how has hale changed since his arrival in salem
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The Salem witch trials occurred in colonial Massachusetts betwixt 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 pop imagination more than than 300 years later on.
Salem Struggling
Several centuries agone, many practicing Christians, and those of other religions, had a strong conventionalities that the Devil could give certain people known as witches the power to impairment others in return for their loyalty. A "witchcraft craze" rippled through Europe from the 1300s to the end of the 1600s. Tens of thousands of supposed witches—mostly women—were executed. Though the Salem trials came on simply as the European craze was winding down, local circumstances explain their onset.
In 1689, English rulers William and Mary started a war with France in the American colonies. Known as King William's State of war to colonists, it ravaged regions of upstate New York, Nova Scotia and Quebec, sending refugees into the county of Essex and, specifically, Salem Village in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. (Salem Hamlet is present-day Danvers, Massachusetts; colonial Salem Boondocks became what'due south now Salem.)
The displaced people created a strain on Salem's resources. This aggravated the existing rivalry betwixt families with ties to the wealth of the port of Salem and those who all the same depended on agriculture. Controversy as well brewed over Reverend Samuel Parris, who became Salem Village's first ordained minister in 1689, and was disliked considering of his rigid ways and greedy nature. The Puritan villagers believed all the quarreling was the work of the Devil.
In January of 1692, Reverend Parris' daughter Elizabeth, age 9, and niece Abigail Williams, age 11, started having "fits." They screamed, threw things, uttered peculiar sounds and contorted themselves into strange positions, and a local doctor blamed the supernatural. Another daughter, Ann Putnam, historic period 11, experienced similar episodes. On February 29, under pressure from magistrates Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne, the girls blamed three women for afflicting them: Tituba, the Parris' Caribbean slave; Sarah Good, a homeless beggar; and Sarah Osborne, an elderly impoverished woman.
Witch Chase
All three women were brought before the local magistrates and interrogated for several days, starting on March ane, 1692. Osborne claimed innocence, as did Skillful. Simply Tituba confessed, "The Devil came to me and bid me serve him." She described elaborate images of black dogs, crimson cats, yellow birds and a "black homo" who wanted her to sign his volume. She admitted that she signed the book and said there were several other witches looking to destroy the Puritans. All three women were put in jail.
With the seed of paranoia planted, a stream of accusations followed for the next few months. Charges against Martha Corey, a loyal fellow member of the Church in Salem Hamlet, profoundly concerned the customs; if she could be a witch, then anyone could. Magistrates fifty-fifty questioned Sarah Good's 4-year-old girl, Dorothy, and her timid answers were construed every bit a confession. The questioning got more serious in April when Deputy Governor Thomas Danforth and his administration attended the hearings. Dozens of people from Salem and other Massachusetts villages were brought in for questioning.
On May 27, 1692, Governor William Phipps ordered the establishment of a Special Court of Oyer (to hear) and Terminer (to decide) for Suffolk, Essex and Middlesex counties. The get-go case brought to the special court was Bridget Bishop, an older woman known for her gossipy habits and promiscuity. When asked if she committed witchcraft, Bishop responded, "I am as innocent as the child unborn." The defense must non have been convincing, considering she was found guilty and, on June 10, became the kickoff person hanged on what was later called Gallows Loma.
Five days later on, respected minister Cotton Mather wrote a letter of the alphabet imploring the courtroom not to permit spectral prove—testimony nigh dreams and visions. The court largely ignored this request and 5 people were sentenced and hanged in July, v more in August and eight in September. On October 3, post-obit in his son's footsteps, Increase Mather, so president of Harvard, denounced the employ of spectral show: "It were better that ten suspected witches should escape than one innocent person be condemned."
Governor Phipps, in response to Mather's plea and his own wife being questioned for witchcraft, prohibited further arrests, released many defendant witches and dissolved the Court of Oyer and Terminer on October 29. Phipps replaced it with a Superior Court of Judicature, which disallowed spectral evidence and only condemned 3 out of 56 defendants. Phipps somewhen pardoned all who were in prison on witchcraft charges past May 1693. But the impairment had been washed: 19 were hanged on Gallows Hill, a 71-yr-old human was pressed to death with heavy stones, several people died in jail and nearly 200 people, overall, had been accused of practicing "the Devil'due south magic."
Restoring Proficient Names
Post-obit the trials and executions, many involved, like judge Samuel Sewall, publicly confessed mistake and guilt. On January xiv, 1697, the General Court ordered a day of fasting and soul-searching for the tragedy of Salem. In 1702, the court alleged the trials unlawful. And in 1711, the colony passed a bill restoring the rights and good names of those accused and granted £600 restitution to their heirs. However, it was not until 1957—more than 250 years later—that Massachusetts formally apologized for the events of 1692.
In the 20th century, artists and scientists alike continued to exist fascinated by the Salem witch trials. Playwright Arthur Miller resurrected the tale with his 1953 playThe Crucible, using the trials equally an apologue for the McCarthyism paranoia in the 1950s. Additionally, numerous hypotheses have been devised to explain the strange behavior that occurred in Salem in 1692. Ane of the most physical studies, published inScience in 1976 by psychologist Linnda Caporael, blamed the aberrant habits of the accused on the fungus ergot, which can be institute in rye, wheat and other cereal grasses. Toxicologists say that eating ergot-contaminated foods can lead to muscle spasms, vomiting, delusions and hallucinations. As well, the mucus thrives in warm and clammy climates—not too unlike the swampy meadows in Salem Village, where rye was the staple grain during the bound and summer months.
In August 1992, to mark the 300th ceremony of the trials, Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel dedicated the Witch Trials Memorial in Salem. Also in Salem, the Peabody Essex Museum houses the original court documents, and the boondocks'south most-visited attraction, the Salem Witch Museum, attests to the public's enthrallment with the 1692 hysteria.
Editor'due south note - October 27, 2022: Thank you to Professor Darin Hayton for pointing out an error in this commodity. While the exact number of supposed witches killed in Europe isn't known, the best guess is closer to tens of thousands of victims, not hundreds of thousands. Nosotros have fixed the text to address this effect.
Source: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/a-brief-history-of-the-salem-witch-trials-175162489/
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