Witchcraft Case

Witchcraft

Witchcraft has fascinated people well past its debut in New England during the late 1600s. In 1692, a shocking sequence of events occurred in Salem, Massachusetts, and Samuel Eliot Morison tells the events in The Intellectual Life of Colonial New England. The horrific episodes began in 1962 when a group of teenage girls began to convulse and cry out, blaming witchcraft. They also accused a "half-breed" slave named Tituba in the ministers family, and two old women of bewitching them. This chain of events ultimately started the vicious circle of accusations and wrongful hangings and the deaths of innocent women, men, and the occasional dog or two. Morison made it clear that the sudden belief in witchcraft was brought about because of a feeling of uneasiness, rebellions, government change, and other hardships this small community faced. "It[Salem Village] had no school, the people were poor, and their ministers had been rather low grade". (Morison 259).

The Salem witch trials go much deeper than a few girls twitching and accusing a few random people of black magic, some had motive for their accusations. In Mary Beth

Norton's article, "George Burroughs and the Girls from Casco" she focuses on one of the few men to be tried and executed because of witchcraft. The people most responsible for his conviction were Abigail Hobbs, Mercy Lewis, and Susannah Sheldon, dubbed "the girls from Casco". Ann Putnam from Salem Village had a vision of Minister Burroughs, "..he which was a Minister that should teach children to feare God..."(Norton 71) This first outcry was the start of George Burroughs execution and many believe the girls had a motive.

Although episodes of witchcraft have been documented, it is extremely hard to prove if all of the facts were true. Entertaining Satan by John Putnam Demos is a study that takes a biographical