Salem Witch Trials: Introduction

The Salem witch trials were hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts from February 1692 – May 1693.  Nineteen of the 200 people accused of witchcraft were found guilty and executed by hanging—14 women and 5 men.  Giles Corey was crushed to death when he refused to plead guilty and five died in jail.  This was the deadliest witch hunt in the history of colonial North America.

Twelve other women were executed in Massachusetts and Connecticut during the 17^th century in the period known as the Salem Witch Trials where preliminary hearings where conducted in towns like Salem Village (now Danvers), Ipswich, and Andover in 1692.  The most infamous trials were conducted by the Court of Oyer and Terminer in Salem Town in 1692.

These witch trials were notorious cases of mass hysteria in Colonial America and were used in political rhetoric and popular literature showing vivid cautionary to the dangers of isolationism, religious extremism, false accusations, and lapses in due process.  While it is not unique, the Colonia American example has a broader phenomenon of the witch trials in the early modern period which also took place in Europe.  Many history consider the lasting effects of the trials to be influential in United States history.  George Lincoln Burr is said to have stated, “the Salem witchcraft was the rock on which the theocracy shattered.”

The 300^th anniversary in 1992 commemorates the victims of the Salem witch trials in a park in Salem as well as one in Danvers.  An act passed in November 2001 by the Massachusetts legislature exonerates the five people and still another one passed in 1957 previously exonerated six other victims.  By 2004, there was talk about exonerating all the victims despite some that think that happened during the 19^th century when the Massachusetts colonial legislature asked to reverse the attainders of George Burroughs and others.  in January 2016, the University of Virginia announced the Gallows Hill Project team to determine where the execution site in Salem where 19 “witches” were hanged.  The city owns the site and planned to establish a memorial to the victims.