Chicago Research Paper

The Salem Witch Trials

Introduction

If all religion contains political elements, witchcraft is perhaps notable in the relative shamelessness of its relation to political power, and to power more generally. Whatever witchcraft is about—and it has been about many things in its long and controversial history—it is always about the manipulation of power for personal and political gain, however benign or even benevolent its goals might be.

The term “witchcraft” is notoriously difficult to define: it is a term of honor in some quarters and of horror in others; an identity that some proudly claim and that others accept only on pain of death. In spite of the growing presence of neopaganism, which has done much to rehabilitate witchcraft as a positive religious practice, in common parlance “witch” still carries nefarious connotations. Witches are those who carry out bizarre rituals—drinking blood, boiling newts, and the like—with the intent of making the universe behave as they wish. More often than not, they wish the universe to bring injury and disaster to those who have gained their disfavor. This is the lens through which Europeans have interpreted witchcraft, and when in the course of their colonial incursions they encountered anything remotely similar to this in other cultures, they have called it witchcraft. Thus a whole host of individuals, practices, symbols, and cultural understandings have been packed uncomfortably under the umbrella labeled “witchcraft.” (1)

The Salem Witch Trials (February to October 1692) comprise the largest witch-hunt in North American history. A keynote of the Salem Witch Trials and the history of their interpretation is conspiracy: secret plots, involving members of groups perceived to be conspiring with the devil, and acting covertly to carry out harmful ends requiring intricate cover-ups.

Discussion

In January 1692, in the village of Salem, Massachusetts, both the daughter and the niece of Reverend Samuel Parris became ill. Nine-year-old Betty Parris began to have fits and make strange noises, and when she and her cousin, 11-year-old Abigail Williams, were examined by the local doctor, William Griggs, he diagnosed bewitchment. This diagnosis started a chain of events, now claimed by many to be an example of mass hysteria, that led to the execution of 20 people as witches and ensured that the Salem witch trials became the most famous witch trials of all.

More than three hundred years later, the Salem witch trials testify to the havoc that fear can play in ruining the lives of innocent people and the importance of due process in protecting individuals against false accusations. Some of those who insisted in 1787 that a Bill of Rights was necessary for the ratification of the Constitution undoubtedly knew about the treatment of the “Salem witches” and of how they had been deprived of the rights to which they should have been entitled under English common law. With the Bill of Rights in place, interpretations of the First Amendment consistently ruled that slander and defamation were not protected by the Constitution. (2)

In January 1692 mass hysteria erupted in Salem Village, Massachusetts, ...