Colonial America: The Salem Witch Trials | 5-Minute Videos | PragerU
The Salem Witch Trials of 1692 remain one of the most infamous—and misunderstood—episodes in American history. What caused the panic? Why did so many go along with it? And how did this dark chapter shape America’s future? Thomas Kidd, author of American History Volumes 1 and 2, explains.
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Transcript:
Colonial America: The Salem Witch Trials
Presented by Thomas Kidd
No episode in early American history is more infamous or misunderstood than the Salem Witch Trials of 1692.
Before they were over, nineteen people, five men and fourteen women, were convicted of engaging in witchcraft and were subsequently executed by hanging. One other was pressed to death with heavy stones, still more died in prison awaiting trial, and many more would have died if cooler heads had not finally prevailed.
From a contemporary perspective, it’s hard to understand why the trials happened at all. But for the people living in Salem at the end of the 17th century, there was no such mystery.
Puritan New England was a profoundly Bible-based society. So, when the Old Testament denounced witchcraft and sorcery, they took it seriously. Massachusetts law mandated that “If any man or woman be a witch… they shall be put to death.”
But why did witch trials happen in Salem when they did? What was the precipitating cause? After all, the Massachusetts colony had existed for sixty-two years without similar upheaval.
Why now?
Many theories have been offered, and none are fully satisfying. All we know for sure was that it was a period of deep instability — socially, economically and religiously.
First, there was uncertainty as to where the colony stood with England, the Mother Country. In 1684, in a move to assert the Crown’s authority, and thereby curtail Massachusetts’ ability to rule itself, King Charles II revoked the colony’s founding charter.
That itself was traumatic.
Then, in 1690, things got much worse. In response to French and Indian raids, Massachusetts authorities ordered an attack against French forces at Quebec.
It was a complete rout.
This devastating loss to French Catholics led the Puritans to wonder why, in the words of one of their leaders, God had “spit in our face.”
All this turmoil made Massachusetts ripe for a panic.
That panic ignited when a group of teenage girls began to suffer from inexplicable fits and convulsions. The young women claimed they had been afflicted by demons. They accused a slave named Tituba, who was owned by one of Salem’s ministers, of being a witch.
Under duress, Tituba offered a confession. She went on to suggest that there were other witches operating in and around the town.
Soon, the accusations began to multiply into the dozens, then hundreds. Most of those accused were older women, often widows and social outcasts. They appeared, so it was charged, as “specters,” or spirits, who urged their “victims” to sign a covenant with the devil. This “spectral evidence” was all the hastily convened special court needed to pronounce a guilty verdict.
In the calculus of the moment, anyone who confessed was spared execution. Only those who maintained their innocence were punished without mercy.
Before long, the accused included prominent figures in Massachusetts society, and the trials became increasingly problematic. The judges and pastors started to have second thoughts.
The influential Boston minister Increase Mather saw something more sinister. Not only had the judges gotten it wrong, he asserted, they had been led to their perverse conclusion by Satan himself: “The Devil is in it,” he wrote. “All Superstition is from him. And when secret things… are discovered by Superstitious practices, some Compact and Communion with the Devil is the Cause of it…”
Mather highlighted the consequences of such thinking in what became the most famous quote of the whole shameful affair: “It were better that Ten Suspected Witches should escape, than that one Innocent Person should be Condemned.”
…access the full transcript here 👉 https://l.prageru.com/4nUZLEo
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Thanks. There’s so few documentaries out there intending to dispel the Christianity hating lies about the Salem Witch Trials and the Crusades, and far too many that condemns Christianity.
Is there any truth behind ergot poisoning causing people in Salem to hallucinate and behave oddly?
We live in a Constitutional Republic ✝️🇺🇸🇺🇸
The line from legitimate suspicion to rampant paranoia is very much shorter than we think. – Capt. Jean Luc Picard
I have a Blog where I cover True Crime Cases; and I fully intend to cover this. It may not be a “crime” by definitional Law standards; but I very much consider it one
The ending of this video felt like reading an essay where someone is stretching to reach the word count!
These is the same type of hysteria as Covid. People were willing to kill people who were not vaccinated
The problem isn’t any particular idea or philosophy but allowing your fear that perceived enemies of that idea or philosophy might be gaining too much power to drive you towards hasten judgements baseless accusations demonization of outsiders shutting yourself from any kind of nuance or doubt blind obedience to authority and rejection of any criticism towards you your peers or your leaders. This paranoia induced cruelty and authoritarianism is the common denominator in so many atrocities throughout history from religious persecution to revolutionary persecution to counter revolutionary persecution to ethnic persecution. It’s sad to see America following the same path in the 2020s and some people still thinking they’re fighting other fear based ideologies while promoting their own paranoid accusations.
It’s crazy how English colonies could make laws that applied the death penalty when feudal lords back in Europe couldn’t
Excellent video, but let's not dumb it down so much that we need to see half of what he's saying written on the screen. He's talking in English, after all
I couldn't wait for the wild conclusion pragu would pull out of their ass and want disappointed 😂 the kids getting fed this slop are going to dumber than a box of rocks and more fasc than current americans. jfc
What is ignored is the money. It started with misbehaving children but quickly turned into a land grab. As soon as a plea was entered your property became forfeit and looking at the maps and property values of the day compared to the accused as this continued shows a trend of those with the best land being accused.
The loan pressing death was someone who refused to enter a plea. The pressing was a torture, illegal even then, to force a plea. Again, it was for property.
My husband's ancestor, Rebecca Nurse, was hung after this trial.
So, out of legitimate curiosity– the Salem witch trials have become the battle cry of actual practitioners of witchcraft today. And Salem is a major stronghold for that practice. How did that come about? I only asked because the level of activity there now generate suspicion that there may have been at least some legitimacy to the accusations.
Wow, this "Bible" sounds like bad news. We should shun it.
🇨🇦 here: Out visiting family in New Bedford, can I tell you how disappointed my sister and I were visiting Salem. Very underwhelming.
So much potential for entertainment or relics or something. That was almost 20 years ago. I wonder if it’s any better?
Thank you so much, I had no idea that Israelis can't read the bible because of it being archaic. Blessings on you guys and the bible society's translation ! Fantastic news.
A bunch of traitorous zionists trying to explain my history to me. FO.
Some people like Tucker Carlson and Candy Owens still believe in witches and demons, tbh.
One good thing happened and that's the endless fantasy stories and other Science Fiction that it spawned.
Fun Fact about Tituba. According to her origin Haiti. she was most probably practicing of voodoo and consumed for her rituals a corn fungus called Mothercorn. Mothercorn has a similar chemical component to lsd.
The Girls probely stole it from her and consumed it. TLDR they were high as f*ck.
I was taught most of this material in junior high & high school. That said, one of the points omitted here is that Tituba DiD tell the girls stories of witchcraft and voodoo on the island of Barbados, and allegedly introduced several young girls to the demonic practices. Did Tituba intentionally “bewitch” the girls ? Not likely. Nonetheless, on a psychological level when impressionable young minds are introduced to such dark practices, certain obsessions do manifest themselves on occasion. And of course, there’s always a possibility that the girls themselves tried some of these practices and started to see demons and believe they were being bewitched.
Thank you for telling the rest of the story…the people confessing and trying to atone for what they’d done.
If we were to carry Cotton Mather’s principle into modern times, it might be paraphrased, “It would be better 100 convicted murders avoid execution, than that one innocent person is put to death.” Given an even SLIGHTILY imperfect justice system, that is why I cannot support the death penalty and hold it is untenable in the 21st century.
Hahahahahaha. The most tolerant in history. The salem trials killed more people per capita (and in less time) than 300 years of spanish inquisition. The most “tolerant” nation abolished slavery (racial slavery by the way) 300 years after the spanish empire created the laws of indies protecting indigenous people, promoting mariage between races and integrating them tho the empire with full protection of the law (while the “tolerant” america has their native americans in “reservations”). The “tolerant” america had in its core (inexistent) judeo-crhistian values to despice catholics so to ask to JFK to appoint that he was nor the catholic candidate for presidency. Good to see the US learned from england rewrites history to look like a virtuous nation and cover up the mess their own ill racial mentallity creates
One of the darkest moments in America's history had a body count under 20 and the people themselves realized they were wrong and atoned. As far as the dark history of nations goes, I'll take that one. Nearly every nation on earth is doing worse than the infamous Salem Witch trials right now.
One of the interesting facts that came out of the Salem Witch trials came from John Hale. He wrote that the Salem Gentlemen made "a conscientious endeavour to do the thing that was right." (sic) To this end he listed a number of works that they consulted including Guide to Grand Jury Men in Cases of Witchcraft by Richard Bernard (1626). However, Bernard made it clear that the first principle in deciding whether or not to prosecute someone for witchcraft was to ALWAYS consider the ACCUSER(S) first to check for "counterfeiting." England itself was in the throes of its own witch craze when he published he work. Immediately after his work was published, witchcraft prosecutions ceased until the English civil war. This same thing could have prevented the Salem Witch trials altogether had the Salem Gentlemen actually looked carefully at his treatise.
What was Tichiba’s confession? What were the specific statements?
If she was a first generation slave she may have been confessing to African religious practices.
We still have fanatics, just not religious ones. BTW, girls don’t have penises.
I'm a descendant of Mary Parker who was hanged for witchcraft. Being removed by many generations didn't lessen the impact of how I felt when I found out.
Didn't they also hang a dog? They people were nuts! And wasn't this slso a land grab? Why didn't you mention King James' book Daemonology?
Modern adults have no difficulty understanding why the Salem witch trials happened: When you use religion as a source of knowledge, the result is human suffering and death. It's been that way for 10,000 years.
The Salem Witch Trials happened in 1692 and were renounced as hysteria, etc, yet in 1983 the Manhattan Beach Witch Trials (A.K.A. McMartin Preschool Trials) happened fueled by public paranoia from the accusations of a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic woman who claimed her child was sexually abused by broom flying witches.
Mass Hysteria Psychosis events continue to occur.
Cvid was one.
Climate alarmism another.