Infamous America - SALEM Ep. 5 | "Legacy"

Episode Date: October 31, 2018

The Salem witch trials reach their darkest point as more innocent lives are lost. When the crisis touches the highest level of government, the governor finally stops the trials. The outbreak slowly fades away, but it haunts all involved for the rest of their lives. For the next 300 years, family members, scholars and historians try to understand it all went so horribly wrong. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A quote, such was the darkness of the day. We walked in the clouds and could not see our way. Reverend John Hale, 1697. The words of George Burroughs echoed in Reverend John Hale's mind. As the Minister of Beverly, Hale had been a part of the crisis since the very beginning. His friend and colleague, Reverend Samuel Paris in Salem Village, had urgently requested a visit eight months earlier when his daughter and niece were sick. Reverend Hale had agreed that the girls appeared to be victims of witchcraft, but so much had happened since then.

The outbreak had grown in size and scale beyond anything in the short history of the colonies. It had escalated with such speed that it was hard to comprehend. Now, six people had been executed, and five more had been sentenced to join them, and Reverend Hale couldn't shake George Burrough's last statement at his trial. Burroughs had agreed that the jury had no choice. but to convict him based on the mountain of evidence that had been presented against him. But then he said he would die due to false testimony. And that had stuck with Hale.

Could it be true? Was it possible that they were all making horrible mistakes? He rushed from the courtroom and sought out one of the accusers. Surviving records suggested it was Mary Lacey or her daughter. He sternly reminded her, you were the one that brings this man to death. If you have charged anything upon him that is not true, recall it before it is too late, while he is still alive.

The accuser, who had testified that George Burroughs conducted an enormous witch meeting behind Reverend Paris's home, only answered that she had said nothing for which she could be blamed. Two weeks later, as George Burroughs climbed the ladder toward the hangman's noose, he stunned everyone in the crowd by doing something they thought was impossible. In the process, he pierced the armor of the witch trials and caused the beginning of the end. Welcome to infamous America, a show that explores some of the darkest and most controversial people and events in American history. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and in season one, we're telling the story of the Salem Witch Trials. This is the final episode in the saga of the Witchcraft Outbreak of 1692.

There are more trials and more executions to come, but the voices of opposition grow louder. And when the crisis reaches the doorstep of the governor, he decides it's finally gone too far. And then in the coming weeks, you'll hear from authors and experts as we try to understand one of the most infamous episodes in our nation's past.

This is Salem, Chapter 5, Legacy. 120 people were in jail as suspected witches by the fall of 1692, and Margaret Jacobs had testified against three of them. One had been her own grandfather, George Jacobs Sr. On the eve of the third round of executions, Margaret Jacobs broke down under the weight of what she had done. She asked permission to speak to Reverend George Burroughs in prison,

and she poured out her sins. She confessed that she had lied when she testified against him, and not just him, John Willard and her grandfather as well. All three men. were scheduled to hang tomorrow. She begged his forgiveness, and he probably granted her wish. But as he accepted her apology in the Boston jail, the other afflicted girls witnessed his specter conduct a witch meeting in Andover.

They said his spirit bid goodbye to his followers, and reminded them to be firm in their belief in the devil by not confessing to charges of witchcraft. The next morning, the largest crowd to date followed the cart of the condemned through the streets of Salem toward Gallo's Hill. For the first time, men would be executed for witchcraft, and one was a reverend who had been accused of being the king of hell. The lone woman, Martha Carrier, was allegedly his queen.

This was not a sight to be missed. When the procession reached the execution ledge, the prisoners were sincere and dignified. They forgave their accusers, and the judges, and the jury. They prayed that they might be pardoned, for their actual sins. Several ministers were on hand to witness the display, including Reverend Nicholas Noyes, who had been cursed by Sarah Good, and Reverend John Hale, whose doubts about the crisis were growing. Reverend Cotton Mather attended an execution for the first time,

and he was about to have a starring role in the show. The guards took George Burroughs out of the cart first. He began to climb the ladder toward the noose that dangled in the air. He kept his composure as he trudged up the rungs, but then he paused halfway to the top. He looked out over the vast audience that had assembled to watch him die, a crowd that included family members and parishioners. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he delivered an impassioned speech. The crowd began to stir as they absorbed his words, and then, with his last moment on earth, he gave them a perfect recitation of the Lord's Prayer. The crowd gasped. This shouldn't have been possible.

It was widely accepted that a person who was in league with the devil could not say the Lord's prayer. Many people in the crowd had seen prisoners fail over and over again, but now, a man who was supposed to be empowered with more evil magic than even a wizard had just said it without missing a single letter. For a moment, it seemed like the commotion in the audience might stop the execution, but it didn't. Reverend Burroughs continued up the ladder and dropped to his death. As his lifeless bodies swayed from the noose, discontent ran through the crowd.

The situation could spiral out of control. So Reverend Cotton Mather rode forward on his horse. He challenged the crowd. What was a better way for the devil to disguise himself than in the form of a man like George Burroughs? Mather's words calmed the protesters so the executions could continue. One by one, Martha Carrier, John Willard, George Jacobs, and John Proctor climbed the ladder, and strangled to death at the end of a rope while the crowd watched. George Burroughs was the only minister executed in the Salem Witchcraft Crisis,

and he was convicted largely due to suspicions in his past. Suspitions that weren't really taken seriously until he was accused of being a witch by Ann Putnam Jr. And even as 13 suspected witches now lay in the grave, Spectres continued to attack Anne and the other afflicted girls. People continued to believe that the girls could see the invisible world of spirits and ghosts, and they continued to call the girls to their homes to diagnose family members who had fallen ill with mysterious sicknesses. The girls delivered the same prognosis every time.

A witch was hurting the sick person. At the end of August 1692, two new Spectres were, ravaged a home in Andover. Several girls were visiting the home of the Tyler family, and during the night, the specters of Mary Parker and Samuel Wardwell tortured the girls hour after hour until the girls thought they might die. Mary and Samuel were arrested, and then Samuel's wife was arrested, and then his two oldest kids were arrested. Before they even knew what was happening, the four oldest members of the household were in jail, which left five children. children home alone to fend for themselves. The Wardwell parents were examined and admitted to

witchcraft after intense questioning. Mary Parker was examined, and the afflicted girls who testified against her convulsed so painfully that only a touch from her hand was able to save them. Mary maintained her innocence. She confessed to nothing, which was rare by this point in the crisis. All the accused were held for trial. As Summer passed into front of her. As Summer passed into fall with the arrival of September, the growing chorus of objection to the witch trials began to sink in with the judges. They reflected on their methods. Maybe they had been too harsh in their punishments. Maybe the foundation upon which their judgments were made was not as solid as it had appeared in June. The death of George Burroughs had created serious unrest amongst the people.

In the aftermath, Reverend Cotton Mather wrote a manuscript that tried to describe the court's point of view during the trials. He had always been skeptical of spectral evidence, but even as the accused maintained their innocence, he still believed they had to be guilty of something. He sent it to Stoughton and got the Chief Justice's approval before he rushed it into production for release later that fall. And while Cotton Mather labored on his book, his father, Increase Mather, was at work on a book of his own, one that was centered squarely on spectral evidence. The two ministers, father and son, would soon be on opposite sides of the crisis. After Mary Parker and Samuel Wardwell were examined, the witchcraft crisis in Andover came to a screeching halt.

This was a stunning event in the timeline of the outbreak. People had been protesting the witch trials with louder and louder voices for a couple months, but now the Justice of the Peace in Andover was shutting it down altogether. Dudley Bradstreet had issued arrest warrants for 30 to 40 people, but after the incident at the Tyler household and the examinations of Parker and Wardwell, he said, that's it, I'm done, this has gone far enough. He refused to issue any more arrest warrants for witchcraft. As a result, he was immediately accused by the afflicted girls of Andover of bewitching nine people to death. He and his brother, who was a local magistrate, fled the area.

Not long afterward, a lawsuit for a thousand pounds was filed against the afflicted of Andover by a man we know only as a worthy gentleman of Boston. The man said he had been defamed by witchcraft allegations and demanded legal proof of the validity of the claims. Maybe the worthy gentleman was Dudley Bradstreet. Maybe not. But whoever he was, the lawsuit's stopped all accusations in Andover. Those who had already been arrested still had to be examined

or tried, but there were no new cases in Andover. And a similar situation happened in Salisbury. The Justice of the Peace, Robert Pike, wrote to Judge Jonathan Corwin to express his serious concern over the use of spectral testimony. He had collected much of the evidence against Susanna Martin, who had been executed in July, and now he raised dangerous questions. how do we know the devil wasn't acting alone? How do we know for sure that any humans were actually involved? How can we be positive witches had really done any of these things? Pike's questions were relayed to Reverend Cotton Mather,

and Mather now pulled off a great tightrope act. He responded by saying that spectral evidence shouldn't be used by itself to convict someone, but it could be used to begin the investigation that would eventually find the proof that was needed to convict the person. And while the crisis unraveled in places like Beverly and Salisbury, the final session of witch trials began in Salem. Dorkas Hoar was one of the first people accused of witchcraft, and she had been sitting in jail for months by the time her trial date finally arrived.

And for the record, her last name is spelled H-O-A-R. Her case was personal for Reverend John Hale, and he testified against her. He recounted a story from 14 years ago. Dorcas, Dorkas' husband, and John Hale's maid-servant Margaret had systematically robbed the minister over the course of several months. When the theft was discovered, Margaret fled and the couple was found guilty. Other neighbors in Beverly testified to suspicious comments and actions, but one of the most damaging pieces of evidence, if you want to call it that, was her appearance.

Most of her hair was short and gray, but at the back of her head she had a snarled ponytail that was more than four feet long. Typically, she coiled it in her lap like a snake when she sat down, but the judges ordered it to be cut off. She protested loudly that she would die, but they cut it off anyway. She survived the haircut, only to be found guilty and sentenced to death. Alice Parker, Anne Pudiator, Mary Easty, and Mary Bradbury received the same fate. They were tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. Anne Pudiator and Mary Easty petitioned the court to reconsider the testimony against them that they considered false. Mary went so far as to say that the judges were wrong, and they had already killed innocent people,

and they would kill more if they continued down this road. at the time it had no effect. Martha Corey was also found guilty and condemned to die, but her stubborn, antagonistic husband Giles would be another matter altogether. Giles Corey pled not guilty after his indictments were read, but then he was asked how he would be tried. His answer was supposed to be a formality. Everyone said it without even thinking about it, but not Giles.

When asked how he would be tried, he was supposed to answer, by God in my country. Instead, he didn't say anything. He refused to speak. Technically, the trial couldn't continue until he gave an answer. His rebellion was known as Standing Mute, and it put the judges in a tough spot. Under English law, the punishment for standing mute was to be pressed under heavy weights until he was forced to say the words. Giles had total contempt for the court, and he was not going to give the judges or the jury the satisfaction of putting him on trial to find him guilty for something he didn't do. The judges postponed his trial. In the meantime, the court heard the cases of Anne Foster and her daughter Mary Lacey, Sr., Samuel Wardwell, Mary Parker, Abigail Hobbs, the girl who freely admitted association with the devil, Margaret Scott, Wilmot Red, Abigail Faulkner, Senior,

and Rebecca Eames. All nine were found guilty in sentenced to hang, though Abigail Faulkner, Sr. was granted a stay of execution because she was pregnant. And now it was time to deal with Giles Corey. The church had excommunicated

him for standing mute at trial, and a friend had pleaded with him for two days to change his mind, but he wouldn't. On Monday, September 19th, 1692, Giles Corey was taken from the Salem Jail to a nearby pasture. Officers laid him on the ground, face up. They placed boards across his body,

and then began piling heavy stones on top of the boards. Giles refused to speak. Even as the weight grew heavier and heavier, he said nothing. At last, as the weight became unbearable, tradition holds that he said two words with a gasp, more weight. And then the weight crushed him to death. Giles Corey was the first, last, and only pressing death in Massachusetts. After the death of Giles Corey, a petition arrived on behalf of Dorkas Horre. It asked for a delay in her execution so that she could properly prepare for death and eternity. Chief Justice Stoughton granted the delay, but eight more executions were carried out as scheduled. Martha Corey, Mary Eastie, Alice Parker, Ann Pudiator, Margaret Scott,

Wilmot Red, Mary Parker, and Samuel Wardwell piled into an ox cart for the ride to Gallows Hill. Many people in the crowd wept when Mary Eastie set a final farewell to her family. All the condemned maintained their innocence, but they were all hanged by the neck until dead. After the executions, the court recessed until November 1st. Those who sat in jail awaiting trial would have to wait until then. Those who had been convicted but not executed didn't know how long they had to wait. They just had to sit there with the knowledge that their time was coming. And while they lingered in jail, court officials and constables confiscated the property of those who had been hanged.

The homes and goods and livestock of the executed now belonged to the colony. And throughout the colony, which trials and examinations continued, Ipswich, Gloucester, Manchester, Redding, Lynn, and others. still battled witches. In Andover, the accusations had stopped, but the executions had not. In early October, two dogs became the only non-human victims of the crisis. A dog in Andover was shot after an afflicted girl claimed its specter attacked her. And in Salem Village, the afflicted girls claimed a spirit had ridden a dog and hurt the animal, so it had to be killed. These killings exasperated Reverend Increase Mather.

He said, If the dog was an actual devil in disguise, no one would have been able to kill it. But since someone had killed it, it was clearly just a dog and didn't have magical powers. Not long after the murder of the dogs, Increase Mather delivered his long-awaited book in the form of a lecture to a group of ministers at Harvard College.

It was called Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirit. In it, he answered the question that he and the ministers had asked two months earlier, could the devil impersonate an innocent person? Yes, he said. This was a spiritual broadside to the witch trials. His pronouncement didn't have any legal effect, but he was the leading minister in the colony. He had just said, by extension, it was possible that people who had been hanged were innocent. Judge Stoughton argued later that there have been plenty of people.

of other evidence against the guilty, but it had all started with attacks by their specters. Increase Mather went on to say that accusations were not proof. He said nothing in nature supported the touch test. He said a free and voluntary confession should be the standard, none of which happened in Salem. He had no patience for teenage girls who just wanted attention. Their outlandish testimony wouldn't have been accepted in any other type of trial, so it should shouldn't be accepted in trials of witchcraft. And he ended with his biggest point. He said, it was better that ten witches escape

than one innocent person should be condemned. The manuscript was powerful. Ministers as far away as New York agreed with his views, and they made another point. The afflicted never declined physically despite their supposed sufferings. When they weren't being attacked, they were fine. They ate, they drank.

They slept, they behaved normally. At about the same time, Increase Mather's son, Cotton Mather, presented his book to the public. It wasn't the exact opposite of his father's book, but it was close. In general terms, he attempted to tell the story of the trials from the court's point of view. But it was sloppy and disjointed. Cotton Mather never actually attended a single trial. He relied entirely on documents that were given to him by the judge's judge's or scribes, and he only picked five cases to discuss.

Voices of opposition to the trials were growing louder by the day, and people viewed Cotton Mather's book as a defense of the trials. The two books added more fuel to the debate over the validity of the witch trials, and now, Governor Phipps, who had avoided the whole affair for months, couldn't ignore it any longer. Governor Phipps had supported the trials from the sidelines for four months, but by mid-October his colony was sharply divided and the accusations had come to his very doorstep.

Reports suggest that his own wife was accused of witchcraft by the fall of 1692, and that would certainly have been a breaking point for Phipps. The next court session was just a couple weeks away, and he clearly had to take action. Finally, he sent a letter to England to notify the royal government that they had a bit of a witchcraft problem here in Massachusetts, But don't worry, he had it under control. He stopped all arrests.

He had suspended all court proceedings, and he had banned the publication of any more documents on the subject, for or against. It was the first major case of censorship on the American continent and the first large-scale cover-up. Regardless, the walls around the crisis were crumbling. Court officials began to grant bail to suspects who had been rotting in jail. Hill. Increase Mather, and a vocal opponent of the trials, Thomas Brattle, made visits to the Salem jail.

Suddenly, prisoners who had confessed said their confessions were false. They said they had been badgered and frightened and confused, and ultimately, they just told the judges what they wanted to hear. Some accusers began to change their stories. The whole thing was beginning to unravel. courts all over New England began to find suspects innocent instead of guilty. But that's not to say that the fire had been fully extinguished. Afflicted girls were still accusing suspects in various towns, but now guilt was not automatic. On October 29th, three days before the next court session, Governor Phipps declared that the court of Oyer and Terminor must fall. And it did.

By the end of the year, it was dissolved. Two weeks later, Reverend John Hale heard a remarkable story from a girl who had been afflicted for two months. Mary Herrick came to him and said she had been afflicted by two spirits for the last several days. One was his own wife, and Reverend Hale obviously didn't like hearing that. But the other was the ghost of Mary Eastie, who had been executed a few weeks ago. The ghost said she was innocent and had been put to death wrongly, and young Mary Herrick was supposed to tell this to Reverend Hale. The teenager was still afflicted, but the tide was starting to turn.

As the year 1692 drew to a close, many things changed, but some didn't. In mid-December, Massachusetts changed its laws concerning witchcraft. The worst cases were still punishable by death, but now, for the first time, there were lesser degrees of witchcraft. The legislature outlined several examples of lesser acts of magic, but the one that affected the witch trials directly was this. If a person tried to hurt someone through the use of magic, the punishment was now one year in jail without bail. Only after a second offense could a person be given the death penalty.

Of course, this didn't help the 20 people who had already been executed, and it didn't help 75-year-old Anne Foster either. On December 9th, Anne died in the Salem jail after spending 21 weeks in prison. Around the same time, Sarah Good's daughter, Little Dorcas, who was five years old, was released. She had been in prison for seven months, nearly half of which she had been alone after her mother had been executed. It was said she was permanently damaged by the experience. She was never right in the head again. But the prison was still crowded with some.

suspects who awaited trial, or who had already been convicted and were awaiting execution. Now, petitions flooded the governor's office from all over the colony asking for the release of the prisoners. They wouldn't get it, at least not yet. There was still more darkness looming in the new year. By January, 1693, the Massachusetts court system had been reorganized. The special court that was convened to hear witchcraft cases was gone. In its place, was the the permanent superior court, but it featured all the same names. William Stoughton was the chief justice. Thomas Danforth, Waite Winthrop, John Richards, and Samuel Sewell were his judges, and one of the first orders of business was to quickly work through all the cases of witchcraft

that had been pending for months. By this point, the debate over spectral evidence was done. When one of the jurors for the upcoming trials asked a judge how much weight should be given into spectral evidence, the judge effectively said, none at all. The court heard more than 50 cases in two weeks. Thirty were tossed out for lack of evidence, including the case of Sarah Cloy, the surviving sister of Rebecca Nurse and Mary Easty. Sarah was finally free to go, and her husband Peter promptly moved them out of Salem Village. Of the 50 cases, only three resulted in guilty verdicts. And those were an interesting blend of the old and the new. The afflicted girls stuck to their stories. They testified against the accused and told tales of the torments they had suffered. The difference now

was that fewer people believed them. Justice Stoughton was one of the hardcore believers. His commitment to the witch hunt never wavered. He signed eight new death warrants. Three for the women who had just been found guilty, Elizabeth Johnson, Mary Post, and Sarah Wardwell, the wife of Samuel, who was executed last year. And five for the holdovers from the old court. Abigail Hobbs, Mary Bradbury, Abigail Faulkner Sr., Elizabeth Proctor, and Dorcas Hore. Abigail Faulkner had given birth, so now she was eligible for execution. The delay granted to Dorcas Hore had long since ended, so she was eligible. On January 27th, Elizabeth Proctor gave birth to a baby boy.

She named him John after his father. And now she was eligible for execution. Gravediggers went to work in Salem preparing a spot for the women after they were executed. But then the King's attorney in New England reviewed the cases of the three new condemned women and made a report for Governor Phipps. He said the newly convicted women looked just as innocent as the ones who had already been executed. Governor Phipps looked at the report. He looked at the loud opposition to the trials,

and he looked at the eight death warrants that Stoughton had just signed. And then he granted reprieves to all the condemned women, at least until he received official instructions from England. Stoughton was furious. He really believed he was cleaning the land of witches. The governor hadn't bothered to tell the chief justice of his decision, so Stoughton found out when he entered the courtroom in Salem town. He stormed out of court and refused to have anything more to deal with it.

Thomas Danforth took over for the rest of the session. The court heard several cases of witchcraft on February 1st, 1693, but all were found not guilty. Over the next three months, from March to May 1693, prisoners began the slow march to freedom. In early March, Mary Post and Dorcas Hoare were released. They had been scheduled to die two months earlier, but now the witch trials were collapsing, and they walked out of prison. Tichiba, who had survived in jail for 13 months, was released, but only after she was sold to a new owner, so Paris could pay her bill to the jailer. Elizabeth Proctor and her infant son were released.

She returned to her farm, only to find that it had been picked clean by neighbors and the government. In one last sad twist, John Proctor had amended his will in jail, and he left nothing to his wife because she was supposed to be executed along with him. Prisoners were released from jails all over New England, as long as they could pay the jailer's fees, of course. Elderly Lydia Dustin could not. She died in the Cambridge jail March 10, 1693. She was the final suspect to die.

in the Salem witch trials. Life slowly returned to normal over the next few years in Massachusetts colony, but the witchcraft outbreak of 1692 would never be forgotten. It haunted, to some extent, all who were involved for the rest of their lives. On July 27, 1693, Governor Phipps finally received the letter from the King of England that he'd been waiting for for almost a year. The King and his council were true politicians. They started by approving the steps FIPS had already taken, suspending the witch trials and granting reprieves. And then they added a vague cautionary note. In future witchcraft cases, Fips was supposed to proceed with more circumspection. What did that mean? Nobody knew. The king didn't explain. Fips just followed the first part. He let the reprieves

stand indefinitely. He couldn't legally cancel the verdicts, only the king could do that, but no one else would be hanged. With that, the crisis officially ended, though it reverberated for many years to come. In 1694, Reverend Samuel Paris finally admitted to his congregation that the crisis had begun in his house with the use of fortune-telling magic. He said he was wrong to believe the girls who said they were possessed, and he now realized that evil spirits could impersonate innocent people. He apologized for the fiery sermons he had preached that led up to the outbreak, and now he truly sympathized with the accused and their families. He asked for their pardons and their prayers, as he said God had been righteously spitting in his face. He resigned as the

Minister of Salem Village in 1696, still fighting with his congregation over the money they owed him. He died in 1720. Governor William Phipps navigated the political nightmare of the witch trials, but then caught a bad cold aboard a ship and died suddenly in 1695. Reverend Increase Mather passed away in 1723, and his son Cotton Mather only survived him by another five years. Cotton Mather was never able to outrun the damage his book did to his reputation and his label as a defender of the witch trials. In 1697, the Massachusetts legislature held a day of fast to acknowledge the wrongs that occurred in the outbreak. Twelve people who had been jurors signed an apology for their actions. That year, the first books about the witchcraft crisis

began to appear. Reverend John Hale wrote one of them. in which he likened the participants to travelers lost in a dense fog. By the end of the year, the first of the afflicted girls died. Abigail Williams died a single woman, no more than 17 years old. Mary Walcott got married in 1696 in Salem and had six kids. Elizabeth Hubbard moved to Gloucester and got married in 1711. She had four kids. Mercy Lewis moved to New Hampshire to live with her aunt.

She got married in 1701 and then moved to Boston. Susanna Sheldon moved to Providence, Rhode Island. In May of 1694, she was ordered to appear in court as a, quote, person of evil fame. It appears likely that she was told she was not welcome in Providence. She died unmarried, probably before 1697. A few of the core afflicted girls disappeared from the records after the collapse of the trials. Mary Warren was the most notable of these, though her case would never be forgotten,

because she was afflicted, and then she wasn't, and then she was again. Betty Paris, the daughter of Reverend Samuel Paris, and one of the first two girls afflicted in the outbreak, got married in 1710 and had five children. She joined a church in Watertown, which meant she would have been required to confess her sins in front of the congregation. There's no surviving record of what she said. Thomas Putnam and Ann Putnam, Sr. both passed away in 1699, within two weeks of each other. Their daughter, Anne Jr., was 29 years old and unmarried. In 1706, she asked to join the Salem Village Church.

Reverend Green helped her compose a confession that would be read out loud to the congregation before they voted her in. In her statement, she said, In her childhood she had accused several people of a grievous crime, and their lives had been taken from them. And now she had reason to believe they were innocent. She specifically named Rebecca Nurse and referenced her two sisters, but not by name. Nor did she mention George Burroughs or anyone else. It's impossible to count the number of people she accused in total, but at least she now took responsibility for her actions.

But then she didn't. She said she didn't do these things out of anger or malice. She did because the devil, that old deceiver, had tricked her. She begged forgiveness and said she was sorry, but underneath it all she was still a victim, as always. Salem Village voted her into the church. It appears the girls never suffered afflictions again. Ten years after the crisis ended, petitions began pouring into the general court of Essex County.

People wanted the names and reputations of the accused, living and dead, to be publicly cleared. From 1703 to 1710, the government passed bills to restore reputations and reimburse people for property that had been seized. In 1711, nearly 20 years of the government passed bills to restore reputations and reimburse people for property that had been seized. after the executions, the Massachusetts legislature finally nullified the judgments against 23 people, 13 who had been executed, and 10 who had been convicted but then released. It would take another 246 years for the state to officially apologize for the Salem witch trials. The descendants of Anne Pudiator, Bridget Bishop, Susanna Martin, Alice Parker, Margaret Scott, and Wilmot Redd would have to wait until Halloween, 2001, for the names of their ancestors to be cleared. It took 309 years. As we bring the

story of the Salem Witch Trials to a close, it would be impossible to end without asking the biggest question that everyone asks when they learn about this unique event in American history. How? How did this happen? Volumes have been written about this question, so I'm not going to go too deep into the theories here. I'll give you some book recommendations in a few minutes, but for now, it's safe to say it was a classic perfect storm. A combination of factors aligned in just the right way, at just the right time, in just the right place. In the 1970s, the popular theory was ergot poisoning, that there was a fungus in the bread that made the girls sick. It caused hallucinations similar to those caused by the drug LSD. Of course,

this theory came about when LSD was popular, and it has been completely debunked today. Modern psychology gives us the most likely cause of the affliction of the first two girls, Betty Paris and Abigail Williams. It's called Conversion Disorder, and Professor Emerson Baker at Salem State University outlines it in his book, A Storm of Witchcraft. You'll hear from Professor Baker in upcoming interviews, and I highly recommend buying his book if you want to learn more about the crisis. In 2011, a dozen girls at a high school at upstate New York fell ill with symptoms that were almost identical to the ones suffered by Betty and Abigail, verbal outbursts, uncontrollable arm motions, and facial contortions. The affliction can be triggered by stress.

In 1692, the two girls, ages 9 and 11, were living in a stressful environment. Reverend Paris was in a figurative war with his congregation, and he was preaching fire in. in brimstone every week. In addition, the girls had no lives of their own. Their whole existence was an endless cycle of housework until they were old enough to get married. Grown women in Puritan society were almost completely ignored. Young girls were basically just workers. The only thing they could look forward to was marriage, when they finally gained a little status by way of their husband. Naturally, this led them to experiment with ways to figure out who they might marry. and then pretty much all scholars agree that fraud was involved to one extent or another.

The outbreak may have begun innocently enough, but it certainly evolved into something sinister. Charles Wentworth Uppin was the first person to really dive into the documents from the crisis when he produced his book Salem Witchcraft in 1867. He flatly stated that the afflicted girls were lying and acting. They had no voice, no role in the community. And suddenly they were the center of attention. They didn't have to do their chores anymore. They had power and notoriety. To keep it going, they had to keep finding new witches. To keep convincing people of their afflictions, they had to develop more elaborate schemes

and evolve their tactics. And then they passed the point of no return. By the time the executions began, they were so caught up in the act that they may have actually believed some of what they were saying. Either way, they were in too deep to get out. They couldn't bear the consequences if they admitted they were lying. So they just kept going, even as 20 people and two dogs were killed. Famous author Nathaniel Hawthorne once said, No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true. He's probably right, and he might be in a position to know.

His great-grandfather was John Hathorn, one of the first two magistrates to hear cases of witchcraft in Salem. Nathaniel added the W to his last name to change it from Hathorn to Hawthorne, though he never explained why. But when it's all said and done, there's really only one question left. What do you believe? Thanks for listening to Infamous America Season 1, Salem. If you enjoyed the show, please give it a rating and a review wherever you're listening.

And we hope you join us soon for Season 2, where we'll dive into our first story of the Gangsters of the 1930s with Public Enemies Volume 1, Pretty Boy Floyd. I want to thank several people who graciously helped with this series. Professor Emerson Baker at Salem State University Rachel Christ, Director of Education at the Salem Witch Museum, and Elizabeth Peterson, director of the Witch House and Pioneer Village in Salem.

The witch house is otherwise known as the home of magistrate Jonathan Corwin. It's been restored to the way it looked when he lived there in 1692, and it's now a museum of its own. It's incredible. If you're visiting Salem, you should see both places. Also a special thanks to Jackson Tingle and Candace Dawes at the Rebecca Nurse Homestead. They were kind enough to arrange a special visit for us, and the property is a great piece of living history. Lastly, thank you to Kate Fox, Executive Director at Destination Salem, for putting us on the right path.

The massive amount of research for this season was done by Jane Wimmer and Mandy Wimmer. Their help was invaluable. And finally, here are some book recommendations. As long as this audio version has been, it doesn't tell the whole story. There are so many more fascinating details out there, so check out these books to learn more. A Storm of Witchcraft by Emerson W. Baker. The Witches by Stacey Schiff. In the Devil's Snare by Mary Beth Norton.

Salem Possessed by Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum. And The Salem Witch Trials, a day-by-day of a community under siege by Marilyn Roach. Thanks again. We'll see you soon.