Song of Fire

—
August 25

Dear Ella,

How I love journeys. I’m reminded of traveling with you to Glacier Park years ago and how excited we were about spending the summer together in that glorious setting.

I’ve come east on a reverse pilgrimage of sorts, seeking our origins and some sort of explanation for our dysfunctional culture. Took the train today from Boston to Salem. Why do American history books typically start with the Puritans? Aside from the fact that Native Americans have been present on this continent for tens of thousands of years, the Puritans weren’t even the first non-Indian settlers. African slaves were left behind in 1526 by Spaniards who abandoned a settlement in South Carolina (the stranded Africans were welcomed into the local Indian population, incidentally). Spanish Jews seeking religious liberty settled in the New Mexico area in the late 1500s. The Spanish had established a presence from the West Coast to Florida long before the English Puritans arrived. But the Puritans have come to exemplify the American mythology, fleeing persecution in Europe to practice their beliefs in the freedom of a new land. The downside of their legacy, though, was their own brand of intolerance, not only against the local Native American population (without whose help they would not have survived the first winter) but against their own people.

The Salem Witch Trials in 1692 unleashed a malignant madness that has come to exemplify our own American form of mass delusion. Those three girls on the cusp of adolescence, stifled by the repressive Puritanism of their community, learned how exhilarating was the power they held over adults by making accusations of witchcraft. It was only when the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony intervened, after his wife was named as a consort of the devil, that the madness ended.

The Witch House is not actually where accused witches lived, but the residence of Judge Jonathan Corwin, who presided over the witch trials. He examined several of the accused witches, possibly on the first floor rooms of this house. He sent nineteen men and women to the gallows, all of whom maintained their innocence to the end. The house, with its sidings painted a grim, austere black and its pitched roofs like witches’ hats, looks like the kind of place one would associate with maleficence — though it turns out the maleficence was not that of witches. The rooms are furnished with period furniture; in the kitchen is a large table whose top could be flipped from the rustic, unfinished work surface to a polished surface sufficiently presentable for entertaining guests: hence the origin of our phrase, “the tables have turned.”

At Boston’s Old North Church, there is a touching plaque dedicated to one of the accused witches — Glen Burroughs, a minister who refused to admit guilt in order to spare his life and so was hanged by Judge Corwin — and Burroughs’ great-grandson, the patriot Robert Newman, who hung the lantern from the church steeple that signaled the start of the Revolutionary War. Burroughs may have been a target because he preached things that challenged the Puritan orthodoxy. The plaque commemorates the great-grandson’s efforts fighting to establish a country free from the kind of tyranny that had so unjustly indicted his great-grandfather.

We think of the Salem Witch Trials as an anachronism from the superstitious past, not believing such a thing could happen in the sophisticated, modern world. But the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the Anti-Communist McCarthy hearings, the Satanic cult child molestation hysteria currently occurring, tell us that fear is still a great motivator and we are no more rational than the Puritans.

At least the Salem of today epitomizes tolerance. Not only is the town emblematic of religious freedom, but there is Nathanial Hawthorne’s family home, nicknamed the House of the Seven Gables, with its secret room that was used to hide runaway slaves. You see, the house was part of the Underground Railroad. It stands as a noble monument to the importance of fighting against injustice. In Salem, they learned early on from the errors of the past. There, the tables have indeed turned.

Your Impuritan,
Jon

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