Subtopics:
In 1692 the people in the town of Salem started to lose their minds. It all started when two girls, Betty Paris and Abigail Williams started to go crazy, because they beard with some kind of fungus in it. They started to have illusions that they were seeing spirits. Then the town started getting suspicious. They thought that Satan had visited the peaceful town of salem.
Next thing that they know is that they were doing all types of things
related to god to try to get rid of Satan. Then the town thought
that since they “saw
spirits” they will know who has contacted the devil. Abigail and the
rest of the girls called out three women’s names and one of them confessed.
The person who confessed was a lady named Tituba. And so the Salem Witch
trials began.
Later during the year Abigail and the girls kept on calling peoples names
and people got hung. Later during the year the leader in the court stopped
the
Witch Trials because it made no sense. After that the girls stopped. Now
the girls have killed people just for saying their names that they suppose
Abigail
saw them with “The Devil”.
This
is the house of Nathaniel Hawthorne in Salem, Massachusetts. Photo By:
Worobod on Flickr.com
During the Salem Witch trials, if you told the truth that you weren't a witch then you would be accused of being one. If you lied and said that you WERE a witch, you would be saved. For example, John Proctor said he wasn't a witch so he got hung. Judge Danforth forced Proctor to confess that he cheated on his wife and that he was a witch. Danforth was also going to put the confession on the church door. Proctor disagreed and said he can't lose his name. He means that he can't have a bad name. He be seen in town after what he did, so he died.
Some of the treatments for witches were getting hanged and getting pressed by rocks. For the hanging deaths, they would lock them away in jail until the day they were supposed to be hanged. If one of the women got pregnant, then they wouldn't have to be hanged until the baby was born.
If you were going to get pressed by rocks, they would ask you if you were a witch and every time you would say you weren't they would add on an extra rock and ask you if you were a witch again. Only one person died from this cause, that person was Giles Corey. He told them to add on more weight when they asked him if he was a witch. So I think that he died with pride and kept his story for each time they asked him if he was a witch.
Most of the people died from getting hanged. When they were on the platform that would drop them to get hanged, they would say a prayer that would let them tell god that they were coming and that they weren't witches.
The Salem witch trials left a dent in American
history. Many were accused without a good reason, and then killed in the
name of god. Some
of the accused’ property was taken away by the Government. It was a
snowballing event in my opinion because the accusations and killing seemed
to lead to more accusations and more killing. Some innocent civilians were
basically trapped because they could’t afford to bail themselves out
of prison. And even if they found a way to get out, they were still left
with no money.
Besides the people in this tragic event there were the animals, farming land
and property that were not treated nicely. The cows were not milked. The
grapes were not picked and property was given to people other than the owners.
Because there were so many people who had good crop land that were accused,
the crops were not watered or treated which caused weak farming for a following
couple years after the trials ended. January 13, 1697 a day of fasting and
prayer took place for the puritans thought that God was punishing them for
hanging so many people.