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Witches

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Submitted By ralva255
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Blumberg opens up in her article “One town's strange journey from paranoia to pardon” that
The Salem witch Trials were also known as the devils magic. Linder goes on to explain, the colony admitted the trials were a mistake and apologized to the families of those convicted. Since then, the story of the trials has become synonymous with paranoia and injustice, and it continues to cheat the popular imagination for more than 300 years later. In Linder first paragraph she explains the background of how the thought of witches came up. Explaining that Several centuries ago, many practicing Christians, had a strong belief that the Devil could give certain people known as witches the power to harm others in return for their loyalty of the religion. A "witchcraft craze" was the term used that rippled through Europe from the 1300s to the end of the 1600s. Tens of thousands of supposed witches—mostly women—were executed. When it reached Salem the European craze was starting to wine down. In 1689, English rulers William and Mary started a war with France in the American colonies. Known as King William's War to colonists, it ravaged regions of upstate New York, Nova Scotia and Quebec, sending refugees into the county of Essex and, specifically, Salem Village in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This war aggravated the existing rivalry between families with ties to the wealth of the port of Salem and those who still depended on agriculture. Controversy also brewed over Reverend Samuel Parris, who became Salem Village's first ordained minister in 1689, and was disliked because of his rigid ways and greedy nature. The Puritan villagers believed all the quarreling was the work of the Devil. After going thru the background Blumberg goes on

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