Three Little Girls

Three little girls created so much havoc and chaos for the community of Salem, Massachusetts in 1692 and 1693. Their names were Ann Putnam Jr., Abigail Willams, and Brittney Parris. They created mass hysteria later with the help of many other girls in the community [1].

The Salem Witch Trials were a series of accusation of over 100 people, 19 of whom were hung and one crushed to death. Three young girls of Salem began having episodes in a manner that exemplified possession such as contorting in odd was and screaming uncontrollably. Because of this could not be explained by medicine, the girls parents called for the names of the witches who did this to their daughters. Thus, beginning the Salem Witch Trials. The community was ransacked with anxiety which caused tensions to build and therefore causing the trials. The main tensions that caused the trials were, the changing political structure of the community, adjusting to frontier life, and religious tension. The Salem Witch Trials were a key point in our nation’s history.

The changing political structure, and the building of a new government based on Puritan ideals caused many tensions in the colony that led to this tragic event. Initially the puritans fled from England because they were being persecuted for their religious beliefs. The King allowed them to establish a Puritan government, therefore giving them the power to discriminate against anyone with differing religious views and do the same things that was done to them in England. To vote under the new government you had to prove your membership in the Puritan church, go regularly to church, and swear an oath to the King. Some were unsettled by the new laws of proving your membership in the Puritan church because they were not of that faith. Many colonist were also unsettled about swearing an oath to the King. The Declaration of Independence was written 84 year before the trials. This shows that the colonist were already disappointed with how they were being treated by the King, therefore they did not want to swear their loyalty which created many tension between the loyalist and the ones who already disliked the King [3].

Religious tensions caused more and more stress in Salem. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, the colonist government had recently changed to a Puritan Government. This change created a tremendous amount of anxiety among the colonist because they began to fear that those of differing religious beliefs would be persecuted. Many consider that the Salem Witch Trials was based on religious beliefs. This created tension among all of the colonist, not just the Non-Puritans. It was not all that long ago that the Puritans themselves had to flee England because they were being persecuted based on their faith. Many Puritans saw that what was being done to the “witches” was precisely was had been done to them. English Protestants was the specific name of the Puritans, their purpose was to cleanse the Church of England. England was of the Anglican faith and anyone who did not believe as they did or refused to convert was persecuted [4]. That is why the protestants came to the colonies. That is exactly what the colonist did to the accused such a Tituba. Before the trials many young girls began experimenting in telling the future. They would gather and try to read each other’s futures. This concerned many officials because they felt as though the youth was straying away from their beliefs and if this happened then all their hope of the future and their beliefs being passed on would die [5].The community also felt that what the young girls were doing was the work of the devil. The religious tension between Puritans and people with differing religious views and the tension of the youth experimenting in types of the “devils work” caused the Salem Witch Trials.

The two key tensions that led to the Salem Witch Trials were the changing political structure of the colony and the differing religious views between colonist. Over 100 peoples reputations were drug through the mud, 20 people were murdered and for what? Overall the trials were a key point in our nations history that deserves to be studied so we can learn what extreme intolerances like that towards people who were different led to.

[1] Adams, Gretchen A. The Specter of Salem. The University of Chicago Press, 2008.

[2]Boyer, Paul, and Stephen Nissenbaum. “Prologue: What Happened 1692.” In Salem Possessed, 1–21. Harvard University Press, 1974. http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.library.astate.edu/stable/j.ctt6wpn71.6.

[3] Adams, Gretchen A. The Specter of Salem. The University of Chicago Press, 2008.

[4]Hutson, James. “America as a Religious Refuge: The Seventeenth Century Part 1.” Library of Congress, n.d. https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel01.html.

[5]Boyer, Paul, and Stephen Nissenbaum. “Prologue: What Happened 1692.” In Salem Possessed, 1–21. Harvard University Press, 1974.