"The Salem Witch Trials, although a minor incident in the far more extensive persecution of religious and social nonconformists as "witches" in Europe from the Middle Ages, is a vivid, cautionary episode in American history. Remembered largely because of its anomalous character, the trials exemplify the threat to American founding ideals of freedom, justice, and religious tolerance and pluralism. Even in New England, which accepted the reality of the supernatural, the trials at Salem were repudiated by leading Puritans." Gale Group, Inc. (2005) But in the end, the Salem Witch Trails affected the entire United States through the legacy it passed on to this day.
Modern Witch Trials "The damage to the community lingered, however, even after Massachusetts Colony passed legislation restoring the good names of the condemned and providing financial restitution to their heirs in 1711. Indeed, the vivid and painful legacy of the Salem witch trials endured well into the 20th century, when Arthur Miller dramatized the events of 1692 in his play “The Crucible” (1953), using them as an allegory for the anti-Communist “witch hunts” led by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s... during the cold war all over America. People were searching for communists, and accusing others of being communists, without any clear evidence. " "The term "witch hunt" has entered the American lexicon to describe the search for and harassment of people or members of groups who hold politically unpopular views."
The Knowledge Gained "The Salem Witch Trials were an important part of American history, but even more important is what is learned from them. It is important to take away all that can be learned from the trials so that we can prevent repeats in the future. The trials can be studied and the ways in which the madness happened and try to truly understand what happened. The witch trials were an example of hysteria people can experience when faced with fear. They also showed very well the time it takes for a community to fully heal, after a tragedy. The Salem Witch Trials were a sad time, but a lot can be learned from them."
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Literacy"For almost a century, the records they left have been a key resource in our study of early American English. The Puritans had a very high level of literacy, but didn’t write much down, especially in their colloquial tongue; they were too busy “trying to survive,” as University of Kansas professor Peter Grund puts it. The witch trials, however, left a range of documents, many transcribed from direct speech. Since the 1920s, these approximately 1,000 manuscripts have been uniquely helpful in showing linguists how early Americans pronounced, spelled, and wrote their language, an English very different from our own. At the same time, linguistic clues in the Salem files have been crucial to understanding how the community spiraled so deeply into crisis."
Ideals of AmericaThe Salem Witch Trials had a major effect upon the ideals of the United States including: freedom, justice, religious tolerance, and pluralism. These ideals were the foundations that lead the nation to where it is now. Examples of those ideals in history are freedom: the freedoms in the Bill of Rights, justice: "Trials should be fair: evidence introduced should be reliable, witnesses should be subject to cross-examination, defendants should have legal assistance and be allowed to testify on their own behalf, and judges should be unbiased.", religious tolerance: freedom of religion in the Bill of Rights, and pluralism, present in the First Amendment .
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