Final answer:
Elizabeth Proctor was accused of witchcraft by Abigail Williams during the Salem Witch Trials, which were fueled by mass hysteria, religious extremism, and local vendettas.
Step-by-step explanation:
Elizabeth Proctor, a character in Arthur Miller's play The Crucible, was accused of witchcraft by Abigail Williams, a young woman in Salem Village who was one of the initial accusers in the historical event of the Salem Witch Trials.
These trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. The trials resulted in the executions of twenty people, most of them women.
The Salem witch trials were a product of mass hysteria, religious extremism, and scapegoating. Young girls, including the daughter and niece of Reverend Samuel Parris, displayed strange behaviors and blamed their afflictions on individuals practicing witchcraft, triggering a wave of accusations.
Tituba, the West Indian servant of Parris, upon being forced, named Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne as her accomplices, further fueling the witch hunt. The combination of Puritanical fear of the devil, local personal vendettas, and superstition led to one of the most infamous cases of legal injustice in American history.