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The Salem Witch Trials: Revival Gone Wrong

Sat, 20 Nov 2010 02:55:44 +0000

    When one thinks of the Salem Witch Trials, many visions and thoughts may come to mind. Whether it be the hanging of the accused on “Witch’s Hill,” the writhing of young girls who were supposedly bewitched, or town meetings of pious Puritan men sentencing people to their death, the images imagined are no doubt images of chaos. The madness of this small Massachusetts town, however, was hardly witchcraft. Rather, it was a conglomeration of several religious, social and economical factors that went horribly amiss.
    From the first fits in late 1691 to the culmination of the ordeal in 1693, 154 people were accused of being witches. Out of these, 19 people were executed, not including 4 who died in prison, and 1 who died during his questioning while being crushed under rocks. (Jrank). While it began with a few young girls behaving mysteriously, there are many factors that played in the escalation to hysteria, chaos, and bloodshed.
    Salem, Massachusetts in the late seventeenth century was not a united town. There were two separate entities, which came to be colloquially known as Salem Village and Salem Town. Salem Town was much like any other New England town. It was a town of commerce and a fishing port known for its accessible waterways. Salem was governed by the Puritan Church, and its citizens were, for the most part, devout in their religious convictions. In the mid 1600’s, Salem Town began to push outward due to the lack of appropriate agriculture land within the town limits. Farms began popping up to the north of Salem Town. This area would later come to be known as Salem Village. While Salem Town began to become more and more commercial, Salem Village remained primarily agricultural and self-sustaining.
    The pulling apart of these two entities began when farmers from Salem Village wished to build their own meeting house and hire their own preacher because of the traveling distance between their farms and the town center in Salem Town, which for many was 10 or more miles. The men were called to serve on night watch, and thought it unfair for them to travel so far. (Boyer/Nissenbaum, 40). Salem Town denied their request the first several times they made it. They had no desire in losing these farmlands, as they increased the tax revenue and supplied food to the town that it couldn’t provide for itself because of the poor soil. The farmers rarely came to the meeting house in Salem Town because of the travel, but were still expected to pay taxes for it. Finally in 1672 they were allowed by the court to put their taxes toward their own meeting house and finding and hiring a minister.
Even though the Village now had a meeting house and a preacher, James Bayley, they were not considered a real church or a real town. In the Puritan belief, a church was neither the religious congregation nor the building in which they met, rather, it was only a select few chosen out of the town populous who were “visible saints who had felt the infusion of divine grace and banded together in testimony to the power of their experience.” (Boyer/Nissenbaum, 42). These were the only people who were allowed to partake in the Rite of Communion, and these were the people who ultimately made the decisions of the Town. The rest of the church-goers were considered the “congregation.” While Salem Town had a church in the Puritan sense, Salem Village did not. There were no select individuals who made up this elite body of believers, only a congregation who could hold meetings and be preached and ministered to, known as a Parish. This caused some tension because in seventeenth century New England a community wasn’t considered a town without a church. Salem Village was also still susceptible to the wants and needs of Salem Town. For example, Salem Town could seize the land of any person living in Salem Village for the use of the Town if they saw fit. An example of this is when they took control of the land directly in front of Nathan Putnam’s house because of his refusal to pay a Salem Town tax. (Boyer/Nissenbaum 42).
    There was also some religious turmoil in Salem Village. The feelings of not being considered a real town along with the strained relationship with Salem Village caused bickering among neighbors. This led to disagreements in the hiring and keeping of preachers, and in fact, between the hiring of their first preacher in 1672 and the onset of the witch trials, they went through four preachers in the twenty year span: James Bayley, George Burroughs, Deodat Lawson, and Samuel Parris, who was the preacher throughout the witch trials. This led to religious insecurity throughout the Village.
    Late in 1691, the fire was started. It began with young girls meeting on the outskirts of town and experimenting with the occult and divinations. Some knowledge of occult had found its way into the colonies through books and into Salem Village through Tituba, the West Indes slave of the Reverend Samuel Parris, who brought tales of voodoo magic with her. What began as trivial adolescent games turned into fear and panic as the girls began to feel that they were losing control of the magic and that there was evil in it. One incident describes a makeshift crystal ball that one of the girls made out of a glass and an egg white. They wished to see their future husbands in the crystal ball, but were frightened when they saw what looked like a coffin floating in the glass. It was shortly after this that the first “fits” began. The girls’ parents described their behavior as “distempers,” “fits,” giving “foolish ridiculous speeches,” and contorting into “odd postures.” (Boyer/Nissenbaum 2).
    The first question one must ask is why were these girls acting so strangely? A plausible explanation is psychological and sociological in nature. The girls were toying in the supernatural and unknown, of which they’d been warned their entire lives was of the devil. They knew that it was “wrong” by the standards of their strict upbringing, and approached the spells and divinations with fear as well as curiosity. After they became panicked by events such as the coffin in the egg white, they began to exhibit these symptoms similar to symptoms that would be present if they really had enacted supernatural forces. It was a sort of “public confession” which was a big part of Puritan religion.
“By first projecting upon others the unacknowledged impulses which lay within themselves…the accusers could bring such impulses into the open… and thereby affirm their commitment to social values in which they very much wanted to believe.” (Boyer/Nissenbaum 215).
    How did this turn into the witch trials that would follow? It must be noted that the girls did not attribute their symptoms to witchcraft until the adults of the Village suggested it, and did not accuse anyone until the adults put them under a battalion of questioning. The way the adult body of Salem Village interpreted the girls’ behavior is what began the accusation and trying of supposed “witches.” While the girls’ behavior is the first time something like this had happened, it has not been the last. In Northampton in 1734 young girls, including Mercy Lewis, began having similar episodes. The adults here, however, did not interpret these as a work of the devil, but instead turned them into a spiritual connotation. All of this eventually led to an almost full-fledged revival, which can be seen as a precursor to the Great Awakening later that century.
    It is interesting to speculate why, when given the same symptoms in the victims, the events in Northampton were attributed to divinity and the events in Salem were attributed to wickedness. The answer is surprising: both of these towns were aiming for the same goal, religious revival, however, Salem had some ulterior motives. Prior to the breakouts in Salem, Reverend Parris was struggling with his congregation. He was having low attendance at services, and was having a hard time convincing the congregation to pay the taxes to provide his income. It seems like a foolproof plan to say that these girls were bewitched to bring the town together and back toward God. Salem’s plan, however, escalated far out of control.
    There is a distinct pattern to the people who were accused of being witches. The first three accused were Tituba, the slave of Rev. Parris, Sarah Good, a homeless beggar woman, and Sarah Osbourne, who was known for fornication, rarely attending services, and selling alcohol out of her home. All three of these women seem like easy targets. Tituba had brought with her tales of Voodoo, which made her a prime suspect to witchcraft. The other two women were looked down upon because their lives were in opposition to Puritan lifestyles. As more and more girls became afflicted however, the social and economical status of the accused gradually climbed, even accusing men who had estates in the colonies and in England of being wizards.
    This pattern leads to a speculation of social power. From the first two girls who were “afflicted,” more and more girls came down with these symptoms. It is very possible that they were feeding off of each others’ actions. It is also possible that the situation got so out of control because of the power that these girls felt during the trials. The social role of a Puritan adolescent female was one of subservience. When the girls were accusing people of higher and higher statuses, they were in control of the elders of the town. They even held peoples’ lives in their hands.
    In conclusion, it is reasonable to believe that the Salem Witch Trials were not about witchcraft at all. Rather, it was hysteria brought on by frightened girls, adults with an agenda seeking community cohesiveness via a religious awakening, and perpetuated by the social power the afflicted girls had and used over the village members. The victims of the Salem Witch Trials were not the girls who were afflicted by witchcraft, rather the victims were the accused men and women who were tried, jailed, and in some cases executed for pleading innocence to the madness.

Works Cited:

Boyer, Paul, and Stephen Nissenbaum. Salem Possessed: The Social Origens of Witchcraft.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974. 2-215. Print.

Breslaw, Elaine. “Tituba’s Confession: The Multicultural Dimensions of the 1692 Salem Witch-
Hunt.” Ethnohistory. 44.3 (1997): 535-556. Print.

Ray, Benjamin. “Salem Witch Trials.” OAH Magazine of History. 17.4 (2003): 32-36. Print.

Sarah Good – Salem Witch Trials Statistics Salem-Witch-Trials-Statistics.html”>

Pendle Witchcraft Trials

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 10:52:09 +0000

It wasn’t just the sheer number of people involved in the trials which made it notable, but the fact that the majority of the accused came from two feuding families.

It all began in 1601, when a seemingly petty argument over the alleged theft of clothes and meal brought the friendship between the two families to an abrupt end. The feud between the two families grew increasingly bitter until accusations of witchcraft emerged; and it wasn’t long before the local justice of peace, Roger Nowell, was involved.

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The charges were typical of all witch trials. Several related to the killing of people by means of witchcraft, and others to the harming of animals and humans via witchcraft.

It was also claimed that they were known to have familiars, supernatural spirit companions in the physical form of animals. It was unbelievably easy in those days to find yourself accused of having familiars. If you owned a cat or dog, or even so much as had a cat or dog pass by your house, you could be accused. Even having a hare or toad close by was sometimes enough!

One of the accused, Elizabeth Devine was convicted largely on evidence of her own children. Although, legally both were ineligible to give evidence (the son in his twenties was considered simple minded and the daughter was only nine years old) this, as was common, was overlooked by the courts.

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An interesting slant was added, when following the arrests of several of them, members of the two families joined to hatch a plot to blow up Lancashire Castle, where they were being held, with a view to releasing their imprisoned relatives.

At the end of the trial, ten of the accused were sentenced to death by hanging on 20 August 1612, despite most of them still protesting their innocence.

Tragedy in Salem

Mon, 21 May 2007 14:02:00 +0000

Salem, Massachusetts in the year of 1692 was the scene of a terrible tragedy. The events that took place ended with the loss of twenty-four lives. The village was rife with accusations of witchcraft which caused hysteria that escalated into the trials of many women and men. There are different theories for the cause of the Salem Witch trials, of which economic, social, religious, and political circumstances are involved. A combination of factors is the most likely cause of the hysteria that followed the illness of two young girls.

The origins of the hysteria that overcame Salem Village began in January 1692 when the young girls, Betty Parris and Abigail Williams, began to display bizarre behavior. The Religious Movements Homepage, University of Virginia, described the state of the girls as “having fits of convulsion, screaming, and hallucination (para. 8).” A doctor examined the girls and could not come up with a natural cause for their affliction.

In light of the Puritanism of the village and the belief that Satan was just as real as God, the community came to the conclusion that they were bewitched. When pressed to reveal who had bewitched them, the girls accused three women, Titbua (the Parris family slave), Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne. This began the horrifying months of accusations and trials in Salem Village.

The strongest theory of the cause of the tragic events is the stringent Puritan code that the villagers lived by. The church was the foundation of life in 17th century New England. Most of the people in Massachusetts were Puritans and the lifestyle was very strict. Puritans believed that all sin should be punished and it was actually against the law not to attend church. The Puritans kept a firm connection between church and government and thus could control the activities of the community.

Any misfortune was looked upon as God’s will and the community would not help the unfortunate. Under these conditions, the accusation of witchcraft was a very serious one, punishable by death. The Puritan leaders must have felt compelled to stamp out any vestige of Satan within the community. The community had other problems at this time and the possibility of witchcraft afoot would have caused much fear and panic.

Another theory for the cause of the tragedy is the fact that the community at this time was divided into two parts; Salem Town and Salem Village. Salem Village (also called Salem Farms) was treated separately because the citizens were mostly poor farmers. “Salem Town was a prosperous port town at the center of trade with London. Most of those living in Salem Town were wealthy merchants (Discovery Education, 2006).”

Salem Village had spent many years trying to become independent of Salem Town. Salem Town was dependent upon the farmers for food and yet they determined crop prices and collected taxes from the village. There was also a division with Salem Village. Citizens who lived near Ipswich Road were closer to Salem Town and they became more prosperous.

The others who lived further away feared that the “worldliness and affluence of Salem Town threatened their Puritan values (Discovery Education, 2006).” One of the families that were in most opposition to the economic changes was the Putnam family. This family was a strong influence behind the witchcraft accusations.

At this time a new minister was selected for Salem Village. Reverend Samuel Parris was a strong opponent to the economic prosperity of Salem Town and claimed it to be the influence of the Devil. Most of the accused witches lived near Ipswich Road and the accusers lived well into Salem Village. The economic jealousies and the influence of a stern minister played a great role in the trials that ensued. With the influence of Reverend Parris and his fueling the fire of dissention between the factions, the families of the village must have been under more than the usual strain to live perfect moral lives.

This leads to the third theory that has been set forth concerning the cause of the witch hysteria of 1692. The children of these circumstances had to live by the same standards as the adults. Their lives were filled with chores and not much else. They were not allowed to show emotions or disobey for they would be punished severely. The children did not usually play because this was looked upon as a sinful distraction (Discovery Education, 2006).

Many knew how to read, but the bible or other religious materials were the only books available. This was the setting for Betty Parris and Abigail Williams. The lure of the stories and fortune-telling of Tituba were probably quite stimulating for bored and restless children. It is theorized that this caused guilt in the girls and lead to their strange behavior.

Living in a time when such activities were demonized, these girls could very well have convinced themselves that they were bewitched. It is also speculated that once the adults showed them this much attention, they continued their behavior until it was impossible to stop the horrible events as they unfolded. These girls may have created the initial witchcraft accusations, but the adults in the community let this escalate into a tragedy.

All three of these theories have valid points. A community divided within itself by economic jealousies, the Puritanism that supported this division and its harsh view of human failings, and children that were deprived of entertainment and joy in life, all could have lead to the hysteria that followed the young girls’ afflictions. This unfortunate mixture of circumstances caused the tragic death of twenty-four innocent lives and forever left its mark on American history.