Cotton Mather and The Salem Witch Trials

Cotton Mather was known to be one of the people who were considered to have had a big part of the Salem Witch Trials. He was a Boston Minister and highly believed in witchcraft. For his education, he went to the Boston Latin School. He later graduated from Harvard only at the age of 15. After he finished all his education and followed in his father’s footsteps and became a pastor at the North Church.

He wrote about 450 books and kept very busy throughout his life. Mather even took part in the Great Awakening which was a big religious movement that happened throughout all of the colonies. But, he is mostly known for how much he helped create the Salem Witch Trials.

The Salem Witch Trials is pretty well known to this day. It started from people believing in the Devil and dark magic. Many thought that the Devil was amongst them and they needed to rid their land of people who were thought of as “Witches”. Anything that would happen unpredictably like a Storm in some cases people automatically blamed it on Dark Magic. The people who accused people of witchcraft and believed in it was because of fear. Many people feared the Devil or any type of evil supernatural spirit. Many people were accused of witchcraft and were hanged because of it. If you were accused you would be brought to court and would have to admit to what you did even if it wasn’t something outrageous. After that you would be sentenced to death.

People today assume that the Witch Trials just happened in Massachusetts. But that is incorrect. The trials also occurred in Connecticut. When some people would be accused some would flee to another colony so they would be safe, others were not that lucky and had to go with the punishment that the court would give them.

So these Witch Trials brings it back to Cotton Mather who is thought to be one of the people who made this whole thing happen. He originally made it to bring back the church moral standards and not make it a witch hunt. But instead, it became the totally opposite and created a lot of violence. Because of all this accusing and violence twenty people were executed in Salem. About eleven were also executed in Connecticut also. Many of these people who died were mostly women.