Hey guys welcome to HipHughes History where today we will hit you up with some colonial history this time with both the Salem witch trials of 1692
Claiming the lives of 19 people who were hung and one man who was pressed to death over two days of having rocks put on
His chest let's go over the basics [so] we can understand not [just] what happened
but the larger concept in American history of McCarthyism [of] the fear [of] the others of Mass hysteria
Getting up for the [London]. [it's] [we'll] get Er. Done right now
So before we get started in Salem itself, and there's actually two Salem's
there's the village of Salem's which is known as
Danvers today that is to the west of what is known as the town or Salem today?
And that's really going to be one of the main ideas as we take a look at how these trials got started and the accusations
Started flying, but really before we get into that
We should stop and say this is the illustration [of] the death of 20 people on witchcraft charges
But if we look at the sweeping broad past especially in Europe over 300 period Say the 15th century to the 18th
century you're looking at forty to sixty
Thousand [people] that are killed being accused of witchcraft [so] it's a much larger problem than this small trial is going to illustrate
But certainly it's important to understand who are these people that [are] living in Salem and again
I'm going to explain that there is the town of Salem and the
Village of Salem and the Village of Salem itself in that time period Is going to be split
It's going to be split with people that really want to maintain ties with the town of Salem
Which is really a town that is developed into a merchant class. It's on the seaport
There's a lot of trade
And you have to understand the roots of where these people came from because they didn't come from the merchant class
Most of these people came in the early 17th century
Because they opposed the church of England they had different traditions different customs a different stricter
interpretation of the reading of the Bible
And that's going to cause them in the early 17th century to flee Europe and to come to colonial
America and at that time period The Massachusetts Bay colony and in
1690 it's going to be going through changes because of changes that are [occurring] in Europe
That's even a larger story, but these are the original settlers these are puritans like calvinists. They believe in a strict
[interpretation] of the Bible and more importantly they really believe in Community living in a sense
it's like a
Commune where everybody kind of you know fits to the norms and lives that way and even [though] we're going to call the government back
then
colonial
secular in Nature
It's really not that secular secular means that it's not with a religion that religion exists outside of the government
but in all actuality the leaders of the colony the leaders of the towns are
Meeting with these puritan congregations and in a sense, they're running things together
[so] those are the roots of the community and really what occurs as we go through the 17th century and especially by
1640 when Oliver cromwell takes over and they really revert back to older customs
And there's not a reason [for] people
[Pyrrha] tends to Flee Europe anymore an emigration slows down that's going to cause a rift in the
Generations a rift between the farmers and the [west] this is the village of Salem
And that merchants class I talked about before which [is] in the town of Salem, [and] really you'll have a split again
I'm saying this again, but a split in the village of Salem
There's people that want to break off they want to be their own town
They want a more communal way of living they want to be puritan
They don't like you know lots of money and greed and what that [merchants] class represents
But then you have a part of that community of 600 in the village of Salem which has ties [to] the [merchants] class
Maybe they trade with them or they have friends or whatever
But they don't want to split and that splits going to be one of the major causes of the Salem witch trials
so I gave one away one cause why don't we take a look at a few other causes and then we'll jump right into the
Trials it's so exciting and scary
so before we get into the major cause which I believe is puritan extremism in the way that they view the
Supernatural and the devil and their definition of God, and it's important to understand that
Puritans back then they believed if you didn't believe in the devil if you didn't believe in the supernatural which was in the bible
Therefore you were rejecting the very nature of God
himself
[so] therefore it was part of their belief system that there were witches and the devil and the
[supernatural] and that you had to fight that and beyond the forces of goodness, so that's ingrained in their belief system
I think that's important to say but you also have these external things that are going on. You have [King] [William's] war
Which is a war with the native Americans that are living east of that
Massachusetts colony [that] would be like in maine in those territories, so there's a lot of warfare going on
There's refugees that are flooding in so there's a lot of fear you had a previous smallpox Outbreak. [there's] a lot of fear
there's a fear of
Supernatural there's a fear [of] native Americans. There's a fear [of] disease and all of these things [-] Puritan represents
God's wrath and we need to fight that so in a sense those are the underlying conditions that are going to give rise to
The ability to have the Salem witch trials for there to be a false accusation
Everybody to fall in line so therefore when you have a false accusation
Especially somebody who might be a minority or somebody who's an oddball or somebody who doesn't fit in whatever?
That's going to make it easier for people to fall in line those are [the] conditions that you [have] in early
1692 and we have the split in the community we have to say that again and that this split is causing a problem
Along Property Lines and congregational rights and by the 1690s the community the Village of Salem had started their own
Congregation and they had actually gone through
Hiring a couple of reverends one of them was reverend George burrow
And they left because there couldn't be a settlement about their pay because of the divide in the community
By the way George burrow is going to be back later in the story as he's accused of being a witch and he is actually
Executed and he's actually one of the reasons [for] the ending of the witch trials as I jump ahead of myself here because right before
He was hung
George [Burrows] read the Lord's prayer and the Story empiricism was that if you were the devil if you were a witch if you were
A wizard [you] couldn't recite the Lord's prayer it was
Impossible the Devil wouldn't let you do it and he did it and they hung him but I get off track
I mean now you
understand that you have a lot of divides a lot of fears you have the well of water that is [ripe] for the poison of
Hysteria, so let's get hysterical
Now with over 140 accused and there's going to be dozens of children that are supposedly afflicted with the signs of being
Affected by witchcraft it's you know hard to go over all of them
But the very beginnings of the story are pretty well known and you have the reverend and the reverend is reverend Sam
Parris
And he is the third
Reverend the one that's been ordained to run this congregation in this divided community in the village of Salem now
It's going to be one of his children and one [of] his nieces that are going to be the main
Accusers first there's Betty Parris. She's nine years old and abigail Williams. She's 11 years old
that's the niece of the reverend and then you have a couple of other children you have Elizabeth Hubbard and you have an
Putnam both [Twelve] Years Old now and Putnam she is the daughter of the Putnam family which is trying to orchestrate?
the breaking off of the village of Salem from the town of Salem
There is a representative the puritans of the farmers
so these are the accusers and
basically what occurs is two of the children betty and abigail start showing symptoms of being sick they have marks on their body, they're
Flailing about they're crying randomly
They're hiding under furniture, and they're taken to the local doctor and the doctor basically says be Richmond the children have bewitched
[so] now there's pressure on the children to basically say something how did this occur to you?
So the story they tell is that they were doing
fortune-telling with the slave of Samuel Parris that would be a woman by the name of Tituba and
Tituba who is from Barbados has a background in what some people would I guess?
Considered to be good Magic where her family taught her about fortune-telling?
This is not uncommon around the world so when they were sitting in this circle and doing
Fortune-telling and the fortune-telling was they were putting an egg white and water and that would determine your future that
Supposedly the children saw some ugly things they got bugged out a little bit and they thought that might have been the reason that they
were
Afflicted with this disease of the b. Wichmann of whatever you want to call it now after the children were diagnosed
It was actually a neighbor Mary sibley that
Recommended to to [tabouleh] and her husband that they baked the children a witch cake in order to find out if they were actually
Bewitched and this witch cake was a mixture of rye and the
peepee of the children and then they would feed this to a dog to see if the dog would take on the
Characteristics of the children which I guess it did the accusation was the children are bewitched
So they point the finger and actually three people first tituba and then two other people that we can be
Considering kind of outsiders of the community obviously [to] [to] buzz of slave. She's an outsider, but you have Sarah Goode
Who's kind of a local beggar a poor woman and you had Sarah osborne who was kind of an outcast herself?
She had remarried an indentured servant. She supposedly had a child of mixed race
so that was not very popular of the puritans so basically they get these three women the
Congregation the town and they start putting the pressure on them and the slave tituba eventually confesses
Most historians look at it as you know she basically was trying to save herself
by pointing the
finger at [the] other
Women and that eventually actually is going to help her because she's not going to be one of the ones that is executed
But nevertheless now. We have a false confession. We have false accusations, and now we have our first three arrested
they're arrested on March 1st of
1692 and then the dominoes start just falling more children start to say they have this affliction [they] start
accusing other people in many
Cases this comes down to that split in the community that the Puritan children are basically
accusing people that are associated with the side that wants to the town of Salem and
The next round of accusations includes two women of upstanding
presence in the Community one was Martha Corey 72 years old she had standing in the community and
Rebecca nurse another Church member
So when those accusations came out there started to be a little [pushback] and actually her husband
Guile's Corey he stands up. You know my wife [is] 72 year old Martha
She's not a witch [witty]. What are you talking about?
Guess what Kyle's you're under [arrest] you're a witch and actually he's [the] one who was crushed to death
Because they tried to get him to take a plea to say that he was guilty he would take no plea
He wouldn't say guilty or not guilty the story is that he was trying to leave his inheritance to his children
And he didn't want this mark on him, so the state would take his inheritance
So eventually what they did is they [put] stones on [your] chest until you took a plea, so you said something
[and] he just kept saying more wait
So it took him two days to die. What a horrible death and that second round of
Accusations another person that was accused was the evil dorothy good
you know what dorothy did she was five years old her mother was in [the] first round of
Accusations the beggar so they threw her into jail as well
she was there for five months being interrogated by I guess you would say the police of the day the sheriff of the day and
Eventually the little one she gave up her mother so her mother must have been a witch so by June of 1692 you have 36
Warrants and enough warrants, and the Jail's our overcrowding at this time for there to be a special court the court of Oya
And terminer which was created just for these witch trials in the village of [Salem], so they could do their business
So by june 2nd. We're going to get our first trial the indictment comes down it's going to be Bridget Bishop
She's going to be the first one put on trial and at the trial the one day trial. She is accused of
wearing torn garments of
wearing black of dressing and Odd customs
Obviously, not a puritan and obviously a witch so the sentence comes down. She's found guilty at her one-day trial
She's going to be exit. You did the first to be executed eight days later on June 10th
1692 now the court actually took a break to meet with cotton mather to write him a letter actually who Led the North Boston
Congregation to ask if they were going in the right way
He basically writes back and says go for it here are all the reasons. Why this is such a bad problem
We need to [rout] the witches out and the trials keep going july 19th another five are executed by august another five are
executed including
four men who were all somewhat related to the women who were being accused of witches and they were standing up for their women and
Then they were taken down on September 22nd
There were another eight and eventually governor Phillips who created the [court] is going to dissolve the court and one of the biggest reasons was
George Burrows that former reverend I talked about and [he's] going to be executed
[and] like I said before he's going to deliver the Lord's prayer and a lot of people saw that as evidence that he was
Innocent and they executed him anyway
And when the story comes out of the stones and the crushing there were some eloquent letters that were written by some of the condemned
which really convinced people that there were probably innocent people and the governor is going to shut these trials down and by
1693 the Trials are over which means that hocus-Pocus and the Sanderson sisters is historically inaccurate
Because they were executed in 1693 in the movie. So not true kids
How could this happen now one of the biggest reasons why it's going to happen is because the trials are a farce
They're going to allow what's called spectral evidence which means that you can literally introduce a dream
Into the trial and sometimes the children would be in the trial and as the people were defending themselves
They would start falling and convulsing on the ground and saying they were being controlled by the people that were being
accused in one case the jury actually found one of the
Defendants not guilty and as she was said to be not guilty one of the children fell on the ground started
Convulsing saying she was being punished the judge told the jury to go back they came back with a guilty verdict
How about that and there were other really just cray-Cray things that people believed back then that if you talk to yourself
that that might be a reason that you were rich that if you couldn't say the lord's prayer if you were friendly [with]
animals if you weighed more or less than a pile of bibles if the witch cake worked
It's just crazy
What else are you going to say, but it's that Mass hysteria?
And that sense of isolation that they didn't have an outside community. This was a very close-knit
community [this] occurred in that that can be a breeding ground for intolerance for
Ignorant [and] for injustice to breed and that of course is going to happen during the red scare during the McCarthyism
Period and you can leave it down in the comments below if you think it's happened in other cases in American history or world history
Eventually the town is going to split and the village of Salem is going to become Danvers
Massachusetts and both communities are going to apologize by
1711 they're actually going to give restitution [to] the heirs of the victims in the Salem witch trials
Now one other kind of note
Is that you had 43 kids affected with some type of condition whether that was just kind of mass hysteria. [if] it was psychosomatic
[but] there are some scientists who believe it was actually an ergot
Which is a fungi that's found in wheat and rye that can lead to some of these
Symptoms which resemble of kid Took LSD?
Or something like that some scientists believe that could have been lyme's disease that would
Kind of take fur into account the marks on the children's body and some of the symptoms that might come from that as well
But most people think it was psychosomatic. It was just mass hysteria, and maybe it was just bad kids
I don't know another effect
is that most of the prisoners are actually spend more time in [jail] because during those periods in days you had to pay [for] the
Food and board you were given in prison even if you were let out
Later a lot of these people are going to be pardoned, but when they do get out they're going to be homeless
And they're going to be penniless
It's not going to be a good situation
But I hope your brains in a better situation now that you understand something about the Salem witch trials [if] it's just about this big
But make sure you understand the bigger idea of how mass hysteria can occur in
societies when you have crisis and a fear of the others all right guys I'm going to say because I say at the end of
Every lecture where attention goes energy flows, we'll see you guys next [time] that you press my [buttons]