...The Salem Witch Trials The Salem Witch Trials were a series of court hearings and prosecutions of people accused of performing witchcraft and other supernatural abilities in colonial Massachusetts. These occurred between February 1692 and May 1693. Although they are referred to as the Salem witch trials, the preliminary hearings were done in various towns: Salem Village, Ipswich, Andover, and Salem Town. These trials had a lasting effect on a multitude of things in the formation of the United States of America and its colonies. The trials brought about warnings of isolationism, religious extremism, false accusations, and profiling based off of social class. Thanks to these trials, America was able to take caution in them to help them eventually form the great country it is today. In order to completely understand the effect of the trials it is necessary to have a little information from the trials. Salem was originally founded in 1626 by a group of European fisherman. Over the years it had gotten a little larger of a town, but never too big. Overall in the incident, around 24 people died because of their accusations of being a witch; whether from being executed, tortured in order to get information, or being killed while in prison. Isolationism really added in influencing the mass hysteria of the people of Salem. They were all so far away from everyone else they essentially had no ways of communicating with anyone at all and they rarely got any news of anything. They...
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...Horrifying and sad, the witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts, still haunt the little town of Salem to this day. Many accusations were thrown around Salem during the time period of 1692 and sadly many people were killed without proper evidence. Superstitions and fear led the trials in Salem instead of justice, causing the downfall of Salem. The witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts have continued to enchant the state as a time of paranoia and injustice; without this conflict, however, superstition and the lack of decent trials would still continue to endure in not only Massachusetts but also the country as a whole. A lot of things occurred before the Salem Witch Trials that contributed to this unfortunate event. Superstitions and the belief in the supernatural arose and spread out in colonial New England (Salem Witch). Belief in the Supernatural involved the belief in the evil doings of the devil. These superstitions led to a witch craze that occurred through Europe to start up in America especially in Salem, Massachusetts (Blumberg). The superstitions that had already been is Salem only helped to fuel this witch craze. Rivalries that had existed in Salem did not help to stop the craze; in fact, these rivalries only increased the witch craze making it a strong part in Salem life. The Puritan community of Salem Village included a rivalry between what was then called Salem Town known as Salem today (Blumberg). The strain on Salem’s resources also aggravated the existing rivalries...
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...Salem Village was a lower class, rural, agricultural village with an official population of 550, not including homeless or the few servants whose masters lived there. Even before the Trials, Salem Village was an unsettled place and was full of stress. The residents of Salem Village were adversarial. There were always family disputes (e.g., land claim disputes and arguments over religion). There was also much tension and stress in Salem and in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Salem Village was always fearing an Indian attack even though it never happened; in 1689, King Charles II of England canceled the legal charter with Massachusetts Bay for having religiously based laws, such as the ones that discriminated against Anglicans; after Charles II died, King James II merged the Massachusetts Bay Colony with the Dominion of New England, which was universally disliked by the colonists. It was overthrown at the same time of the Glorious Revolution in England in 1691. The new Protestant...
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...Salem witch trials Sabrina Armstrong Com/220 April 24, 2010 G.L. Beck Salem witch trials: a drug induced hysteria What happened in Salem in 1692? The people involved in the Salem witch trials were more than just names, dates and places; they were people with lives and families as well. The Salem witch trials started with three girls falling ill with mysterious symptoms that the doctors could not explain by medical science during that point in history. Many people still wonder today why the hysteria took place. Some people believe that, what caused the hysteria was a by-product of children’s self-delusions. Other people believe that while, the hysteria fueled the Salem witch trials it was not the cause of the trials. A handful of people instead believe that it was drug induce by a toxic fungus called ergot. Ergot is a mold often found on plants such as rye, wheat, and barley, which during the witch trials and still today people made bread from these plants. St. Anthony’s fire is also another name for ergotism. Ergot is a type of food poisoning; that during; Medieval Times was frequent. Although ergot does not include LSD, it does contain ergotamine, which is the hallucinogen that LSD derives from. The evidence suggests that digesting food with ergot in it will poison people and make them sick; this was a major aspect in the Salem trials but no one realized this until recently, when historian and behaviorist psychologist Linnda Caporael did a study on the trials...
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...accused of performing witchcraft and were jailed, nineteen people were executed . The accusations that led to the Salem Witch Trials were brought on by a combination of preconceived knowledge on the topic, religious beliefs, and precocious imaginations. These accusations shed light on the natural human need to find explanations for misfortunes occurring during the time period and to justify themselves in a Puritan dominated society. In 1689, only three years before the events that occurred in Salem, a similar case of possession happened to the four children of John Goodwin of Boston. The children, the oldest aged thirteen and the youngest five, began displaying symptoms of a diabolical illness and caused the adults in the community to gather together to not only pray for the health of the children but to determine the cause of their illness. It was soon discovered that the eldest Goodwin child had an argument with the elderly women who did the family’s laundry and received harsh words and insults from the laundress . The accused was Mary Glover, a single woman who had emigrated from Ireland to New England. During her trial, Glover spoke in her native tongue, Gaelic and often whispered words. This was seen as characteristics of a witch in the eyes of the court. Soon after her execution Puritan minister Cotton Mather, who questioned Glover before and during the trial, wrote a report that depicted the symptoms of the Goodwin children and his views on witchcraft, called Wonder of...
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...Hailey Cappiello The Salem Witch Trials took place in 1692. The people of Salem killed innocent people, accusing them of witchcraft. These killings were a result of a group of girls, which were claimed to have been possessed by the devil. Most of the people accused were women, but there were men killed and accused also. The Salem Witch Trials is worthy of study to remember all the people who died in vain. Approximately 200 people were accused of witchcraft and thrown in jail, awaiting trail. Over 20 people were killed. They were hung, burned, drowned, and some died in prison due to starvation and sickness. One man, Giles Corey, was pressed to death. They placed a board on his chest, and as people watched, they placed many heavy stones on the board. He was pleading for more weight so his death would go by quickly. But, as a result of his pleading, they slowly added more and more weight until his bones crushed under the board. After a year of people being killed and accused, the people stopped and admitted it was a mistake. All the people that were killed were innocent and shouldn’t have been killed. People got scared when others were different, so they made up a reason for peoples differences in culture. These people were demonstrating McCarthyism, they were accusing and killing people of witchcraft and they didn’t have any real evidence that they were witches. The short-term impact was that 20+ people were killed. Families and friends lost people in their lives. Then...
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...Salem Witch Trials             The Salem Witch Trials occurred between February 1692 and May 1693. These trials were a series of hearings and prosecution of people who were accused of witchcraft in the colonial Massachusetts. The preliminary hearings were also conducted in a variety of towns across the province, but the most serious one was conducted by the court of Terminer and Oyer in Salem Town (The DBQ Project, 2002). The Salem Witch Trials were sparked by hysteria mixed with family rivalries. The trial led to the execution of 19 defendants who were accused of witch craft and the 20th defendant by the name Giles Corey was pressed to death because of refusing to plead guilty.                The main accusers of the Salem Witch Trials were immediate neighbors and family members. The Salem witch Hunt started when the daughter and cousin of Reverend Samuel became sick and without proper diagnosis, the doctor inferred that the two girls were bewitched. The girls had symptoms such screaming, throwing things around and positioning themselves in awkward positions. Those put to trial were accused of causing death of their neighbors’ livestock, sickness and death of their neighbors’ children and torment.            The neighbors attributed their misfortunes to witch craft practiced by the defendants. As the cases proceeded, the affected girls became the main witnesses and accusers which later saw the judges controversially use spectral evidence...
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...Salem Witch Trials The Salem Witch Trials occurred between February 1692 and May 1693. These trials were a series of hearings and prosecution of people who were accused of witchcraft in the colonial Massachusetts. The preliminary hearings were also conducted in a variety of towns across the province, but the most serious one was conducted by the court of Terminer and Oyer in Salem Town (The DBQ Project, 2002). The Salem Witch Trials were sparked by hysteria mixed with family rivalries. The trial led to the execution of 19 defendants who were accused of witch craft and the 20th defendant by the name Giles Corey was pressed to death because of refusing to plead guilty. The main accusers of the Salem Witch Trials were immediate neighbors and family members. The Salem witch Hunt started when the daughter and cousin of Reverend Samuel became sick and without proper diagnosis, the doctor inferred that the two girls were bewitched. The girls had symptoms such screaming, throwing things around and positioning themselves in awkward positions. Those put to trial were accused of causing death of their neighbors’ livestock, sickness and death of their neighbors’ children and torment. The neighbors attributed their misfortunes to witch craft practiced by the defendants. As the cases proceeded, the affected girls became the main witnesses and accusers which later saw the judges controversially use spectral evidence. This is because the witnesses claimed...
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...The Salem Witch Trials were an example of the strict Puritan religion in the 17th century. Even though there was no actual evidence of witchcraft, the religious beliefs of the Puritans caused many men, women and children to be wrongfully accused. The Puritan’s life revolved around the church. They attended sermons twice a week, dancing was not allowed, listening of non-religious music was prohibited, holidays were not celebrated and children were not allowed to play with toys or dolls and their education revolved around the Bible. Some Puritan’s believed Satan needed permission to take over a living human body while others believed Satan could afflict anyone. The Puritan values and religious beliefs during this time led to a mass hysteria which started the accusations of witchcraft. In the Seventeenth Century it was believed that witches were a product of Satan. During this time it was unheard of to speak of a good witch in colonial Massachusetts. “A witch is a person believed to have received special powers.” (1) As life became more difficult for the Puritans they began to blame witches for the problems they faced within their community. Puritan’s believed that anyone crippled, aged, poor, deformed or sickly were possible offspring of Satan. Anyone that did not follow the Puritan religion faithfully would risk the possibility of being accused of witchcraft. People being accused of witchcraft were typically women in their middle age possibly living on their own. The woman...
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...The Salem witch trials took place in 1692-1693, executing people accused of practicing witchcraft. In result of the executions and accusations it affected the community and their religion. For eight months, colonists in Massachusetts went on a witch hunt. Hundreds of people were “cried out” against. One hundred seventeen women and thirty-nine men were accused and within a four month period fourteen women and five men were hung and one man was pressed to death. The concept of witchcraft is often treated as a cultural ideology providing a scapegoat for human misfortune. This was particularly the case in the early modern period of Europe where witchcraft was seen as part of a vast diabolical conspiracy of individuals following the Devil undermining Christianity, eventually leading to large-scale witch-hunts, especially in Protestant Europe. (The History of Witchcraft and Demonology) In Christianity and Islam, sorcery came to be associated with heresy and to be viewed as evil. Among the Catholics, Protestants, and secular leadership of the European Late Medieval/Early Modern period, fears about witchcraft rose to an all time high, and sometimes led to large witch hunts. Throughout this time, it was increasingly believed that Christianity was engaged in an apocalyptic battle against the Devil and his secret army of witches, who had entered into a diabolical pact. In result , thousands of people were executed, and others were imprisoned, tortured, banished, and had lands and...
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...The Salem Witch Trials was a series of prosecutions where nineteen people were convicted of being a witch, hung, and many other suspects were jailed. The trials took place in the Salem Village located in the Massachusetts Bay Colony which is now Danvers, Massachusetts. The focus of the Salem Witch Trials was the evidence of being a witch, the hunts, trials, executions, and the aftermath. If the people in the town wanted to convict a person of being a witch, they had to have evidence. “The evidence consisted of whether they sank or floated when they were tied with rope and pushed into a body of water. Even if they did sink, they would have drowned. Other evidence included simply acting differently and being subject to bodily fits or seizures”...
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...Sorcery in Salem began its mass hysteria in January 1692 when Dr. William Griggs diagnosed the first girls with being “bewitched”. He was the only physician in the village and since his educational background is unknown, we do not know exactly what education he has in the medical field but we assume that he had some medical training since he was the doctor in the village. Both of the young girls that was diagnosed as “bewitched” was Reverend Samuel Parris’s own daughter and niece. (Lawson, 2007) According to psychologist Linnda Caporeal, in 1976, she believed that the girls that were considered to be “bewitched” because of the symptoms that they displayed could have very well been symptoms of a disease known as convulsive ergotism. (Lawson, 2007) Convulsive ergotism is a disease caused by eating rye that has been contaminated by ergot. This is also known as ergot poisoning because ergot is many drugs such as mythylergometrine and ergotamine. When given in high dosages, it can cause the person to get very sick. The symptoms include seizures, diarrhea, paresthesias, and mental effects. This could have been misconstrued as being “bewitched” because the doctor of the village had never seen seizures and psychotic break so he assumed that they were the work of evil and diagnosed them as such. During the Salem Witch Trials, there were more than 200 trials that took place. (Video, 2012) Out of the many trials that took place, 20 people were tried and found guilty and executed. However...
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...The Salem Witch Trials Witchcraft is the practice of black magic. In the late 17th century in New England, at least 344 individuals were tried and 35 were executed as witches in Salem in 1692. More than 95 percent of all formal accusations and more than 90 percent of the executions for the witchcraft in British America occurred in Puritan colonies. Many factors contributed to the hysteria that gripped Salem. Impact of King William‘s War, the Puritan belief system and gender roles all led to the Salem witch trials. The foundation of the witchcraft crisis lay in the Puritan New Englanders’ singular worldview, one they had inherited from the first settlers of Massachusetts Bay more than sixty years earlier. That worldview taught them that they were a chosen people, charged with bringing God’s message to a heathen land previously ruled by the devil. And in that adopted homeland, God spoke through his providence - that is through small and large events of daily life. New England’s Puritans even in the third generation, believed themselves to be surrounded by an invisible world of spirits as well as by a natural world of palpable objects. Both worlds communicated God’s messages, because both operated under his direction. Losses sustained in the Second Indian War, King William’s War, prompted doubts or spiritual anxiety within the Puritan community. “That their Wabanaki enemies were Catholic (or at least aligned with the French Caltholics) made matters worse, suggesting that the...
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...the world as we know it today. For as long as history goes back, fear has been a key aspect of every civilization. Governments have brainwashed their people in order to scare them into thinking that what they are doing is the only thing to do. During the 1600’s, the Salem witch trials began, striking fear in the eyes of all the people living there. Civilians were forced behind bars if they did not attend church regularly, and the scare of witches caused many to be hanged for all to see. These acts were recounted in a book called “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller. The things that happened in Salem were not the only time fear has ruined lives, for fear is still a part of society...
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...of the minister of salem village randomly started having screaming and violent outbursts. The doctor diagnosed them with being controlled by witches. After they have been diagnosed other females started mimicking the same symptoms that the two girls had. The young girls accused a caribbean slave, Tituba, and other women of using witch spells on them. Years latter it was revealed they were lying, and Abigail Williams were the mastermind behind the lies of the young girls being bewitched. The people Abigail Williams accused of being witches were brought to the magistrates Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne and being questioned while the teens who lied about them being...
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