*the central figure in this 1876 illustration of the courtroom is usually identified as ‘mary walcott”*.
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*the salem witch trials were a series of ‘hearings’ + ‘prosecutions’ of people accused of ‘witchcraft’ in ‘colonial massachusetts’ between ‘february 1692’ + ‘may 1693’*
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(the trials resulted in the executions of ’20 people’…)
(14 of them women)
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(all but 1 by hanging)
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(which one?)
(and how did they kill him / her?)
(and why?)
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*5 others (including 2 infant children) died in prison)*
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(12 other women had previously been executed in ‘massachusetts’ + ‘connecticut’ during the ‘1600s’)
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(despite being generally known as the ‘salem witch trials’, the ‘pre-liminary hearings’ in 1692 were conducted in several towns…)
‘salem village’
(now ‘danvers’)
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‘salem town’
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‘Ipswich’
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‘andover’
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(the most infamous trials were conducted by the court of ‘oyer’ / ‘terminer’ in 1692 in ‘Salem Town’)
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(the episode is one of Colonial America’s most notorious cases of ‘mass hysteria’)
(it has been used in political rhetoric / popular literature as a vivid cautionary tale about the dangers of
‘isolationism’,
‘religious extremism’,
‘false accusations’,
and ‘lapses in due process’
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(it was not unique, but a Colonial American example of the much broader phenomenon of witch trials in the early modern period, which took place also in ‘Europe’)
(many historians consider the lasting effects of the trials to have been highly influential in subsequent United States history)
(according to historian ‘George Lincoln Burr’, “the Salem witchcraft was the rock on which the theocracy shattered”)
(at the 300th anniversary events in 1992 to commemorate the victims of the trials, a park was dedicated in Salem and a memorial in ‘Danvers’)
(in ‘November 2001’, the Massachusetts legislature passed an act exonerating all of those convicted and listing them by name, including some persons left out of earlier actions)
(in ‘January 2016’, the ‘University of Virginia’ announced its ‘Gallows Hill Project’ team had determined the execution site in ‘Salem’, where the 19 “witches” had been hanged)
(the city owns the site and is planning a memorial to the victims)
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*12 OCTOBER 1692*
(the seminal event connected to ‘freethought day’ is a letter written by then massachusetts governor ‘william phips’ in which he wrote to the ‘privy council’ of the british monarchs ‘william’ + ‘mary” on this day in ‘1692’)
(in this correspondence he outlined the ‘quagmire’ that the trials had degenerated into, in part by a reliance on “evidence” of a ‘non-objective nature’ and especially “spectral evidence” in which the accusers claimed to see devils and other phantasms consorting with the accused)
(note that, contrary to what has been claimed by some, there was no specific order or edict by ‘phips to ban “spectral evidence” from all legal proceedings)
(rather, this was one concern that brought about phips’ stopping the proceedings)
(when the trials ultimately resumed, “spectral evidence” was allowed but was largely discounted + those convicted were swiftly pardoned by ‘phips’)
(in the time leading up to the trials being stopped, it was actually ‘clerics’ (including the famous ‘cotton mather’, often portrayed as the ‘chief villain’ in the ‘hysteria’) who took the lead in advising cautions against the use of ‘spectral evidence’)
(‘the reverend increase mather’ (cotton’s father) specifically condemned “spectral evidence” in his book ‘cases of conscience’, in which he stated that, “it were better that 10 suspected witches should escape, than that 1 innocent person should be condemned”)
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(it was this shift in sentiment, no doubt aided by the escalating ‘hysteria’ and the fact that accusations were beginning to reach higher into the Massachusetts Bay Colony hierarchy, that led to phips’ action)
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💕💝💖💓🖤💙🖤💙🖤💙🖤❤️💚💛🧡❣️💞💔💘❣️🧡💛💚❤️🖤💜🖤💙🖤💙🖤💗💖💝💘
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*🌈✨ *TABLE OF CONTENTS* ✨🌷*
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🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥*we won the war* 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥