Essay On 1692 Salem Witch Trials

Most all people who accused others for being witches were young girls. Many people were put to death because of these people accusing them. After the trials were done they were very deeply regretting their decisions when they found the women that were accusing were lying and found guilty. On February 29, the girls blamed three women for cursing them: Tituba, a slave; Sarah Good, a homeless woman; and Sarah Osborne, an elderly woman. Not until 1957, 250 years later, did Massachusetts apologize for what they the Witch Trials did.

Samuel questioned the girls until they eventually told him that his slave Tituba was a witch. The girls also named Sarah Osbourne as well as Sarah Good as the ones tormenting them. On March 1, 1692, Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osbourne were arrested for practicing witchcraft. Tituba confessed to having made a pact with Satan, causing a psychological dam to brake, releasing a torrent of emotion and hostility on the part of the girls and shortly thereafter on the part of the entire local community.9 The start of the accusations by the girls also initiated the executions. Over 150 men and women were accused and arrested for witchcraft and some were executed.10 The turning point for the Salem Witch Trials was the mass execution that took place on Sept. 22, 1962.11 (pg81-113) The Puritans, the court and even the Reverend were realizing that they made a mistake.

The most acknowledgeable dispute from the play was between the Putnam’s and the Nurse’s. Rebecca Nurse was blamed for the death of all of Ann Putnam’s children, except for one. The events also caused numerous people to be convicted of witchcraft, some of them being executed. Two of the most notable people convicted in the play were John Procter, condemned for adultery and later hung, and Tituba, who confessed, saving her own life.

Witchcraft was second among the hierarchy of crimes which was above blasphemy, murder and poisoning in the Puritan Code of 1641. Since England had their own witch hunts, it was said that the anxiety spread to New England mainly because of a pamphleteer Cotton Mather. It started early 1692 when the daughter and niece of Salem local minister, Samuel Parris had strange violent convulsions and loud outbursts. The only local doctor of the village which only could read but not write, then concluded that the girls were bewitched. There were three primary “suspected” witches, the minister’s slave Tituba, Sarah Good who was a beggar, and Sarah Osborne, a widower.

In the play Abby tries to do witchcraft to kill John Proctor's wife Elizabeth. She almost gets caught doing it so she accuses many people of bewitching her and got many people hanged. She accuses Elizabeth of bewitching her to kill her. The court will not kill her because she is pregnant but John Procter ends up being hanged because he was accused. In the play Elizabeth the example of good.

The Causes of the Salem Witch Trials Much of modern America’s fear and infamous interest in witches has been derived most likely from the profound Salem Witch Trials. “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,” stated History.com authors. However, many historians still deliberate how such events occurred in the first place. Based on several presented documents, some conclusions suggest that there was a prominent cause to the beginning of the Salem Witch Trials. All in all, the cause of the Salem Witch Trials was the attempt of Salem citizens to either defend or create family

Salem Witch Trials According to Blumberg, the Salem witch trials occurred in colonial Massachusetts between 1692 and 1693. More than 200 people were accused of practicing witchcraft- the Devil’s magic- and 20 were executed. Eventually, the colony admitted the trials were a mistake and compensated the families of those convicted. Since then, the story of the trials has become synonymous with paranoia and injustice, and it continues to beguile the popular imagination more than 300 years later. Several centuries ago, many practicing Christians, and those of other religions, had a strong belief that the Devil could give certain people known as witches the power to harm others in return for their loyalty.

During this time, there were many people involved that greatly influenced the Salem Witch Trials. Two of the most influential were two young girls who sparked the trials by accusing local witches of using witchcraft on them. The two girls were cousins and their names were Betty Parris and Abigail Williams. According to Jeffrey Russell in A History of Witchcraft: Sorcerers, Heretics and Pagans, “Two small girls aged nine and eleven began experimenting with divination in a half-serious attempt to discover who their future husbands would be. As often happens with people who play with magic, the children became terrified and began to exhibit nervous symptoms, thrashing about and assuming odd postures” (114) Apparently, they were playing around and it quickly turned into something much more serious.

Like Abigail utterly told liars about how Elizabeth spirit had stabbed her at the dinner table but actually Abigail framed Goody Proctor with the doll Mary Warren had made as evidence to stable herself. Also Abigail accused Mary Warren for working with the devil in the setting of act three in the courtroom. The girls in courtroom acted as if Mary spirit was attacking them ,to scare her back to their side. Giles Corey also accused Thomas Putnam for being gluttonous for more land and therefore accusing his neighbors for it. The indictment of witchcraft are lies told in statements as if death is a game to play with.

The Salem witch trials were the prosecution of people accused of witchcraft in Massachusetts from June to September 1692 by the Court of Oyer and Terminer. Though the trials were held in Salem, the accused were brought in from the neighboring towns of Amesbury, Andover, Topsfield, Ipswich, and Gloucester as well. To this day the trials are considered the epitome of injustice, paranoia, scapegoating, mass hysteria, and mob justice. The results were almost 200 arrests, 19 executed “witches”, one man pressed to death, one man stoned to death, and two dogs killed because they were suspected to be familiars of their owners who were accused of being witches. (Familiars are evil spirits in the form of animals used by witches to cast spells and perform

Trials occurred for months to scrutinize who was considered a “witch” in the eyes of the judges and teenage girls. More than 150 men, women, and children were accused of being a witch during these trials. Nineteen victims of the trials were executed by hangings, and one man, Giles Corey, was pressed to death by rocks. These men and women who were accused during the trials had to pass

In Colonial Massachusetts, there were series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft between February 1692 and May1693 known as the Salem witch trials. The episode is one of the Colonial America’s most notorious cases of mass hysteria. The trials resulted in the executions of twenty people, fourteen of them women, and all but one by hanging. Five others, including two infant children died in prison. The preliminary hearings were conducted in several towns, Salem Village which is now known as Danvers, Salem Town, Ipswich, and Andover.

Nineteen accused witches were convicted and hanged on Gallows Hill in 1692. One accused witch was crushed to death after he failed to plead guilty or not guilty. As many as thirteen other accused witches died in prison. During this time, the people in Salem feared that the Devil was trying to demolish their beliefs of Christianity. In addition to their fear of the Devil, the people

There are many important events that led up to the Salem Witch Trials. In 1233, Pope Gregory established the medieval inquisition to bring order against the growing heresy in which he later hunts down witches. In 1347, the Bubonic Plague or also known as Black Death struck in Europe demonstrating how ignorance lead to superstition. In 1431, Joan of Arc was accused of witchcraft and burned alive at the stake. After her death, she was declared innocent and deemed a martyr.

Among the groups labeled witches, most practitioners were women, and women were the primary leaders (The vulnerability of women to witchcraft Accusations- by Christian Day, 1992, n.d). Certain people to practice supernatural forces of evil that can hurt others with return - especially faith in the loyalty - had reached had appeared extensively in colonial New England in the 14th century Europe. In addition, the Salem Village (Massachusetts) War between France and England in the American colonies in the harsh realities including sequelae 1689 lives in rural Puritan society in recent smallpox epidemic, Native American tribes and Salem Village (Salem Witch Trials, n.d).