thesis statement examples for salem witch trials

• Suggestions on Salem Witch Trials Research Paper Topics

The Salem witch trials were prosecutions conducted of people indicted for witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. More than 200 people faced accusations of witchcraft. Thirty were found guilty, and nineteen of them were executed by hanging. Fourteen of the victims were women and five men, but an unknown number of innocents were injured as well.

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Therefore, Salem witch trials essay topics are so popular among students. This theme has many pitfalls to explore, and all researches concerning the Salem witch trials have unique historical value.

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The Salem Witch Trials

Written by: malcolm gaskill, university of east anglia, by the end of this section, you will:.

• Explain how and why environmental and other factors shaped the development and expansion of various British colonies that developed and expanded from 1607 to 1754

Suggested Sequencing

This Narrative should accompany the Anne Hutchinson and Religious Dissent Narrative to explore the topic of religious toleration in the New England colonies.

In January 1692, in the village of Salem, Massachusetts, the nine-year-old daughter and eleven-year-old niece of a contentious minister, Reverend Samuel Parris, began having strange fits and seeing apparitions of local women they said were witches. A doctor diagnosed bewitchment, which meant that others were to blame for the girls’ possession, to which Parris responded with prayer. When this failed, Parris pressured the girls to identify the suspected witches. Meanwhile, other girls in Puritan households had supposedly been afflicted. Soon, three women had been accused of witchcraft, including the slave Tituba, who had performed a counter magical spell by baking a witchcraft victim’s urine in a cake and feeding it to a dog. The three women were arrested and jailed. The accusations gathered momentum and a panic set in.

Villagers were emboldened to voice their own suspicions of other witches, which led to more arrests. The accused were brought to the public meetinghouses and urged to confess so they could be brought back into the Christian fold. Most people gave credence to “spectral evidence”, evidence based on visions and dreams, in which the afflicted claimed they could see invisible spirits flying around the room and causing them pain. Even a four-year-old girl, the daughter of one of the accused, Sarah Good, was imprisoned for witchcraft. Before long, the witch hunt had spread to several neighboring communities.

Some people doubted the wild accusations that were tearing apart the communities. For example, Reverend Cotton Mather, a Boston minister, believed in witchcraft but had initial doubts about the outbreak. He questioned the use of spectral evidence, because in English law it was grounds for suspicion but not proof. Mather offered to provide spiritual guidance to the afflicted and cure their ills through prayer and counseling. Unlike the case in most witch hunts, in this one, only those who refused to confess were hanged, for clinging obstinately to Satan.

In May, the governor of Massachusetts, William Phips, set up a special court to deal with the forty-odd people who had been charged. A wealthy merchant, Samuel Sewall, sat on the court, and Lieutenant Governor William Stoughton presided. Many of the accused were perceived to be outsiders in some way, tainted by association with Quakers, American Indians, and non-English European settlers. People living closer to the town were also more likely to be suspects, as kinship groups and sections of town accused other kinship groups and sections of town with whom they were at odds.

The court convened on June 2 for the first trials, and on the basis of unprovable charges and spectral evidence, Bridget Bishop was found guilty and hanged. One of the judges, Nathaniel Saltonstall, was so outraged by the proceedings that he immediately resigned. A few days later, several clergymen published a statement, “The Return of Several Ministers,” expressing their own dissatisfaction with the use of spectral evidence and asking for greater burdens of proof. Nevertheless, the trials continued despite the travesty of justice that was recognized at the time. The conviction rate was unusually high, mainly because more than fifty suspects confessed, presumably to evade the noose. Puritans saw in the large numbers only mass allegiance to Satan, which, in turn, led to more accusations. The psychological pressures were intense, and some confessed “witches” recanted, thus sealing their fates.

With the stamp of this seal, William Stoughton, the chief judge who presided over the Salem witch trials, sent Bridget Bishop to her death.

The court convened again in late June, with more than one hundred accused witches in jail. Five more were tried and executed, followed by another five in August, and eight in September, fourteen women and five men. Elizabeth Proctor was found guilty but received a reprieve because she was pregnant. Giles Corey, who refused to plead, was pressed to death beneath a growing blanket of stones; his wife Martha was hanged. The deaths caused profound unease, including among previously enthusiastic ministers and magistrates. Reverend Increase Mather delivered a sermon in which he asserted, “It were better that ten suspected witches should escape, than that one innocent person should be condemned.”

As in European witch trials (where an estimated sixty thousand accused witches were executed in the preceding centuries), the problem was using spectral evidence as proof, which, it was argued, may have been the Devil’s illusion to foment discord. Perhaps Satan’s goal had been not to recruit witches but to trick the court into executing the innocent. Particular weight had been placed on the girls’ testimony and on the confessions of the accused, both of which were unreliable. In late October, the Massachusetts Court called for a day of fasting and prayer for reflection on the hysteria. A few days later, Governor Phips met with Stoughton to decide the fate of the court and decided to halt the trials. The jailed were released.

In 1855, Thomkins H. Matteson painted Trial of George Jacobs, August 5, 1692. Jacobs was one of the colonists the court convicted of witchcraft and sentenced to death. How has Matteson conveyed the climate of hysteria that overtook the community of Salem and led to the witch trials?

Samuel Sewall, one of the judges, regretted the role he had played in the witchcraft trials and wondered whether the subsequent misfortunes of his own family, and of all New England, might be divine punishment for shedding innocent blood. In January 1697, he stood bare headed in church in Boston while the minister read the following apology:

Samuel Sewall, sensible of the reiterated strokes of God upon himself and family; and being sensible, that as to the guilt contracted upon the opening of the late commission of Oyer and Terminer at Salem (to which the order for this day relates) he is, upon many accounts, more concerned than any that he knows of, desires to take the blame and shame of it, asking pardon of men, and especially desiring prayers that God, who has an unlimited authority, would pardon that sin and all other his sins, personal and relative; and according to his infinite benignity, and sovereignty, not visit the sin of him, or of any other, upon himself or any of his, nor upon the land. But that He would powerfully defend him against all temptations to sin, for the future and vouchsafe him the efficacious, saving conduct of his word and spirit.

The jurors apologized later that same year. They admitted that, because they had not been “capable to understand nor able to withstand the mysterious delusions of the powers of darkness,” they were “sadly deluded and mistaken” in believing weak evidence and had caused the deaths of blameless people.

The factors that led to the 1692 Salem witchcraft outbreak were indeed complex. Much of the conflict fueling the trials originated in tensions between a traditional Puritan lifestyle based on piety and subsistence farming, and an increasingly worldly, capitalist outlook. Some Puritans complained of “declension” – a waning of godly ideals beginning in the 1630s, when Massachusetts Bay was settled. Friction between town and village had also developed over governance: Villagers resented paying taxes to maintain a distant town church and wanted independence.

The accusations may also have reflected tension between neighbors. Some scholars blame them on the fantasies and hysteria of children, and possibly even ergotism (a form of poisoning from a potentially hallucination-causing fungus that grows on rye) and an encephalitis epidemic. Gender also seemed to be significant: Were propertied women the victims of envious men? The Puritans believed witchcraft was God’s punishment for sin, either by allowing the Devil to convert so many witches or by turning fearful people against innocent neighbors. The Puritans believed in the existence of the Devil and his evil minions, who they thought could intervene in human affairs, tricking some into following them by practicing witchcraft.

The witchcraft outbreak was intensified across New England by political uncertainty during the years between the loss of the Massachusetts charter in 1684 and the granting of a new one by the English crown in 1691. The Glorious Revolution of 1689-1690 led to war with France, which, in turn, reignited war with American Indians in New England. These events all contributed to an atmosphere of profound insecurity and danger, spiritual and physical, though perhaps none really adequately explain the Salem witchcraft outbreak of 1692.

Review Questions

1. During the late seventeenth century and the events surrounding the Salem witch trials, what was considered “spectral evidence”?

• Evidence compiled from witnesses not physically present at the crime
• Evidence based on religious beliefs
• Evidence based on visions and dreams
• Evidence not accepted by court magistrates

2. How was the use of “spectral evidence” in trials of those accused as witches different in the New England colonies and in England?

• In English law, spectral evidence was grounds for suspicion, not proof.
• There was no difference in the use of spectral evidence.
• Spectral evidence was not admissible in English courts.
• The issue of spectral evidence never came up in England.

3. What was the fate of those who confessed to being witches in Salem Village?

• They were immediately hanged on the grounds that there was no doubt as to their guilt.
• Only those who refused to confess were hanged for clinging obstinately to Satan.
• Men tended to be acquitted whether or not they confessed.
• Regardless of whether they confessed, some were burned and some hanged.

4. Why was the conviction rate of accused witches in Salem so high?

• People were not hanged if they confessed, so many confessed to save their own lives.
• Many people genuinely believed they were witches.
• Many people were actually engaging in various witch rituals.
• Salem Village had an unusually large population.

5. What event launched the beginning of witchcraft accusations in Salem?

• A slave woman named Tituba confessed to witchcraft.
• Farm animals started disappearing.
• A young girl began having strange fits.
• A large comet appeared in the sky.

Free Response Questions

• Analyze potential causes of the witch trials in Salem and the surrounding area of Massachusetts. Which is the best explanation? Justify your answer.
• Explain why the accusations of witchcraft were acceptable to Puritans in seventeenth-century Massachusetts.

AP Practice Questions

“The humble petition of Mary Easty unto his excellencies Sir William Phipps to the honoured Judge and Bench now sitting In Judicature in Salem and the Reverend ministers humbly sheweth that whereas your poor and humble petitioner being condemned to die do humbly beg of you to take it into your judicious and pious. . . . I would humbly beg of you that your honors would be pleased to examine this afflicted persons strictly and keep them apart some time and like-wise to try some of these confessing witches. I being confident there is several of them has belied themselves and others as will appear if not in this world I am sure in the world to come whither I am now agoing and I question not but you’ll see an alteration of these things they say myself and others having made a league with the devil we cannot confess I know and the Lord knows as will shortly appear they belie me and so I question not but they do others the Lord above who is the searcher of all hearts knows that as I shall answer it at the tribunal seat that I know not the least thing of witchcraft therefore I cannot I dare not belie my own soul I beg your honers not to deny this my humble petition from a poor dying innocent person and I question not but the Lord will give a blessing to your endeavors.”

Petition of Mary Easty to the Court, 1692

1. The view expressed in the excerpt provided reflects the request made by Mary Easty to

• consider that although she is innocent, most of the others accused were really witches
• keep the accused and “confessing witches” apart
• stop the trials altogether because they are morally and spiritually wrong
• question the authority of the judges to pass sentence on so many people

2. Which of the following most likely led to the events described in the excerpt provided?

• The introduction of Slave Codes in Massachusetts society
• The strict nature of gender roles in the late seventeenth century
• The English legal system
• The strict religious practices in seventeenth-century colonial New England

Primary Sources

Cotton Mather’s Account of the Salem Witch Trials: https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-now/cotton-mather%E2%80%99s-account-salem-witch-trials-1693

Suggested Resources

Boyer, Paul, and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft . Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974.

Karlsen, Carol F. The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England . New York: Norton, 1998.

Norton, Mary Beth. In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692 . New York: Knopf, 2002.

Ray, Benjamin C. Satan and Salem: The Witch-Hunt Crisis of 1692 . Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2015.

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Salem Witch Trials

By: History.com Editors

Updated: September 29, 2023 | Original: November 4, 2011

The infamous Salem witch trials began during the spring of 1692, after a group of young girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts, claimed to be possessed by the devil and accused several local women of witchcraft. As a wave of hysteria spread throughout colonial Massachusetts, a special court convened in Salem to hear the cases; the first convicted witch, Bridget Bishop, was hanged that June. Eighteen others followed Bishop to Salem’s Gallows Hill, while some 150 more men, women and children were accused over the next several months. 

By September 1692, the hysteria had begun to abate and public opinion turned against the trials. Though the Massachusetts General Court later annulled guilty verdicts against accused witches and granted indemnities to their families, bitterness lingered in the community, and the painful legacy of the Salem witch trials would endure for centuries.

What Caused the Salem Witch Trials?: Context & Origins

Belief in the supernatural—and specifically in the devil’s practice of giving certain humans (witches) the power to harm others in return for their loyalty—had emerged in Europe as early as the 14th century, and was widespread in colonial New England . In addition, the harsh realities of life in the rural Puritan community of Salem Village (present-day Danvers, Massachusetts ) at the time included the after-effects of a British war with France in the American colonies in 1689, a recent smallpox epidemic, fears of attacks from neighboring Native American tribes and a longstanding rivalry with the more affluent community of Salem Town (present-day Salem). 

Amid these simmering tensions, the Salem witch trials would be fueled by residents’ suspicions of and resentment toward their neighbors, as well as their fear of outsiders.

Did you know? In an effort to explain by scientific means the strange afflictions suffered by those "bewitched" Salem residents in 1692, a study published in Science magazine in 1976 cited the fungus ergot (found in rye, wheat and other cereals), which toxicologists say can cause symptoms such as delusions, vomiting and muscle spasms.

In January 1692, 9-year-old Elizabeth (Betty) Parris and 11-year-old Abigail Williams (the daughter and niece of Samuel Parris, minister of Salem Village) began having fits, including violent contortions and uncontrollable outbursts of screaming. After a local doctor, William Griggs, diagnosed bewitchment, other young girls in the community began to exhibit similar symptoms, including Ann Putnam Jr., Mercy Lewis, Elizabeth Hubbard, Mary Walcott and Mary Warren.

In late February, arrest warrants were issued for the Parris’ Caribbean slave, Tituba, along with two other women—the homeless beggar Sarah Good and the poor, elderly Sarah Osborn—whom the girls accused of bewitching them.

Salem Witch Trial Victims: How the Hysteria Spread

The three accused witches were brought before the magistrates Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne and questioned, even as their accusers appeared in the courtroom in a grand display of spasms, contortions, screaming and writhing. Though Good and Osborn denied their guilt, Tituba confessed. Likely seeking to save herself from certain conviction by acting as an informer, she claimed there were other witches acting alongside her in service of the devil against the Puritans.

As hysteria spread through the community and beyond into the rest of Massachusetts, a number of others were accused, including Martha Corey and Rebecca Nurse—both regarded as upstanding members of church and community—and the four-year-old daughter of Sarah Good.

Like Tituba, several accused “witches” confessed and named still others, and the trials soon began to overwhelm the local justice system. In May 1692, the newly appointed governor of Massachusetts, William Phips, ordered the establishment of a special Court of Oyer (to hear) and Terminer (to decide) on witchcraft cases for Suffolk, Essex and Middlesex counties.

Presided over by judges including Hathorne, Samuel Sewall and William Stoughton, the court handed down its first conviction, against Bridget Bishop, on June 2; she was hanged eight days later on what would become known as Gallows Hill in Salem Town. Five more people were hanged that July; five in August and eight more in September. In addition, seven other accused witches died in jail, while the elderly Giles Corey (Martha’s husband) was pressed to death by stones after he refused to enter a plea at his arraignment.

Salem Witch Trials: Conclusion and Legacy

Though the respected minister Cotton Mather had warned of the dubious value of spectral evidence (or testimony about dreams and visions), his concerns went largely unheeded during the Salem witch trials. Increase Mather, president of Harvard College (and Cotton’s father) later joined his son in urging that the standards of evidence for witchcraft must be equal to those for any other crime, concluding that “It would better that ten suspected witches may escape than one innocent person be condemned.” 

Amid waning public support for the trials, Governor Phips dissolved the Court of Oyer and Terminer in October and mandated that its successor disregard spectral evidence. Trials continued with dwindling intensity until early 1693, and by that May Phips had pardoned and released all those in prison on witchcraft charges.

In January 1697, the Massachusetts General Court declared a day of fasting for the tragedy of the Salem witch trials; the court later deemed the trials unlawful, and the leading justice Samuel Sewall publicly apologized for his role in the process. The damage to the community lingered, however, even after Massachusetts Colony passed legislation restoring the good names of the condemned and providing financial restitution to their heirs in 1711. 

Indeed, the vivid and painful legacy of the Salem witch trials endured well into the 20th century, when Arthur Miller dramatized the events of 1692 in his play “The Crucible” (1953), using them as an allegory for the anti-Communist “witch hunts” led by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. A memorial to the victims of the Salem witch trials was dedicated on August 5, 1992 by author and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel.

HISTORY Vault: Salem Witch Trials

Experts dissect the facts—and the enduring mysteries—surrounding the courtroom trials of suspected witches in Salem Village, Massachusetts in 1692.

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Analysis of the Salem Witch Trials

How it works

The Salem Witch Trials were a progression of preliminaries endeavoring to discover, recognize, and slaughter every single known lady and men honing black magic. The preliminaries happened in Colonial Massachusetts from 1692 and 1693, and for the subjects there, all killings were a triumph as the residents trusted they were disposing of the underhanded spirits expedited by the demon, until the point that they swung to catastrophe when the natives acknowledged they had slaughtered honest blood. “As a country we have a long history of witch hunting, especially in the colonial period,” says Jason Coy, a professor of history at the College of Charleston who is an expert on witch hunts.

(5 Facts about the Salem Witch Trials History.com) A thing to ask ourselves today, is for what reason did the Salem Witch Trials happen, who was charged and why, and what was the result of the trials.

In the late 1600’s, two young girls in pioneer Massachusetts, were analyzed and “diagnosed” that they were being controlled by a demon. They would begin to throw objects, had extraordinary fits described by minister John Hale as “beyond the power of epileptic fits or natural disease to affect” (Salem Witch Trials, Virginia University, January-15-2016), muscle spasms, hallucinations and spewing. When different young ladies began getting diagnosed to have “bewitchment,” warrants were issued for the Parris’ Caribbean slave, Tituba, and two other women the destitute hobo Sarah Good, poor people, and the elderly, such as Sarah Osborn, all who the young ladies professed to have possessed or bewitched them. The principal hanging that occured of the Salem Witch Trials was for Bridget Bishop.

Bridget Bishop had the first trial, and had the most informers and observers than any other “witch” because of her exceptional state of mind, been hitched 3 times and did not dress in usual Puritan norms. Bridget Bishop was hanged on June 10, 1692. That was far from the end of the Salem Witch Trials. Shortly afterwards, 13 people, from slaves to the wealthy, were executed for the use of witchcraft. One man, Giles Corey was executed by being crushed to death, one of the more violent executions of the trials. There could have been many causes regarding to the start of the Salem Witch Trials. “The Puritans strongly believed in the existence of witches and witchcraft. According to the belief, witches were in alliance with the devil that gave them power to do harm. They were blamed for all kinds of misfortunes from illnesses and failed crops to bad weather and other things” (List of 5 Possible Causes of the Salem Witch Trials, History Lists, 2012). Other reasons could have pertained to boredom, Ergot poisoning, disputes, rivalries, and the cold weather theory.

‘The people awaiting trial were often kept in dreadful holding cells, and many died before their trial even occurred. In the dungeons or cells, the accused witches would be chained to the wall, so their “spirits” escaping the prison, and attacking more civilians. The Salem Witch Trials, were held at the Salem Village Meetinghouse. Then, the witches would be taken in to the courtroom, in front of judge and jury and be questioned. They were allowed no legal counsel, and had to plead guilty or not guilty without counsel. This of course would lead to easily convicted people of witchcraft. This led to the conviction of Rebecca Nurse. Different from most convicted witches, she was a well respected member of the community. When she was arrested, the town even signed a petition asking for her release. When her trial began, she was found not guilty, until the “accusers” started to act out in the court. The judge at the time, Stoughton, asked the jury to rethink their verdict. This was a turning point for the Salem Witch Trials, because most witches were known to be ugly, lower class, slaves, weird, or anti-social, human beings, but this was the first trial that, at the time, proved, that anyone could be a witch.

A main component of the Salem Witch Trials, was the ability and freedom to use spectral evidence. During the trials, spectral evidence was the best proof you would have to indict a witch. The most popular and used one was “Live” spectral evidence. In one of the early trials, the two girls who accused the first witch would start to act uncontrollably and show all the “symptoms” they testified for. The prosecution would then be able to use that “evidence” stating that the person was using witchcraft at the time of the trial. Another form of evidence the could be used was “Dream” Evidence. If a “victim” testified that while in a dream the witch contacted and attacked them, the judge would convict them promptly. This is exactly the case for Sarah Good who testified that Sarah Osborne was possessing girls through dreams. As the trials progressed many people started disagreeing with the use of spectral evidence. It was not until 1693 when people started to protest the use of spectral evidence in court. , the court magistrates banned usage of spectral evidence, concluding that spectral evidence was insufficient proof to indict people. The banning of spectral evidence effectively caused the end of the witch-hunt. The reason it ended the witch-hunt was because spectral evidence was the puzzle piece needed to convict witches and without it, the witch-hunt was nothing.

How did the trials come to an end and who was killed? After multiple cases, most were thrown out by the court while others, 26 to be exact, were convicted of witchcraft and were executed shortly. The following convicted and executed witches were, Bridget Bishop (June 10, 1692), Rebecca Nurse (July 19, 1692), Sarah Good (July 19, 1692), Elizabeth Howe (July 19, 1692), Susannah Martin (July 19, 1692), Sarah Wildes (July 19, 1692), George Burroughs (August 19, 1692), George Jacobs Sr. (August 19, 1692), Martha Carrier (August 19, 1692) , John Proctor (August 19, 1692), John Willard (August 19, 1692), Martha Corey (September 22, 1692), Mary Eastey (September 22, 1692), Mary Parker (September 22, 1692), Alice Parker (September 22, 1692), Ann Pudeator (September 22, 1692), Wilmot Redd (September 22, 1692), Margaret Scott (September 22, 1692), Samuel Wardwell Sr. (September 22, 1692), and Giles Corey (September 19, 1692). All of these executions were counted as triumphs to the people of Salem and in their minds were getting rid of the devil and its spirits. After spectral evidence was no longer allowed on court, people started to realize that the trials were unfair.

Once 1692 ended, people started to realize that the Salem Witch Trials had no true evidence. Cotton Mather, son of the President of Harvard, also Mather’s father, who both supported that the Salem Witch Trials not be allowed to use spectral evidence and that they should be treated as any normal crime. “It would better that ten suspected witches may escape than one innocent person be condemned.” Amid waning public support for the trials, Governor Phips dissolved the Court of Oyer and Terminer in October and mandated that its successor disregard spectral evidence” (Salem Witch Trials, History.com) By May 1693, Governor Phillips pardoned all those being held or in process of trial. This action became the ending for the Salem Witch Trials. In January 1697, the Massachusetts General Court declared a day of fasting for the tragedy of the Salem witch trials; the court later deemed the trials unlawful, and the leading justice, publicly apologized for his role in the process. The damage to the community stayed, however, even after Massachusetts passed legislation restoring the good names of the condemned and providing financial restitution to their heirs in 1711. (Salem Witch Trials, History.com) the burden, and loss on the families stayed.

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Escaping Salem

Richard godbeer, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Richard Godbeer's Escaping Salem . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

Escaping Salem: Introduction

Escaping salem: plot summary, escaping salem: detailed summary & analysis, escaping salem: themes, escaping salem: quotes, escaping salem: characters, escaping salem: terms, escaping salem: symbols, escaping salem: theme wheel, brief biography of richard godbeer.

Historical Context of Escaping Salem

Other books related to escaping salem.

• Full Title: Escaping Salem: The Other Witch Hunt of 1692
• Where Written: Riverside, California
• When Published: 2004
• Literary Period: Contemporary
• Genre: American History
• Setting: Stamford, Connecticut, 1692
• Climax: In 1693, after a year of imprisonment in a Stamford jail, Mercy Disborough is finally acquitted of the charge of witchcraft.
• Antagonist: Sexism; fear; religious extremism
• Point of View: Third Person

Extra Credit for Escaping Salem

Dark Past. Though the Stamford witch trials that Godbeer explores in Escaping Salem happened around the same time as the Salem witch trials, Connecticut had a long history of religious panics and witch hunts. The Connecticut witch trials, which lasted from 1647 to 1663, where the first in the American colonies, predating the Salem trials by 30 years. Eleven people, including Alse Young—likely the first person ever executed in the American colonies for witchcraft—were put to death. In 2017, the town of Windsor passed a resolution symbolically clearing the names of Young and Lydia Gilbert, the town’s two victims of the trials.

The Salem Witch Trials in American History Term Paper

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

The Salem Witch Trials certainly made a mark on American lives. It would be safe to assume that every American knows what had transpired during that period, more than any other events throughout America’s history. Thus far, several scholars and non-scholars have become intrigued with this and made what seems like veritable accounts and analyses.

The facts, of course, are as simple as these. When two girls began acting strangely in Salem Village and a local doctor can not understand what caused their oddities, they were diagnosed to be suffering from an evil hand, and that they were bewitched. At that time, people were sure that witches exist but are not allowed to live. These girls caused even more panic when they went screaming and contorting in a public hearing conducted by the magistrates and began pointing left and right at the perpetrators. Other girls joined in with their accusations and soon they were mayhem. Later on, a specialized witches’ court was established to try these accused. That period saw numerous people being sentenced to hang, counting to more than two hundred (Detweiler, p. 597).

With such figures, it is no wonder that it is characterized to be one of the biggest and most important outbreaks of witchcraft in British America. The conundrum that people had been analyzing ever since is who was behind this outbreak. Blame ranges from the devil initially to puritan ministers encouraging the witch mania to bring support for the Church, and to the ideology of Puritanism itself, a strong belief that everything strange is the work of the devil, such that all the things they do not understand were categorized as witchery. Some modern scholars see Massachusetts as a place with stifling norms, full of repressions and inhibitions, a suppression of independent thought and uniqueness that ultimately resulted in the said witch trials and deaths (Detweiler, p. 598).

The Salem witch trials were also said to be the result of children having the adult world at their fingertips. That is, they were practicing conscious fraud, deliberately wielding their power over the adults through feigning their attacks and then accusing certain people of witches. In this case, the two girls were just attention-seeking and therefore the ones to blame (Detweiler, p. 599). Or there really could have been witches.

Using today’s technology though to examine what happened with the two girls who started it all, their symptoms were found out to be the ones associated in modern times with hysteria. Unfortunately, in the 17 th century, they still don’t have the means of deciding what ails a person and any sort of deviant observed was considered demon-driven.

Though there are too many accounts of who was precisely behind this phenomenon, it is not more important than knowing why the allegations of witchcraft were taken in easily and acted upon fervently by the people of Massachusetts. What was about the place and the people that make it all so believable? Suffice to say, if a person would be told he had been bewitched today, you’ll probably laugh your head off. So what was different then?

More than two hundred people sentenced to hang as a result of young people crying “witch” is quite astounding. Therefore more significant than just equating the incident as a fraud committed by someone, and more than just knowing who started it is finding out why these accusations and these prosecutions transpired in such magnitude. (Detweiler, p. 601)

The studying of the Salem Witch trials brings about different sides to the story and in different aspects. First, through it, we had a clearer understanding of the Massachusetts society in 1692. We can not judge their society with our standards, that is when they do not dismiss witchcraft as nonsense even if different from the mainstream. The fact that they had believed in witches carries with it significant meaning. As said, every incident especially the misfortunate ones in a society should have a reason behind it. Those that cannot be explained are categorized as bewitchery. Even more applicable to Massachusetts since it is a society that believes wholeheartedly that witches exist. This belief makes the ‘witches did it’s more believable and logical. After all, having an explanation for everything is a relief (Detweiler, p. 601). Misfortunate events can cover incidents from just sickness to the bad welfare of the economy.

The belief that witches existed at that time and the fact that they were the reasons for every misfortunate thing in one’s life serves many purposes. First off, as we said, it is a fallback explanation for the things one cannot understand happened in his life, or we could say, it is a direct one can blame on. Second, witchcraft functions as a check on anti-social conduct. The fear of being called a witch, let alone being punished as one toe the line for all the people in the society to act accordingly with all the behavioral rules in their place (Detweiler, p. 602). There is no room for uniqueness, independent thought, and eccentricity.

Another study resonates that these types of behaviors and beliefs with a structural conflict inherent to the lives within that community. This is suggested from the pattern that teenage girls are crying ‘witch’ while middle-aged women are called witches. As the fact that the accused are known to be quite independent in their thinking and actions, different from the social norms.

The issue of sex roles may inadvertently exist at that time, as women are often the accused, and therefore insinuates that women must be the traditional and conformists in a society (Detweiler, p. 604).

In times of insecurity, and adjustment, there could also be witnessed the increasing rate of people accused of witchcraft and people said to be bewitched. In particular, in the late 1680s and the 1690s, Massachusetts was a nation in general unrest, with Puritanism in decline and religion in decay. People were commonly in fear of dealing with God’s wrath and afraid of the penetration of the devil into their lives. Along with such, Massachusetts also lost so much of its self-determination when the whole of New England was united under one government. Institutions, political well as economic systems all lose their credibility and power till the outbreak of civil war. Still, that period marked the start of many indecisive behaviors, and political uncertainties (Detweiler, 606). The result of course was the witch episodes we are discussed now. These accounts are mostly from anthropologists, focusing their research on the social systems.

In general, the witch craze crystallized during the 14 th Century, with Pope John XXII encouraging it. He was a believer in magic and its power, and he encouraged all Dominicans and the Inquisitors to pursue all alleged sorcerers, magicians, and heretics to stop the spread of witchcraft practices. The damage that this and subsequently authorized witch hunts wrought was somewhere between 200,000 and half a million people burned, beheaded, drowned, changes, and other forms of execution (Ben-Yehuda, p. 378). Conversely, the executed were mostly women.

In the field of psychology and psychiatry, the explanations for these witch crazes delved more into the individual aspects. Analyzing the victim’s behavior, (the executed), it was construed that they are mentally ill. Yet because of medieval technological deficiency, the only means of analyzing queer behaviors was by attributing it to a supernatural phenomenon that they believed in. This assumption did not go unchallenged of course (Ben-Yehuda, p. 329).

The witch hunters, on the other hand, it was found that they have emotional problems and uses the alleged witches as scapegoats.

Science of course has different explanations. For this area of study, the lure of witchcraft and hunting coincides with the emerging scientific revolution. The craft resembles science experiments.

Generally, though, social scientists see the advent of witch-hunting as a gender issue. They manifest the inequality in gender identity and gender roles, and the political and economic struggle of the different groups in society (Ben-Yehuda, p. 330).

Interestingly, we have an account of who was the first confessor in the Salem Witch Trials. Her name is Tituba, a slave from the West Indies, and presumed to be practicing hoodoo. She had confessed to night rides on a pole and participation in satanic ceremonies. The puritan authorities banished her away, for fear being in her presence would mean separation from God. She was also black, and by her skin color, she was deemed to be a condemned being of God (Tuker, p. 624).

Her jail fees were not paid by Reverend Parris, the one responsible for bringing her to Salem Village for fear of being in her diabolical presence. She was rescued by an unknown man 13 months later. Regrettably, when many of the accusers and executers publicly repented, she was not given the honor of receiving redress. Properties of the convicted witches were returned to their families, yet no one claimed Tubita’s. And when restitutions were given, or the cost of being imprisoned was given back, no one claimed hers (Tuker, p. 625).

Far from being removed from the witch craze history, Tubita’s name becomes embroiled into it, in which a shroud of mystery remains surrounding her sullied name. Up until now, reasons for quickly believing her testimonies and executing her ardently remain a puzzle.

Modern speculations revolved around her being a woman, a slave, and an African-Indian. The fact that she was seen as a dual race brings her resemblance closer to the Devil itself, who was referred to as a black man first and later tawny (African to Indian) (Tuker, p. 627)

Frankly, all that one can deduce from the phenomenon is again, like everything that hounded America’s history, the inherent presence of discrimination, with accordance to gender, identity, and race. The fact that the nation had believed in witchcraft cushioned these discriminating tendencies and blew them out of proportion.

Truly another side then to the story is the economic aspect of it. Although not quite as evident, the Salem witch trials in Massachusetts still created enough for economic interpretation to hold.

The economic angle here involves the workings of the medieval Catholoc Church. The studies put forward that the Church had supplied a monopoly. Specifically, the church made use of the Salem witch hunts as the conditions of salvation. The witchcraft episode in Salem draws the picture that the ministers use Puritan religious doctrine regarding witches and witchcraft to maintain the Church’s or strengthen its monopoly and authority, as well as increase church membership. They intend to expand their wealth through augmented church membership (Mixon, p. 179).

As we’re discussing ministers, Reverend Samuel Parris, the one conferred a while ago briefly about Tubita’s case, will be talked about more in detail. He and his daughter, Betty and niece came into Salem Village in 1689 to take up a position in the Parish. He was treated rather rubbish and was even denied the simplest of courtesy (Mixon, p. 180).

Matters went bad to worse when the village experienced dismal winters, smallpox outbreaks and Indian raids. Parishioners started to look for reasons why these unfortunate events were happening. At that time, Reverend Parris’s daughter and niece picked up that moment to seek entertainment outside their Calvinist upbringing. They become close to Tituba, their house’s slave and spent many nights with her and along with the village girls learning voodoo, magic, fortune telling and making od witch cakes (Mixon, p. 180).

The following events would be the reiteration of the Salem witch trials facts mentioned early in this paper and which everyone quite knows. Betty and Alice got sick with an unfamiliar disease, as well as other village girls that were once pupils of Tituba. Unknown to the physician, the disease was then described to be the work of the evil hand. Being that case, the reponsibility of finding the solution to the crisis was left in the hands of the ministry (Mixon, p. 180).

The ministry took on the role rather earnestly and aggesively. Reverend Parris articulated that God must be angry with them and sending forth His destroyers in the form of witches. He and other ministers therefore rebuke and rebuff anyone who had doubts in hunting for witches. Vague evidence was admitted in court by the ministers. They served as counsel and jurists on the same court later on. The outcome of course was the terrible losses of lives in an extent. The thing is, the affliction the girls suffered could now be explained in concrete trms by modern research. They have had actually only bread poisoning called ergotism (Mixon, pp. 180-181).

Revernd Pariss reactions and actions as well as his peers and the church at that time points to us the economic interpretation of the events. The Puritan Church of that period holds monopoly on rights to interpret the spectral evidence, biblical interpretations of witchcraft, and the fate of these alleged witches. This let us see the political and economic power the Puritan theologians had at that time and let us surmiss on how they wield the power. They had become the experts on the subject of witchcraft that one cannot fully understand what the Salem witch trials are without associating it with Puritanist ideologies. The fact that they allowed in spectral evidences to be interpreted in their own volition is quite presumptous of the bias incorporated here (Mixon, p. 181).

When the trials were halted, many ministers agreed that this type of trial lead to the demise of innocent people. The evidences for the capture and ultimate punishment of death were rather unreliable. Of course, these new ministers though not agreeable with how the hunt was managed, still believed that demons could penetrate their lives through the use of innocent people. Confessions and other types of evidence aside from spectral hence were given credibility and used as grounds to execute witches (Mixon, pp. 181-182).

Several studies contended that the group of Parris took advantage of accusers or the girls for their personal gain. Parris had been having difficulty in filling up his weekly worship so that he used the girls’ allegations to instill fear in the villagers and persuade them to turn to him for guidance and attendance. Ministerial services became the rage at that time (Mixon, p. 183).

Puritanism, a religion that is not unyielding in terms of doctrine, can easily be used or manipulated to fetter several results like in this case, to increase church membership and increase personal wealth. This is of course their intention, yet they did not forsee the extent of these manipulations, more or less 20 dead and hundred more sentenced to be (Mixon, p. 183).

Therefore, the Salem witch trial is famous as it is for raising several issues at once; the issue of the existence of witchcraft, the issue of gender discrimination, race discrimination and the issue of Church manipulation. Yet, there is still no concrete way of analyzing what truly happened during 1692, starting from when two girls fell sick simultaneously.

• Ben-Yehuda, Nachman. “ Problems Inherent in Socio-Historical Approaches to the European Witch Craze .” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion . 20:4 (1981). Web.
• Detweiler, Robert. “ Shifting Perspectives on the Salem Witches .” The History Teacher . 8:4 (1975). Web.
• Mixon Jr, Franklin G. “ Homo Economicus and the Salem Witch Trials .” The Journal of Economic Education . 31: 2. (2000). Web.
• Tuker, Veta Smith. “ Purloined Identity: The Racial Metamorphosis of Tituba of Salem Village .” Journal of Black Studies . 30: 4 (2000). Web.
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IvyPanda. (2021, September 8). The Salem Witch Trials in American History. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-salem-witch-trials-in-american-history/

"The Salem Witch Trials in American History." IvyPanda , 8 Sept. 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/the-salem-witch-trials-in-american-history/.

IvyPanda . (2021) 'The Salem Witch Trials in American History'. 8 September.

IvyPanda . 2021. "The Salem Witch Trials in American History." September 8, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-salem-witch-trials-in-american-history/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Salem Witch Trials in American History." September 8, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-salem-witch-trials-in-american-history/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The Salem Witch Trials in American History." September 8, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-salem-witch-trials-in-american-history/.