The 1962 Salem Conspiracy

During the year of 1692, the small town of Salem seems to have been in a state of panic and confusion. The book Witchcraft at Salem, by Chadwick Hansen, is about the witchcraft conspiracies the town has experienced. Hansen goes on to explore the truthfulness of the "possessed" young girls. The reason why Hansen wrote the book is to try to set straight the record of the witchcraft phenomena at Salem, Massachusetts, in the year 1692, about which much has been written and much misunderstood. Hansen has a very respectable education. He graduated and obtained a Bachelors degree from the much respected Yale University. He went on to continue his education and obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. Hansen has had many teaching jobs throughout his life. From 1955-60 Hansen was an assistant professor at Pennsylvania State University. From 1965-70 he was a Professor of English and American studies at the University of Minnesota. His most accomplished teaching job was when he was a professor and Director of American Civilization at the University of Iowa. To help with his teaching he was in many history groups. He was a member of the Modern Language Association, American Studies Association, and American Historical Association. Hansen has written numerous books including, The American Renaissance: The History and Literature of an Era, and Modern Fiction: Form and Idea in the Contemporary Novel and Short Story. Hansen has many qualifications to write a historical piece during the American Revolution time period.

In the summer of 1692, many strange and out of the ordinary events were taking place in Salem. Several young girls and young women began to have strange fits. They were eventually examined by doctors. "Dr. William Griggs examined Elizabeth Paris and Abigail Williams and came to the conclusion that the evil hand is upon them." With this analysis he was informing the patients that they were the victims of witchcraft. Before the girls were examined many members of the Salem community came to the conclusion that witchcraft was the reason the girls were having the strange fits. Following this was a series of hearings and trials, which resulted in the death of 20 people. This was not an uncommon practice used during that time. “Approximately nine hundred witches were burned in the single city of Bamberg, a...

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...I believe it provided the reader with a better understanding of the different reasons the girls were acting in the nature they did.

Overall I enjoyed reading Witchcraft at Salem. Hansen brought new ideas while challenging the old ones in a very enthusiastic manner. Many scholars have differing views on what happened at Salem. Some believe that girls were lying, while some believe that a physical ailment was the cause. This book was great for a reader who wanted to find several opinions on what took place in Salem. If the reader wanted to know just the basic facts of the Salem Witch Trials then I would not recommend this book. Witchcraft at Salem requires a general knowledge of what happened during the witch trials because it goes very in depth. This book might be confusing to someone who slept in high school history or english and knows nothing of what happened at Salem during 1962.

Erikson, Kai T. “Were some of those witches real?” The New York Times. 6 July 1969, BR5.

Hansen, Chadwick. Witchcraft at Salem. New York: George Braziller, 1969.

Marion A. Knight, ed. “Chadwick Hansen.” Book Review Digest. New York: The H. W. Wilson Company, 1927, 273.