Martha Carrier Analysis

The Puritan justice system was corrupt. This is evident in Cotton Mather’s review of the Trial of Martha Carrier through the accusations, testimonies, and betrayal in her case. Her trial in Salem was unjustly carried. Based on the evidence given it is safe to conclude that manipulating the system was simple. To this day we see injustice in the court system, in this review Mather allows us to learn that injustice has changed its form but derived from our ancestors. During her “examination before the magistrates,” people portrayed acts of falling under her bewitchment (Mather 331). They accused Carrier of causing supernatural events on their lives and cattle. Even witches testified knowing and seeing her involved in witch meetings. Martha Carrier stood her ground and was found guilty of her charge. While Martha Carrier was …show more content…
Pleading not guilty would take one to trial and punished by hanging. If someone was culpable and helped reveal other witches they would escape death. As Mather wrote, there were three witches who testified against Martha Carrier. Foster, Lucy, and Lucy claimed to be witches themselves and divulged that Carrier was one too. Foster identified her at the reunions and as the person who convinced her to deal with the devil. She then gave the magistrates an event in which the women experienced together. On their way to the witch meeting in the Salem Village the “devil carried them on a pole, but the pole broke, and she hanging about Carriers neck, they both fell down” (Mather 332). To the day of the trial, Foster had not fully recovered yet from the fall. As for the other witches, Lucy and Lucy, they declared similarly, that they had seen Carrier at witch meetings as well. This shows that the witches would undermine their own sisters. They double crossed her during the trial to save their own lives. It could have also possibly been to gain favor with the