Salem Witch Trials

6 Pages 1613 Words

People ask themselves, why 1692? What started the Salem Witch Trials? Why were the people accused of witchcraft? There are some answers to those questions, but not accurate as to give a full description, and correct facts about the trials. Each person has a different perspective towards those answers, but none have the proof for their answers. They are all commentaries that people get from their knowledge about history.
The Salem Witchcraft trials were trials that resulted from the largest witch hunt in America history. The trials were held in 1692 in Salem, a town in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Nineteen people, both men and women, were convicted and hanged as witches. Another man was pressed to death with large stones for refusing to enter a plea of innocent or guilty to the witchcraft charge. Another 150 other resulted in the last witchcraft executions in America. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was an English colony, and many people there had brought the belief in witchcraft from England. Under English law, witchcraft was punishable by death. Sixteen people had been hanged as witches in New England before 1692.
Throughout history millions of people, eighty-percent of which were women, have been accused, arrested, tortured, put to trial and persecuted as witches. In 1692, a tragedy occurred in America, the Salem Witch Trials. People would think that by the time the United States was colonized these injustices on humanity would have come to an end, but that was not so.
Numerous witchcraft accusations had occurred in New England prior to 1692. As Indians attacked along the frontier and in the colonial landscape, most colonist feared for their own lives. In addition to the deadly cold winters, a smallpox epidemic had been around for over a decade. The superstitions of the people led them to believe that their God had abandoned them. In 1684, Great Britain withdrew its charter of Massachusetts, merchants sp...