The Salem Witch Trials : Crisis

1. Salem, Massachusetts is known for the witch trails. The trails were all about how people claimed other residents in the town were witches to get the guilt of being called a which off of them. This phenomena spread though the entire town as people were proclaiming each other were witches and many were hanged for the crime of being a

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.

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, that occurred in colonial Massachusetts, were a hostile part of American history. People lived in a constant state of paranoia and fear. A great number of people were accused of practicing witchcraft, which was thought to be connected to the devil, and some were even executed. Eventually, the colony realized the faults in the trials. By reading the primary sources ‘A Modest Inquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft Chapter II’ by John Hale and Two Letters by Governor William Phips, we are able to discover a wealth of knowledge about the aforementioned trials. The two sources allow the reader to gain insight into how the trials were flawed by showing the nature of the Salem Witch Trials, the evidence used to find the witches guilty, and the role native americans played in the trials. While also exhibiting how primary sources can be a disadvantage in navigating through historical events.

Colonial Massachusetts in the late 1600s was very complex. The small colony consisted of mainly puritans, who had come to escape from the Church of England. Puritans believed that those chosen by God to be saved — the elect — would experience "conversion." In this process, God would reveal to the individual His grace, and the person would know he was saved. One of the many issues within the society was religion. A very big problem that would cause a lot of tension and problems later on was witchcraft. The Salem witchcraft hysteria started because of personal jealousies, it targeted those who went against puritan beliefs, and it was an explanation of all the weird things happening.

In 1692 mass hysteria broke out as the Salem Witch Trials came to their peak and executed 20 and imprisoned 200. Salem, located in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, was a highly religious community running away from England’s prosecution like many other colonies. They found themselves in multiple conflicts that slowly was tearing them a part and increasing tension among the colonists. In 1691, the new king and queen of England, Mary and William, issued a more antireligious charter. They combined the Massachusetts Bay colony, Plymouth, and several others so they could be under closer watch. The bay colony mostly consisted of Puritans who felt they were under attack and still under England’s strict religious persecution. They began to believe that the devil was punishing them by attacking them with external factors. This made their fear manifest to anxiety so real it could be easily manipulated by even children. All of this would lead to the demise of innocent people and the tearing apart of a community.

In January of 1692, two girls became ill, the daughter and niece of Reverend Samuel Parris. When their state did not improve the doctor, William Griggs, was called in to help. In June of 1692, the special court of Oyer and Terminer sat in Salem to hear the cases of witchcraft. Presided over by Chief Justice William Stoughton, the court was made up of magistrates and jurors.

In Rosalyn Schanzer Witches! The Absolutely True Tale of Disaster in Salem everybody started to accuse each other of being a witch. Which lead to witch hunts and trials, just because two girls woke up one morning having terrible fits. In the trials all the evidence that they had against the accused witches was spectral evidence and they also believed every bit of malarky that came out of the afflicted peoples mouths. The most unfair trials were the ones done by the court of oyer who were on the bandwagon for using spectral evidence and believing in everything.

The Salem Witch Trials were a questionable and scandalous time in New England history that led to the deaths of 14 women and 6 men, all of whom had been charged with practicing witchcraft. The trials were the result of the strange and unexplainable behavior of two young girls, who exhibited violent convulsions and uncontrollable outburst of screaming and fits that left them unable to see,speak or hear. After a local doctor examined them and found no physical reason for their fits, diagnosed them as bewitched. This diagnosis sent salem into hysteria and in the summer of 1692, nearly 200 people were accused and arrested for practicing witchcraft. In January of 1692, Betty Parris, age nine, and Abigail Williams, age eleven, the daughter and niece of Reverend Samuel Parris, began having what was recorded as fits. The girls threw things around the room, uttered strange sounds and contorted their bodies. They also started covering their ears during sermons. After their diagnosis, other young girls in the village began exhibiting the same symptoms. In February, scared by events, the villagers held fasts and prayed for the afflicted. Wanting the influence of witchcraft out of the village, the girls were pressured into providing names of whomever had bewitched them. Three women were named, Sarah Good, Sarah Osburne and an old slave named Tituba. It was easy to believe that the three women were guilty due to them being unpopular within the village. Sarah Good was a beggar and had

Over the course of a year, dozens of people, mostly teenage girls, claimed to be put in spells casted by men and women who had "enlisted the supernatural powers of the devil". This occurred in Salem village, a small village a few miles away from Salem town. The accusations started in the Parris household in 1962.

The Salem Witch Trials, taking place between February 1692 and May 1693, arose from a period of mass hysteria regarding witchcraft. The puritanical society of New England emphasized a need for a Bible-based society, which caused a fear of the supernatural and gave rise to the false accusations of “witches.” With testimonies of witches rooted in the Old Testament, the idea of witchcraft eventually made its way into the superstitious and everyday Puritan life, and was fueled by the rejection of the group during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.

The notorious witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts occurred from June through September. It is a brief, but turbulent period in history and the causes of the trials have long been a source of discussion among historians. Many try to explain or rationalize the bizarre

” She states this in order to emphasize that her study was better organized than it was written, and that maybe a better writer could have approached this theory in more depth and even with better detail. This researcher feels that this article was well supported but could’ve been better written. The author has also referred to Arthur Asher Miller’s “The Crucible.” She uses this as a reference in order to show that Norton fails to mention the most important literacy that happens to be the reason that the majority of living American’s knowledge of the Salem Witch Trials even exists. She stays organized by micro-critiquing both good aspects of Norton’s work and also the bad aspects. Balee states that Norton’s idea behind the witches of Salem was due to the fear of Indians. She then goes into the details of the first few accused witches and their situations and how they were handled. The author does not have bias towards the subject of the Salem Witch Trials because she spends most of her article critiquing someone else’s work instead of trying to build a different viewpoint for a separate work. She quotes much of Norton’s article “In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692,” as well as tearing it down word by word and explaining the viewpoint of how Norton approached this. The author sometimes uses vocabulary that is difficult to understand and she switches from the story and critiquing, but is overall comprehendible if you can keep up. The only way this

Could something like The Salem Witch Trials happen again? My answer is yes. The Salem Witch Trials started in the spring of 1692 when a group of girls claimed to be possessed by the devil. The village began fasting and praying to try and rid them from the devils influence in the month of February. Over time, more girls started to act possessed which only gave people more of a reason to believe in witches. The girls accused many local women in the Salem Village of preforming witch craft. During the month of March, many women were examined, charged or killed, if accused of being a witch. Victims of the witch hunt experienced different death penalties. Nineteen were hung, one had been crushed to death under the weight of stones, and many died

In the Delusion of Satan: The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials, Frances Hill, write the time period there were accusations that lead to the witch trials and executions in Salem Valley. “By studying what happen in Salem in detail, we can learn some valuable but painful lessons about the darkness and perversity of the human heart, and about some of the articular dilemmas that continued to afflict the Western spirt.”