Civil magistrates in Massachusetts set up a special court in 1692 to carry out prosecutions of people accused of practicing witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts. Witchcraft trials resulted in the imprisonment and execution of several people and many women were hanged.
It all started because in 1692, a group of white women were found in Salem (Massachusetts) at night dancing naked in a forest next to a bonfire. They were accompanied by Tituba, a slave who had recently been brought from the Island of Barbados in the Caribbean. This evidence was later confirmed by other people, who in the middle of public interrogations say they had dreams or visions in which the accused were seen communing with the devil.
In 1957 the Massachusetts General Court declared that these procedures were the <em>"result of fear and popular hysteria that produced the figure of the devil."</em> Therefore, the State recognized its responsibility in the death of innocent people.
The Great Depression was a contributing factor to dire economic conditions in Weimar Germany which led in part to the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Within the United States, the repercussions of the crash reinforced and even strengthened the existing restrictive American immigration policy.
The most likely reason that the Confederate army burned Richmond was "<span>c. to make sure Union soldiers could not use Confederate resources," since it was clear that Richmond offered a great number of such resources for the taking. </span>
