No Salem witch trials

How would history have unfolded if Salem had been spared the witch trials?

Apart from the fact that today downtown Salem is chock-full of witch stuff and witch paraphernalia...
 
How would history have unfolded if Salem had been spared the witch trials?

Apart from the fact that today downtown Salem is chock-full of witch stuff and witch paraphernalia...

honestly some other town would have had it, witch burnings occurred as far west as Illinois and as recently as 1740's in the Carolinas. Something would have stuck.
 
honestly some other town would have had it, witch burnings occurred as far west as Illinois and as recently as 1740's in the Carolinas.

No, they didn't.

Much like Scotland and England, convicted witches in the American colonies were hanged.
 

jahenders

Banned
How would history have unfolded if Salem had been spared the witch trials?

Apart from the fact that today downtown Salem is chock-full of witch stuff and witch paraphernalia...

Very little effect. A few less people would be killed or ostracized, but some other place that persecuted witches would get the label/fame/infamy.
 
The biggest impact, I think, might be that Cotton Mather is remembered better in American history. His fence-sitting over the the procedures of the court during the trails has left a black mark on his name and undermined his popularity during his own life.
 
The biggest impact, I think, might be that Cotton Mather is remembered better in American history. His fence-sitting over the the procedures of the court during the trails has left a black mark on his name and undermined his popularity during his own life.

Which means Yale is never founded.
 
Well you just devastated modern day Salem's economy! Halloween up there is like Thanksgiving in Plymouth, and Patriots Day in Lexington and Concord all rolled into one.

You can't shake a broomstick without hitting a Witch or at least someone that knows one in Lovecraft's Arkham.

The lines of tourists on tours are like when a buffalo herd blocked a pioneer and the closer you get to October the bigger and more plentiful these things become.

Yes Salem has plenty of other points of interest but the Witches put them over the top.

If someone were to build a time Machine to go back and stop the Witch trials the Salem Chamber of Commerce would build one to go back and stop them.

The Police have witches on broomsticks painted on the doors of their cruisers.

Of course, no one cares to mention that its the people who refused to admit to being witches and not the ones that confessed that were killed but why muddy up the ideal?
 
Possibility of the novel The Scarlett Letter (1850) being butterflied away or being forgotten and millions of students not being forced to read this novel in high school.
 
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