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Salem Witch Trials In 1692

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In 1692, A town in Massachusetts by the name of Salem Village found itself in one most documented cases of mass hysteria in history. This saga started with three girls: Abigail Williams, Elizabeth Parris, and Ann Putnam a neighborhood friend. Abigail Williams, the niece of the town’s minister, began to display weird and questionable behavior. The town’s physician,William Greggs, was called to determine the cause of this sporadic behavior. The town’s physician determined that the three girls were under “the Devil’s influence” and they had been bewitched. What started as a silly game between children slowly brought Salem Village to the edge of insanity? This insanity lead to the killing of 25 innocent people due their “crimes of witchcraft”. …show more content…

In the years prior, the town of Salem had seen its fair share of hardships. One major hardship included the revoking of the town’s charter by King Charles II in 1684. The charter was very important because it was a document that allowed the citizens to colonize the area. Without the charter the people would not have the rights to their own land. The king of England believed that the citizens of Salem had neglected several provisions of the original document. After King Charles death in the year 1692, King James II later took over and merged the Massachusetts Bay Colony into what is known as the Dominion of New England. The main reason King James II merged the colonies was because he wanted to tighten his control over what went on in the New England colonies. Later in the year 1691, the new royal family, King William and Queen Mary issued a charter that had a lot of anti-religious aspects. Instead of giving Salem the original and much simpler charter, King William and Queen Mary decide to combine Salem with the many of the surrounding colonies. The new charter by King William and Queen Mary wasn’t much different from the earlier charter created by King James II. All these events are significant to the witch trials because they caused a lot of discontent in the colony. The Puritans,who left England to …show more content…

The majority of the people who wanted the two towns in Salem separated were the farmers and poor citizens. The citizens of Salem Town believed that the more prosperous Salem Town had abandoned the intentions of the original settlers. The individuals of Salem Town had become Individualistic. These individualistic views were the complete opposite of what the Puritans stood for upon their arrival . The Puritans believed in the importance of a community and working together. One of the largest farming families in Salem, The Putnams, felt that Salem Town had abandoned the Puritan’s original beliefs. Since the Putnam family owned so much farmland, they were the main ones pushing for separation from Salem Town. The Putnam family lived a simple and traditional Puritan lifestyle and they truly believed in the value of community working together over trying to make oneself rich. The Putnams seeing, how Salem Town clashed with their own values, created a unique congregation separate from Salem Town. What seemed like a great idea at first, presented many issues because the congregation only represented a select fraction of of the church. This select group that the congregation represented was the Putnam family. Not only did the idea of separating the two communities drive a wedge between Salem Town and Salem Village, but it also

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When the people migrated from England, “the Old World” to New England, the Putnams, primarily farmers could not farm well due to New England’s very rocky soil and swampy lands, which could not be used as pastures for cattle. Therefore, the Putnams could not earn money. Meanwhile, a family named the Porters, who were farmers like the Putnams found a way to make money through trade with distant lands, taking advantage of Salem’s location as the second largest port in New England. And with the Porter’s trade came new luxury foreign goods, which caused the rules to lighten and people to live by newer, much more lavish living standards. This caused tensions between the Porters and the Putnams.

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"You must understand, sir, that a person is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there be no road between. This is a sharp time, now, a precise time-we live no longer in the dusky afternoon when evil mixed itself with good and befuddled the world. Now, by God's grace, the shining sun is up, and them that fear not light will surely praise it." First we must look into how the Salem Village lived at that point in time. Back in those days, the Salem village people all were expected to go to church.

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The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 and 1693 were among the most surprising and violent episodes in the history of America. It wasn’t violent due to a lot of people dying, in fact, only 19 people were killed due to this event. However, hundreds had their lives changed forever. Some, without any hope of it ever going back to how it was prior to the Trials. No, it was violent due to the fact that it was neighbor turning on neighbor.

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The Salem Witch Trials of 1692, a dark period in American history, resulted in the death of "two-hundred Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony" and the persecution of many more (Loock 528). This witchcraft crisis was sparked by religious intolerance and these wrongful actions were justified by the fact that they were purging the town of anything that went against their belief system. Frederick Douglass, a self-educated slave, could point out that people tend to fall back on religious belief in order to justify their cruel actions. The Salem Witch Trials prove that Douglass's assertion that men use religion to justify cruelty was not a new theory brought about by slavery. There becomes a point where people's morals become distorted and they

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Not many people know much about what actually happened in the Salem Witch Trials. Maybe someone would think that it was just about witchcraft and crazy people being hanged, but it is a lot more than that. The Salem Witch Trials only occurred between 1692 and 1693, but a lot of damage had been done. The idea of the Salem Witch Trials came from Europe during the “witchcraft craze” from the 1300s-1600s. In Europe, many of the accused witches were executed by hanging.

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