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Example research essay topic: Salem Witch Trials Put To Death - 1,706 words

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The evidence of witchcraft and related works has been around for many centuries. Gradually, though, a mixture a religious, economical, and political reasons instigated different periods of fear and uncertainty among society. Witchcraft was thought of as a connection to the devil that made the victim do evil and strange deeds. (Sutter par. 1) In the sixteenth, seventeenth, and twentieth century, the hysteria over certain causes resulted in prosecution in the Salem Witch Trials, European Witchcraft Craze, and the McCarthy hearings. These three events all used uncertain and unjustly accusations to attack the accused.

The Salem witch trials in Massachusetts Colony lasted from 1692 to early 1693. Even before the witchcraft trials, Salem Village was not exactly known as a bastion of tranquillity in New England. (Sutter par. 2) There was a population of over six hundred that was divided into two main parts; those that wanted to separate from Salem Town and those that did not. They divided themselves into the eastern and western parts of the town. With this tension and an unfortunate combination of economic conditions, congregational strife, teenage boredom, and personal jealousies, (Oliver par. 2) Salem became unstable. When Elizabeth Parris and Abigail Williams, Reverend Samuel Parris's daughter and niece, started to exhibit strange behavior including convulsive seizures, screaming, and trances, (Oliver par. 2) and the doctor declared that the girls were under the influence of the devil, the townspeople believed him. This could be because there was an Indian War ranging less than seventy miles away, and with many refugees from the war were in that area, that the thought that the devil was close at hand was possible. (Oliver par. 5) From then on, the accusations were everywhere.

Neighbors accused neighbors of witchcraft, and the fright was mounting. (Sutter par. 4) The accused were mostly women, and to make them confess, different methods of torture were used. The confessions and trials of the accused witches were nonsense. Often, torture would continue until the victim had no choice but to confess of being a witch, and most of the confessions were forced. Trials and hangings continued and by the early autumn of 1692, doubts were developing as to how so many respectable people could be guilty. The educated elite of the colony began efforts to end the witch-hunting hysteria that had enveloped Salem. Increase Mather then published a work entitled Cases of Conscience, which argues that it were better that ten suspected witches should escape than one innocent person should be condemned.

This urged the court to exclude spectral evidence. With spectral evidence not permitted, the remaining trials ended in acquittals and all the convicted and accused witches were let out of jail in May of 1693. By the time the whole witchcraft incident ended, nineteen convicted witches were hanged, at least four accused witches had died in prison, and one man, Giles Corey, had been pressed to death under rocks. About one to two hundred other people were arrested and imprisoned on witchcraft charges. The witchcraft accusations in Salem had taken the lives of at least twenty-four people. In Europe, death by accusations of witchcraft had started as early as the thirteenth century.

By the middle of the thirteenth century, the Church became deeply concerned about the spread of heresies. (Wilkins 25) The Church therefore decided to set up courts known as the Courts of the Inquisition to try cases of heresy. Witches were among those tried and put to death. This persecution may have seemed harsh, but it was with the coming of the Reformation that the witch-hunts really began. To the Protestants, witches represented the devil himself. For one thing, it was that the Protestants believed everything in the Bible meant exactly what it said. In one of the books in the Old Testament (Exodus 22: 18) it says, Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.

This was taken to mean that witches existed and should be put to death. There was no group of Protestants who did not hate and fear witches (Wilkins 26) So, as the Reformation spread across Europe, the persecution of witches gathered strength. (Wilkins 26) However, it was during the late fifteenth century that the witchcraft hysteria began. Inflation, war, plague, and religious uncertainties had played a part in causing the social tension to start the craze. Three years after the British Civil War began, the Parliament appointed a Witch-finder General. He and other appointed witch-finders were to take suspicious-looking people to a witch trial.

The most common kind of trial was when they stick a long pin into the accused witch's leg. If she did not cry out, the magistrate would declare that she was a witch because witches, supposedly, could not feel pain. Unfortunately, though, witch-finders would often use a trick pin, built in the same way as modern stage daggers, so that the point disappeared into the upper part of the pin, and the woman, naturally, did not feel anything. (Wilkins 42) Another type of trial was known as swimming a witch. The woman's hands are tied to her feet and then she is thrown into a pond. The innocent ones sank, and the ones who floated were said to be guilty and were executed. This put the woman into a very hard position; if she sank, she would drown, and if she floated, she would be executed.

Finally, during the second half of the seventeenth century, the hysteria began to lesson. A big contribution to this was science. As science became more widespread, heavy beliefs in religion and witchcraft abated. Destruction caused by religious wars also caused the people to become more tolerant and as the government got stronger, fewer officials wasted their time on witchcraft trials. The last execution took place in 1684, and in 1736, the law against witches was repealed. The number of deaths in this time period is unknown because the accused witches lived and died without records, and we know nothing of their lives, or even their trials and executions. (Powell-Smith par. 79) An estimated 30, 000 people died in Germany alone, where the craze reached its most disturbing heights. (Powell-Smith par. 2) When compared with the Salem witchcraft trials in Massachusetts, the European witchcraft craze seemed much harsher.

Even though they were both caused by fear of the unknown mixed with other tensions, the death rate of the witchcraft accusations in Europe is well over 1000 times more than in Salem. Also, documents prove that the executions of witches in Europe was much more painful. In Salem, the main method of executing witches was hanging them and nearly all the convicted witches died in that manner. In Europe, on the other hand, various methods were used such as burning the witch alive, dislocating the arms by hanging the victim up by the arm and attaching heavy stone weights to the legs, tearing up flesh with hot pincers, impalement, and breaking on the wheel. (Powell-Smith par. 12. ) Basically, death by torment was common. Both in Salem and Europe, fear of the devil caused the trials, and the realization that the trials were pointless ended the hysteria.

Strong belief in religion had also fostered the hysteria. People were so intent to be faithful to God by accusing anyone whom they suspected were no longer faithful that they didn't realize that the trials were unjustly, or they were unaware of the mass murder that it caused. One event in history that relates to the two periods of witchcraft hysteria is the McCarthy hearings. Senator Joseph McCarthy had a strong resentment of Communism. His portrayal of Communism as the supreme evil allowed his accusations of 'disloyalty' to be incredibly effective. (Friedman par. 1) He accused eighty-one members in the State Department of having Communist connections.

However effective his portrayal of Communism may be, almost all his cases were totally messed up in the speech of his that explained each of the cases. For example, Case 3 was the same as Case 4, Case 9 was the same as Case 77, Cases 15, 27, 37, and 59 were never mentioned, and for one of his cases, he simply said that 'I do not have much information on this except the general statement of the agency [unidentified] that there is nothing in the files to disprove his Communist connections. ' (Friedman par. 18) This is somewhat like the witchcraft trials because the accusations did not contain much proof and were entirely unjustly and to an extent, silly. In the end, throughout his whole senatorial career, he never once was able to directly convict a single suspected Communist of a crime. (Friedman par. 30) Contrary to the witchcraft trials, many witches were convicted of their connection with the devil, but their trials were not fair. Also, McCarthy played on people's fears, and 'The Fight for America' was nothing more than a cleverly thought out plan that took advantage of America's hysteria about Communism during the Cold War. (Friedman par. 33) The thought of people renouncing God and conversing with the devil played on people's fears in the witchcraft trials, and with the people's hysteria, was able to kill many, though it was not a single person controlling the hysteria like McCarthy, but a whole area. To be concise, the relationship with McCarthy hearings and the European and Salem witchcraft hysteria can be summed up by an analogy; During the McCarthy hearings, people were prosecuted for being communists even without valid proof just as in the two witchcraft crazes, people were prosecuted for being witches without valid proof. All three were caused mainly of fear of the so-called evil.

During a time of crisis, people turn to extreme solutions. The witchcraft hysteria of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the McCarthy hearings are only three examples of how people can try to prosecute those they fear by assumption and without valid proof. The witchcraft hysteria should warn us to think about how best to safeguard and improve our system of justice to avoid unjustly trials that lead to unfair prosecution. These trials come to show as a reminder of how politics, family conflicts, religion, economics, and the imagination and fears of people (Sutter par. 1) can yield tragic consequences.


Free research essays on topics related to: witchcraft trials, mccarthy hearings, accused witches, salem witch trials, put to death

Research essay sample on Salem Witch Trials Put To Death

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