event of hearings and prosecutions of people being accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts. Although it lasted from 1691 to 1692, it lead to more than 200 people, including men and women, being accused and arrested of witchcraft and 20 of those people executed. The hysteria began with two young girls: Elizabeth Parris and Abigail Williams claiming to be possessed by the devil, causing the “witch-fever” among the Salem village. In this essay the circumstances behind poor harvest, sickness and the conjecture of witches and witchcraft being highly considered as a cause in this era will be described. The Salem Witch Trials were caused by environmental factors because the Salem community had limited understanding of natural causes such as poor harvest, sickness and diseases.

The view that religious beliefs were behind the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 is predominantly incorrect. While the Puritan culture’s strong Christian beliefs did dictate the behaviour of New England society, for the authorities that instigated the Witch Trials, religion was a mere justification for their actions that allowed them to gain support by instilling in the masses the fear of a higher power. Their true motives lay in the political and social issues of the time, with Salem Town’s division due to two disputing families, the ever-present fear of smallpox, and the male population’s immense opposition to female independence and sexuality. Thus, while society had strong religious beliefs, they were merely a pretext for the political and social factors of family conflict, disease, and fear of women that were the true bases for the accusations dealt in 1692.

During the time period of 1691 to 1692 the town of Salem, a small thriving community within the Puritan Massachusetts Bay colony, was struck by widespread hysteria in the form of witch trials. The way these trials and accusations played out are historically unlike any other witch trials found in European and American history. Historians have pointed to a number of economic, political, and social changes of the then existing institutions throughout the Massachusetts Bay area to be the cause of the Salem witch trials, along with the direction they took. If studied closely however, it becomes apparent that the main cause for the Salem witch trials can be found in the way the people of Salem viewed and

The myths surrounding the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 spike the interest of historians and non-academics alike. These trials have been the concern of different historical articles, novels, plays, films, and even religious debates. One issue that is certain, is the hysteria of the community overwhelmed Salem, Massachusetts in 1692 and 1693. A particular primary source, “Accounts of the Salem Witchcraft Trials (1693)” by Cotton Mather, suggests that the actions brought forth provided proof of satanic work. Even though Mather was a contemporary observer, Mather fails to analyze the importance of the real contemporary issues displayed during the time of the trials. Furthermore, historian Kyle Koehler, takes a different approach in his review,

Doctor William Beaumont discovered that gastric juices digest food by treating a gunshot patient who’s wound healed forming a hole. Nazis are bad. Nazis performed inhumane experiments on many people they deemed as “inferior”. The “Angel of Death” Josef Mengele was fascinated with twins and conducted many experiments on them because they were “natural controls”. In the 1930s, German medical schools led such experiments in eugenics and promoted the concept of the Aryan purity. Mengele performed experiments such as: blood transfusions between twins, stitched two twins together as conjoined twins, electric shock, exposing women to high radiation subjecting them for sterilization, and even tossing escaped Jewish children in pits of burning gasoline. He escaped war criminal charges throughout the entirety of his life. After World War Two, German physicians pleaded that what they had done should not be considered war crimes because they had only been following orders and were not very different from what American physicians would do to captives. The Nuremberg trials created ten principles for ethical experimentation and that anyone should freely consent to participation. Similarly, American researchers experimented on orphans, inmates, mental institution patients, and military personnel. Soldiers were unknowingly introduced to mustard gas which was later tested as an anticancer drug. During times of war, protection of human rights was undervalued. American physicians injected many

The evidence of witchcraft and related works has been around for many centuries. Gradually, though, a mixture a religious, economical, and political reasons instigated different periods of fear and uncertainty among society. Witchcraft was thought of as a connection to the devil that made the victim do evil and strange deeds. (Sutter par. 1) In the sixteenth, seventeenth, and twentieth century, the hysteria over certain causes resulted in prosecution in the Salem Witch Trials, European Witchcraft Craze, and the McCarthy hearings. These three events all used uncertain and unjustly accusations to attack the accused.

The central issue at stake for people during the Salem witch trials were a series of hearing and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft. It all started in Salem Village, in colonial Massachusetts between 1692 and 1693. A man by the name of Richard Godbeer, the author of “The Salem Witch Hunt” and several other books is a professor at the University of Miami. Godbeer’s research and teaching interests center on colonial and revolutionary America. Also, his fields of interest are in gender, sex, witchcraft and religious culture.

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.