American History: Salem Witch Trials 1692

The Shakespearean reference characterizing the Salem witch trials as the "worst" historical event, certainly might be reasonably argued by some. In a sense, the trials of 1692 were the most outrageous travesty of justice to befall the Puritan community. It involved hundreds of falsely accused individuals and over twenty related deaths by execution, torture and unjust imprisonment.

Were there other events which exceed the Salem trials in their overall social impact and negative effect? Unquestionably, the answer is an unequivocal yes.

The New England Puritan community was devastated on a far greater scale by the tragic and deadly King Philip's War conflict which raged during 1675-1676. During this disasterous event, thousands of native people and colonial settlers were displaced, entire native villages and frontier towns were destroyed and abandoned, and hundreds lost their lives.

As with the trials of 1692, the Puritan ministers reasoned that this event was an outpouring of divine wrath upon a community which had turned its back upon its mission to establish a "city upon a hill" and had broken its covenant with God.

In actuality it represented the last organized effort by an alliance of New England tribes of native people to drive the English colonists back from the frontier and stem the westward expansion of settlers. Besides the ruthless slaughter, the King Philip's War was noted for the inhumane and unjust treatment of prisoners of war. Many colonists were taken to French Canada and sold, while many natives, including the "praying Indians" of Natick and elsewhere,were forcibly confined in detention centers located on islands in Boston Harbor.

To the Puritans, the greatest difference between the threat of the King Philip's War and the Salem witchcraft outbreak was the perceived enemy. In the former crisis, the "enemy" was visible and could be confronted directly and killed by conventional means, while in the latter, the enemy was insidious, invisible and of a spiritual nature. For this reason the Salem trials may have left a more devastating effect upon the collective subconscious of the Puritan community than the threat of King Philip (Metacomet) and his hundreds of warriors.

One of the most widespread misunderstandings about the Salem episode is the belief that the condemned victims were burned-at-the-stake. While this form of execution was commonly practiced in continental Europe in cases of witchcraft and heresy, it was much less common in England. This is especially true after the reign of Mary "Bloody Mary" Tudor who attempted to bring Roman Catholicism back to her nation by a ruthless persecution of Protestants in the mid-1500's.

In 17th century New England, however, there is no existing record of anyone being burned-at-the-stake. Those individuals found guilty and executed for witchcraft were hanged.

One would like to think that this method of execution was used in an effort to provide a more humane form of death than being burned alive. In actuality, the customary method of hanging in the 1600's was the so-called "short-drop", and it was excruciating.

In this method the victim would be forced to ascend a ladder under a projecting branch of a tree. A rope and noose would be tied to the branch overhead then the noose placed around the neck of the condemned standing upon a rung of the ladder. The ladder would then be turned or pulled out from below, leaving the victim suspended from the branch by the rope.

In this method of public execution, the condemned died of gradual strangulation over a period of several minutes. It was often used to execute persons guilty of murder, grand larceny, piracy and other serious anti-social behavior.

In this way each of the nineteen victims of the Salem episode died a slow and agonizing death. Unfortunately, they lived over a hundred years before the development of the more rapid and humane "long-drop"---an execution method incorporating a gallows with trap door designed to quickly drop the victim several feet, snapping the neck of the condemned person.

Contemporary people are often incredulous that any form of belief system could have ever been regarded as so dangerous as to constitute a capital crime. For such persons it is difficult to imagine a society where norms of both social and religious behavior were determined by the laws of the state.

Concerning this point, it is important to remember that during this period, the strength of a society or nation state was closely associated with its uniformity of religious belief. Whatever the faith of a monarch happened to be, Protestant or Catholic, such would also be the faith of the population of his kingdom. This was the norm.

At this time, the solidarity of religious belief of a nation's people was perceived as a strength. Diversity of belief--even among various sub-sects of reformed Protestantism--was viewed as an essential weakness in the fabric of society. The one notable exception to this practice was the Dutch Republic, which had only recently achieved its independence from Roman Catholic, Habsburg Spain. In fact, Holland was the only European nation which was essentially tolerant of religious diversity throughout most of its existence.

In England, until the reign of King James II(1685-1689), the population was expected to belong to and worship as members of the Church of England. Thus English law, prior to 1688, prohibited all other forms of worship except that of the state church.

That is not to say that England did not possess many religious dissidents and non-conformists as well as a significant community of Jews and Roman Catholics. But these minority groups understood that they were always at risk. They were generally regarded as less than loyal subjects since the monarch was the head of the Church of England, and to break away from that Church was to call your loyalty as a subject into question. It was an intolerant age.

Witchcraft, as a crime defined by the law codes of most European nations of this time, was achieved by persons who had deliberately attempted to communicate with Satan. Such communication was attempted to establish a relationship whereby individuals would exchange their soul to Satan for supernatural powers. Such individuals were regarded as a threat to society because they had agreed to perform malefic, harmful, often destructive, anti-social acts at Satan's request.

Naturally, implicit in such legal codes was the generally accepted belief in the existence of God, Satan and other spiritual beings comprising what Reverend Cotton Mather would characterize as "the invisible world".

Beyond this perceived societal danger, the political loyalty of alleged witches was clearly in question because they had, by definition, betrayed all religious institutions including the predominant state church. Thus to the legal minds of the 1500's and 1600's, witchcraft was a form of secular treason, a form of anti-social behavior, always punishable by death under secular legal codes whenever discovered. For this reason, such cases were not tried in ecclesiastical but state courts which enforced secular statutes and their prescribed punishments.

For these reasons the secular legal records of most European states--Spain, France,Switzerland, the Italian and German ststes, Scotland and of course, England-- from the 1400's through the 1600's, are full of cases of thousands of individuals charged with the crime of witchcraft. Salem is a New England manifestation of this horrific and widespread phenomenon, and when compared to Europe, a relatively minor one.

In beginning this site, one of my primary concerns is to correct some of the common misunderstandings and misconceptions about this tragic event. Some of these are so basic that it is surprising that they have become so firmly entrenched in our public consciousness, while others are more abstract, and merit some serious discussion. It is my hope that this might become a forum for some serious discussions focusing on the trials, the events surrounding them, and the various theories that have been offered by way of explanation.

The Salem witchcraft trials are perhaps the most well known and yet misunderstood series of events in American history. They are not unique to colonial New England since literally dozens of witchcraft cases took place in Massachusetts and Connecticut prior to 1692. They are not unique to Puritanism, nor should the Puritans as a group be castigated for the then pervasive belief in witchcraft which was common among the people of Europe--rich or poor, educated or ignorant, Protestant, Catholic, noble or commoner, from earliest times down to the advent of the Enlightenment.

The Salem trials have been wrongfully used by some historians, and by more than a few less academic writers, as a means to discredit the New England Puritans and their 17th Century effort to establish a reformed, theocratic commonwealth in the New World. Not discounting the great travesty of justice the Salem episode represents, frankly, it might have been much worse. Consider that of the over two-hundred individuals who were "cried out against" by the so-called, "afflicted children", only twenty-three convictions are brought in. Nineteen persons are convicted and ultimately hanged and one very brave and somewhat uncooperative individual--Gile Corey--is subjected to death by the torture of forte peine et dure ("pressing")---a medieval practice allowed by English Common Law, and not devised by some pathological Puritan court officer.

In fact, the great majority of cases involving witchcraft in Puritan New England beginning in the 1640's and ending in the 1690's resulted in verdicts of innocence or dismissal, not conviction and execution. This compares quite favorably to the multiple thousands of cases of alleged witchcraft in Europe, the majority of which resulted in conviction and death for those accused between 1400 and 1700. This tragic point is, I believe, often conveniently overlooked by those who wish to characterize the Puritans of New England as a group of unusually intolerant, fanatics bent upon harming all those who did not confrom to their highly regimented and, to most contemporary observers, distastefully religious way-of-life.

It is their way of saying to their readers in effect, "See! This is what comes of a society determined to be devoted to a standard of faith based upon the teachings of Christ...fanaticism, judgmentalism, hypocrisy and persecution!"

In actuality, the 17th Cenury was, by-in-large an intolerant and violent time in which to live regardless of one's religious beliefs and personal perspective. Everyone--Protestant and Catholic--sought a place where they might live without fear of persecution. It is time that contemporary historians and writers attempt to understand the Salem witchcraft episode as it fits within the larger context of European culture and society, and not as some aberrant, localized manifestation of Puritan Calvinist theology.