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... 1) In the sixteenth, seventeenth, and twentieth century, the hysteria over certain causes resulted in prosecution in the Salem Witch Trials, European Witchcraft Craze, and the McCarthy hearings. ...
The Salem witch trials in Massachusetts Colony lasted from 1692 to early 1693. Even before the witchcraft trials, Salem Village was not exactly known as a bastion of tranquillity in New England. ... 2) There was a population of over six hundred that was divided into two main parts; those that wanted to separate from Salem Town and those that did not. ... 2) Salem became unstable. ... The confessions and trials of the accused witches were nonsense. Often, torture would continue until the victim had no choice but to confess of being a witch, and most of the confessions were forced. Trials and hangings continued and by the early autumn of 1692, doubts were developing as to how so many respectable people could be guilty. The educated elite of the colony began efforts to end the witch-hunting hysteria that had enveloped Salem. ... With spectral evidence not permitted, the remaining trials ended in acquittals and all the convicted and accused witches were let out of jail in May of 1693. ... The witchcraft accusations in Salem had taken the lives of at least twenty-four people. ... This persecution may have seemed harsh, but it was with the coming of the Reformation that the witch-hunts really began. ... In one of the books in the Old Testament (Exodus 22:18) it says, Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. ... Three years after the British Civil War began, the Parliament appointed a Witch-finder General. He and other appointed witch-finders were to take suspicious-looking people to a witch trial. ... If she did not cry out, the magistrate would declare that she was a witch because witches, supposedly, could not feel pain. Unfortunately, though, witch-finders would often use a trick pin, built in the same way as modern stage daggers, so that the point disappeared into the upper part of the pin, and the woman, naturally, did not feel anything.
Approximate Word count = 1664
Approximate Pages = 6.7
(250 words per page double spaced)
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