Witches and Revolution

For this weeks podcast I once again returned to the Gilder Lehrman institute of American History website and I listened to the podcasts of John Demos and Carol Berkin.
John Demos is a Yale professor and his podcast was titled “Religion and Witchcraft in Colonial America.” He begins with the famous Salem witch trials. He discusses how most defendants were acquitted and those who were convicted were later overturned. Demos stated that it all began with gossip. Back then every town had suspected witches. There were references to witchcraft everywhere. The witch trials were only the tip of the iceberg (Demos). In an essence witchcraft was a part of life. And yet I wonder why it was feared so much? Demos moves further to explain how the people of the time would use God as an explanation to the world around them. Science and religion coincided with one another during colonial times. They would explain nature disasters as God punishing certain towns therefore those people would respond with prayer, repentance, and moral reform. By the time of the American Revolution, Americans reconstructed God toward a different interpretation. He was not there to only punish. How different was God viewed back then as it is in present times? Does it change with time?

Carol Berkin at the National Constitution Center gives a lecture about the “Myths of the American Revolution”. Berkin discusses how most Americans believe that the American Revolution came about after oppression from the tyrannical English Parliament and every colonist spontaneously rose up in unification to defend unfair taxes. She states that this story is wrong. The colonies were built for no other reason than to supplement the mother country. However parliament largely ignored what was going on in the colonies which came to be known as salutary neglect. There was no overwhelming consensus to fight the British. As John Adams had put it 1/3 supported the war, 1/3 opposed it, and 1/3 had no opinion. The numbers for who opposed it are actually believed to be much higher. What did drive many colonists into the revolution was the intolerable behavior of the British army that was sent to watch the colonies. Berkin continues with how the Revolutionary war was also a civil war when Indians were concerned. For them it was a battle for their land. For North Carolina farmers it was a battle for representation because they were being oppressed by the tidewater government. In many cases it was colonists killing colonists. For smugglers it was a war to keep in business since they made their living competing with Britain. The American Revolution was a series of different wars for different goals.