The Salem Witch Trials of 1692

During the 1600’s in the United States there was much economic and religious dissention within the Puritan society: a group of English reformed protestants who pursued the Purification of the Church of England. Among these issues, is the hysteria of the Salem Witch Trials that prosecuted women to be found worshippers of the devil. The Puritans found the necessity to exercise this crusade in order to stay by their moral codes of conformity which included witchcraft to be the greatest crime, punishable by death. However, the true reasons of the trials was not to simply follow their religious constitutions. It is mainly in part from corruption of religion and how some had used the trials as a form of personal gain, the influences of the attitudes from the strict Puritan lifestyle, the need for unification between the Salem factions, and the society’s fear of evil.

The Salem Witch Trials brought havoc among the citizens of Salem, Massachusetts starting in 1692. Many of the people within the town continued to have strong loyalties to their new Puritan religion and their old king back home. The church of England had moved away from the Catholic religion with the help of King Henry VIII and the Puritans were a new group of people who accepted the split from Catholicism but still believed that the church of England had a lot of aspects that remained with the Catholic religion. Despite this, loyalty to the king remained strong because the Puritans were not looking to break off from the Church of England instead they wanted to reform the religion and make it their own. These loyalties stretched to such an extent that any sin committed was also considered an act of treason and thus punished. The Salem community was constantly searching for evil within their town to prove their righteousness to God which lead to high rates of fear and paranoia in their daily lives. The strict Puritan religion soon became the root cause of the monstrous imagination that started to form within the community of Salem. Many people still feared the presence of Catholic ideas within their communities and in response were willing to go to any extent to irradiate these views. Some historians also account the beginning of the trials to divisions within the two towns of Salem that lead to tensions and turmoil between the townsmen. But without the increased belief in their new religion, women around town wouldn’t have been persecuted. The strict belief in the Puritan religion and culture was the root cause of fear and paranoia that led to the mass execution of many women and townspeople during the Salem Witch Trials.

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 were a dark time in our history, filled with paranoia, betrayal, the innocence of children, and vengeance.The incident would be so severe that it would leave bitter scars that have continued to this day.

During the seventeenth century, many Puritans became fed up with the Church of England and its devilish ways. They wanted to break free from it, and make changes elsewhere. They got permission to set up a colony in Massachusetts Bay, and soon after that, over twenty-thousand Puritans fled from England to America. They decided to base their colony on the word of God, and believed God would protect them if they followed his commandments. This meant that if anyone were to sin, “they didn’t want God to protect them because they already worshiped the devil,” and “anyone who worshipped the devil was a witch who used witchcraft to possess others.” Because of this theory, many people were accused of being witches and using witchcraft. The most notorious series of hearings and prosecutions for those accused of witchcraft took place in Salem Village, Massachusetts, known as the Salem Witch Trials.

The Salem Witch Trials were a sequence of hearings, prosecutions, and hangings of people who were thought to be involved in witchcraft in Massachusetts. These trials occurred between February 1692 and May 1693("The Salem Witch Trials, 1692." ). The Trials resulted in the execution of twenty people, in fact, most of them were women. The first of the trials began in several towns in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, such as Salem Village (currently known as Danvers), Salem Town, Ipswich, and Andover("Salem Witch Museum." ). The most infamous trials were tried by the Court of Oyer and Terminer in 1692, in Salem Town. Robert Calef, the author of More Wonders of the Invisible World, a book composed throughout the mid-1690s denouncing the recent Salem witch trials of 1692, summarized the trials saying

Robert Calef was a merchant in Massachusetts during the witch hunts of 1692. The primary source that is being analyzed isn’t about him but is from many stories that he collected and put them together in a manuscript. This manuscript that contains true accounts about the trial and it included the attempted escape of Mrs. Cary of Charlestown Massachusetts told from her husband Nathaniel Cary’s viewpoint. I believe that Nathaniel Cary wanted this account to be written in order to highlight and expose how the puritans handled the witch trials and specifically the trial against his wife and to inform people of what was truly happening in New England at the time. In this primary source analysis, I will be discussing what this document tells us

A Puritan defined 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 of worship.” Puritan society in America depended on the belief that all members were working for the glory of God. The Puritans did not allow deviations from the strict code of behavior which would not allow any member to have individuality. They restricted any type of entertainment, except that which was endorsed by the church. They worked and worshipped.

Human beings always have been curious creatures. We are a species that is always searching for answers to unexplainable events. Take aliens for example. To us, aliens may or may not exist (depending on your individual belief of course). Yet we still take such an interest in them that we continuously search for answers and proof of alien. Now that we have modern day technology, we can attain “proof” of alien life-form somewhere deep in outer space. But given the date 1692 in New England, if we were to even come in contact with aliens it would have been considered some supernatural phenomena, and even cause quite a bit of hysteria. That is what happened to the puritans in Salem village during the Salem Witch Trials, in Massachusetts, in the year 1962. The puritans of Salem village were extremely paranoid, and they believed that if something can’t be explained then it had the devils influence. So when a group of Salem girls spoke up about the devil and witches, the villagers of Salem went into a panicked frenzy. Truth of the matter is that there were no witches in Salem nor was the devil at war against Salem; the Salem Witch Trials were only a result of endless lies, conspiracies, and side effects of an illness.

The seventeenth century was a time of great religious excitement both in Europe and America. It had been widely believed even before the Puritans left England that witchcraft was a well-practiced profession in Europe. The times for settlers in the New America proved to be quite different and so ever changing. With many new rules, laws, regulations and curfew a true government was being born. Throughout this vast change, religious beliefs became so strong to be studied and participated in. Religions that divided from Christianity and Catholic beliefs, such as Puritans, who had a clear vision of what their churches were going to be like. Witchcraft had been a crime a long time before the trials in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and prior

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.

The Salem witch trials were a difficult time for the citizens of the Massachusetts Colony in the late seventeenth century. They were accused of practicing the Devil’s magic, which many believed to be real; so real that people were being imprisoned and executed for it. Between the years 1692 and 1693 there were over two hundred accusations and about 20 people and two dogs were killed altogether.

The first large group of colonists to come to the new world were Puritans who were strict Christians that wanted to purify the church of England. When they couldn’t, they moved to America in order to freely practice their form of Christianity. Due to their strict beliefs, Puritans were close minded individuals who looked down on anyone that did not have the same beliefs. Throughout the year 1692 in Salem village in the Massachusetts bay colony, two girls started to have “fits”; however, the doctors did not know what was happening to these girls, and this led to the accusations of witchcraft. The first person accused was the family’s maid, Tichiba, she was a Native American slave, and she would not be the only person accused. A pattern appeared throughout the trial that the supporters of a church in Salem village were the accusers who accused the opponents of this new church. Due to long feuds between different families the Witch Trials turned into ending those long feuds by accusing the person of being a Witch. Furthermore, during the trials Cotton Mather, a Puritan clergyman and highly educated individual, made account of the trials from a biased point of view. Mather wanted to continue the trials until every witch was found, and he created a hortatory address in order to urge the people of Salem to act and not stop the trials. After the trials had ended John Hale, a clergyman whose own wife was accused of witchcraft, decided to write an account of what happened from a

One of colonial America’s darkest times was during the Salem witch trials of the 17th

During the seventeenth century, many Puritans became fed up with the Church of England and its devilish ways. They wanted to break free from it, and make changes elsewhere. They got permission to set up a colony in Massachusetts Bay, and soon after that, over twenty-thousand Puritans fled from England to America. They decided to base their colony on the word of God, and believed God would protect them if they followed his commandments. This meant that if anyone were to sin, “they didn’t want God to protect them because they already worshiped the devil,” and “anyone who worshipped the devil was a witch who used witchcraft to possess others.” Because of this theory, many people were accused of being witches and using witchcraft. The most notorious series of hearings and prosecutions for those accused of witchcraft took place in Salem Village, Massachusetts, known as the Salem Witch Trials.