Presenter(s): Sydney O’Neil—History Sociology
Session: Prerecorded Poster Presentation
In early 1692, an episode of witchcraft occurred that was different from any other outbreak in New England . The series of accusations, trials, and executions lasted longer, jailed and executed more suspects, and rippled the social, political, and religious norms within Salem, Massachusetts, more than any other incidence of suspected witchcraft . In the end there were some 1,600 accusations, 162 arrests, 54 confessions, 20 executions, and, shortly after its end, a government repudiation as a colossal mistake . This episode was caused by something deeper than petty squabbles between neighbors which seem to have been at the root of earlier and less extreme episodes of witchcraft . The goal of this research was to offer a more fully encompassing explanation of how the Salem Witch Trials became a moral panic . In accordance with a seventeenth-century Puritan worldview, in which religion played a central role, the rhetoric of sermons was analyzed to determine causation between sermons and trial accusations . The style, tone, and substance of the ministers sermons are examined before and during the trials . The persuasive sermons and everyday rhetoric by Puritan ministers acted as a call to action for Salem citizens, and were key in promoting the ministers’ personal agendas . Similarly, through these sermons ministers provided an explanation for the disproportionate prosecution of women, as well as the unjustly extracted confessions of satanic collusion from accusers, leading to extreme numbers of accusations, trials, and executions, and perpetuating the duration and extremity of the Salem Witch Trials .