Witchcraft Trials
Just an excuse for bad government – A prominent GOP candidate got into hot water recently for confessing an early dabbling in Wicca. Today, the Salem witch trials stand for bad government leaders overstepping boundaries, McCarthyism and Arthur Miller’s play “The Crucible,” but the story hasn’t always had the same meaning throughout history.
Historian Gretchen Adams says the phrase “witch trials” had a different political rhetoric and meaning to Americans in the 1800s than it does to most people today. She says, “We think of the Salem witch trials now as a story of poor leadership and abuse of the government’s investigative powers. In the 19th century, people thought of it as a tale of mass hysteria and going back to the ways of the Old World.”
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