It is generally accepted that there was a grave miscarriage of justice, that religious zealots persecuted innocent people for no good reason, and innocent men and women were executed for witchcraft. It has been debated whether or not the accusations surfaced as a result of fraud and/or hysteria.
What is ignored in this debate is that there was actual witchcraft practiced in colonial New England. Chadwick Hansen in Witchcraft at Salem argued that there was actual witchcraft, but that its power was purely psychological. Without completely rejecting that argument, William H. Cooke in Justice at Salem argues that more could have been at work.
Nevertheless, Cooke does not completely exonerate the prosecutors and judges in the witch trials. Most of the accused were likely innocent. Correct legal procedures were not always followed. In the fight against the perceived threat of witches, the protections of the law were sometimes abandoned. In the pursuit of security, liberty was lost. In that sense, the Puritans weren't so different from us, Cooke argues, as he draws parallels to the War on Terror. And the fact that the guilty practiced a religion that was offensive to the majority did not justify persecuting them. But at the time witchcraft was perceived as a grave threat to the existence of the colony and not without good reason. Justice at Salem takes a detailed look at the cases of five individuals charged with witchcraft: Bridget Bishop, Sarah Good, George Burroughs, Tituba, and Samuel Wardwell, and also looks at the events that helped to start and end the trials. Witty, irreverent and sarcastic at times, well researched (be sure to read the endnotes), and timely, Cooke's book is a breath of fresh air to the typical drivel that passes as popular history about the Salem witch trials.
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