The Effects of the Witch Trials

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Recommended: Social aspects of the Salem witch trials

In Salem town there was a massive breakout. It wasn’t a breakout of a disease(some might have said it was), it was a breakout of witches.These witches weren’t really witches though. This event occurred because people had grudges against each other, or they were just too scared to think about what they were really saying and doing. Some of the people might even of had a disease and didn’t know what it was so they blamed it on witches. Their law was that if anyone was a witch they would be thrown in jail and then would have to go to trial. At the time it first started only a couple people were said to be witches, but then everyone was blaming people. There were even three girls that said they could see the witches haunting people and making them sign the devil’s book. It started with the girls accusing people that couldn’t defend themselves, but when the girls started accusing people that were well known and well liked, people started believing that these “witches weren’t real. The witches that were in Salem town weren’t really there. In fact, the witches were never there.
When people in Salem town started getting accused, it was only a short number of them had been accused. In the beginning only people that couldn’t defend themselves. Many of them didn’t have anyone that would stand up for them so they had no chance of being innocent. Once more and more people started getting accused, and everyone started turning on eachother. It got to the point that the jails started filling up and they couldn’t hardly fill any more people. This is another reason why the witches in Salem were not witches, but innocent people that had been taken from their homes and thrown in jail. How could that many people be witches? They weren’t. Many...

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...t even the accusers had to live with the fact that they ruined someone’s life. Everybody was hurt in some way during the trials, some more then others, but people will always remember those who were hurt and those who lost everything. People have now mostly forgotten and forgiven the accusers that falsely accused people and changed their lives, and hopefully nothing like this never happens again. Many people were hurt and affected during the Salem witch trials and some were even killed for being falsely accused, and the effects that I listed wasn’t all of the tragedy that happened in Salem town.

Works Cited

Linder, Douglas O. "The Salem Witchcraft Trial 1692." Famous American Trials. UMKC School of Law, n.d. Web. 06 Apr. 2014.
Schanzer, Rosalyn. Witches!: The Absolutely True Tale of Disaster in Salem. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2011. Print.

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