Abigail Williams was among the first individuals to be afflicted during the witch trials in Salem village, Massachusetts. Furthermore, she was the first individual to accuse other people of witchcraft before she vanished (Goldfab, 2018). Abigail was only twelve years of age when the strange events started happening to her cousin, Betty Parris, and herself. By then, it was January 1692 and Williams was living with her uncle Samuel Parris and his family, which included his daughter Betty and his slaves, John Indian and Tituba. While it is not clear why Williams was living with her uncle, some historians suppose that she was orphaned (Brooks, 2015). Her troubles started one morning when she started having fits. A visiting reverend, Deodat Lawson, who had previously ministered at Salem village, observed Williams’s predicament and recorded that she would move around the whole house, sometimes acting as if she would fly, screaming, stretching her arms as high as she could manage, and claiming that she saw invisible people talking to her. At the advice of the reverend, Samuel Parris called in a local doctor who concluded that Abigail was possessed.
The doctor’s diagnosis sparked a witch hunt, which culminated in the arrest and prosecution of fifty-seven people, out of which twenty were killed. The Salem witch trails ran from 1692 through 1693 (Montague, 2019). Williams and Betty Parris played a central role in the identification of and witnessing against the alleged witches because they strongly believed that they had been bewitched. Their accusations quickly spread across the village in what is recorded in history as the Salem Witch Hunt. To identify the culprits, a special cake was made using the victims’ urine mixed with rye meal and later baked in ashes. The cake was then fed to special dogs called the familiars, which were believed to help the witches in their work, and after some time, they would reveal the names of the people responsible for the sorcery. Sarah Osbourne, Sarah Good, and Tituba were the first people to be accused on 26 th February, 1692. Williams believed that the women were responsible for her afflictions, and they were arrested a few days later on the last day of the month (Brooks, 2015).
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Much as Williams accused many people, court records suggest that she was only present at eight of the trails against the suspects. Her history varnished somewhere half way through the trials. According to Goldfab (2019), her last court testimony was against Rebecca Nurse and John Willard on June 3, 1692. There are speculations about what might have happened to Williams with some Staffaroni (2019) and Miller (2015) thinking that she moved on to become a prostitute in Boston, while others Brooks (2015) suggesting that she died young, at the age of seventeen.
Importance of Abigail Williams to the US History
The events that constituted the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 and 1693 are significant to American History since they were a formative occurrence in the evolution of the American civil society. The events were an expression of a theocratic mindset, which was supported by civil power over death and life (Gill, 2016). The importance of the trials can be perceived primarily in the fact that they served as an object governance lesson. Much as historians have continuously discredited them as state murders, a thorough analysis of their significance could reveal just that. The primary issue of significance of the trials concerns the proper role of the government religion in civil society as well as the power ratios among and between persons and between the social structure in which people lived and the people themselves.
On the possibilities that the trials were state murders, one notes that the nine judges who were involved in the cases were government appointees. The judges were among the richest business people in the colony and they had extensive levels of experience—five of them had had stints at Harvard while one went to Oxford (Gill, 2016). The judges were supposed to have been wise in their judgement of the cases brought before them before they determined the outcome. The importance of the trails can be seen in the modern courts of the US in which the defendants are assumed innocent until it is determined beyond reasonable doubt that they had a hand in the crimes for which they have been accused. However, in contrast, the courts in Salem practiced the opposite since the order of the prosecutions happening in court revealed the intentions of the judges. A close reading of the historical accounts of the court proceedings reveals that the judges involved in the case believed that a significant conspiracy with witchcraft was a threat to the colony, which is why it was necessary to round up any guilty members (Gill, 2016). Interestingly, even the individuals who pleaded not guilty of the crimes before the court were convicted swiftly; some of them were executed in public.
On the relationship between and among people, the events revealed that some crimes were gender-related, including witchcraft, which is why close to three quarters of the persons implicated were women. The accused women had no chance of appealing or challenging the authority of the judges who often relied on spectral evidence, which was mostly founded on religious principles. Consequently, the Salem Witch Trials depicted the need to establish a court system that would give defendants enough time to lay their defense, especially with enough and reasonable evidence.
How the Salem Witch Trials Have Changed My Daily Life
I understand that in my encounters with others in my daily life, misunderstandings are likely to arise. For this reason, I learned from the Salem Witch Trails and the character of Abigail Williams to value of critical thinking, which I always strive to connect with objective reasoning. I never want to judge people falsely or from a subjective standpoint because I always want to create a harmonious co-existence. I feel that any rushed decisions would have negative outcomes on myself and others around me, which is why I always want to be back my decisions with sufficient information.
The Long-Term Implications of the Salem Witch Trails on the American Civil Society
The trials in Salem underscore the value of justice, which should be founded on fair trial. The current court system of the US is built around an important principle, which is to give accused persons a fair trial. In simple definitive terms, when a person is given fair trial, they are allowed enough time to defend themselves, which includes most importantly, the need for them to access a defense attorney, which was lacking in at the Salem Witch Trials. In fair trial, the appellants are also allowed enough time to prepare themselves, which includes the fact that they can ask the court to push their cases forward for convenience. The events in Salem village, therefore, have a long-term effect of prompting the current American courts to respect the principle of fair trial, which increases the chances that the decisions reached would be properly informed, and that they will lead to just determinations of cases.
References
Brooks, R. B. (2015). Abigail Williams: The Mysterious Afflicted Girl . History of Massachusetts . Retrieved 9 March 2019, from https://historyofmassachusetts.org/abigail-williams-salem/
Goldfab, K. (2018). How A 12-Year-Old Sparked The First Witch-Hunt In America . Retrieved 9 March 2019, from https://allthatsinteresting.com/abigail-williams
Miller, A. (2015). The crucible . Bloomsbury Publishing.
Montague, J. (2019). Can an auto-immune illness explain the Salem witch trials? . Bbc.com . Retrieved 9 March 2019, from http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20181221-can-an-auto-immune-illness-explain-the-salem-witch-trials
Staffaroni, L. (2019). Best Abigail Williams Analysis - The Crucible . Blog.prepscholar.com . Retrieved 9 March 2019, from https://blog.prepscholar.com/the-crucible-abigail-williams-analysis
