Witch Trials DBQ

In Exodus 22:18, it says “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” It was chaos In Salem, Massachusetts, during 1692, 19 people were accused and hanged and one brutally pressed. this is because the puritans believed almost everything the bible said. One subject that the bible covers, is that the Devil is real and really clever, and is able to enter a normal person's body and turn them into a witch. There are three interconnected causes that might have caused the drama, and panic that was the Salem witch trial hysteria, which are: age, gender, and marital status, lying girls and they’re folk tales they made up, and a divided town.

To begin, one of the causes of the Salem witch trial was the age, gender, and marital status. In Document B, twenty-four accusers were females. Twenty-three of the twenty-nine were under twenty years old, and twenty-eight of the thirty-four accusers were unmarried. 80% of females were 40 years old, and 75% of the females were either married or widowed. It’s interesting to mention that 23 of the accuser were females that were single, and 13 females that were at least between the ages of 16-20.

The second cause of the Salem witch trial hysteria involves lying girls, their erie performances, and the many stories they made up as lies. According to Document C, during Bridget

Bishop’s Examination, she and the accused girls fell into fits, looked tortured, and rolled up their eyes when Bridget Bishop rolled her eyes. In Document D, Charles Upham states that the testimony of the girls wasn’t true and the recorder, Samuel Parris who was the father of one of the accused witches, was exaggerating on what really happened in the examination, meaning that everything in the examination, was simply altered to sound it is true, but it’s not.
The final cause of the Salem witch trial hysteria is the division of the town.

According to Document E, the map is shown divided into two sections. The west side of the town, and the east side of the town. The east side of the town is known to more wealthier, while the west side of the town is more poorer. What might have happened is that the west side of the town began to get jealous because of how rich the east side of the town was, so they began to accuse some of the people in the east so they can get more money overtime. In fact, According to Document E, the west side of the town had more accusers than the east side did, and the east side had more accused

witches.
There are other causes that may have caused the Salem witch trial hysteria, like the community in Salem, or the puritans over exaggerated beliefs of witches and the Devil. However, The three main causes are more reasonable because the three have one thing in common, and it is that it focuses on the accusers, and tells that they were doing it because of pure jealousy of the wealthier people in the east side of Salem. We can also say that the ones that did most of the accusers were females, and that they are much younger than thought, mainly under the age of 20. Females were mostly the main targets during that time, and didn’t seem like it would get any better, but in September 22, when the governor's own wife was accused as a witch, the governor decided to stop all the hangings to save his wife, and so the horror ends here.