The United States has been through many dark and destructive times that today's young people need to study, understand, remember and learn from. In the land of the free, people have been enslaved, tortured, persecuted, and murdered with the open and tacit approval of local, state and federal government. The Salem witch trials were a blot on America's reputation that happened in the late sixteen hundreds. The eminent Puritan minister, Cotton Mather, is most remembered for his part in inciting Massachusetts' citizens to accuse and shun neighbors and friends.
In one of his most famous works, "Memorable Providence", he recounts a disturbing episode involving a local mason. This individual called on him because he did not know what was happening with his children. They were suddenly complaining of severe pain and would burst into unexpected wails of distress. The minister looked into the matter and concluded that a washerwoman was to blame for demonizing them.
During this time the Puritans became fearful and intolerant of those who did not completely obey the tenets of their religion. They considered impure thoughts to be as sinful as impure actions and targeted anyone they believed guilty of nonconformity. Behavior that today we would associate with a mental disorder, they perceived as the devil living inside the afflicted person.
The Salem trials accused many individuals, mostly women, of witchcraft for a number of reasons. There were local grudges involved in some cases, family feuds in others, and some simply wanted to purge their villages of what they deemed loose, or immoral individuals. It was also an explanation for the plague of smallpox that affected the region during this time.
Household pets, especially cats, became known as familiars if it was believed their owners had turned them into accomplices. Hundreds of animals were put to death for this reason. Any kind of skin blemish could cause the villagers to accuse individuals of being possessed. They could be arrested and searched for something as common as freckles.
At the end of these trials, a total of twenty people were either hanged or stoned to death. Most of these were women. Some who escaped the death penalty died in prison while others were pardoned or escaped. George Burroughs, an ex-minister and one of those convicted, stunned the villagers who had come to see him hang when he recited the entire Lord's Prayer on the scaffolding. A witch would have been unable to do that, but against the pleas of the crowd, Mather urged the authorities to complete the sentence.
It is interesting to note that all the women who confessed to being witches survived and those who refused to plead guilty were put to death. In later years, as accused survivors began to recant their guilty admissions, Mather had doubts about some of his actions. He attempted to minimize his involvement, but history remembers differently.
These events may seem outrageous to young people in the twenty first century, but it is not such a far cry from some of the rhetoric being spouted today. Wise people say unless we understand the past, we are doomed to repeat it.
In one of his most famous works, "Memorable Providence", he recounts a disturbing episode involving a local mason. This individual called on him because he did not know what was happening with his children. They were suddenly complaining of severe pain and would burst into unexpected wails of distress. The minister looked into the matter and concluded that a washerwoman was to blame for demonizing them.
During this time the Puritans became fearful and intolerant of those who did not completely obey the tenets of their religion. They considered impure thoughts to be as sinful as impure actions and targeted anyone they believed guilty of nonconformity. Behavior that today we would associate with a mental disorder, they perceived as the devil living inside the afflicted person.
The Salem trials accused many individuals, mostly women, of witchcraft for a number of reasons. There were local grudges involved in some cases, family feuds in others, and some simply wanted to purge their villages of what they deemed loose, or immoral individuals. It was also an explanation for the plague of smallpox that affected the region during this time.
Household pets, especially cats, became known as familiars if it was believed their owners had turned them into accomplices. Hundreds of animals were put to death for this reason. Any kind of skin blemish could cause the villagers to accuse individuals of being possessed. They could be arrested and searched for something as common as freckles.
At the end of these trials, a total of twenty people were either hanged or stoned to death. Most of these were women. Some who escaped the death penalty died in prison while others were pardoned or escaped. George Burroughs, an ex-minister and one of those convicted, stunned the villagers who had come to see him hang when he recited the entire Lord's Prayer on the scaffolding. A witch would have been unable to do that, but against the pleas of the crowd, Mather urged the authorities to complete the sentence.
It is interesting to note that all the women who confessed to being witches survived and those who refused to plead guilty were put to death. In later years, as accused survivors began to recant their guilty admissions, Mather had doubts about some of his actions. He attempted to minimize his involvement, but history remembers differently.
These events may seem outrageous to young people in the twenty first century, but it is not such a far cry from some of the rhetoric being spouted today. Wise people say unless we understand the past, we are doomed to repeat it.
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