Cotton Mather was born in 1663 in Boston, Massachusetts. Cotton Mather, his father, and his grandfather were all Puritan ministers at a church in Boston. Witchcraft was very prominent in the 17th century. People would blame many events on supernatural causes and on witches.
All Cotton Mather wanted was for the colonies to return to their high moral standards and not be subject to witchcraft. His teachings and books were used to persecute many people accused of witchcraft. Mather did not want to get rid of the people being accused of being witches; Rather, he just wanted the witches to stop being witches, and for the people to stop believing in witchcraft. What actually happened was that other men took his books and misunderstood them. They built a courthouse specifically for the Salem Witch Trials, and successfully condemned twenty women to die before the Governor stopped them. He pardoned any “witches” that were in the process of a witch trial, and let them go free.
Cotton Mather did not intend to start the Salem Witch trials. He would not have supported them. The people simply misunderstood his books and thought that he preached persecution of the witches. Anybody could accuse somebody of witchcraft. Twenty times, those people were judged to be witches. People frown on Cotton Mather because they blame him for the witch trials, when, in reality, he did not start them. Eventually, the people went back to their high moral standards in a movement called the Great Awakening.