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Oct. 13, 1998I think that one of the reasons that we now have separation of the government and religion is what happened in Salem, Massachusetts. During the witch hunts the people on the judiciary committee could not effectively separate themselves between their own laws and religion, and so they couldn’t be objective in the rulings. (My teacher said did not want to) I think that this is also why people on a jury are supposed to be impartial and not know the defendant, because if they have a common history with them, they will be searching throughout the trail in their memories about little clues that could be meaningless.
I think that if I were a Puritan living at that time I might be afraid for my own life. I would be afraid to smile, to laugh, or to be happy in general. I think that the paranoia would be crippling in a huge social sense. I wouldn’t know who to trust, if my neighbor or best friend would accuse me next. Or worst yet if I felt compelled to accuse someone and then they were murdered on my word only, I think after the end of everything I would be still guilty of murder.
The first part of the document, the confession of Mrs. Osgood, seems to show a lot of imagination. Her confession is lengthy and involves many details, but her retraction is short and to the point. The stories are the kind that I would expect to find in a fiction novel. How she met a cat that was not a cat, and how she had to be baptized again. It seems that she needed a rebirth to be a witch, but only needs to say that she didn’t do any of what she confessed to be good Mrs. Osgood again. I think that this is a be inconsistency in the Puritan Church doctrine, or maybe part of the confession was left out of the book.
When I was reading the second half of this document I wondered how Mrs. Osgood could retract her accusation without any repercussions. Did the people that she confess to, and implicated in her confession, suddenly believe her? I then wondered about the amazing stresses that she must have been under to begin with and then I tried to relate it to my own life. I thought that it would be a very miserable existence if all the people that I knew and lived with were urging me to confess crimes and thoughts that I never had or did. She probably was under this kind of stress for least a week if not a month or two. I think that if I were her near the end of my ordeal I would be willing to admit anything my tormentors wanted from me.
In conclusion, I do think that the Salem Witch Trails make a great study because a person can begin to understand the pressures that everyone must have been under to begin with. The trails added on to those pressures must have affected everyone greatly and made the mentally unstable.
Oct. 13, 1998