Salem Witch Trials - Research Paper Example

? SALEM WITCH TRIALS July 26, 07-26 Introduction In January 1692, several girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts, began experiencing strange “physical fits,” and their physician, William Griggs, concluded that they had been “bewitched.1” The bizarre fits started with the child and niece of Reverend Samuel Parris, the elected minister of Salem Village. His nine-year old daughter, Betty, and his niece, eleven-year-old Abigail Williams, exhibited uncanny behaviors. They hid under chairs, contorted their bodies, lashed out their tongues, and spoke in outlandish languages.2 Because Doctor Griggs cannot provide a physical explanation, he blamed witchcraft for these behaviors. During the seventeenth century, in accordance to British laws, colonists, who had been discovered to work with the devil or practice witchcraft, were considered as committing a felony.3 The first arrest for the alleged witches happened on February 29, 1692. The trials ended on October 29, 1692, after nineteen people were hanged and around 156 people were imprisoned.4 This paper describes the developments leading to the Salem Witch Trials. It provides a brief history of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the events during the trials, as well as key personalities. It will also discuss what historians and researchers think are the reasons for the Salem Witch trials. They range from the feminist and economic analyses. They believed that the Salem Witch Trials is a product of public hysteria, the economic manipulation of the ministers, bitter and unresolved local conflicts, Puritan theocracy, and the influence of cultural stereotypes regarding witches. Brief History of Salem Village In 1609, Henry Hudson led the exploration of Massachusetts Bay. In 1620, pilgrims arrived on the Mayflower and created Plymouth. Six years afterwards, the Naumkeag Indians lived at numerous sites in Massachusetts. In addition, Roger Conant made Salem a trading post. In 1620, settlers wanted to “purify” the Calvinist Church and established strong Puritan beliefs and practices. The Massachusetts Bay Company formed the Massachusetts Bay Colony.5 A royal charter provided them the right to manage the Massachusetts Bay Colony. John Endecott soon started the first plantation in Salem.6 One year after, John Winthrop was appointed as the new governor and travelled to Massachusetts. In 1638, a small group of Puritans settled at what was then called as Salem Village. Throughout the pre-1692 period, before the witchcraft trials commenced, conflict developed in Massachusetts. Roach stressed: [t]he Salem witchcraft trials erupted during an eight-year war [King William’s War] while Massachusetts steered an unauthorized government with a nearly empty treasury through the hazards of French imperialism, Algonquin resentment, and English suspicion.7 The charter government increased the colonists’ unconstructive attitude toward civil authority.8 The villagers did not appreciate the double layer of authority imposed on them. In 1672, Salem Village was provided the authority to start a parish, hire a minister, and collect taxes for community projects. They created the Salem Village Parish and selected Samuel Parris to be their minister. In January 1692, the child and niece of Reverend Samuel Parris showed a bizarre form of sickness. His nine-year old daughter, Betty, and his niece, eleven-year-old Abigail Williams hid under chairs, contorted their bodies, lashed out their tongues, and spoke in outlandish languages.9 Without a physical explanation, Griggs stressed that the girls were bewitched. In February of the same year, Magistrates Jonathan Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin “examined” the witnesses.10 In May, Governor William Phipps created the Special Court of Oyer and Terminer to “hear and determine” the witch cases.11 Several months after that, nineteen of the accused were hanged, while hundreds were detained. The Events and Personalities of the Salem Witch Trials After what happened to the girls of the Parris’ household, another girl, Ann Putnam, 11 years old, experienced the same behaviors.12 On February 29, because of the increasing pressure from magistrates Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne, the girls charged three women for using witchcraft on them: Tituba, the Parris' Caribbean slave; Sarah Good, a destitute beggar; and Sarah Osborne, an elderly poor woman.13 These women were brought before the local magistrates and they were examined for several days. The trial started on March 1, 1692. Osborne and Good asserted that they were innocent. Tituba, however, confessed to witchcraft, “The Devil came to me and bid me serve him.”14 She explained complicated “images of black dogs, red cats, yellow birds,” and a “black man” who asked her to sign his book.15 She stated that she signed the book and that many other witches wanted to destroy the Puritans. These three women were all imprisoned, despite their different testimonies. After this case, paranoia spread across the colony. Several charges were placed against Martha Corey, a loyal member of the Church in Salem Village, and this event significantly troubled the community.16 People thought that if she could be a witch, then others might be a witch too. Magistrates also asked Sarah Good's 4-year-old daughter, Dorothy, and her fearful answers were taken as a full confession of her mother’s witchcraft.17 The questioning intensified in April, when Deputy Governor Thomas Danforth and his assistants partook in the hearings. By this time, scores of people from Salem and other Massachusetts villages were being questioned.18 On May 27, 1692, Governor William Phipps created a Special Court of Oyer (to hear) and Terminer (to decide) for Suffolk, Essex and Middlesex counties.19 The first case concerned Bridget Bishop, an older woman recognized for her gossip behaviors and promiscuity.20 When interviewed about her practices of witchcraft, Bishop answered, “I am as innocent as the child unborn.”21 The defense must have been poor, because she was determined as guilty and, on June 10, she was the first person hanged on what was soon named as the Gallows Hill.22 Five days after the execution, esteemed minister Cotton Mather wrote a letter asking the court not to permit spectral evidence, which consisted of testimony about dreams and visions.23 The court did not follow this request and five people were again sentenced and hanged in July. Five more were hanged in August and eight more “witches” suffered the same fate in September. On October 3, Mather’s son, Increase Mather, also the president of Harvard, condemned the use of spectral evidence: “It [was] better that ten suspected witches should escape than one innocent person [is] condemned.”24 These people were concerned of how spectral evidence eased placing allegations, which resulted to swift examinations and executions. Governor Phipps responded to Mather's plea, especially after his own wife was alleged for witchcraft. He forbid further arrests, and freed many accused witches. He also dissolved the Court of Oyer and Terminer on October 29. Phipps created the Superior Court of Judicature in its place, which prohibited spectral evidence and convicted 3 out of 56 defendants. Phipps finally pardoned all who were in prison on witchcraft charges by May 1693. The damage on suspected witches and the stigma on their families cannot be reversed, nevertheless. Because of these trials, 19 were hanged on Gallows Hill, a 71-year-old man was crushed to death with heavy stones, several people died in jail and almost 200 people, in general, had been alleged of using “the Devil's magic.”25 In “The Long and Short of Salem Witchcraft: Chronology and Collective Violence in 1692,” Latner studies the events during the witch trials.26 Using legal data and other historical documents, he learns that “Salem” witchcraft went outside of the boundaries of Salem Village. He notes that around 151 accused witches resided in twenty-five communities in New England (twenty-six if he differentiates the partially autonomous parish of Salem Village from Salem).27 They included eastern, coastal areas like Gloucester to areas located at the west of Salem Village like Chelmsford and Billerica; from urban Boston to the northern boundaries of Maine, where Salem Village's former minister, George Burroughs, was working, when he was arrested.28 Norton stresses that the “geographical reach of the accusations was remarkable,” mainly because past witchcraft allegations centered on one or two villages that were near each other only.29 Latner highlights, however, that these twenty-five communities were not all implicated all at once. The accusations diffused in a certain pattern across them. Using the 1692 incident, accusations divided into two separate waves, and showed a “double-humped camel,” when graphed.30 The first wave of allegations came from three early complaints at the very end of February 1692, which affected only the residents of Salem Village. The number of accusations gradually increased, and it expanded to four more victims throughout the month of March. The outbreak of allegations jumped in April with 23 new cases, and in May, with 39 more allegations.31 Before May ended, sixty-nine witches had been named, and they were likely imprisoned and examined for legal considerations. Since then, the number of accusations fell dramatically. When June started, only three witches were charged and brought to Salem Town for examination.32 No new arrests or allegations were made, until the constable of Ipswich arrested Sarah Davis. She started the second wave of arrests that lasted until November. One of the remarkable features of the Salem Witchcraft trials was the division within and among contending parties. Cotton Mather illustrated the two parties in the dispute, bewailing that he must confirm the division between two groups: On the one side; [Alas, my Pen, must thou write the word, Side in the Business?] There are very worthy Men, who having been call’d by God, when and where this Witchcraft first appeared upon the Stage to encounter it, are earnestly desirous to have it sifted unto the bottom of it . . . On the other side [if I must again use the word Side, which yet I hope to live to blot out] there are very worthy Men, who are not a little dissatisfied at the Proceedings in the Prosecution of this Witchcraft.33 Mather felt that the devil himself sowed chaos and conflict: “we are not aware of the Devil, if we do not think that he aims at inflaming us one against another.”34 He supported Daniel Defoe and others after him, who saw the disagreement as innately demonic. After the trials and executions, numerous personalities involved, such as Judge Samuel Sewall, openly acknowledged error and guilt.35 On January 14, 1697, the General Court declared a day of fasting and soul-searching for the misfortune of Salem. Other judges and examiners also realized the inhumanity and lack of credibility of these charges and trials. In 1702, the court asserted that the trials were unlawful.36 In 1711, the colony signed a bill repairing the rights and good names of those accused and provided ?600 compensation to their heirs.37 Nevertheless, it was not until 1957, more than 250 years afterwards, that Massachusetts officially apologized for the events of 1692.38 The Reasons behind the Salem Witch Trials Public hysteria mixed with bitter and unresolved local conflicts to widen the witch trials. People had local problems with one another, which involved money, land, or simple gossips.39 At the same time, conflict became more pervasive, because of clinical hysteria, where people believed that their children had the same behaviors.40 It is possible that because of hysteria, some girls and men felt bewitched and exhibited self-prophesizing behaviors thereafter. They might have imagined these feelings, because of the influence of the trials on them. Puritan theocracy can also be partially blamed, because it rested on beliefs on the devil and the need to decimate devil worshippers. The Colonial American Puritans were dedicated to God and community. Mann (1986) stated, “Early Puritanism was an exceptionally legalistic theology. It defined the fundamental relationship between God and the individual as a contractual one,” and “The legalism of covenant theology had far-reaching consequences in 17th Century New England, where the religious covenant between God and the individual believers was the model for social covenants that linked individuals in communities and communities to God.”41 These strict religious beliefs were connected to continued confidence in ancient beliefs about witches and their communion with the devils. As a result, the Puritans had severe fear of witches and black magic, and they found corporal punishment as a worthy penalty for these actions.42 Intertwined economic and political reasons were one of the main catalysts and reinforcers of the Salem Witch Trials. Puritan ministers took their livelihood from the community they served. Ekelund, Hebert, and Tollison conjecture that the payment of the clergy is more or less based on their industry and status.43 They quote Adam Smith and stress: “They are obliged, therefore, to use every art which can animate the devotion of the common people.”44 Ministers sell religious services to their market, which is composed of the members of the community, and to obtain and uphold market share, a minister must be seen by its community members as a virtuous and dependable person, who defended them from evil. Rivalry in religious services provision signified a threat to the security and affluence of the Puritan ministers.45 Supporting the trials provided a means of increasing demand for church services and members inevitably went to church or donated more, because of fear of the devil. The importance of Puritan ministers also enabled them to preserve other forms of social control over Salem Village and nearby communities.46 The supposed behavior of the accused witches was differentiated as anti-social (i.e., hostile, violent, and noncompliant), and the ministers did not want to permit it to corrode ministerial control and dislocate the community. It seems perceptive that the political control is displayed by the fact that many of the accused witches were women. The laws that were implemented during the witchcraft hysteria in Colonial America depended on an English statute enacted in 1604 during the sovereignty of James I, and certainty of witchcraft had the punishment of death penalty.47 The witch trials controlled deviant behaviors and put the people in check. Another possible reason for conducting these witch trials is the obsession of the patriarchal culture against strong-willed and independent women. While the major accusers were young girls, most (about 75 percent) of the witnesses at the different witchcraft trials of the day were men.48 Among the male and female witnesses, “74 percent and 80 percent, respectively, were married.”49 This supports the hypothesis that the witchcraft trials were used to preserve the status quo and to suppress perceived abnormal behavior. These were questionable actions for men, but seen as particularly detestable and dubious when seen in women. Wilson, in the book, The Salem Witch Trials, notes that witchcraft is essentially an attack against independent women who have economic or social power.50 Some of the accused were women with properties, which somewhat proved that the accusers wanted to also access wealth from the “witches.” Hill, in The Salem Witch Trials, collects several books and testimonies that exhibited perverted, misogynistic ideas about women with different religious practices and had independent lives.51 They represent the underlying patriarchal attitudes against single and/or strongly willed and propertied women. Conclusion The Salem Witch Trials both started and ended rapidly. Historians and researchers believe that the Salem Witch Trials came from a mixture of public hysteria, the economic manipulation of the ministers, bitter and unresolved local conflicts, Puritan theocracy, and the sway of cultural stereotypes regarding witches. Whatever causes they may have, the trials changed the lives of the hanged and the accused. Only recently were the charges dropped and a formal apology has been issued by the Massachusetts government. They may not be enough to compensate for the social and psychological trauma of being part of the accused and convicted, but at least, they rewrote history and erased the hands of the devil on the works on man. Bibliography Blumberg, Jess. “A Brief History of the Salem Witch Trials.” Smithsonian.com. Last modified October 24, 2007. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/brief-salem.html Gibson, Marion. “Retelling Salem Stories: Gender Politics and Witches in American Culture.” European Journal of American Culture 25, No. 2 (2006): 85-107. Hill. Frances. The Salem Witch Trials Reader. Massachusetts: Da Capo Press, 2000. King, Ernest W., and Franklin G. Mixon. “Religiosity and the Political Economy of the Salem Witch Trials.” Social Science Journal 47, no. 3 (2010): 678-688. Latner, Richard. “The Long and Short of Salem Witchcraft: Chronology and Collective Violence in 1692.” Journal of Social History 42, no. 1 (2008): 137-156. MacBain, Jenny. The Salem Witch Trials: A Primary Source History of the Witchcraft Trials in Salem, Massachusetts. New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, 2003. Sun, The. “Witch City ; Salem, Mass., Embraces Its Gruesome History.” The Sun (Baltimore, Maryland), October 31, 2004: 2R. Wilson, Lori Lee. The Salem Witch Trials. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications Company, 1997. Read More