Killing the Witches: The Horror of Salem, Massachusetts

Killing the Witches: The Horror of Salem, Massachusetts is a bestselling work of popular history by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard. It is the 13th entry in their bestselling Killing series, each volume published annually since Killing Lincoln in 2011. It chronicles the infamous Salem Witch Trials that took place in 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts, resulting in the execution of 19 people, and the death of a 20th person during an attempt to extract a plea. The Salem Witch Trials occupy an enormous place in the American imagination, creating the term “witch-hunt” as any form of unjust social action by one group against an individual or other. In addition to providing background for the Salem Witch Trials, as well as describing their proceedings and consequences, the authors also explore the long-term ramifications of the Salem Witch Trials for American politics and culture. 

This guide is based on the 2023 St. Martin’s Press first hardcover edition.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide feature depictions of death.

Summary

The book begins by providing both a broad and immediate historical context for the 1692 Salem Witch Trials. Accusations of witchcraft featured heavily in European society, resulting in tens of thousands of executions over the centuries. For a society firmly built on Christianity, belief in demons, witches, and other supernatural beings was consistent with belief in God, with the Gospels describing Jesus as speaking with the Devil and exorcising demons from people and animals. When these beliefs melded with ambition, greed, or fear, a vulnerable person or group of people could be brought before the public for execution in the belief that God would find satisfaction in the sacrifice. The Puritans, who settled New England, were immersed in the idea of God’s Providence. They survived a perilous journey across the Atlantic and were able to live according to their faith, but they also found themselves stranded in a vast wilderness, surrounded by Indigenous peoples who had little reason to trust their goodwill. Good relations with some of the Indigenous communities helped the colony survive, but as communities grew more prosperous, and dependence on the Indigenous peoples decreased, relations became more hostile. Meanwhile, the harsh theocratic rule of the Puritans generated internal dissent, leading people either to break off and form their own settlements or explore alternative forms of spirituality. In this fervid atmosphere, a young preacher named Cotton Mather, also the son of a preacher, decided that reviving community required the purging of its impure elements, starting with witches.

Exemplifying mass hysteria, the Salem Witch Trials began by fixating on vulnerable members of society. Among the first to be accused were Bridget Bishop, an independently minded woman trying to escape an abusive marriage, and Tituba, an enslaved person with knowledge of supernatural practices from the Caribbean. But as these accusations proved compelling, further accusations fell upon more upstanding members of the community, their presumed guilt helping to bolster the idea that anyone was susceptible to the Devil’s influence. The hysteria was also fed by local officials, such as the sheriff, who stood to inherit the property of the convicted, as well as Mather, whose reputation as a leading minister was closely tied to his prosecution of witches. As the executions reached a feverish climax, turning the townspeople against each other, the royal governor (whose own wife was accused) shut down the courts and publicly denounced the trials as a fraud. While those responsible for the hysteria and mass murder largely escaped consequences, many lived the rest of their lives in obscurity, or died prematurely, implying divine justice for their earthly sins.

The next part of the book roughly spans the life of Benjamin Franklin to foreground the question of religious liberty in the colonies. Franklin’s Boston youth was overshadowed by the powerful Cotton Mather, as several states established religions that tended to persecute minorities. Over Franklin’s long life, he saw the Great Awakening rouse opposition against established churches, often dovetailing with opposition to the English crown, which had established the Church of England, or the Anglican Church in America. By the time of the Constitutional Convention, which Franklin attended as an elder statesman, James Madison and others made a forceful case for religious liberty, which became the supreme law of the land through the First Amendment to the Constitution.

The final section discusses the story of Ronald Hunkeler, a teenaged boy who allegedly underwent a prolonged demonic possession in Maryland in the 1950s. Hunkeler suffered greatly until a group of Catholic priests oversaw an exorcism, followed by his conversion to Catholicism. This section affirms the general existence of demons while denying that any such demons were present during the Salem Witch Trials. The authors conclude the book by comparing the 17th-century witch hunt to modern-day cancel culture, and they underscore the Salem Witch Trials as an important part in America’s path toward religious freedom.