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Salem Witch Trials Research Paper

1387 Words6 Pages

The Salem Witch Trials were not due to actual witchcraft, but occurred due to socioeconomic tensions, ergot poisoning, and religious persecution. The infamous trials sparked from the hysteria after a group of young girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts, had claimed to be possessed by the devil and accused several local women of witchcraft. As it spread throughout colonial Massachusetts, a special court began to hear the cases of the accused, beginning the Salem Witch Trials. Belief in the supernatural and specifically in the devil’s practice of giving certain humans the power to harm others in return for their loyalty had emerged in Europe as early as the 14th century. They believed that the devil was giving people the ability of witchcraft …show more content…

Tensions started to develop among the residents and divided Salem into two halves. There was the thriving port in Salem Town that brought in the majority of the wealth and they also had prosperous merchants. The other half, Salem Village was poorer than Salem Town and their residents were treated much differently. In an article, Boyer and Nissembaum mention Salem Village, “...it became increasingly clear to us that except for a brief moment, the inhabitants of Salem Village were ‘ordinary’ people, too, living out their lives in an obscure seventeenth-century farming village. Had it not been for 1692, they would most probably have been overlooked by ‘serious’ historians. But, as we have come to see, it is precisely because they were so unexceptional that their lives (and, for that matter, the trauma which overwhelmed them in 1692) are invested with real historical significance.” There was even more division in Salem Village, those who lived closer to Salem Town and were able to earn a living being blacksmiths, merchants, and innkeepers wanted to remain a part of Salem Town, but the farmers who lived on the outskirts of the village wanted to separate from Salem Town. The wealthy merchants of Salem Town and Village soon became the leaders of the government and took control of town politics, while preventing the farmers from having an active political role. With the …show more content…

In addition, they were not allowed to follow their own religious beliefs without punishment in the new colonies. In the 16th century the Puritans settled in the New England area with a plan to regain their principles of the Christian church. They brought all of their ideas, beliefs, values and customs along with them. The Puritans also brought a strong sense of mission. They wanted to build a community based on God and his will to create a perfect society based on religion. Religion is one of the biggest contributors that led to the trials, because of their strong superstitions surrounding

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Salem, 1692 Living in the second largest port, people say trade built Salem to be prosperous. However, the trade appears to deteriorate the equal society of first generation farmers, like me, and the fishermen. Luckily, living in the eastern section of the village has gained me prosperity through the richer soils unlike the less fertile western half of the village. Moreover, the western half of the village lost their political influence they once possessed. Most importantly, the western half is where the majority of the witches lives.

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At a time, Salem Village was a part of the Salem town but then was set apart due to the separation of its economy, class and character Residents of the village were poor farmers who did their part by cultivating crops in the rocky terrain. The town on the other was where the wealthy had lived (so to speak the upper class) and they had been prosperous for the of the trade with London most of people in Salem town were rich merchants. For many years, Salem village, had tried to declare their independence from the town but that was not likely to happen because the town depended on the village for the farmer’s food and their taxes. The Village had also been going to the town mainly because they don’t have their own church (till 1674), but there had also been a parting within the Salem village which was between those lived near the commerce road of the town which had Blacksmiths, carpenters and innkeepers. They had supported and praised the economic changes taking place but the farmers who lived far away from the commerce road believe the worldliness and affluence of Salem town threated there way of life and their Puritan values.

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This caused the Puritans to believe in evil forces like the devil who could potentially try to lead them into temptation or other sinful things because their faith in God was so strong. In 1692, the Puritans worst nightmare had begun. The Salem Witch Trials had started and an estimated number of 200 people were accused of practicing dark magic and some had been punished by death. These trials consisted of bringing convicted witches into court and sentencing them to be hanged or in prison for many years if proven guilty. To the Puritans, the devil was as real as God, and the devil would choose the weakest people to torment, and those people were mostly women and children.

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In Massachusetts during 1692, Salem Village underwent a time of grief, trial, death, and Witchcraft. The chaos in Salem Village began when young girls would have what they called “fits” and they would scream vey vulgarly and fall onto the ground and shake uncontrollably (Magoon 6). These fits frightened the surrounding people and the Doctors of Salem couldn't find a diagnosis. After studying and trying to understand the illness they had, the people of Salem came to the conclusion that these girls were possessed by the Devil (Magoon 7). The result would lead to one of the most recognized events in American History, the Salem Witch Trials.

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In this book, Boyer and Nissenbaum go deeper to help us as readers understand the truth of Salem Village and their witchcraft accusations in 1692. The two believed the witchcraft occurred because of the differences in social classes, geography, and the desperate need to establish a strong community in the midst of it all. There was a separation within Salem Town and Salem Village, where as Salem Village was not a part of Salem Town and the Village paid taxes to the Town. Within the separation was two families, the Putnam's and the Porter’s. The Putnam’s lived in Salem Village and enjoyed living there where they supported the new church and the new minister Samuel Parris.

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Salem Village was a part of Salem town but wanted independence because they had no political or religious power. Half of Salem village wanted to remain with the Town, while the other half struggled and fought for independence. Wealth was also a main cause for arguments between the people in the Village. While it can be broken down as simple as the rich versus the poor, it was much more complicated than that. Instead it was the Porters versus the Putnams, two of the richest families in Salem Village.

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Watters 1 One of the most incomprehensible events as well as one of the darkest times in history occurred in the colony of Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. The Salem Witch Trials occurred in seventeenth century New England, where people lived in a constant fear of the Devil which led to paranoia and illogical thinking. This fear led to many accusations and trials of innocent people and in the end, twenty people were killed, nineteen hung and one pressed to death. With the technology and knowledge we now have in the twenty-first century, it has become apparent that the behavior exhibited during the Salem Witch Trials (and other Witch Hunts around the world around this time) was not due to witches, as they do not exist. Although we can now conclude that this commotion was not caused by witches and magic, the question that still looms is what did cause this behavior in 1692?

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The great Salem Witch Trials were not founded as much on the Puritans belief of good against evil Satan but on human gluttony, the gluttony of those who established these movements especially. Though the Salem Court later refuted guilty parties, acrimony loitered in the community, and the excruciating endowment of the Salem witch trials would withstand for multiple decades. However, through the trials and tribulations of the events in the small town of Salem, a basis for an orderly justice was

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1441 Words | 6 Pages

Paragraph 1- (Intro) The Salem Witch trials of 1692 were a dark and (prevalent) time for the people of Salem, Massachusetts. During this time, nearly 200-300 people were convicted of witchcraft, and over 60 were officially hanged by the government. This must all be looked at from the colonists’ point of view- they had come from a land where religion was the most important aspect of their everyday life, keeping beliefs close to heart. They took this aspect to the New World, the area inhabited with mysterious other people’s foreign to them, where fears of the devil replaced common fears of everyday life. The floodgates of scapegoating did not truly start, although, until Tituba, a young slave, confessed of witchcraft herself.

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the colonists of Massachusetts Bay expected to have trouble settling in the New World, far from their English heritage. Growing rapidly from the outset, the newcomers busied themselves establishing a governmental and religious order in a purely Puritanical method. With such success, the population expanded as well, shattering the relative tranquility the people of New England had known in the early years of their colonization. For example, in the mid-1600s, Salem divided into two communities: Salem Town and Salem Village, causing strain on the political, religious, and economical institutions of the people. Beyond these social difficulties, one cannot exclude human character and personal vengeance when considering what prompted the hysteria

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141 Words | 1 Pages

The Salem witch trials began in October 1692, where the towns people of Salem Village Massachusetts thought they were being attacked by a conspiracy of witches. The Puritans also thought of North America as the devil’s territory, a super natural enemy. During the spring of 1692 a group of young girls started acting really bazar they claimed to possessed by the devil. The girls accused many older local women of witchcraft, usually all the women accused were usually outcasts. The result of those young girls Salem Village began a special court to hear the cases of accused women.

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673 Words | 3 Pages

The Salem witch trials were the cause of 25 innocent women, men, and children. Salem was a town that settled in 1626 and was made up of puritans, which was a group of English protestants. The people were afraid of disease and starvation and the relationships of the people were non existent, in fact they did not like each other. In the winter of 1692 two cousins Betty Paris and Abigail Williams began to act strange so they were checked on and although he determined there was nothing physically wrong with them he determined that they were possessed and as news began to spread so did the “possession “. This eventually led to four of the girls accusing 4 women of tormenting them, these women were considered outsiders and they were swiftly arrested.

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By 1692 the village had grown to a population of about five-hundred people. Salem Town to the south, was a major sea port in the region and was populated by a mercantile class. Salem Village to the north was much smaller and populated mainly by a farming class (ISH). In early 1692, the village of Salem was unstable both socially and politically. In addition to the normal everyday hardships of life (hard labor, rigid religious practices, bad weather, poor harvests, possibility of Indian raids, etc.), the Salem Charter that granted the people of Salem independence from the English crown, as well as the right to own land in the New World, was revoked in 1684 (it would however be restored in 1689 after King James II was deposed).

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One of these things is politics. Salem village was into two factions, the traditionalists and the modernizers. The traditionalists were farmers who wanted the old ways of doing things, but the modernizers were business owners who wanted to expand on new things for the village. But the witch trials became a war for these two factions, with both sides accusing each other of witchcraft and using the trials to gain the advantage.

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This was the beginning of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. This train of events would forever change the town of Salem; everyone would soon associate the colony as a “witch town”. The trials had changed the town, now the people of Salem would be wondering who would be accused next. The problem was no one knew, a startling statistic would haunt the town forever; 40 people were dead and

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