Salem WitchCraft Trials of 1692 Research Assignment

The Salem Witchcraft Trials included mass witch hysteria, and resulted in twenty four known deaths, with as many as thirteen other possible. It started in 1688, after an argument between one Goody Glover, and a thirteen year old girl named Martha Goodwin. Proceeding this argument, Martha began to act strangely and was suspected to be afflicted by witchcraft. Glover was arrested, and after attempts to persuade her to repent, was hanged. Martha continued to exhibit her bizarre behavior, as did her younger brother, and two sisters.

Four years later, eleven-year-old Abigail Williams, and nine-year-old Elizabeth Parris are acting similarly. Ann Putnam Jr, and other Salem girls also soon begin behaving oddly. The girls are pressured by townspeople and ministers to identify who caused them to begin behaving like this, and Elizabeth fingers a slave named Tituba. Later, the girls accuse Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne of witchcraft.

Over the next nine months, a fever of accusations would fly about the village of Salem, with over fifty accused, and more than thirty dead. Among the accused, four-year-old Dorcas Good, John, and Elizabeth Proctor (he was the first man to be accused of witchcraft in Salem), also Mary Warren who was one of the accusing girls, after she confessed to lying. Later, she recanted this statement, and rejoined the accusers.

The furor finally began to calm down when the use of spectral evidence was denounced by the Reverend Increase Mather. Later, the Governor of Massachussetts, one Sir William Phipps, ordered the use of spectral evidence no longer admissable in court, releasing many accused witches, and prohibiting further arrests. Over the next three hundred years, the trials held in Salem would be called unlawful, and a tragedy, and formal apologies would be made by the accusers, officials involved in it, and the colony itself.

Bibliography
-http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/salem/SALEM.HTM