Salem’s Lesson:The Power of Accusation
...h-going women with a high-standing in the community. The accusation did not escape men or children either. John Proctor, a 60-year-old tavern-owner was soon accused, as was his wife. The girls even accused 4-year-old Dorcas Good, Sarah Good’s daughter, of witchcraft. By June 2, 1692, the situation in Salem was so chaotic that Massachusetts governor William Phips created a new court, the Court of Oyer and Terminer, simply to hear the witchcraft cases (Linder). On June 10, Bridget Bishop, the first woman tried by the new court was hanged. This leads one of the five judges, Nathaniel Saltonstall to resign from the court (Hill 226). In the next month ten more people were hanged after being found guilty, including John Proctor and George Burroughs, former minister of Salem Village. Burroughs, who lived in Maine at the time, had been singled out by many of Salem’s afflicted girls as being the ringleader of all the witches in the state of Massachusetts (Linder). However at his hanging Burroughs “recited the Lord’s Prayer flawlessly. This achievement was important because it was believed that a wizard could not recite this prayer without making a mistake” (Sutter). Even such a moving act was not enough to save his life. As the months pressed on, other towns around Massachusetts began sending for the Salem girls, in an effort to oust witches in their own towns. However, as the girls accused more and more of witchcraft, the public began to doubt some of the dubious claims, such as Lady Phips, the wife of the governor. Another factor in the growing skepticism regarding the trials was the fact that no strong physical evidence of witchcraft was ever presented. The courts relied heavily on spectral evidence, “testimony by afflicted persons that they had been visited by a suspect's specter” (Linder). On October 29, Sir William Phips formally dissolved the Court of Oyer and Terminer. In May of the next year, he ordered that all those accused of witchcraft be released from jail. Finally, after a year of trials and hangings the chaos of the Massachusetts witch-hunts was coming to a close. Fourteen years after the girls first began their fits, Ann Putnam, one of the accusers, apologized in the Salem Village church for causing the deaths of innocent people. She claimed it was due to “a great delusion of Satan” (Hill 228). More important than the actual events of the Salem trials, are the suspected motivations behind some the accusations. Thomas Putnam, father of Ann, was a prominent farmer in Salem Village. The village was fiercely divided over whether or not to separate from Salem Town. Many farmers of the village felt that separating from Salem Town and forming their own town would boost their individualism, while many of the businessmen of Salem Village were dependent on the busy harbor of Salem Town for their profits. In order to help support the separation, the Putnams had set up their own church congregation and hired Reverend Parris, at a much more generous salary than most ministers of the day. A new town council opposed this choice and refused to collect more taxes to pay Parris’s salary (Sutter). This ongoing conflict convinced many historians that the witch-hunts had possible political motives. Many of those accused of witchcraft were opponents of either the Putnams or Parris himself. The use of accusation as a political means to gain power has been going on for a long time, and is common in the history of the United States. In the 1950’s, Joseph McCarthy, a senator from Wisconsin, began accusing members of the state department, fellow politicians, and notable celebrities of being communists. At the time, communism was a very frightening thing to many Americans, and McCarthy used this fear to his advantage. He was made chairman of the Government Committee on Operations of the Senate, and was given the opportunity to hold very public investigations of many different people. At first, McCarthy targeted Democrats and portrayed President Truman as a dangerous liberal who was soft on communism, in doing so, “McCarthy's campaign helped the Republican candidate, Dwight Eisenhower, win the presidential election in 1952” (McCarthyism). Using the public’s fear of the idea of communism, McCarthy easily gained a political advantage. Opponents of McCarthy were afraid to speak up, for fear of being labeled communists themselves. This is much like how many who disbelieved the Salem girls cries of ‘Witch!’ were afraid to state their own opinions. While no one was hanged during McCarthy’s two-year-long investigation, hundreds of government employees lost their jobs after admitting to being members of the American Communist Party, and a large number of famous artists and celebrities were publicly embarrassed. Much like the girls of Salem 260 years before him, McCarthy took his accusations too far. In October of 1953 he began investigating communist infiltration into the military. Even President Eisenhower, who once supported McCarthy, was angered by this. On March 4th, 1954, Eisenhower’s vice president Richard Nixon criticized McCarthy in a public speech saying, “Men who have in the past done effective work exposing Communists in this country have, by reckless talk and questionable methods, made themselves the issue rather than the cause they believe in so deeply” (McCarthyism). The similarities between McCarthyism and the Salem witch-hunts are astounding. In both situations, the accusers took advantage of a widespread fear of difference. The Puritans feared witchcraft because it was demonic to them and against their religion. Also, they did not fully understand witchcraft, and thus made many wrong assumptions about it. The Americans of the Fifties feared communism because it posed a threat to America’s capitalism, and was a very different idea. Again, many Americans did not fully understand the ideas of communism, and quickly accepted the most basic ideas about it. Both McCarthy and the girls of Salem started small, attacking easy targets who could easily be tied to evil and most possibly were guilty. However, if McCarthy had studied the Salem Witch Trials he might have realized that a frightened public will only follow your accusations so far. There is always a point in which so much finger-pointing becomes hard to believe. Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible about the Salem Witch Trials in the early fifties, as a direct response to McCarthy’s actions. In fact, Miller and several of his friends had been accused by McCarthy of being supporters of communism. Not only Miller, but the audiences who first witnessed the play in the fifties made the simple connection between McCarthy and the witch-hunts of 1692. Even after two such widely-known failed witch-hunts, people continued using exaggerated accusations as a means of getting political power. Throughout the 1990’s conservative Republicans attacked President Clinton and attempted to bring out many scandals involving him. The first of these was the Whitewater scandal, which surfaced in 1994. Clinton and his wife Hilary were accused of fraud involving an investment they had made in the Whitewater Development Corporation. After several investigations and Hilary’s testimony before a grand jury, the Clintons were acquitted of all charges, much to the disappointment of their political opponents. In 1998, the independent counsel in the Whitewater case, Kenneth Starr, happened upon a very different accusation against the president. This accusation involved an extra-marital affair Clinton may have had with one of his white house interns, Monica Lewinsky. Despite the validity of these claims, Kenneth Starr launched a very public attack on Presid...