Salem Witch Trials Research Paper

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The Salem witch trials were a set of trials between February 1692 and May 1693 in the Massachusetts town of Salem. The trials were based on people in the town who were accused of being witches or practicing witchcraft. A total of 200 people were accused and 20 were executed. Today, knowledge of these trials happening is vast but information regarding the reasons behind the townspeople committing these atrocities is not a lot. The reasons behind the Salem witch trials were the belief at the time that Satan was real and he would recruit witches and wizards to work for him. The confessions of others added credibility to the accusations made and lastly, the accusations of people being witches were a scapegoat for the hard times being suffered by…show more content…
During the time of the trials the Puritans believed that God and Satan were equally real (“Salem Witch Trials – 1692 Salem”, n.d.). Everyone would end up being affected by the power of good and evil but people thought that Satan would pick the weak, women and children for example, to do his work for him (“Salem Witch Trials, 2013). This is one reason a majority of women were accused. The Puritans thought that witchcraft was one of the worst crimes anyone could commit and therefor anyone found guilty would be sentenced to death (Loiselle, 2009). This clearly shows how the people of Salem believed in the Devil and how they thought he was controlling witches in their town, leading them to accuse people of…show more content…
Due to the belief that Satan is real, people in the town of Salem would think everything bad was the work of the Devil (“Salem Witch Trials, n.d.). During the time of the trials there was bad weather effective harvest levels, an epidemic of small pox had recently gone through the town, Indians renewed attacks on settlements and townspeople feared that another war not unlike King Phillip's War was about to start (Loiselle, 2009). In the time of trouble, people believed that Satan was extremely active but had no proof until they started the accuse people of being witches (Loiselle, 2009). Once people had thought witches were the cause of all the trouble they could have easily started to blame more and more people of being witches as things got worse. This proves that people used witches as a way to prove Satan was behind their time of

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