August 7, 2008

August 7, 2008

We took public transportation to Salem, MA. We should have driven. The commuter rail system is meant for travel downtown not across town. It ended up taking all morning to get to Salem, most of it waiting for the next legs of the trip to arrive. Once at Salem we walked to the port to visit the Salem Maritime National Historic Site. Colonial Salem merchants were obscenely rich from trading with the world. When the British imposed trading restrictions, Salem merchants yelled the loudest for independence. Ironically these same merchants profited enormously from the Revolutionary War acting as privateers (gov’t sanctioned pirates) preying on British trade ships. Success didn’t last long though. Salem soon lost out to harbor towns with deeper ports and better transportation links. We give ourselves a tour of the historic area. One of the restored buildings is the original Customs House. It was a major revenue source for our early country. Before the implementation of the Income Tax in 1913, import duties provided 90% of US revenue. Unfortunately the historic site turns out to be pretty much of a bore making me surprised it has been a national park site since 1938.

Salem, MA is most famous (or infamous) for the witch trials of 1692. During that turbulent 10-month period nineteen innocent souls were hanged for witchcraft. We visited the Witch Trials Memorial to the victims, (appropriately next door to the graveyard), but there is little physical history remaining. That hasn’t stopped the local merchants. There are a dozen different commercial witch museums in Salem. We pass on all of them. New Englanders are big on their connections with their colonial past. Apparently this causes problems in Salem as descendants of the victims and of the oppressors both still live in the town.