Terrorism: Sometimes It's A Good Thing
10.09.2002
Terrorism.
A word that, especially these days, sends shivers down one's spine.
A word associated with evil, dishonor and cowardice.
A word that invokes images of men with explosives strapped to their bodies, of the Oklahoma City bombing, of the Pentagon in flames, and of the twin World Trade Center towers collapsing.
A word defined by Webster's Dictionary as "the unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons" and by Thomas Jefferson as "the act of terrorizing, or state of being terrorized; a mode of government by terror or intimidation."
However, terrorism is sometimes a good thing.
Sometimes terrorists and acts of terrorism can be, and have been, justified and even celebrated by history.
You don't believe me? Then let me share with you one of my favorite examples of a patriotic, freedom loving group of terrorists and their terrorist act - from United States history. An event known as...
The Boston Tea Party
This event during the Colonial tea tax boycott is the first and most famous of several other similar copycat 'tea parties' in various Colonial harbors. According to the Boston Tea Party Ship & Museum,
An American Patriot - Samuel Adams |
- On May 10, 1773, the British parliament authorized the East India Co., which faced bankruptcy due to corruption and mismanagement, to export a half a million pounds of tea to the American colonies for the purpose of selling it without imposing upon the company the usual duties and tariffs. With these privileges, the company could undersell American merchants and monopolize the colonial tea trade. Not only did this action create an unfair commerce to the merchants of the colonies but it proved to be the spark that revived American passions about the issue of taxation without representation. To fully understand the resentment of the colonies to Great Britain and King George III, one must understand that this was not the first time that the colonists were treated unfairly. In previous years, the 13 colonies saw a number of commercial tariffs including the Sugar Act of 1764, which taxed sugar, coffee, and wine, the Stamp Act of 1765, which put a tax on all printed matter, such as newspapers and playing cards, and the Townshend Acts of 1767 which placed taxes on items like glass, paints, paper, and tea. The Tea Act of 1773 was the last straw.
- On November 27, 1773, three ships from the East India Co., named the Dartmouth, Eleanor and the Beaver, loaded with tea landed at Boston and were prevented from unloading their cargo. Fearing that the tea would be seized for failure to pay customs duties, and eventually become available for sale, something had to be done. Demanding that the tea be returned to where it came from or face retribution, the Sons of Liberty, led by Samuel Adams began to meet to determine the fate of the three cargo ships in the Boston harbor.
- On the cold evening of December 16, 1773, a large band of patriots, disguised as Mohawk Indians, burst from the South Meeting House with the spirit of freedom burning in their eyes. The patriots headed towards Griffin's Wharf and the three ships. Quickly, quietly, and in an orderly manner, the Sons of Liberty boarded each of the tea ships. Once on board, the patriots went to work striking the chests with axes and hatchets. Thousands of spectators watched in silence. Only the sounds of ax blades splitting wood rang out from Boston Harbor. Once the crates are open, the patriots dumped the tea into the sea.
- The silence was broken only by the cry of "East Indian" as patriots caught Charles O'Conner filling the lining of his coat with tea. George Hewes removed O'Connor's coat, threatened him with death if he revealed the identity of any man present, and sent him scurrying out of town. The patriots work feverishly, fearing an attack by Admiral Montague at any moment. By nine o'clock p.m., the Sons of Liberty had emptied a total of 342 crates of tea into Boston Harbor. Fearing any connection to their treasonous deed, the patriots took off their shoes and shook them overboard. They swept the ships' decks, and made each ship's first mate attest that only the tea was damaged.
The Boston Tea Party, a clearly terroristic action, is celebrated and remembered with patriotic pride as one of the signature events leading up to not only the revolution, eventual freedom from "taxation without representation" and the formation of the United States of America. As such, it and the patriots who participated in this act of disobedience should forever be remembered.
For more info on the Boston Tea Party, see Wikipedia: Boston Tea Party.
Raid On Harper's Ferry
An event that many feel was a major spark that set the flames for the civil war, the Raid on Harper's Ferry - along with its mastermind, John Brown - is extremely controversial.
Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll said of him in a speach given in 1867,
- "the real pioneer in America was old John Brown. Moved not by prejudice, not by love of his blood, or his color, but by an infinite love of Liberty, of Right, of justice, almost single- handed, he attacked the monster, with thirty million people against him. His head was wrong. He miscalculated his forces; but his heart was right. He struck the sublimest blow of the age for freedom. It was said of him that he stepped from the gallows to the throne of God. It was said that he had made the scaffold to Liberty what Christ had made the cross to Christianity. The sublime Victor Hugo declared that John Brown was greater than Washington, and that his name would live forever."
And, according to the PBS website for the film "John Brown's Holy War" Frederick Douglass stated after meeting Brown that "though a white gentleman, [he] is in sympathy a black man, and as deeply interested in our cause, as though his own soul had been pierced with the iron of slavery," It further goes on to succinctly explain the Raid itself, stating that after being involved in the controversially violent resistance against slavery in the Kansas territory,
- "On October 16, 1859, John Brown led 21 men on a raid of the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. His plan to arm slaves with the weapons he and his men seized from the arsenal was thwarted, however, by local farmers, militiamen, and U.S. Marines led by Robert E. Lee. Within 36 hours of the attack, most of Brown's men had been killed or captured."
While Brown was not successful in implementing his plan to arm slaves and embolden them to revolt against their masters, his objective was a proper one. The slaves, being denied freedom by their government, had every right to rebel just as the Declaration of Independence states, that,
- "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
I think that most would agree that the institution of slavery is destructive to the ends that Jefferson wrote about in the Declaration of Independence, among those being "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Thus, the slaves therefore had every right to rebel against their masters and the United States itself which made legal their enslavement - the caveat being, of course, that the slaves had neither the means nor, in most cases, the will to revolt. John Brown tried, but failed, in his effort to provide them with both, but he is still celebrated as a hero among many lovers of Liberty, for even if his methods were questionable by today's standards it is argued by most historians that his actions gave spark to the Civil War, ultimately freeing millions from bondage.
For more info on the Raid on Harper's Ferry, see Wikipedia: John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry.
The Kansas Jayhawks
No, not the college basketball team. The original Jayhawks (aka Jayhawkers), the anti-slavery militia, based out of the town of Lawrence (in Kansas Territory, that terrorized the slave owners of Missouri (see John Brown above) by raiding their slave farms, freeing the slaves and slaughtering the slave owners. This, and the retaliatory raids by pro-slavery Missouri militias, was the pre-Civil-War civil war, a war fought well before the first shots at Fort Sumter initiated the official Civil War between the States. Yes, many of the Jayhawkers were no better than bandits working under the cover of the chaos of the Kansas/Missouri border wars (the same could be said of many of the pro-Slavery Missouri militias), but the origins and main focus of the Jayhawker movement was defense against pro-slavery raids and abolition.
For more info on the Jayhawkers, see Wikipedia: Jayhawker.
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