America on Trial
Inside the Legal Battles That Transformed Our Nation
Chapter One
The Salem Witchcraft trials
Date: 1692
Location: Salem, Massachusetts
Defendants: Approximately twenty-five in 1692, but several hundred men and women
were arrested and imprisoned on charges of witchcraft between 648 and 1706
Charge: Witchcraft
Verdict: Guilty
Sentence: Thirteen women and six men hanged; one man pressed to death with heavy
stones; at least four others imprisoned (two dogs were also executed as suspected
accomplices)
Although the Inquisition never reached the colonies-Catholics were tiny minority
among the colonists-the Salem witchcraft trials bore some striking resemblances,
writ small, to what had roiled the Continent two centuries earlier. They
paralleled, in some ways but not in others, the trial of Joan of Arc in 1431. The
pre-Enlightenment church was a dominant influence in the Bay Colony during the
seventeenth century, but other influences were also at play against the women who
were accused-primarily by other women-of the capital crime o ... read full excerpt from: America on Trial: Inside the Legal Battles That Transformed Our Nation ebook
