Case File 162-The Salem Witch Trials

In 1692 the Puritan colonies of North America had fallen on dark times. The colonists had suffered through two devastating wars with Native American and French neighbors which had left much of the Maine frontier a scorched ruin and produced a refugee crisis. The colonies had their charter revoked and a military governor installed. These circumstances had a visible impact on the towns which inhabited the Massachusetts coast. Towns that had seen growing prosperity and had begun to move away from their austere and devout origins. Numerous religious leaders began to see these unfortunate events as an encroaching darkness which signaled...