Salem Village, now Danvers, Massachusetts, was at one time the setting for one of the most controversial trials in American history. Seventeenth century Puritanical New England encompassed strict laws, harsh punishments, and politics that coincided with religion. In 1692, a group of adolescent girls residing in Salem Village, broke out with symptoms causing unexplainable fits, after hearing tales told by a West Indian slave. When questioned, the "afflicted" girls denounced several local women as being the culprits of their bizarre torment. The people of Salem Village were astounded by these accusations, but not too surprised because witchcraft was spreading rapidly throughout America and Europe in the 17th century. The town officials received word of the ill girls and their tormenters, who supposedly inflicted them with the works of the devil through witchcraft. In response, the officials convened a court to hold hearings and trials for the people accused of the crimes. One source indicates the result of the trials held the "afflicted" girls accountable for the following: 200 arrests, of which 30 were sentenced to death, 19 hanged, one pressed to death, two died in jail, one escaped, two excused for pregnancy, and five confessed after their sentences (Kingston, 96). The aftermath of the trials was a time for deep regret and painful guilt for punishing innocent people for crimes never committed. Earl Rice Jr. explains, in 1697, Massachusetts Bay Colony officials declared a day of public fasting. The people of Massachusetts believed that God had bestowed upon them many newfound misfortunes such as failed crops, shorter harvests, and many sudden deaths because of the unfair persecutions they so hastily placed upon innocent people. On the day of the fast, twelve participating jurors singed a petition admitting their guilt for taking the lives of innocent people under such insufficient "spectral" eviden...