 Sometimes they ask about the people that were doing the accusing. What was motivating them? Didn't they feel bad that people were dying as a result of what they were doing? One of my responses is that have you ever said something and that you knew it wasn't exactly right, but people seemed to respond in the way that you wanted and so you couldn't go back and say oh no no I that was an exaggeration I made that up you get in trouble or whatever and they all can relate to that and also I think this speaks to this question of maybe there was a lot of confusion going on and so maybe the accusers were just doing it out of malicious intent or they had a history of bad feelings about a particular family that they were doing that they were accusing the woman of but maybe something bad did happen to them that they really did think that this person caused it I mean people were talking all the time about this so-and-so walked by the house five years ago after that our cow died you know this this didn't seem preposterous to them this was witchcraft was a way of answering certain strange things that happened in their world so you know again very credible to actually think that yeah my cow died and probably was this person and we've had some bad dealing so all these things kind of add up you know they're really racking their brains to see you know what they did in their life and you know really kind of soul-searching and being good Puritans really because that's what you were supposed to do all the time is this constant soul-searching so like with anything that you study historically there really isn't one answer to any of these questions that you that can be raised about Salem and there's just little glimmers that we think well maybe maybe this is what was going on some people recanted they initially confessed and then and then took it back so here's a just a couple of sentence sentences from this person Margaret Jacobs she wrote to her father from Salem jail that she had confessed and here's just a couple words that I think are so significant she confessed by reason of quote the magistrates threatenings and my own vile and wretched heart so you know they have both things going on here she's she's pressured into confessing she feels pressure external pressure but she also feels this internal pressure that her own vile and wretched heart something about you know her past sins caused her to to confess and she says in a later statement she characterized her confession is completely false saying that she had quote been hurried out of my senses by the afflicted persons saying they knew me to be an old witch and if I would not confess I should very speedily be hanged which was the occasion with my own wicked heart of my saying what I did say this is one of the values of actually looking at the primary documents and and immersing yourself in that I mean I think it's more important to emphasize that rather than emphasize the narrative of what actually happened in fact when I when I teach this I barely even tell the students what happened how it ended and any of it I just say you know here's a Salem witchcraft trials I explain you know what I explained here let's look at this so they they don't even know really because most of them you know haven't done the reading until after till before the exam so they might not even know the outcome and we just plunge in to look at this and I think that helps because then they're not so focused on how it ended or how things could have gone differently I mean they could they can ask those questions by looking at this what if they hadn't pushed them then would that have you know what well someone will inevitably ask why didn't they just question them in private that would have avoided a lot of this this you know the shrieking in the actual courtroom that the whole courtroom drama and then I'll say well that's a really good idea asking in private is one of the one of the women who was accused did say to the magistrates look this is insanity what's going on here why don't we pursue this in private and sure enough that that suggestion in in combination with other things that contributed to the ending of the whole thing did help to you know tone everything down because when you don't have that and you're just one-on-one it's a very different dynamic but so anyway I sometimes it's better not to give students everything because also then they think that they there's no need to look at the primary sources so much if they already know the answers because they you know many of them just want the answers the test horse I don't want them to to focus so much on the answers I want them to see the process unfold because to me that's the exciting part of being a historian and I try to you know convey that to them that that's the exciting part let's see what these people were thinking to us it seems so out of our range of what's normal but this was normal for them so what's going on here let's you know focus on the primary sources