Salem Witch Trials Research Paper

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What happened during the Salem Witch trials? Witchcraft… did it really exist during the 1600’s or were the people afraid of the so called dark magic? For every good thing it could easily be spun to the bad. What led them to the Salem Witch trials? The well-known Salem Witch Trials occurred in Salem, Massachusetts the year of 1692. Many individuals were executed at the accusations of them conducting with craft. In this day in time anything too technological had to be at the hands of a witch. As reported by multiple sources, the accusations began when “A group of girls and young women began to suffer from hysterical fits that year, and they accused various women of bewitching them. A witch was someone who had supposedly made a pact with the devil and had then been granted strange powers. Soon a contagion of accusations and even confessions spread through Salem. A special court was convened, and before the witchcraft trials ended, 16 women and 3 men had been executed, and 50 had confessed to being witches” (Matthews, “Witches, Persecution of”). Where did the term witches become the ones to blame? Another viewpoint for many historians was to why so many of those accused were female… “Ever since, historians have puzzled over why "witches" were persecuted in Salem and why so many were women. Scholars have argued that the…show more content…
There was a separation in the town between the Salem village & the Salem town. Residents of Salem village were set apart by class. The village consisted of individuals that were in the lower class. They stay on farmlands & produce the food for their families. The people of Salem town were upper-class, mostly wealthy merchants trading with London. But the division didn’t stop there, the Salem village was further divided by those who made more money than others. The few that made more money were merchants to make more of their life for their

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