Cousins Abigail Williams and Betty Parris began entering trance-like states and suffering from convulsive seizures in January. By late February, prayer, fasting, and medical treatment had failed to relieve the girls' symptoms and quiet the blasphemous shouting that accompanied their fits. Pressured to explain, they accused three local women of sorcery.
A recent epidemic of small pox, heightened threats of Indian attack, and small town rivalries, primed the people of the Salem area for the mass hysteria that characterized the witch trials. Although social status and gender offered little protection from accusations, historians note that single women particularly were vulnerable to charges of practicing witchcraft. Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, and Tituba all lacked male protectors. In fact, three of the signatories to the trial document pictured above are widows.Acting on the recommendation of the clergy, civil authorities created a special court to try accused witches. As the number of imprisoned people approached 150, however, public opinion shifted against the proceedings. On October 29, 1692, Massachusetts Governor William Phips dissolved the special court. When the remaining witchcraft cases were heard in May 1693, the Superior Court failed to convict anyone.
In the 1950s, playwright Arthur Miller explored the Salem witchcraft trials in The Crucible. Writing during a period when concern about "subversive activities" ran high, Miller used his play to protest the red scares of the postwar era. Once again, Miller implied, innocent people were sacrificed to public hysteria. Called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1956, Miller refused to supply names of people he met years before at an alleged Communist writers meeting. The resulting contempt conviction was overturned on appeal.
- American Treasures of the Library of Congress includes several items highlighting the early history of Massachusetts, including America's First Book, printed in 1640 in Cambridge, Massachusetts; the First Complete Bible Printed in America, published in Cambridge in 1663; The "General Fundamentals" of the Plymouth Colony; and the poetry of Phyllis Wheatley.
- Despite intense pressure, few accused witches confessed to practicing witchcraft. Test your mettle at the National Geographic interactive site Salem Witchcraft Hysteria
- See the Library of Congress exhibition Religion and the Founding of the American Republic to learn about the history of men and women of deep religious convictions who in the seventeenth century crossed the Atlantic Ocean to flee religious persecution in Europe in order to practice their faith freely in America.
