October 22, 2025 • 45 mins
Which witch is which? You probably heard a lot of lawyers saying that in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. That was the year of America's largest witch hunt ever. But what sparked this mass hysteria that led to false accusations, sham justice and wrongful executions? Teenagers, of course.
Bob is joined by historian Emerson Baker (A Storm of Witchcraft) to explore how religion, politics, and panic fueled the Salem Witch Trials. A time when no one was above suspicion!
Guest: Emerson Baker, author of A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Those people who are standing up and being good Christians
and saying no, not guilty, not a which I don't
know why they're doing this. Tried, convicted, sentenced, executed. Meanwhile,
those people who kind of play ball with the court,
over a third of the people accused confess and they're
at least alive for the time being.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
You've reached American History Hotline. You asked the questions, we
get the answers, leave a message. Hey, they're American History Hotliners.
Bob Crawford here, thrilled to be joining you again for
another episode of American History Hotline, the show where you
(00:45):
ask the questions. You know the drill by Now send
your questions to Americanhistoryhotline at gmail dot com. That's American
History Hotline at gmail dot com. Okay, on to today's question.
It comes from Eleanor in Flagstaff. She writes, I hear
so much about witch hunts and the Salem witch trials,
(01:08):
but I actually never learned this history. Why were women
accused of being witches? And did they actually have trials?
How do you defend against being a witch? I love
this question, Eleanor, and here to help me answer it
is Emerson Baker author of the book A Storm of Witchcraft,
(01:29):
the Salem Trials and the American Experience pivotal moments in
American history. Emerson, thank you for joining me today.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Happy to be here, Bob.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
And a great question it is it is Emerson, there's
so much to get into to start, can you give
us the setting for all of this? Like when was
this and what does America look like at this point?
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Sure, sixteen ninety two in Salem, Massachusetts. Massachuset since had
been settled in sixteen twenty at Plymouth, and Salem was
established in sixteen twenty six, so we're talking a couple
of generations in from settlement at the time. We just
have a string of settlements really from oh northern North
Carolina on up into Maine sort of hug in the coastline,
(02:17):
so it's the early days. Salem is one of the
bigger settlements, which probably has a population of about twenty
five hundred people, and it's a very active maritime port
on the coast. But if you go interior a few
miles to what was known as Salem Village, then you're
there in sort of a rural, agrarian farming community of
maybe about five hundred people. These people are devout Puritans
(02:39):
who came to New England in the sixteen thirties for
religious freedom to worship as they saw fit in the
in the Puritan fashion, a fairly strict ranch of Protestantism.
And I on to point out too that I think
because of Salem people and the Puritans, people associate witch
hunts with them.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
You know, witch hunts.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Unfortunately, it's kind of like a universal thing that has
taken place throughout time and place. Most societies have some
version of of a witch hunt, and we know that
in Europe the Great Age of witch hunts between about
fourteen hundred and American Revolution in Europe and her colonies,
about one hundred thousand people were tried as witches and
(03:21):
about half of them executed. So Salem is sort of
taking to a place towards the end of that. But
this is it's a long, sad story of which Salem
is just a small part.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
So witch trials, they're not you're right, Well, you have
this idea of witch trials being this New England thing,
this thing that happened in the sixteen hundreds. But you're
telling us like witch trials, No, they were, They've always
been around.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Yeah, and in fact, they're frankly kind of still with
us in a sad way.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
We know that, and they went.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
They I got to stop you there. Right, there's the
word witch hunt has been overly used, or it's been
used a lot the past ten years.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Now, probably yes, in our recent history.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
So so let's just let's just get this out of
the way, Like, what do you mean?
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Okay, I'm sorry, you know, I should have clarified. I'm
not trying to go politically here on your bob.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
No, it's well, you may, you may if you want,
or you don't have to whatever you want to do.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
That is that is to say that let's okay, let
me back the basics. In large part, hunt, a witch
hunt is largely escapegoating, right, It's like it's like someone
someone if you have a big problem in your village,
bad weather, crop failures, unexplained sickness, and in traditional villages,
people are looking for someone to blame, right, someone who's
(04:43):
Who's Who's the witch? And unfortunately, witch hunts continue today
in part of the world, parts of southern parts of
Africa and India, where if those sorts of things take place, mobs,
you know, not not the justice system, because the justice
system in those countries would not believe in witches. But
in local villages where people aren't particularly well educated, they
(05:05):
literally will take the person that they think is causing
the harm to the village lynch mob will round them
up and and and actually kill them in rather terrible fashion.
The way they do it in most places is that
they actually it's called tiring people. You take someone and
you know, you tie them up and you put it
a tire over their neck, pour gasoline on them and
(05:26):
set them on fire. So when I say witch hunter
are real, I don't. I don't mean the frankly, the
relatively mild stuff of American politicians sort of stiping at
each other. I'm talking about life or death matters and
part of the world so and again, you know, that's
sort of the modern version of it. But it's they've
been going on in one time or another. And again,
(05:47):
pretty much every society bob around the world has some
form of witch hunts. It's I hate to say this,
but I think you know, as long as as long
as we have serious disagreements, uh and and and you know,
willing to scapegoat other people because they're different. In some
way we're going to have it, unfortunately. But we know
that in Europe, starting in like the fourteen hundreds and
(06:10):
fifteen hundreds, there were huge outbreaks and the one in
Salem was the largest in American history. But it's pretty small.
So give you an example. There was an outbreak in Cologne,
Germany in the sixteen twenties. It lasted a decade and
about two thousand people were burnt at the stake. And
there's so many people that it's like round fuzzy numbers
(06:30):
because we don't have all the names in the statistics, right, So,
and in some degrees it's funny to me that people
sort of you know, but Salem is the most famous,
right and that's the one that.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
People allow me to start.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
No, no, this is this is all amazing. And so
you're telling me in Cologne in the sixteen twenties, Now
we're talking about the sixteen you know, nineties, like we're
in the same period, right, Was this part of the Reformation?
Is there a connection between the Reformation and witch hunts?
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Absolutely well, in part yes, but again which hunts indirectly?
Which hunts take place in most religions? Again, whether Christian,
non Christian, all parts of the world, Eastern Orthodox, you
name it. And I think again, maybe sort of Puritans
get a bad rap because for us we tend to
think like, oh, it was those those stern people who
dressed in black and white and didn't have fun. Well, no,
(07:22):
they weren't like that. But that's another that's another story. Okay,
that's another question. But there is which hunts take place
when there's tensions in society and in early modern Europe,
you know, after yeah, after the Reformation, Martin Lutheran all that,
you're talking about a couple hundred years of religious tension
and warfare of people arguing over whether what is the
(07:43):
proper way to go to heaven and the proper way
to worship God in the Christian fashion. And unfortunately we
know in some ways Christians can be can be maybe
uh maybe maybe harsher on on fellow Christians sometimes than
than than than others because they just agree with how
you feel you should worship. So throughout the fifteen hundreds
(08:05):
and sixteen hundreds, particularly in those areas that were torn
by division between Catholics and Protestants over the Reformation and
the counter Reformation, you see a lot of religious tensions
that result in witch huns. And that doesn't mean that
people are saying, oh, my next door neighbor is a Catholic,
they're a witch, they need to be burnt at the stake.
I really think most of these are much much more subtle, Bob.
(08:28):
You know, it's like things are going wrong in our village.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Who do we blame.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Well, there are those people next door, and they worship
God a little differently than me, and they speak with
an accent, and they dress funny. So maybe they're the problem,
you see.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
And that's so it's in those senses.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Is those kinds of tensions that result from the Reformation
also too, some people say, some historians point to this
is the time when sort of we're looking at the
beginning of sort of the global economy and the evolution
of what we now know is capitalism, and that you
have so you have a lot of change going on,
breakup of tradition, old medieval village life, and change is.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Tough, Emerson.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Change brings out the crazy in folks. Let's just let's
just call it what it is, Okay, So the sixth
we're talking about Salem in the sixteen nineties. Give us
details of this particular witch hunt that we're talking about
witch trials? What were some of the accusations? Sure set
the scene for us.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Well, first off again to just to point out quickly
that there were about one hundred people accused of witchcraft
in New England before sixteen ninety two, but usually it's
only one or two people.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
Salem in sixteen ninety two.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Is in New England, particularly Massachusetts, isn't a really precarious
situation there are? Well, I call my book a Storm
of Witchcraft to reflect that idea of the perfect storm,
that you have a lot of bad things taking place,
and when you do that in the age four science,
people are looking to see how they've displeased God, right,
because everything is a sign of God's pleasure or displeasure
(09:55):
to puritan So how about people being concerned about to
bing religious fervor not as many people are attending worship
as they should, and that attendance is dropping, and not
as many people are joining the church. And add to
that a war going on with the French and the
Wabnachi Native Americans in northern New England. And add to
(10:17):
that what we now know was the worst weather in
hundreds of years, the worst the extremes of the little
ice age where you have horrible winters, hot, dry summers,
crop failures. So and if you want to add to that,
in the spring of sixteen ninety two, a new governor
is arriving in Massachusetts with a new charter that is
(10:37):
a new form of government, and all of these uncertainties, Right,
how is this going to happen? What is going to
happen to us? Is the new government going to work
out are the are the attacks going to destroy our village?
Make people start to say this is clear that say
that Satan has been set loose in our colony as
a test for us of our of our Christian fervor.
(11:00):
And clearly there are witches here and now we need
to start rounding them up.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Okay, So who were the accused?
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Ah? So the accusers start off with you know, in witchcraft,
it's like you know that famous lining Casablanca, round up
the usual suspects, bob, Right, That's what it was. Witchcraft
was normally a crime on the wrong side of the tracks. Right,
there's the working class people, usually women, or start to
someone will why whow why women?
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Why?
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Women? Okay, so let's go back to you know, I
don't know about you, but I have an amazing wife
and two strong, wonderful daughters who've made it successfully into
their thirties. So it hurts me to even think such
things or to say such things. But people didn't always
feel that way about women. Right in the seventeenth century
and in the earlier times, they were considered to be
and I'm putting this in quote marks, and you can
(11:52):
see this, bob body as can't.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Do I see these quote marks.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
I the air quart, the weaker vessel, not as not
as I'm smart, more susceptible to Satan's wiles, you see,
because Satan can tempt them with all kinds of things.
And men again not true, but they perceive men to
be sort of smarter. Remember, women are made out of
Adam's rib and so that's that's powerful stuff. So as
(12:19):
it turns out, because of that, people immediately suspect women
as witches. But again, it's not just this is not
just a European early modern thing. Throughout time and space,
most pre modern societies, you know, have their concerns about women.
And so about three quarters of the people in Salem
and pretty much every witch hunt are women. And it's
(12:41):
worse than that, because they believe that witchcraft was passed
throughout families, So you could have husbands or sons of
witches who.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Are so you're saying it's like genetic.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Well, they didn't understand genetics. You know, we're a long
ways from genetics. But exactly they believed it was handed
down from one member of the family to the other.
And the other thing too, is well, what about a
man who's not related? What about a neighbor? And he
has the temerity to accuse a woman of not being
a witch, saying, hey, no, you may have accused her,
(13:12):
but this woman, I know her. She's a good neighbor,
she's a good Christian, she's not a witch. And the
and and you know, we know what witch hunts are like.
And under those circumstances, people can say, well, well that's funny.
You seem like a good guy and we see you
at church on Sunday. But if your why on earth
would you defend someone that we know is a witch?
(13:32):
What Bob does that say about you?
Speaker 3 (13:35):
Are you one? Two? So you see, you see how
it grows.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
It's an impossible situation. Yes, it's it becomes like this
mob mentality. So put a face on that. Shi give
me a specific person who was accused.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
So the first three who are accused in Salem are
the usual suspects. You have Sarah Good, who's a distempered
they describe me again probably woman who's poor, woman who's
mentally challenged. She's a pauper, she's homeless, she's going around
house to house begging door to door. Okay, so that's
one she's accused, along with Titaba, who's a Native American
(14:11):
woman who's a enslaved by Reverend Paris, who's the minister
in the village. And there's also Sarah Osborne who's a
we might call her as a reasonably well to do
middle class woman, but she's been she's been widowed her husband,
and when after her husband dies, she has this apparently handsome, younger,
(14:32):
indentured servant who's contracted to work for the family for
seven years, she decides to free him and marry him.
And also too, he's not English, he's Welsh, which again
would make him a little bit stand out. So she
scandalized the family. So here you have people who sort
of scandalized people who might or poppers and distempered or enslaved.
(14:54):
So it really is those kind of usual suspects.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Who with the easy target.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
He's low target, low hanging fruit, isn't it exactly exactly?
And these are the people too, you can see though,
who might be really susceptible to Satan's temptations. Oh, you
promise me wealth, you promise me a good life, you
promise me a rich reward in the afterlife. And so
those traditionally are the victims. But in Salem is where
(15:21):
it gets insidious. Is before long, even good church members
are being accused, even leaders of the colony.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
In the end, you have.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Almost one hundred and seventy people arrested and charged with witchcraft.
Of those, nineteen will be executed. One who refuses to
cooperate with the court is literally pressed to death. They
pile rocks on top of him and try to press
out a plea. And five people die in prison because basically,
(15:53):
think of the word dungeon. So if you're locked up
there for like a year before trial, five people died.
But before it's over, Bob. And here's the thing. It
basically ends months later when the governor of Massachusetts calls
a halt to the proceedings after.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Who was the governor at this time.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Governor Sir William Phipps was a wealthy man who the
first American to be knighted by the King of England.
But his wife, he's off fighting, trying to fight the
war in Maine and lead the army, and when he
gets home in October, he finds out that someone has
accused his wife of being a witch, at which point
(16:31):
he writes the King and Queen and says, yeah, there's
been some witch hunts here, but I've now brought the
proceedings to a halt because there are people that I
know for a fact are not witches. So okay, no
jokes about his wife, but seriously, you know it took
something like that for him to say, Wow, something's gone
off the rails here, I guess because I know my
(16:52):
wife and her best friend are not witches, and her
best friend is the wife of the leading minister of
the colony. We know these women are above reproach and
are not witches. So it's only when things go that
far wrong, after nineteen people have been executed that do
things finally come to an end. And even then, when
(17:13):
he stops them, some people are saying, like the Chief
Justice is very upset. He's so upset when the trials
come to a halt. At one point, he basically storms
out of the courtroom and won't come back for a week.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
This is American History Hotline. I'm your host, Bob Crawford. Today.
My guest is Emerson Baker, author of the book A
Storm of Witchcraft, the Salem Trials and the American experience
pivotal moments in American history. We're talking about witches in
a kangaroo court. That's right, the Salem witch Trials. But hey,
(17:53):
we can talk about whatever you want next week. If
you have a question about American history, send it our way,
record yourself using the voice memo app on your phone
and email it to American History Hotline at gmail dot com.
That's American History Hotline at gmail dot com. Now back
to the show, Emerson, I want to kind of dig
(18:17):
in here a little bit where I want to looking
at the accusers, right, and how this thing spreads. Okay, so,
so it seems like first you're accusing the people in
the fringes of society, right, the enslaved woman, the woman
who who has is struggling mentally. Uh, the woman who's
(18:40):
not traditional, who's been widowed, who maybe has taken on
a you a younger man, right, he was indentured. She's freedom,
like you said, the low hanging fruit. But this works
its way all the way up to the wife of
the governor and her friend and the chief Justice wants
to keep Okay, So just talk about how the accusations spread.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
So what's really unusual in Salem is the accusers tend
to be largely teenage girls. There are a couple of
older women. There's a boy and a man involved too,
but the core group of about a dozen are mostly
between the ages of about thirteen and twenty. Okay, they
(19:25):
tend again, they tend to be sort of most of
them tend to be sort of at the fringes, though
some of them are not. Some of them are leaders
in the community. The daughter the first to be afflicted,
the daughter and niece of the minister, the most respected,
most about, most Christian.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
So how does that happen?
Speaker 3 (19:43):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (19:43):
So again I go back to the perfect storm analogy,
because there's so many people making accusations about so many
different things that there's no single explanation. You know, this
idea of they ate moldy bread and they got head.
A bad LSD trip is the standard one of Salem,
and it just doesn't fit. But I think there could
have been medical raised lots of medical reasons, psychological reasons.
(20:05):
But originally I think the first two these girls, they
were about ten and eleven, and there are hard times
in Stalem village. The village is try to fire their
father as a minister. They stopped paying his salary, they
stopped providing firewood to the house, and he's convinced that
Stton is in their midst and he's storming around the
parsonage practicing his sermons, fire and brimstone sermons. God is angry,
(20:28):
He's coming and he's basically taken no prisoners right, and
Sttan is in our midst and we have to drive
Stateton out and these poor girls will being are absolutely terrified, absolutely,
you know, and they don't know why Dad's freaking out,
but they know Satan's here and they're worried. Long story short, Bob,
And again I'm no clinical psychiatrist, nor do I play
one on television, but in their case, it sounds like
(20:51):
they're suffering really from what we'd call today called conversion disorder.
What they used to call mass hysteria, but where they're
basically they're not faking their symptoms. What they do is
they start feeling saying that they're being attacked by invisible assailants.
They feel like a thousand pins are sticking into their bodies.
(21:12):
They start wanting to do things like they bark like
a dog, They lose their vision temporarily, they want to
throw themselves into the roaring fire and don't know why.
They've lost control over their bodies and they don't understand why,
which makes it all the more scary.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
And so what you're describing for me sounds like medical
anxiety or what we used to call hypochondria or or
you know, where the human body can play tricks on
the mind, and the mind can play tricks on the
human body. And these symptoms are real, but the source,
(21:49):
the original source of the symptoms is.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Not and it's unknown, which makes it worse. Right, is
driven by anxiety and get today we call it it's
called conversion disorder, and there are cases of it. And
what that means is literally, you know, our minds are
really powerful things that we still don't fully understand. Right,
and so your mind is so overwrought from these young
(22:12):
girls and anxious about what's going on that literally their
body takes over but doesn't isn't telling them that, right,
And so their body is causing these symptoms and the symptoms.
So essentially what it does is your mind is converting
your anxiety into physical symptoms, but again not telling you,
and that makes your anxiety worse.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
Right.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
So, and what's interesting is there are outbreaks today. There
was one in upstate New York, a famous case about
a dozen years ago in Leroy, New York, among which
is like a post industrial town kind of on the
decline at least in the time. Hopefully it's doing better
these days. And interesting about this, about three quarters of
the victims hypercis of the victims of a conversion disorder teenagers,
(22:59):
predominantly women. And again I think of the tough lives
that our teenage girls have today with issues of body
image and all these things, is right, you know, well
it was imagine in a patriarchal society that doesn't value
women like men. In the seventeenth century it was worse,
and so you have these girls who really start catching
(23:24):
these symptoms. But what's interesting about conversion disorder then and
now is the power of suggestion, Right, So who are
the first in Salem village, the daughter and niece of
the minister, the most important people in town. They're your
leaders of the community. And then by the power of suggestion,
their neighbors children start to behave the same way in
(23:45):
Lee Roy, New York, like about I think it was
in about twenty thirteen or fourteen. Guess who would hit first.
The cheerleaders in the high school, the trend setters, right,
and then once they're having symptoms, all these kids will start,
you know, aring and screaming in the middle of class
and again, and you know what, then it took them
forever to explain it because no one wants to go
(24:07):
to the well there's there they have some mental crisis. Instead,
it's like, well, remember we had that train go off
the tracks a few miles out of town, and weren't
there's a few years ago, and weren't There's some nasty
chemicals on it and stuff, And it's the same ways
in Salem. People don't understand this process.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
So what do you do.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
You call in a doctor and pretty soon he makes
the diagnosis of bewitchment, because again.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
It's real.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
How do you prove someone is a witch. And first way,
two questions. One, how do you prove someone's a witch?
How do you prove someone's not a witch?
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Yeah, well, so a lot of years are approved that
they disprove isn't it. And that's the problem, and that's
why witch hunts tend to spread, right, because particularly particularly
two in Salem. The reason Stalem gets out of hand
is they use questionable evidence normally, so you mentioned you
mentioned kangaroo courts before and this fortunately this wasn't Australia,
(25:06):
but it's an English justice similar to what we'd recognize, Okay,
normally innoctent until proven guilty. Normally there's only two ways
to convict someone of witchcraft. Now, if this makes sense, Bob, right,
if you have someone who confesses, okay, why would you confess, Well, unfortunately,
normally because they've used some and again i'll use those
(25:27):
quote marks mild judicial torture, all right. Or you have
two people giving eyewitness testimonies saying that they've seen you
commit an act of black magic using Satan's powers, which
frankly then or now is kind of hard to do.
So in Salem they use this other weird evidence called
spectral evidence where And this is people knew that Stan
(25:50):
could give his powers to witches. It's in the Bible.
It's real. Everyone believes this is not superstition.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Right.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
But one of the ways that Statan's could use his
powers or give to people was to form specters. He
could create spirits or ghosts of people, and those ghosts
could harm people. Okay, and the specter is invisible to
anybody but the assailant.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
So I could be.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Standing in a room and I'd be going like, oh,
Bob's and people would look at me and they'd say, well,
wait a second, Bob's not even here. What are you saying? Right, No,
he's causing that's spectral affliction. Now this again, we're kind
of joking at this because it seems crazy to us. Well,
the point is it actually was crazy in this seventeenth century,
(26:34):
but not for the reasons we feel, but because again,
remember some people said, look it, if your specter's being used,
and this is unfortunately the judges believe this, if your
specter's being used, you're in league with Satan. But others said,
hang on, Satan is the great trickster. What if he's
not only trying to harm Emerson but he's also trying
to get Bob in trouble and get him accused of witchcraft.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
You see, it's a twofer.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
So, but the point is people in Salem were so
hard pressed, that so many things were going wrong that
they used this dubious evidence. And everybody in Stalem was
accused initially on this spectral evidence, which is just crazy stuff.
And so in instance, it's easy, easy, easy to accuse
people of being a witch.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Right, we are not far from this being the norm. Again.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Well, yeah, that's the whole other talk I mean, but
I think, as an aside, I think the big problem
that we face today in our country is that it's
so easy to demonize our enemy, right when in fact,
you know, if you sit down with them over a
meal or a cup of coffee, you'd agree, you'd find
out that you really agree about ninety ninety five percent
of the things that are really important. But that's it,
(27:43):
you know, Yeah, they're the enemy, They're the cause of
our problems. So let's let the witch hunt begin.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Yeah, So I think about the presidential pardon today or
a governor granting a stay of execution. Could the accused
pet someone in a higher power, like a governor or
a High Court judge for relief.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Yes, and it eventually works, but not throughout the summer
of sixteen ninety two when several of the accused. There's
one Rebecca Nurse, who's this saintly woman who's about eighty,
a god fearing Christian, her family and neighbors. They hit fifty,
almost fifty signatures on a petition saying, look, I don't
agree with the nurse's politics, but they're not witches, right,
(28:32):
And that petition goes to the covernor. And even when
she goes to trial, she's initially found not guilty, but
the Chief Justice says, I don't think jury. And again
there's a jury here of twelve good men, and they
came back not guilty. But they said, and I'm sure,
they said, well, you know the petitions and all this,
and he said, look it, you didn't look at some
of this evidence. Let's look at this again, Bob. They
(28:54):
came back again guilty, and she was executed, this poor woman.
But so eventually, in the fall of sixteen ninety two,
after the last they have a last session.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Of the court.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
In two weeks they convict and try execute eight people
for witchcraft. In these really rush trials, and people begin
to say things are going wrong here. And it's not
long after that that the ministers intervene. Who's sort of
like the leading sort of experts on theology and witches
in the colony, right, and the leading minister this man
(29:29):
whose wife had been accused, Increase Mather, very famous Puritan theologians,
well known today and as well as this un Cotton
Mather Right. Increased Mather writes a book and in it
he essentially says, Okay, it's getting to the stage where
we know innocent lives are being lost, so clearly we
can't prove beyond reasonable shadow of doubt that someone's a witch.
(29:51):
We're making mistakes here. And he ends up saying in
his book, better that ten witches live than one innocent
life be shed. And that's only then does it come
to an end. People don't stop believing in which is Bob,
They kept believing in witches. They just said, we don't
have a perfect justice system to convict them.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Is this before Blackstone's law book was published.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
So there are a number of legal books that they're
that they're using.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
Blackstones' commentaries is a little bit a little bit later,
but they do have, but yeah, you know what, they're
still executing some people in Europe for this. In England,
there was a major witch hunting in England during the
English Civil War in the sixteen forties, where things are
kind of again ten religious and military and political tensions.
Over one hundred people were executed, and the last execution,
(30:46):
let's see in Scotland is like sixteen ninety seven. So
and their witch hunts in the sixteen eighties in England,
but they're starting to peter out in large part because yes,
you do have English legal officials sort of saying like, yeah,
this spectral evidence isn't too good and again, you know maybe,
but having said that, you know, the chief Justice, the
future Chief Justice of England sought to the conviction and
(31:10):
execution of several women in the sixteen sixties and sort
of so he felt even to that point, the legal
justices in the land, leading leaders of it, of your system,
are saying, yep, there's still enough evidence to convict people
of witchcraft in extreme cases. So again, what Stalem is
doing is sort of an extreme but it's not totally
(31:32):
out of line with what's going on.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Okay, So what happened to the poor people who were convicted.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
So those originally there's again the old like thirty trials
talk about a kangaroo court. Almost all of those people
pled not guilty, were tried, convicted, sentenced, and again nineteen
of them were executed. They had others they were waiting
(32:01):
to execute. They had other people they were waiting to try,
some of them who sat for months in prison. The
good news was after increased Mather writes his book, and
also other people begin to complain the governor and by
the way, increased Mauther, the minister was also the governor's
top political advisor. We didn't have any division of church
(32:23):
and state here at all, so there's kind of a
slippery slope there. But I do think the Salem changed
that people began to say, maybe this isn't a great idea,
right because they also too. By the way, one of
those people at nineteen executed was a Puritan minister, and
five ministers were accused, and even other politicians were accused.
Members of the legislature were accused. So everybody's getting accused here.
(32:46):
But long story short, in the fall in October that
Governor phipp says, we have to end this court and
we At this point, they still have over one hundred
people in prison, and many of them have been some
have been convicted, others a waiting trial. Bob, you won't
believe this though. Fifty five people confess to witchcraft in
(33:07):
sixteen ninety two confessed.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
Guess come get you.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
But I mean it's a death sentence to confess.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
Right, Well, yeah, but guess how many of them died?
Speaker 3 (33:18):
How many? Zero? None? None?
Speaker 1 (33:22):
And now having said this, I think they would have eventually,
but in the early stages they noticed, like Titaba, who
was one of the first to confess back in the spring,
all throughout the summer of sixteen ninety two, she hasn't
even been tried. What they're doing is, you know, I'm
sure we all have our favorite crime show where they
bring in like the little Fish and they sort of
start sweating them like, Okay, if you just flip over,
(33:45):
mister or missus big, we can do some we can
we can talk, right, And that's what.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
They were doing with people.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
They'd get people to confess and then say, okay, great,
we know this is a huge witch hunt. Titaba even instead,
there were nine witches who had signed Satan's book, so
help us find the other people, so talk to us.
When you flew into that coven, who was there, I
don't know. There was some guy from Boston, but he
was wearing his hat down and it was dark and
(34:14):
I didn't quite catch his name, you know. But eventually, no, no, no,
you need to name names. You need to tell us
now the joke is again. Eventually there's only one punishment
for witchcraft.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
Just like today.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
You know, you commit a capital crime, you're in Massachusetts,
you would be sentenced to death then. But literally people
are seeing like wow, those people who were standing up
and being good Christians and saying no, not guilty, not
a witch. I don't know why they're doing this. Tried, convicted, sentenced, executed. Meanwhile,
(34:47):
those people who kind of play ball with the court,
over a third of the people accused confess and they're
at least alive for the time being. And when some
of these people probably would have been convicted if Phipps
hadn't ultimately issued pardons for them. And so it's it's
and it keeps on playing out for like another six
months under a new court.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
So what is the means of death? What it's the means?
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Well, I'd like to think that, you know, the English
folk are reasonably civilized. They aren't burning witches, but people
are being hanged. And it's a miserable way to go
because not to get too gory here, but essentially back
then they didn't have what we now call a short
drop where people break their necks, but you had people
who were strangulated and might take eight or ten minutes.
So it's a god awful way to die. And and
(35:36):
of course, and people always stay in stalem they were
burning witches, that's a misconception.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
In Europe.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
On the continent, in particularly, they tended to burn witches,
but that's because it's treated as a religious crimes, committing heresy,
and in Europe they burned heretics. In England and America
it's our standard sort of criminal courts where we don't
have ecclesiastical courts who are who are trying people, So
they're tried and sentenced and executed like other murdered people
(36:02):
who curedated murders and other capital crimes. So but again,
pretty pretty horrible way to go. Unfortunately, no unless except
for Giles Corey, who of course is is literally pressed
to death to try to get an answer an eighty
year old guy being pressed down. I think the good
news was for him was that he didn't hold up
too long. Unfortunately or maybe fortunately for him. Right, pretty
pretty bad it was. This was not Bob. This was
(36:24):
not a kind of Regentler time. Okay, it really wasn't.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
So I think about the Red Scare, the Red Scare
and the fear it spread and Joseph McCarthy, and thank god,
he was ultimately called out, you know, by people like
Edward R. Murrow. But lives were ruined, you know, lives
were ruined. What's the aftermath of the Salem Drive.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
Well, my short answer is that's the book I'm writing now,
so you'll have to wait. But no, no, but you
love it because I think that's that's the that's the
that's the important story about how these people recovered. It
did take They changed, they started a new court, they
changed the proceedings. They said you can't use spectral evidence anymore.
And guess what, Bob, no one was found guilty. There
(37:11):
were three people who confessed because they were still playing
kind of playing under those old rules. But the governor
pardons them and no more lives are lost. But it
takes until May sixteen ninety three before the last people
are tried, and even then it's sort of a tragedy
because you won't believe this. Back then, it's bad enough
to be in prison, right, how about if they treated
(37:32):
it like a really bad motel where you had to
pay for your room and board. And so in seventeenth century,
your family there was one woman who had been found
not guilty in the spring of sixteen ninety three, and
before she was a poor family, and before they could
come up with the money and come get her out
(37:52):
of prison to pay for her basically her room and board,
she died.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
So god is to.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Say families can continue to suffer really what we now
recognize as transgenerational trauma. Right where we know there were
people people immediately, here's the good news. Families, friends' neighbors
immediately rallied for those victims who were still alive to
try to get them pardoned, because at this point they
(38:21):
were legally dead. Before the law, they didn't even have
legal standing. Once you're convicted felon back then you lose
pretty much all right, So don't you can't even go
issue a competition to the court asking for a pardon
because they can't recognize you legally funny, you're standing right there,
but you're legally dead, right.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
So it took long.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Story short, it took until seventeen oh four, I think
it was seventeen oh three actually to get the first people,
first handful of people pardoned. By seventeen ten, they issue
a more general pardon where people are pardoned and also
get some financial damages, some minor compensation to help pay
those jailer's fees. Right, But honestly, there were eight or
(39:00):
nine people not pardoned and they won't get pardoned. There's
a wave of them between the nineteen fifties in Massachusetts
and the last one in twenty twenty two, where the
legislature finally agreed at the urging in the last case
of a middle school Civics class and Civics teacher to
ask if the last convicted which could could receive a pardon.
(39:22):
So it was a really long time getting justice for
these people. But to some degrees, I think that constant
pushed to get justice by the families, which lasted for
over fifty years.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
Initially.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
I think that's one of the reasons why Salem is
so well known, because it was touching injustice. I think
it's the first mass failure of an American government to
protect the innocent lives. And I think no one let
the government or where the accusers forget that, And I
think that's one reason why Salem so well known.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
Were there any you talk about how there were witch trials,
you know before this and witch trials sense, were there
any other major ones in the United States?
Speaker 3 (40:06):
No?
Speaker 1 (40:06):
After sales Stalem was there was one trial found not
guilty in Connecticut five years later. But essentially Salem is
the last real witch trial in America. But having said that,
on into the eighteenth century, these court, these cases show
up in court. But guess what, by this time, there's
(40:26):
slander cases. The woman who's been accused of a witch
she and her husband are going to court and getting
damages from the people who accused them. But we know this,
but again we know the belief is still there, and
in fact, people use counter magic on their houses too.
Here's the problem, Bob. If the courts aren't going to
take action against witches, you have to have a home
security system, right, So people put counter magic up on
(40:47):
their houses, like horseshoes overdoors that horseshoes were originally designed
to ward off against witches.
Speaker 3 (40:54):
Yeah, amazing, Yeah, amazing.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
So there there's are steps. There are no witch trials
because people know that can't convict, but that doesn't stop
the belief and it keeps on going. I've seen houses
built around here where I live in Maine in the
late nineteenth century that still are protected with things like
horseshoes and stuff like that. To sort of and again,
at what point does it pass the threshold from believe in,
(41:18):
which is to kind of superstitions or traditions.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
Right, We're not.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
We're never quite sure, but that is to say, those
you know, folk beliefs tend to last a real long time.
And it took a long time too for the for
their stain to be removed from from these families, even
after the government took action.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
So button it up for us. Okay, what makes what
makes the Salem Witch Trials a pivotal moment in American history?
Speaker 1 (41:44):
Well, again, I think it's by far it is like
that huge first crisis for America. Frankly, we don't pass
the test too well, right, But it also it's just
becomes an important lesson. I guess what I say is
every generation at his Salem moment almost from you know today,
we think this use of politicians and his petitions of left,
right and center who invoked witch hunts. I remember, you know,
(42:07):
it isn't just the president a few years ago. Is
is Hillary Clinton supporter talking about the Bengazi witch hunts? Right,
So this is an a politic is an equal opportunity.
Witch hunts are, right, But it's one of these It's
one of these things that every generation in America made
reference back to stalem and had its own witch hunts.
And you mentioned, you mentioned McCarthyism, and that's the one,
you know, the crucible that we're best known for. But
(42:29):
in the American Revolution, loyalists were accusing patriots of you know,
being fervent witches and extremists in their beliefs. If you look,
Southerners accused Northern abolitionists in the eighteen thirties and forties
of basically murdering witches and being extreme interviews well as
(42:51):
their ancestors were extreme in reviews, and they were just
as bad with their abolitionist beliefs. Every time, the Red
Scare after World War One, the Palmer Raids, has those
kinds of moments. So to me, the lesson here is Yeah,
this is this is how to how did this? We
have to we have to work together to understand people
and to try and not to demonize our enemies, and
(43:12):
to realize that as Americans we welcome diverse views on
politics and everything else, and our real the real hard
work for us is to work hard to understand folks
and all have civil discourse and civil disagreements, because other
otherwise we're going to go back to that example of
Salem and keep at least metaphorically, you know, hanging witches.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
Well would the social media spreading conspiracy theories like wildfire.
We're going to get to the point where we believe
in witches once again, and who knows where that will
lead us. I mean, it's it's just we're not getting
smarter people, We're not getting smarter. I've been talking with
(43:55):
Emerson Baker, author of the book A Storm of Witchcraft,
The Salem Trial and the American Experience Pivotal Moments in
American history. Emerson, when you write that next book, please
come back. You're always welcome here on the American History Hotline.
Speaker 3 (44:12):
We'll do Bob looking forward to it.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
You've been listening to American History Hotline, a production of
iHeart Podcasts and Scratch Track Productions. The show is executive
producer is James Morrison. Our executive producers from iHeart are
Jordan Runtall and Jason English. Original music composed by me,
Bob Crawford. Please keep in touch. Our email is Americanhistory
(44:40):
Hotline at gmail dot com. If you like the show,
please tell your friends and leave us a review in
Apple Podcasts. I'm your host, Bob Crawford. Feel free to
hit me up on social media to ask a history
question or to let me know what you think of
the show. You can find me at Crawford Base. Thanks
(45:01):
so much for listening, See you next week.
Those people who are standing up and being good Christians
and saying no, not guilty, not a which I don't
know why they're doing this. Tried, convicted, sentenced, executed. Meanwhile,
those people who kind of play ball with the court,
over a third of the people accused confess and they're
at least alive for the time being.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
You've reached American History Hotline. You asked the questions, we
get the answers, leave a message. Hey, they're American History Hotliners.
Bob Crawford here, thrilled to be joining you again for
another episode of American History Hotline, the show where you
(00:45):
ask the questions. You know the drill by Now send
your questions to Americanhistoryhotline at gmail dot com. That's American
History Hotline at gmail dot com. Okay, on to today's question.
It comes from Eleanor in Flagstaff. She writes, I hear
so much about witch hunts and the Salem witch trials,
(01:08):
but I actually never learned this history. Why were women
accused of being witches? And did they actually have trials?
How do you defend against being a witch? I love
this question, Eleanor, and here to help me answer it
is Emerson Baker author of the book A Storm of Witchcraft,
(01:29):
the Salem Trials and the American Experience pivotal moments in
American history. Emerson, thank you for joining me today.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Happy to be here, Bob.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
And a great question it is it is Emerson, there's
so much to get into to start, can you give
us the setting for all of this? Like when was
this and what does America look like at this point?
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Sure, sixteen ninety two in Salem, Massachusetts. Massachuset since had
been settled in sixteen twenty at Plymouth, and Salem was
established in sixteen twenty six, so we're talking a couple
of generations in from settlement at the time. We just
have a string of settlements really from oh northern North
Carolina on up into Maine sort of hug in the coastline,
(02:17):
so it's the early days. Salem is one of the
bigger settlements, which probably has a population of about twenty
five hundred people, and it's a very active maritime port
on the coast. But if you go interior a few
miles to what was known as Salem Village, then you're
there in sort of a rural, agrarian farming community of
maybe about five hundred people. These people are devout Puritans
(02:39):
who came to New England in the sixteen thirties for
religious freedom to worship as they saw fit in the
in the Puritan fashion, a fairly strict ranch of Protestantism.
And I on to point out too that I think
because of Salem people and the Puritans, people associate witch
hunts with them.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
You know, witch hunts.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Unfortunately, it's kind of like a universal thing that has
taken place throughout time and place. Most societies have some
version of of a witch hunt, and we know that
in Europe the Great Age of witch hunts between about
fourteen hundred and American Revolution in Europe and her colonies,
about one hundred thousand people were tried as witches and
(03:21):
about half of them executed. So Salem is sort of
taking to a place towards the end of that. But
this is it's a long, sad story of which Salem
is just a small part.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
So witch trials, they're not you're right, Well, you have
this idea of witch trials being this New England thing,
this thing that happened in the sixteen hundreds. But you're
telling us like witch trials, No, they were, They've always
been around.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Yeah, and in fact, they're frankly kind of still with
us in a sad way.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
We know that, and they went.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
They I got to stop you there. Right, there's the
word witch hunt has been overly used, or it's been
used a lot the past ten years.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Now, probably yes, in our recent history.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
So so let's just let's just get this out of
the way, Like, what do you mean?
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Okay, I'm sorry, you know, I should have clarified. I'm
not trying to go politically here on your bob.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
No, it's well, you may, you may if you want,
or you don't have to whatever you want to do.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
That is that is to say that let's okay, let
me back the basics. In large part, hunt, a witch
hunt is largely escapegoating, right, It's like it's like someone
someone if you have a big problem in your village,
bad weather, crop failures, unexplained sickness, and in traditional villages,
people are looking for someone to blame, right, someone who's
(04:43):
Who's Who's the witch? And unfortunately, witch hunts continue today
in part of the world, parts of southern parts of
Africa and India, where if those sorts of things take place, mobs,
you know, not not the justice system, because the justice
system in those countries would not believe in witches. But
in local villages where people aren't particularly well educated, they
(05:05):
literally will take the person that they think is causing
the harm to the village lynch mob will round them
up and and and actually kill them in rather terrible fashion.
The way they do it in most places is that
they actually it's called tiring people. You take someone and
you know, you tie them up and you put it
a tire over their neck, pour gasoline on them and
(05:26):
set them on fire. So when I say witch hunter
are real, I don't. I don't mean the frankly, the
relatively mild stuff of American politicians sort of stiping at
each other. I'm talking about life or death matters and
part of the world so and again, you know, that's
sort of the modern version of it. But it's they've
been going on in one time or another. And again,
(05:47):
pretty much every society bob around the world has some
form of witch hunts. It's I hate to say this,
but I think you know, as long as as long
as we have serious disagreements, uh and and and you know,
willing to scapegoat other people because they're different. In some
way we're going to have it, unfortunately. But we know
that in Europe, starting in like the fourteen hundreds and
(06:10):
fifteen hundreds, there were huge outbreaks and the one in
Salem was the largest in American history. But it's pretty small.
So give you an example. There was an outbreak in Cologne,
Germany in the sixteen twenties. It lasted a decade and
about two thousand people were burnt at the stake. And
there's so many people that it's like round fuzzy numbers
(06:30):
because we don't have all the names in the statistics, right, So,
and in some degrees it's funny to me that people
sort of you know, but Salem is the most famous,
right and that's the one that.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
People allow me to start.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
No, no, this is this is all amazing. And so
you're telling me in Cologne in the sixteen twenties, Now
we're talking about the sixteen you know, nineties, like we're
in the same period, right, Was this part of the Reformation?
Is there a connection between the Reformation and witch hunts?
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Absolutely well, in part yes, but again which hunts indirectly?
Which hunts take place in most religions? Again, whether Christian,
non Christian, all parts of the world, Eastern Orthodox, you
name it. And I think again, maybe sort of Puritans
get a bad rap because for us we tend to
think like, oh, it was those those stern people who
dressed in black and white and didn't have fun. Well, no,
(07:22):
they weren't like that. But that's another that's another story. Okay,
that's another question. But there is which hunts take place
when there's tensions in society and in early modern Europe,
you know, after yeah, after the Reformation, Martin Lutheran all that,
you're talking about a couple hundred years of religious tension
and warfare of people arguing over whether what is the
(07:43):
proper way to go to heaven and the proper way
to worship God in the Christian fashion. And unfortunately we
know in some ways Christians can be can be maybe
uh maybe maybe harsher on on fellow Christians sometimes than
than than than others because they just agree with how
you feel you should worship. So throughout the fifteen hundreds
(08:05):
and sixteen hundreds, particularly in those areas that were torn
by division between Catholics and Protestants over the Reformation and
the counter Reformation, you see a lot of religious tensions
that result in witch huns. And that doesn't mean that
people are saying, oh, my next door neighbor is a Catholic,
they're a witch, they need to be burnt at the stake.
I really think most of these are much much more subtle, Bob.
(08:28):
You know, it's like things are going wrong in our village.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Who do we blame.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Well, there are those people next door, and they worship
God a little differently than me, and they speak with
an accent, and they dress funny. So maybe they're the problem,
you see.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
And that's so it's in those senses.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Is those kinds of tensions that result from the Reformation
also too, some people say, some historians point to this
is the time when sort of we're looking at the
beginning of sort of the global economy and the evolution
of what we now know is capitalism, and that you
have so you have a lot of change going on,
breakup of tradition, old medieval village life, and change is.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
Tough, Emerson.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Change brings out the crazy in folks. Let's just let's
just call it what it is, Okay, So the sixth
we're talking about Salem in the sixteen nineties. Give us
details of this particular witch hunt that we're talking about
witch trials? What were some of the accusations? Sure set
the scene for us.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Well, first off again to just to point out quickly
that there were about one hundred people accused of witchcraft
in New England before sixteen ninety two, but usually it's
only one or two people.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
Salem in sixteen ninety two.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Is in New England, particularly Massachusetts, isn't a really precarious
situation there are? Well, I call my book a Storm
of Witchcraft to reflect that idea of the perfect storm,
that you have a lot of bad things taking place,
and when you do that in the age four science,
people are looking to see how they've displeased God, right,
because everything is a sign of God's pleasure or displeasure
(09:55):
to puritan So how about people being concerned about to
bing religious fervor not as many people are attending worship
as they should, and that attendance is dropping, and not
as many people are joining the church. And add to
that a war going on with the French and the
Wabnachi Native Americans in northern New England. And add to
(10:17):
that what we now know was the worst weather in
hundreds of years, the worst the extremes of the little
ice age where you have horrible winters, hot, dry summers,
crop failures. So and if you want to add to that,
in the spring of sixteen ninety two, a new governor
is arriving in Massachusetts with a new charter that is
(10:37):
a new form of government, and all of these uncertainties, Right,
how is this going to happen? What is going to
happen to us? Is the new government going to work
out are the are the attacks going to destroy our village?
Make people start to say this is clear that say
that Satan has been set loose in our colony as
a test for us of our of our Christian fervor.
(11:00):
And clearly there are witches here and now we need
to start rounding them up.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Okay, So who were the accused?
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Ah? So the accusers start off with you know, in witchcraft,
it's like you know that famous lining Casablanca, round up
the usual suspects, bob, Right, That's what it was. Witchcraft
was normally a crime on the wrong side of the tracks. Right,
there's the working class people, usually women, or start to
someone will why whow why women?
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Why?
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Women? Okay, so let's go back to you know, I
don't know about you, but I have an amazing wife
and two strong, wonderful daughters who've made it successfully into
their thirties. So it hurts me to even think such
things or to say such things. But people didn't always
feel that way about women. Right in the seventeenth century
and in the earlier times, they were considered to be
and I'm putting this in quote marks, and you can
(11:52):
see this, bob body as can't.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Do I see these quote marks.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
I the air quart, the weaker vessel, not as not
as I'm smart, more susceptible to Satan's wiles, you see,
because Satan can tempt them with all kinds of things.
And men again not true, but they perceive men to
be sort of smarter. Remember, women are made out of
Adam's rib and so that's that's powerful stuff. So as
(12:19):
it turns out, because of that, people immediately suspect women
as witches. But again, it's not just this is not
just a European early modern thing. Throughout time and space,
most pre modern societies, you know, have their concerns about women.
And so about three quarters of the people in Salem
and pretty much every witch hunt are women. And it's
(12:41):
worse than that, because they believe that witchcraft was passed
throughout families, So you could have husbands or sons of
witches who.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Are so you're saying it's like genetic.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Well, they didn't understand genetics. You know, we're a long
ways from genetics. But exactly they believed it was handed
down from one member of the family to the other.
And the other thing too, is well, what about a
man who's not related? What about a neighbor? And he
has the temerity to accuse a woman of not being
a witch, saying, hey, no, you may have accused her,
(13:12):
but this woman, I know her. She's a good neighbor,
she's a good Christian, she's not a witch. And the
and and you know, we know what witch hunts are like.
And under those circumstances, people can say, well, well that's funny.
You seem like a good guy and we see you
at church on Sunday. But if your why on earth
would you defend someone that we know is a witch?
(13:32):
What Bob does that say about you?
Speaker 3 (13:35):
Are you one? Two? So you see, you see how
it grows.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
It's an impossible situation. Yes, it's it becomes like this
mob mentality. So put a face on that. Shi give
me a specific person who was accused.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
So the first three who are accused in Salem are
the usual suspects. You have Sarah Good, who's a distempered
they describe me again probably woman who's poor, woman who's
mentally challenged. She's a pauper, she's homeless, she's going around
house to house begging door to door. Okay, so that's
one she's accused, along with Titaba, who's a Native American
(14:11):
woman who's a enslaved by Reverend Paris, who's the minister
in the village. And there's also Sarah Osborne who's a
we might call her as a reasonably well to do
middle class woman, but she's been she's been widowed her husband,
and when after her husband dies, she has this apparently handsome, younger,
(14:32):
indentured servant who's contracted to work for the family for
seven years, she decides to free him and marry him.
And also too, he's not English, he's Welsh, which again
would make him a little bit stand out. So she
scandalized the family. So here you have people who sort
of scandalized people who might or poppers and distempered or enslaved.
(14:54):
So it really is those kind of usual suspects.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Who with the easy target.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
He's low target, low hanging fruit, isn't it exactly exactly?
And these are the people too, you can see though,
who might be really susceptible to Satan's temptations. Oh, you
promise me wealth, you promise me a good life, you
promise me a rich reward in the afterlife. And so
those traditionally are the victims. But in Salem is where
(15:21):
it gets insidious. Is before long, even good church members
are being accused, even leaders of the colony.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
In the end, you have.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Almost one hundred and seventy people arrested and charged with witchcraft.
Of those, nineteen will be executed. One who refuses to
cooperate with the court is literally pressed to death. They
pile rocks on top of him and try to press
out a plea. And five people die in prison because basically,
(15:53):
think of the word dungeon. So if you're locked up
there for like a year before trial, five people died.
But before it's over, Bob. And here's the thing. It
basically ends months later when the governor of Massachusetts calls
a halt to the proceedings after.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Who was the governor at this time.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Governor Sir William Phipps was a wealthy man who the
first American to be knighted by the King of England.
But his wife, he's off fighting, trying to fight the
war in Maine and lead the army, and when he
gets home in October, he finds out that someone has
accused his wife of being a witch, at which point
(16:31):
he writes the King and Queen and says, yeah, there's
been some witch hunts here, but I've now brought the
proceedings to a halt because there are people that I
know for a fact are not witches. So okay, no
jokes about his wife, but seriously, you know it took
something like that for him to say, Wow, something's gone
off the rails here, I guess because I know my
(16:52):
wife and her best friend are not witches, and her
best friend is the wife of the leading minister of
the colony. We know these women are above reproach and
are not witches. So it's only when things go that
far wrong, after nineteen people have been executed that do
things finally come to an end. And even then, when
(17:13):
he stops them, some people are saying, like the Chief
Justice is very upset. He's so upset when the trials
come to a halt. At one point, he basically storms
out of the courtroom and won't come back for a week.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
This is American History Hotline. I'm your host, Bob Crawford. Today.
My guest is Emerson Baker, author of the book A
Storm of Witchcraft, the Salem Trials and the American experience
pivotal moments in American history. We're talking about witches in
a kangaroo court. That's right, the Salem witch Trials. But hey,
(17:53):
we can talk about whatever you want next week. If
you have a question about American history, send it our way,
record yourself using the voice memo app on your phone
and email it to American History Hotline at gmail dot com.
That's American History Hotline at gmail dot com. Now back
to the show, Emerson, I want to kind of dig
(18:17):
in here a little bit where I want to looking
at the accusers, right, and how this thing spreads. Okay, so,
so it seems like first you're accusing the people in
the fringes of society, right, the enslaved woman, the woman
who who has is struggling mentally. Uh, the woman who's
(18:40):
not traditional, who's been widowed, who maybe has taken on
a you a younger man, right, he was indentured. She's freedom,
like you said, the low hanging fruit. But this works
its way all the way up to the wife of
the governor and her friend and the chief Justice wants
to keep Okay, So just talk about how the accusations spread.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
So what's really unusual in Salem is the accusers tend
to be largely teenage girls. There are a couple of
older women. There's a boy and a man involved too,
but the core group of about a dozen are mostly
between the ages of about thirteen and twenty. Okay, they
(19:25):
tend again, they tend to be sort of most of
them tend to be sort of at the fringes, though
some of them are not. Some of them are leaders
in the community. The daughter the first to be afflicted,
the daughter and niece of the minister, the most respected,
most about, most Christian.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
So how does that happen?
Speaker 3 (19:43):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (19:43):
So again I go back to the perfect storm analogy,
because there's so many people making accusations about so many
different things that there's no single explanation. You know, this
idea of they ate moldy bread and they got head.
A bad LSD trip is the standard one of Salem,
and it just doesn't fit. But I think there could
have been medical raised lots of medical reasons, psychological reasons.
(20:05):
But originally I think the first two these girls, they
were about ten and eleven, and there are hard times
in Stalem village. The village is try to fire their
father as a minister. They stopped paying his salary, they
stopped providing firewood to the house, and he's convinced that
Stton is in their midst and he's storming around the
parsonage practicing his sermons, fire and brimstone sermons. God is angry,
(20:28):
He's coming and he's basically taken no prisoners right, and
Sttan is in our midst and we have to drive
Stateton out and these poor girls will being are absolutely terrified, absolutely,
you know, and they don't know why Dad's freaking out,
but they know Satan's here and they're worried. Long story short, Bob,
And again I'm no clinical psychiatrist, nor do I play
one on television, but in their case, it sounds like
(20:51):
they're suffering really from what we'd call today called conversion disorder.
What they used to call mass hysteria, but where they're
basically they're not faking their symptoms. What they do is
they start feeling saying that they're being attacked by invisible assailants.
They feel like a thousand pins are sticking into their bodies.
(21:12):
They start wanting to do things like they bark like
a dog, They lose their vision temporarily, they want to
throw themselves into the roaring fire and don't know why.
They've lost control over their bodies and they don't understand why,
which makes it all the more scary.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
And so what you're describing for me sounds like medical
anxiety or what we used to call hypochondria or or
you know, where the human body can play tricks on
the mind, and the mind can play tricks on the
human body. And these symptoms are real, but the source,
(21:49):
the original source of the symptoms is.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Not and it's unknown, which makes it worse. Right, is
driven by anxiety and get today we call it it's
called conversion disorder, and there are cases of it. And
what that means is literally, you know, our minds are
really powerful things that we still don't fully understand. Right,
and so your mind is so overwrought from these young
(22:12):
girls and anxious about what's going on that literally their
body takes over but doesn't isn't telling them that, right,
And so their body is causing these symptoms and the symptoms.
So essentially what it does is your mind is converting
your anxiety into physical symptoms, but again not telling you,
and that makes your anxiety worse.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
Right.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
So, and what's interesting is there are outbreaks today. There
was one in upstate New York, a famous case about
a dozen years ago in Leroy, New York, among which
is like a post industrial town kind of on the
decline at least in the time. Hopefully it's doing better
these days. And interesting about this, about three quarters of
the victims hypercis of the victims of a conversion disorder teenagers,
(22:59):
predominantly women. And again I think of the tough lives
that our teenage girls have today with issues of body
image and all these things, is right, you know, well
it was imagine in a patriarchal society that doesn't value
women like men. In the seventeenth century it was worse,
and so you have these girls who really start catching
(23:24):
these symptoms. But what's interesting about conversion disorder then and
now is the power of suggestion, Right, So who are
the first in Salem village, the daughter and niece of
the minister, the most important people in town. They're your
leaders of the community. And then by the power of suggestion,
their neighbors children start to behave the same way in
(23:45):
Lee Roy, New York, like about I think it was
in about twenty thirteen or fourteen. Guess who would hit first.
The cheerleaders in the high school, the trend setters, right,
and then once they're having symptoms, all these kids will start,
you know, aring and screaming in the middle of class
and again, and you know what, then it took them
forever to explain it because no one wants to go
(24:07):
to the well there's there they have some mental crisis. Instead,
it's like, well, remember we had that train go off
the tracks a few miles out of town, and weren't
there's a few years ago, and weren't There's some nasty
chemicals on it and stuff, And it's the same ways
in Salem. People don't understand this process.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
So what do you do.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
You call in a doctor and pretty soon he makes
the diagnosis of bewitchment, because again.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
It's real.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
How do you prove someone is a witch. And first way,
two questions. One, how do you prove someone's a witch?
How do you prove someone's not a witch?
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Yeah, well, so a lot of years are approved that
they disprove isn't it. And that's the problem, and that's
why witch hunts tend to spread, right, because particularly particularly
two in Salem. The reason Stalem gets out of hand
is they use questionable evidence normally, so you mentioned you
mentioned kangaroo courts before and this fortunately this wasn't Australia,
(25:06):
but it's an English justice similar to what we'd recognize, Okay,
normally innoctent until proven guilty. Normally there's only two ways
to convict someone of witchcraft. Now, if this makes sense, Bob, right,
if you have someone who confesses, okay, why would you confess, Well, unfortunately,
normally because they've used some and again i'll use those
(25:27):
quote marks mild judicial torture, all right. Or you have
two people giving eyewitness testimonies saying that they've seen you
commit an act of black magic using Satan's powers, which
frankly then or now is kind of hard to do.
So in Salem they use this other weird evidence called
spectral evidence where And this is people knew that Stan
(25:50):
could give his powers to witches. It's in the Bible.
It's real. Everyone believes this is not superstition.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Right.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
But one of the ways that Statan's could use his
powers or give to people was to form specters. He
could create spirits or ghosts of people, and those ghosts
could harm people. Okay, and the specter is invisible to
anybody but the assailant.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
So I could be.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
Standing in a room and I'd be going like, oh,
Bob's and people would look at me and they'd say, well,
wait a second, Bob's not even here. What are you saying? Right, No,
he's causing that's spectral affliction. Now this again, we're kind
of joking at this because it seems crazy to us. Well,
the point is it actually was crazy in this seventeenth century,
(26:34):
but not for the reasons we feel, but because again,
remember some people said, look it, if your specter's being used,
and this is unfortunately the judges believe this, if your
specter's being used, you're in league with Satan. But others said,
hang on, Satan is the great trickster. What if he's
not only trying to harm Emerson but he's also trying
to get Bob in trouble and get him accused of witchcraft.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
You see, it's a twofer.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
So, but the point is people in Salem were so
hard pressed, that so many things were going wrong that
they used this dubious evidence. And everybody in Stalem was
accused initially on this spectral evidence, which is just crazy stuff.
And so in instance, it's easy, easy, easy to accuse
people of being a witch.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Right, we are not far from this being the norm. Again.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Well, yeah, that's the whole other talk I mean, but
I think, as an aside, I think the big problem
that we face today in our country is that it's
so easy to demonize our enemy, right when in fact,
you know, if you sit down with them over a
meal or a cup of coffee, you'd agree, you'd find
out that you really agree about ninety ninety five percent
of the things that are really important. But that's it,
(27:43):
you know, Yeah, they're the enemy, They're the cause of
our problems. So let's let the witch hunt begin.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Yeah, So I think about the presidential pardon today or
a governor granting a stay of execution. Could the accused
pet someone in a higher power, like a governor or
a High Court judge for relief.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Yes, and it eventually works, but not throughout the summer
of sixteen ninety two when several of the accused. There's
one Rebecca Nurse, who's this saintly woman who's about eighty,
a god fearing Christian, her family and neighbors. They hit fifty,
almost fifty signatures on a petition saying, look, I don't
agree with the nurse's politics, but they're not witches, right,
(28:32):
And that petition goes to the covernor. And even when
she goes to trial, she's initially found not guilty, but
the Chief Justice says, I don't think jury. And again
there's a jury here of twelve good men, and they
came back not guilty. But they said, and I'm sure,
they said, well, you know the petitions and all this,
and he said, look it, you didn't look at some
of this evidence. Let's look at this again, Bob. They
(28:54):
came back again guilty, and she was executed, this poor woman.
But so eventually, in the fall of sixteen ninety two,
after the last they have a last session.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Of the court.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
In two weeks they convict and try execute eight people
for witchcraft. In these really rush trials, and people begin
to say things are going wrong here. And it's not
long after that that the ministers intervene. Who's sort of
like the leading sort of experts on theology and witches
in the colony, right, and the leading minister this man
(29:29):
whose wife had been accused, Increase Mather, very famous Puritan theologians,
well known today and as well as this un Cotton
Mather Right. Increased Mather writes a book and in it
he essentially says, Okay, it's getting to the stage where
we know innocent lives are being lost, so clearly we
can't prove beyond reasonable shadow of doubt that someone's a witch.
(29:51):
We're making mistakes here. And he ends up saying in
his book, better that ten witches live than one innocent
life be shed. And that's only then does it come
to an end. People don't stop believing in which is Bob,
They kept believing in witches. They just said, we don't
have a perfect justice system to convict them.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Is this before Blackstone's law book was published.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
So there are a number of legal books that they're
that they're using.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
Blackstones' commentaries is a little bit a little bit later,
but they do have, but yeah, you know what, they're
still executing some people in Europe for this. In England,
there was a major witch hunting in England during the
English Civil War in the sixteen forties, where things are
kind of again ten religious and military and political tensions.
Over one hundred people were executed, and the last execution,
(30:46):
let's see in Scotland is like sixteen ninety seven. So
and their witch hunts in the sixteen eighties in England,
but they're starting to peter out in large part because yes,
you do have English legal officials sort of saying like, yeah,
this spectral evidence isn't too good and again, you know maybe,
but having said that, you know, the chief Justice, the
future Chief Justice of England sought to the conviction and
(31:10):
execution of several women in the sixteen sixties and sort
of so he felt even to that point, the legal
justices in the land, leading leaders of it, of your system,
are saying, yep, there's still enough evidence to convict people
of witchcraft in extreme cases. So again, what Stalem is
doing is sort of an extreme but it's not totally
(31:32):
out of line with what's going on.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Okay, So what happened to the poor people who were convicted.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
So those originally there's again the old like thirty trials
talk about a kangaroo court. Almost all of those people
pled not guilty, were tried, convicted, sentenced, and again nineteen
of them were executed. They had others they were waiting
(32:01):
to execute. They had other people they were waiting to try,
some of them who sat for months in prison. The
good news was after increased Mather writes his book, and
also other people begin to complain the governor and by
the way, increased Mauther, the minister was also the governor's
top political advisor. We didn't have any division of church
(32:23):
and state here at all, so there's kind of a
slippery slope there. But I do think the Salem changed
that people began to say, maybe this isn't a great idea,
right because they also too. By the way, one of
those people at nineteen executed was a Puritan minister, and
five ministers were accused, and even other politicians were accused.
Members of the legislature were accused. So everybody's getting accused here.
(32:46):
But long story short, in the fall in October that
Governor phipp says, we have to end this court and
we At this point, they still have over one hundred
people in prison, and many of them have been some
have been convicted, others a waiting trial. Bob, you won't
believe this though. Fifty five people confess to witchcraft in
(33:07):
sixteen ninety two confessed.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
Guess come get you.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
But I mean it's a death sentence to confess.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
Right, Well, yeah, but guess how many of them died?
Speaker 3 (33:18):
How many? Zero? None? None?
Speaker 1 (33:22):
And now having said this, I think they would have eventually,
but in the early stages they noticed, like Titaba, who
was one of the first to confess back in the spring,
all throughout the summer of sixteen ninety two, she hasn't
even been tried. What they're doing is, you know, I'm
sure we all have our favorite crime show where they
bring in like the little Fish and they sort of
start sweating them like, Okay, if you just flip over,
(33:45):
mister or missus big, we can do some we can
we can talk, right, And that's what.
Speaker 3 (33:51):
They were doing with people.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
They'd get people to confess and then say, okay, great,
we know this is a huge witch hunt. Titaba even instead,
there were nine witches who had signed Satan's book, so
help us find the other people, so talk to us.
When you flew into that coven, who was there, I
don't know. There was some guy from Boston, but he
was wearing his hat down and it was dark and
(34:14):
I didn't quite catch his name, you know. But eventually, no, no, no,
you need to name names. You need to tell us
now the joke is again. Eventually there's only one punishment
for witchcraft.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
Just like today.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
You know, you commit a capital crime, you're in Massachusetts,
you would be sentenced to death then. But literally people
are seeing like wow, those people who were standing up
and being good Christians and saying no, not guilty, not
a witch. I don't know why they're doing this. Tried, convicted, sentenced, executed. Meanwhile,
(34:47):
those people who kind of play ball with the court,
over a third of the people accused confess and they're
at least alive for the time being. And when some
of these people probably would have been convicted if Phipps
hadn't ultimately issued pardons for them. And so it's it's
and it keeps on playing out for like another six
months under a new court.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
So what is the means of death? What it's the means?
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Well, I'd like to think that, you know, the English
folk are reasonably civilized. They aren't burning witches, but people
are being hanged. And it's a miserable way to go
because not to get too gory here, but essentially back
then they didn't have what we now call a short
drop where people break their necks, but you had people
who were strangulated and might take eight or ten minutes.
So it's a god awful way to die. And and
(35:36):
of course, and people always stay in stalem they were
burning witches, that's a misconception.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
In Europe.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
On the continent, in particularly, they tended to burn witches,
but that's because it's treated as a religious crimes, committing heresy,
and in Europe they burned heretics. In England and America
it's our standard sort of criminal courts where we don't
have ecclesiastical courts who are who are trying people, So
they're tried and sentenced and executed like other murdered people
(36:02):
who curedated murders and other capital crimes. So but again,
pretty pretty horrible way to go. Unfortunately, no unless except
for Giles Corey, who of course is is literally pressed
to death to try to get an answer an eighty
year old guy being pressed down. I think the good
news was for him was that he didn't hold up
too long. Unfortunately or maybe fortunately for him. Right, pretty
pretty bad it was. This was not Bob. This was
(36:24):
not a kind of Regentler time. Okay, it really wasn't.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
So I think about the Red Scare, the Red Scare
and the fear it spread and Joseph McCarthy, and thank god,
he was ultimately called out, you know, by people like
Edward R. Murrow. But lives were ruined, you know, lives
were ruined. What's the aftermath of the Salem Drive.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
Well, my short answer is that's the book I'm writing now,
so you'll have to wait. But no, no, but you
love it because I think that's that's the that's the
that's the important story about how these people recovered. It
did take They changed, they started a new court, they
changed the proceedings. They said you can't use spectral evidence anymore.
And guess what, Bob, no one was found guilty. There
(37:11):
were three people who confessed because they were still playing
kind of playing under those old rules. But the governor
pardons them and no more lives are lost. But it
takes until May sixteen ninety three before the last people
are tried, and even then it's sort of a tragedy
because you won't believe this. Back then, it's bad enough
to be in prison, right, how about if they treated
(37:32):
it like a really bad motel where you had to
pay for your room and board. And so in seventeenth century,
your family there was one woman who had been found
not guilty in the spring of sixteen ninety three, and
before she was a poor family, and before they could
come up with the money and come get her out
(37:52):
of prison to pay for her basically her room and board,
she died.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
So god is to.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Say families can continue to suffer really what we now
recognize as transgenerational trauma. Right where we know there were
people people immediately, here's the good news. Families, friends' neighbors
immediately rallied for those victims who were still alive to
try to get them pardoned, because at this point they
(38:21):
were legally dead. Before the law, they didn't even have
legal standing. Once you're convicted felon back then you lose
pretty much all right, So don't you can't even go
issue a competition to the court asking for a pardon
because they can't recognize you legally funny, you're standing right there,
but you're legally dead, right.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
So it took long.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Story short, it took until seventeen oh four, I think
it was seventeen oh three actually to get the first people,
first handful of people pardoned. By seventeen ten, they issue
a more general pardon where people are pardoned and also
get some financial damages, some minor compensation to help pay
those jailer's fees. Right, But honestly, there were eight or
(39:00):
nine people not pardoned and they won't get pardoned. There's
a wave of them between the nineteen fifties in Massachusetts
and the last one in twenty twenty two, where the
legislature finally agreed at the urging in the last case
of a middle school Civics class and Civics teacher to
ask if the last convicted which could could receive a pardon.
(39:22):
So it was a really long time getting justice for
these people. But to some degrees, I think that constant
pushed to get justice by the families, which lasted for
over fifty years.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
Initially.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
I think that's one of the reasons why Salem is
so well known, because it was touching injustice. I think
it's the first mass failure of an American government to
protect the innocent lives. And I think no one let
the government or where the accusers forget that, And I
think that's one reason why Salem so well known.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
Were there any you talk about how there were witch trials,
you know before this and witch trials sense, were there
any other major ones in the United States?
Speaker 3 (40:06):
No?
Speaker 1 (40:06):
After sales Stalem was there was one trial found not
guilty in Connecticut five years later. But essentially Salem is
the last real witch trial in America. But having said that,
on into the eighteenth century, these court, these cases show
up in court. But guess what, by this time, there's
(40:26):
slander cases. The woman who's been accused of a witch
she and her husband are going to court and getting
damages from the people who accused them. But we know this,
but again we know the belief is still there, and
in fact, people use counter magic on their houses too.
Here's the problem, Bob. If the courts aren't going to
take action against witches, you have to have a home
security system, right, So people put counter magic up on
(40:47):
their houses, like horseshoes overdoors that horseshoes were originally designed
to ward off against witches.
Speaker 3 (40:54):
Yeah, amazing, Yeah, amazing.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
So there there's are steps. There are no witch trials
because people know that can't convict, but that doesn't stop
the belief and it keeps on going. I've seen houses
built around here where I live in Maine in the
late nineteenth century that still are protected with things like
horseshoes and stuff like that. To sort of and again,
at what point does it pass the threshold from believe in,
(41:18):
which is to kind of superstitions or traditions.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
Right, We're not.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
We're never quite sure, but that is to say, those
you know, folk beliefs tend to last a real long time.
And it took a long time too for the for
their stain to be removed from from these families, even
after the government took action.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
So button it up for us. Okay, what makes what
makes the Salem Witch Trials a pivotal moment in American history?
Speaker 1 (41:44):
Well, again, I think it's by far it is like
that huge first crisis for America. Frankly, we don't pass
the test too well, right, But it also it's just
becomes an important lesson. I guess what I say is
every generation at his Salem moment almost from you know today,
we think this use of politicians and his petitions of left,
right and center who invoked witch hunts. I remember, you know,
(42:07):
it isn't just the president a few years ago. Is
is Hillary Clinton supporter talking about the Bengazi witch hunts? Right,
So this is an a politic is an equal opportunity.
Witch hunts are, right, But it's one of these It's
one of these things that every generation in America made
reference back to stalem and had its own witch hunts.
And you mentioned, you mentioned McCarthyism, and that's the one,
you know, the crucible that we're best known for. But
(42:29):
in the American Revolution, loyalists were accusing patriots of you know,
being fervent witches and extremists in their beliefs. If you look,
Southerners accused Northern abolitionists in the eighteen thirties and forties
of basically murdering witches and being extreme interviews well as
(42:51):
their ancestors were extreme in reviews, and they were just
as bad with their abolitionist beliefs. Every time, the Red
Scare after World War One, the Palmer Raids, has those
kinds of moments. So to me, the lesson here is Yeah,
this is this is how to how did this? We
have to we have to work together to understand people
and to try and not to demonize our enemies, and
(43:12):
to realize that as Americans we welcome diverse views on
politics and everything else, and our real the real hard
work for us is to work hard to understand folks
and all have civil discourse and civil disagreements, because other
otherwise we're going to go back to that example of
Salem and keep at least metaphorically, you know, hanging witches.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
Well would the social media spreading conspiracy theories like wildfire.
We're going to get to the point where we believe
in witches once again, and who knows where that will
lead us. I mean, it's it's just we're not getting
smarter people, We're not getting smarter. I've been talking with
(43:55):
Emerson Baker, author of the book A Storm of Witchcraft,
The Salem Trial and the American Experience Pivotal Moments in
American history. Emerson, when you write that next book, please
come back. You're always welcome here on the American History Hotline.
Speaker 3 (44:12):
We'll do Bob looking forward to it.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
You've been listening to American History Hotline, a production of
iHeart Podcasts and Scratch Track Productions. The show is executive
producer is James Morrison. Our executive producers from iHeart are
Jordan Runtall and Jason English. Original music composed by me,
Bob Crawford. Please keep in touch. Our email is Americanhistory
(44:40):
Hotline at gmail dot com. If you like the show,
please tell your friends and leave us a review in
Apple Podcasts. I'm your host, Bob Crawford. Feel free to
hit me up on social media to ask a history
question or to let me know what you think of
the show. You can find me at Crawford Base. Thanks
(45:01):
so much for listening, See you next week.
Host
Bob Crawford
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