Terrorism in America

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Terrorism in America

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Brenda J. Lutz and James M. Lutz

TERRORISM IN AMERICA

Copyright © Brenda J. Lutz and James M. Lutz, 2007. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published in 2007 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–1–4039–7460–0 ISBN-10: 1–4039–7460–8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lutz, Brenda J., 1957– Terrorism in America / Brenda J. Lutz and James M. Lutz. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–4039–7460–8 (alk. paper) 1. Terrorism—United States—History. I. Lutz, James M. II. Title. HV6432.L89 2007 363.3250973—dc22

2007006582

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: November 2007 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

To Betty Lutz and Tessa and Cara, our two beautiful daughters and Alasdair, Bessie, and Barnaby our loyal and lovable Saint Bernards, and Sadie our pet Newfoundland


Contents

Preface

ix

1 Terrorism: Concepts and Causes

1

2 The Colonial Era: Rebellion and Dissent

13

3 Before the Civil War: Mob Violence in Jacksonian America

27

4 From the Civil War to World War I: Racism, Labor Disputes, and Anarchism

55

5 The Interwar Years: The Red Scare to Fascism

77

6 1940–1980: McCarthyism, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Left

95

7 Into the Twenty-First Century: International and Domestic Attacks

111

8 Conclusion: Two Hundred and Fifty Years of Terrorism in the United States

139

Notes

157

Bibliography

187

Index

205


Preface

This book is part of our ongoing work on terrorism, which is one of the most important phenomena in the world today. Many of the cases in this book were covered briefly in an earlier book Terrorism: Origins and Evolution (Palgrave, 2005). In this book we take the opportunity to discuss the American experiences in depth and detail as part of our ongoing effort to better understand terrorism. The contents of this book make it clear that terrorism has been always present in the two hundred plus years of our history. Understanding our nation’s past will not only help us understand its present, but also to understand events in other countries. This book would not have been possible without the support of a number of people. Barbara Blauvelt is the secretary for the Department of Political Science at Indiana University-Purdue University at Fort Wayne. The department runs smoothly and efficiently, making Jim’s job as chair less time-consuming than it otherwise could be. His colleagues in the department have been congenial and their professionalism has meant that problems are few and far between. Teaching informs research and writing, just as research and writing informs teaching; thus, it is not surprising that students in my classes on terrorism through the years have influenced the contents of this book in many ways. Their questions, insights, quandaries, and perspectives have guided our thoughts and efforts at times. The editors and others at Palgrave have been supportive and helpful throughout the writing of this book, and the copy editors and professionals have contributed their expertise to create a much more finished product. The dedication acknowledges the central importance of our daughters Cara and Tessa in our lives. While they do not contribute directly to the book, they do make our work and effort worthwhile. They are part of our inspiration, and when all is said and done, they are the greatest reason why we write. Our dogs also contribute significantly to

x

Preface

the quality of our lives. The Saint Bernards (Alasdair, Barnaby, and Bessie) and our Newfoundland (Sadie) are wonderfully gentle creatures that provide all of us with great loyalty and affection. All they ask in return is food and tummy rubs (and not necessarily in that order). We owe a special thanks to our parents, Elmer and Betty Lutz and Byron and Carol Hoover. While we have had support and help from all these quarters, we ultimately remain responsible for the work and for any errors of omission or commission that it may contain. We hope this book provides insight and knowledge to others to face the future and to improve it. BJL and JML Fort Wayne, Indiana February 2, 2007

1 Terrorism: Concepts and Causes

Terrorism became a topic of great interest in the United States for the general population, politicians, and academics after the September 11 attacks. Since that tragic day terrorists and terrorism have been analyzed, publicized, and sensationalized. Much of the writing on terrorism since September 11 has treated the topic as if it were something new and relatively foreign to the history of the United States. But terrorism is not all that new a phenomenon, and it has not been all that unusual in the nation’s history. It is important to put such an event in a broader context. The attacks on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon were clearly inspired from abroad and were part of a larger campaign of violence against the United States and the West in general. In many ways they were significantly different from previous acts of terrorism, but it would be a mistake, however, to let this singular event obscure the historical patterns that indicate that most of the terrorism in the United States, as terrorism in other countries, has been of domestic origin. The activities of the Ku Klux Klan (in the 1860s, the 1920s, or the 1950s) and the bombing of the Murrah Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 are among the prominent examples of such domestic terrorism, even though they are not the only ones. In fact, incidents of domestic terrorism have been more common than is normally thought—the United States has not been immune from such violence in the past. It is important to understand what kinds of groups have used terrorism in the past and for what objectives. The failure to understand historical events and their context will make it more difficult to understand terrorism.1 This kind of understanding will help to provide insights into terrorism in general as well as an opportunity for comparisons between the United States and the rest of the world by looking at American examples in depth.

2


An initial step in the analysis is to establish a definition of terrorism. A multitude of definitions have been advanced to describe terrorism. In some cases, efforts have been made to tailor the definition to condemn specific groups and to exempt others. For example, though some observers will agree that many attacks constitute terrorism, they will want to exclude from the definition any actions undertaken by national liberation struggles directed against colonial powers. This view, not surprisingly, predominates in the developing world.2 Many others like to suggest that the actions of conventional armies and countries that follow aggressive foreign policies constitute terrorism of the first order and that it is the actions of governments that should be denounced considering the damage that they do.3 It is undeniable that wartime atrocities, massacres, attacks that lead to large numbers of unnecessary civilian casualties, and similar events should be denounced and efforts made to prevent their occurrence in the future. Similarly, on a domestic level slavery is a particularly evil form of subjugation and repression, but it is not terrorism. It does not become more acceptable simply because it is not so labeled. Not every horrible event qualifies as terrorism. To exclude some types of violence from an analysis of terrorism is neither to sanction them nor to ignore them; the exclusion simply assumes that these examples of violence and their consequences are best analyzed in another definitional context. Some actions such as genocide are worse. Similarly, attacks that meet definitions of terrorism qualify as terrorism, even if undertaken by freedom fighters to overthrow a vicious dictator. Neither the ideology nor the intention of the perpetrator defines what is, or what is not, terrorism. Though there have been many definitions of terrorism, there has been general agreement on its many key characteristics. Terrorism consists of the use of violence or the threat of violence by an organized group to attain political objectives. The victims of terrorist violence are important as a means of influencing a wider target audience. The victims are normally civilians because attacks on civilians increase the impact of the violence on the target audiences. Terrorism is also a weapon of the weak. Groups that are able to obtain their desired political objectives by other means (victory in an election, intra-elite maneuverings, military coups, bribery, rebellion, or civil war) are much less likely to rely on terrorism as the primary means of gaining their goals. The last characteristic is that terrorist violence involves nongovernmental actors on at least one side. Either the targets, or the terrorists, and sometimes both are nongovernmental actors.4

Terrorism: Concepts and Causes

3

Governments using violent techniques against other governments are excluded from this definition of terrorism, even though such violence may be designed to create terror. Governments have often been the targets of dissident violence. They can, however, also play the role of perpetrators. Those in power can tolerate or support violent actions by militias, paramilitary groups, or vigilantes when the latter attack opposition groups, unpopular minorities, or other groups that the government or its leaders may mistrust. In extreme cases, governments may form death squads to deal with opponents. The governments will maintain a facade of legality while allowing the groups to operate, but the actions or inaction of the government will facilitate such activities.5 This form of state-supported terrorism corresponds to the characterization of terrorism as a weapon of the weak. Governments that are stronger can usually deal with dissidents through the legal system or even through repression; they do not have to rely on vigilantes, paramilitaries, or death squads. Finally, it is also possible for nongovernmental groups to use terror against other nongovernmental groups even in the face of opposition from the government. The characteristics of the above definition are essential to the understanding of terrorism and its use. Violence (or the threat of violence for organizations that have already successfully used violence in the past) is essential. The political objectives may be changes in state boundaries, changes in the system of government, a replacement of the ruling political elite, or changes in government policies. Whether the terrorists are seeking great changes or more limited goals, the fact remains that these are political objectives and that helps to explain their resort to violence. Violence by criminal elements seeking to extort money or for other ends often relies on creating terror, but these actions do not qualify as terrorism since the objectives are financial gain rather than political change. Of course, it is possible for more organized criminal groups to use violence in the pursuit of political goals. Effective organization is indeed essential for terrorism. Without organizational resources, it is impossible to mount sustained campaigns of attacks to bring about the desired political changes.6 Individuals may undertake violence as part of a broader framework without direct orders from anyone, though these attacks do occur within the context of some broader organization.7 Such “leaderless resistance” styles of terrorism have today become more common. The victims and the target audience are essential for acts of terrorism. Terrorism at its most basic level is psychological warfare that hopes to obtain political objectives by demonstrating to members of a target audience that they

4


are collectively and individually vulnerable.8 It is the survivors of any attack that may take the necessary actions to change policies. If some government officials are killed, then others may modify policies. The target audience may also be a more general public, and in some cases the acts of violence, as those of September 11, are designed to spread terror by indicating that everyone in a national population is potentially vulnerable.9 Fearing more attacks the general public then may pressure the government for change. The audience is the important target. For this reason terrorists will often seek media attention for their actions. Media coverage and publicity extend the psychological effects of terrorist actions.10 While the media may be important in many cases, they are not essential since the terrorists can rely on less formal mechanisms for news of the attacks to spread to target audiences.11 The choice of audiences is a key element of any terrorist operation. Terrorism is not random violence against any target; it consists of violent attacks that randomly affect members of groups who are important to the audience. The idea that terrorism strikes randomly is actually a major misconception, since effective terrorist groups choose their targets with care.12 In addition to a definition of terrorism, it is useful to categorize the basic types of terrorist groups. The most basic distinction is between those groups that have a communal base and those that have some type of ideological motivation for their actions. In a communal group, identity can be based on ethnicity, language, a perception of separateness, religion, or some combination of these factors. Anticolonial movements may combine ethnicity and religion in their opposition to the colonial power, although the desire for independence may be dominated by ethnic concerns. Violent dissident organizations based on national communities (however defined or self-defined) have been persistent and often are able to carry on for long periods of time.13 While ethnicity can form the basis for a communal group, religions can be the primary base as well. Prior to the rise of nationalism, religion was often the overriding form of communal identification.14 Religion has once again come to separate attackers and targets in violent conflicts in many parts of the world, and it has, in fact, reappeared as a basis of communal identification to such an extent that the revival of this identification has been termed religious nationalism.15 As noted, religion and ethnicity can reinforce each other, making solutions more difficult. In fact, casualties from conflict and terrorism are often higher when religion reinforces ethnicity.16


5

Ideology is the other major motivation for dissidents who resort to violence. A large number of groups have, over time, sought to bring about political change and to implement or instill in people new political ideas by using terrorism. One of the first groups to do so was the anarchist movement that operated toward the end of the nineteenth century. The anarchists launched a campaign of assassinations directed against the heads of state and government officials in many different countries as part of an effort—an unsuccessful one as it turned out— to mobilize the masses to rise up and destroy the existing political systems that they saw as being based on privilege and inequality. The wave of leftist violence in the late 1960s and 1970s that swept through Europe and Latin America with weaker manifestations such as the Weathermen in the United States represented an effort by various terrorist groups to undermine the global capitalist system and capitalism in individual countries and to attack supporters of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Like the anarchists, they hoped to create more just and fairer societies. Leftist ideologies as a basis for violence to change governments declined with the collapse of communism in the old Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Right-wing ideologies that had previously served as a justification for violence, however, have continued. Early versions, such as Fascism in Italy, Nazism in Germany, and the Iron Guard in Rumania used terror to gain power. Discredited though these ideologies were by defeat in World War II, they did not disappear. Neo-fascist groups remained active in Europe after the war, and rightwing, xenophobic groups have gained strength in recent years, while groups with similar ideas or similar prejudices have appeared in the United States as well. In addition to the communal and ideological bases for action, some terrorist groups have had largely instrumental reasons for their violence. Drug traffickers want to weaken governments and to make it more difficult for security and police forces to interfere with their business and have allied themselves with terrorist groups in many parts of the world.17 Drugs, of course have presented serious social problems for the United States. Further, there is at least the possibility that criminal groups might resort to violent attacks designed to change policies or bring about desired political outcomes.18 Several criminal organizations have existed in the United States and it is possible that such groups have been involved in terrorism at various points in time. Terrorism that is supported or tolerated by governments can have the same basic communal, ideological, and instrumental causes

6


as dissident terrorism. This type of terrorism is more likely to involve pragmatic or instrumental elements such as the government elite desiring to keep itself in power. Groups can be targeted for many reasons—ethnicity, religion, ideology, opposition to the government in power, or a combination of these factors. At one extreme, governments have relied on death squads that operate with relative impunity against groups that the government fears or distrusts. Such groups provide the government with at least some plausible deniability—that is, the government can pretend not to approve the action or to even deplore it.19 In other circumstances, governments may not organize death squads but they will tolerate or encourage paramilitary groups or militias that are willing to attack opposition groups that are a cause for concern.20 At the very least, these government-supported groups can operate secure in the knowledge that they do not have to face the threat of arrest or prosecution from the state authorities.21 Terrorism by militia or similar groups can instill fear in target audiences and force them to withdraw support for opposition groups with which they might otherwise identify. Terrorism is communal, ideological, instrumental, or has a mixture of characteristics that define it in terms of the objectives of its practitioners. Organizations using terrorism, moreover, may have tactical as well as strategic goals. Strategic goals include independence or autonomy, changes in the form of government, changes in ruling groups or personnel, or changes in policies. Tactical goals may involve efforts to gain more immediate benefits such as publicity for the cause—including efforts to reach international audiences, keeping the organization viable, attracting new recruits, improving morale among the members of the group, or gaining support (including financial aid) from some part of the population.22 Another typical tactical objective may be the generation of more repressive government policies or retaliatory attacks. If these kinds of attacks occur, it is possible that the government might alienate a section of the population and throw it into the arms of the dissidents.23 In some cases, a goal with both tactical and strategic elements may be survival in hopes of being able to mount a more effective threat at some point in time in the future. If the organization can live to fight another day, survival will qualify as a success for the group.24 The strategic and tactical objectives of dissident organizations help to define them in many respects. Communal groups are identified by their ethnic or religious goals, while ideological groups have a set of goals that flow from their political viewpoints. There are, however,


7

other factors that can lead to terrorism that are sometimes much more difficult to perceive. It is clear that there is no single basic cause that explains the appearance of terrorism.25 There are, in fact, a number of different potential causes. Part of the reason for the lack of any singular cause is that terrorism is a technique that can be used by many different groups seeking change. In that sense, the same factors that lead to the use of techniques such as demonstrations and riots, military coups, rebellions, guerrilla insurgencies, and civil wars can also lead to terrorism. The choice of technique to be used depends on the balance of power between the government in power and the opposition. Some of the factors associated with outbreaks of political violence and terrorism can include increasing levels of frustration, status and economic deprivation, globalization, nationalism, and the possible clash of civilizations. Increased frustration can contribute to outbreaks of violence. One of the theoretical explanations for violence assumes that relative deprivation and frustrated expectations arising from an economic downturn that follows periods of prosperity may lead to violent reactions. Where hopes and aspirations remain unfulfilled and resources decline, violence finds a home. Violence also occurs when increased repression leads to limited access to resources.26 It has also been suggested that when individuals or groups face obstacles to continued economic advancement or possible declines in economic status, they are more likely to engage in risky behavior, which would include violence.27 Perhaps the more intriguing questions that the linkage between frustration and violence raises are the questions as to what other factors cause levels of frustration and social tension to increase and why some frustrated individuals do not turn to violence while others do. Weak state structures are another cause for the outbreak of political violence and terrorism. Strong authoritarian states or totalitarian ones do not normally face terrorist attacks as retribution is quick and sure. Security forces are not too concerned about abusing the rights of suspects, and torture is an acceptable method for gaining information about the group, its members, and plans. When there are weak authoritarian states with ineffective or inadequate security forces terrorism surfaces.28 When states are weak or about to collapse, domestic terrorist groups may appear and become quite active with less concern about the reactions of security forces. Such weak states or regions of states where government authority is minimal or absent can also provide a fertile ground for terrorist groups that want to launch attacks in

8


neighboring countries or regions.29 Democratic systems, though they may not be weak states, can also be more vulnerable to terrorism when compared to authoritarian systems. In democracies, concern for civil liberties provides greater scope for terrorist activities. There is less government security and surveillance, more restrictions on the police, and greater guarantees of fair trials for anyone who is arrested. Further, democratic societies normally have a free press that provides greater media exposure for terrorist actions.30 The United States has thus been potentially vulnerable for much of its existence as a nation, because it has been a reasonably democratic system. In addition to democracies and weak authoritarian systems, political systems in transition can also be vulnerable,31 when for example, the old ruling elite or security forces become weak or disappear and their replacements are yet to settle in. Thus, there are certain types of political systems that are more vulnerable to terrorism. Only totalitarian and very strong authoritarian systems in the past seem to have been relatively immune. An additional factor that has contributed to outbreaks of terrorism has been the processes associated with globalization. Globalization is the increasing interaction of different parts of the world with each other. These interactions frequently lead to societal strains that result in conflict because the processes bring about changes that create both winners and losers. Even when societies as a whole clearly gain, there are always some within the society who lose status, economic position or wealth, or positions of political leadership or influence.32 Local economies can be disrupted by the intrusion of external economic actors. Not only are the local economic relationships in societies disturbed, but the traditional social arrangements that are often part of the economic system are disturbed as well.33 Globalization also introduces new and competing value systems and ideas—including new religions and secularism, which can generate opposition from those who see these influences as essentially negative and threatening. Terrorism in many parts of the world, in fact, has been seen as a response to the hegemony of Western economic and social values.34 The usual companion of globalization is modernization, which can be threatening in its own right and can reinforce the strains that come with increasing interactions with a wider world. Modernization can undermine the existing political institutions in states and lead to political decay and weakness.35 Weaker institutions mean a weaker state that is less able to deal with the violence.


9

Nationalism can be a potential contributing factor for increases in terrorism when it becomes a potent mobilizing force for groups that seek self-determination and independence. Walter Laqueur has suggested that the effect of nationalism on outbreaks of terrorism became more important when democratic systems were established. Nationalism provided the spark for mobilizing populations while it was the democratic political ideas that led populations to expect more from their governments and to be more willing to use violence when governments were found wanting.36 The American and French Revolutions and the Napoleonic Wars were especially important in this regard, since they were associated with the spread of both nationalistic and democratic ideas (or perhaps ideals). Nationalism is affected by globalization as well. Globalization can enhance not only civic nationalism but uncivic nationalism as well.37 Samuel Huntington has proposed a theory that integrates globalization with other factors in the idea of the clash of civilizations or clash of cultures.38 He suggests that fracture lines between different civilizations will be areas of conflict in the twenty-first century. The civilizations in contention with each other can be defined to a significant degree by the dominant religion in each. These civilizations—Western Christian, Orthodox Christian, Latin America, Islamic, Sinic, Japanese, and Hindu—and possibly Africa and Buddhist—are competing with each other, and areas where they meet each other are likely to have a greater potential for conflict. The evidence for Huntington’s basic thesis about conflicts appearing along the fault lines is mixed; his ideas about the clash of civilizations do not consistently explain outbreaks of violence, and much of the violence that has occurred in recent years does not correspond to confrontations between civilizations.39 While his ideas do not explain all violence or even necessarily a large part of it, they do seem to fit at least some situations that have developed in the world. The connection between globalization and outbreaks of violence and terrorism has become more apparent than before. Globalization by its very nature assumes that there is conflict between the different value systems obtaining in the different areas of civilization. The onset of European colonialism generated violent responses from the indigenous populations.40 Many different religious groups, on which civilizations are based, have opposed foreign influences, and especially the secularization and modernization that have often come with them.41 More recent violent responses to globalization include violent religious reactions to the effects of foreign values. It is not

10


surprising that many of the religion-based terrorist groups in the world have been considered antiglobalist guerrillas.42 Other, more modern, ethnic communal terrorism can be a reaction to globalization. Smaller nations see their cultures in danger of being absorbed or overwhelmed by global homogenizing trends. They see the number of persons linked to their local languages or cultures steadily decreasing in the face of the encroachment by foreign languages and cultures.43 Supporters of this idea believe that secular globalization can lead to ethnic and religious fragmentation, which in turn promotes violent responses to the changes that are going on.44 Terrorist groups based on ideologies can also be considered a response to the processes involved in globalization. Left-wing terrorists have sought to prevent the spread of global capitalism with all its attendant evils, focusing on global capitalists even more than on the local or national capitalists.45 Right-wing groups that have appeared in Europe and the United States are opposed to a different kind of global trends—the migration of peoples from other cultural areas. They have resented the intrusion of outside values that have come with foreign migrants with different cultures or religions into their countries.46 Thus, there are many indications that globalization can create circumstances at least favorable to the formation of terrorist groups, a situation that could have led to outbreaks of terrorism in the United States in some earlier eras as well. The above factors all help to explain at least some outbreaks of terrorism in the world. The chapters to follow will analyze examples of terrorism in the United States to determine the extent of terrorist violence in the country. While the United States has often been considered a violent society,47 not all types of violence with political objectives qualify as terrorism as defined in this study. Events that do qualify as examples of terrorism will be discussed within the historical context of the United States, and the chapters that follow will catalogue the kinds of terrorism that this country has witnessed and the extent to which ethnic identifications, religion, and ideology have driven terrorist violence. The American experience may also shed some light on the broader causes of terrorism. This examination will illustrate the extent to which communal and ideological factors have been important in terrorist organizations and whether instrumental or pragmatic concerns were present. Some of the potential causes for terrorism, which have been suggested elsewhere are applicable to the United States also in its relatively short history as a country. The United States has had weak government structures at times, and has always had a democratic


11

system of government; therefore, the potential for frustration arising from relative deprivation and status loss always existed. The country has also been involved in the trend toward globalization (and in fact was colonized in one such movement). The chapters that follow are arranged chronologically. This temporal division of the material provides controls for the potential effects that communication and transportation systems could have on the causes of terrorism, the types of outbreaks, and their duration. It also makes it possible to categorize the various examples after the fact rather than making initial assumptions about causes, influences, and types of terrorism that were practiced. These chapters consider terrorism in Colonial and Revolutionary America, the era preceding the Civil War and Reconstruction, the period from 1876 to World War I, the years between the two world wars, the post–World War II era, and finally the events of the last part of the twentieth century leading into the twenty-first century. Chapter 8 contains the conclusions that can be derived from the preceding chapters. The focus throughout will be on domestic terrorism since most of the political violence on U.S. soil has come from within. The discussion of events after World War II, however, will have to consider the activities of foreign groups as well as U.S. support for terrorist organizations abroad.


2 The Colonial Era: Rebellion and Dissent

The colonial period in what was to become the United States was an era in which violence was all too common. There were numerous conflicts between settlers and Indians, some of which were part of the conflicts between Great Britain and other European colonial powers. In the colonies there were extralegal attempts to resolve political disputes through armed confrontations among colonists, divided on issues of political policy, political control, or religion. At times elections to colonial assemblies turned violent. Violent agitation against the Crown preceded the American Revolution; and Shays Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion occurred early in the history of the creation of the new country. Though not all of the violence from the colonial era qualifies as terrorism, some of it certainly does. Conflicts between settlers and the indigenous Indian inhabitants were frequent in the British colonies in North America. The level of conflict quickly became the greatest in the more densely settled English colonies. The French colonies in North America were much more sparsely settled than the English colonies further south. French collaboration with the Indians was thus possible as the smaller number of settlers were not competing for land with the Indians or using the natural resources as fast as the British were. The Spanish sent more settlers to the Western Hemisphere than the French, but Spanish attention was focused on Mexico and Peru with their great mineral wealth. The extension of Spanish colonial rule to the Southwest was a result of efforts to find more cities of gold. The settlements in Florida were designed to guard the northern flank of the sea routes to the valuable colonies in Peru and Mexico. As a consequence, though Spanish relations with the Indians had not always been good, there was less scope for conflict between the two as the Spanish presence

14


was not overwhelming. The English colonies attracted many settlers who claimed more and more land for farming and whose presence used the resources necessary for the Indian population to thrive. The ecological changes that came with more migration undermined the life style of the Indian inhabitants. Given the direct and the indirect conflicts over the use of resources, it is not surprising that relations between the colonists and Indians resulted in skirmishes, wars, and massacres and unwarranted killings of men, women, and children by both sides. The battles between the Indians and colonists often led to terror on the part of the settler or indigenous populations, but there are very few indications in this period that either side used terrorism as technique in the different conflicts. Both sides relied on warfare, which included guerrilla tactics on the part of the Indians. In the initial conflicts in the colonial period both sides were strong enough to rely on war rather than terrorism in their struggles. The initial colonies on the edge of the ocean were vulnerable, and there was an occasional fear, such as during King Philip’s War, that the Indians might triumph and eradicate the English settlements. The Indians, however, lost the initial battles. Tribes that were traditional enemies allied with the colonists against each other. The Europeans often had superior weapons, both offensively and defensively. The Indians lacked the weapons to deal with forts and blockhouses with any degree of success. As the settler population increased, the Indians were destined to be defeated in the conflict. They could win battles but they could never hope to win the wars, a pattern that was to repeat itself in later years. The military campaigns eventually decimated the tribes that lived along the eastern seaboard. Much of the conflict was resolved in battles and skirmishes. There were more than a few massacres and unprovoked attacks by both sides. While there was no obvious policy of ethnic cleansing on the part of the colonists, the end result was the same. Most of the Indians were driven westward in the course of a series of conflicts; they were weakened by war, diseases (European and African), and contact with the colonists. The colonists themselves were often greedy for neighboring lands that belonged to the Indians, but they did not usually seek to eliminate the local tribes. There was one incident that had characteristics that went beyond simple warfare. The Dutch in New Amsterdam had an ongoing war with some of the local Indian tribes between 1640 and 1645. At one point in 1643, the governor authorized local colonists to launch an attack one night on a nearby friendly Indian village with the apparent

The Colonial Era

15

intent of using the violence to cow the antagonistic Indians and others into submission.1 The attack on the village resulted in many deaths, but it failed to end the conflict. The Dutch were hard-pressed to survive attacks from the Indians while maintaining the economic viability of the colony. While there were other unprovoked attacks and many cruelties during the five years of warfare, the attack on the village has the hallmark of state-supported terrorism. The action was undertaken by colonists, not by soldiers. The governor hoped that the attack would frighten the Indians into submission, so he condoned and supported it. Many of the military campaigns by the Dutch in this case and the English colonists in other conflicts were designed to accomplish the same purpose of intimidation of Indian tribes, but they were military campaigns conducted by soldiers or militia. They were not sneak attacks at night by “civilians” attacking unsuspecting targets. The attack condoned and perhaps organized by the governor was designed to achieve a political objective, whereas the military campaigns were directed more toward defeating the enemy on the battlefield, and political objectives had a decidedly secondary role, if any, to play. The distinction between the unprovoked attack by the Dutch settlers and murderous military campaigns is indeed a fine one, but it is an important one. The Dutch at other times undertook punitive actions against various Indian groups for interfering with trade or for violating agreements.2 In none of these cases, however, did they rely on extrastate groups or seek to terrorize the Indians as had been with the case with the attack of 1643. Politics led to a variety of armed confrontations in the colonies. There were eighteen such confrontations in the various colonies—five that involved no violence, seven that include the threat but no actual use of violence, and six incidents in which some violence did occur. Only Bacon’s War, however, involved major violence.3 In these cases factions among the settlers took to arms to assert their rights or to protest against the policies of colonial governors and councils. Sometimes the goals were changes in policy and at other times the goal was control of the machinery of government. Small farmers often complained, usually with cause, that they were overtaxed, lacked representation, and were inadequately defended against Indian attacks. They resisted officials, tarred and feathered tax collectors or marched on the capital to demand appropriate legislation.4 These and other political contests between groups were usually straightforward tests of strength (with or without actual fighting). There does not appear to have been any examples of efforts to undermine the opposing side by

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clandestine terrorism, although the physical assaults and tarring and feathering clearly were designed to intimidate those that disagreed with the dissident groups. It is likely that the relatively small size of the settler populations minimized the possibility that anyone could use clandestine terrorist tactics and would be able to maintain their anonymity. In small populations there is often little opportunity for terrorists to hide as their identity would be known (or assumed) by the other side and they could be dealt with.5 Under such conditions, open rebellion combined with straightforward physical intimidation of opponents was both less dangerous and more likely to be effective. There was also occasional violence surrounding colonial elections as many different groups attempted to determine the outcomes for selecting members of the colonial legislative councils. Elections in Pennsylvania, particularly in Philadelphia appear to have consistently involved at least intimidation. In these elections the “Quaker” faction, which was not in favor of raising funds to support the use of military force against the Indians on the frontier, and groups that favored levying funds for such purposes were opposed to each other. When the elections saw opposing forces putting forth candidates, the results in Philadelphia were often decided by control of the stairs leading to the ballot box that was located on a balcony. Voters with ballots for the “wrong side” were intimidated and physically prevented from casting their votes. Interestingly enough, it was supporters of the Quaker faction (usually without the physical support of Quakers) that were able to win these confrontations.6 The election of 1742 turned out to be one of the most violent. The groups opposed to the Quaker faction actually mobilized supporters and recruited sailors from ships in the harbor to attempt to gain control of the stairs and to win the election by ensuring that their supporters got through while preventing other voters from casting their votes. They ultimately failed in the effort, but only after the supporters of the Quaker faction triumphed in the street battles.7 The election violence was similar to other complaints from residents in the colonies about the type of representation available, and clearly violence was used to obtain political objectives. The intimidation of voters, however, was not linked with other activities designed to attack or terrorize members of the opposition groups, and the violence does not appear to have extended beyond the election day. On the other hand, the efforts to control access to the ballot boxes was not just restricted to one election, as evidenced by the preplanned efforts by anti-Quaker party in the 1742 election to control the ballot box. The Quaker faction in turn usually controlled the legislative

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council in this period, but the colony had few police or other resources that could be used by the state in support of one faction and against another, a fact that may have limited actions before or after the elections. The election violence, therefore, constitutes a marginal case of terrorism. The most political violence that occurred in the colonial era did not involve disputes among the colonists but disagreements between the colonials and the British government. Opposition to British laws and practices in the colonies led to a series of confrontations, which became especially widespread after the defeat of France in the French and Indian War and British annexation of Canada. There were forty-four recorded urban riots in the 1760s and 1770s. Every colony except Delaware and Maryland had at least one such riot. Thirty of the fortyfour riots were anti-British in character.8 The actions that the colonies undertook were designed to undercut and defeat the authorities that were appointed by and responsible to the British Crown. The colonial legislatures and courts often proved to be unreliable sources of support for British authorities as the members frequently sided with their fellow colonists. There were a number of incidents where British naval officers who were seeking to impress (recruit by force) men for service in the Royal Navy were prevented from doing so by local mobs. Perhaps the most illuminating aspect of these incidents was the refusal of the local militias to aid the British officers in their efforts, effectively preventing them from operating.9 The British efforts to collect duties on imports and to prevent smuggling did not fare much better either. Smugglers were hard to catch. Even when they were caught, the colonial courts arranged for many of the cases to be dismissed for lack of evidence, and convictions were hard to obtain when trials were actually held.10 While these activities were isolated incidents, they were examples of the willingness of the colonists to disobey the authorities, and their ability to get away with it. The violent incidents provide marginal, even if somewhat unorganized, examples of terrorism as they were isolated. Vigilante groups also operated in the colonies, but these groups were formed to deal with criminal activity, especially in the frontier areas where courts and law officers were nonexistent or ineffective.11 While these groups had no overt political objectives, their actions supplied examples of effective organization, and they were the forerunners of a tradition of vigilante activity. The isolated acts of violence and the vigilante operations all helped to prepare the ground for the campaign of disobedience that accompanied the passage of the Stamp Acts by the British Parliament.

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The passage of the Stamp Act in 1765 led to an increase in violent opposition to the Crown and to a significant degree of organization in the dissidents’ activities. The British parliament passed the Stamp Act in 1765 to raise funds to help reduce the national debt and to cover the costs of maintaining the empire. But parliament was also attempting to proclaim its supremacy over the colonies through its ability to impose taxes. The first step for the colonial opposition consisted of resolutions by colonial legislatures that denied parliament’s right to levy taxes without their agreement.12 When parliament persisted, the opposition took a more violent turn. While the riots to prevent impressment for the British navy were spontaneous, the opposition to the Stamp Act became very organized. The dissidents created organizations to prevent the implementation of the Stamp Act. Groups that later adopted the title of Sons of Liberty appeared in all the colonies and were central to the efforts to prevent the sale or the use of stamps. In some cases, public opinion was sufficient to prevent local officials from trying to issue or use the stamps, but violent intimidation was more frequently used.13 Officials appointed to sell the stamps were assaulted and their houses were attacked and their property destroyed. In colony after colony, the officials were forced to resign under duress due to physical assault or the threat of violence. Those required to use the stamps on official documents broke the law in order to avoid becoming targets of violence.14 This violence started in New England but it quickly spread to the other colonies. The more perceptive officials in other colonies appointed to dispense the stamps resigned their posts even before facing any threats of violence as they correctly judged the temper of their own people.15 In other cases, it became impossible to find anyone who was willing to accept the post to implement the act.16 The failure of the British tax effort was also due to the fact that the colonial authorities, as they had before, looked the other way when the violence occurred and local juries refused to convict anyone for any of the actions.17 The organization against the Stamp Act was effective throughout the colonies, and the Stamp Act became unenforceable. “So effective was the campaign of intimidation that the Stamp Act was already completely meaningless by the time Parliament repealed it.”18 The opposition to the Stamp Act was effective not only in forcing a parliamentary retreat. “In short, terrorism implemented by dissident Americans was used to force a fundamental redirection of British policy.”19 The campaign has also demonstrated how effective organization of groups within each colony

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and collaboration between colonies could be in challenging British rules and regulations. The political struggle between the colonies did not end with the repeal of the Stamp Act. Violence and intimidation continued on the part of the dissidents, culminating in the protests against British tax policies and commercial laws that finally led to actions such as the Boston Tea Party, which were a prelude to war. One rather spectacular incident occurred in 1772. The British revenue (i.e., antismuggling) cutter Gaspee ran aground near Providence, Rhode Island. Local colonialists, led by a prominent merchant, came out to the ship. They captured the crew and set them ashore and then burned the ship.20 In the aftermath of the destruction of the Gaspee, a special tribunal established by the Crown could not find anyone willing to provide evidence; consequently, not a single arrest was ever made.21 Once again the officials of the British government received virtually no support from the colonial authorities. The final act began with the British efforts to derive revenues from the sale of tea by the British East India Company. The colonists formed the Continental Association in 1774. It was designed to interrupt all trade between England and the colonies and also to discover those who were sympathetic to the Crown and to intimidate and silence them. If threats were insufficient to accomplish that goal, violence would be used.22 As tensions rose, the Sons of Liberty became very active again. Loyalists were tarred and feathered and assaulted and they suffered property damage—all which was the price they paid for their continued support of British authority.23 The new tea agents, like the stamp agents before them, quickly resigned in fear of reprisals.24 Supporters of the Crown, who often tended to be among the propertied classes, found that their wealth was in jeopardy if they actively adhered to their political beliefs. Shipments of tea were targeted, culminating in the Boston Tea Party. Dissidents attacked the tea on ships and warehouses elsewhere too. In New York, members of the Sons of Liberty dressed as Mohawk Indians boarded a ship in the Hudson River and threw the tea overboard.25 Later, patriots in Maryland emulated the Boston activities by throwing tea overboard as well.26 In Philadelphia the local pilot was threatened if he helped a tea-laden ship navigate to the port (he wisely declined to provide his expertise).27 The attacks on the tea were a culmination of a whole series of property attacks. In Boston, the dissidents assembled and marched to the ships and proceeded to dump the tea. It was one of the most well-ordered mob attacks in history.28 No one was injured in the process, and no other property was attacked. The target of the action

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was in effect the trade taxes that had been imposed and the right of parliament to levy them without the consent of the colonies. The target, a highly symbolic one, was clearly chosen for its political impact. While the dissidents, who would soon become rebels, were quite willing to use violence against supporters of the king and parliament, the violence never became lethal. The violence surrounding the Stamp Act and the actions leading up to the Boston Tea Party were usually directed against the property of the loyalists, and even when the Crown supporters were assaulted, they were not killed. The Sons of Liberty and other dissidents “trusted to horror rather than homicide.”29 In the days that followed the fighting at Lexington and Concord, the patriots continued to use violence to intimidate supporters of the Crown. The rebels continued with the same kinds of tactics such as tarring and feathering that had been used in the days before the outbreak of fighting.30 When the actual fighting began, it involved conventional battles, in some cases. The American forces, however, often relied on guerrilla warfare and raids that tied up British troops and played havoc with the lines of supply. British forces or their local allies often mounted raids against the Americans as well. It is not surprising that many rebels or pro-British Loyalists were on the wrong side of the battle lines. The Loyalists suffered at the hands of the rebels. Many areas of the colonies had a tradition of resorting to self-determined vigilante justice for dealing with conflicts on the frontiers and in areas where the colonial authorities were absent.31 The term “lynch law” actually comes from this period. Local leaders in Virginia (William Lynch or perhaps Charles Lynch) whipped and assaulted local proBritish residents for their beliefs.32 These actions were considered illegal even at the time but were later approved post hoc by the Virginia legislature.33 Supporters of the revolution in British occupied territory sometimes suffered as well. But even in British occupied cities and territories, the Loyalists frequently suffered. They were attacked by mobs and sometimes driven into exile, and these attacks actually paralyzed Loyalist efforts to support British troops and to mobilize resources on behalf of the Crown.34 After the war, those who had obviously remained loyal to the Crown faced prejudice in the new country, and many chose to migrate to England or to other British colonies rather than face the potential ire of the victors. After the war former loyalists were forced to leave. In South Carolina, they were warned that they had to leave in twenty days. When some failed to do so, eight were killed and “four were left alive to warn other Tories of a similar fate.”35 The departure of the pro-British citizens was in some ways a

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logical conclusion to the fact that they had been so often targets of violence in the previous years. The victory of the rebels provided some impetus to the continuation of the tactics that had been used prior to the American Revolution. Extralegal groups, mobs, and riots were often important for influencing the politics of the United States and the various states when the Articles of Confederation served as the constitution.36 The dissidents in Shay’s Rebellion followed what could have been considered timehonored tactics. Government agents were intimidated and private property was destroyed as part of the violent protest against the plight of smaller farmers and others in Massachusetts.37 The local dissidents used force to prevent local government from functioning. Courts were prevented from meeting to assess fines, confiscate property, or to foreclose on farms, and local officials were clearly intimidated and under the threat of violence.38 The protests led local authorities to arrest those who were seen as the ringleaders, but mobs often released them from jail.39 While Shay’s Rebellion did not generate a public insurrection, the violence and intimidation associated with the protests did have major effects. The government in Massachusetts changed many of the laws that provoked the protests, and the rebellion accelerated demands for a new constitutional structure at the national level to replace the ineffectual central government under the Articles of Confederation.40 The government under the new constitution, however, had to face the Whiskey rebellion in 1794 as a test of central authority. Resistance to the central government in this case focused on taxes on whiskey. The western frontier region, including Pennsylvania west of the Appalachian Mountains, was the location of the most opposition to the new laws and taxes. Opponents of the tax on whiskey argued that it was exactly the kind of tax that the British had tried to impose on the colonies before the Revolution and that resistance to this illegal taxation was justified.41 These dissidents, as those in Shays Rebellion, relied upon the same types of activities used in the years immediately preceding the revolution. Revenue officials were assaulted; some were tarred and feathered, and others were forced to resign their offices.42 These efforts represented a systematic attempt to drive the revenue officers out of that part of the state.43 In many parts of the western frontier, tax collectors resigned and nominees refused to accept posts to collect the taxes. Even those who were willing to pay the taxes found it expedient to disobey the law.44 This antipathy toward the central government was not new in western Pennsylvania. The region had not supported ratification of the new Constitution and was suspicious

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of government in general. Many local inhabitants carried the distrust of government from the colonial period into the new era of independence and equated any government with potential tyranny.45 The Whiskey Rebellion collapsed when faced by prompt action by President Washington. He chose western Pennsylvania as the test of strength between the national government and local dissidents because of tactical considerations in mounting a military expedition and because of the likelihood of success. Defeat of the dissidents even in one area would serve the purposes of the new national government.46 His response and the failure of the opposition to the new taxes led to the end of the antigovernment agitation and campaigns of violence designed to generate policy changes or changes in the structure of government. Overall, while the colonial era was often violent, it witnessed relatively few examples of terrorism with the major exception of the agitation against the authority of the British Crown. The conflicts between the colonists and Indians were frequent, often deadly, and sometimes vicious, but there was no campaign of terrorism by either side at this point in the struggle. Election violence, disputes between settlers and colonial authorities on the coast, and the occasional armed response by one side in a dispute never developed into campaigns of violence designed to instill terror in the opponents. The confrontations were more direct. The elections in Pennsylvania in the first half of the 1700s and the Dutch support for the settler attacks on the Indians provide some of the few examples of efforts to instill terror or intimidate. The violent opposition to British authority that led to the American Revolution is the major exception to the general absence of terrorism in this era. There were two significant aspects to the violence. First, the violent actions, particularly those surrounding the passage and attempted implementation of the Stamp Act, marked the beginning of a series of campaigns by dissidents designed to instill fear in the other side. The mobs and groups involved in the disturbances were not a particularly new phenomenon for the period, but what was new was the activity of mobs that were “capable of pursuing social and political objectives on a sustained and systematic basis.”47 The activities of the Sons of Liberty and similar groups preceding the outbreak of war were not isolated incidents or even spontaneous outbreaks of dissatisfaction with the British authorities. They were well organized and “part of a carefully executed campaign of violent politics.”48 The other important facet of these actions was the fact that the attacks did not involve

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the death of officials or supporters of the status quo. There were almost no lethal attacks in the whole period. The dissidents appear to have realized that avoiding lethal attacks prevented the alienation of potential supporters, including some of those who might otherwise be opposed to popular violence.49 The target of the violence was frequently the property of those supporting the British authorities, but these attacks were nonetheless effective. The mob violence, even if nonlethal, worked exceedingly well as a form of terrorism. The attacks “highlighted grievances as mere words could never had done; they struck terror into the hearts of British adherents.”50 The control exercised by the terrorist groups to avoid deaths is strong evidence of the extent of the organization that was involved in the actions. The organization and restraint also reflected the fact that the dissidents actually saw themselves as protectors of the community, and they were seeking to regain lost rights rather than new ones.51 They were interested in preserving rather than in destroying. The terrorist campaign that led up to the American Revolution was organized and quite effective in mobilizing opposition to the Crown and to Loyalists as well. The Boston Tea Party was an especially effective attack whose effects were strengthened by boycotts of tea elsewhere in the colonies and other property attacks on tea. The Tea Party itself created a difficult dilemma for the British authorities. If they failed to respond to the attack, they would appear weak and supporters of the Crown would decrease. Loyalists with property could feel that they had more to lose by supporting parliament and the king than they would by supporting the dissidents if no forceful defense of royal prerogatives and adherents to the Crown was forthcoming. The British government, as a consequence, chose instead to close Boston harbor to trade and to punish Massachusetts for the actions of the Sons of Liberty. The British garrison was strengthened as well. The closing of the harbor and related activities, termed the Intolerable Acts, turned out to be even worse for the British authorities as they led the rest of the colonies to side with Massachusetts. The Tea Party and the British response provided a rallying point for those opposed to the Crown, creating the unity of purpose necessary for the victorious rebellion. The Boston Tea Party was a violent act that had consequences out of proportion to the damage that was inflicted.52 A property attack with no deaths and no injuries that built upon earlier campaigns of property attacks and assaults (but no deaths) was tremendously effective in setting into motion events that led to an eventual military victory.

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There was one additional circumstance or contextual factor that facilitated both isolated cases of terrorism and the organized campaigns of attacks that began with the protests against the Stamp Act— the absence of an effective police force.53 The election violence in Philadelphia in the 1740s, for example, was possible because of the absence of an effective police force.54 In other cases, the local authorities agreed with the mobs or crowds and thus provided no effective assistance to the British authorities.55 The local officials in the colonies frequently sympathized with the dissidents—if they were not actually leading them. Local militias not only failed to aid British naval officers, but during the disturbances surrounding the Stamp Act, Boston’s militia also refused to defend the property of Loyalists or to deal with the outbreaks of violence—leaving the British officials with few options.56 Local officials and others who might have been willing to side with the Crown to enforce the laws were fearful of doing so as there was no effective means of arresting and confining those who were responsible for attacks.57 The absence of a police force to arrest those responsible for the attacks may have been a factor in the relative moderation of the dissidents. The Sons of Liberty and others were not forced to undertake more violent attacks because the British government was not able to defend against the property attacks.58 The difficulties of the British officials were probably exacerbated by the fact that local juries could not be relied upon to convict anyone who was actually charged with a crime. Not only were the police powers of the Crown limited, but the local citizens also defended anyone who was caught with their own version of jury nullification as they saw the attackers as defenders of their own rights. When the British government finally attempted to rectify the problem of insufficient enforcement by bringing in troops, the timing of the action only made matters worse. The very presence of the regiments became a cause of controversy and dispute, further heightening the tensions in Boston and increasing colonial opposition elsewhere. The instances of violence in the years immediately after the successful revolution witnessed some similar activities, but they never achieved the popular support that the anti-British agitation had gained, and the reliance on violent intimidation and property terrorism declined. Shay’s Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion collapsed. They lasted as long as they did because of the limited police power of the state or national government, just as had been the case in the agitation against the British. At the height of the unrest in Pennsylvania, victims of the attacks were unwilling to bring charges against their attackers

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and local authorities were unable to arrest the individuals responsible for the violence.59 The lack of more extensive popular support and a vigorous response by government authorities at the state level in the case of Shays Rebellion and at the national level for the Whiskey Rebellion effectively prevented these actions from gaining ground and becoming dangerous to the stability of the state government or national government. Thus, the anti-British activities in the 1760s and 1770s remain the major example of successful terrorism in the colonial era. The attack by settlers in New Netherlands supported by the governor is a case of terrorism in effect by state forces, but one that failed. The election violence in Philadelphia is less clearly a case of terrorism, partly because the activities were limited to election day and were not carried over into the everyday life of the residents of the colony (unlike the campaigns directed against Crown supporters in later years).


3 Before the Civil War: Mob Violence in Jacksonian America

The period from the Whiskey Rebellion to the end of the Civil War was an era in which the new country with a new government and constitution was undergoing a period of consolidation. The Civil War was, in many ways, the final act for this consolidation. This period, often referred to as the Jacksonian era, represented increasing public inputs in the political process, and it witnessed a variety of violent actions and a greater reliance on terrorism by groups in the United States than did the previous colonial and revolutionary periods. Confrontations between settlers and Indians continued, but there were now instances of the overt reliance on terrorism to accomplish the goals of the settlers. Racist violence increased with the appearance of campaigns of attempted ethnic cleansing. The Mormons were persecuted for their unusual religious beliefs and for attempts to isolate themselves from other groups. Antimigrant and anti-Catholic feeling were prevalent and peaked in this period with the formation of the Know-Nothing Party (or American Party). Overt reliance on terrorism became most obvious in many respects in the battles between proslavery and free soil groups in Kansas in the 1850s. In this period, much of the violence and terrorism involved actions by mobs that were mobilized to deal with or deter groups that were seen as threatening to the country or society. Warfare between the westward-moving Americans and Indian tribes continued in this era. The wars and skirmishes in this era are too numerous to mention, but even when the Indians won battles, they inevitably lost the wars since they were outnumbered and faced superior weaponry. They retreated steadily westward when they survived.

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The process of conflict, loss, and relocation resulted in a continuation of the very real process of ethnic cleansing that began in colonial times. Probably the Indian tribes’ last hope of remaining on their traditional lands east of the Mississippi River with the War of 1812. By allying with the British they had hoped to be secure in their lands, but when the war ended with both sides in possession of the territory they held before the war, it meant that the Indians had, in effect, lost. A similar result emerged on the Pacific Coast; the arrival of settlers in the Oregon country and the migration to California once it was acquired by the United States led to the dispossession of the local Indian tribes. In addition to the steady pressure exerted by the westward movement of settlers, governments during this period became more involved in forcing tribes westward as a matter of policy. In some cases the federal or state governments ignored the pressure exerted by the settlers on the Indians or the problems created by settler encroachment on Indian lands. In other cases, government policy was more active in seeking to relocate the Indians to lands west of the Mississippi River. Congress passed the Indian Removal Act in 1830, which permitted the federal government to encourage and subsidize the relocations. State governments also sought the removal of tribes. The state of Georgia was in the forefront of the efforts to move the Indians to the West and was in some respects a catalyst for the policy of removal. State officials, with popular approval, decided to cleanse the state of the indigenous population. In 1802, in pursuance of this goal, Georgia ceded all its western land claims to the national government in exchange for the right to remove all the Indians from within the more limited borders that resulted.1 Dispossession was a very important issue in the state since the Indian tribes had title to approximately one-third of the total land.2 The state’s campaign to claim the land began with the Creeks. The Creeks were a good choice for the experiment since their lands were largely further west in the Alabama Territory and their Georgia lands were small and less important to their holdings. As a consequence, Georgia found it relatively easy to buy off at least some of the chiefs and convince the tribe to evacuate those lands that were in Georgia.3 The departure of the Creeks, however, proved to be just the beginning. Georgia’s success in forcing the Creeks off their lands led the state officials to focus on the much more numerous Cherokees in the northwestern part of the state. The first steps in these efforts involved the passage of discriminatory state laws. Indians became nonpersons in the state courts of law, and they could not testify in legal proceedings.

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Contracts had to be witnessed by whites in order to be legal. The state even passed a law, making it illegal for a Cherokee to advise other Cherokees against migrating to the western lands set aside for Indians.4 The consequence of these laws was that it became easier for unscrupulous white settlers to use opportunities to cheat the Indians out of their lands. The removal of recourse to the judiciary made it difficult to contest any fraudulent actions taken against the Cherokees. It also was an important limitation on Indian rights in criminal proceedings, since charges against white settlers were hard to prove. Indians were persecuted, assaulted, and in a few cases even killed.5 Any possibility of deterring other whites from such attacks was obviously limited. Of course, it was unlikely that Cherokee criminal or civil charges would receive a fair hearing in a state court even in the best of circumstances, but this laws created an even larger bias against the Indians. The pressure to drive out the Indians was exacerbated by the discovery of gold in the Cherokee lands in 1829. It has been suggested that the discovery of gold triggered the efforts to expel the Indians from their land,6 although the efforts clearly predated the discovery of gold. Georgia proceeded to pass laws that prohibited the Cherokees from digging for gold on their own lands.7 The efforts to limit Cherokee access to the mineral resources of the land were not primarily due to greed for the gold; it had a much more pragmatic intent. If the Cherokees were allowed to exploit the gold for their own enrichment, they would increase the financial resources to defend their property and to use legal means to retain title to the land.8 The discovery of the gold actually provided additional opportunities for Georgia to take over the land. Gold rushes attract a wide variety of individuals, including many of doubtful background or occupation and, not surprisingly, there was violence in the gold fields. Miners flooded into the area, and destruction of Indian property was quite common.9 The state government sent the militia into the area to preserve order. The use of the militia was designed to be especially provocative as it was done in the hope that the resultant increase in violence would give Georgia an excuse to expel the Cherokees and the expulsion could be passes off as part of an effort to keep the peace. When this effort failed, Georgia created a special police force, the Georgia Guard, to maintain order in the gold fields. The real job of the Guard was to harass the Cherokee population and to support the white settlers in any confrontations that occurred.10 In essence, the state government had created a paramilitary force that with state sanction could use violence to intimidate and terrorize the Cherokees in an attempt at ethnic cleansing. Not all

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whites supported the efforts to expel the Cherokees. There were missionaries who tried to defend the rights of the Indians, but they were arrested on various state charges and removed from the area.11 Georgia moved beyond toleration of attacks on an unpopular group to active support. Faced with the assaults on their rights and property, the Cherokees invoked the privileges guaranteed to them in a treaty with the national government in a case before the United States Supreme Court. After hearing arguments, the Court ruled in favor of the Cherokees and against the state of Georgia on two occasions ordering the state to stop the persecution and denial of rights. First, President Andrew Jackson and then President Martin van Buren avoided doing anything to enforce to these decisions.12 Andrew Jackson is reputed to have said “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.”13 While the quote may not be historically accurate, it clearly is in keeping with the tenor of Jackson’s response to the decision of the Supreme Court and Chief Justice John Marshall. Under the circumstances, the studied inaction of both Jackson and Van Buren provided very effective support for Georgia. Earlier in the face of the difficulties in Georgia, Jackson had sent troops to the gold fields to help control the violence in the area. Since the federal troops provided a measure of protection for the Cherokees, Georgia requested that the troops be withdrawn and Jackson was quite willing to comply.14 By the mid-1830s, the Cherokees had run out of options, and they reluctantly agreed to migrate beyond the Mississippi to what is now Oklahoma. Georgia and the white settlers had effectively won the battle for the land and resources by intimidating and terrorizing the Cherokees. The state government had been an active participant in the campaign of terror, especially with the use of the militia and the creation of the Georgia Guard to further the process of ethnic cleansing. The national government by a conscious decision refused to interfere, thus tolerating the local attacks and providing support for them. The efforts to force the Cherokees off their land did not constitute an isolated incident. Earlier President John Quincy Adams had initiated treaty negotiations with many tribes north of the Ohio River to facilitate migration to western lands. Often under the influence of alcohol, many tribal leaders signed away the rights to their lands.15 The policy became official in 1830 when the Removal Act was passed by Congress authorizing the government to expend the funds necessary to relocate tribes in the East. Many in Congress regarded the Removal Act as being a permissive law, one that could be used to


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facilitate migration of those tribes that wished to relocate or that were willing to relocate but not one that mandated relocation. It provided for an exchange of lands in the East for lands in the West and funds for the move.16 President Jackson, who signed the bill, however, saw it as authorizing forcible removals, and relocation in effect became mandatory.17 Jackson’s view was able to carry the day because many in the United States agreed with him, and relatively few were willing to oppose him. More and more tribes were moved westward. The Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and some of the Seminoles joined the Cherokees in the Indian Territory. One group of Seminoles retreated south to the Florida Everglades and was able to defeat the efforts of the military to dislodge them and force them west. Many of the methods used against the Cherokees were used against the other tribes in the Southeast. In Alabama, the Creeks were forced to divide tribal lands into individual plots, and frequently the individual plot-owner Indians were then defrauded. Alabama borrowed a page out of Georgia’s law codes and denied Indians any status in court, thereby depriving them of opportunity to challenge any fraud involved in the loss of their lands.18 Mississippi extended state jurisdiction over the Choctaws and their lands, eliminated the authority of the chiefs, and disallowed all Choctaw customary law except marriage. Mississippi, unlike Georgia and Alabama, did grant them the same rights that white citizens of the state had, although this concession had little practical effect.19 The Choctaws attempted to resist the move to the West, but they eventually agreed to the relocation; they realized that armed resistance was futile and that they would ultimately lose their land.20 The Chickasaws, concentrated in Tennessee and northern Mississippi, also reluctantly accepted the inevitability of relocation.21 The tribes remaining in the Midwest also joined in the internal migration. What made the situation even worse for the Indians was the fact that the relocations turned out to be deadly for many of those attempting the trip. The long journey killed some; others faced disease and limited supplies in their new lands in the west. Attacks by the Plains Indians also took their toll. The road west became appropriately known as the Trail of Tears. This collective removal of most of the Indians from the East constituted a clear example of a policy of ethnic cleansing. While some of the transfers resulted from military conflicts, most resulted from coercion by the national and state governments. There can be little doubt that all these numerous efforts were part of a concerted campaign, and that violence or the threat of violence by nongovernmental paramilitary groups played an important part in the ethnic cleansing.

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The acquisition of California and the Oregon Territory resulted in additional conflicts with new groups of Indian tribes. In what are now Oregon and Washington, the familiar battles broke out between settlers and Indians, and the various tribes progressively lost much of their land. They were pushed inland away from the coastal areas for the most part, but they were not forced to relocate to Oklahoma. In California, the Indian population had already adopted a relatively sedentary existence around the Catholic missions under Spanish and then Mexican rule. The Indian population fared less well under U.S. rule. The approximately one hundred small Indian tribes were viewed as much more primitive than the Indians in the eastern United States and were thus viewed as much less threatening. As a consequence, they were not removed but “left in place, only to be rather haphazardly exterminated.”22 Within twenty-five years, more than three-quarters of the Indian population in California had died due to disease, violence, starvation (related in part to loss of land), and the effects of exposure to alcohol. There may not have been an organized campaign of genocide, but for the California Indians it amounted to the same thing.23 The discovery of gold quickened the process of decay and disintegration by the arrival of new migrants, and gold hunters were quick to take advantage of the Indians or to ignore their rights. The local authorities were indifferent to the fate of the Indians, thereby furthering the process of decay and debilitation. Prejudice, intolerance, and violence were not just directed against the indigenous inhabitants of the United States in the years before the Civil War. The new territory added to the country in 1848 as a consequence of the victory in the war with Mexico brought with it Spanishspeaking populations in the Southwest and California. These new citizens were often treated poorly by the English-speaking Americans. The appearance of more organized discrimination and violence began with the California Gold Rush in 1849. Local Spanish-speaking Californians caught the gold fever as did their English-speaking neighbors. Gold seekers including many miners from Mexico, Chile, and Peru came from all over the world. The English-speaking miners quickly proceeded to organize themselves against their Hispanic competitors. They used the legal system to attempt to deny Spanish-speaking miners access to the gold fields. When blatantly discriminatory laws were insufficient, they were quite willing to use assaults, mob action, and murder to drive away the Spanish-speaking miners.24 While there were elements of racism involved in the assaults, it is also likely that the English-speaking miners feared the competition, particularly since


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many of the Hispanic miners had had more expertise because of having worked in the mines in their homelands than many of the Americans from the eastern part of the country. At this time the first Chinese also began to come to California, and many of them began to work the gold fields as other recent arrivals in the state did. When the number of Chinese started to reach threatening levels, laws and violence were used against them just as it was done in the case of the Spanish-speaking groups.25 The Chinese in California, just like the Cherokees in Georgia or the Creeks in Alabama, became legally nonpersons who were forbidden to testify in courts of law. Consequently, many of the crimes against the Chinese went unpunished, as local sheriffs and other officials were not generally concerned about solving crimes committed against Chinese victims.26 The obvious intent of those who attacked the Hispanic and Chinese miners was not only to drive off the specific individuals but also to drive away the whole group. While some of the rationale for the attacks was economic, there were also clear elements of racist and negative communal feelings involved. These campaigns in California, like the campaigns against the Cherokees and other Indians, provide more examples of attempts at ethnic cleansing by local groups, which were tolerated or supported by local government officials. The institution of slavery was fast becoming a major divisive issue in the United States in this period. Even though many in the North were opposed to the institution of slavery, they could still demonstrate racial prejudice against blacks, including the free blacks in their midst. Maryland, which consistently had the largest number of free blacks of any state after 1810, prohibited any free black from testifying in a court of law against whites.27 There were riots directed against black areas in a number of major cities. One early riot in Providence in Rhode Island, one of the most tolerant states, destroyed a black area, resulting in the departure of the inhabitants from the state.28 There were major attacks in Cincinnati that were reflections of a general desire by many in the city to drive the blacks out. In 1829, more than a thousand blacks fled their area of the city for Canada as a consequence of the attacks. In 1841, there was another major riot targeting the community of free blacks who had remained.29 Many of the blacks in the city again left. “In balance, then, the Cincinnati mob of 1841 achieved its purpose.”30 The black community in Washington, DC, was similarly targeted by mobs engaged in ethnic cleansing.31 In 1834, New York City witnessed major riots that targeted the black population of the city, their churches, and other institutions connected with them.

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The racial animosity was exacerbated by labor competition between whites and the recently freed blacks.32 Antiblack riots were common in Philadelphia in this period, and they often reflected antagonism between Irish Catholics and blacks, both of whom were competing for jobs.33 Many other northern cities saw such attacks on black communities. The attacks became even more violent when the black residents resisted.34 Ultimately the attacks were also a form of social control. They were designed to remind the free blacks to “stay in their place.”35 Members of the prosperous black middle classes became special targets since they were rising above their accepted place in society.36 As a consequence, “free northern blacks shared many of the insecurities, pains, and injuries borne by their southern slave brethren.”37 Further, it was quite rare for anyone to ever be charged for any of the violence directed against blacks.38 Such violent actions intended to instill fear in the target audience were not necessary in the southern states since there were other mechanisms for controlling slaves. While many in the South lived in fear of a major slave uprising such as had occurred in Haiti, there were actually only a handful of such rebellions, small in scale, and easily controlled by local forces. Violence against minorities was not restricted to ethnic or linguistic groups in this period. The Mormons (members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) became frequent victims of violent attacks as local citizens in a number of states organized to harass them and drive away this religiously different group. Joseph Smith, who saw himself as a new prophet, founded the church in upstate New York. The first converts lived in New York, but Smith led one group to Ohio while another group moved on to Missouri. These early Mormons left New York in 1831 for new areas so they would be able to live in their own autonomous communities. They set up a relatively separate community in Ohio in which they isolated themselves from the population around them.39 Their religious beliefs and aloofness in a self-contained community combined to generate fear and distrust among the neighboring population. By 1832, the Mormons were facing significant persecution from the local people. They were beaten, tarred and feathered, shot, and their homes and property were destroyed.40 As a consequence of the violence, most moved on to the Mormon settlements in Missouri or to a new community in Illinois. The Mormon settlements in Missouri fared even worse than the ones in Ohio. Joseph Smith thought that the area around Independence, Missouri, was destined to become the new center of the religion, but


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the local population viewed the new group with even deeper suspicion than the local population in of Ohio did. As in Ohio, it was not only the fact that the Mormons adhered to a new and different religion that created difficulties, but also the fact that they were forming their own communities isolated from other groups in the state worried the old settlers. The non-Mormons feared that the Mormons could even become a majority in local areas. Further, there was the fear that the Mormons wanted to set up their own state with its own set of laws.41 The old settlers attempted to retain control by preventing the Mormons from voting, but the Mormons were prepared for the intimidation and defended their voters during elections.42 It is probably not surprising that tensions between Mormons and non-Mormons increased, and incidents of violence between members of the two groups began to occur. In 1839, open warfare broke out with skirmishing between the two groups. The violence peaked at Haun’s Mill where almost twenty Mormons were killed and more wounded in an attack by a large group of Missourians.43 Faced with the increasing violence between the two groups, the governor called out the state militia to control the situation. His approach, however, was less than even-handed, for he issued orders that the Mormons should be exterminated or driven out of the state. A local militia general, however, was able to negotiate for the withdrawal of the Mormons from their settlements, thus avoiding more bloodshed.44 The Mormons, however, had effectively been evicted from Missouri. Joseph Smith and some other Mormon leaders were arrested for murder and other serious crimes. Smith and the others, however, managed to escape while being transferred from one jail to another, probably with the acquiescence of local officials.45 It would appear that state officials found it more convenient to have Smith escape since there would be no trial and no publicity. At this time, the small Mormon settlements in the Iowa Territory faced the same kinds of problems as had occurred in Missouri. While the violence was more subdued, the Mormons were warned to leave and there were threats that force would be used to expel them.46 The Mormons now concentrated their settlement around the city of Nauvoo in Illinois on the Mississippi River. This town, just north of the border between Missouri and the Iowa Territory, became yet another new home and refuge for them. The Mormons feared additional attacks from Missouri, a danger that seemed to increase after the former governor who had pushed them out was the target of an assassination attempt. The attack was presumably

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undertaken by one of Smith’s bodyguards on Smith’s orders, and it was feared that there could be an attempt to kidnap Smith and take him back to Missouri for trial on the earlier charges.47 The Mormon settlement at Nauvoo was not to last. The city initially prospered and grew, and the Mormons were able to form a city government and elect local officials. They created the Nauvoo Legion as a local militia to protect themselves and their new home. Mormon voters even became important for local state politics since their numbers were often sufficient to sway the results of contests between Whigs and Democrats. Eventually the closed nature of Mormon society raised the same kind of fears among non-Mormons in Illinois as had already appeared in Missouri and Ohio—the strange religious beliefs of the Mormons, Joseph Smith’s ideas about forming a political kingdom in the United States, and the danger that the Mormons would take over local areas in Illinois by bloc voting.48 In 1844, as had happened elsewhere, tension between Mormons and non-Mormons grew and violence between the two groups became more common. In this case, unlike Missouri, the Mormons could rely upon the protection provided by their own local officials. Mormon judges and juries acquitted Mormons brought up on charges (while non-Mormon juries and judges did the same for non-Mormons).49 Joseph Smith eventually began even to argue that the city charter for Nauvoo permitted him in some cases to veto state and national laws, a position that the non-Mormons found threatening and which further antagonized them.50 The problems and violence between Mormons and non-Mormons may have been exacerbated by Joseph Smith’s announcement in 1844 of his candidacy for the presidency on a third-party ticket. This announcement heightened the fears of a political takeover by the Mormons or the idea that he was seeking to create his own political kingdom or state. It was in this context that Smith had the Nauvoo city council order the seizure of a newspaper in the town that was critical of him. The printing press and office furniture were destroyed. When the owner brought charges in the Nauvoo municipal county, they were dismissed and the owner was ordered to pay court costs for a frivolous suit.51 Smith and his brother, however, were arrested by county authorities supported by state officials for the destruction of the newspaper. His actions were seen as a clear attack on freedom of the press and his ability to escape responsibility by using the local court was regarded as an abuse of power.52 Smith and his brother were taken to Carthage to face charges. While they were in custody, however, a mob attacked the jail. The local militia company that provided


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his guard fled when faced by the mob, perhaps by prearrangement. Smith and his brother were then killed by the mob, which included many members of militia units that had been assembled to deal with the Mormon “threat” but were disappointed when Smith’s surrender meant that they would not be allowed to march on Nauvoo to deal with the “Mormon problem” once and for all.53 There was substantial evidence that local political leaders and the governor of Illinois were either involved in a conspiracy to kill Smith or that they were at least aware of the plans to kill him and did nothing to prevent it.54 There have even been suggestions, with much less evidence, that there was a Whig conspiracy to assassinate Smith because his presidential bid threatened a successful candidacy by Henry Clay, the party’s likely candidate.55 Government toleration of the assassination was obvious when the persons charged with the murders were acquitted after a relatively inept prosecution.56 One of the persons who was suspected of being a ringleader in the attack, however, was later mysteriously murdered. Although it was widely believed that the killer was someone in the Mormon community, the local authorities never discovered the culprit.57 Many of those responsible for the murder of Joseph Smith as well as some who were complicit in the murder expected that the church would collapse without its leader.58 While they were proved wrong, the existence of this belief would suggest that Smith was killed primarily because he was the leader of an unorthodox (and feared) religious community, not because of his political ambitions or his threat to the existing parties. Even with the death of Smith, however, the Mormons in Nauvoo continued to prosper and thus remained a threat to the non-Mormons. Before long, fighting between the two sides again broke out with blame for the violence and criminal activity shared by both sides.59 The Mormons living outside of Nauvoo were progressively driven off their lands and had to retreat to the city for safety.60 Government officials in Illinois were eventually forced to concede that they could not protect the Mormons from the violence, and inaction on the part the national government despite appeals from the Mormon leaders made it clear that the necessary protection would not come from this source.61 Faced with increasing violence and with no prospect of help from the state or national governments, it became increasingly obvious to the Mormon leaders that they would have to leave yet another community under the threat of violence. Once the Mormons had agreed to leave Illinois, the violence did come to a temporary end. The bulk of the Mormon population then followed

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Brigham Young westward to ultimately settle in Utah (then part of Mexico). Some, however, remained behind in Nauvoo because they lacked the funds to migrate or for other reasons. Their continued presence, however, was unacceptable to the local population. Mobs and militia companies attacked the city and harassed the citizens until eventually the remaining Mormon population fled as well.62 The Mormons had become targets of a series of campaigns designed to terrorize them and to drive them out of Ohio, Missouri, the Iowa Territory, and Illinois. While individuals or small groups undertook many of the actions against them, local authorities refused to defend the Mormons, often tolerated the attacks, and in some cases actively (and openly) supported them. Whether or not Joseph Smith’s murder involved a national conspiracy or a local one, it was part of the much broader campaign to drive out an unpopular minority group. The violence also at times had elements of vigilante violence since the anti-Mormon groups saw themselves as defending an appropriate social order from the Mormon challenge. The citizens of Illinois (and Missouri) rose up to defend their community “when institutional law and order had failed them.”63 They were, of course, successful in these efforts and finally forced the Mormons to relocate to Utah in 1845. The Mormons were not the only religious group to face attacks in this period. Prejudice against Catholics was never absent, and often it was pervasive.64 Before the Revolutionary War, Catholics were identified with the threatening French and Spanish colonies, but there was also a generalized fear after the American Revolution that Catholics served as soldiers in a papal army and were always ready to overthrow the Republic and establish a state run by the Roman church.65 This antipathy toward Catholics increased when large numbers of new immigrants entered the country beginning in the 1820s. Many of the new migrants were Catholic Irish or German (some of whom were Catholic), establishing a link between immigration and Catholicism in the minds of the native-born Protestants who saw themselves facing a new threat. The Irish Catholics were generally considered inferior, even in a racial sense. Many of the Germans migrated after the failed revolutions of 1848 and were thus suspect as radicals or even somewhat illogically as potential carriers of the idea of European despotism.66 The result was acts of violence and the appearance of political movements designed to protect the country by attacking Catholics. Violence against Catholics was prevalent in the North in the 1830s. There were attempts to intimidate the Catholics, many of whom were Irish, as part of a process of keeping them “in their place.” There were


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attacks in many parts of New England, and in Boston in a major incident rioters burnt down a convent in the city. The mob that attacked the convent had clearly been organized in advance, and the members used messengers and signal fires to coordinate their activities.67 While this incident was perhaps the most dramatic attack on a Catholic target at this time, it was simply the most singular of many such events.68 During these outbreaks of violence, the authorities often did not intervene against Protestant rioters, and the Protestant majorities usually did not protest. In the case of the burning of the Boston convent, potential witnesses to the arson were threatened if they dared to testify, and the state attorney general was hung in effigy for even bringing a case against the defendants. The resulting acquittal of the defendants on all charges “was a foregone conclusion.”69 Baltimore saw similar riots that centered on a convent in that city.70 Major eastern cities such as Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, as well as New Orleans in the south, saw influxes of Irish laborers in the 1840s, and as their numbers grew, resentment against them increased in the 1840s, contributing to the outbreaks of violence. One of the largest riots occurred in Philadelphia in 1844 as a consequence of a controversy about teaching Bible studies in the city schools. The school board required the use of the King James Version and refused Catholic requests that their students use the prescribed Catholic version. Catholic protests over the situation led to confrontations, and the Catholics were accused of attempting to exclude the Bible from school.71 The result was a major riot and attacks by Protestants against the Catholic sectors of the city for three days.72 The violence and intimidation went beyond the Catholic victims of the mobs. Soldiers and officers who helped to defend Catholic churches and other property were assaulted and threatened.73 This type of violence provides one of the few instances in this period in which the terrorist attacks were directed against institutions of authority, although the intent of the violence was not to attack the existing political system. While the rioters did attack the Catholic sections of the city, their attacks were not random. Targets were carefully chosen, and the control and organization involved in the violence was evident in the fact that there was virtually no looting involved.74 A grand jury investigating the violence chose not to indict the rioters, but instead blamed the city’s Catholic bishop for the violence and concluded that the riots were caused by the attempts of part of the city’s population (i.e., Catholics) to exclude the Bible from the school system.75

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The violence in Philadelphia was followed by a new wave of antiCatholic violence in the 1850s that resulted in riots, the destruction or desecration of churches, the tarring and feathering of priests, and the vandalizing of church buildings.76 Anti-Catholic violence became so common in New England that armed guards were used to protect Catholic churches, and insurance companies refused to write policies for Catholic buildings unless they were constructed of nonflammable materials!77 In many locations, especially in New York City, Protestant street corner preachers attacked Catholics and Catholicism. Their sermons and rabble-rousing helped to escalate petty conflicts between Catholics and Protestants into riots.78 A delegate from the pope visited the United States in 1853 and 1854 on a fact-finding tour, and his presence generated a tremendous amount of negative feeling. There were protests in the cities that he visited and in several towns the militia had to be deployed to protect him.79 These continuing attacks against the Catholics were designed to intimidate, to keep them in their place and limit their influence, and in some cases, they represented efforts to drive them out. The great riot in Philadelphia was locally successful since later Irish immigrants were more likely to choose Boston or New York rather than Philadelphia as a destination.80 Anti-Catholic violence was pervasive in this period. It reflected the antipathy of the Protestant majority to another religion to some extent as well as the fear of those with a different cultural background. The threat that Catholicism represented in Protestant eyes first led to the rise of the American Republican Party and then the more extensive Know-Nothing (American) Party. The Know-Nothings used violence not only against Catholics as a religious community but also as a technique in political campaigns in order to gain political power. The Know-Nothing Party became the anti-Catholic party par excellence in this period. The party first appeared in the late 1840s as another expression of opposition to the increasing immigration and the threat to control by “native” Americans that this immigration presented, and it quickly gained strength in the early 1850s. The party sought to require lengthy waiting periods before immigrants would be allowed to vote (some waiting periods as long as twenty-one years were suggested). It attracted those who had been active in the earlier anti-Catholic disturbances in the country, because a large number of the new immigrants coming into the country at this time were Catholic. The party was avowedly anti-Catholic, and Catholics were prohibited from joining the party. It thus provided much greater political organization for the anti-Catholic bias prevalent in the country and used its organizational


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capacity in some cases to organize violent attempts to intimidate opposition voters and control the outcomes of elections to pursue its preferred policies. There had been rather frequent election disturbances and riots in the past, but these outbreaks were not normally intended to use violence to win elections for either the Whigs or the Democrats, even though these parties had also hired gangs for “election work” at times.81 The violence by the Whigs or Democrats represented more typically efforts to settle accounts or a means of reinforcing group (i.e., party) solidarity—“the rioters did not fight to advance or defend political principle, rather, they fought because it was entertaining and because it was a way of preventing the other side from gaining votes.”82 Such activities at times, however, could become more violent. In 1812, Democratic-Republicans in Baltimore attacked a Federalist newspaper and its supporters. In rioting that lasted days, the mobs in the largely Republican city were clearly attempting to drive out members of the competing political party.83 In this case, the political objective for the mob was the elimination of the minority party from the city, and violence was the technique used to intimidate the Federalists. With the advent of the Know-Nothings into the electoral equation later in this period, election day violence became much more purposeful and organized in at least some cases. The Know-Nothings managed to briefly become a major national party in the 1850s when they won statewide elections, controlled state legislatures, and elected members of Congress by rallying native-born Americans who were opposed to granting rights to immigrants. In the cities, the Know-Nothings were frequently in conflict with the Democratic Party, which was often supported by the more recent immigrants (many of whom were Catholic). Violence during elections became common in a number of cities. Secret ballots had not been yet used in the United States, and voters brought ballot papers supplied by their preferred parties with them. The Know-Nothings began to use distinctly colored ballots, which made it easier to identify supporters of the party as well as those who were planning to vote for others. The violence was designed to prevent Democrats from casting their ballots so that the Know-Nothings would win the elections. Violence associated with this new anti-Catholic party with political overtones occurred in many cities including Louisville, Baltimore, Washington DC, New Orleans, and San Francisco. Riots in 1855 in Louisville resulted from election day efforts of the party to win control of the city to limit immigrant influence. In this case, the Catholic immigrants who presented the threat to the native-born population were principally

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German Catholics who had come to the city in the aftermath of the failed revolutions of 1848 in Europe. The Know-Nothings mobilized supporters on election day to prevent the foreigners from voting. With the help of local officials and the police, the violence proved effective and the party won the election. The violence on election day led to a riot and once started, it continued for three days with attacks on the German Catholic (and Irish) sections of the city.84 Most sources suggest that approximately twenty died in the violence, but it could have been considerably more.85 Most, but not all, of the dead were foreign born.86 Many Germans and Irish actually left the city as a consequence of the violence.87 Further south New Orleans had also received an influx of German and Irish migrants that resulted in a nativist backlash. In 1854, there were street battles, knifings, and killings during the election. The result was that anti-immigrant forces were able to score major election victories in 1854 and 1855.88 The violence was again effective in limiting participation and influencing the results of the voting. Violence became even more common for municipal elections in Baltimore. Attacks were extensive and designed to influence election outcomes. During elections in 1856, 1857, and 1858, the KnowNothings successfully instituted campaigns of terror to prevent immigrants from voting (and voting Democratic). In 1856, the party faithful used knives and sharp shoemaker awls to keep away voters without the distinctive color-coded party ballots of the American Party. In some areas, the native-born extremists were armed and gun battles resulted.89 Later in the year, there were three riots that pitted supporters of the Know-Nothing Party against immigrants. More than a dozen were killed in these attacks and hundreds were injured.90 In 1857, the election was much more peaceful—“primarily because most Democratic voters were afraid to vote.”91 In 1858, appalled by the violence, the Democrats, Whigs, and even some members of the Know-Nothing Party combined to support a reform candidate for mayor. There was no gunfire in this election, but supporters of reform were again attacked at the polls. The reform candidate had to announce his withdrawal from the race on noon of election day, since he knew he “could not win under these conditions and that his followers were indeed risking their lives to vote for his candidacy.”92 Rioting and violence on election day in Washington, DC, in 1857 was a direct extension of the violent tactics that worked so well in Baltimore. The Baltimore party sent a gang of supporters by train to the capital to keep Democrats from voting. The thugs briefly gained


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control of the streets and ballot boxes, and it took a unit of marines hastily raised from barracks in the city to restore order. At least five people died and more than a dozen were wounded in the violence.93 Unlike the intimidation in Baltimore, the violence in Washington was not sufficient to bring victory to the party. Organized vigilante action continued to be directed against criminal gangs. Many vigilante groups in the country were known as white caps. Their goals were limited to tackling immediate problems in their own areas, and they lacked clear political goals beyond establishing law and order and driving off outlaws.94 Violence in San Francisco (and other California communities) took the form of vigilante committees. The committees were active in 1851 and 1856 in San Francisco in the face of lawlessness in the city and its surrounding area. The local authorities appeared to be unable to deal with the problem, leaving citizens to take law enforcement into their own hands. At one level the movements were no different from other vigilante groups that provided rough and ready justice—usually in the form of hanging—in the absence of effective law enforcement.95 As a consequence, both the 1851 and 1856 the vigilantes were generally seen as a positive force. In 1856, eight outlaws were hung. Their gang was broken up, and hundreds of other known criminals fled the area.96 While these kinds of actions did help to deal with outbreaks of crime, the 1856 activities went a bit further. The vigilantes were respectable middle-class individuals, many of whom were Know-Nothings. Some of the criminals whom they targeted were migrants from Australia, but most of them were Irish Catholics who had previously been transported to Australia, so these violent actions also dealt with a group that the members of the American Party distrusted. They also used the opportunity presented by the vigilante committee in 1856 to purge the city administration and to rid themselves of a Democratic (and Irish) political machine.97 The fact that the vigilante committee removed a suspect political group from power was no coincidence, and the event places the San Francisco violence in the same category as the election violence in Baltimore, Washington DC, Louisville, and New Orleans. The Know-Nothings were quite willing to use terror to gain political power to implement the policies that they thought were necessary for the country. They hoped to use the immigrant issue as a rallying point for the North and the South. Catholic migrants were more likely to be concentrated in northern cities, but obviously southern cities such as New Orleans and Louisville and cities in border states such as Maryland also had to deal with significant numbers of migrants. Southerners

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were also concerned that immigrants were able to vote in the territories to decide whether slavery would be permitted in these areas.98 The efforts of the American Party ultimately failed. The Know-Nothings, as the Whigs before them and the Democrats after them, split in northern and southern wings when the party could not find a common position on the issue of slavery. The disunity arising from the slavery question undid the party with its organized anti-Catholicism. While the party disappeared from the scene, distrust of Catholics was to remain the United States for many years to come. Slavery was central to a number of conflicts involving incidents of terrorism in this period, although the issues that generated the violence often had complex components. Many in the North were opposed to slavery, even though freed blacks were often the target of mob violence as noted above. These riots, aimed at intimidating the free black population, indicated that many northerners were not in favor of equal rights for whites and blacks any more than they were in favor of equal rights for Protestants and Catholics. Some of the northerners who were in favor of ending slavery wanted to transport the freed slaves back to Africa, a colonialization effort that led to the founding of Liberia. The opposition to slavery in the North rested in part on the view that it provided the South with an unfair labor advantage, and many of those who wanted to prohibit slavery in the North were concerned about the competition for jobs that could come if slavery were permitted in the northern states. By the same token, they were often somewhat less concerned about slavery as long as it stayed in the South. The ambivalent attitude of northerners toward blacks helps to explain why abolitionists in the North became the target for attacks. The violence was directed toward getting them to stop their efforts at ending slavery in the South. Northerners realized that the abolitionists were increasing regional tensions, and many of them were unwilling to sacrifice national unity in the cause of ending slavery. As long as slavery was kept out of the North, they were willing to tolerate its existence in the South. Since national laws such as the Compromise of 1820 and the Compromise of 1850 determined where slavery was permitted, abolition was actually condemned by many for being “lawless.”99 In the 1830s and 1840s attacks against abolitionists was quite common. There were assaults and riots where mobs directed their attacks against individual abolitionist spokespersons, against the offices of abolitionist printing firms, and against antislavery meetings.100 In Philadelphia, the headquarters of the abolitionist group was burned


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down in 1838.101 This attack was just one of a series of such riots in Philadelphia that reflected opposition to the abolitionist goal.102 Any abolitionists brave (or foolish) enough to carry their ideas to the South rapidly became victims of mob action while the authorities stood aside to permit the attacks.103 In some cases, the violence that began with actions against the abolitionists degenerated into mob attacks on black sections of cities.104 The freed black population often became targets since the abolitionists were seen as promoting amalgamation or race mixing between blacks and whites.105 These attacks on the abolitionists often had widespread support. Newspapers and politicians at times actually condoned the attacks with open statements of approval. In other cases, their toleration of the violence was apparent by the silence that greeted such actions.106 Eventually the idea of abolition gained greater support in the North, and the abolitionists ceased to be targets of violence. It is ironic, however, that the initial terrorism resulting from the issues surrounding the slavery question was directed against those advocating freedom for all slaves. In the final analysis, the violence had not been effective in ending the agitation for the abolition of slavery, but it probably did delay the gathering of support for the idea and may have postponed the military contest between the North and South for a number of years. While people in the North may have been ambivalent about slavery in the South, they were never very receptive toward efforts to catch runaway slaves and return them to their masters. The Fugitive Slave Act empowered federal officials to assist in the return of runaways so that southern slave owners did not have to rely on the (largely absent) cooperation of local northern state officials. The law did not resolve the problem. Committees were formed to prevent the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act, and crowds rescued or attempted to rescue slaves who had been recaptured by local authorities or slave hunters and even punished those cooperating with slave catchers.107 These efforts not only resulted in the prevention of the enforcement of the law but also warned others as to the potential dangers of supporting efforts to recapture slaves. An incident in Christiana, Pennsylvania, just over the border from Maryland and Virginia in 1851 demonstrated the lack of support the law had. A confrontation between a slave owner assisted by a U.S. marshal and runaways resulted in the death of the owner.108 While the person responsible for the death of the slave owner escaped to Canada and the runaways disappeared, a number of blacks and five whites, thirty-eight in all, faced criminal charges. They were charged with treason for either supporting the

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slaves against their owner and the marshal or for failing to render aid to a U.S. official pursuing his duties. In the first test trial, the defendant was quickly acquitted, and the others were released as well.109 The result of this trial infuriated many in the South who now felt that their rights, supposedly guaranteed by national law, were being ignored.110 Clearly, the violence intended to rescue runaways and to “discourage” the slave catchers was at least partially successful in negating the effects of national law (and of heightening tensions between the North and the South). The issues that lay behind the violence initially directed against abolitionists and then against the application of the Fugitive Slave Act came to a head in the Kansas Territory where antislavery and proslavery groups practiced terrorism against each other. The antislavery side in Kansas included some who opposed slavery on principle, but many could be more precisely considered supporters of the of free-soil idea. They wanted slavery kept out of Kansas because of their fear of competition from slave labor, but they also often preferred that free blacks be kept out of the Kansas Territory as well.111 The violence occurred not only because of differences over slavery, but also because each side feared the loss of important political rights. They both saw victory by the other side on the slavery issue as threatening or diminishing their own rights. In fact, the battle over political rights was a much greater concern for many than the issue of slavery.112 While the free-soil movement was not in favor of racial equality, the battle lines were still drawn based on attitudes toward slavery in the territory. Initially the proslavery groups had the upper hand. A majority of the early migrants to the territory came from the southern states while less than a third was from the North.113 The proslavery groups succeeded in gaining control of the territorial legislature. Their election victories, however, were tainted. Large numbers of proslavery inhabitants from neighboring Missouri crossed into Kansas to stuff ballot boxes in order to ensure victory for proslavery candidates in 1854 and 1855.114 A sign of the extent of the electoral fraud was the fact that the 2,905 males who could vote in Kansas cast 6,307 votes in one election—791 for free-soil candidates and 5,516 for proslavery candidates.115 The Missourians were not content to cast fraudulent ballots; they also were quite willing to use violent tactics and intimidation to prevent free-soil voters from participating in elections.116 The irregular voting activities were buttressed by “an increasingly violent program of terrorism.”117 Once the proslavery side won control of the legislature, its members used the authority of the territorial government to


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enhance their position. The territorial legislature made it a crime to claim that slavery was illegal or to circulate antislavery material. The death penalty was assessed for anyone inciting slaves to rebel, and the holding of free-soil views became a bar to holding office or serving as a juror.118 President Franklin Pierce aided the proslavery forces in Kansas. In his efforts to maintain unity in the Democratic Party, he appointed either prosouthern territorial governments or individuals who were ineffective in dealing with the proslavery groups.119 The political battles soon became more violent as each side attacked the other. The violence included assaults, tarring and feathering, and even a few murders as the conflict escalated.120 With the escalating violence, each side began to organize its forces and to coordinate defensive and offensive actions. The free-soil groups even set up a competing territorial legislature in opposition to the proslavery body. They also established local militias—which were essentially vigilante groups—that were expected to maintain law and order and to protect against proslavery attacks.121 Lawrence, Kansas, became one of the centers of the free-soil forces, and proslavery groups attacked the town as a consequence. In one successful attack, they destroyed the printing presses for newspapers that had been supporting the free-soil point of view and burnt buildings such as the hotel that was the headquarters for meetings of free-soil advocates from around the state.122 Both sides received external support in the struggle. The slavery groups, of course, had the active aid of many residents of Missouri. Elsewhere in the South, southerners, including elected officials raised money and outfitted settlers who were sent to Kansas to swell the ranks of the proslavery side.123 The free-soil side, in turn, received aid from the North. Free-soil settlers destined for Kansas were outfitted and given supplies, including significant quantities of rifles and other weapons.124 With the passage of time, the violence became both more organized and more deadly. Gangs on both sides became more effective and consciously sought to spread terror. Southerners who had come to Kansas simply seeking a new home (rather than with any intention of extending slavery) fled the territory due to the violence, although proslavery southerners proved to be harder to dislodge.125 Free-soil settlers were also warned to leave or face the consequences, and many of them did so.126 Free-soil groups also aided runaway slaves and attacked those who attempted to catch them. In one case, the man who helped recapture a fugitive slave was lynched by antislavery Kansans, and his death was intended as a warning to others who aided

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slave catchers.127 Congress contributed to the escalating violence by intentional inaction at one point. President James Buchanan requested additional funds so that military troops could be dispatched to end the disorder and control the violence, but northern Congressmen refused to vote for funds that would be used to help a proslavery territorial legislature maintain slavery in Kansas.128 John Brown was the leader of one of the most dangerous antislavery groups that appeared in Kansas. Brown was responsible for a premeditated murder of five unarmed southern settlers at Pottwatomie Creek. While there had already been deaths in the clashes between the two sides, they usually occurred in the heat of the moment or in battles between the two sides. Brown’s attack, on the other hand, was planned, with the premeditated intention of killing the victims. In this case, the “victims were well chosen by Brown not because they were guilty but because they were innocent. He instinctively grasped the essence of maximum terror. It is its unreasonableness and consequently its unpredictability which makes the terror most fearsome.”129 The murder of the five proslavery men “undoubtedly struck fear into the hearts of all Southerners.”130 Brown was attempting to stir the pot to force more confrontations between the two sides, and he wanted to force the freesoil party to fight rather than to negotiate.131 Ultimately, he was successful to at least some extent since his actions made compromise between the two sides much less likely and led to increases in the levels of violence. The attack at Pottwatomie Creek resulted in retaliation by Missourians who burnt a free-soil town and killed more than a half dozen men and wounded more than twenty.132 The antislavery group eventually won a reasonably fair election that set the stage for a Kansas that would be free of slavery. The attacks by Brown and other abolitionist or free-soil groups had limited the interference from Missouri and had at least some role in permitting the electoral victory.133 The conflicts had taken their toll, however, as more than two hundred persons died in the attacks and raids.134 About this time, U.S. troops became more effective in helping to police and control the violence. During the initial periods of violence, much of the available military force in the region had been tied up in a confrontation with the Mormons in Utah. The peaceful resolution of disputes between the Mormons and the national government freed up a number of military units for duty in the Kansas Territory. John Brown’s activities did not end with the victory of the antislavery groups in Kansas. He returned to the territory in 1858 and began rescuing or freeing slaves from their owners in both Kansas and Missouri.


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His return, given the record of the past activities of his group, spread fear among slave owners.135 He later escorted the slaves whom he had freed to safety in the North, and they were eventually provided passage to Canada. This activity was quite open, but no law enforcement officials dared to interfere with him.136 Public opinion in the North by this time, as indicated above, was not in favor of returning fugitive slaves to their owners, and any attempt to arrest Brown would have provoked a riot. Brown eventually went on to launch his famous raid on Harpers Ferry in an effort to start a slave uprising in the South. The danger of such an uprising was one of the greatest fears of southerners, and Brown’s attempt consequently did generate renewed fear of that possibility. As in Kansas, his choice of targets displayed either great forethought or great intuition. While he failed in his immediate purpose of instigating a slave uprising, the raid did make compromise and reconciliation in the country more difficult, even impossible.137 For example, his raid and its aftermath effectively undermined the efforts of former Know-Nothings to create a National Union Party dedicated to preventing the breakup of the country.138 Brown’s raid may not have made open warfare between the two parts of the country inevitable, but it clearly threw fuel on the fires of discontent. His raid “was seen as proof that the South could never rest easy in a union that included free states and harbored abolitionists.”139 Northerners in the South were deemed guilty by association; they were beaten, tarred and feathered, and driven out of the region by other means.140 His earlier success with terrorism in Kansas set the stage for the later effort to accomplish abolition by starting a war that the South was likely to loose. The outbreak of the Civil War, of course, involved a different kind of violence on a large scale, but even during the war, there were outbreaks of violence that had linkages with the terrorism of the earlier years. Newspapers were attacked and their presses destroyed for opposing the war, and mobs made life uncomfortable for antiwar dissenters, and there were even occasional lynchings.141 In 1863, New York witnessed the greatest urban riot of the nineteenth century in North America when protesters opposed to the new Conscription Act took to the streets. The rioters, largely Irish, attacked blacks to protest against the war and also to protest against blacks competing with them for jobs. The riot had elements of class animosity as well, since the law gave the rich the option of buying an exemption. The riots lasted for three days, and while the total number of dead was never fully determined, it could have been as high as 1,200.142 Control in the city was

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only reestablished after troops fresh from the victory at Gettysburg were rushed to the city.143 The black population in the city declined by 20 percent in the aftermath of the riot as many of the survivors fled to other parts of the country.144 These riots were at least partially effective as a form of ethnic cleansing and they had obvious links to previous terrorist attacks against free blacks and abolitionists. They could also have been a reaction to the violence inflicted upon Irish Catholics by the Know-Nothings and other nativist groups in the earlier years; Irish Catholics were now able to take the same tactic with free blacks. The rioters themselves paid a cost as somewhere between four hundred and two thousand of them died during the violence, often at the hands of the troops sent to maintain order.145 Opposition to conscription was not restricted to New York City. There were antidraft riots in Newark, Jersey City, Boston, Toledo, and Evansville among other cities, and almost all the northern states saw attacks against officials charged with implementing the draft.146 Irish-Americans in the coal-mining regions of eastern Pennsylvania effectively used violence and threats to prevent young men their communities from being drafted.147 It is even possible that some of the same persons who launched attacks on antiwar newspapers were involved in violent efforts to prevent the implementation of conscription. The two forms of intimidation clearly coexisted in the North during the war. The first sixty years of the nineteenth century in America turned out to be quite violent, and the violence often qualified as terrorism. There were campaigns against Mormons and Catholics, the Indians in the East (and the west coast), Chinese migrants and Spanish speakers in California, the abolitionists and free blacks in the North, and the mutual terrorism of the proslavery and free-soil groups in Kansas. These campaigns reflected organization, political (and sometimes economic) objectives of a variety of groups, and reasonably clear target audiences. Much of the violence in this period involved mobs, but the mobs of this era did not indulge in random and uncontrolled attacks against people or property. The attacks of antiabolitionist mobs in particular involved planning and organization.148 Like the mobs active before the American Revolution they were quite controlled and chose their targets carefully. Spontaneous violence with indiscriminate attacks was much rarer than organized action.149 One “mob” attacking property in Baltimore took a vote and decided not to burn a lumberyard because that was too great a danger of the fire spreading to an adjacent lumberyard that did not belong to anyone being targeted in the violence!150 When the headquarters of the abolitionists in


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Philadelphia was burned to the ground in 1838, the mob prevented fire companies from saving the building but permitted them to save neighboring structures.151 The participants in the riots could obviously be very discerning in their attacks. The draft riots, such as the one in New York in 1863, would appear to be an exception in this regard, since the violence was more widespread and in some cases included the property of the well-to-do. Two related factors help to explain why these attacks by such groups could occur so openly and frequently in this era. First, most cities in this era lacked effective or professional police forces to control the violence.152 The prevalence of riots in this period actually convinced some cities to develop professional police (and fire) departments.153 Second, many of the riots were led by respectable elements of society. These leaders saw themselves as enforcing societal norms in the absence of government agencies. In some ways, the weak police forces in the cities led to this type of action to be seen as a form of social control. The targets were those that were considered to be, in some fashion, the more undesirable elements— Catholics, Mormons, immigrants, freed blacks, abolitionists, slave catchers, Chinese, or outlaws. The mob activities were usually designed to support the status quo where white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants dominated the power structure. In fact, the violence was directed against the above groups who might challenge the established system or who were representatives of different cultures. The terrorism in California constituted efforts to create and maintain the established system when faced by Catholic migrants, Hispanics, and Chinese. The actions supported this Protestant elite grouping in California and the rest of the county.154 The terrorism thus often involved an element of vigilantism as the groups sought to defend the system when the authorities could not do so.155 Because the violence was undertaken in defense of the existing system, it was often very effective since it had the tacit support of the majority community—if not their active encouragement. The leadership and support are reflected in the noteworthy fact that in this period legal mechanisms were often used in tandem with violence to achieve political objectives. The Indians and Chinese were denied legal status in the courts of law. The black community in Cincinnati had previously been forced by law to post a $500 bond to guarantee good behavior in order to live there.156 Hispanic prospectors in California had to pay a special tax to work in the gold fields, and white miners did not always honor the certificates issued as proof payment.157 The Know-Nothings wanted to pass laws that would disenfranchise the new immigrants for long periods of time.

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The basis for much of the terrorism in this period was religious or ethnic communalism. The Know-Nothings targeted Catholics, building upon the existing prejudice in the country. The efforts to limit immigration and to limit voting rights sought to guarantee control by the native-born (Indians, of course, were not considered native-born). Mormons were the other obvious religious target in this period. The Irish Catholics, unlike other immigrant groups, tended to stick together rather than to assimilate. This “clannishness” of the Irish created greater suspicion in the eyes of the Protestant majority.158 The Mormons in some areas and the Catholic Irish more generally were numerous enough to stick together; therefore, their numbers also made them a potential political force at the ballot box. The exclusiveness of the Mormons and the “clannishness” of the Irish caused the majority to have doubts about the commitment of both groups to the country and to the republican form of government.159 The Irish also became more “dangerous” in the late 1840s when they became established financially and began to involve themselves more actively in politics.160 The targeting of free blacks and Chinese, as well as the Spanish-speaking residents of the territory acquired from Mexico, was racism, but there was also a fear of economic competition in some cases. All these activities provide examples of ethnic cleansing that was effective at local though not at national level, since most of the Catholics, free blacks, Chinese, Mormons and others remained in the country. The removal of the Indians from east of the Mississippi was also effective ethnic cleansing. While terrorism based in communalism was most frequent, ideology explained the attacks on abolitionists and the opposition to those attempting to capture runaway slaves. Ideology was also a key factor in the struggle for control in Kansas. Differences over the institution of slavery did have religious components and reflected disputes over slavery itself, but the deeper currents involved political issues and disputes over the rights of individuals in different sections of the country. The activities of the Know-Nothings provide one of the more complex examples. The election day violence in Louisville, Baltimore, Washington DC, and New Orleans, as well as the vigilante movement in San Francisco, had a mixture of ideological, communal, and even instrumental goals. The party wanted to keep Catholics out of power because of their suspected ties to the pope and church hierarchy (communal), protect the union from dissolution (ideological), and maintain control of the city government to further the communal and ideological goals and to maintain access to the prerogatives of power (partly instrumental).


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What is perhaps most notable about the terrorist attacks in this period is that they were often very successful. The support of the majority as well as the support of respectable leaders explains the successes. When groups attacked the system, they were much less effective.161 Catholics and blacks were intimidated, and in many cases, the local violence convinced them to relocate to other parts of the country or even to Canada in the case of some of the free blacks. The Mormons were in succession pushed out of Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois. They finally settled in Utah, an area where they could become the initial residents. The Indians were forced into the West, as were the Mormons. The Spanish-speaking miners and the Chinese were marginalized in California because of the attacks upon them. The Fugitive Slave Act was unenforceable in large parts of the North because of public disapproval and violence. The Know-Nothings were able to win elections in Baltimore and Louisville (but not in Washington DC) and to oust the Democrats from power in San Francisco. Both sides used terrorism with success in the Kansas Territory, although obviously only one could triumph in the end. John Brown was in a number of ways perhaps the most effective practitioner of terrorism. The later raid on Harpers Ferry, as the Boston Tea Party, had an impact all out of proportion to the damage done or the importance of the action by itself. The attacks on conscription laws and the machinery for implementing conscription had both successes and failures on the local level. Only the violence directed against the abolitionists failed in its goals. They were not effectively intimidated; they persisted in their efforts, and they finally overcame the adverse majority opinion that initially greeted their efforts. The successes of the terrorist acts, to at least some extent, resulted from the active or tacit support of government. With the Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, and Seminoles, government actions (or conscious inaction) helped those who wanted to drive them out. The Mormons faced groups tacitly supported by politicians and even faced state militia companies that were called out to confront them. Attacks on Catholics, abolitionists, and free blacks, as noted above, were led by respectable citizens and often tolerated by a majority of the society. Discrimination, assaults, and even murders of Hispanics and Chinese in California were not investigated; nor were charges levied against the attackers. Terrorism has a much greater chance of being successful when it has this kind of support from government.162 Thus, the first part of the nineteenth century was characterized not only by many examples of terrorism, but also examples of successful violence, often with government support.


4 From the Civil War to World War I: Racism, Labor Disputes, and Anarchism

The period after the end of the Civil War terrorist violence saw not only the continuation of old forms of terrorist violence but also the appearance of new types. Discrimination and racism persisted and so did the attendant violence. Attacks on Hispanics, freed slaves, and the Chinese continued; so did anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic feeling. The Ku Klux Klan and similar organizations appeared in the former Confederate states, and they relied on campaigns of terrorist violence to achieve their political objectives. Industrialization brought in its wake labor disputes, which at times became violent. These confrontations between management and workers also brought state authorities into the fray. Anarchism appeared in Europe in late nineteenth century, as a protest against inequality among different classes. While anarchist violence was much more prevalent in Europe in this period, a few important instances of anarchist violence did tale place in the United States. The post–Civil War period saw the continued relocation of Indian groups and further reductions of their landholdings to smaller and smaller reservations on which they were forced to live. The loss of lands and the restrictions of the surviving Indians to these smaller pieces of territory led to warfare in many cases, but this era witnessed nothing like the policies of the national government, state governments, or private groups that forced virtually all the tribes in the East to move across the Mississippi to lands in the West. Indian numbers were diminished by warfare, disease, inadequate nutrition resulting from the loss of hunting grounds and game habitat, or inadequate nutrition from the food supplied to Indians on the reservations by the

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national government, attacks by settlers or miners, and the cultural disruption and disintegration of their societies. Some part of the Indian population assimilated into the general population, but assimilated Indians often faced discrimination in the larger society. Though the end result of the contact with the Europeans, which began in the 1600s, was a continuing series of disasters for the original inhabitants of North America, in this period, there were no campaigns of overt terrorism or ethnic cleansing directed against the indigenous inhabitants. Of course, as other factors had undermined the Indian population very effectively, it was not necessary for the government or the general population to formulate specific policies to force them on to the reservations and to the margins of society. One of the largest and most consistent campaigns of terrorism in the history of the United States was carried out in the former Confederate states after the Civil War ended. The Union Army was in effect serving as an occupying military force during the Reconstruction period. New state governments were set up immediately after the war, but many former Confederate soldiers and officials who had served in the Confederate or state governments were barred from voting. Those who were able to vote included most of the freed slaves (freedmen), southern unionists who had opposed secession, and a handful of northerners who had moved south to take advantage of opportunities (legal and questionable) in the former Confederate states. The consequence was a series of state administrations that were controlled by local Republicans. The Republicans as the party of union and emancipation benefited initially from support from the Republicans at the national level and from the disenfranchisement of voters of doubtful loyalty. The local Democratic parties then became the supporters of efforts to reestablish the old political system of white dominance. Once it was clear that the Republicans allied with party members in the North were going to continue to be in power, those opposed to the Republican rule and the extension of rights to former slaves organized to oppose the situation. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) became the most important organization to represent dissident groups. Initially, the KKK was formed as a fraternal organization, but it soon became a “firmly-rooted domestic political terror organisation.”1 In 1867, former Confederate cavalry general Nathan Bedford Forrest became the head of the KKK. The KKK’s goal was the replacement of the local Republican administrations with Democratic politicians who would reflect the views of the white voters in the various states. “To the white Southerner, the Ku Klux Klan was a law-and-order movement because

From the Civil War to World War I

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it was directed at the restoration of the proper order.”2 Local chapters of the KKK quickly appeared in many other parts of the South. Where the KKK did not appear, local groups with similar goals and similar techniques were formed. Most groups were, in fact, locally led with only marginal links to any regional organization. Forrest actually disbanded the KKK in 1869 after Tennessee, his home state, had passed out of Republican control. The fact that the Klan continued to operate and even expand in other states provides evidence of the local autonomy or independence of different Klan groupings.3 Whether local groups were actually affiliated with the KKK or were truly independent of that organization, they all shared similar objectives and used similar tactics. Terrorism was a key technique used by the KKK and similar groups in the South. It was an essential component of their efforts to regain control of the state governments or local offices. The freed slaves were a principal target of attacks and intimidation. The goal of the white dissidents was to keep the freed slaves from registering to vote. Blacks, consequently, were physically prevented from registering to vote.4 When they did manage to register to vote, violence and intimidation were used to prevent them from exercising their rights on election day. If a sufficient number of blacks could be prevented from voting by the use of such tactics, whites would be able to regain control of the government institutions by victories at the ballot boxes.5 Attacks on individual freedmen were intended to send a message to all the former slaves in a given region about the dangers involved in participating in the political life of their communities. Black militias were formed to protect black voters and even to intimidate white voters at times.6 Battles between the southern whites and black militias were fought with some frequency.7 The KKK in some cases, however, simply began to target members of the militia units, assaulting and beating the members and killing the officers.8 The KKK also targeted local white Republicans and other whites who were cooperating with the local political systems. Both whites and blacks were attacked to prevent them from remaining in control of local or state government. Murders, assaults, robbery, arson, and intimidation became the effective weapons for the Klan.9 The attacks in this period frequently involved elected Republican officials at the local or state level. In Arkansas, a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives was among those who were killed.10 Violence was especially heavy in election years.11 The concentration of the attacks around elections is hardly surprising as control of the government was a key goal of the

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dissidents. In some areas, the violence became so pervasive that local authority all but collapsed and the death toll reached hundreds.12 The number of persons killed in the attacks in the Reconstruction era cannot be adequately determined, given the lack of comprehensive records, but deaths and beatings were quite common. While most of the violence in the ex-Confederacy was local and relied on a series of attacks on individuals or small groups, there were some conflicts on a larger scale. There were numerous riots in which the white population targeted blacks to frighten and intimidate them.13 In 1868, there was virtual rebellion and massive violence in Arkansas. The courts were forced to close, government officials were killed, and hundreds of blacks were murdered.14 In 1876, violence in South Carolina against blacks was especially great. The killings throughout the state eventually prompted President Grant to dispatch troops to Arkansas (and other states).15 Some of the violence in the period more directly reflected struggles for political power. In the early 1870s, violence flared in New Orleans, Louisiana. Federal troops had to intervene between two factions battling for control of the state government. The two sides brought artillery and Gatling guns to their confrontation, and the death toll could have been quite high but for the military intervention.16 There was another conflict—in 1874 in Arkansas—between two Republican groups for control of the state government. President Ulysses S. Grant eventually intervened and chose a winner in the conflict. More importantly, he ordered the army to enforce his decision, thereby effectively ending the controversy.17 These more obvious examples of violence went beyond the simple use of terrorism, but they included terrorist violence and evolved out of the background of terrorism and intimidation that had become part of the political process in all the southern states. The constant intimidation of voters, assaults on government officials, and murders that were intended to pave the way for gaining control of state government, all served to ease the way for escalations of violence that included bringing artillery and Gatling guns to the streets of New Orleans. The attacks were not extended to the national government. In fact, the constitution of the KKK in 1868 pledged its allegiance to the U.S. government.18 The KKK and similar groups tried to avoid direct conflicts with any federal troops stationed in their states. When federal troops did become involved in police activity, resistance tended to disappear.19 Any attacks on federal troops could have prompted major retaliation from the army or the federal government; the southerners were not attempting to refight the Civil War but to place the former


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political elite back in power. The national government, however, did make other efforts to preserve the position of former slaves in the South, in part because the political power of the national Republican Party had been enhanced with control of state parties. In 1871, Congress passed the Ku Klux Klan Act that gave local federal prosecutors the power to try members of the KKK and to call upon federal troops for support in at least some circumstances. Though this law did undermine the KKK’s freedom to operate,20 the reality on the ground was different. Filing charges in federal courts proved to be of limited value in many cases. Jurors and witnesses were afraid to serve or testify because they would be killed if they did so.21 Even when charges could be brought and witnesses were willing to appear, convictions were often very difficult to obtain when the jurors were often drawn from communities that were sympathetic to those practicing violent intimidation of blacks.22 While the activism on the part of the national government provided some opportunities for protecting the rights of the freedmen, it ultimately came too late to reverse the trend of violent intimidation that had led to the return of effective political power to white hands in some states and had prepared the way for its return in others. In the final analysis, the actions of the KKK and other similar dissident groups proved to be quite successful in reversing the political fortunes of blacks (and Republicans) and whites (and Democrats). In state after state, the local Democrats representing the old white power structure were able to regain power. Once in power, voting rights were returned to the white population and the former slaves were progressively disenfranchised. The terror and violence had been extremely successful in keeping blacks and white Republicans from the polls and in leading to the electoral victories of those opposed to granting rights to former slaves. Blacks and their supporters were kept from voting and from even running for office. When the last of the black militia units were dissolved, all hopes of effective self-defense ended in many areas.23 This campaign of terrorism reversed one of the significant outcomes of the Civil War itself, at least for many, many decades. In the first few years after the shift in political power away from Republican and black hands, paramilitary terrorist groups such as the KKK remained in operation, but they disappeared relatively quickly once the political system was in white hands. With the powers of state and local government available, the local white population no longer needed to rely on extralegal groups; they could now rely on state repression to accomplish their goals. The passage of the anti-Klan act

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actually would appear to have come too late to prevent the return to power of whites and elimination of blacks from meaningful participation. The withdrawal of the last federal troops in the aftermath of the 1876 election and the end of Reconstruction effectively cemented the position of the white population in control of local offices. The withdrawal of the remaining troops with the end of Reconstruction and a passive posture by national officials proved to be exactly the assistance that was needed by local white groups to consolidate their positions of power.24 The activities of the KKK and related groups were different in one important respect from most of the terrorism that occurred before the Civil War. These groups directly attacked the government structure, government officials, and the supporters of the existing political leadership. The KKK and related organizations were dissidents; they were not operating in support of the groups that were already in power as happened in the violence against Catholics, the Chinese, freed blacks in the North, Mormons, or abolitionists before the war. As was the case with John Brown in Kansas, the violence was antigovernment, as the KKK sought to transfer control of the local and state governments from freemen and Republicans to whites and Democrats. Unlike the terrorism that preceded the American Revolution, however, the violence in the South was not directed toward gaining independence or changing the basic nature of the political system. The fact that the Klan avoided direct confrontations with federal troops was an indication of the limited nature of its objectives—a realistic limitation, given the results of the Civil War. The KKK in this period provides a classic example of a terrorist group seeking to change the makeup of those groups in control of the political system. Ultimately, the group was quite successful in achieving this goal. Although the KKK and similar organizations disappeared from the scene with the end of Reconstruction as they were no longer needed, violence against blacks continued in the South but in a different form. White-dominated governments were able to discriminate against blacks and impose segregation and barriers to advancement, but violence was also used, inevitably with the tacit or direct support of governments. Though violent attacks remained as a form of social control for the dominant white population, the whites no longer needed clandestine organizations such as the Klan. Blacks who were perceived to lack the appropriate deference to whites or who were thought to be guilty of crimes were beaten or killed. Lynching, which by this period had come to mean extrajudicial execution—usually but not necessarily by


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hanging—was frequently used against blacks.25 While the lynchings were not limited to the southern states, they were more prevalent in this region, and blacks were most frequently the victims. Even in the case of suspected crimes, the lynchings served as warnings to the black population. It was better to get the right man, but it was not essential. The warning effect was clear even when the wrong man was hanged, “the Negro caste is punished through one of its representatives.”26 In the periods from 1882 to 1903 for which reasonably complete records are available, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas had the largest number of such extrajudicial executions.27 The lynchings were also notable for the toleration that the state showed for these actions. Charges were virtually never brought against anyone involved, even though many of the persons involved in the activities were well known and they did not attempt to disguise their identities. Local police either made no attempts or made only perfunctory attempts to investigate these murders.28 In addition to these more selective acts of violence directed against individuals but nonetheless intended to terrorize the larger audience of the black population, blacks in the South were also victims of riots in a number of cities where the white population attacked them.29 Wilmington, North Carolina, was the scene of one of the worst such riots in 1898. Just before the election of that year, whites threatened black voters and officials, and consequently were able to return those opposed to rights for blacks to government. After the electoral victory, all black government officials were forced to resign and black political leaders were run out of town. White rioters then attacked a black newspaper and other black businesses as well as any black citizens they could find, killing somewhere between twenty and hundred people in the process.30 The political position of the black population of Wilmington was effectively destroyed in these actions. The ultimate goal of the Wilmington riots such as the campaigns of extrajudicial punishments in the form of lynchings was to ensure the compliance of the black population with the existing power structure. Such riots were not restricted to the South. In Springfield, Illinois, whites felt threatened politically and economically by a prosperous black population. A three-day antiblack riot in 1908 led to the departure of most of the blacks from the city.31 Fear and intimidation were common and proven methods for attaining the political (as well as social and economic) objectives that went with keeping blacks in their place.32 Vigilante violence continued throughout this period of American history. Some of the lynchings of blacks in the South at times might

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qualify as vigilante action, but most of these murders were only tangentially related to specific crimes, especially when mobs were willing to hang any black person. They provide a clear example of a campaign of racial attacks designed to maintain the economic, social, and political status quo. While blacks were usually the victims of extrajudicial executions, approximately one quarter of the victims of lynchings after Reconstruction were whites.33 In most of these cases, their deaths were for specific criminal activities and they did reflect concern about the inability of local authorities to deal with outlaws. The best indication that any vigilante activity was related to specific crimes is that the groups involved in dispensing the justice were disbanded once the culprits had been caught and punished. In other cases, the vigilantism dealt with locally unacceptable behavior such as adultery, wife beating, drunkenness, and other activities not directly covered by state or local laws. Punishments in these cases usually involved beatings. The objectives here were social rather than political, and thus they generally do not constitute cases of terrorism. Vigilante groups, still generally known as White Caps, were still present to deal with criminal gangs. One of the more unusual White Cap groups appeared in New Mexico. It was organized by local Hispanics to defend against land seizures and other activities by the Anglo or English-speaking majority. The New Mexican White Caps relied on property attacks for the most part. They were somewhat successful in frightening the majority Anglo community and achieving some amelioration of the discriminatory practices being used. Eventually spies infiltrated the group and undercut its effectiveness, and it then disappeared.34 What is perhaps most interesting about this group is not that such a group was formed but that it was one of the rare anti-establishment groups of this type to appear. Probably the group that suffered relatively the most in this era, perhaps even more than freed slaves in the South, were Chinese immigrants. Many more Chinese migrated to the West Coast of the United States in the 1860s than they did in earlier times, in response to the need for workers on the Union Pacific, a portion of the transcontinental railroad, which was moving eastward from California. Chinese laborers were sought by the railroads in this period because passage from Hong Kong to California was cheaper than travel from New York or Chicago.35 The Chinese migrants also provided the workforce for other construction activities in the era of major railroad building in the West. Once the major rail lines were completed, the Chinese either settled in the cities on the Pacific Coast or they went to work in mines


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in other parts of the West. While dislike for the Chinese was quite common, their presence was tolerated during the Civil War and when workers were needed for the railroads. The end of the war and the return of demobilized soldiers to civilian life, however, meant increased competition for jobs with a corresponding increase in racial tensions.36 Just as in the days of the California Gold Rush, the Chinese during this period became targets of ethnic violence and terror that was clearly intended to drive them either out of the country or at least out of specific areas of the country. The Chinese who had been the longest in residence in California became targets of terrorism in this period with increasing frequency. In 1871, a street conflict between competing Chinese gangs in Los Angeles sparked violent attacks by anti-Chinese white mobs. They invaded the Chinese section of the city and attacked the Chinese and their property. When the violence was over, at least eighteen Chinese had been killed (and the total was probably higher), and there was major property damage as well.37 A grand jury that convened to investigate the violence failed to return a single indictment against anyone for any of the crimes.38 The attack was quite violent and a very good indication of the level of racism prevalent in the city, but the mob in this case, at least in this particular period, does not appear to have been part of any concerted campaign of ethnic cleansing directed at driving out the Chinese.39 Like violence against blacks elsewhere in the country, this attack was more of an effort at social control and keeping the Chinese in their place. Other cases in California, however, proved that the violence had ethnic cleansing as its intended goal as it had been in the earlier violence in the gold fields. In the 1870s, San Francisco actively sought to remove its Chinese residents from the city by the selective application of city ordinances.40 Los Angeles also followed the example of San Francisco and tried to use local ordinances and regulations to accomplish the same objective.41 In San Francisco, local businesspersons who hired Chinese became targets—they faced boycotts, and were the victims of arson and physical attacks.42 In 1877, there was a massive attack in San Francisco against the Chinese section of the city. As many as 10,000 rioters burnt Chinese property and assaulted any Chinese that they found, killing at least four. It required the mobilization of troops, civilian volunteers, and sailors from U.S. naval facilities and ships in the harbor to finally control the violence.43 These attempts at ethnic cleansing were not restricted to the major cities of California. In 1885 a battle between rival Chinese gangs in Eureka in the northern part of

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the state resulted in the accidental death of a white man, who was also a local city councilman. The anti-Chinese element in the city used this incident to expel the entire Chinese population numbering more than two hundred persons (somewhat ironically, they were sent to San Francisco by ship).44 What is noteworthy is not that racist elements in the majority population wanted to drive out the minority community, but the fact that the local Chinese felt obligated to abandon their homes. Violence in California against the Chinese had existed for so long that the even implied threat of violence was sufficient to achieve the purposes of the local racists. In 1876 and 1877, many towns in the West were the scenes of mob violence. Local Chinese had their homes and businesses burnt, were murdered, and driven out of the towns.45 There were some isolated, recorded incidents of attacks on local Chinese as well as major incidents in Rock Springs, Wyoming, Seattle, and Tacoma. Two Chinese were lynched in the Idaho territory because of their race, but no one was ever charged for the crime.46 In Oregon, a Chinese mining camp was attacked, and thirty-one miners were robbed and killed. While the perpetrators were generally known in the local community, only three individuals were ever brought to trial, but were acquitted of the charges.47 Washington Territory saw similar attacks on miners, perhaps resulting from news of the massive attacks in Rock Springs, Wyoming, discussed below. An attack on Chinese miners by five white men and two Indians left three dead, and the rest fled. “Public sentiment against the yellow race was such that though these men were arrested and tried for murder, they could not be convicted.”48 In late 1885, anti-Chinese feelings peaked in the Washington Territory. Local groups started a concerted campaign to drive the Chinese out of the area. Committees of citizens were formed in Tacoma and Seattle for the express purpose of expelling the Chinese residents from the territory. The committees in these two cities directed nearby smaller towns to form their own committees to combat the Chinese presence, a suggestion that was readily accepted. While many members of these local groups hoped that legal means could be used to expel the Chinese, there were many others who were quite willing to use threats, intimidation, and violence to achieve their goals. These local committees were very effective, and in 1886 virtually the entire Chinese population of the region fled, leaving only a handful behind.49 Local officials were threatened and warned against helping the Chinese under threat, although they were sometimes helpless to intervene in the anti-Chinese pogroms.50 In many cases, however, the local


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officials choose to stand aside and tolerate (or even support) the attacks. The Seattle police force, for example, was clearly unreliable in the crisis and was not available to defend the Chinese or their property.51 The Chinese residents who were terrorized into abandoning their homes and property were not able in all cases to arrange for their immediate departure by ship. The local authorities had to mobilize local forces and volunteers opposed to the violence to protect the Chinese awaiting evacuation from the fury of heavily armed mobs.52 In the aftermath of the violence and after the departure of the Chinese, federal authorities eventually managed to bring some of the individuals responsible for the attacks in Seattle to trial, but the courts could not obtain any convictions with local juries.53 The result was basically the same in Tacoma except that in the authorities in this city could not even obtain any indictments.54 One of the worst outbreaks of anti-Chinese violence in this era occurred in 1885 in Rock Springs, Wyoming Territory. The Chinese workers on the railroads had often gone into mining, partly because, in many cases, the railroads owned coal mines, which produced fuel for their locomotives. Rock Springs had major coal mines owned by the railroads, and the Chinese there accounted for approximately two-thirds of all the mine workers.55 Tensions between the Chinese the other miners had been increasing, and a minor incident between white and Chinese minors sparked a confrontation. The white miners were able to rally support from white nonminers in the community, and an armed white mob was mobilized to attack the Chinese. The mob burnt the homes of the Chinese; they also assaulted them, killing twentyeight and wounding many others. The survivors had little choice but to flee for their lives.56 Military units had to be deployed to stabilize the situation, but the Chinese miners were not able to return; they were relocated to other mines in other areas. When the situation had stabilized, a grand jury was impaneled, but in what was a typical result for cases where the Chinese were the victims, no indictments were issued.57 The anti-Chinese violence was pervasive in the western part of the United States where the bulk of the Chinese lived. In some respects, it was similar to the nativist violence against other recent arrivals in the country. Racism was obviously an underlying cause for the attacks. Other factors, however, came into play as well in the case of the Chinese. The Chinese often proved to be more docile workers than native-born Americans or even recent European immigrants. They worked for lower wages and were less likely to strike. In fact, the

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Chinese miners first appeared in Rock Springs as strikebreakers.58 These attributes, naturally viewed favorably by employers, meant that the Chinese were often in competition for jobs with whites. It is not surprising that the anti-Chinese violence was more likely to occur when unemployment was higher, and that workers in competition with the Chinese were often in the forefront of the attacks.59 Concern about competition in California resulted in the state actually passing a law making it illegal for a corporation—but not private companies or individuals—to hire any Chinese.60 Ultimately, the racism and the competition issues were resolved when in 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which prohibited Chinese immigration.61 Japanese immigrants, who began to arrive somewhat later, faced the same hostility. Japanese migration was limited more informally through an understanding between Japan and the United States, which controlled and then prohibited immigration from Japan to the United States.62 This so-called Gentlemen’s Agreement extended the discrimination faced by the Chinese to the other major source of Asian migration. The violence against the Chinese thus indirectly led to the exclusion of the Japanese. The Chinese were clearly subjected to organized and continuous assaults wherever they lived. They were treated as poorly in the West as former slaves in the South or free blacks in the North. “No variety of anti-European sentiment has ever approached the violent extreme to which anti-Chinese agitation went.”63 As was the case with blacks, the Chinese quickly realized that they could be assaulted at virtually any place and any time and that the attackers would not be punished.64 The many acquittals or failures to even indict persons for such attacks are evidence of the impunity that the attackers normally enjoyed. It is interesting to note that not even Indians in the Washington Territory could be convicted for attacks against the Chinese, although it is possible that their immunity resulted from acting in concert with whites. Murders of Chinese became such a commonplace occurrence in the West that newspapers often did not even report them.65 The violence was endemic, although many of the attacks were locally organized and led, and lacked central direction. The numerous attacks on local Chinese are examples of attempted or successful ethnic cleansing in which terror was used to drive the Chinese out of specific areas of the country. In the final analysis the anti-Chinese groups managed to achieve their goal when Congress gave into public pressure and prevented the Chinese (and then the Japanese) from entering the country.


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Former slaves and the Chinese clearly suffered heavily from violence and terror, but these were not the only groups that were targeted. Hispanics continued to face violent discrimination in the Southwest. In Texas, Mexican Americans were as likely to be lynched as blacks were.66 The anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant sentiments prevalent before the Civil War had not disappeared. New waves of migrations brought many new Catholics from southern and eastern Europe into the country. The American Protective Association (APA) was formed in 1886 to further American values, and it warned about the dangers from Catholic immigrants.67 Violence against Catholics was not all that frequent, but the APA was often involved in the violence that did occur.68 Interestingly enough, the APA was quite strong in the West where there was not much Catholic immigration.69 Of course, the APA with its antiforeign views was able to draw support from the antiChinese sentiment in this area where some chapters were clearly antiOriental.70 Many of the new migrants were considered socially or racially inferior to those descended from migrants from northern or western Europe. Descendants of northern Europe migrants started referring to themselves as “whites” to distinguish themselves from the new migrants from southern Europe.71 Italians in the South sometimes became special targets. In some cases, their social unacceptability was increased by their willingness to accept social equality in their interactions with the blacks, and consequently they became targets of lynchings and attacks.72 The new European migrants included significant numbers of Jews, for the first time. They also became targets of mob violence and of those who considered themselves to be native-born or more American.73 Anti-Semitism, however, was limited because Catholics were still considered the major foreign threat.74 Though the Catholics and Jews did not face the same level of violence as blacks or Chinese did, they were still victims of terrorist attacks by the Protestant majority in the country, which clearly at some level hoped to reduce the numbers of immigrants or at least to drive them away to some other city or state. New Mexico at the end of the nineteenth century provides another unusual, even exceptional, example of political violence that involved terrorism. Like other western states and territories, the New Mexico Territory saw a number of conflicts over control of land that led to range wars, gun battles, and murders. These conflicts were primarily economic in nature and straightforward fights over the control of relatively scarce resources. New Mexico, however, was the scene of campaigns of assassinations aimed at leading political figures in

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both parties. This “epidemic of assassination,” which began in 1867, was over by 1900.75 Prominent Republicans and Democrats became targets, and there is evidence that leaders in both parties were involved in the assassinations and attempted assassinations. “The most important point is that virtually all factions in New Mexico accepted and used assassinations as a way of eliminating troublesome opponents.”76 These murderous campaigns were meant not only to remove especially troublesome opponents from the political scene, but also to terrorize members of the opposing party. When assassinations become part of political campaigns, they are clearly intended to reach target audiences well beyond the immediate victims.77 The last part of the nineteenth century also saw major labor violence between early labor groups, seeking higher wages and collective bargaining rights, and owners and management, who were often determined to prevent unionization. Strikers often attempted to prevent strikebreakers from taking their jobs. The violence resulting from confrontations between strikers and new workers, however, had a primarily economic motivation, even when there were attempts to terrorize replacement workers. The companies, in turn, frequently used armed guards, who were often persons hired from the Pinkerton Detective Agency, to protect the plants and replacement workers. These armed guards were quite willing to use violence against the strikers, sometimes in self-defense and sometimes with much less provocation. Violence by company guards was at times used to terrorize the workers. In many cases, the owners were also able to call upon the government to send in troops to use force in their battles with workers. The 1892 steel strike at Homestead, Pennsylvania, exemplified the types of conflicts that could occur. An announced reduction in wages resulted in a strike. Pinkertons attempted to come in by water, a running gun battle ensued, and left dead and wounded on both sides.78 When the National Guard arrived on the scene to protect property and the strikebreakers, the union was on the road to defeat.79 The mining sector proved to be one of the more violent areas of conflict between workers and owners that involved the use of terror. Struggles in the western part of the country turned violent while the anthracite-mining region in Pennsylvania saw the rise of the Molly Maguires and a campaign of violence against mine owners and their supporters. In the western states, violence during strikes was not uncommon. Strikers would occasionally damage company property and would attempt to intimidate strikebreakers. Less frequently, more


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militant labor organizers would consciously use violence as a tool to advance their cause and to intimidate owners and nonunion workers.80 The conflicts with the Chinese described above occurred frequently because the Chinese were willing to work as strikebreakers. This proved to be an advantage to the strikers as they could mobilize groups not normally sympathetic with unions to attack those seen as racial inferiors. Violence was present in labor disputes where there were no Chinese miners. The company guards in turn would sometimes resort to force to “control” the strikers or to defeat unions and to protect their property during strikes. The guards deputized were provided with the authority of law enforcement.81 In 1914, in the confrontation in a strike at Ludlow, Colorado, guards fired on a striker’s camp, killing nearly twenty, which included workers as well as women and children.82 If violence at a strike site escalated, the mine owners were frequently in a position to call upon the state militia or other government resources to restore order—usually in their favor. The bias of the National Guard or militia was fairly obvious in those cases where management or mining companies provided financial subsidies for their operations.83 State troops would also be called in. Local officials who were seen as being prounion or who presented difficulties for the owners would be removed from office.84 The presence of the private armed forces or sympathetic state militia troops permitted the antiunion groups to form vigilante committees that would move against union officials. Meetings would be disrupted, union officials and members would be forced to leave town, and supporters of the union would be threatened, intimidated, and attacked. State and local authorities were often tolerant of or supportive of these local vigilante groups, making it much easier for the groups to operate and to successfully intimidate the would-be union members.85 The state governments frequently facilitated strikebreaking activities and provided government support for paramilitary terrorism. Needless to say, very rarely were any criminal proceedings instituted for attacks against the unions or their supporters. It was rare for the unions or those attempting to organize unions to rely on violence to win the day. The leaders realized that not only was the use of violence rarely successful,86 but also it was often counterproductive as it gave management the opportunity to seek assistance from the state in the form of militia units or special police.87 There were some examples of violence, including the murder of a former governor of Idaho early in the 1900s, apparently for using the state militia to

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support management during labor disputes.88 Such preplanned attacks by labor were relatively rare and they usually did not involve campaigns of terrorist violence. The anthracite coal-mining region in eastern Pennsylvania in the 1870s was the scene of major violence involving management and miners. Many of the miners were Irish Catholics who found themselves facing not only management, but also often a hostile Protestant population. The situation became worse in many respects once migration from Ireland as a consequence of the Potato Famine led to the Irish Catholics becoming a majority in some parts of this mining region. The Molly Maguires, a term that originally referred to native dissidents who were opposed to English landlords in Ireland, was also the name given to a group of Irish Catholic miners who attacked mining companies, officials, and owners in this region of Pennsylvania. They sought to dominate the region through the systematic use of violence, and they were initially successful.89 There were property attacks, assaults, and even murders. This violence was a response to poor pay and working conditions, but it also represented opposition to the local power structure, which favored the owners. The actual extent of the Molly Maguire organization has always been unclear, as violence was endemic to the area and at least some of the attacks that occurred were personal or criminal activities designed for personal gain. The local Protestant population assumed that most Irish Catholic miners were part of clandestine groups that were disloyal to the political system—a local reflection of anti-Catholic bias present in the country. When arrests had been made in earlier years for various violent acts, juries were packed and alibis were swiftly provided for the accused—additional evidence that convinced many of the existence of an underground, secret, Catholic organization.90 Some of the violence in this period, however, was organized and undertaken by persons who admitted to being members of the Molly Maguires. The violence at times was also successful in mounting a challenge to the local economic and political system.91 The increasing violence in the 1870s finally led to a counteroffensive by the owners, and the resulting crackdown eventually broke the back of the group. Individuals who admitted to or even suspected of being members of the group were brought to trial and inevitably convicted, often by prosecutors supplied by the mining companies or the railroads (which owned many of the mines).92 The state authorities helped to ensure convictions by carefully excluding Catholics from the juries as well as anyone who might be subjected to intimidation by members or supporters of


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the Molly Maguires.93 As some alibis had involved perjured testimony in the past, the state began to actively prosecute anyone who provided the defendants with alibis for specific crimes by charging and quickly convicting them of perjury (with appropriate prison sentences).94 Needless to say, witnesses for the defense (both false and real) stopped coming forward under these circumstances, and convictions of the Molly Maguires accused of violent acts became easier. State and local authorities also tolerated the activities of local vigilante committees that supported the mining companies and intimidated the local Irish Catholic community.95 The combination of active prosecution, persecution, and state-tolerated vigilante action proved to be quite effective in stamping out opposition from the Irish Catholic miners, both those organized in the Molly Maguires and those who simply agreed with their complaints. The confrontations between workers and management usually ended in defeat for the workers, especially when the resources of the state were mobilized against the workers. State authorities and police either violated the rights of the workers or permitted private groups and private vigilantes to use whatever action necessary to help control the workers. Violence left workers dead, and strike leaders were the victims of some of the lynchings that lacked any racial motivation.96 While the motivation for worker violence was usually economic, the violence sanctioned by the owners often had additional political objectives—preservation of the local policy structure and defeat of the perceived challenges to it. As many of the workers were immigrants—often Catholic, Chinese, but sometimes Jewish or black—the violent nativist tradition present in other conflicts before and after the Civil War could be harnessed to control workers.97 In the Pennsylvania coalfields, the English and Welsh miners were often pitted against the Irish.98 An undercover operative investigating the Molly Maguires for the mining companies in the anthracite fields discovered two other violent groups of workers whose members were neither Catholic nor Irish; however, it was only the presumed members of the Catholic Molly Maguires who were targeted, brought to trial, and convicted.99 The combination of worker militancy and minority status was apparently seen as more threatening to the system than worker militancy alone. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, anarchists began to launch attacks in many countries against the existing political systems and the ruling classes. The extent of labor unrest and attacks on labor in the United States and elsewhere convinced many anarchists of the

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necessity for bringing about change in the political system to meet the needs of the working class and their families and to provide for a more equitable system. The anarchists first attempted to accomplish their goals by education (propaganda of the word), but their verbal efforts had little effect in persuading those in power to modify the existing systems and share the benefits with the workers. They then resorted to violent attacks (propaganda of the deed) in the hope that violent actions would inspire the public to rise up against their governments to bring about the necessary change. If such uprisings did not immediately occur, they hoped that the threat of terrorism would lead the governments to increase the levels of repression, which then would start a cycle of attacks and repression that would ultimately lead the population into rebellion.100 The anarchists frequently focused their efforts on the assassination of political leaders and heads of state. Although most of these assassination attempts were in Europe, one of them was made in the United States, an attack in 1901 on President William McKinley. Though many of the attacks by anarchists were part of organized campaigns, individuals with anarchist tendencies were also inspired by an assassination or attempted assassination to undertake similar violent acts.101 These assassination attempts thus represented an example of a leaderless resistance type of approach to terrorism where individuals or small groups adopted the practice without central direction. McKinley’s assassin would appear to belong to this category. Inspired by anarchist writings and the previous assassination attempts in Europe he decided to kill President McKinley.102 In words eerily reminiscent of President Bush’s after the September 2001 attack, President Theodore Roosevelt, in September of 1901, called a campaign to exterminate terrorism in the aftermath of McKinley’s assassination.103 Needless to say, terrorism has managed to survive Roosevelt’s call to action. Most of those who believed in the anarchist or related ideologies eschewed terrorism and violence as advocated by political theorists, recognizing that is was likely to be self-defeating for the working class and the poor.104 Even so, there were some scattered incidents other than the assassination of President McKinley, which involved anarchists or presumed anarchists. An anarchist, operating on his own, attempted to assassinate the plant manager involved in the strike and in the violence at the steel plant in Homestead, Pennsylvania. He saw the plant manager, who attempted to break the union, as a symbol of the overall repression of workers in the political and economic system.105 In another incident, a bomb was thrown at a labor rally in Haymarket


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Square in Chicago on May Day in 1886. Seven police officers were killed and more than sixty wounded.106 Anarchists were blamed for the attack, and the authorities quickly arrested a number of them. Despite a lack of any real evidence linking any of the anarchists to the bombing, eight were convicted of inciting violence, and four were executed for their presumed role in the crime.107 They were charged and convicted for their political beliefs. The actual perpetrators of the bombing were never determined with any certainty. The bombing could have actually been done either by anarchists or others involved in the labor movement; it might also have been undertaken by individuals or groups opposed to labor who used the bombing as a false flag attack designed to bring discredit upon anarchists or the labor movement. In 1910, two bombs went off in a printing plant in Los Angeles during a confrontation over an effort to unionize the employees. In a third incident, however, two Italian anarchists were caught placing a bomb and were convicted of the crime.108 The general unpopularity of anarchism, especially after the assassination of President McKinley meant that the anarchists had become a suspect community in the United States. Like the Catholic immigrants, they were also suspected of all kinds of conspiracies and were assumed to be guilty of all kinds of crimes and violent deeds. In the wake of McKinley’s assassination, mobs attacked anarchists and anarchist newspapers, in retaliation.109 In the final analysis, the handful of attacks by anarchists or those inspired by the anarchists had very little effect on the political and economic situation in the United States. In this era, the use of terrorism by a variety of groups was widespread. The violence was a mixture of terrorism against and in support of the existing system. The battles between labor and owners reflected both antisystem and prosystem terrorism with higher levels of terror being used in support of the system. The violence by both sides did involve ideology although economic concerns were often more obvious. The state militia or National Guard, police, and local authorities either directly used violence against unions and strikers or created situations in which supporters of management and vigilantes were relatively free to use terror and intimidation against the unions and workers. If criminal proceedings ever reached the courtroom, it was the workers who were brought to trial, not the owners, or their employees. Even when company guards or the police were brought to trial for their violent actions, they were acquitted.110 Members of vigilante groups were almost never brought to trial for their actions. The workers, on the other hand, frequently were tried and convicted as the

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cases involving the Molly Maguires aptly demonstrate. The courts simply became another mechanism for supporting the status quo and overlooking transgressions of those whom the system favored. Union violence was less frequent and less effective. The violent activities of the anarchists were uncoordinated and relatively infrequent. The continuing terrorism based in communal groups also reflected a significant amount of state toleration for preservation of the status quo. Terrorism directed against blacks in the South after Reconstruction clearly falls into this category. Chinese, Catholics, Hispanics, Jews for the first time, and migrants in general (many of whom were also Catholic or Jewish) were targets of violence as most of them had been in the years before the Civil War. While anti-Catholic violence lacked the degree of organization associated with the outbreaks of violence before the Civil War, it was still present. Anti-Catholic rhetoric provided a familiar way of dealing with pressure from immigrant groups and appealed to middle-class Protestants facing status anxiety caused by the rise of a Catholic middle class.111 The migrants from southern and eastern Europe were also seen to be dangerous to the American institutions, and the racism of the Anglo-Saxon groups in the country came into play vis-à-vis these groups as well.112 Racism prevalent in the North led the descendants of migrants from northern Europe to identify themselves as white men and distinguish themselves from the new migrants from southern Europe.113 The Chinese, of course, were the targets of some of the most systematic violence. In at least some cases, such as the San Francisco riots and the troubles in Seattle and Tacoma, local authorities did eventually mobilize the resources to provide them some protection, which was limited, as even when culprits were brought to trial, convictions could not be obtained. Thus even when the state was not willing to tolerate the violence, the local population was. There were links between the communal violence and labor agitation. The Molly Maguires were an Irish and Catholic group, although the group’s membership probably did not include as many Irish Catholics as was commonly thought. The dreaded conspiratorial group was not as large and dangerous as feared. In other places, many of the workers involved in the battles with owners and management were also recent migrants, often from southern or eastern Europe. The anti-Chinese incidents at Rock Springs combined labor concerns with communal antagonism. The Chinese being more quiescent (docile) workers than others were not willing to participate in strikes. They also often worked for lower wages. They were thus doubly damned


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for being “different” and for hurting other workers by accepting less pay. Interestingly enough, most of the white miners involved in the attacks on the Chinese at Rock Springs were themselves recent arrivals in the country, but from northern Europe.114 These communal differences were responsible for the ability of the European migrants to rally support from other groups in the town. Violence against black Americans in this period also reflected a variety of factors. The attacks in the South during Reconstruction were a rare example of major terrorist assaults on government. These attacks, however, did have limited objectives, as the control of the existing state and local government institutions in the South (and not the national government) was their goal. The violent dissidents finally did win control and the old community-based leadership regained political power in state after state. Once the transition to white control was complete, the KKK and similar groups disappeared, but the terrorism in the form of lynchings that was aimed at keeping the former slaves subjugated was clearly tolerated by state governments and local populations—and in many cases was actively supported by them. The shift in targets of lynching, from blacks and whites during Reconstruction to predominately blacks, after Reconstruction, was a reflection of the changes in the political system that occurred. As a consequence, while the violence in the late 1860s and early 1870s was communal, marginally ideological, and was dissident terrorism against the established government, the violence against black Americans for the rest of the period was similar to attacks on the Chinese, Catholics, Jews, and immigrants in general. While blacks remained targets, the rationale for the attacks had changed. The terrorism in this period, as in the years before the Civil War, was often successful, at least in the short run. Members of the target groups were intimidated or forced out of certain areas. The Chinese in particular were the victims of ethnic cleansing campaigns. Of course, they generally relocated to other areas in the West (where they might again become targets for terrorist violence and ethnic cleansing), as there was no nationally organized campaign for driving them out of the country. With depressingly regularity, the courts failed to convict anyone of crimes against the Chinese, and state and local governments supported or tolerated efforts aimed at driving out the Chinese. The Chinese Exclusion Act did eventually limit their numbers. Although ultimately workers did achieve the right to organize and bargain collectively, the unionization of the industrial workforce in factories or mines was delayed because of the violence in this period. As political

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leaders and local authorities often directly or tacitly sided with those who attacked the “foreign” communities or labor groups, it is not surprising that so much of the terrorism was at least partially successful in achieving its objectives. Action by dissident groups was much less effective in achieving its goals. The anarchists most obviously had little impact. The violence that originated from labor movements or was a reaction to attacks against workers was also usually ineffective. The takeover of state governments in the South by white dissidents was much more effective than most acts of dissident terrorism. It stands, however, as one of the few examples of effective dissident terrorism when compared with the more successful use of terrorism by groups attempting to preserve the status quo.

5 The Interwar Years:The Red Scare to Fascism

At the turn of the twentieth century, the United States had begun to change because of massive waves of immigration, the acquisition of overseas territories (and attendant responsibilities) as a consequence of the Spanish-American War, and increasing urbanization and industrialization. In the Philippines, the United States faced a guerrilla insurgency, first from Filipinos seeking to create an independent state and then from the Muslim Moros in the southern part of the colony, seeking to separate from the rest of the territory. The acquisition of the Philippines and the consequent guerrilla warfare, however, did not lead to any campaigns of terrorism. In Hawaii, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and Cuba, a de facto protectorate for a number of years, opposition to the American presence was not violent at this time. American military involvement or interference in Mexico, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua during or after World War I involved fighting, but did not bring any terrorist violence to the United States itself. Domestically, the Indian population had already been forced onto reservations or assimilated (more or less) into the general population, thereby ending over two hundred years of conflict. This period, however, did witness the appearance of a number of groups that were willing to use violence and intimidation against their political opponents or against groups that they considered dangerous or threatening in some fashion. The period beginning with World War I and ending with World War II saw violent incidents of extreme patriotism, starting with the declaration of war by the United States in 1917: campaigns against foreign radicals during and after the war; the reappearance of an organized Ku Klux Klan; the creation of native fascist movements; continued lynching and race riots; and violent activities by organized crime groups that at times had political objectives at the local level.

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World War I saw an outburst of patriotism from many Americans, but this support for the country and its policies during wartime often took an ugly turn. Government laws were used against those seen as hindering the war effort. Pacifists, socialists opposed to the war because it was not to the advantage of the working classes, or anyone thought to favor Germany became a target of official and popular wrath. Laws were used to silence opponents of the war, and hefty prison sentences were imposed on those who publicly spoke out against the American involvement in the conflict. Public reactions, moreover, often went beyond official prosecutions. Persons regarded as opponents of the war or those judged insufficiently patriotic became targets. Germans were frequent targets of assaults and property attacks.1 When war protesters organized demonstrations and parades, off-duty military personnel and members of the public attacked them.2 Individuals opposed to the war were beaten, tarred and feathered, and in extreme cases, murdered for their political views or for presumed lack of patriotism.3 Failure to buy war bonds or support the Red Cross could even lead to violent attacks.4 Lack of action by local authorities became typical of these times. Arrests were rare, but when arrests were made, charges were usually not brought. In the rare cases when the perpetrators of the violence actually went to trial, local juries failed to convict anyone, even when antiwar protesters had died in the attacks.5 No one was going to be sent to jail for being patriotic, not even a violent patriot. Much of the concern with radicalism and the lack of patriotism at this time centered on the International Workers of the World (IWW) or Wobblies. Like other labor organizations, the IWW had also faced problems in the years before the war. It had been targets of attacks and discrimination, especially in the western part of the country,6 but in the war years, the IWW came under greater suspicion for many reasons. As an organization, it attracted the more militant workers who were seen as an even greater threat by middle- and upper-class Americans.7 Many of its leaders were recent immigrants into the country, and such foreign associations were considered dangerous.8 The IWW was under greater fire once the war started as the group was considered unpatriotic. The charge had a basis in fact, as, IWW theory regarded patriotism and nationalism as ideologies that were among the worst of the existing political ideas as these misled the workers and kept them from focusing on more important issues, such as class differences and workers’ rights.9 Like other labor unions in general, there was doubt about the IWW’s loyalty when it was trying to organize

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workers during wartime; consequently, it became a scapegoat during the war for any problems that appeared.10 More than a thousand miners suspected of being IWW members and German sympathizers were expelled from Arizona.11 Ultimately, the “threat” from the IWW and other radicals in the labor movement was contained during the war by the deployment of military troops in the mines and other sectors of the economy.12 Even when the war was over, the attacks on the IWW offices and the harassment of its members continued.13 Throughout this period of violence, local authorities either could not or would not do anything to protect the IWW and its members. Legislatures in the western states passed laws to limit the activities of the IWW, and a number of state governors asked the national government to ban IWW’s actions. The governors argued that it was necessary to ban this labor group, as they were unable to protect its members from the other citizens.14 Their inability to protect the group from citizen vigilantes thus became an argument for eliminating the organization. The violent actions directed against the IWW and against other suspect individuals and groups during the war were locally organized for the most part, but they did constitute campaigns of intimidation and terrorism. Those involved in the attacks had clear political objectives and goals, and in many cases, they achieved them. Dissenters and antiwar protesters were often silenced. The obvious political objective of this violence, even if unstated, was to silence opposition to the war and to radical labor ideas. Though dissent and contrary points of view were not eliminated from the public arena, the number of dissenting voices was reduced. The IWW had not been accorded even basic civil liberties before the war, but during the war, it had to suffer limitations on dissent and on unpopular views. The IWW’s effectiveness in organizing workers, of course, was severely limited by the actions of the vigilante groups and of the government. Much of the vigilante action had at least the toleration if not the support of local government officials, in part because the public supported the intolerance directed against the IWW and other presumed radicals. These actions and the fear of foreign ideas and influences prevalent during the war helped to set the stage for the Red Scare of 1919–1920. The Red Scare was a logical continuation of the fear of foreign influences so prevalent in the years immediately preceding the war. The impetus for the outbreak of the paranoia came from a number of sources. First, there were the wartime events that involved a real enemy. Second, early in 1919, labor groups in Seattle called a general strike. While strikes were nothing new in the United States, a general strike

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was different. Such strikes in Europe were often called to achieve broader political goals, not just higher wages or better working conditions. General strikes had preceded some of the uprisings at the end of World War I. Though the strike was quickly called off, it led many Americans to fear that the country had been penetrated and influenced by radical ideas and foreign ideologies.15 Finally, there was a series of bombings beginning in 1917, through 1918, and extending into 1919. In 1917, a number of bombings in Milwaukee led to the arrest and conviction of eleven Italian anarchists.16 In May of 1918, it was discovered that a group of package bombs had been sent through the mail. Though thirty-six bombs sent, only two were delivered. They were intended for politicians, elected officials—including Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer—and leading capitalists.17 In June of 1918, bombs went off in eight different cities within hours of each other. These bombs were directed against similar targets, and one of them destroyed the front of the residence of Attorney General Palmer in Washington, DC.18 Although isolated and small groups of violent anarchists were undoubtedly responsible for at least some of these attacks, the bombs were perceived by the public as a major, organized conspiracy.19 Attorney General Palmer at this point became an advocate of strenuous dealing with the foreign threat from radicals, socialists and Bolsheviks, and anarchists. He instituted what came to be known as the “Palmer raids” to round up those responsible for the threat to the nation. While his advocacy of dramatic and drastic action could have reflected the fact that he had been a target of the bombs, he had also developed presidential aspirations and hoped to use the battle against foreign radicals as a platform for improving his chances of gaining the Democratic nomination. More than 3,000 noncitizens were rounded up in the raids, and Palmer intended to deport them all to the Soviet Union, regardless of the country of their origin, as they were seen as sympathetic to the new Bolshevik regime.20 Palmer was in a position to operate with a great deal of initiative in his efforts to gather up these individuals for deportation as President Woodrow Wilson had suffered a stroke and had been incapacitated. Wilson’s incapacitation, however, ultimately put a break on Palmer’s efforts when the Secretary of Labor, acting on his authority under existing law, blocked most of the deportations.21 Thus, ultimately only 249 of the individuals were actually sent to the Soviet Union.22 Interestingly enough, while the bombing campaigns precipitated the attempted deportations, the most deadly attack did not occur until 1920 when most of the national

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anxiety associated with the Red Scare had declined. A bomb on Wall Street resulted in more than thirty deaths and injury for more than two hundred people.23 This time, the public reaction was more subdued and did not lead to a new round of persecutions. Public opinion ultimately decided that Palmer had overreacted in the earlier crisis, and his presidential ambitions were foiled as he failed to gain the necessary support to win the nomination.24 The actions of government were strengthened by the actions of the public. Citizens attacked anyone thought to support foreign ideas during the Red Scare.25 The IWW was still a target even though the war was over. Groups such as the National Security League, the American Defense Society, and the National Civic Federation had become advocates of patriotism during the war, and they continued to emphasize the need for everyone to perform their patriotic duties even after the war.26 The American Legion, formed by ex-servicemen, became involved in efforts to defend the United States. It engaged in attacks against socialists and the IWW, drove off suspected radicals, and was in favor of deporting any radical alien or citizen opposed to the American way of life. The attacks by members of the Legion were often quite effective in silencing those suspected of having radical ideas or in forcing them to leave the cities and towns where the Legion was active.27 The waves of bombings that helped to precipitate the Red Scare were obvious examples of terrorism in the period. While no group responsible for the bombing attacks, including the Wall Street bomb, was ever identified, the number of mail bombs and simultaneous bombings make it obvious that there was some organizational activity involved in the attacks. The choice of targets, including both politicians and prominent capitalists (capitalism was an obvious target of the bomb on Wall Street), further underscores the leftist political ideologies of the attackers. The attacks were successful in generating a repressive response from the government that such groups often hope for, but there was no public reaction or outrage against government policies. In fact, the public participated in the repression. These bombings, moreover, never threatened the political system, and there was never any danger of the system collapsing. The failure of the system to identify any individuals involved in the crimes that triggered the Red Scare is one of the more interesting facets of the violence. Much of the public reaction might have been avoided, if only investigators had succeeded in identifying the individuals responsible for the violence.

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Two aspects of the Red Scare are particularly important. First, the paranoia and the violence drew upon the anti-immigrant feelings that were shared by many “native-born” Americans. The antiforeign feelings of the previous century manifested themselves in the extreme patriotism exhibited during World War I and the opposition to the IWW. The Red Scare became another outbreak of nativism. While much of the violence was unplanned, individuals took advantage of the situation to express their distrust and fear, and eventually more organized groups took advantage of the public sentiment.28 The linkage of opposition to radical and anarchist ideas with nativism is not surprising. The political ideas in question originated in Europe, and they were in that sense foreign to the United States. Followers of these ideologies were also likely to be recent immigrants. Approximately 90 percent of the 60,000 members of the Communist Party in 1919 were foreign.29 The connection between being foreign and radical ideas was linked in the public’s mind by the fact that many of the identifiable anarchists were Italian, Slavic, or Spanish.30 Italian migrants in the country were treated with suspicion by virtually everyone. They were excluded even from membership in the American Federation of Labor because of their origin. It is not surprising, therefore, that many of them drifted into anarchist groups.31 The person who (prematurely) set the bomb off at Attorney General Palmer’s residence in Washington, DC, in June 1919 died in the blast. While he could not be identified conclusively, investigators were able to conclude that he was probably an Italian alien from Philadelphia.32 The other important aspect of the Red Scare, of course, is that government authorities were central to the persecutions and activities. Even when the actions by vigilante groups were less organized, as they were in many cases, it was obvious that the business and social elite—and therefore local government—supported many of the attacks.33 The attempted deportations organized by Palmer were simply one of the more obvious aspects of government persecution. States governments required loyalty tests or placed limits on the right to freedom of speech in order to prevent the spread of seditious and treasonous ideas.34 Under these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that individuals or members of mobs rarely faced any criminal penalties for assaults as had been the case with the superpatriots of World War I.35 Although none of the presumed anarchist bombers were ever identified or brought to trial, there can be little doubt that if they had been caught, they would not have got off lightly. What is perhaps more surprising is that there were no trials for known anarchists or radicals such as the ones after the Haymarket

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Square bombing where the anarchists were convicted with minimal evidence. The bombs set off by the dissidents—whether communists, anarchists, or (less probably) socialists—failed to threaten the political system. The group and vigilante attacks against radicals and foreign ideas both during the war and during the Red Scare were more effective. They limited the discussion of new ideas and policies and contentious views of any kind. In 1920, a man in Connecticut received a six-month jail sentence for the innocuous comment that Lenin was obviously intelligent!36 The toleration of violence by state and local governments and even national agencies facilitated acts of the intimidation and terror, and the active involvement of government increased their impact. Local governments, borrowing from the tactics used against the miners in the latter part of the nineteenth century and the turn of the twentieth century, deported miners and militant workers to other states in freight cars or cattle cars.37 Methods such as these did discourage labor and others from challenging the government. Eventually the fears that prompted the Red Scare subsided. The dangers of a global Bolshevik revolution had passed; the social and economic disruptions that had come with entry into World War I were over; and the effects of similar disruptions that had come with demobilization had diminished. The distrust of anarchists, members of the IWW, Bolsheviks, and radicals in general was carried over, to some degree, into the public’s views on organized labor. Owners and the middle class had a continuing fear of organized labor, partly because of concern over infection by foreign ideas (although owners often were opposed to organized labor on practical grounds as well).38 The public also had a fear of foreign radicals, a fear reinforced by the attempted general strike in Seattle. Violence was present at times in labor disputes of this period, and management still attempted to intimidate workers or to rely on government support to control the violence that may break out in confrontations.39 Companies still used private police forces and volunteer citizen groups to control workers. Government at the national and state level tolerated these activities by the companies.40 Slowly these practices and the official toleration of them started to disappear. Violence as a characteristic of labor disputes started to decline and by the mid-1930s had virtually ended.41 Even though there were occasional clashes between workers and management or between strikers and strikebreakers, labor disputes gradually ceased to involve the violent pursuit of political objectives.

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One of the most important groups that relied on terrorism in this period was a revived avatar of an earlier organization. The Ku Klux Klan reappeared in 1915 in Georgia when William J. Simmons, an itinerant Protestant minister, received a charter. The old KKK had disappeared with the end of Reconstruction. The new version was initially intended to serve as a patriotic and fraternal organization to provide social opportunities for the members. Simmons viewed the Klan as an instrument to make money from membership fees and costs for regalia. The group, however, spread and was transformed, and it came to be defined by the things that it opposed. The group was antiblack, but not virulently so. In 1917, it became an avid defender of American patriotism; it was also antiunion and opposed to foreign influences. The group also frequently supported basic Protestant views of morality. It drew support from individuals who, in a changing world, faced many different concerns, and from those who were ultimately willing to use violence to support their views. The revitalized KKK gained strength with the entry of the United States into World War I. The Klan became a superpatriotic organization dedicated to controlling alien enemies and defending against anyone who would threaten ultimate victory in the conflict.42 Strikers were considered un-American and disloyal, and the Klan in some areas threatened violence against those who would weaken the war effort. Opposition to unions remained after the war. Even in later years when Klan membership had peaked and then declined, the KKK was still an important local group opposed to unions, and one willing to use violence in dealing with them.43 Membership in the KKK increased because of the Red Scare, as it was one of the groups that supported the idea of keeping the United States free from foreign influences. Together with members of the American Legion, Klansmen provided the muscle for enforcing loyalty to the United States and for fighting foreign radicals.44 The KKK thus drew upon the tradition of nativism of earlier eras. In fact, this version of the Klan was regarded as traditional nativism’s last stand.45 The KKK quickly developed its position as being anti-Catholic. AntiCatholicism was an important element in the growth of the Klan.46 The Klan was also anti-Jewish. Anti-Semitism now became part of a more general antialien sentiment. While opposition to Jewish migrants had begun to appear at the end of the nineteenth century, it now became greater as two million recent Jewish migrants had provided a critical mass for the native-born to fear.47 The KKK even saw a conspiracy between the Catholic Church and Jews to destroy America.48

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The Klan, like other nativist groups before it, was also anti-immigrant, especially as many of the recent migrants to the United States had been Catholic or Jewish. On the West Coast, the Klan chapters were antiOriental, drawing upon the deep-seated racist feelings long present in that area.49 The presence of recent migrants provided an opportunity for the KKK to draw upon both the antiforeign feelings related to religion and the antiforeign outbursts against radical individuals and radical ideas. Of course, for many Americans, the two were linked and the connection between them obvious. The second version of the Klan thus differed from the first one. The first Klan accepted all white men, regardless of religion or the length of their residence in the country, but the second Klan limited its ranks to white Protestants. This Klan became the bastion for white Anglo-Saxon Protestant racism.50 The ability of the Klan to attract the support from those who feared radical ideas or the intrusion of foreigners and those who saw themselves as patriots permitted the KKK to expand its membership dramatically in the early 1920s. It spread throughout the South and into many other parts of the country. The Klan also protected Protestants against competition from overachieving Catholic and Jewish migrants or more prosperous blacks who jeopardized white economic interests.51 The national organization eventually was weakened by struggles over leadership and the control of the considerable financial resources of the organization. The organization was also hurt when many states outside the South passed laws prohibiting the wearing of masks in public, making it more difficult for the KKK to organize marches and public activities that its members could support while remaining anonymous. Scandals, including personal ones centered on D. C. Stephenson, leader of the Indiana chapter (the largest state chapter at the time), also weakened the groups.52 While the national organization began to decline in the latter part of the 1920s, the state organizations prospered and remained a fact of political life in the South until the start of World War II. The KKK was also opposed to anything approximating equal rights for blacks, even though the issue was a secondary one it. It was clearly determined to keep blacks in their place in American society.53 The Klan considered native black Americans to be less dangerous than the foreign elements that it saw as flooding into the country.54 Unlike its predecessor in the 1860s and 1870s, the Klan was much more concerned about Catholics and Jews as threats to the American way of life.55 At times, the KKK did try to argue that America’s black population had been influenced by Bolshevik ideas.56 This theme, however,

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never gained much prominence in the group’s propaganda and was apparently designed to serve as a means of mobilizing support against the idea of black equality. The lower level of concern with the blacks seemed to result from a number of factors. The discounting of the danger from black Americans was a reflection of the racism and superiority of the white Klan members who obviously were more afraid of other whites. Black Americans were also regarded as part of the national culture, unlike not so recent migrants. Finally, as is discussed below, there was less need for the Klan as an organization to focus on black Americans, as there were other mechanisms for controlling this minority. The KKK, of course, was quite willing to use violence as a means of intimidating its target groups and achieving its political and social objectives. Local chapters resorted to beatings and whipping, tarring and feathering, and murder against members of the groups that it opposed.57 Catholics and Jews were among the early targets, but the Klan also moved against those who activities were anathema to the Protestant fundamentalism that had come to be central to the organization. The Klan became a mechanism for social control of all those who violated the social norms that were important to the Klan—adulterers, drunks, and prostitutes.58 Of course, in many areas, the KKK was probably better able to chastise disreputable Protestants because they had already driven off or intimidated any Catholics, Jews, or immigrants, while the local black population had already been thoroughly subjugated. The Klan seldom had to face criminal charges for any violence. It had considerable local political influence, and local officials often welcomed the efforts of the Klan to deal with problems such as drinking and prostitution and regarded the group as an auxiliary, and effective, form of law enforcement agency.59 The KKK also benefited from having a relatively high number of police officers among its members.60 It often restricted its attacks to members of the lower classes who could be physically attacked with relative impunity; wealthier individuals guilty of the same moral transgressions were seldom subjected to physical attacks.61 In the early 1920s, the Klan was able to spread outside the South and establish chapters in most parts of the country, attracting those seeking membership in a fraternal organization, those opposed to foreign radicals, anti-Catholics and anti-Semites, and patriots who wanted to defend the country against external threats. In addition, it was able to draw upon the nativist tradition in the country, which was strong not just in the South but in many other regions as well. Given

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the diversity of the people who joined the Klan and their different interests, it is not surprising that not all the KKK chapters were violent. Some chapters avoided violent attacks but were willing to try to intimidate their neighbors by sheer numbers and by parades or other demonstrations of strength to create fear and uncertainty in their opponents.62 In Buffalo, New York, ironically enough, it was supporters of the Klan who became the targets of terrorism. Buffalo with its large immigrant and Catholic population was hostile territory, and it is not surprising that local Klan activities created antagonism among some of the locals. One Protestant clergyman associated with the Klan was threatened, as were his wife and children. Another affiliated with the Klan had his home bombed. He and his family were fortunately away at the time; but it appears that the bomber did not know this; the bomb was intended to cause injury or death.63 The violence was clearly intended to intimidate and warn members of the local KKK chapters and their supporters that it was dangerous, at least in Buffalo, to belong to an unacceptable social and political group. As noted, the KKK was not needed as a mechanism for maintaining the superior racial position of white Americans. The outbreak of racial lynchings of blacks that had occurred before World War I peaked between 1891 and 1901.64 It is worth noting that this peak came long after the end or Reconstruction and in a decade in which the KKK did not exist. While the lynching of blacks declined after the beginning of the twentieth century, the phenomenon did not disappear and people were still being lynched: unpatriotic Americans during World War I; members of the IWW in the West; and especially black Americans in the South. Lynching continued to be the more important, pervasive, and accepted form of social control over blacks in the last part of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century as well. While lynching victims in earlier times had sometimes been white, after the turn of the century the victims were much more likely to be black.65 The loosely organized beatings and lynching of blacks on the local level involved many segments of white society (including Klansman as individual participants, particularly in the South).66 The fact that lynching was a form of social control was obvious because the persons involved were seldom punished. One study from the early 1930s found that out of the tens of thousands of participants and onlookers of lynchings of black Americans, there were only forty-nine indictments and four convictions.67 The violence was exacerbated by the connection of racial animosity with other issues. Efforts to organize blacks in unions presented not only an

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economic challenge, but a racial one as well as the owners were invariably white. Violence was a frequent outcome. In Arkansas, a conflict between black sharecroppers trying to organize and authorities resulted in major violence. As many as two hundred blacks died in confrontations and more than a thousand were arrested. In quick trials of black defendants with even quicker deliberations by white jury members, convictions, including twelve death sentences were handed out. No white person was ever arrested in connection with any of the violence.68 Official and public toleration meant that the violence against blacks went unpunished. The period between the wars also saw a number of race riots. By one count, there had been 242 racial battles in 47 cities in the early 1940s alone.69 The first riots were usually similar to previous race riots in the nineteenth century in which white mobs attacked black citizens. In these cases, the white rioters were attempting to maintain the status quo position of political, economic, and social inferiority for the blacks who were the targets of the violence. The intent to terrorize was frequently obvious because the rioters intentionally assaulted or murdered any black citizens they came across, even when violence was not necessary.70 The race riots or pogroms, which most frequently occurred in the North, performed the same function as lynchings in the South—the continued subjugation of the minority group. The race riots and the lynchings were similar in that when blacks (or Hispanics in California) were targeted, the police largely ignored the attacks and never arrested any of the rioters.71 These riots were clearly part of an ongoing tradition of terrorism against the black minority population. Some of the later riots, including the major race riot in Detroit in 1943, were different. These riots were not attacks by whites determined to keep blacks in their place but were riots between two groups for access to territory in the cities. The clashes occurred where the racial communities intersected with each other.72 While violent, these riots were not principally about social control or the preservation of a political status quo. They reflected the racial tensions of the day. Some of the latter riots had also elements of protest as the residents of ghettos rioted over unjust treatment and economic exploitation. Termed “commodity riots,” they reflected the source of anger in the economic injustices suffered by the residents at the hands of white business owners who lived outside the ghettos.73 These riots lacked the political objectives of the earlier types of riots, which were more like pogroms where the dominant group was free to attack the minority, although

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they did reflect political concerns within the minority community; thus, not every major riot in this period qualifies as an example of terrorism. Like other industrialized countries, the United States had a number of indigenous fascist movements that appeared in the period between the wars. The first few groups were inspired by Mussolini’s success in Italy, while the later ones appeared after Hitler and after the National Socialists (Nazis) became important in Germany. The fascist groups were anti-Semitic, opposed to communism and democracy, and were distrustful of President Franklin Roosevelt’s social and economic policies.74 While over a hundred different groups appeared, most were small and were never able to cooperate with each other on any meaningful level.75 The Silver Shirts, led by William Dudley Pelley, was one of the larger and more prominent organizations espousing fascist ideas. The Silver Shirts accepted the need for violence as part of a purifying experience, and they practiced street-fighting techniques.76 They seldom actually used violence or undertook campaigns to intimidate their opponents or the population in general, as their European counterparts did. They were more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators.77 The Silver Shirts and most of the other fascist groups in the country were not particularly violent and certainly not on a continuous basis. As these groups failed to gain mass following, they did not constitute a serious threat to political stability or to the groups that they disliked. The Black Legion, a splinter group from the KKK, was an exception to the practice of voicing violent rhetoric but not practicing it. Like the Klan, it was anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, antiblack, anti-immigrant, and anticommunist, but it also adopted some of the trappings of fascism, and it had contacts with Pelley and his Silver Shirt fascists.78 The political aims of the group were somewhat obscure (as were of many fascist organizations in the world at this time), but it was opposed to both the Democratic and Republican parties.79 The Black Legion was strongest in Michigan where it was very effective in attracting migrants from the southern states who had moved north to find work on the assembly lines, particularly in the auto industry.80 These individuals were outsiders to the local economic and social system and more likely to fear people of other religions, races, and nationalities. They were obviously willing to join one of the relatively extreme organizations in the area. The Legion was politically active, electing members to local offices or providing important support for candidates who won other races. It was also quite willing to resort to violence against

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those whose elections it opposed81 and against all the groups that it feared. It was responsible for several assaults and for the murder of a number of individuals. It collapsed in 1939 as a result of criminal prosecutions in which thirteen members went to prison for life because of their involvement in the murders and thirty-seven others were convicted for other terrorist activities.82 Ultimately, it is the unwillingness of the local authorities to tolerate violence that led to the demise of this fascist group. The last area of activity of this period, in which intimidation and violence were used, was organizes crime. Criminal groups who were getting increasingly organized were trying to enhance their wealth and power. They usually directed their violence against each other but at times members of the public got caught in the cross fire. Prohibition proved an exceptional opportunity for many criminal groups to acquire control of lucrative markets for illegal sale of alcohol. The violence by the organized criminal groups was normally for increasing their illegal profits, but some of their activities occasionally extended into the political realm. Local politicians had long used criminal gangs during elections to help “persuade” voters or to control ballot boxes, and the politicians granted the gangs favors in return.83 Officials were sometimes in the direct employ of gangs or they accepted bribes from them. When the police did not interfere in selected criminal activity, it provided the gangs increased opportunities for financial gain. The gangs, like other interest groups, would support one side or the other in local elections, and they were willing to use violence against the opposition.84 Though criminal elements were involved in politics intermittently, were disruptive, and sometimes violent, their actions did not ultimately threaten state sovereignty.85 In some cases, in this period (as well as in others), criminal organizations that sought to influence policy did use terror and intimidation against officials to gain advantages, but there were no systematic efforts to gain political control or to change policies at the national level. The interwar years saw political violence and terrorism related to ideological and communal concerns. During the war and during the Red Scare, anyone adhering to a radical political ideology or suspected of having radical political ideas was open to attack. The fear of radical ideas was reinforced by the traditional nativism, which reflected both religious (Protestant) and ethnic (white, Anglo-Saxon) nationalism. The KKK targeted groups for communal and religious reasons and feared foreign radicalism as well. The Black Legions, which held similar views, was probably the most violent of the American fascist

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groups. The problems that labor groups faced in this period also reflected the prevailing racism, nativism, and fear of radical ideas. These three elements together have generated violent responses as domestic groups were reacting simultaneously to economic, political, and cultural threats that came with foreign migrants.86 While owners and management may have played on prevailing fears to weaken labor movements and mobilize support in work disputes, some of the fear was genuine. Violence and terrorism from labor in this era was less organized in a period when the violence from organized groups (the KKK, businesses, the American Legion) was the most deadly. Lynchings continued and were effective in limiting the social and political advancement for blacks in many parts of the country. Immigrants, especially Catholics and Jews, were also subjected to violent intimidation, although with less loss of life than in the case of black Americans. Most of the terrorism in this period, as that of earlier times, was not antisystem. The violence was undertaken in support of the status quo or in defense of the political system rather than against it. The lynchings and race riots that were pogroms by whites occurred when blacks were seen as making economic gains or as threatening to upset the system. The KKK was both a dissident and a status quo movement as it varied so much in its appeal from place to place. In some areas, it was in alignment with the local elite while in others, it was opposed to the local leadership.87 Ultimately the Klan more frequently sided with the local elite, given its willingness to target unions, black, Catholics, and Jews—groups that were more likely to threaten the status quo than to be part of it. The attacks on local “sinners,” which frequently became part of Klan activities, were not threatening to the local power structure, even if not actively supportive of it. The nativism that the KKK drew upon and the superpatriotism of World War I and the Red Scare also reflected fear of challenges to the status quo—in this case by radical ideas and movements from abroad. The weak and ineffective fascist movements were potentially antisystem. Even though they sought to portray themselves as preservationist groups, they never amounted to much of a threat. The anarchist and leftist groups responsible for the bombings right after World War I were obviously antisystem and violent, but their efforts failed. The vigilante actions against anarchists and socialists were actually more effective than the bombs from the left were. The commodity riots by blacks in the cities toward the end of the period had protest and antisystem elements, but these lacked the organization and political objectives to qualify as

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terrorism. In fact, these protest riots had the organization neither of the “mobs” operating in earlier periods of American history nor of the white mobs that engaged in pogroms against blacks. The status quo nature of the terrorism and the fact that violence was effective even in the absence of well-organized groups proved that much of the activity in this period was tolerated by government officials.88 Lynchings and the race riots instigated by whites often had the active support of local governments, and local law enforcement officials were (often intentionally) ineffective in dealing with the violence. Even in the rare cases when arrests were made, convictions were unlikely. Public opinion and juries tolerated attacks on radicals and foreigners, those who were not patriotic enough, blacks, and on outsiders in general. Toleration at the state level reached the point where the failure to protect the IWW from assault was used as a reason for a total ban on the organization as the only way to protect its members. The Black Legions were an exception as they were actively prosecuted. Anarchists actually involved in terrorist attacks would have been actively prosecuted as well, if any of them had ever been caught. The native fascist groups, however, seem to have suffered from a lack of active government protection at times, as they were often the targets of attacks. One of the casualties of government toleration of attacks on outsiders and members of suspect groups was the effect on civil liberties in the country. The civil rights of blacks and foreigners were often ignored. In addition, general civil liberties were weakened and the freedom to express unpopular ideas was curbed by public reactions and official indifference to the rights of the speakers. During the Red Scare, a number of cases, which reached the Supreme Court, dealt with the efforts of state governments to restrict political activities and curb speech. The Court was not immune to public opinion, and was aware that its judgments had to be enforced by other branches of the national government and the states. It is not particularly surprising, therefore, that the Court upheld the legality of state governments restricting the rights and activities of suspect radical organizations in some circumstances.89 The various kinds of terrorism of this era were in many ways a reflection of the economic, social and political uncertainties of the times. The Red Scare occurred in a period where the country had to deal with rapid demobilization, large-scale immigration, and the strains of readjustment to a peacetime economy.90 The intolerance of the first years after the war were exacerbated by rapid economic

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change, unequal distributions of wealth, increasing urbanization, and the disillusionment with the failure of the sacrifices of World War I to lead to the anticipated improvements in the world.91 Of course, the bombs set off by the radicals did not help to promote tolerance. Racial pogroms against blacks were in part a consequence of the internal migration from the South to jobs in the North during the war. Of course, the Great Depression and the tremendous economic dislocation that went with it fueled people’s fears and provided opportunities for groups with quick and easy solutions to the problems to gain adherents. The fact that many of the criminal gangs involved recent migrants and foreigners (including Catholic Italians) added to the fears. As a consequence the indigenous fascist groups and the Black Legions gathered a following. The fear of radicals, foreigners, and outsiders, and the violent manifestations of these fears were very much a reaction to globalization and modernization that this period witnessed. The KKK, when it sought to prevent the intrusion of external ideas, was in many respects an exemplar of such negative reactions to globalization.92 The isolationist trend that later developed in the United States in the interwar years represented an effort not only to keep the country uninvolved in the problems of the world, but also to keep the rest of the world at arm’s length. Preservationist right-wing violence and isolationism are related reactions to the trauma that comes with the increasing changes that accompany modernization and globalization. The onset of World War II brought even greater changes arising from even more consequences of increasing globalization. In the aftermath of World War II, the country had to face new challenges and violent actions from not only old groups, but from some new ones as well.


6 1940–1980: McCarthyism, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Left

When World War II ended, a variety of terrorist groups was in operation in the United States. Some types of terrorism were similar to those that had existed in the past while others were relatively new to the country. McCarthyism and related activities, which gained impetus from the cold war, were in some respects a repeat of the Red Scare. The perceived dangers, in the case of McCarthyism, were related to the global conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union rather than just the fear of the presence of radical dissidents in some domestic organization. The civil rights struggle for greater equality for black Americans provoked violent responses from white supremacists. The Ku Klux Klan reappeared for a third time and joined with other groups in using violence to prevent the achievement of racial equality. The inequality between blacks and whites also led to riots and protests in the ghettos and to some use of terrorism by black nationalist groups. The U.S. presence in Indochina resulted in an upsurge in leftist opposition that eventually ended in violent campaigns as members of the left, especially the young, sought to indicate their opposition to U.S. involvement in Vietnam and Southeast Asia in general. U.S. foreign policy during this period started becoming a reason for terrorist attacks. Violent leftist groups, opposed to their own governments as well as to the United States for its role in Vietnam and as the center of a global capitalist system, appeared in Europe and elsewhere. As a consequence, American interests began to be targeted abroad. Other groups used terrorist attacks in the United States to publicize their causes, be they communal or ideological. Anti-Castro Cuban émigré groups based in the United States in pursuit of their goal of bringing

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down the regime in Havana were particularly active in launching attacks, both on U.S. soil and abroad. Finally, the United States also saw terrorist attacks by organized groups of Puerto Rican nationalists, who were seeking independence for the island. World War II did not lead to the reactive superpatriotism that occurred during World War I. The relocation of Japanese-Americans from the West Coast to camps in the interior of the country was done from a fear similar to the public fear and government mistrust of radicals displayed during World War I. On the West Coast, it was a continuation of the racism against Orientals, which had been prevalent and had not disappeared with the passage of time. There were few other cases, however, of obsessive wartime patriotism. People were not assaulted, tarred and feathered, or killed for failing to be patriotic enough. No one was convicted or sent to jail for criticizing the president. The German language was not banned in the schools as it was in many places during World War I. Conscientious objectors received much better treatment from the public during this conflict. Workers were not rounded up and shipped out of state for belonging to radical (and presumably subversive) labor groups. Lynchings and mob actions were most conspicuous by their absence.1 As overreaction to the wartime situation was limited to the treatment of the JapaneseAmericans, there was little need for government officials or juries to be complicit in supporting intimidation and in the use of terror against unpatriotic or suspect individuals. Of course, when the United States entered World War II with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, an overwhelming majority of the citizens supported the government and the war effort. Even so, while potential targets for patriots may have been fewer during World War II than during World War I, it is still noteworthy that such violence generally did not occur. The breakdown of the wartime alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union did lead to a fear of the intrusion of radical ideas from abroad, a repetition of the Red Scare of 1919. In this case, the fear was that American communists and other radicals were serving the interests of the Soviet Union by spying or by other subversive activities. Unlike during the Red Scare, however, in this period, there was a very real conspiracy and a danger as there were active spies in the United States and other ongoing efforts to undermine the United States and its allies. Further, the Berlin Blockade, the war in Korea, the development of the atomic bomb by the Soviet Union, and other cold war confrontations stimulated fear. One reaction to the situation involved appeals to patriotism and the result was another period of manifest

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fear and suspicion—not only of communism and radicals, but also sometimes of anything new or different. This reaction has since come to be known as McCarthyism, named after Joseph McCarthy, the Republican senator from Wisconsin, who was at the center of persecutions of individuals suspected of being leftists, or worse, spies. McCarthyism involved some marginal violence and overreactions from the public and the government, including efforts at intimidation and repression that left many ruined lives. The reaction to the possible presence of Soviet spies and collaborators on U.S. soil led to a number of repressive security policies of the government. Loyalty oaths became a requirement for some government jobs, and all communist organizations were required to register with the Justice Department. Individuals belonging to communist groups or supporters of other forms of totalitarianism (Nazism, fascism) were not allowed to migrate to the United States or even to get a visa for a visit.2 Although government attempts to limit the influence of radical ideas were similar in some respects to actions taken during the Red Scare, they did not constitute terrorism. Violence by the public against presumed communists was less likely than it was during the Red Scare. There were a few attacks by local citizens. In some cases, local government officials and police tolerated violence against leftists as they had after World War I, and those that did attack presumed communists or others could do so without fear of arrest.3 The suspicion that many unions had been infiltrated by communists increased the likelihood of union efforts facing violent responses.4 Of course, owners faced with union agitation found it convenient to label labor union organizers as communists or to pretend to believe that they were communists, but sometimes there was the genuine belief that the unions had been infiltrated by radicals or that they were a dangerous influence in general. There was a difference between the Red Scare of 1919–20 and the McCarthyism of the 1950s. Senator McCarthy used his position in Congress to publicize his attempts and others’ efforts to ferret out and identify leftists and communist sympathizers in government, the professions, and in other important positions. His efforts in committee hearings provided him with a valuable reelection issue and campaign platform. Individuals appearing before the Senate committee faced some major disabilities. They could be damned through guilt by association for friendships or work contacts with individuals guilty of subversive or unpatriotic activities. The committee members could and did publicly smear individuals who in return had very little chance

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to respond or to defend themselves. The committee issued contempt citations for those who refused to name their leftist or communist associates—out of principle, loyalty to colleagues, or simply because they did not have any communist associates. Committee members, especially McCarthy, would claim to have proof of wrongdoing even when none existed or was ever likely to be found. While a few years earlier the House of Un-American Activities Committee had utilized many of these methods in its investigations of fascists and communists, McCarthy used these tactics more extensively, and the methods were more pervasive too.5 The testimony before McCarthy’s committee did not directly affect the liberty of many Americans as there was little evidence (if any) that could be used for criminal convictions. The public exposure and innuendoes of wrongdoing, however, amounted to abuse of power by the committee, and suggestions of guilt did have very real, and often quite severe, consequences for thousands of individuals. People labeled as communists by committee members lost their jobs and were often blackballed and patriotic Americans refused to hire suspect individuals. Such economic sanctions against suspects started to become more frequent.6 The economic consequences for people under clouds of suspicion were increased by semi-clandestine government activity. The FBI would leak information about suspects or send investigators to question employers or potential employers about individuals. The individuals would then lose their jobs or not be hired as the government sought to punish those suspected of disloyalty but who could not be convicted of any crimes.7 McCarthyism’s unique contribution to governmental abuse of power in the United States was in the form of the economic sanctions that could result from the hearings. This economic pressure was directed against a target audience beyond the immediate victims. Though the punitive sanctions applied in this period were less severe than imprisonment or death, they still created fear in groups beyond the individual victims directly affected. Those who were disloyal could be punished, and those with information could be more readily “persuaded” to inform on friends or colleagues as the effects on individuals were often quite severe in economic terms. The economic and social attacks on possible subversives and radicals were often disjointed and unorganized, even when helped by government agencies, thereby providing some limit to the damage that was done, but the damage was still done. The end result was fear that drove “more and more men and women in all walks of life to silence or to the folds of the orthodox” and a fear that resulted in stereotypical political viewpoints and limited

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public discussion of some issues.8 While many of the perpetrators of McCarthyism did not probably intend these consequences—the limited discussions of political and social alternatives—they were also probably unconcerned about and even celebrated them. By the time McCarthyism faded, especially after the full Senate censured Senator McCarthy, many Americans had been terrorized by government actions. The Ku Klux Klan, although significantly weakened by the beginning of World War II, had not disappeared. It underwent a revival after World War II, but never gained anything like the membership that it had in the 1920s (or the 1860s). The Klan in this period was fragmented and localized, and there was no real national organization.9 While it still relied on appeals to racial and religious bigotry, racial hatred became its main emphasis. Antipathy toward black Americans was universal among the chapters. The importance of other issues varied from one chapter to the next, and consequently the relative weight of issues for each chapter differed.10 The various loosely affiliated Klan groups were still willing to use violence to achieve their goals of white racial control. Racial tension had increased after the war as white supremacy in the South was challenged by demobilized black soldiers as well as migrants who had worked in industries in the North during the war and who were returning home. Both groups began to expect greater equality and more rights in society. Though lynching as a form of social control by the white community was on the decline, the white community in the South still relied on it to some extent.11 Circumstances had changed and the freedom to murder blacks with impunity was disappearing in many areas. The Klan as a semiclandestine group thus had more opportunities to engage in violence against blacks, and could do so with some expectation of avoiding discovery (at least by officials or law enforcement). The various chapters had relatively free hands for their activities because in many cases as in the past, police officers were members.12 There was an upsurge in membership in the Klan when the civil rights struggles in the South began. Membership increased in particular after the first Brown vs. Board of Education decision by the Supreme Court in 1954, which opened the doors for integrated schools.13 The KKK attracted many whites who were willing to use violence to prevent blacks from gaining more rights.14 There were assaults; there were a great number of bombings and the frequent use of arson; and there were murders as well.15 The efforts of the Klan and other groups to stop the civil rights movement ultimately failed. Intervention by national officials led to

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more effective prosecution of those who tried to terrorize blacks and members of the civil rights movement from the North. The KKK chapters were defeated by arrests and convictions. Informers found it relatively easy to infiltrate the various chapters, which then could be dismantled with inside information.16 The lack of a centralized structure, however, meant that local chapters had to be dealt with individually, although the weakening of nearby chapters no doubt undercut support for other Klan groups. At the local level, Klan members were still able to avoid convictions by local juries, especially for serious crimes.17 Convictions for civil rights violations punishable under federal law and other lesser crimes, however, became somewhat more common.18 Local, usually white, juries were apparently unwilling to send their neighbors to jail for bigotry and violence, but they were also apparently less willing to tolerate the continued violence. Convictions for the lesser offenses provided for a graduated level of punishment. Even so, Klan members were likely to receive lighter sentences when convicted when compared with many other extremists caught and convicted for terrorist crimes in this period.19 While the Klan became much less effective as an antiblack group, white racist sentiment did continue in other forms. Racism and bigotry also did not disappear with the defeat of the Klan and the achievement of more rights for black Americans. Other groups opposed to blacks and other minorities were created and they continued racial violence similar to Klan attacks in various parts of the country in this period, although the other groups became more active in later years.20 There were a number of other right-wing groups that were active in the period. The Minutemen had armed themselves, and they were prepared to defend the country against communists and foreign subversion. They saw themselves as supporting the government and defending the country, or at least their very conservative version of what the country should be; they were not actively challenging existing laws or policies as the KKK was doing. These groups, however, helped to set the stage for more activist and antigovernment groups that were to appear and became more important in the years that followed (which will be discussed in chapter 7). While the battle over legal or imposed segregation had been won at least at the national level and eventually in the various states, black Americans still faced barriers to equality in the country, and they had to overcome social and economic disabilities. Their frustration with the lack of progress, in addition to persistent poor housing and education, limited job opportunities, and other problems resulted in a series of

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urban riots in the 1960s and 1970s in the ghettos of many cities. These riots were a combination of protest and commodity riots, similar to the violent outbreaks that had occurred during World War II, which are discussed in chapter 5. Merchants and landlords who exploited the residents of the ghettos—or were perceived to do so—and more generally the political and economic power structure were the targets. While these riots were quite violent on occasion and did send a message, they lacked any continuing organizational structure and had very vague or general political objectives, if any.21 While both terrorism and rioting can occur in situations in which there are high levels of polarization between groups, the lack of organization or structure separates rioting from terrorism.22 As a consequence, while the riots are important examples of political violence, they do not constitute an example of domestic terrorism although they did help to set the stage for groups that practiced terrorism. The failure of black Americans to make progress toward greater equality resulted in a series of terror campaigns by black nationalists and extremists in support of the idea of Black Liberation. There were at least four hundred attacks by black nationalists after World War II, concentrated in the 1960s and 1970s.23 The black nationalist groups were in effect paramilitary organizations that were willing to use violence to challenge the system.24 The violence was designed to create terror in target audiences, and the groups had relatively clear political objectives, even if they were likely to be unattainable. Many of these groups had been influenced by the Marxist, neo-Marxist, and other leftist ideologies that were current at the time, and they believed that terrorism was an essential part of the revolutionary struggle in which they had become engaged.25 The Black Panthers was one of the betterknown groups that sought to promote black causes. The party was opposed to capitalism and argued that there was a need for the destruction of the existing political system.26 At other times, the Panthers proclaimed self-defense for the black community and the pursuit of its objectives within the framework of the political system as their goal. The Panthers faced suspicion from the police and authorities who doubted the peaceful intent of the group, as they were involved in a number of confrontations, some of which ended with violence.27 There were extremists within the Black Panther Party, including those that formed the Black Liberation Army (BLA). The BLA robbed banks to finance its political activities against the system and targeted police officers in a number of cities for assassination and police stations as representatives and symbols of the established system. The members

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of the BLA were eventually tracked down and either arrested or killed in confrontations with the police.28 Other black nationalist groups appeared. The Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) was typical of many small groups that linked black nationalist and leftist ideas. The SLA became famous for kidnapping (and converting) Patty Hearst to the cause. Authorities quickly disposed of the SLA, as they did similar groups. In fact, violent threats from the black nationalist groups have usually been effectively dealt with by conventional law enforcement practices such as operations of the police and the criminal justice system.29 There was a brief period of violence in a related vein that involved American Indian activists including tribal leaders and tribal police and government agencies. While there were deaths on both sides in the confrontations, with the most famous of them occurring in the vicinity of Wounded Knee in South Dakota, these Indian activists did not resort to organized terrorist campaigns to achieve their objectives. They generally relied, instead, on protests and other public actions, not clandestine ones. While some of these actions were violent, led to overreactions from the authorities, or were likely to risk the possibility of violence, there was no organized campaign of violence. In the late 1960s, the United States saw the emergence of leftist groups opposed especially to American military involvement in Indochina and to some extent to capitalism in general. Peaceful protest turned violent after the Democratic Party’s national convention in Chicago in 1968, and the subsequent election to the presidency of Richard Nixon. With the failure of electoral politics, the leftist groups, most of which disproportionately attracted the young and middle class turned more violent. Most of these groups were splinters from the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). The vast majority of the attacks from these groups were symbolic and limited to the destruction of property. They consciously sought to avoid injury or death when they used violence.30 The best-known, and probably the most important, group was the Weathermen or Weather Underground, which carried out a number of attacks, including some lethal ones, between 1970 and 1974. These bombings and other actions served as an inspiration for other groups who in turn launched similar attacks against the establishment.31 Ultimately, the attacks from the left proved to be ineffective. They did not achieve any of the political objectives of the groups, although they may have contributed to the process of polarization that led to a shift in public opinion from favoring involvement in Vietnam to supporting withdrawal from Indochina.

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What is somewhat ironic is that it was the U.S. involvement in Vietnam and the position of United States as the center of global capitalism that helped to mobilize groups in many parts of the world. Yet the usually ineffective American leftist revolutionaries never attracted sufficient members or individuals who were willing to launch terrorist campaigns of the same magnitude as those of the Red Brigades in Italy or even the Red Army Faction (Baader-Meinhoff Gang) in West Germany. What made the foreign movements in Europe and Latin America much more effective was their willingness to inflict casualties in their campaigns, and the increasing terror that came with lethal attacks.32 Leftist terrorism in the United States never became a major threat, and in the final analysis the police, FBI, and similar agencies were able to contain the activities of the Weathermen and the other groups without too much difficulty. The leftist urban guerrillas in the United States did not have much of an impact on either on government policies or on society. While, in this period, there were very few international incidents that occurred on U.S. soil, Americans abroad more frequently became targets.33 From 1968 to 2003, 40 percent of all international terrorist incidents had U.S. citizens or interests as targets.34 Terrorist groups in other countries began to choose Americans or symbols of the United States in their countries as targets of attacks to force changes in American foreign policy. The attacks occurred abroad, but the target audience was the American public and American politicians.35 Various leftist groups in Europe consciously chose such targets for their attacks to protest U.S. involvement in Vietnam and the U.S. position at the center of the global capitalist system. For leftists around the world, the United States was “the font of economic exploitation.”36 American military personal became targets, and there were incidents involving prominent figures. The CIA station chief in Greece was assassinated, and General James Dozier, who was assigned to the NATO command in Italy, was kidnapped by the Red Brigades, although he was rescued unharmed.37 Leftist groups in Latin America at this time also targeted foreign nationals for kidnapping for ransom, especially the business executives of foreign multinational corporations with local plants. The kidnap victims included a number of Americans and European executives as well.38 The struggle of the Palestinians for their own state led to the increasing use of terrorism by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and other groups after the Israeli victory in the Six Day War in 1967.39 The United States had by this time become the major external supporter of Israel; consequently its citizens abroad

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and U.S. interests became the targets of the Palestinian attacks. For example, American consular officials were killed in the Sudan in 1973 by members of a Palestinian group.40 When U.S. embassies were provided with greater security, the terrorists targeted less secure embassies when American diplomatic personnel were present there.41 Leftist groups in Europe often collaborated with and supported the various Palestinian groups because they saw Israel as a capitalist and imperialist outpost of the West in the Middle East. The presence of so many American targets abroad meant that terrorist groups that were opposed to American policies did not have to venture onto U.S. soil to launch their attacks.42 These attacks, however, had little effect on foreign policy in the 1970s or 1980s. Émigré groups were responsible for a wide variety of terrorist incidents that occurred on U.S. soil, although the targets were not usually U.S. policies or interests. A significant number of émigré groups selected targets in the United States for attacks to publicize or protest conditions in their own countries. Groups linked with Armenians, Haitians, Sikhs, Taiwanese, Croatians, and other were responsible for attacks that were designed to increase public awareness of conditions at home. U.S. policy stances were often not the issue or were only a peripheral issue for these groups.43 Similar attacks were occurring in other Western, industrialized countries as well. Extreme Croatian nationalists launched at least 128 attacks between 1962 and 1982, only some of which were in the United States.44 Terrorist organizations chose Western democracies to generate media attention and to influence public opinion in other countries and hoped to put pressure on their home governments.45 During the 1960s and 1970s anti-Castro Cuban exile groups were involved in numerous violent terrorist actions against a wide variety of targets. A variety of groups including Omega 7, one of the larger and better-known exile organizations, was involved. The various exile groups appear to have been inspired by the international terrorist exploits of the Palestinians, and they adopted similar techniques.46 The Cuban exiles launched attacks directly against Cuban interests in the United States and other countries. The exile groups also targeted businesses and organizations that did business with Cuba.47 In one of the more deadly attacks, a bomb destroyed a Cuban airliner, killing seventy-three people. The man responsible was not extradited to Cuba and was considered a hero by the Cuban exile community.48 The exiles also attacked fellow Cubans in the United States for insufficient zeal in their opposition to the Castro regime or for their willingness to

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negotiate or compromise with the regime in Havana.49 The extreme anticommunism of the exiles made them convenient and willing activists in campaigns against other leftists. Cuban exiles therefore have worked in a variety of Latin American countries in opposition to leftist groups. They cooperated with the regime of General Pinochet in Chile. They were involved in the assassination of the former foreign minister in the cabinet of the former leftist president Salvador Allende in Washington, DC, in 1976. In this case, an American and three Cuban exiles were tried and convicted for their role in the murder.50 The United States government during this period was generally supportive of the activities of the exiles, even if not always in agreement with their every action. There was semiclandestine funding and training for some of the members of the groups, and, of course, there was never any question of extradition to Cuba of any of the activists responsible for any of the attacks. By the 1980s, the activism of the various exile groups had begun to wane, but it never completely disappeared. One domestic group that used terror tactics in the United States to protest conditions in a foreign country and the policies of a foreign government was the Jewish Defense League (JDL), formed by Rabbi Meir Kahane. The JDL was an active supporter of Israel, and it mounted a number of attacks in the United States against foreign governments. The JDL especially targeted activities connected with the Soviet Union to express opposition to the Soviet support for Arab countries and opposition to the restrictive Soviet immigration policies that made it difficult for Jews to leave the Soviet Union.51 The group was responsible for numerous bombings and a significant number of murders.52 There have been at least fifty indictments and thirty convictions of members of the organization for these violent activities.53 Notwithstanding the seriousness of the crimes connected with JDL members, many times members of the group were either not prosecuted or they received relatively light sentences.54 Kahane eventually migrated to Israel and was a member of the Israeli Parliament until his party was banned for its racist attitudes toward Palestinians. He was later killed by a Palestinian resident in the United States in 1990. The assailant had connections with some radical groups, but the murder was apparently the individual initiative of the killer and not part of an organized plot.55 There was one example of “external” nationalism that directly involved U.S. policies and that led to terrorist attacks in the United States and its properties. Puerto Rican nationalists began a national

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liberation struggle to bring independence to the island. After World War II, a number of groups launched terrorist attacks to gain independence. There were two attempts made to assassinate President Harry Truman in 1950, and in 1954, four nationalists opened fire from the galleries of the Capitol Building and wounded five members of the House of Representatives. In addition, there were numerous bombings in Puerto Rico and the United States.56 The groups involved in the terrorism kept changing over time, and more than one organization was involved in the attacks. The Macheteros were the most active in Puerto Rico itself, while the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN) was more likely to be involved with bombings on U.S. soil.57 The Macheteros effectively used robberies also to generate more than a million dollars to finance the group’s activities.58 Unlike the domestic leftist groups that operated in the United States, the Puerto Rican groups did not just choose symbolic targets; they were willing to inflict casualties. In fact, it is clear from the choice of targets and the timing of some of the bombs that death and injury were intended.59 The idea of independence never gained much popular support on the island between 1950 and 1980. The resort to terrorism, in fact, was a result of the inability of the advocates of independence to mobilize support for their views from the population of the island.60 The police have not been able to completely eliminate or break up these violent dissident groups. It has been difficult to penetrate the different terrorists groups and gather intelligence.61 What is perhaps most important for the nationalists is the fact that they have been able to maintain their organizations and to remain active into the last part of the twentieth century and well into the twenty-first century. The Puerto Rican nationalists have survived to continue their struggle. The United States also experienced a wave of airline hijackings in this period. While a few of the skyjackings were clearly intended to focus attention on specific political causes or to influence public opinion one way or other, many of them were undertaken by individuals suffering from mental problems or simply seeking the spotlight. In most cases, the reasons for the hijackings were not political.62 There were even a few examples where the intent of the hijackers was financial gain. Many of the hijacked aircraft were flown to Cuba. The wave of skyjackings eventually came to an end. Airports installed better security, and Cuba agreed to return aircraft and passengers and incarcerated many of the hijackers in Cuban jails.63 A few groups did manage to gain some publicity for their causes. When the hijackings grew in number and the causes varied, however, the efforts of groups

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with clear political causes were often lost in the background noise created by the other attempts. The highjack attempts of individuals suffering from delusions also created an impression that most or all skyjackers were delusional, thereby further limiting the media attention that the politically motivated groups desired. The United States avoided any hijackings that compared with the spectacular operations undertaken by the Palestinian groups with the help of radical leftists in Western Europe. One other consequence of the skyjackings and their resolution in this period, which had implications for the future, was the development of operating procedures that specified that the crews of the airliners should cooperate with the hijackers. The kinds of terrorist activities that occurred in this period were both similar to and different from earlier examples. McCarthyism drew upon the same types of sentiment that was prevalent during the Red Scare, but it lacked much of the nativism associated with the earlier incidents. Supporters of Senator McCarthy may have been just as ethnocentric as those responsible for violent attacks during the Red Scare, but the enemy was almost completely defined in ideological terms, and the enemy included Americans who had become too enamored of the left or who had become traitors. All in all, nativism was muted in this period compared to earlier ones. The KKK’s brief resurgence after the war was almost entirely related to the civil rights struggles of black Americans, and the Klan lost some (but not all) of the anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic overtones that were so prevalent in the 1920s. The activities of the KKK and the actions of black nationalists, however, were rooted in communal feelings although they were not nativist. The actions of the various Puerto Rican independence groups were also communal, even though the Puerto Rican (and black nationalists) did adopt some leftist rhetoric. Some of the émigré groups that used terrorism in this period were also primarily communal as they were seeking independence or autonomy for their peoples. While communally-based terrorism was present in this period, what was more frequent in the thirty plus years after World War II was the appearance of terrorist violence related to ideological views. McCarthyism reflected ideological antipathy toward suspected communists. The terrorism associated with the Weathermen and similar groups were part of a global outbreak of ideological opposition to global capitalism. The extreme right groups that were to become more important later, and the KKK to a limited extent, also had an ideological base. Some of the émigré groups that operated in the United States also reflected ideological concerns. In many cases, their terrorist acts

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were designed to undermine a particular type of government in power in their homelands. The anti-Castro Cuban exile groups provide a classic example of ideological underpinnings for violence. American support for these Cuban exile groups was, of course, part of the cold war confrontation between the East and the West. The terrorist violence of this era reflected both antisystem and status quo terrorism. The post–World War II Klan, like its predecessor in the 1920s, did not see itself as opposed to the existing system. The Klan sought to preserve its concept of the system and to protect it against threats from blacks, Jews, criminals, and subversives.64 Supporters of McCarthyism also saw themselves as defending the system against subversion. Other groups, however, were obviously antisystem. The Weathermen and similar groups were clearly antisystem and hoped to either reform the system or create a revolution to dramatically alter it. The black nationalist groups were antisystem as well. Puerto Rican nationalism was opposed to the status quo and regarded its battles against the United States as a typical, third world anticolonial struggle. The émigré groups frequently used the United States soil as a matter of convenience, and, for the most part, their actions were not a reflection of opposition to or support for political currents or policies in the United States. Some of the violence may have been intended to push the United States to adopt different policies toward their home governments. In any event, this period saw significant terrorist activities. Often ineffective or with minimal impact, they were in some ways either an attack on the U.S. system or on the status quo in the homelands of the émigré groups. Violence in support of the status quo was much less marked than in earlier periods. As terrorism in support of the status quo was less prevalent, it is not surprising that this period also saw less government toleration or support for the terrorists. Parts of the national government and some state governments were involved in the excesses of McCarthyism, but the damage done was usually economic, not physical. The Cuban exile groups found toleration and even support for many of their activities, especially those against Cuban interests in other countries. The KKK still received community support and government toleration at the local level for much of the period, but many Klan chapters were broken by federal agents, and convictions for criminal activity became more common. The government and juries were somewhat more tolerant of young leftists and members of the JDL who received lighter sentences than the Puerto Rican nationalists or right-wing extremists.65 Even so, government toleration of terrorist violence was generally limited.

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The lack of government support or toleration probably explains why terrorist groups in this period had relatively few successes. There was nothing that corresponds to the power that the KKK or white vigilantes displayed in the 1920s or 1930s. The leftist revolutionaries and black nationalists disappeared. The Klan did not survive as an important actor, and the other right-wing groups in the country at this time were less violent and threatening, especially when McCarthyism was on the wane. The Puerto Rican groups achieved little toward their goal of independence, but they did survive to continue their activities into the 1980s and beyond. Émigré violence did provide publicity for a variety of causes, but none of the groups involved managed to achieve any obvious successes. The Cuban exiles were no exception in this regard as Castro was just as firmly in power in the 1980s as before, if not more so. The economic violence toward potential dissidents, leftists, and conformists of the McCarthy era was more effective. McCarthyism was perhaps most successful in structuring—or more realistically—limiting political debate on issues or ideas that might have changed policies. The main impact may, in fact, have been “the social reforms that were never adopted, the diplomatic initiatives that were not pursued, the workers who were not organized into unions, the books that were not written, and the movies that were never filmed.”66 McCarthyism also limited civil liberties for the immediate victims, and, of course, for Americans in general, as limitations on one group can become limitations on the entire population. McCarthy’s methods were acceptable to his supporters and tolerated by others because “he was doing a job which could not be done in any other way.”67 The whole period, however, was one in which terrorist acts, either domestic or with international implications, did not rise to crisis proportions. Indicative of the importance of terrorist violence are data from 1969 and 1970. There were 4,330 bomb incidents in the country, but only one-quarter of them clearly had political objectives. In 64 percent of the cases, the reason for the bombing was unknown.68 As terrorism requires a target audience, the bombings for unknown reasons would generally have had private or criminal motives. It is obvious from these data that private violence was much more prevalent than political violence. At the beginning of the 1980s, with the demise of the revolutionaries of the New Left and the decline of the KKK, the American people and the government were lulled into a false sense of security. Politically motivated terrorism, they thought, was not going to be a major threat, at least not on their soil. Little did they know that they would be proved tragically wrong.


7 Into the Twenty-First Century: International and Domestic Attacks

The last twenty years of the twentieth century and the first years of the twenty-first century saw some changes in the types of groups willing to use terrorism. The period was a witness to some dramatic terrorist attacks: the destruction of a federal office building in Oklahoma City by a domestic terrorist, which killed more than a hundred people; the attacks against U.S. embassies in East Africa that killed hundreds; the first attempt to destroy the World Trade Center; and, of course, the September 11 attacks in New York City and Washington DC, which killed thousands. The activities of black nationalist groups, the New Left, and the JDL were fading from the scene, although Puerto Rican nationalists continued their attacks throughout this period. While the remnants of some old right-wing groups remained active, new violent groups on the right, which advanced racist and anti-Semitic doctrines, came on the scene. Émigré groups, including the anti-Castro Cuban organizations operating out of the United States, became less active. New domestic groups including those opposed to abortion and those seeking to defend the environment or the rights of animals, that were willing to use violence in pursuit of their causes became active. Situations abroad involving U.S. foreign policies were increasingly linked to terrorist activities. The United States provided direct or indirect support to dissident terrorist groups in a number of countries. It also became embroiled in the struggle against the drug cartels in Colombia, a struggle in which terrorism was often the weapon of choice for drug lords and their allies. While changing circumstances led to a decline in the number of attacks on U.S. targets by Palestinian groups, major assaults resulting from U.S. policies in the

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Middle East increased, first abroad and then on U.S. soil. The 9/11 attacks, in turn, were linked to the chain of events that led to the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, which in turn spawned a new wave of terrorist attacks directed at the United States, its protégés in Iraq, and its allies in the Middle East and elsewhere. The JDL launched a few attacks after 1985.1 The end of the cold war and the breakup of the Soviet Union, however, meant that Soviet Jews were now free to migrate to other parts of the world, and this event led to the elimination of one of the causes for the violence. Terrorism from the left in the United States had also largely disappeared by the early 1980s, although leftist groups in parts of Europe lasted somewhat longer. Eventually, the fall of communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union ended what little appeal the leftwing groups had for potential recruits. The leftist rhetoric of some groups became less relevant with the demise of communism and the exposure of the reality of the Soviet paradise that had been held up as a model. Violence associated with black extremists or nationalists also virtually disappeared. The situation for black Americans had improved, although full racial equality was yet to be achieved. Black Americans now had more readily available legal remedies for dealing with discrimination. While racism in the United States had not disappeared, illegal actions resulting from racism were more likely to be prosecuted by authorities; consequently, black nationalist groups held somewhat less appeal. Though violence from this source did not totally disappear, terrorist attacks were certainly rarer.2 While some groups faded from the scene, the Puerto Rican groups continued to operate and launch attacks. Launching the attacks from Puerto Rico rather than from the mainland increasingly became the trend.3 The Puerto Rican nationalists have even found allies recently in a number of environmental groups. The U.S. military has long used a gunnery range on Vieques Island off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico. The nationalists have protested the use of their land (rather than land on the U.S. mainland) for this kind of activity, which they saw as exploitation by the colonial power. The environmental groups have been concerned about the resulting ecological damage to the island. This tactical alliance has generated additional publicity for the nationalists. While there has been little change in official attitudes, the links with the environmental groups could provide some useful cover and support for the nationalist groups. Though the nationalist groups are no closer to their ideal of independence, the U.S. government has not totally discounted the threat that these violent dissidents represent.

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The violence from Puerto Rican nationalists has no doubt been reduced, but the possibility of future outbreaks still remains. While terrorist violence from the left had faded, right-wing extremist violence continued and even increased in the 1980s and 1990s. The attack on the Murrah Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 was the most deadly single attack in this period. The violent right wing groups of this period included a variety of groups: organizations that would qualify as neo-Nazi groups; others that combined racism and anti-Semitism with aberrant interpretations of Christian doctrine; the militia movement that peaked in the 1990s; several extreme tax protest organizations; and a number of groups that were fearful that the United States was being undermined or taken over by foreign interests. The KKK, once the leading violent right-wing group, had by this time been reduced to a shadow of its former self, but the new groups persisted in their efforts to maintain white supremacy, and former Klan members provided recruits for many of these organizations. Many of these new groups were active in pursuing their goals through violence. As a consequence, the 1990s saw an increase in both the number of white supremacist groups, as well as an escalation of violence and an upsurge in hate crimes.4 Over half of all the terrorist attacks in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s were from the extreme right.5 Anti-Semitic attacks began to increase as well.6 In the later part of the twentieth century, 62 percent of the hate crimes were against blacks, while 17 percent had religious targets, usually Jewish.7 The overt neo-Nazi groups operating in the United States have often been marginal organizations. As loyalty to the ideals of Hitler and the original Nazi Party was a major part of their ideology and appeal, these groups could not survive long in their original form. They however, appeal to racist strains in U.S. society and to individuals opposed to blacks and other “foreign” races. They developed informal alliances with the Klan, anti-Semitics, and antigays. The former Klan members were more likely to cooperate with neo-Nazi groups. Older Klan members, who had served in World War II, had found Nazi symbols unpleasant and even repugnant. With the passage of time, however, this antipathy declined.8 Neo-Nazi groups typically felt that the country was losing its unique and valuable American culture because of the migration of nonwhites into the country, the corruption of the government, and the pervasive influence of Jews working behind the scenes.9 The overt anti-Semitism of such groups has made them place the blame for the country’s difficulties on Jews. Most of these neo-Nazi groups refer to the national government as the Zionist

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Occupation Government (ZOG), reflecting their view that the United States has been secretly dominated by Jewish financiers. The various neo-Nazi groups have sporadically attacked Jews and racial minorities, particularly blacks. They have also targeted gays because they regard them as one more unacceptable community. While no single group has launched a large number of attacks, collectively they have accounted for many terrorist incidents and some deaths. At least prior to September 11, 2001, national, state, and local authorities kept these groups under surveillance thereby reducing the threat they presented.10 After the attacks on Washington, DC, and New York City, however, they have received less attention. One of the more active neo-Nazi groups that appeared was the Silent Brotherhood, more commonly called the Order. Robert Mathews formed the group in 1983. The group was racist, anti-Semitic, and antigovernment. Mathews argued that it was necessary to exterminate minorities and traitors to the white race in a race war.11 The Order actually began a campaign of terrorism against the government and groups in society that supported the national government. He drew much of his inspiration for his tactics from earlier left-wing groups.12 He hoped to start a revolutionary uprising against the government by setting an example with modern day versions of propaganda of the deed that would inspire others to act. The Order, while small, was much more dangerous than the typical leftist group whose tactics it emulated. The group launched a series of attacks on Jewish citizens and minorities; it also carried out a series of bank robberies and armored car robberies that netted more than $4 million.13 The group did not survive for long as many members were caught and convicted of various crimes. Mathews himself was killed in a shootout with the police in Washington state. Very little of the money from the robberies was recovered; it is commonly believed that most of it was channeled to other right-wing groups.14 Though Mathews failed to inspire the uprising against the government, he did become a martyr and hero to the extreme right in the United States (and in Europe as well).15 Skinheads are another group that operates on the extreme right. The skinheads are less organized than either the neo-Nazi groups or the Klan in its heyday. Their violent activities may lack some of the clear political objectives of other groups, but their targets are similar. They would like to get rid of those whom they consider undesirable.16 They are opposed to racial minorities, are antigay, and feel that foreign immigrants have received concessions at the expense of white males. They have assaulted Jews, blacks, and homosexuals, and in


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some cases displayed some commitment to general right-wing political agendas.17 Skinheads have not been as common in the United States as in Europe, but as they do in Europe, they can provide additional muscle for attacks on minority groups or on other targets by the right. They can thus become participants in activities that have an underlying political purpose. Even when skinheads engage in isolated attacks on their own, they find support for their views and attitudes in the general negative atmosphere of hostility that the other groups create for minorities. Another element in the right-wing extremist mix has been the tax protest groups. Posse Comitas was basically one such group.18 The members argued that the highest level of government created by the Constitution was the county sheriff. Only he had the right to call upon citizens for support in forming a posse. Even then, members of the Posse Comitas believed that they could refuse to obey the sheriff if they thought he was wrong; furthermore, they could act on their own if he was wrong in refusing to take action. Some members of tax protest groups also claimed the right to nullify laws that they believed to be unconstitutional and that they had the right to use force against anyone trying to enforce such unconstitutional laws.19 Many tax protest groups also argue that the Federal Reserve Bank, federal courts, and the income tax violate the Constitution.20 Group members have faced criminal charges for tax evasion and for filing false legal documents, as well as for possession of weapons. They believe that the Second Amendment to the Constitution guarantees the right to the personal ownership of all kinds of weapons. The Freedmen of Montana, for example, ran afoul of federal authorities on such issues, resulting in the siege of a ranch of a prominent member, which ended with the surrender of the Freedmen in question. Of course, the essence of the arguments of such tax protest groups is that their interpretation of the Constitution and laws cannot be challenged and that they are justified in defending their self-proclaimed rights by whatever means necessary. Thus, it is not surprising that members of the Posse Comitas and other such groups have acted upon their beliefs and used violence against government officials and others. Another component of some, but not all, of these violent extremist groups has been Christian Identity. The Christian Identity movement is quite diverse. There is no theological orthodoxy; pastors and congregations follow their own views.21 The Christian Identity movement in its basic form does have common elements, such as the view that the United States should be a white, Christian nation, separated from

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contamination from the outside world, especially from other religions and other races. The ideology/theology of Christian Identity has both ethnic and religious elements of intolerance.22 The religious themes have provided a justification for the antigay attitudes of many groups, which explains their willingness to assault homosexuals.23 In the more extreme versions of Christian Identity, it is argued that the real Israelites—and therefore Jesus Christ—were white Aryans, and that the Jewish claim to be the Chosen People is false.24 While not all those linked with Christian Identity churches support violence, some do.25 Perhaps more important than the actions of Christian Identity movements has been the justification that such teachings have provided for other right-wing groups. The theology supports violence as it proclaims that God’s laws are higher than the laws of governments, and if government laws conflict with God’s laws, the former are illegitimate.26 Christian Identity also reinforces racist attitudes and encourages antiSemitism.27 The Aryan Nations, one of the more prominent neo-Nazi groups, had links with Christian Identity groups and Robert Mathews had such linkages as well.28 The Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord (CSA) was another Christian Identity group that was involved in a few attacks against Jews and homosexuals, and it apparently had plans for more serious terrorism, but failed to follow them through.29 Another strand of right-wing extremism developed around the militia movement appeared and expanded in the 1980s. There militia groups that appeared were characterized by their diversity, as were the Christian Identity groups. Like the Minutemen of the 1960s, the militia members saw themselves as patriotic groups created to help defend the United States from external takeover and internal subversion. The groups feared that foreign influences would have negative effects on the country. Many groups see the United Nations as a pernicious agent for these negative foreign influences and believe that U.N. troops have been on the ready in Canada to begin an occupation of the United States at the appropriate time. They have also come to regard the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) as the national government agency that was participating in such plans by preparing extensive underground detention centers to hold the Americans who would be arrested when the invasion came.30 The militias’ fear of foreign ideas and cultures led them into ethnocentrism and racism. It is perhaps not surprising that most of the militia members are white. While they actually avoid overt racism in their official views, they are concerned about the need to protect their presumed


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constitutional rights to bear arms. Thus, the militias have shared many of the same political ideas and theories as other right-wing groups, and some militia members have previously been involved in other groups. They have also served as a stepping stone for others get into the more extreme groups. Notwithstanding the professed goal of protecting the country, many militias also share the distrust of the government of other right-wing groups; they see the government as an enemy.31 Many are antigovernment because they see minority social programs and affirmative action as threats to their well-being and their futures.32 Some militia groups have been involved in terrorist violence, while in other cases investigations and undercover activities by police agencies have pre-empted some serious attacks that were being planned.33 One attack that was actually undertaken involved the derailing of an Amtrak passenger train in Arizona by a local militia group.34 The violence by militia groups, as that of other right-wing groups, has been scattered to date, but it provides an indication of the potential for terrorism that exists within the movement. The remnants of the Klan, neo-Nazi groups, Christian Identity elements, skinheads, tax protesters, and the militias were a diverse collection of groups on the extreme right. Individuals drifted from one group to another or from one type of group to another. Though there were obvious differences between these groups, they shared many ideological views. The similarities included the willingness to use violence. In addition, they distrusted government in the best of circumstances and were often actively antigovernment. Most groups were concerned about what they considered to be their Second Amendment rights to bear arms. As their concern over government encroachment on their rights was genuine, they needed the arms to carry out their violent attacks. The groups were invariably racist, anti-Semitic, and generally xenophobic. Many had views that incorporated religious elements to reinforce their intolerance, but even the groups that lacked distinct religious elements had millenarian characteristics often associated with religious cults.35 These groups saw the alien elements and influences that they feared as part of a conspiracy to take over and subjugate the United States. Many of the groups also had a fascination for biological or chemical toxins.36 A number of groups tried to stockpile ricin, a deadly poison made from castor beans, to assassinate government officials or others that they feared. Members of a tax resisters group, the Minnesota Patriots Council, were arrested, tried, and convicted for planning such actions.37 The CSA apparently had plans for poisoning municipal water supplies.38 The racist and

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xenophobic attitudes of some of these groups has led to a concern that some of them would be willing to use weapons of mass destruction against minority groups or government targets or population centers if they could acquire such weapons.39 Another aspect of these right-wing groups has been the development of the idea of leaderless resistance discussed in chapter 1. William Pierce popularized this idea of leaderless resistance. Pierce, who was at one time a member of the American Nazi Party,40 wrote the Turner Diaries, a fictional account of a personal rebellion against a corrupt U.S. government dominated by Jewish and foreign interests. The hero of the novel followed the strategy of leaderless resistance. His intent was to spark an uprising in a fashion similar to the ideas of the anarchist theory of propaganda of the deed. Pierce, until his death by natural causes in 2002 served as a leading theoretician for extremists groups on the right. Robert Mathews drew upon the Turner Diaries for inspiration for his terrorist campaign.41 Pierce, in turn, apparently received substantial donations from Mathews, which no doubt were from the proceeds of the bank and armored car robberies that the Order had staged.42 While the idea of leaderless resistance may have originated elsewhere, Pierce was important because he suggested it as a course of action for groups on the right. He noted that leaderless resistance style of action made it much more difficult for police informers to infiltrate the groups.43 He also suggested this type of tactic as the only realistic option for revolutionary violence by the right in this period.44 Leaderless resistance also had the advantage of separating the persons acting as leaders from the rank and file. One consequence of the separation has been that the leaders cannot be charged with conspiracy or involvement in the violent attacks undertaken by members of small groups or by individuals operating as lone wolf terrorists. The leaders use websites or publications to identify those who are opposed to their ideas and who are considered dangerous to the country, and they provide addresses or other information about potential targets. They can applaud—with appropriate regrets about violations of the law—actions undertaken in support of the cause, but they remain immune to prosecution because there is no organization involved.45 Suggested targets for leaderless resistance attacks have been government officials, minorities, and infrastructure.46 Attacks by such lone wolf terrorists are on the rise and have become more deadly. While the attackers may be isolated individuals, they have attacked racial or religious minorities with the intent of spreading terror among the target


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populations.47 While each of these acts in isolation may seem to lack the organization required to count as terrorism, these “individual acts can be counted as terrorism if they occur within the context of an ongoing political campaign, and follow the same goals as established paramilitary movements.”48 There is little doubt that the leaderless resistance activities of the extreme right qualify as terrorism. There has been some concern that such lone wolf attacks would constitute the greatest threat to U.S. security.49 The different elements of the extreme right were energized, and in some cases enraged, by the events in Ruby Ridge, Idaho in 1993 and outside Waco, Texas in 1994.50 At Ruby Ridge misunderstandings and faulty operational procedures resulted in tragedy. Federal agents had tried to recruit Randy Weaver as an informer on local right-wing groups, but he refused. He was then charged with a violation of firearms regulations as part of the effort to encourage him to become an informer. When he failed to appear for a trial date (most likely because he had not been informed or had failed to realize that the date had been moved forward), federal agents attempted to arrest him. Weaver’s son and a federal marshal were killed in a gun battle that resulted from the initial attempt, and a later shooting led to the death of Weavers wife. Weaver was eventually persuaded to surrender, but the federal agents displayed poor planning during the episode. Weaver was acquitted of all charges by a local jury, no doubt a sympathetic one, and was paid compensation for the death of his wife and son.51 These events convinced many members of groups on the right that the federal government was indeed intent on disarming patriotic citizens, perhaps particularly because they were white Christians and that the government was obviously willing to go to extremes in its efforts to deal with those that it regarded as dangerous.52 Events in Waco a year later reinforced the discontent of the extreme right. The Branch Davidians, a religious cult led by David Koresh, had set up a compound outside of Waco, Texas. While the Branch Davidians were an unorthodox religious group rather than a right-wing political organization, they had stockpiled a number of illegal weapons in the compound. For groups on the extreme right the important dispute between the cult and the government involved Second Amendment issues over gun ownership. Federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms organized a raid to seize the weapons, but the Branch Davidians had been forewarned. They repelled the raid and deaths on both sides resulted. After a long standoff, government agents under the supervision of the FBI entered the compound. Many of the Branch

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Davidians, including Koresh, died after explosions set off within the compound started fires. Many right-wing groups saw these events as another example of an oppressive government that was willing to disarm its own citizens and to even kill resisters.53 They were also convinced that the government intended to kill the religious dissidents from the beginning as part of broader plans of repression. The actions at Ruby Ridge and Waco simply reinforced their belief in a global conspiracy undermining their view of what America should be. What is important, of course, is not whether these views are correct or not, but that members of the groups believed that they were correct and proceeded to act accordingly. Timothy McVeigh was one of the individuals who saw the actions at Ruby Ridge and Waco as part of a concerted government effort to repress citizens and abrogate the rights of Americans. He was determined to strike back at the national government for these actions. McVeigh and Terry Nichols, his coconspirator, had been hovering around the fringes of various right-wing extremists groups. While they were apparently not formal members of any group, they were familiar with some of them, including the Michigan Militia. This group did not welcome them as they were seen as undisciplined and likely to act independently.54 They did indeed choose to act on their own, and McVeigh used a car bomb on the Murrah Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, causing the death of more than a hundred people. The fact that the bombing occurred one year after the assault on the compound in Waco is unlikely to be a coincidence. The Oklahoma City bombing was a potent example of how devastating a leaderless resistance type of attack could be; furthermore, it also demonstrated how difficult it is to prevent or preempt every major terrorist attack. Complete prevention is not possible when the terrorists are operating on their own and are not part of any group. This makes it much more difficult to detect them before they strike. The attack also demonstrated how easily a devastating bomb could be made from commonly available information and materials. The extreme right has not always accepted McVeigh’s guilt for Oklahoma City bombing. New conspiracy theories have appeared suggesting that it was the national government that was actually responsible for the bombing and was using the incident to discredit the militia movement.55 Notwithstanding such defensive statements, some militia groups did see a decline in membership after the Oklahoma City violence. Other groups attracted new members, however, because there was a greater awareness of them. Though many of the new members did not remain


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long in the various militia organizations, their membership in the militia introduced them to the ideas of the extreme right and many of them developed connections with other right-wing groups.56 They remained potentially available for mobilization for more active participation in the future. Further, the persons attracted to militia groups (or other right-wing groups) in the aftermath of Oklahoma City are probably more likely to be committed to action, even violent action. Some attacks on citizens or resident aliens from the right are part of a broader pattern of violence, often referred to as structural violence. Unpopular minorities can become targets of attacks by organized groups or by individuals who are prejudiced on racial, religious, or other grounds. The violence is termed structural, as society often either approves of the assaults or accepts them as relatively unimportant. Local police may facilitate such violence by inaction. Clearly lynchings in earlier periods of time constituted structural violence against blacks. The failure of local authorities to deal with domestic violence against women would be another example. By the end of the twentieth century, attacks on gays and some immigrants fell into this category as well.57 Fortunately the pattern of the public ignoring structural violence has changed, and this kind of violence is now more likely to be seen as a problem. The national government and many states have enacted hate crime legislation in reaction to structural violence, which suggests an appreciation of the damage that such violence can do to society. Even when police have been less than totally diligent, deaths have usually provoked a government response, and to their credit some local communities faced with attacks on minorities react quite vigorously. The various right-wing groups have usually found it difficult to cooperate with each other, although they often have an ideological affinity with each other. Many individuals drift from one group to another. The multiplicity of groups provides individuals with access to this sometimes-violent strand of American political ideas.58 These individuals also provide a core of activists for terrorist actions. They can become lone wolf actors in leaderless resistance campaigns. While no single group is particularly large, the combination of groups on the extreme right has made them collectively dangerous. While isolated actions may not have much impact, the cumulative effect of attacks begins to have an impact as do major terrorist incidents such as Oklahoma City. Militia groups, white supremacists, tax protesters, and others remain active, and they continue to plot and plan, and even occasionally to launch, terrorist attacks.59 In many respects the actions

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of the various right-wing groups represent a reaction against the effects of globalization and modernization.60 The presence of more persons from different minority groups or cultural traditions in the United States that has come with globalization has triggered violent responses. The response is similar to reactions that were directed in earlier days against Catholics, southern Europeans, and then East Europeans and Jews. The fear that the government has been taken over by foreigners is a current version of this xenophobia. The religious views of some groups reinforce the fear of change as they see the secular humanism that comes with modernization as a threat to religious principles and a moral society.61 The displacements and discontents that flow from modernization and globalization are not likely to disappear; on the contrary they provide additional fuel to the future fires of right-wing extremism. Abortion clinics became another target for terrorism in this period. Attacks on abortion centers generally were undertaken by those opposed to abortion on religious grounds. The coalition of antiabortion activists was not restricted to members of any one religious group. Protestants, Catholics, Jews, and others, all participated in protests against abortion and other activities. It is interesting to note that though most of the participants disagree on many other points of theology, they came together in opposition to abortion. The protests and the associated violence were clearly an example of instrumental terrorism by an ad hoc coalition of opponents. The antiabortion activism was also somewhat unusual in that the target audiences included the private sector providers of abortions and the national and state governments whose policies the activists sought to change. Most of the activists normally confined their violence to property attacks— vandalism of clinics or the cars of the people who worked in the clinics, glue in locks, and arson or bomb attacks at night when there was no one present.62 The most militant among the activists, however, became more violent resorting to assaults or even murders in their attempts to shut down abortion clinics. A shadowy organization calling itself the Army of God appeared, apparently founded by Mike Bray, a minister involved in abortion protests. The Army of God provided some organizational framework for those willing to use violence as part of the campaign to end abortions. The Army of God justified the violence against doctors and workers in the clinics not as revenge or retribution for wrongdoing, but as a way to deter others from providing abortions.63 The Army of God wanted to provoke violence and was successful in stimulating some attacks.64 A number of websites


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appeared to support similar attacks. Such sites identified doctors and nurses performing abortions, disclosed their home addresses, and applauded when one of the doctors was killed or assaulted. As a consequence of these kinds of activities, a number of doctors who had performed abortions were wounded or killed. One of the individuals involved in violent attacks on abortion clinics was Eric Rudolph. He left the bombs at the Atlanta Olympics and a gay bar, indicating that his intolerance extended to foreigners and minority groups.65 The antiabortion groups were at least partially successful in their efforts. The property violence led to some landlords deciding that they would not renew leases for abortion clinics while others raised rents to cover the costs of higher insurance premiums.66 The threats, assaults, and murders led some practitioners to stop providing abortions or deterred others from entering the field.67 Overall, the activists were successful in making abortions harder to obtain in some parts of the country.68 In the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001, there was a major anthrax scare. Letters containing deadly anthrax were sent to a number of people. People died from the exposure to the anthrax; at least one person who was the apparent target, a few postal workers, and at least one person whose contact point with the anthrax was never determined became victims. It is not clear if the anthrax letters qualify on all counts of the definition of terrorism as the sender made no demands nor raised any political issues that could be addressed by the government or the public. It is possible that if a single individual was responsible he or she could have been deranged or acting on some sort of personal grudge.69 Although the perpetrator is yet to be caught, certain aspects of the attacks suggest that it does constitute terrorism. The style of attack was in keeping with the ideas of lone wolf attacks as part of a leaderless resistance campaign of terrorism. The targets of the letters were liberal politicians and journalists (often perceived to be liberal). The editor of a local weekly in Florida who died as a consequence of the exposure was Jewish, suggesting at least the possibility of anti-Semitism as a motive. The attacks were immensely successful in introducing widespread fear in the population. A small bomb could have resulted in an equal number of deaths, but the use of anthrax as the mechanism for the attacks suggests that the inducement of greater fear in a broad audience than in the actual victim was indeed the goal. If such fear was indeed the goal, it was accomplished. The public went into great panic, especially as the attacks were so close on the heels of the 9/11 attacks. Mail Services were severely disrupted, and significant

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resources were expended in seeking the person responsible. While no one has claimed credit for the attack, the method of disseminating the anthrax and the timing meant that a communiqué was not essential. It is even possible that the perpetrator may have hoped to generate even greater hostility in the United States toward Arabs or Muslims by hoping that al Qaida would be blamed—a goal that would be in keeping with the political ideology and objectives of the extreme right. At the end of the 1980s, new groups committed to protecting the environment and willing to use violence to achieve their goals appeared.70 Some environmentalists and those concerned about animal rights began to use terrorism in pursuit of their goals. These groups can be viewed as a variation of leftist terrorism. These activists often have come out of left-wing groups, and the movements themselves represent an antipathy toward global capitalism and all the evils that come with it.71 The groups include the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), which originated in the United Kingdom but has established chapters in the United States. The ALF has normally used property attacks to attain its objectives, relying on vandalism and break-ins at labs that use animals for research. The test animals are “liberated” from the labs and the research results from the animal studies are destroyed. There have been attacks against fur operations too, including actions against trappers, farms that raise animals for their fur, and stores that sell fur products. As a consequence of both peaceful and the violent protests, fur sales have suffered significant decline.72 ALF has also promoted leaderless resistance types of campaigns to save animals. It maintains websites that applaud successful operations, and this publicity appears to be intended to provide activists around the country with the necessary information as to the kinds of actions that are likely to work.73 Environmental groups such as the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) have adopted similar tactics to defend the planet from despoliation. They have used property attacks against construction equipment, ski lodges, and housing subdivisions that impinge upon scenic areas or forested land previously untouched by home building or development, and they have vandalized gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles (SUVs) and all terrain vehicles (ATVs).74 Opposition to logging operators has led the environmentalists to resort to tree-spiking. Tree-spiking—the practice of driving spikes into the trees—does not harm the trees but can damage chain saws or other equipment used for cutting down the trees or for cutting them into sections. Logging companies face increased costs from either the damages to equipment or from the need to post


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guards at logging sites or from the need to hire inspectors to make sure the trees have not been spiked.75 Terrorism by the ELF and ALF has a number of somewhat unique characteristics. These two groups and other similar ones usually have not targeted the government, not even indirectly. Their targets have primarily been private sector businesses with which they disagree. The terrorist attacks hit businesses where they are most vulnerable— the balance sheet. Between 1996 and 2002, these groups committed at least six hundred criminal acts and caused an estimated $43 million in damages in the United States.76 They have been able to increase the costs for the targeted businesses; consequently, they have been successful in stopping some companies from using animals for research or in making other companies pay more attention to environmental issues. The fact that this economic warfare has been as successful as it has been may be precisely a consequence of targeting the profit levels and behavior of private firms and individuals rather than relying on attempts to change government policies.77 While the groups have had some successes with their property attacks, there has been some concern that the activists may be escalating their violence and are now willing to risk causing injury or death through their attacks.78 There have already been isolated instances of such attacks, and the property attacks may have served as a first step to increasingly violent actions by at least some of the militant dissidents when they see that the broader objectives of the groups are not being achieved.79 These groups may also become more radicalized if they form alliances of convenience with right-wing groups opposed to elements of globalization. Environmentalists and animal rights groups are opposed to modernization and the dangers that globalization brings. Demonstrations against the World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999 and the World Bank in Washington DC in 2000 involved groups on both the right and the left, and environmentalists who were opposed to globalization in one form or another.80 The demonstrations, of course, were not terrorism, but they did demonstrate the potential for alliance among disparate groups willing to resort to violence to achieve their political goals. Émigré terrorism has largely disappeared. There were very few instances in which foreign groups staged attacks on U.S. soil to focus attention on problems in their home countries (as opposed to protesting U.S. policies). The end of the cold war, the collapse of Communism in Europe, and the breakup of the Soviet Union, and other changes in

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the international environment lessened the value of such actions. Foreign policy issues were responsible for an increase in U.S. connections with international terrorism, usually as a target, but sometimes as a supporter of groups abroad. The United States supported dissident groups that used terrorism, often in conjunction with guerrilla tactics, against their governments. Terrorist techniques were part of the actions used by anti-Soviet and anticommunist groups in Afghanistan, and these groups received direct and indirect support from the United States. The Contras in Nicaragua initially attempted to use guerrilla tactics to destabilize the Sandinista government but eventually relied almost entirely on terrorism.81 Forces of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) in Angola combined guerrilla and terrorist tactics to replace the government formed by another national liberation movement that fought the Portuguese colonial regime in the 1960s and the 1970s. UNITA received indirect support from the United States for a period in the 1970s and early 1980s in addition to more direct assistance from South Africa. While Cuban émigré actions against the Castro regime became fewer and fewer, the United States continued to provide some assistance or to at least tolerate their actions. U.S. policies also led to involvement in domestic conflicts in Colombia. The United States supported efforts in Colombia to curtail the drug trade. The United States and Colombia reached agreements that permitted Colombian drug bosses to be extradited to the United States to stand trial on charges of drug trafficking. This agreement led to a terrorist campaign by the Medellin Cartel designed to force the government to change policies and to revoke the agreements permitting extradition of Colombians. Ultimately the Medellin Cartel was defeated—in part through the actions of government forces and in part because the rival Cali Cartel helped the government to destroy its competitor.82 Though the terrorist campaign and the government response did not directly affect the United States, the United States did actively support the Colombian government. The United States, its personnel, and its interests remain potential targets as it continues to aid Colombia in its struggles against the powerful combination of leftist dissidents that are allied with the drug producers. While émigré terrorism in this period did not affect the United States as it had in earlier years, Americans and U.S. interests abroad remained targets of terrorist violence. There were occasional attacks and kidnappings in Latin America, although not on the scale of the 1960s and 1970s. Americans were more frequently chosen as targets


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by terrorist groups abroad in the 1980s.83 Tourists, educators, and businesspersons became targets more often partly because of the greater security at diplomatic facilities.84 Events in the Middle East, however, led to the increased targeting of Americans. The United States often became a target either for its direct support of Israel in the continuing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians or for its close relationship with states that had abandoned the struggle with Israel— such as Egypt when it signed its peace treaty after the Camp David meetings hosted by President Jimmy Carter. In Lebanon, U.S. citizens (as well as citizens of European states) became victims of kidnapping as groups protested U.S. policy in Israel or U.S. policies toward Lebanon. Hizballah (Party of God) was formed at this time as a political organization devoted to advancing the interests of the Shi’ite Muslim community in Lebanon. As it represented this minority group within Islam, it also received assistance from the Islamic Republic of Iran, which was governed by Shi’ite clerics. The situation in Lebanon not only led to attacks on individual Americans but also to first the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut and then the bombing of the new site of American diplomatic offices. U.S. involvement in a peacekeeping force that was seeking to help resolve the complex situations relating to the Lebanese civil war also led to the attacks on U.S. marines, which left 241 dead. An additional attack on French paratroopers left 58 dead.85 There is some evidence that the CIA attempted to retaliate and supported an assassination attempt by foreign nationals against the Hizballah thought to be responsible for the attacks. The car bomb intended to kill him killed nearly a hundred people and left hundreds more wounded but missed the leader. While the assassination attempt failed, a Saudi “donation” to Hizballah seemed to have been effective, perhaps in conjunction with the assassination attempt, in ending the Hizballah violence against the United States.86 There was a variety of attacks by Palestinian groups. Members of the Palestinian Liberation Front hijacked the cruise ship, the Achille Lauro, in 1985. The only passenger killed was an elderly American Jew. When a TWA plane was hijacked in the same year, it was an American serviceman who was murdered.87 There were other hijackings and attacks that involved American citizens, but the Americans were not special targets; similar to citizens of other countries, they were chance victims. By the end of the 1980s, however, Palestinian attacks had begun to decline as the PLO—and most, but not all, of the other Palestinian groups—ceased attacks against civilians and targets outside of Israel or of the Occupied Territories. When the Oslo Accords

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were signed, Palestinian terrorism had already been in a hiatus. The breakdown of the Oslo agreements and the violence in Israel and the Occupied Territories that occurred later, did not involve attacks against Americans. Some U.S. citizens have died or been wounded in the various attacks, but there has been no evidence that U.S. citizens have been specifically targeted, even though many Palestinians still see the United States as a key supporter of Israel. While attacks against the United States or its citizens from Palestinian groups declined, other groups based in the Middle East (and elsewhere) began to target the United States and other Western countries. Islamic extremists in a number of countries opposed the West for supporting repressive or secular regimes. Osama bin Laden and al Qaida, of course, were behind some of the attacks abroad. Bin Laden and al Qaida were also able to argue that the West was slow to respond to attacks on Muslims in Bosnia and Muslim Albanians in Kosovo, suggesting that the West was inherently anti-Muslim. In further support of their argument, they also cited U.S. aid for attacks on Muslims in places such as Lebanon and Chechnya.88 The withdrawal of U.S. forces from Lebanon after the attack on the marine barracks and from Somalia after causalities were inflicted on U.S. forces was also used by bin Laden to suggest that further attacks would be successful.89 Structurally, al Qaida is a loosely affiliated network of local groups centered on the leadership of bin Laden. Bin Laden was able to cement personal links with many of the leaders of national groups during the common struggle in Afghanistan against the Soviets and their local allies. The connections made in that struggle have created the basis for cooperation and mutual support in later attacks. This network’s operations would also appear to have benefited from the use of modern technology devices such as cell phones and the Internet for maintaining contacts.90 The leaders do not necessarily direct the actions of the local groups, although they supply support or funding. Al Qaida has created its own form of effective leaderless resistance at the global level. While al Qaida has had connections with some of the Islamic groups involved in attacks, in some cases the attacks were launched by local extremist groups that had no connection with al Qaida, even if they sympathized with bin Laden or drew inspiration from the group. Al Qaida has been involved in some of the most important terrorist incidents directed against the Unites States. There was an early attempt to attack U.S. servicemen in Sana, Yemen in 1992, which miscarried and was not even recognized as an attempt at the time.91 The Somali


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militia that attacked the U.S. troops in Somalia apparently had some links with al Qaida, which involved funding, weapons supply, and training, but bin Laden was probably not involved in the planning of the attacks or perhaps even in the idea of a direct attack on U.S. personnel.92 There is stronger evidence that the group supported the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, a blind Egyptian cleric connected with an Islamic extremist group in Egypt, was in charge of the attack, but al Qaida supplied financing, and an al Qaida member, Ramzi Yousef, provided technical support for the effort.93 The bomb was intended to collapse one of the towers and inflict significant casualties, but the attack failed in this objective as only a handful of people died. While there were more than a thousand injuries, most were minor, and the World Trade Center survived and the building continued to function. The choice of the World Trade Center as a symbol of modernization, globalization, and the economic role of the United States in an evolving world was significant, and had obvious implications for the future. The actual individuals involved in the attack were caught and convicted, but Ramzi Yousef had left the country before the attack. The failure of this attack no doubt was a factor in the choice of the World Trade Center as one of the targets eight years later. There were other attacks abroad. In 1996, Islamic militants attacked the Khobar Towers complex in Dharan in Saudi Arabia. Nineteen U.S. servicemen died and nearly four hundred people were injured. While the evidence indicates that the attackers were not al Qaida members, they may have used contacts with it to get the explosives that they later used.94 In 1998, there was no doubt that al Qaida was involved in the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. The attacks at Dar-es-Salaam did less damage and only killed eleven people as the truck with the explosives could not get close to the building and as the embassy was not on a major thoroughfare. The truck bomb in Nairobi was much more deadly. More than two hundred people, mostly Kenyans, died, and thousands were injured.95 Neither Kenya nor Tanzania had done anything to qualify as a special target; the target was the United States. Kenya and Tanzania were chosen because the U.S. embassies there were vulnerable, because the al Qaida operatives could blend in with the local populations (both countries have Arab minorities), and because the local security and counterintelligence services were relatively weak. The U.S. retaliation against the al Qaida training camps in Afghanistan was ineffective as bin Laden and other key personnel

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had already moved to other locations. The fact that the attacks failed may have made the United States seem even more ineffectual in the aftermath of the bombings.96 Of course, a failure to react to the embassy attacks in any form would have provided even more encouragement to anti-U.S. extremist groups around the world. Ultimately, bin Laden and al Qaida were able to continue to operate relatively unimpeded. Al Qaida’s activities between 1998 and 2001 were focused on other targets for the most part although the long-term planning for the 9/11 assaults was obviously under way. There was at least one attempt to smuggle explosives in from Canada to launch an attack at the beginning of 2000, which was thwarted by the border patrol. Late in 2000, the destroyer, the USS Cole, was the target of a suicide attack in the harbor at Aden and thirty-two sailors were killed.97 There were other targets, however, that were related to the long-term goals of al Qaida, which involved opposition to the West in general and to regimes in the Middle East that were too friendly with the West or the United States in particular, governments in Islamic countries that were considered to be too secular, or governments in countries that ruled over significant Muslim minorities. A plan was developed by RamziYousef. Operating out of the Philippines his plan called for al Qaida operatives to simultaneously plant bombs on eleven American airliners sometime early in 1995. A prototype of the bomb to be used had already been successfully tested on an airliner late in 1994.98 Fortunately, this effort was short-circuited when a fire in a Manila apartment led to the discovery of the plot. The planning involved in this plan and others indicated that al Qaida was willing to make a significant effort to strike at the United States and the governments of other countries. The long-term plans for a direct assault on the United States came to fruition in 2001 with the attacks that destroyed the two towers of the World Trade Center, the damage done to the Pentagon, and the intended attack on the Capitol or the White House that was prevented by the efforts of the passengers on a fourth hijacked aircraft. It is not clear what role the hijacking of an Air France flight by Algerian dissidents in 1995 played in the planning for the 9/11 assaults. Bin Laden and others were aware of the attempt to crash the plane at Paris, presumably into the Eiffel Tower. They may already have been considering something like the 9/11 attacks, or they could have been influenced by this failed attempt. The possibility of such an occurrence resulting from airports in the United States had obviously not been taken too seriously by U.S. agencies. These attacks required


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long-term, complex planning. Some of the hijackers had to learn how to fly multiengine planes at least at a minimal level of competence. The hijackers had to reside in the United States for a prolonged period without arousing suspicion, something that they managed to do relatively successfully. The plan itself called for the simultaneous hijacking of the four airliners. The hijackers took connecting commuter flights into the main airports for the flights chosen for the hijackings from smaller airports where security was likely to be less rigorous (as no one is likely to hijack a short commuter flight to Cuba). The flights that were chosen were early morning ones that were less likely to have delayed departures. The fourth flight, United Flight 93, that did not make it to its chosen target did leave later, a circumstance that gave the passengers the opportunity to determine what had happened with the other three planes and to realize their fate if they did nothing. The day chosen was a Tuesday when the planes were likely to have fewer passengers than Mondays or days later in the week, making the takeover of the plane easier. All four flights were coast-tocoast, meaning that they had full fuel tanks with increased destructive potential for the suicide attacks when they hit their targets. The hijackings also took advantage of established procedures for the airlines. The wave of hijackings in the 1960s had led to practices where airline crews were trained to cooperate with hijackers as the best guarantee for limiting casualties. This approach made the operation much easier for the al Qaida hijackers, but they were not the dissidents of the 1960s willing to settle for publicity for a causes, the publication of demands, and safe passage to Cuba or Algeria. The attacks also displayed coordination in attacking multiple targets as had been the case with the East African embassy assaults. This multiple target approach has been one of the few common characteristics of various attacks planned and coordinated by al Qaida over the years. The devastation of the 9/11 attacks placed the terrorist threat in the forefront of public attention in the United States. The damage and loss of life were great, and the attack itself sent shockwaves around the world. It is possible that bin Laden and the al Qaida leadership did not expect the damage that occurred to be as great as it turned out to be. The attacks demonstrated that the United States was vulnerable to attack on its own soil. The fact that the World Trade Center was again a target was quite significant as well. The center is symbolic of the United States as the center of the global economy and a center of world capitalism, but the choice of this target probably involved an additional consideration. The World Trade Center had survived the

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attack in 1993. While al Qaida was only a supporter in this terrorist attack, it may have been important to demonstrate that a failed attack did not mean that there would not be an ultimate success. The second strike at this target made an even clearer statement that there was no safety from terrorist violence anywhere, thereby enhancing the psychological aspect that is so central to terrorist operations. More attacks linked to al Qaida followed the violence of 9/11. None of them was on U.S. soil, but the attacks targeted American interests abroad instead. In 2002, a suicide car bomb was used to attack the U.S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, that left nineteen dead. In 2003, car bombs in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia were directed against compounds that housed westerners. In addition, the attacks on tourists at the Indonesian island of Bali in 2002 and 2005, the attacks on the Spanish commuter trains in Madrid in 2004, and the attacks on the London transit system in 2005 were all directed or inspired by al Qaida.99 The attempted destruction of a Paris to Miami flight by Richard Reed no doubt had some organizational support from al Qaida or some similar group as well, given the sophistication of the explosive devices, although Reed may have been recruited as an individual. These attacks either directly targeted the United States as in the consulate in Pakistan and the destroyer in Aden, U.S. allies in foreign policy efforts such as involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan in the case of the attacks in Madrid and London, or the West in general. The attacks are likely to continue, and as al Qaida is a network of groups, it has proven to be difficult to attack and dismantle it. Should bin Laden be even captured or killed along with the other key figures of the al Qaida leadership, more attacks are likely for at least some time into the future. One of the issues that became important with the terrorist actions in this era was the potential for infringements of civil liberties by authorities seeking to prevent additional attacks. Legislation passed after the bombing in Oklahoma City and the U.S. Patriot Act passed after 9/11 provided the opportunity for enhanced security screening and greater opportunities for searches, including some clandestine searches by authorities. There were also opportunities for the use of other questionable practices to combat terrorists, including the use of psychological pressure when questioning suspects and even the willingness to tolerate the use of torture of prisoners or suspects by allies. The fact that the United States saw itself as engaged in a war on terrorism meant that the pressure on civil liberties was increased. A situation analogous to war has led to the curbing of civil liberties. The current


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limitations have drawn on past precedent when public opinion and courts in the United States have tolerated greater restrictions on civil liberties in wartime. Bush administration’s classification of captured terrorist suspects as enemy combatants was designed to keep them outside the normal court system while providing for greater flexibility for indefinite detention. Discussions on creating military courts or tribunals to try terrorists for crimes includes the acceptance that intelligence sources and classified material can be used to provide evidence for convictions with full disclosure of the sources of that information. The use of such military courts or tribunals would also make convictions for crimes much more likely, even with weaker rules of evidence that might not normally satisfy the “guilty beyond reasonable doubt” requirements of American jurisprudence. Further, as there is a war on terrorism, dissent about policies can be viewed as disloyal and as providing aid and comfort to the enemy.100 The potential threat to civil liberties becomes greater in the context of the realization that there will always be difficulties in defending against terrorists. The terrorists have the great advantage that they get to choose the targets for their violence. There are far too many vulnerable targets abroad and at home to be effectively defended. Only foolish terrorists strike at the heavily guarded target and ignore the undefended or weakly defended one. Creating a feeling of vulnerability among target populations is one of the more important physiological consequences of terrorist attacks, which most violent groups use to their advantage.101 There is also a fear that there may be al Qaida sleeper cells present in the United States.102 Islamic extremists have already launched attacks or been arrested while planning attacks in the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, and Spain. One possible cell was discovered in the Buffalo, New York, region. It is possible that other cells might exist, biding their time. Perhaps even more likely are attacks by individuals or small independent groups acting on their own because they agree with Muslim extremists and draw inspiration from the examples that the extremists have provided. Even if group members are caught before they strike, the psychological warfare continues to be effective, and sooner or later some actions, whether large or small, will be successful. There is a danger that the situation in the United States might be exacerbated if Muslims of whatever national origin or persons from the Middle East of any religion become suspect communities. Subjected to greater attention from the authorities they are more likely to be arrested and even convicted for terrorist actions.103 Some, however, have argued that it has become necessary to carefully watch individuals

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from the Middle East or Muslims in general, including converts.104 They would clearly be treated as a suspect community. So far the country has avoided major outbreaks of popular vigilantism so prevalent in the American past against such suspect groups. While there was an immediate backlash against Muslims and an increase in hate crimes in the aftermath of 9/11, it did not last long as the government’s efforts to defuse a potentially explosive situation were generally successful.105 The extreme right would probably gain strength if campaigns against Muslim citizens and residents were to appear in the future. To date the extreme right does not seem to have gained strength because of the attacks of 9/11 and the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, but such resurgence is possible. Al Qaida or similar groups will launch other attacks on American soil and against U.S. interests abroad as part of the continuing struggle against Western influence in Muslim countries and specific U.S. foreign policies. The United States remains vulnerable abroad. Terrorist groups have begun to target foreign tourists with increasing frequency. Tourists serve as useful targets because they are symbolic of the penetration of foreign influences and ideas, from the United States in particular or the West in general. Tourists are a convenient target because the foreign visitors are hard to protect. Successful attacks will reduce foreign exchange earnings and reduce the tax revenues of the governments, and reduced revenues means that the governments will have fewer resources to provide the necessary security services and less money for other programs that could bind the population to the government in power.106 Attacks on Western tourists send messages to wider audiences about vulnerability, about supporting secular governments in the Middle East, about support for particular Western policies such as involvement in Iraq, and general opposition to the secularism that has come with modernization and the intrusion of Western cultures into local societies. U.S. citizens will frequently become targets for such attacks as there are many tourists from the United States traveling abroad. The effects of the 9/11 attacks and other terrorist actions from Islamic groups have been significant. Government and private resources have been diverted to protection against attacks, both on U.S. soil and abroad. U.S. and other airlines have faced the possibilities of bankruptcy as a consequence of reduced travel and the increased costs of security. Travel to foreign countries and visits to the United States have become more difficult for some groups. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon also have led to major initiatives in


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U.S. foreign policy. The invasion of Afghanistan by U.S. and allied forces after the Taliban refused to turn over bin Laden was one very direct consequence. The invasion of Iraq a few years later was linked by the Bush administration to international terrorism and the dangers that weapons of mass destruction represented. The ongoing conflict in Iraq has provided American troops and citizens as targets for attacks by a variety of Islamic and Iraqi nationalist groups. The Iraqi conflict has exacerbated tensions between the West and Muslims in many parts of the world. Provocation is often one of the goals of terrorist groups where an organization hopes to provoke the target government into actions that demonstrate its hostility to some audience.107 It has been suggested that one of the goals that bin Laden hoped to achieve by the attacks of 9/11 was just such a clash between the West and Muslims.108 At least in the short term, such increased enmity has been a result of the attacks and of American foreign policy reactions. One consequence is that the United States and its citizens could increasingly become targets. The nature of terrorism in this period changed substantially in that it often originated in foreign regions whereas in the past most of the terrorism involving the United States was domestic. The émigré terrorism of the 1960s and the 1970s, the attacks on business abroad in the same period, and perhaps the anarchist violence of the late 1800s and early 1900s are among the few previous examples of international terrorism reaching the United States. The United States also became more involved with terrorism with its continuing support of anti-Castro groups and assistance to groups in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, and elsewhere. The activities of al Qaida, its affiliates, and groups drawing inspiration from it, which began in the 1990s, however, has indicated that international terrorism is going to be a major threat in the future. The conflict in Iraq could greatly contribute to this level of violence if uncertainty or chaos continues to threaten the country. The underlying forces driving terrorist groups in this era were complex in many cases. The Puerto Rican groups were essentially communal (ethnic), while the few émigré groups operating in the United States were essentially at ideological odds with their home governments. The various right-wing extremist groups represented varying mixtures of ideology, religious beliefs, and ethnic exclusiveness (racism). The Islamic extremists most obviously represented religious communalism, but such groups have also been able to attract relatively secular, nationalist individuals who have opposed Western influence in the Middle East.109 The groups opposed to the U.S. presence in Iraq after

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the invasion and occupation in 2003 are an especially complex mix that includes religious opponents of the West, Iraqi or Arab nationalists fighting an occupying army, and even some groups ideologically opposed to capitalism and liberal democracy. The antiabortion and environmental groups have been considered single-issue groups that are focused on instrumental policy change.110 Though religion is the basis for the antiabortion groups, the groups are also an unusual instrumental coalition of otherwise potentially antagonistic religious groups. The violent environmental and animal rights activists would seem to be more akin to leftist ideological groups, given the suspicion of capitalism that they share. These dissident groups combine both ideological and instrumental characteristics. What is noteworthy about this period is that terrorist groups of this period were of diverse types and they covered a wide range of activities. The terrorism in this period was different from that of earlier periods in that most of the groups that were active were no longer supporting the status quo nor saw themselves as supporting the status quo. Right-wing extremist groups in the past, like the KKK in the 1920s, saw themselves as allies of the government. The right-wing groups in this period, however, were much more likely to regard the government as a key enemy that had to be defeated. Their activities could only be regarded as status quo terrorism by those who accepted their inaccurate historical version of what the United States in the past had really been like. The Puerto Rican nationalists, as separatist groups, were also opposed to the status quo. The environmental extremists are also likely to see the government as part of the problem rather than as deserving of support. The attacks carried out by Palestinian groups against U.S. targets in the early part of this period were also for changing the status quo rather than preserving it. Al Qaida and similar groups are also obviously not in favor of the status quo and have actively sought to undermine the U.S. government and its activities. The activities of the antiabortion groups sought to change government policies on abortion, so they would be considered dissident terrorism as well. The few remaining actions of émigré groups or the JDL would qualify as dissident with regard to the governments that they were targeting. The U.S. government and public were more peripheral rather than principal audiences for their violence. While the terrorism originating from Islamic or nationalist groups in the Middle East has obviously increased, right-wing groups pose the most serious domestic threat. It has been suggested that the Islamic extremists and the right-wing dissidents together pose the greatest


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threat for the United States in the immediate future.111 There is little reason to disagree with this assessment. Both of these groups have been opposed to globalization or to some aspects of it—especially the intrusion of foreign people and foreign ideas—The extreme right’s racist attitudes and Muslim extremists’ aversion to the West both reflect xenophobic tendencies. Both groups also see themselves as upholding traditional values that are being challenged and threatened.112 As globalization and modernization are going to continue, the attendant dissatisfaction and violent responses will continue as well. Racist and Muslim extremist groups also share the characteristic of utilizing leaderless resistance types of terrorism. It is unlikely that violence from the environmental and animal rights groups or antiabortion organizations will cease, but these groups do not currently constitute as potent a threat as Muslim extremists and racists do. The future foreign policy decisions of the United States in parts of the world other than the Middle East could generate backlashes and negative responses, but it is currently not clear what those regions will be. Probably the other serious worry regarding future outbreaks of terrorism is the growing linkages between criminal groups and terrorist organizations. There is increasing evidence that the interests of terrorist groups and criminal networks, especially those involved in drug trafficking, in many parts of the world complement each other.113 The activities of the Colombian drug cartels have demonstrated not only the importance of such linkages, but also the corrupting influence of large amounts of drug money on most groups in that country—including government officials, the leftist dissidents, and progovernment vigilantes on the right.114 The zealousness of political extremists (including Islamic groups) and the corruption that comes with financially rewarding criminal activity could pose the greatest threat abroad for the United States in the future, greater than even that posed by Muslim extremists acting independently of such criminal groups.


8 Conclusion:Two Hundred and Fifty Years of Terrorism in the United States

The previous chapters have indicated that in the relatively short history of the United States, many groups have chosen to use terrorism as a means of achieving their political objectives. The extent of such terrorism has been greater than commonly thought by most casual or even not so casual observers. As one observant analyst put it, the idea that terror came to American in 2001 or 1995 is ludicrous, given the nation’s experience with this type of political violence.1 Notwithstanding this background, one study of modern terrorism still noted that the Puerto Rican FALN “was the most prolific terrorist organization in U.S. history” because of the number of attacks (130) that it launched.2 Clearly this Puerto Rican nationalist group, however, was not the most active group in the nation’s history. That distinction (hardly an appropriate word) probably belongs to the Ku Klux Klan of the 1860s or the 1920s rather than to the FALN. We do not have accurate counts on how many attacks were launched by official branches of the KKK in either period, but it is obvious that either the 1860 or the 1920 version accounted for more than 130 incidents! It is possible that the Molly Maguires or the nativist groups in Philadelphia before the Civil War or a number of other groups might also have been responsible for more attacks. It is essential to take into account the past and the present when looking at terrorism. The terrorist groups that appeared in the country included ones whose political objectives were primarily rooted in communalism— religious, ethnic or a combination of the two ideologies—from either the left or the right; in a few cases they represented efforts to achieve instrumental goals. The terrorism that occurred included significant

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cases of both dissident and status quo terrorism. Some of the terrorism that falls into the status quo category included cases in which the authorities tolerated the terrorism as well as cases in which government authorities were actively supporting the violence. The majority of the terrorism in the United States was from domestic groups with domestic objectives, but the most recent years have seen the appearance of international terrorism of which the devastation of 9/11 was the most significant example. The different examples of U.S. terrorism do not support any single causal theory to explain terrorism, but a variety of theories. The analysis of terrorism in the United States also suggests that at least some of the time, terrorists have been successful in achieving some of their objectives. Further, the history of terrorism in the United States has indicated that civil liberties for individuals have often been in jeopardy whenever terrorists have been active. Terrorism is not a particularly new phenomenon in the United States. Many Americans today regard terrorism as a rare or unique occurrence, but it has, in fact, been a common thread running through the fabric of the much of the country’s history, but the political violence that occurred has often not been recognized or labeled as terrorism. The activities of the Sons of Liberty and the Boston Tea Party have not usually been considered within the framework of terrorism but they clearly qualify under most definitions. Given the negative connotations associated with the term terrorism, Americans would prefer to think of the opponents of the British as freedom fighters. The Sons of Liberty and related groups displayed remarkable restraint and did not engage in lethal attacks, but they did participate in a very effective terrorist campaign. The activities involving free-soil and proslavery groups in Bleeding Kansas have always been regarded as violent but seldom considered as terrorism. John Brown, however, was clearly a terrorist, even if his political violence was undertaken to end slavery— a form of oppressive violence in its own right. It is clear that terrorism was more prevalent in some periods than in others. The nineteenth century saw many examples as indicated in chapters 3 and 4. Though terrorism had obviously been important in the colonial era, it was both less prevalent and less deadly than the terrorist activities of the nineteenth century. The twentieth century overall provided somewhat fewer examples of terrorism than the nineteenth century did. The Red Scare and McCarthyism were relatively short-lived phenomena. The KKK in its second manifestation in the 1920s was the most active single terrorist group in this century. The organized violence of the Klan was frequently supplemented by the prevalent racism and the violent

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vigilante practices that kept black Americans terrorized and subjugated. The KKK did eventually fade after the 1960s, but terrorism increased with the activities of other extreme right groups and the international assaults on the United States and its interests by al Qaida and similar groups. Terrorism had once again become more prevalent and more deadly. It is possible that the twenty-first century could witness more terrorism centered on the United States than the twentieth or even the nineteenth century. In the past the vast majority of terrorist incidents in the world have been domestic.3 The United States was no exception to this trend since most of the terrorism that the country has faced in its history has been of the domestic variety. The victims and the broader audiences were usually local as were the terrorists. There is no doubt that globalization has led to situations in which international terrorism is going to be more prevalent now than it has been in the past. It was only after World War II that international terrorism became important. While the international variety has increased in other parts of the world and for other countries, it was long absent from the United States. The cold war led to both superpowers supporting terrorists that targeted regimes friendly to the other side. U.S. support for terrorist groups opposed to the Soviet Union included Islamic militants in Afghanistan, the Contras, and the anti-Castro Cubans. The Soviets in turn supported groups that attacked U.S. allies or U.S. interests abroad. In the case of Latin America, leftist groups included U.S. citizens among their targets for general ideological reasons and because of their latent antiAmericanism, but not as part of a grand Soviet terrorist conspiracy. A variety of Palestinian groups launched attacks that involved American citizens—sometimes intentionally so because of U.S. support for Israel. In other cases, international terrorist groups simply used the the United States (or other countries) soil as convenient sites for launching attacks on their home governments. Some of the international violence has simply been attacks launched on foreign soil against domestic enemies because the targets were more vulnerable. As for the United States, though domestic terrorism will continue, the special prominence international terrorism has assumed is unlikely to decline; on the contrary it could increase rapidly in the years to come. While violent groups with religious or ethnic agendas have been prevalent, there have been a surprising number of terrorist groups that had predominately ideological reasons behind their violence. The struggle against British rule in the colonial period was nationalistic, but there were major elements of ideological disagreements over

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government policies between the colonists and the Crown. The Americans sought to change the policies of the British government and to protect what they considered to be their political rights. Much of the terrorist violence that occurred throughout the country before the Civil War that was intended to silence abolitionists was primarily ideological. The activities of John Brown and other abolitionists in Kansas were also essentially ideological, as they wanted to change the government policies that tolerated or accepted slavery. The actions of the proslavery groups in Kansas were similarly ideological. The struggle over Kansas was not just a struggle over slavery; it involved more deep-seated issues about the relative power of the states and the national government and regional political conflicts. Kansas was a test that pitted the increasing political power of the North against the declining political power of the South. The activities of the anarchists, after the Civil War, were obviously based on ideological beliefs. The sometimes-violent efforts by the government or citizens’ groups to control the anarchists were also essentially ideologically motivated. Both the Red Scare and McCarthyism involved ideological reactions to perceived threats from the radical left and to the dangers of extremist ideas from abroad. In the last half of the twentieth century, the activities of the New Left were rooted in political ideas derived from Marxist-Leninist theories and views of the world. The environmental and animal rights groups that became active in this period also had strong ideological components compatible with leftist views in many cases but obviously had some unique elements as well. Though the right-wing groups such as the Minutemen, Posse Comitas, militias, and others reflect a complex array of concerns and fears, all of them had at least some levels of ideological discontent with the national government. Although their activities had relatively little to do with U.S. policies, the émigré groups operating in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s reflected political disagreements over the form of government between the dissidents and the regimes in power in their homelands. U.S. support for Cuban exiles, the mujahedin in Afghanistan, the Contras in Nicaragua, and others represented the ideological differences inherent in the cold war conflicts between the East and the West. Even the communal terrorist groups predominately based on ethnicity and religion often incorporated some ideological elements, although these elements often constituted convenient supports for the underlying communal biases of these organizations. Overall, there have been a significant number of groups, whose primary

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basis for organizing in the first place is rooted in political belief patterns, willing to resort to violence. By far the most common factor behind terrorism in the United States has been communal animosities. Religion has played a key role in provoking terrorist violence. Anti-Catholic nativist movements have been common. The anti-Catholic feeling that turned very violent with the urban riots of the 1820s and 1830s (especially in Philadelphia), continued to be violent most prominently with the activities of the Know Nothings, and then continued with less violence at times with the APA and the KKK of the 1920s. The KKK between the wars and its later version also included anti-Semitism in its views, a trait shared by many of the groups on the extreme right after World War II. The persecution of the Mormons in the 1830s and 1840s provides a rather extreme example of campaigns of terrorism against another minority religious group. The Mormons were driven from state to state until they finally settled in what was to become Utah. The religious biases demonstrated in the past suggest that problems could appear in the future. The violent groups on the right, for example, rely on religious justifications in many, but not all, cases. If the past is a prologue to the future, it is clear that religious feelings could fuel attacks on Muslims and other religious groups residing in the United States. Compared to the scant protection that Mormons were given in the nineteenth century, there are now greater protections available for members of minority religions. As for local communities tolerating isolated attacks on individual members of unpopular or different religious groups, it is unlikely that the state or national governments would tolerate this kind of violence that drove a religious community to relocate to an isolated area or to flee to some other country. The violence against members of particular religious communities was reinforced by the fact that many of the targets were also frequently from different ethnic groups. The Catholic targets before the Civil War were often Irish. The Americans with their English heritage not only considered the Irish to be part of a foreign religious community but to be racially inferior as well. The Catholic and Jewish immigrants who came to the country after the Civil War were from Central and Southern Europe. They brought with them an ethnic distinction that provided a racial bias to go with the religious bias. As was noted in earlier chapters, Italians, whose religion was seen as a disability, were considered ethnically or racially inferior. The bias against Hispanics in California combined anti-Catholicism with racism. Ethnicity and

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religion thus became mutually reinforcing factors, although usually religion provided the principal basis for the persecutions. The past suggests that religious minorities that are ethnically distinct could suffer in the future. Many Muslims in the United States today who may face problems also originated in the Middle East, thus adding ethnic differences to religious ones. In addition, Sikhs and Hindus are ethnically different and are followers of different religions that are quite foreign for most Americans. Extreme right-wing groups have targeted members of these groups because of their ethnicity and/or foreign religion. It is worth noting that religion alone could still provide the basis for persecution. The Mormons had no discernible ethnic disability, yet they suffered severely at the hands of the majority population. Ethnic communalism explains a great deal of the terrorist activity that has occurred in the United States. Incipient nationalism reinforced the ideological antipathy to the English government before the American Revolution. Ethnicity reinforced the tendencies to use violence against the “foreign” Catholics and then Jews. As noted, Muslims or Hindus could become the targets of tomorrow for the same combination of characteristics. The treatment of Hispanics in the Southwest and California in the 1800s represented another form of communal terrorism with fairly equal elements of ethnicity and religion as the causes for the violence. Probably the racial group most often targeted in the United States has been black Americans. Freed blacks in the North were targets of popular riots—before, during, and after the Civil War. The first KKK made former slaves one of the principle targets of terrorism. The Republicans and other locals who supported the rights of the former slaves became targets not just because of their political beliefs, but also because of their ties with and support for the former slaves. The widespread lynchings and white race riots that continued into the twentieth century focused on black Americans. Many of the violent right-wing groups active in recent years have included black Americans among the minorities who they feel need to be driven out of the country. The violence of black nationalist groups in the late twentieth century was a community-based response to the previous attacks on black Americans, but it is a form of communal violence that largely disappeared as a form of organized terrorism—although black on white hate crimes do occur just as white on black hate crimes continue. The actions of Puerto Rican nationalists provide a unique example of communal dissident terrorism aimed at achieving independence for a specific territory. In some circumstances the long history of conflicts between settlers and the Indians included acts of

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terrorism and more organized campaigns of ethnic cleansing. The use of organized terrorism was most obvious with the Indian removals that occurred before the Civil War. The ethnic cleansing in the case of the Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaws, and others was very effective in part because the government at the state and national levels either tolerated attacks on the Indians or even actively supported them. When the Indians attempted resistance in defense of their lands and their rights, they were dealt with by military action that was often quite harsh. Finally, the anti-Chinese pogroms and persecutions provide some of the worst examples of communal terrorism in the history of the country. Many of the attacks constituted local attempts at ethnic cleansing, and they were frequently succeeded in driving out the local Chinese communities. In fact, it is likely that some of the Chinese were forced out of one area or city after massive threats of death or property loss, only to face the same threat from locals in the areas to which they fled. The violence against the Chinese was particularly vicious as, unlike Indians or Hispanics in the West, who occasionally initiated the violence in confrontations with the whites, there are no examples of Chinese being the aggressors in any of the conflicts that occurred.4 Antipathy toward the Chinese carried over to the Japanese and eventually resulted in the exclusion of Asian immigrants from the country for many years. There are only a few examples of instrumental terrorism discussed in the previous chapters. The targeting of outlaw gangs by local vigilante groups, which was touched upon in previous chapters, was primarily instrumental terrorism, as the local citizen groups were usually happy if the outlaws or undesirable groups moved on (and became someone else’s problem). These activities, while violent, usually would not qualify as terrorism since the objectives were only marginally political at best, and there often was no target audience beyond the immediate gangs. The violent activities of political parties on election day in various places, however, were sometimes intended to provide political advantages in terms of winning the elected political offices at stake. This violence, however, often involved at least some elements of ideological or communal differences as the basis for the political differences between the two sides. One of the clearest examples of instrumental terrorism would be the campaigns of assassination in the New Mexico Territory in the late nineteenth century. The primary goal of these campaigns would appear to have been to gain control of the territorial government for its own sake. When criminal groups became involved in politics and used violence against opponents on one side or

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the other, the underlying reasons involved economic gain, not ideology, not policy change, nor any political objective beyond control of the government machinery. Some of the partisan battles between different Republican factions in the South led to street battles and activities that would qualify as terrorism. This violence was obviously instrumental as control of the government was the goal. Another example would be the opposition to labor unions by business owners as they sought to maintain control and increase profits—objectives that were primarily instrumental. Sometimes the communal violence and terrorism that were so common had elements of instrumentalism in the cases in which the target groups were seen as taking jobs away from another community or as willing to work for lower wages. Competition in the mines between the Chinese and whites, for example, obviously exacerbated the ethnic prejudices in Rock Springs. Two more recent examples of terrorist activity that involved somewhat unusual combinations of religious and instrumental elements were the activities of the antiabortion activists and the antigay groups. The targets in both cases were religiously defined by the views of those who were opposed to them, but they were not themselves distinctive religious groups. The antigay violence might perhaps qualify as communal terrorism, given the attempts in some cases to drive away an unpopular minority. The antiabortion movement as noted brought together a somewhat disparate group of opponents who cooperated with each other to achieve a very specific goal. While the violent activists were a smaller part of the movement, they also were part of ad hoc coalitions that were defined by their target and not by their own characteristics. The organization of the activists willing to use violence, both against property and against human targets, was instrumental in this single-issue form of terrorism. Much of the terrorism that occurred in U.S. history would qualify as terrorism in support of the status quo rather than as dissident terrorism. The violence against American Indians, blacks, Chinese, Hispanics, Mormons, and Catholics, all had either the active support or toleration of the more substantial elements in society—the gentlemen of property and standing. At least some of the time, the violence had the tacit support of the government also, as the political objectives of the terrorists were in accord with the goals of the government. The attacks on abolitionists in the North also had the support of the local elite in many cases. Similarly, the Red Scare and McCarthyism provide examples of violence that was against unpopular ideological minorities. The resort to violence by businesses in their disputes with

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workers and labor unions long had the backing of government as well. The prevalence of status quo or vigilante terrorism is in part explained by the relatively weak repressive capacity of government at the state and national levels for much of the country’s history. Prior to the Civil War, the country lacked any real military establishment, and local militias were often ineffective in dealing with violence in their communities because the members of the militia were involved in the violence. Local police forces were small, unprofessional, and ineffective. In Europe in the same time period, by contrast, government security agencies or military forces were usually available to deal with unpopular minorities and keeping them in their place. In the United States, on the other hand, there had to be greater reliance on the informal organization of mobs to enforce community standards, to provide mechanisms for social control, and to deal with perceived threats from ethnic, religious, or ideological minorities. The permissive atmosphere that resulted from weak police forces and a virtually nonexistent military had other effects as well. Terrorists had greater opportunities, given the weak forces to support law and order. Of course, the terrorism that was supportive of the status quo benefited, as attacks on unpopular minorities usually had more public support. Even when officials tried to protect the targets of the terrorism, they often lacked the means to do so. Authorities facing antiChinese pogroms in both Seattle and San Francisco had to use ad hoc units and raise volunteer forces to protect the Chinese because local police, and presumably local militia units, were unwilling to provide the necessary protection. Eventually, police forces and state militias changed their attitudes and provided more protection for groups that were targeted. Such protection had not always been provided, even if it was available, as black Americans knew well when facing violence from the KKK in the 1920s or the 1950s and 1960s. Eventually, it was national agencies such as the FBI, U.S. marshals, and military or National Guard units controlled by the national government that effectively contained the violence and prosecuted persons responsible for terrorist attacks. Changing technology eventually provided other means of protection against violence. Improved communications and transportation meant that assistance could be more quickly provided when requested. The telegraph permitted local authorities to ask for aid, and railroads provided a means of transporting units to where they might be needed. For example, the availability of rail transport permitted the dispatch of troops to protect the Chinese survivors of the Rock Springs attacks.5 The availability of more effective forces of

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law and order, however, provided more opportunities for repression. Vigilante terrorism became less necessary when state militias could be called upon to deal with unpopular groups, as was frequently the case with disputes between workers and management. As was seen in chapter 4, attempts to unionize miners in many parts of the West were defeated by state militia units on numerous occasions. With the passage of time, however, the somewhat unique opportunity for terrorists to operate freely in the United States became a thing of the past with the creation of more effective police and military forces. Dissident terrorism was rarer than status quo terrorism in the early history of the United States. The very first examples of terrorism in the country, however, were of the dissident variety. The colonial violence against the British, Shay’s Rebellion, and the Whiskey Rebellion were clearly antigovernment. The violent activities in Kansas by both sides would generally qualify as dissident terrorism as well. The violence in Kansas, even though of a dissident variety, got out of hand so quickly because of the absence of effective police and military forces, either territorial or national. The first KKK after the Civil War clearly constituted a major example of violence by a dissident group. Later, other examples appeared with the organization of the Molly Maguires, the anarchists, and then various fascist groups after World War I. The second KKK operated as a dissident group in some contexts, but it probably served more often as a status quo group supporting white Protestant supremacy. After World War II, dissident terrorism became more common. Groups such as the Puerto Rican nationalists, black nationalists, the groups on the left and the right, the antiabortion groups, and the environmentalists were all essentially of the dissident variety. The activities by groups abroad that were opposed to U.S. policies would also qualify as dissident from the American perspective. In fact, one of the major differences that sets apart the last fifty years of American history from the early period is the prevalence of dissident terrorism and the absence of status quo terrorism. Another key issue for analyses of terrorism involves questions of success or failure of the objectives of the groups. A number of analysts have suggested that terrorism is a losing strategy and that it does not work.6 Others have suggested, however, that terrorism can be successful, if not always in terms of achieving the ultimate goals, then in terms of leading to some changes in the directions that the violent groups seek.7 Of course, some of the incidents from American history provide clear examples of failure. The New Left, the Puerto Rican nationalists (so far), the anarchists, the participants in the Whiskey Rebellion,

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and others failed to accomplish very few, if any, of their objectives. On the other hand, other groups were more successful. The examination of different terrorist incidents suggests that the violence is much more likely to be successful when the government participates in the activity. The ethnic cleansing actions against various Indian tribes were quite effective in forcing their relocation to west of the Mississippi. Local violence also drove the Chinese out of communities in the West, thus providing more examples of successful ethnic cleansing. The Red Scare clearly limited the ability of radical groups to spread their political ideas in the United States after World War I, and McCarthyism had much the same effect after World War II. Efforts to organize workers into unions were clearly disrupted by attacks from owners, frequently with the active support of authorities. The violence against blacks in many periods was extremely effective in keeping them politically disenfranchised and socially and economically marginalized. In many cases, the end result was the departure of blacks for other locations as happened with the riots in Cincinnati before the Civil War, the draft riots in New York City during the Civil War, and the riots in Springfield, Illinois in 1908. Hispanics in the Southwest and California were also marginalized by violence. The Mormons were successfully forced to migrate to the West, and the riots directed at Catholics also meant that this religious group was also often disenfranchised for long periods. Government toleration or support, consequently, often signaled success for the terrorists. It is not especially surprising that terrorism worked when authorities were involved or when the majority launched vigilante attacks against minorities. What is perhaps more surprising is the number of cases of successful terrorism that qualify as dissident terrorism. The anti-British actions of the colonial era were obviously extremely effective in rallying local support and intimidating loyalists. The terrorism was not the only factor in the outbreak of the American Revolution, but it was a contributing factor. In the aftermath of Shays’ Rebellion, the state of Massachusetts changed policies in response to the criticisms of the rebels, and the United States wrote its second constitution (this latter change being an unintended consequence of the situation). While the activities of the Know Nothings during elections in a number of cities usually provided only temporary advantages, the San Francisco vigilantes gained their basic objective of destroying the local Democratic Party machine and of placing the nativists in power. John Brown’s activities further demonstrated how effective terrorism could be. First, he used terror as psychological warfare to help turn the tide in favor

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of the free-soil groups in Kansas. Then, though his raid on Harpers Ferry did not lead to the slave uprising that he hoped to instigate, it did have the desired effect of hardening attitudes between the North and the South, and he became a martyr for the antislavery cause. It has been suggested that in weaker democracies terrorism can undermine the system by aggravating existing cleavages.8 After the Civil War, the KKK was very successful in helping to restore the old political elite to power and in reestablishing white supremacy even in the face of opposition from the national government and the local authorities supported by the northern Republicans. More recently, antiabortion groups have achieved at least some successes in reducing the availability of abortions in some areas. It is too soon to tell what the eventual effects of attacks by al Qaida and similar groups will be on the United States and on U.S. foreign policy, but it is possible that there could be some consequences. While there is little doubt that most terrorist groups fail to achieve any objectives or at least any important ones, it is obvious that the history of groups in the United States indicates that sometimes terrorism will in fact be successful for its practitioners. More important is the fact that many who are opposed to the U.S. government or its policies and who are potential terrorists, believe that violence will work.9 For much of the history of the United States civil liberties have not been well protected against the dangers of majority tyranny. As noted, officials often lacked the ability to protect the targets of terrorist attacks, but even when they had the ability, they often lacked the political will. With the passage of time, however, there was increasing concern about the rights of individuals, even though there were still lapses in protection. The anarchists, IWW activists, and the supposed foreign radicals who were targeted during the Red Scare era were all treated very poorly under the legal system. Individuals associated with these groups facing criminal charges were almost guaranteed of conviction. They also frequently saw their attackers go free on the infrequent occasions when they were brought to trial. The victims of McCarthyism also received little protection under the law and their civil liberties were curtailed as well in many cases. Ethnic or religious communal minority groups faced the same kinds of indifferent protection in many cases. Those who attacked blacks, Hispanics, Chinese, Catholics, or Mormons were not likely to be convicted of any crimes. The authorities, on the other hand, sometimes went to considerable lengths to convict members of minorities. The Molly Maguires, or at least the Irish Catholic defendants in the Pennsylvania

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coalfields, had little chance of being acquitted of the crimes they were charged with. The failure to protect the civil liberties of many of the targets from attacks of the majority was related to the creation of suspect communities in the country. Membership in these group automatically made convictions for any crimes more likely. Catholics were among the first to be considered suspect because of their presumed allegiance to a foreign power and because they were considered un-American. Rumors about Catholic plots and attempted takeovers and other antiAmerican activities were readily believed without it being necessary to provide any proof. As a consequence, Catholics often faced official disabilities in terms of voting or holding office and were often the targets of violence. Mormons were equally suspect because of their church membership and the fear that they would put loyalty to their prophet or their religion above loyalty to the state. Immigrants were frequently also considered to be suspect, because they were Catholic or Jewish, because they were thought to be members of inferior races, or because they were bringing in foreign or radical ideas that would undercut American principles. Ironically, the threat to American values often meant that the civil liberties of the suspect communities were often ignored. While Hispanics fared poorly in the Southwest, blacks faced disabilities everywhere. Racial stereotypes were so common that blacks were often considered suspect communities, especially in the South but in other parts of the country as well. The Chinese immigrants were in some ways regarded a bit differently, but even they were considered to be a suspect community because they were so foreign. They were inevitably suspected of undercutting the wages of white men, and they received very little protection when they came under attack. Concerns over civil liberties still exist today, and the idea of suspect communities and guilt by association has not disappeared.10 Muslims and persons from the Middle East have become suspect not only in the eyes of many members of the public, but also in the eyes of the government, as seen in the roundup of migrants and visitors from the Middle East in the aftermath of 9/11. Nativism has reappeared in the country, but Catholic migrants and Catholic citizens are no longer the group to be feared. The indefinite detention of those suspected of being terrorists or being linked to terrorists is another concern as it is contrary to the basic ideas of democracy and fair trials. Further, the possibility of wiretaps and clandestine searches raises other issues of individual rights in the never-ending controversy between security

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and freedom.11 Persons with radical political ideas (whether based on religion or ideology) could become members of suspect communities in the future just as they have been in the past. It is often suggested that if the United States, in order to fight terrorism, reduces democratic freedoms further, the terrorists will indeed have won. This danger is real enough, and terrorist violence can potentially threaten the very basis of any democratic society, especially when civil liberties are curbed and suspect communities are created. It is possible that one of the reasons for the increased threat to civil liberties in recent times is the fact that it is difficult to protect against terrorist attacks. Terrorism from the right-wing extremists or militant Islamic extremists is so dangerous because there are so many targets. Terrorists, consequently, have the major advantage that they get to pick the targets while it is impossible for the authorities to defend all the potential targets. If one particular individual, building, or type of target is well defended, the terrorists can simply shift to unprotected targets. Better security can simply lead to a substitution effect.12 Tourists and American interests abroad are especially vulnerable to attacks. Right-wing groups in the United States also have marked a multitude of domestic targets, given their broad definitions of dangerous foreign influences and the presence of minority groups. Almost any government official or office is a possible target, as are members of any minority group. Given the range and number of potential targets, there can be little doubt that some attacks will eventually succeed. There cannot be enough restrictions on civil liberties to provide sufficient security, and there is always the danger that overly severe infringements on rights could lead some to join the terrorist camp. Harsh regimes may be able to avoid outbreaks of terrorism for a long period, but only with the imposition of truly repressive state mechanisms. The question of underlying causes of terrorism is important in any study of terrorism. In the case of the United States, however, it is not possible to identify any single underlying cause. One can identify a number of factors behind terrorism or those that facilitated terrorism. Of them, the relatively weak state structure in the country has been discussed in relation to outbreaks that were beyond the resources of local police and militia. This weakness clearly permitted terrorist activity to occur and expand, especially in the case of status quo violence. The weakness of colonial authorities loyal to Great Britain was one of the factors that made anti-British violence so effective prior to the American Revolution. The activities of proslavery and antislavery

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groups in Kansas benefited from state weakness as well. Economic factors played a role in some of the violence. The discussions in previous chapters indicated that Catholics or black Americans were more likely to be targeted when they became more prosperous or when they began to compete with the more dominant groups for jobs. The Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Creeks were more threatening to their white neighbors in part because of their relative prosperity and material wealth. The KKK in the 1920s also provided some economic protection for white Protestants who were facing competition from black Americans or immigrants. There is little doubt that some of the violence against Hispanics in the California Gold Rush was prompted by the competition that they represented. One factor in the animosity toward the Chinese in the West was the fact that they were considered dangerous because they threatened to take jobs away from white residents by working for lower wages. The economic factors leading to terrorist violence were also linked with the effects of globalization and modernization in some cases. Globalization and modernization bring changes, and there will always be winners and losers when change comes. Even if the winners outnumber the losers, the losers can still react violently to the changes in status quo. The relative deprivation theories that seek to explain political violence in a variety of contexts would appear to be applicable for explaining terrorist violence too, in some cases. Further, a more modern world has permitted the waves of immigration that fueled the nativist fires, especially since many of the new residents came from different cultural and religious backgrounds. Racism and religious intolerance were one of the results, and terrorist violence was one of the more extreme manifestations. The anti-Catholic riots and then the Know Nothing movement were obvious early examples of such intolerance. The APA and the KKK provide more recent examples. Both the Red Scare and McCarthyism included a reaction, sometimes violent, to the intrusion of foreign ideas and values that were “infecting” the country from the outside—an infection that is increasingly possible in a more modern and interconnected world. More recently, the appearance of right-wing extremists is a reaction against changes brought about by globalization and the intrusion of foreign ideas. Their idealized version of the United States in the past as a white Christian nation without minorities and as a country isolated from the evils current in the rest of the world says a great deal about what concerns them in the present. Globalization has also been important in another respect for the terrorist violence that the United States currently has to deal with. Changes in other societies that have

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resulted from the intrusion of Western ideas and values and that has resulted in challenges to existing social structures in groups have led to terrorism as well. As the United States is associated with such changes, U.S. citizens, interests, and foreign policies became the targets of terrorism by foreign groups such as Latin American leftist revolutionaries, economic nationalists, and groups such as al Qaida and other religious extremists. Samuel Huntington’s idea about the clash of civilizations that occurs with globalization surely does not explain all the domestic terrorism that has occurred in the United States or even all the violence directed against the United States abroad, but it would seem to provide insight into at least some of the terrorism that has occurred. Terrorism in the United States over the centuries has resulted from a variety of causes, but the country has not been exempt from terrorism as has often been thought. Terrorism in the United States has involved both status quo and dissident terrorism, with status quo terrorism being more prevalent in the earlier times, notwithstanding the importance of dissident terrorism in the colonial period. Although all types of terrorism have been present on the domestic scene, communal terrorism (both religious and ethnic) has been more prevalent than ideologically driven violence. More recently, groups have been increasingly targeting US interests abroad. Ideological groups were initially more important in these attacks, but religious communalism has become more prevalent at the present time. The future is always unclear, but there is little doubt that terrorism will continue. At least some of the time terrorism works, and more importantly, the perception that terrorism works will induce more groups to use the tactic to pursue their political goals, whatever they may be. It may become worse or less severe, but it will not disappear. The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated how easy it is to mobilize opposition to U.S. policies abroad. It is an inevitable fact of life that the United States will always face foreign policy choices in which whatever is done or not done will have the potential to alienate groups and generate the resentments that will lead to violence. The ongoing changes in foreign countries and on the domestic scene will leave some individuals and groups marginalized and resentful. Though the government should be able to manage and contain the domestic threat, domestic terrorism will not be eliminated. International terrorism will be more difficult to deal with as the United States has less control over events in other countries. The United States will need to deal with the threats that terrorism creates while still maintaining an

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appropriate respect for the civil liberties of individuals, and there will be a real need to prevent groups from becoming suspect communities with all the disadvantages and discriminatory treatment that such a status brings in its train. The world will continue to be a dangerous place, and the United States, consequently, will have to cope and adapt accordingly.


Notes

1 Terrorism: Concepts and Causes 1. Frederick Schulze, “Breaking the Cycle: Empirical Research and Postgraduate Studies on Terrorism,” in Andrew Silke (ed.), Research on Terrorism: Trends, Achievements and Failures (London: Frank Cass, 2004), p. 183. 2. Michael Dartnell, “A Legal Inter-network for Terrorism: Issues of Globalization, Fragmentation, and Legitimacy,” in Max. Taylor and John Horgan (eds.), The Future of Terrorism (London: Frank Cass, 2000), pp. 199, 204, and Paul R. Pillar, Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2001), p. 13. 3. Cf. Noam Chomsky, “Wars of Terror,” in Carl Boggs (ed.), Masters of War: Militarism and Blowback in the Era of American Empire (New York: Routledge, 2003), pp. 131–48. 4. James M. Lutz and Brenda J. Lutz, Global Terrorism (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 10. Cf. also David Claridge, “State Terrorism: Applying a Definitional Model,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 8, No. 3 (1996), pp. 47–63, and Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), Chap. 1. 5. James M. Lutz and Brenda J. Lutz, “State Uses of Terrorism,” in Andrew T. H. Tan (ed.), The Politics of Terrorism: A Survey (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 89–102. 6. Thomas J. Badey, “Defining International Terrorism: A Pragmatic Approach,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 10, No. 1 (1998), p. 93, and Peter Chalk, West European Terrorism and Counter-terrorism: The Evolving Dynamic (Houndsmill, Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1996), p. 17. 7. Bruce Hoffman, “ ‘Holy Terror’: The Implication of Terrorism Motivated by a Religious Imperative,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Vol. 18, No. 4 (1995), p. 281, and Harvey W. Kushner, Terrorism in America: A Structural Approach to Understanding the Terrorist Threat (Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1998), pp. 82–3. 8. Chalk, West European Terrorism, p. 13; Bruce Hoffman, “The Emergence of the New Terrorism,” in Andrew Tan and Kumar Ramakrishna (eds.), The New Terrorism: Anatomy, Trends and Counter-strategies (Singapore: Eastern Universities Press, 2002), p. 45; Bruce Hoffman and Gordon H. McCormick,

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9.

10.

11.

12. 13.

14. 15. 16.

17.

18. 19.

Notes “Terrorism, Signaling, and Suicide Attacks,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Vol. 25, No. 4 (2002), p. 269; Assaf Moghadam, “Palestinian Suicide Terrorism in the Second Intifada: Motivations and Organizational Aspects,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Vol. 26, No. 2 (2003), pp. 65–92, and Michael Stohl, “Expected Utility and State Terrorism,” in Tore Bjorgo (ed.), Root Causes of Terrorism: Myths, Reality and Ways Forward (London: Routledge, 2005), p. 201. Michael T. Klare, “The New Face of Combat: Terrorism and Irregular Warfare in the 21st Century,” in Charles W. Kegley, Jr. (ed.), The New Global Terrorism: Characteristics, Causes, Controls (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003), p. 31. Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, p. 65, and Brian M. Jenkins, “International Terrorism: The Other World War,” in Kegley (ed.), The New International Terrorism, p. 22. Cf. Paul Wilkinson, Terrorism versus Democracy: The Liberal State Response (London: Frank Cass, 2000), p. 174, for example of how the Assassins centuries ago launched their attacks in circumstances that guaranteed the spread of the news without the presence of the media. C. J. M. Drake, “The Role of Ideology in Terrorists’ Target Selection,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 10, No. 2 (1998), pp. 53–85. Andrew Tan, “Armed Muslim Separatist Rebellion in Southeast Asia: Persistence, Prospects, and Implications,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Vol. 23, No. 4 (2000), p. 268. James M. Lutz and Brenda J. Lutz, Terrorism: Origins and Evolution (New York: Palgrave, 2005), p. 159. Mark Juergensmeyer, “The Worldwide Rise of Religious Nationalism,” Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 50, No. 1 (1996), pp. 1–20. Jonathan Fox, “Religion and State Failure: An Examination of the Extent and Magnitude of Religious Conflict from 1950 to 1996,” International Political Science Review, Vol. 25, No. 1 (2004), p. 66, and Mark Juergensmeyer, “ ‘Holy Orders’: Religious Opposition to Modern States,” Harvard International Review, Vol. 25, No. 4 (2004), p. 37. T. David Mason and Christopher Campany, “Guerrillas, Drugs and Peasants: The Rational Peasant and the War on Drugs in Peru,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 7, No. 4 (1995), pp. 140–70, and Alex P. Schmid, “Terrorism and the Use of Weapons of Mass Destruction: From Where the Risk?” in Horgan and Taylor (eds.), The Future of Terrorism, p. 114. Lutz and Lutz, Terrorism: Origins and Evolution, pp. 105–6. George J. Aditjondro, “Ninjas, Nanggalas, Monuments, and Mossad Manuals: An Anthropology of Indonesian State Terror in East Timor,” in Jeffrey A. Sluka (ed.), Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), pp. 158–88; Bruce B. Campbell, “Death Squads: Definition, Problems and Historical Context,” in Bruce B. Campbell and Arthur D. Brenner (eds.), Death Squads in Global Perspective: Murder with Deniability (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), pp. 1–26; Claridge, “State Terrorism”; Richard Gillespie, “Political Violence in Argentina: Guerrillas, Terrorists, and Carapintadas,” in Martha Crenshaw (ed.),

Notes

20.

21. 22.

23.

24. 25. 26.

27.

28.

29.

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Terrorism in Context (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania University State Press, 1995), pp. 211–48; Patricia Gossman, “India’s Secret Armies,” in Campbell and Brenner, (eds.), Death Squads, pp. 261–86; Tim Judah, Kosovo: War and Revenge (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 286–90; and Douglas A. Macgregor, “The Balkan Limits to Power and Principle,” Orbis, Vol. 45, No. 1 (2001), p. 103. JoAnn McGregor, “The Politics of Disruption: War Veterans and the Local State in Zimbabwe,” African Affairs, Vol. 101, No. 402 (2002), pp. 9–37; David Rieff, “Suffering and Cynicism in Burundi,” World Policy Journal, Vol. 18, No. 3 (2001), pp. 61–7; Ian Taylor and Paul Williams, “The Limits of Engagement: British Foreign Policy and the Crisis in Zimbabwe,” International Affairs, Vol. 78, No. 3 (2002), pp. 574–65; and Wilkinson, Terrorism versus Democracy, p. 73. Lutz and Lutz, “State Uses of Terrorism,” p. 100. Adam Dolnik, “Die and Let Die: Exploring Links between Suicide Terrorism and Terrorist Use of Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Weapons,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Vol. 26, No. 1 (2003), p. 21; Alan O’Day, “Northern Ireland, Terrorism, and the British State,” in Yonah Alexander, David Carleton, and Paul Wilkinson (eds.), Terrorism: Theory and Practice (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1979), p. 131. Florian Bieber, “Approaches to Political Violence and Terrorism in the Former Yugoslavia,” Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans, Vol. 5, No. 3 (2003), p. 47; Martha Crenshaw, “Introduction: Reflections on the Effects of Terrorism,” in Martha Crenshaw (ed.), Terrorism, Legitimacy, and Power: The Consequences of Political Violence (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1983), p. 20; Judah, Kosovo, p. 137; Andrew H. Kydd and Barbara F. Walter, “The Strategies of Terrorism,” International Security, Vol. 31, No. 1 (2006), pp. 49–80; and Wilkinson, Terrorism versus Democracy, p. 11. Bruce Hoffman, “Rethinking Terrorism and Counterterrorism since 9/11,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Vol. 25, No. 5 (2002), p. 311. Andrew Silke, “The Road Less Travelled: Recent Trends in Terrorism Research,” in Silke (ed.), Research on Terrorism, p. 242. James C. Davies, “Revolution and the J-Curve,” in Claude E. Welch, Jr., and Mavis Bunker Taintor (eds.), Revolution and Political Change (North Scituate, MA: Duxbury Press, 1972), pp. 122–53, and Ted Robert Gurr, Why Men Rebel (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970). Lawrence A. Kuznar, “Risk Prone Peasants: Cultural Transmission or Sigmoid Utility Maximization?” Current Anthropology, Vol. 43, No. 5 (2002), pp. 787–9. Martha Crenshaw, “Causes of Terrorism,” in Kegley (ed.), The New Global Terrorism, p. 94, and Feliks Gross, Violence in Politics: Terror and Assassination in Eastern Europe and Russia, Studies in the Social Sciences 13 (The Hague: Mouton, 1972), p. 90. Zachary Abuza, “Tentacles of Terror: Al Qaeda’s Southeast Asian Network,” Contemporary Southeast Asia: A Journal of International and Strategic Affairs, Vol. 24, No. 3 (2002), p. 434; Robert I. Rotberg, “Failed States,

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30.

31.

32.

33. 34.

35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

40.

41.

Notes Collapsed States, Weak States: Causes and Indicators,” in Robert I. Rotberg (ed.), State Failure and State Weakness in a Time of Terror (Cambridge, MA, and Washington, DC: World Peace Foundation and Brookings Institution Press, 2003), pp. 1–15, and Alex P. Schmid, “Prevention of Terrorism: Towards a Multi-pronged Approach,” in Bjorgo (ed.), Root Causes, p. 232. Barry R. Posen, “The Struggle against Terrorism: Grand Strategy, Strategy, and Tactics,” International Security, Vol. 26, No. 3 (2001/2002), p. 41, and Leonard Weinberg and William Eubank, “Terrorism and Democracy: What Recent Events Disclose,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 10, No. 1 (1998), pp. 108–18. Fernando Reinares, “Nationalist Separatism and Terrorism in Comparative Perspective,” in Bjorgo (ed.), Root Causes, p. 125, and Wilkinson, Terrorism versus Democracy, pp. 20–1. Klare, “The New Face of Combat,” p. 33, and Peter Waldmann, “SocialRevolutionary Terrorism in Latin American and Europe,” in Bjorgo (ed.), Root Causes of Terrorism, p. 157. Michael Mousseau, “Market Civilization and Its Clash with Terror,” International Security, Vol. 27, No. 3 (2002/03), pp. 16–17. Oliver P. Richmond, “Realizing Hegemony? Symbolic Terrorism and the Roots of Conflict,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Vol. 26, No. 4 (2003), pp. 289–309. Samuel Huntington, “Political Development and Political Decay,” World Politics, Vol. 17, No. 3 (1965), p. 95. Walter Laqueur, A History of Terrorism (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2001), p. 11. Saul Newman, “Nationalism in Postindustrial Societies; Why States Still Matter,” Comparative Politics, Vol. 33, No. 1 (2000), p. 32. Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996). Fox, “Religion and State Failure,” and Lavina Rajendram, “Does the Clash of Civilizations Paradigm Provide a Persuasive Explanation of International Politics after September 11th,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Vol. 15, No. 2 (2002), pp. 217–32. Stephen Frederic Dale, “Religious Suicide in Islamic Asia: Anticolonial Terrorism in India, Indonesia, and the Philippines,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 32, No. 1 (1988), pp. 37–59; William J. Duiker, Cultures in Collision: The Boxer Rebellion (San Rafael, CA: Presidio Press, 1978), pp. 33–34; and Guy Puyraimond, “The Ko-lao Hui and the Anti-foreign Incidents of 1891,” in Jean Chesneaux (ed.), Popular Movements and Secret Societies in China 1840–1950 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1972), pp. 113–24. Juergensmeyer, “Worldwide Rise”; Bernard Lewis, “The Roots of Muslim Rage,” in Kegley (ed.), The New Global Terrorism, p. 200; Pillar, Terrorism, p. 63; Magnus Ranstorp and Gus Xhudo, “A Threat to Europe? Middle East Ties with the Balkans and Their Impact upon Terrorist Activity throughout the Region,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 6, No. 2 (1994), p. 199;

Notes

42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

47.

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and Andrew Sinclair, An Anatomy of Terror: A History of Terrorism (London: Macmillan, 2003), p. 339. Mark Juergensmeyer, “The Religious Roots of Contemporary Terrorism,” in Kegley (ed.), The New Global Terrorism, pp. 185, 191. James Dingley and Michael Kirk-Smith, “Symbolism and Sacrifice in Terrorism,” Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 13, No. 1 (2002), pp. 102–28. Kumar Ramakrishna and Andrew Tan, “The New Terrorism: Diagnosis and Prescriptions,” in Tan and Ramakrishna (eds.), The New Terrorism, pp. 3–4. Pillar, Terrorism, p. 63. Judith Bessant, “Political Crime and the Case of Young Neo-Nazis: A Question of Methodology,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 7, No. 4 (1995), p. 113; Tore Bjorgo, “Introduction,” in Tore Bjorgo (ed.), Terror from the Extreme Right (London: Frank Cass, 1995), p. 9; Peter H. Merkl, “Radical Right Parties in Europe and Anti-foreign Violence: A Comparative Essay,” in Bjorgo (ed.), Terror, p. 102; and Paul Wilkinson, “Why Modern Terrorism? Differentiating Types and Distinguishing Ideological Motivations,” in Kegley (ed.), The New Global Terrorism, p. 119. Michael A. Bellesiles, “Introduction,” in Michael A. Bellesiles (ed.), Lethal Imagination: Violence and Brutality in American History (New York: New York University Press, 1999), pp. 1–15, and Richard Hofstadter, “Reflections on Violence in the United States,” in Richard Hofstadter and Michael Wallace (eds.), American Violence: A Documentary History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970), p. 6.

2 The Colonial Era: Rebellion and Dissent 1. Evan Haefeli, “Kieft’s War and the Cultures of Violence in Colonial America,” in Michael A. Bellesiles (ed.), Lethal Imagination: Violence and Brutality in American History (New York: New York University Press, 1999), pp. 26–7. 2. Faren R. Siminoff, Crossing the Sound: The Rise of Atlantic American Communities in Seventeenth Century Eastern Long Island (New York: New York University Press, 2004). 3. Richard Maxwell Brown, Strains of Violence; Historical Studies of American Violence and Vigilantism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 43–4. 4. W. Eugene Hollon, Frontier Violence: Another Look (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), p. 8. 5. Cf. Lutz and Lutz, Global Terrorism, p. 20, for comments on the lack of terrorism in Greek city-states for these reasons. 6. Joan de Lourdes Leonard, “Elections in Colonial Pennsylvania,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, Vol. 11, No. 3 (1954), pp. 385–401, and William T. Parsons, “The Bloody Election of 1742,” Pennsylvania History, Vol. 36, No. 3 (1969), p. 290. 7. Parsons, “The Bloody Election of 1742.” 8. Brown, Strains of Violence, p. 51.

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Notes

9. Paul A. Gilje, The Road to Mobocracy: Popular Disorder in New York City, 1763–1834 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1987), pp. 12–13; Richard Hofstadter and Michael Wallace (eds.), American Violence: A Documentary History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970), p. 60; and Edmund S. Morgan and Helen M. Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution, 2nd ed. (New York: Collier Books, 1962), pp. 63, 159. 10. Morgan and Morgan, Stamp Act Crisis, pp. 61–62. 11. Brown, Strains of Violence, p. 113, and Rachel N. Klein, “Ordering the Backcountry: The South Carolina Regulation,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, Vol. 38, No. 4 (1981), pp. 661–80. 12. Morgan and Morgan, Stamp Act Crisis, Chap. 7. 13. Gilje, Road to Mobocracy, p. 48. 14. Paul Bradley Davis, “American Experiences and the Contemporary Perception of Terrorism,” Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 7, No. 2 (1996), p. 224; Division of Archives and History (State of New York), The American Revolution in New York: Its Political, Social and Economic Significance (Albany: The University of the State of New York, 1926), pp. 14–18; Robert Leckie, George Washington’s War: The Saga of the American Revolution (New York: Harper Collins, 1992), p. 49; Morgan and Morgan, Stamp Act Crisis, Chap. 8; and Lloyd I. Rudolph, “The Eighteenth Century Mob in America and Europe,” American Quarterly, Vol. 11, No. 4 (1959), p. 450. 15. Gilje, Road to Mobocracy, p. 49, and Morgan and Morgan, Stamp Act Crisis, pp. 198–9. 16. Benson Bobrick, Angel in the Whirlwind: The Triumph of the American Revolution (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1977), p. 62. 17. Arthur Meier Schlesinger, “Political Mobs and the American Revolution, 1765–1776,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 99, No. 4 (1955), p. 246. 18. Hollon, Frontier Violence, p. 10. 19. Davis, “American Experiences,” p. 224. 20. Hollon, Frontier Violence, p. 13. 21. Schlesinger, “Political Mobs,” p. 248. 22. Brown, Stains of Violence, p. 6. 23. Bobrick, Angel in the Whirlwind, p. 75; Pauline Maier, “Popular Uprisings and Civil Authority in Eighteenth-Century America,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, Vol. 27, No. 1 (1970), p. 11; and David C. Rapoport, “The Four Waves of Rebel Terror and September 11,” in Kegley (ed.), New Global Terrorism, pp. 37–8. 24. Leckie, George Washington’s War, p. 79. 25. Divisions of Archives and History, The American Revolution in New York, p. 33, and Leckie, George Washington’s War, p. 79. 26. Bobrick, Angel in the Whirlwind, p. 92. 27. Bobrick, Angel in the Whirlwind, p. 89. 28. Scheslinger, “Political Mobs,” p. 245. In New York City the mobs that threw the tea into the Hudson were also organized so that only the tea was destroyed. Cf. Gilje, Road to Mobocracy, p. 59.

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29. Scheslinger, “Political Mobs,” p. 246. 30. Roger J. Champagne, “New York’s Radicals and the Coming of Independence,” Journal of American History, Vol. 51, No. 1 (1964), pp. 22–3. 31. Brown, Strains of Violence, p. 23. 32. Christopher Waldrep, “Word and Deed: The Language of Lynching, 1820–1953,” in Bellesiles (ed.), Lethal Imagination, p. 230. 33. Brown, Strains of Violence, p. 60. 34. Hofstadter, “Reflections on Violence,” p. 36; Hollon, Frontier Violence, p. 11; and Schlesinger, “Political Mobs,” p. 244. 35. Brown, Strains of Violence, p. 81. 36. Gordon S. Wood, “A Note on Mobs in the American Revolution,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, Vol. 23, No. 4 (1966), p. 640. 37. Hollon, Frontier Violence, p. 12. 38. Richard B. Morris, “Insurrection in Massachusetts,” in Daniel Aaron, America in Crisis: Fourteen Crucial Episodes in American History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952), p. 29, and Alden T. Vaughan, “The ‘Horrid and Unnatural’ Rebellion of Daniel Shays,” in Roger Lane and John J. Turner (eds.), Riot, Rout, and Tumult: Readings in American Social and Political Violence, Contributions in American History No. 69 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978), p. 58. 39. Morris, “Insurrection in Massachusetts,” p. 31. 40. Vaughan, “Rebellion of Daniel Shays,” p. 69. 41. Thomas P. Slaughter, The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 103. 42. Leland D. Baldwin, Whiskey Rebels: The Story of a Frontier Uprising (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1976), pp. 82, 84, 206; Jacob E. Cooke, “The Whiskey Insurrection: A Re-evaluation,” Pennsylvania History, Vol. 30 (1963), p. 317; Hollon, Frontier Violence, pp. 12–13; Slaughter, The Whiskey Rebellion, p. 113; and Bernard A. Weisberger, America Afire: Jefferson, Adams, and the Revolutionary Election of 1800 (New York: William Morrow, 2000), p. 113. 43. Cooke, “Whiskey Insurrection,” p. 317. 44. Baldwin, Whiskey Rebels, p. 103, and Slaughter, The Whiskey Rebellion, pp. 117, 150–1. 45. Cooke, “Whiskey Insurrection,” p. 345. 46. Slaughter, The Whiskey Rebellion, p. 120. 47. Rudolph, “Eighteenth Century Mob,” p. 447. 48. Hollon, Frontier Violence, p. 10, emphasis added. 49. Davis, “American Experiences,” p. 224, and Schlesinger, “Political Mobs,” pp. 248–9. 50. Schlesinger, “Political Mobs,” p. 244. 51. Gilje, Road to Mobocracy, p. 34. 52. Hofstadter, “Reflections on Violence,” p. 8. 53. Lutz and Lutz, Terrorism: Origins and Evolution, pp. 25–6, 77, and Wilfried Nippel, “Policing Rome,” Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 74 (1984), pp. 20–9. 54. Cf. Leonard, “Elections in Colonial Pennsylvania,” p. 399. 55. Wood, “Mobs in the American Revolution,” p. 639.

164 56. 57. 58. 59.

Notes Maier, “Popular Uprisings,” pp. 19–20. Schlesinger, “Political Mobs,” p. 246. Wood, “Mobs in the American Revolution,” p. 640. Baldwin, Whiskey Rebels, p. 91.

3 Before the Civil War: Mob Violence in Jacksonian America 1. Patricia Cleland Tracey, “Cherokee Gold in Georgia and California,” Journal of the West, Vol. 39, No. 1 (2000), p. 50. 2. Dale van Every, Disinherited: The Lost Birthright of the American Indian (New York: William Morrow, 1966), p. 96. 3. Van Every, Disinherited, pp. 99–102. 4. E. Merton Coulter, “Georgia’s Destiny,” in Louis Filler and Allen Guttmann (eds.), The Removal of the Cherokee Nation: Manifest Destiny or National Dishonor? (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1962), p. 108; Gloria Jahoda, The Trail of Tears: The Story of the American Indian Removals, 1813–1855 (New York: Wing Books, 1975), p. 43; and van Every, Disinherited, p. 132. 5. Norman Finkelstein, “History’s Verdict: The Cherokee Case,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 24, No. 4 (1995), p. 38. 6. Tracey, “Cherokee Gold,” p. 53. 7. Van Every, Disinherited, p. 132. 8. Samuel Carter III, Cherokee Sunset, A Nation Betrayed: A Narrative of Travail and Triumph, Persecution and Exile (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976), pp. 88–9. 9. Tracey, “Cherokee Gold,” p. 51. 10. Carter, Cherokee Sunset, p. 100, and William G. McLoughlin, Cherokee Renascence in the New Republic (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 432–3. 11. Jahoda, Trail of Tears, p. 49, and McLoughlin, Cherokee Renascence, p. 433. 12. Tracey, “Cherokee Gold,” p. 51. 13. Louis Filler and Allen Guttman, “Introduction,” in Filler and Guttman, Removal of the Cherokee Nation, p. vii. 14. Van Every, Disinherited, pp. 132–3. 15. Jahoda, Trail of Tears, p. 36. 16. Robert S. Wicks and Fred R. Foister, Junius & Joseph: Presidential Politics and the Assassination of the First Mormon Prophet (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2005), p. 11. 17. Finkelstein, “History’s Verdict,” p. 37. 18. Jahoda, Trail of Tears, pp. 144–6. 19. James Taylor Carson, Searching for the Bright Path: The Mississippi Choctaws from Prehistory to Removal (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), p. 115. 20. Carson, Bright Path, p. 125, and Jahoda, Trail of Tears, Chap. 4. 21. Jahoda, Trail of Tears, Chap. 8.

Notes 22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27. 28. 29.

30.

31. 32. 33.

34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

165

Tracey, “Cherokee Gold,” p. 51. Hollon, Frontier Violence, p. 62. Hollon, Frontier Violence, pp. 64–6. Hollon, Frontier Violence, pp. 81, 91, and William R. Locklear, “The Celestials and the Angels: A Study of the Anti-Chinese Movement in Los Angeles to 1882,” Historical Society of Southern California, Vol. 42, No. 3 (1960), p. 239. Hollon, Frontier Violence, pp. 85, 91. Thomas P. Slaughter, Bloody Dawn: The Christiana Riot and Racial Violence in the Antebellum North (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 13. Hofstadter and Wallace, American Violence, p. 204. Michael Feldberg, The Turbulent Era: Riot and Disorder in Jacksonian America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 38, 42; Hofstadter and Wallace, American Violence, pp. 207–8; and Michael Wallace, “The Uses of Violence in American History,” in Lane and Turner (eds.), Riot, Rout, and Tumult, p. 13. Leonard L. Richards, “Gentlemen of Property and Standing”: Anti-abolition Mobs in Jacksonian America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 129. David Grimsted, “Rioting in Its Jacksonian Setting,” American Historical Review, Vol. 77, No. 3 (1972), pp. 377–8. Gilje, Road to Mobocracy, pp. 162–3. Brown, Strains of Violence, p. 207, and Michael Feldberg, “The Crowd in Philadelphia History: A Comparative Perspective,” in Lane and Turner (eds.), Riot, Rout, and Tumult, p. 142. Feldberg, Turbulent Era, pp. 39–42. Feldberg, Turbulent Era, p. 43. Brown, Strains of Violence, p. 207, and Slaughter, Bloody Dawn, pp. 171–2. Feldberg, Turbulent Era, p. 42. Slaughter, Bloody Dawn, p. 179. Klaus J. Hansen, Mormonism and the American Experience (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), p. 123. David H. Bennett, The Party of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), p. 38; Angus Crane, “Millard Fillmore and the Mormons,” Journal of the West, Vol. 34, No. 1 (1995), pp. 70–1; and Hollon, Frontier Violence, p. 32. Hansen, Mormonism, p. 136. Kenneth H. Winn, Exiles in a Land of Liberty (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), pp. 93, 133–4. Hansen, Mormonism, p. 136; Hollon, Frontier Violence, p. 32; and Winn, Exiles, p. 141. Crane, “Millard Fillmore,” p. 71; Hollon, Frontier Violence, p. 32; and Winn, Exiles, p. 142. Annette P. Hampshire, Mormonism in Conflict: The Nauvoo Years, Studies in Religion and Society, Vol. 11 (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1985), pp. 18–19.

166

Notes

46. Marvin S. Hill, Quest for Refuge: The Mormon Flight from American Pluralism (Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 1989), p. 105. 47. Wicks and Foister, Junius & Joseph, p. 70. 48. Winn, Exiles, p. 161. 49. Robert Bruce Flanders, Nauvoo: Kingdom on the Mississippi (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1965), p. 307. 50. Hampshire, Mormonism in Conflict, p. 274, and Hill, Quest for Refuge, p. 106. 51. Wicks and Foister, Junius & Joseph, pp. 139, 142. 52. Hampshire, Mormonism in Conflict, p. 275. 53. Hill, Quest for Refuge, p. 150, and Wicks and Foister, Junius & Joseph, Chap. 13. 54. Cf. Wicks and Foister, Junius & Joseph, pp. 164–9. 55. Wicks and Foister, Junius & Joseph, Chap. 20. 56. Wicks and Foister, Junius & Joseph, p. 233, and Winn, Exiles, p. 227. 57. Wicks and Foister, Junius & Joseph, p. 243. 58. Crane, “Millard Fillmore,” p. 71. 59. Hampshire, Mormonism in Conflict, pp. 244–5; Hill, Quest for Refuge, pp. 179–81; and Winn, Exiles, p. 228. 60. Flanders, Nauvoo, p. 307. 61. Crane, “Millard Fillmore,” p. 71; Flanders, Nauvoo, p. 306; and Hill, Quest for Refuge, p. 182. 62. Hill, Quest for Refuge, p. 181, and Flanders, Nauvoo, p. 340. 63. Hampshire, Mormonism in Conflict, p. 253. 64. Tyler Anbinder, Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know-Nothings and the Politics of the 1850s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. xiii. 65. John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1955), p. 6. 66. Higham, Strangers in the Land, p. 8; Wallace S. Hutcheon, Jr., “The Louisville Riots of August, 1855,” Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, Vol. 69 (1971), pp. 152–3; and Timothy M. Roberts, “Now the Enemy Is within Our Borders; The Impact of European Revolutions on American Perceptions of Violence before the Civil War,” American Transcendental Quarterly, Vol. 17, No. 3 (2003), pp. 197–214. 67. Theodore M. Hammett, “Two Mobs of Jacksonian Boston: Ideology and Interest,” Journal of American History, Vol. 63, No. 4 (1976), p. 847. 68. Bennett, The Party of Fear, pp. 27, 37. 69. Bennett, The Party of Fear, pp. 37–8; Ray Allen Billington, The Protestant Crusade 1800–1860: A Study of the Origins of American Nativism (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1963, originally published 1938); and Hammett, “Two Mobs,” p. 856. 70. Joseph G. Mannard, “The 1839 Baltimore Nunnery Riot: An Episode in Jacksonian Nativism and Social Violence,” Maryland Historian, Vol. 11, No. 1 (1980), pp. 13–27. 71. Bennett, The Party of Fear, p. 38. 72. Anbinder, Nativism and Slavery, p. 12, and Bennett, Party of Fear, p. 58.

Notes

167

73. Vincent P. Lannie and Bernard C. Diethorn, “For the Honor and Glory of God: The Philadelphia Bible Riots of 1840,” History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1968), p. 86. 74. Feldberg, The Turbulent Era, pp. 25–6, and Elizabeth M. Geffen, “Violence in Philadelphia in the 1840s and 1850s,” in Lane and Turner (eds.), Riot, Rout, and Tumult, p. 124. 75. Lannie and Diethorn, “For the Honor and Glory of God,” p. 80. 76. Anbinder, Nativism and Slavery, p. 25; Bennett, Party of Fear, p. 90; Feldberg, The Turbulent Era, p. 35; Peter Haebler, “Nativist Riots in Manchester: An Episode of Know-Nothingism in New Hampshire,” Historical New Hampshire, Vol. 39 (1985), pp. 121–37; and Sister M. Evangeline Thomas, Nativism in the Old Northwest, 1850–1860 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 1936), p. 191. 77. Billington, The Protestant Crusade, pp. 87–8. 78. Anbinder, Nativism and Slavery, p. 29; Billlington, The Protestant Crusade, p. 306; Bennett, Party of Fear, p, 89; and Louis Dow Scisco, Political Nativism in New York State (New York: AMS Press, 1968, originally published in 1901), p. 94. 79. Bennett, Party of Fear, p. 88; Billington, The Protestant Crusade, p. 302; Hutcheon, “Louisville Riots,” p. 153; and Thomas, Nativism, p. 121. 80. Feldberg, The Turbulent Era, p. 37. 81. S. J. Ackerman, “A Riot in Washington,” American History, Vol. 36, No. 2 (2001), p. 58. 82. Feldberg, The Turbulent Era, p. 55. 83. Paul A. Gilje, “The Baltimore Riots of 1812 and the Breakdown of the AngloAmerican Mob Tradition,” Journal of Social History, Vol. 13, No. 4 (1980), pp. 547–64. 84. Bennett, Party of Fear, p. 143; Hofstadter and Wallace, American Violence, p. 313; and Hutcheon, “Louisville Riots.” 85. Feldberg, The Turbulent Era, p. 35. 86. Hutcheon, “Louisville Riots,” pp. 160–1. 87. Wayne G. Broehl, Jr., The Molly Maguires (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964), p. 76. 88. Bennett, Party of Fear, p. 147. 89. Feldberg, The Turbulent Era, pp. 59–60. 90. Hofstadter and Wallace, American Violence, p. 93. 91. Feldberg, The Turbulent Era, p. 61. 92. Feldberg, The Turbulent Era, p. 61 93. Cf. Ackerman, “Riot in Washington.” 94. Brown, Strains of Violence, pp. 113–20. 95. Feldberg, The Turbulent Era, pp. 73–4. 96. Hollon, Frontier Violence, p. 73. 97. Ray Abrahams, Vigilant Citizens: Vigilantism and the State (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998), pp. 71, 79–82; Brown, Strains of Violence, pp. 124, 135–7; and Waldrep, “Word and Deed,” pp. 237–8. 98. Hutcheon, “Louisville Riots,” p. 153.

168

Notes

99. Nicole Etcheson, Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2004), p. 3. 100. Clement Eaton, “Mob Violence in the Old South,” in Lane and Turner (eds.), Riot, Rout, and Tumult, p. 147; Feldberg, The Turbulent Era, pp. 43–4; Grimsted, “Rioting,” p. 376; and Richards, Gentlemen of Property and Standing, p. 15. 101. Bennett, Party of Fear, p. 38. 102. Grimsted, “Rioting,” p. 392. 103. Eaton, “Mob Violence,” pp. 151–7. 104. Feldberg, The Turbulent Era, p. 50, and Richards, Gentlemen of Property and Standing, p. 85. 105. Brown, Strains of Violence, p. 208, and Slaughter, Bloody Dawn, p. 171. 106. Grimsted, “Rioting,” p. 389, and Slaughter, Bloody Dawn, p. 165. 107. Richard Maxwell Brown, “Historical Patterns of Violence,” in Ted Robert Gurr (ed.), Violence in America: Volume 2, Protest, Rebellion, Reform (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1989), p. 26; Hofstadter and Wallace, American Violence, p. 85; and Slaughter, Bloody Dawn, pp. 51, 73, 183. 108. Richard Grau, “The Christiana Riot of 1851: A Reappraisal,” Journal of the Lancaster County Historical Society, Vol. 68 (1964), pp. 147–63; Roderick W. Nash, “The Christiana Riot: An Evaluation of Its National Significance,” Journal of the Lancaster County Historical Society, Vol. 65, No. 2 (1961), pp. 65–91; and Slaughter, Bloody Dawn. 109. Nash, “Christiana Riot,” p. 72, and Slaughter, Bloody Dawn, p. 88. 110. Grau, “Christiana Riot,” p. 159. 111. Rusty Monhollen and Kristen Tegtmeir Oertel, “A Century of Struggle for Equality in Kansas,” Kansas History, Vol. 27, No. 1/2 (2004), p. 119; Stephen B. Oates, To Purge This Land with Blood: A Biography of John Brown, 2nd ed. (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984), p. 265; and Stephen B. Oates, “To Wash This Land in Blood: John Brown in Kansas,” in Lane and Turner (eds.), Riot, Rout, and Tumult, p. 171. 112. Etcheson, Bleeding Kansas, p. 4. 113. Etcheson, Bleeding Kansas, p. 29. 114. Louis A. DeCaro, Jr., “Fire from the Midst of You”: A Religious Life of John Brown (New York: New York University Press, 2002), p. 218; Rita G. Napier, “The Hidden History of Bleeding Kansas: Leavenworth and the Formation of the Free-State Movement,” Kansas History, Vol. 27, No. 1/2 (2004), pp. 53–4; and Oates, “To Wash This Land,” p. 166. 115. Jules Abels, Man on Fire: John Brown and the Cause of Liberty (New York: Macmillan, 1971), p. 47. 116. Etcheson, Bleeding Kansas, p. 57. 117. DeCaro, Fire from the Midst, p. 217. 118. Abels, Man on Fire, p. 47; Etcheson, Bleeding Kansas, p. 63; and Napier, “Hidden History,” pp. 46, 57. 119. DeCaro, Fire from the Midst, p. 219, and Roberts, “Now the Enemy,” p. 207. 120. Abels, Man on Fire, pp. 48–9; DeCaro, Fire from the Midst, p. 219; Alice Nichols, Bleeding Kansas (New York: Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 102; and Oates, To Purge This Land, p. 114.

Notes 121. 122. 123. 124.

125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141. 142.

143.

144. 145. 146. 147.

148. 149. 150. 151. 152. 153.

154.

169

Waldrep, “Word and Deed,” p. 239. DeCaro, Fire from the Midst, p. 220. DeCaro, Fire from the Midst, p. 217. Oates, To Purge This Land, p. 158; Kristen Tegtmeier Oertel, “ ‘The Free Sons of the North’ versus ‘The Myrmidons of Border-Ruffianism’,” Kansas History, Vol. 25, No. 3 (2002), pp. 174–89; and Roberts, “Now the Enemy,” p. 207. Nichols, Bleeding Kansas, p. 223, and Oates, To Purge This Land, p. 146. DeCaro, Fire from the Midst, pp. 232–3, and Oates, To Purge This Land, p. 146. Etcheson, Bleeding Kansas, pp. 190, 221. Roberts, “Now the Enemy,” pp. 210–12. Abels, Man on Fire, p. 76. Emphasis in the original. Oertel, “The Free Sons of the North,” p. 187. Abels, Man on Fire, p. 89, and Etcheson, Bleeding Kansas, p. 111. Hofstadter and Wallace, American Violence, p. 90. Oates, To Purge This Land, p. 217. Abels, Man on Fire, p. 90. Oates, To Purge This Land, pp. 256, 262. Oates, To Purge This Land, pp. 256–7. Oates, To Purge This Land, p. 361, and C. Vann Woodward, “John Brown’s Private War,” in Aaron (ed.), America in Crisis, pp. 124–5. Bennett, Party of Fear, p. 145. Brown, “Historical Patterns,” p. 26. Woodward, “Private War,” pp. 126–7. Higham, Strangers in the Land, p. 13. Hofstadter, “Reflections on Violence,” p. 15, and Lawrence Lader, “New York’s Bloodiest Week,” in Turner and Lane (eds.), Riot, Rout, and Tumult, p. 185. Robin Brooks, “Domestic Violence and America’s Wars: A Historical Interpretation,” in Gurr (ed.), Violence in America, Vol. 2, p. 178, and Hollon, Frontier Violence, p. 30. Hofstadter and Wallace, American Violence, p. 212. Broehl, Molly Maguires, p. 91. Brooks, “America’s Wars,” p. 178, and Hofstadter and Wallace, p. 212. Harold W. Aurand, From the Molly Maguires to the United Mine Workers: The Social Ecology of an Industrial Union, 1869–1897 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1971), p. 97, and Broehl, Molly Maguires, p. 89. Richards, Gentlemen of Property and Standing, p. 5. Richards, Gentlemen of Property and Standing, p. 111. Grimsted, “Rioting,” p. 379. Feldberg, “Crowd in Philadelphia History,” p. 139. Ackerman, “A Riot in Washington”; Bennett, Party of Fear, p. 149; and Feldberg, The Turbulent Era, p. 27. Brown, “Historical Patterns,” p. 35, and Grimsted, “Rioting,” pp. 395–6. Volunteer fire groups were often involved in violence in this era, but their goals seldom involved any political objectives. Cf. Feldberg, The Turbulent Era. Bennett, Party of Fear, p. 103, and Feldberg, The Turbulent Era, p. 34.

170

Notes

155. Feldberg, The Turbulent Era, p. 73, and Hampshire, Mormonism in Conflict, p. 253. 156. Feldberg, Turbulent Era, p. 38. 157. Hollon, Frontier Violence, pp. 64–6. 158. Scisco, Political Nativism, pp. 18–19, 245. 159. Bennett, Party of Fear, p. 147; Hampshire, Mormonism in Conflict, p. 278; and Scisco, Political Nativism, pp. 18–19, 243. 160. Thomas, Nativism in the Old Northwest, p. 45. 161. Grimsted, “Rioting,” p. 389, and Hammett, “Two Mobs,” p. 846. 162. Lutz and Lutz, Global Terrorism, p. 210.

4 From the Civil War to World War I: Racism, Labor Disputes and Anarchism 1. Davis, “American Experiences,” p. 229. 2. David M. Chalmers, Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1965), p. 21. 3. Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, p. 2, and Allen W. Release, “Reconstruction: The Great Experiment,” in Lane and Turner (eds.), Riot, Rout, and Tumult, p. 208. 4. Release, “Reconstruction,” p. 213. 5. Stephen Cresswell, Mormons, Moonshiners & Klansmen: Federal Law Enforcement in the South and West, 1870–1893 (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1991), p. 29. 6. Wallace, “Uses of Violence,” p. 14. 7. Sinclair, Anatomy of Terror, p. 147. 8. Release, “Reconstruction,” p. 210. 9. Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, p. 10; Davis, “American Experiences,” p. 229; Release, “Reconstruction,” p. 204, and Richard E. Rubenstein, Rebels in Eden: Mass Political Violence in the United States (Boston: Little Brown, 1970). 10. G. David Garson and Gail O’Brien, “Collective Violence in the Reconstruction South,” in Hugh Davis Graham and Ted Robert Gurr (eds.), Violence in America: Historical & Comparative Perspectives (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1979), p. 251. 11. Garson and O’Brien, “Collective Violence.” 12. Hofstadter and Wallace, American Violence, p. 223. 13. Garson and O’Brien, “Collective Violence”; Release, “Reconstruction,” p. 204; and Wallace, “Uses of Violence,” p. 14. 14. Hofstadter and Wallace, American Violence, p. 223. 15. William Blair, “The Use of Military Force to Protect the Gains of Reconstruction,” Civil War History, Vol. 51, No. 4 (2005), p. 400. 16. Blair, “Use of Military Force,” p. 396, and Hofstadter, “Reflections on Violence,” p. 16. 17. Blair, “Use of Military Force,” p. 396, and Release, “Reconstruction,” p. 210.

Notes

171

18. Richard E. Rubenstein, “Rebellion in America: The Fire Next Time?” in Gurr (ed.), Violence in America: Volume 2, p. 314. 19. Blair, “Use of Military Force,” p. 397. 20. Blair, “Use of Military Force,” p. 396, and Davis, “American Experiences,” p. 229. 21. Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, p. 10, and Cresswell, Mormons, Cowboys, Moonshiners, p. 33. 22. Cresswell, Mormons, Cowboys, Moonshiners, pp. 27, 61; Garson and O’Brien, “Collective Violence,” p. 251; and Release, “Reconstruction,” p. 211. 23. Hofstadter, “Reflections on Violence,” p. 16. 24. Blair, “Use of Military Force,” p. 388. 25. Ted Robert Gurr, “Political Terrorism: Historical Antecedents and Contemporary Trends,” in Gurr (ed.), Violence in America: Volume 2, p. 206. 26. John Dollard, “Caste and Class in a Southern Town,” in Lane and Turner (eds.), Riot, Rout, and Tumult, p. 303. 27. Hofstadter, “Reflections on Violence,” p. 20, and Hollon, Frontier Violence, p. 51. 28. Brown, Strains of Violence, p. 218. 29. Brown, Strains of Violence, p. 208. 30. Blair, “Use of Military Force,” pp. 397–8, and Brown, Strains of Violence, pp. 208–10. 31. Richard Wade, “Violence in the Cities: A Historical View,” in Lane and Turner (eds.), Riot, Rout, and Tumult, pp. 355–6. 32. Brown, Strains of Violence, pp. 212, 216, and Dollard, “Caste and Class,” p. 299. 33. Hollon, Frontier Violence, p. 51. 34. Hollon, Frontier Violence, p. 192. 35. Elmer Clarence Sandmeyer, The Anti-Chinese Movement in California (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1973, originally published in 1939), p. 109. 36. Iris Chang, The Chinese in America: A Narrative History (New York: Viking, 2003), p. 117. 37. Hollon, Frontier Violence, p. 94, and Hofstadter and Wallace, American Violence, p. 325. 38. Hollon, Frontier Violence, p. 94. 39. Locklear, “The Celestials and the Angels,” p. 244. 40. Chang, The Chinese in America, p. 119. 41. Locklear, “The Celestials and the Angels,” pp. 248–9. 42. Chang, The Chinese in America, p. 122. 43. Chang, The Chinese in America, p. 127. 44. Lynwood Carranco, “Chinese Expulsion from Humboldt County,” Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 30, No. 4 (1961), pp. 329–40. 45. Hofstadter and Wallace, American Violence, p. 325. 46. Hollon, Frontier Violence, p. 101. 47. Chang, The Chinese in America, p. 135. 48. W. P. Wilcox, “Anti-Chinese Riots in Washington,” Washington Historical Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 3 (1929), p. 205.

172

Notes

49. Hollon, Frontier Violence, pp. 101–2; Jules Alexander Karlin, “The AntiChinese Outbreaks in Seattle, 1885–1886,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly, Vol. 39, No. 2 (1948), pp. 103–29; Jules Alexander Karlin, “The Anti-Chinese Outbreak in Tacoma, 1885,” Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 23, No. 3 (1954), pp. 271–83; and Wilcox, “Anti-Chinese Riots.” 50. Karlin, “Outbreak in Seattle,” p. 109. 51. Wilcox, “Anti-Chinese Riots,” pp. 206, 209. 52. Hollon, Frontier Violence, p. 103. 53. Karlin, “Outbreak in Seattle,” p. 129. 54. Karlin, “Outbreak in Tacoma,” p. 283. 55. Paul Crane and Alfred Larson, “The Chinese Massacre,” Annals of Wyoming, Vol. 12, No. 1 (1940), p. 47. 56. Crane and Larson, “The Chinese Massacre,” and Hollon, Frontier Violence, pp. 98–9. 57. Hofstadter and Wallace, American Violence, p. 329. 58. Crane and Larson, “The Chinese Massacre,” p. 53. 59. Karlin, “Outbreak in Seattle,” pp. 103–4; Karlin, “Outbreak in Tacoma,” p. 272; Locklear, “The Celestials and the Angels,” p. 240; Sandmeyer, Anti-Chinese Movement, pp. 64–5; and Wilcox, “Anti-Chinese Riots,” p. 204. 60. Chang, Chinese in America, p. 128. 61. Bennett, Party of Fear, p. 162, and Crane and Larson, “The Chinese Massacre,” pp. 51–2. 62. Bennett, Party of Fear, pp. 162–3. 63. Higham, Strangers in the Land, p. 25. 64. Chang, The Chinese in America, p. 126. 65. Hollon, Frontier Violence, p. 98. 66. Bellesiles, “Introduction,” p. 6. 67. Bennett, Party of Fear, p. 174; Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, Politics of Unreason: Right-Wing Extremism in America, 1790–1970 (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), p. 79; and Donald S. Strong, Organized AntiSemitism in America: The Rise of Group Prejudice during the Decade 1930–40 (Washington, DC: American Council on Public Affairs, 1941), p. 14. 68. Higham, Strangers in the Land, p. 84. 69. Lipset and Raab, Politics of Unreason, pp. 88–9. 70. Morris Schonbach, “Native Fascism during the 1930’s and 1940’s: A Study of its Roots, its Growth, and its Decline,” PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1958, p. 54. 71. Higham, Strangers in the Land, p. 173. 72. Higham, Strangers in the Land, pp. 90–1, 169; Hofstadter and Wallace, Violence in America, p. 332; and Thomas Reppetto, American Mafia: A History of Its Rise to Power (New York: Henry Holt, 2004), p. 17. 73. Bennett, Party of Fear, p. 169, and Higham, Strangers in the Land, pp. 92–3. 74. Lipset and Raab, Politics of Unreason, p. 95. 75. Brown, “Historical Patterns,” p. 31. 76. Brown, Strain of Violence, p. 14.

Notes

173

77. Lutz and Lutz, Terrorism: Origins and Evolution, p. 8, and Alex P. Schmid, “The Response Problem as a Definition Problem,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 4, No. 4 (1992), pp. 10–1. 78. Henry David, “Upheaval at Homestead,” in Aaron (ed.), America in Crisis, p. 149. 79. Philip Taft and Philip Ross, “American Labor Violence: Its Causes, Character, and Outcome,” in Graham and Gurr (eds.), Violence in America (1979), p. 194. 80. Davis, “American Experiences,” p. 231. 81. Michael Wallace, “The Uses of Violence,” p. 19. 82. Brown, Strains of Violence, pp. 34–5, and Taft and Ross, “American Labor Violence,” p. 211. 83. Hofstadter and Wallace, American Violence, pp. 151–2; George G. Suggs, Jr., Colorado’s War on Militant Unionism: James H. Peabody and the Western Federation of Miners (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1972), p. 11; and Taft and Ross, “American Labor Violence,” pp. 195, 201. 84. Suggs, Colorado’s War, pp. 89, 100–1, and Taft and Ross, “American Labor Violence,” p. 194. 85. Suggs, Colorado’s War, pp. 115–6. 86. Taft and Ross, “American Labor Violence,” p. 189. 87. Taft and Ross, “American Labor Violence,” p. 197. 88. Broehl, The Molly Maguires, p. 354. 89. Rubenstein, Rebels in Eden, p. 29. 90. Aurand, From the Molly Maguires, p. 98; and Davis, “American Experiences,” p. 231. 91. Broehl, The Molly Maguires, p. 107; J. Walter Coleman, The Molly Maguire Riots: Industrial Conflict in the Pennsylvania Coal Region (New York: Arno & New York Times, 1969, originally published in 1936), pp. 47–53; Davis, “American Experiences,” p. 231; and Gurr, “Political Terrorism,” p. 202. 92. Aurand, From the Molly Maguires, Chap. 9, and Coleman, Molly Maguire Riots, p. 168. 93. Coleman, Molly Maguire Riots, p. 119. 94. Broehl, The Molly Maguires, pp. 331–2, and Coleman, Molly Maguire Riots, p. 136. 95. Coleman, Molly Maguire Riots, p. 104. 96. Wallace, “Uses of Violence,” pp. 19–20. 97. Aurand, From the Molly Maguires, p. 27. 98. Broehl, The Molly Maguires, p. 361. 99. Aurand, From the Molly Maguires, p. 108. 100. Laqueur, A History of Terrorism, p. 50. 101. Albert Parry, Terrorism: From Robespierre to Arafat (New York: Vanguard Press, 1976), p. 86. 102. Franklin L. Ford, Political Murder: From Tyrannicide to Terrorism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), pp. 360–1. 103. Rapoport, “The Four Waves of Rebel Terror,” p. 36. 104. Taft and Ross, “American Labor Violence,” p. 189.

174 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114.

Notes David, “Upheaval at Homestead,” p. 151. Hofstadter and Wallace, American Violence, p. 417. Gurr, “Political Terrorism,” p. 201. Charles H. McCormick, Hopeless Cases: The Hunt for the Red Scare Terrorist Bombers (Lanham, MD: University Press of American, 2005), p. 2. Higham, Strangers in the Land, p. 111. Aurand, From the Molly Maguires, p. 133. Bennett, Party of Fear, p. 174, and Lipset and Raab, Politics of Unreason, p. 81. Higham, Strangers in the Land, pp. 93–4. Higham, Strangers in the Land, p. 173. Crane and Larson, “The Chinese Massacre,” pp. 48–9.

5 The Interwar Years:The Red Scare to Fascism 1. Rubenstein, Rebels in Eden, p. 109. 2. Bennett, Party of Fear, p. 191, and Brooks, “Domestic Violence,” pp. 180–1. 3. Bennett, Party of Fear, p. 191; Higham, Strangers in the Land, p. 219, Lipset and Raab, Politics of Unreason, p. 103; H. C. Petersen and Gilbert C. Fite, “The American Reign of Terror,” in Lane and Turner (eds.) Riot, Rout, and Tumult, p. 267; and Robert Tyler, Rebels of the Woods: The I.W.W. in the Pacific Northwest (Eugene, OR: University of Oregon Books, 1967), p. 121. 4. Petersen and Fite, “American Reign of Terror,” p. 274. 5. Stanley Coben, “A Study in Nativism: The American Red Scare of 1919–20,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 79, No. 1 (1964), p. 52; Petersen and Fite, “American Reign of Terror,” pp. 270–1; and Tyler, Rebels of the Woods, p. 120. 6. Brown, Strains of Violence, p. 57; William Preston, Jr., Aliens and Dissenters: Federal Suppression of Radicals, 1903–1933 (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), p. 96; and Tyler, Rebels of the Woods, pp. 46–8. 7. Paul L. Murphy, “Sources and Nature of Intolerance in the 1920s,” Journal of American History, Vol. 51, No. 1 (1964), p. 62. 8. Higham, Strangers in the Land, p. 219. 9. Preston, Aliens and Dissenters, pp. 41–2. 10. Tyler, Rebels of the Woods, pp. 60–1, 127. 11. Higham, Strangers in the Land, p. 220, and Preston, Aliens and Dissenters, p. 93. 12. Preston, Aliens and Dissenters, pp. 115–6. 13. Bennett, Party of Fear, p. 191, and Brooks, “Domestic Violence,” p. 181. 14. Higham, Strangers in the Land, p. 220. 15. Robert K. Murray, Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria, 1919–1920 (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1955), pp. 57–66. 16. McCormick, Hopeless Cases, p. 14. 17. Bennett, Party of Fear, and Murray, Red Scare, p. 71.

Notes 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51.

175

Murray, Red Scare, p. 78. Coben, “Study in Nativism,” pp. 64–5. Bennett, Party of Fear, pp. 194–5. Bennett, Party of Fear, pp. 192–5, and Coben, “Study in Nativism,” pp. 72–3. Murphy, “Nature of Intolerance,” p. 65. Murray, Red Scare, pp. 257–9. Murray, Red Scare, p. 259. Coben, “Study in Nativism,” p. 52, and Murray, Red Scare, pp. 74–6. Murray, Red Scare, p. 84. Higham, Strangers in the Land, p. 224; Murray, Red Scare, pp. 88–90; and Tyler, Rebels in the Woods, p. 129. Coben, “Study in Nativism,” p. 59, and Christopher Capozzola, “The Only Badge Needed Is Your Patriotic Fervor: Vigilance, Coercion, and the Law in World War I America,” Journal of American History, Vol. 88, No. 4 (2002), p. 1379. Murray, Red Scare, p. 53. Coben, “Study in Nativism,” p. 68. McCormick, Hopeless Cases, p. 10. Murray, Red Scare, pp. 78–9. Bennett, Party of Fear, p. 197, and Rubenstein, Rebels in Eden, p. 109. Bennett, Party of Fear, pp. 192, 197, and Higham, Strangers in the Land, p. 220. Coben, “Study in Nativism,” p. 52. Coben, “Study in Nativism,” p. 52. Higham, Strangers in the Land, p. 220, and Tyler, Rebels of the Woods, p. 121. Murphy, “Nature of Intolerance,” p. 64. J. Browyer Bell and Ted Robert Gurr, “Terrorism and Revolution in America,” in Graham and Gurr (eds.), Violence in America, p. 330, and Murphy, “Nature of Intolerance,” p. 73. Capozzola, “Only Badge Needed,” p. 1366. Taft and Ross, “American Labor Violence,” p. 224. Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, p. 31. Eckard V. Toy, Jr., “Right-Wing Extremism from the Ku Klux Klan to the Order,” in Gurr (ed.), Violence in America, p. 135. Murray, Red Scare, p. 87. Cf. Bennett, Party of Fear, p. 199. Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, p. 33. Strong, Organized Anti-Semitism, pp. 14–5. Murphy, “Nature of Intolerance,” p. 72. Lipset and Raab, Politics of Unreason, pp. 138–9. Higham, Strangers in the Land, p. 288, and Murphy, “Nature of Intolerance,” p. 69. Alison J. Gough, “Ku Klux Klan Terror,” in Martha Crenshaw and John Pimlott (eds.), Encyclopedia of World Terrorism, Vol. 3 (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1997), p. 527, and Murphy, “Nature of Intolerance,” p. 69.

176

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52. Cf. Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, pp. 167–70, and Richard K. Tucker, The Dragon and the Cross: The Rise and Fall of the Ku Klux Klan in Middle America (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1991). 53. Murphy, “Nature of Intolerance,” p. 69. 54. Tucker, The Dragon and the Cross, p. 5. 55. Brown, “Historical Patterns of Violence,” p. 41. 56. Murray, Red Scare, p. 92. 57. Brown, “Historical Patterns of Violence,” p. 41; Chalmers, Hooded Americanism; and Wallace, “Reflections on Violence,” p. 23. 58. Bennett, Party of Fear, p. 219; Roberta Senechal de la Roche, “Collective Violence as Social Control,” Sociological Forum, Vol. 11, No. 1 (1996), p. 115; Higham, Strangers in the Land, pp. 294–5; and Toy, “Right-Wing Extremism,” p. 133. 59. Bennett, Party of Fear, p. 225. 60. Lipset and Raab, Politics of Unreason, p. 124. 61. De la Roche, “Collective Violence,” p. 115. 62. Shawn Lay, Hooded Knights on the Niagara: The Ku Klux Klan in Buffalo, New York (New York: New York University Press, 1995), p. 146. 63. Lay, Hooded Knights on the Niagara, pp. 116–7. The bomber was never caught. 64. Gurr, “History of Protest,” p. 11. 65. Hofstader, “Reflections on Violence,” p. 20, and Sinclair, Anatomy of Terror, p. 231. 66. Toy, “Right-Wing Extremism,” p. 134. 67. Arthur R. Raper, “The Tragedy of Lynching,” in Lane and Turner (eds.), Riot, Rout, and Tumult, p. 294. This excerpt is from a longer work written in 1933. 68. Capozzola, “Only Badge Needed,” p. 1379, and Fred Thompson, “Subverting the Organization of Labor,” in Bud Schultz and Ruth Schultz (eds.), The Price of Dissent: Testimonies to Political Repression in America (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001), pp. 25–6. 69. Harvard Sitkoff, “Racial Militancy and Interracial Violence in the Second World War,” in Lane and Turner (eds.), Riot, Rout, and Tumult, p. 314. 70. Robert Fogelson, “Violence as Protest,” in Lane and Turner (eds.), Riot, Rout, and Tumult, pp. 331–3. 71. Fogelson, “Violence as Protest,” p. 332, and Sitkoff, “Racial Militancy,” p. 314. 72. Morris Janowitz, “Collective Racial Violence: A Contemporary History,” in Graham and Gurr (eds.), Violence in America, p. 265. 73. Janowitz, “Collective Racial Violence,” p. 265. Cf. also Fogelson, “Violence as Protest.” 74. Schonbach, “Native Fascism,” pp. 251–2, and Strong, Organized AntiSemitism, p. 14. 75. Bennett, Party of Fear, p. 248. 76. Schonbach, “Native Fascism,” p. 307. 77. Toy, “Right-Wing Extremism,” p. 138. 78. Bennett, Party of Fear, p. 247; Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, p. 310; and Morris Janowitz, “Black Legions on the March,” in Aaron (ed.) America in Crisis, p. 306.

Notes

177

79. Lipset and Raab, Politics of Unreason, pp. 157–8, and Schonbach, “Native Fascism,” p. 318. 80. Janowitz, “Black Legions,” p. 308. 81. Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, p. 310. 82. Schonbach, “Native Fascism,” p. 318, and Toy, “Right-Wing Extremism,” p. 138. 83. Humbert S. Nelli, The Business of Crime: Italians and Syndicate Crime in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 193, and Repetto, American Mafia, p. 22. 84. Nelli, Business of Crime, p. 192. 85. Robert J. Kelly and Rufus Schatzberg, “ ‘Once Upon a Time in America’: Organized Crime and Civil Society,” in Felia Allum and Renate Siebert (eds.), Organized Crime and the Challenge to Democracy (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 131. 86. Rubenstein, Rebels in Eden, p. 109. 87. Shawn Lay, “Conclusion: Toward a New Historical Appraisal of the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s,” in Shawn Lay (ed.), The Invisible Empire in the West: Toward a New Historical Appraisal of the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1992), p. 220. 88. Rubenstein, Rebels in Eden, p. 109. 89. Murray, Red Scare, pp. 271–2. 90. Coben, “Study in Nativism,” p. 59. 91. Murphy, “Nature of Intolerance,” p. 75. 92. Lutz and Lutz, Terrorism: Origins and Evolution, p. 79.

6 1940–1980: McCarthyism, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Left 1. Petersen and Fite, “American Reign of Terror,” p. 274. 2. Bennett, Party of Fear, p. 290. 3. Hofstadter and Wallace, American Violence, p. 365, and Ellen Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (Boston: Little Brown, 1998), p. 362. 4. Macel D. Ezell, McCarthyism: Twentieth Century Witch-Hunt (Austin, TX: Steck-Vaughn, 1970), p. 22, and Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes, p. 362. 5. Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht, Joe McCarthy and McCarthyism: The Hate that Haunts America (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972), pp. 38–9, and Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes, p. x. 6. William O. Douglas, “The Black Silence of Fear,” in Ellen Schrecker, The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents (New York: Palgrave, 2002), p. 273; Schrecker, The Age of McCarthyism, pp. 104–5; and Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes, p. 363. 7. Schrecker, The Age of McCarthyism, p. 87. 8. Douglas, “Black Silence,” p. 273. 9. Bennett, Party of Fear, p. 347; John George and Laird Wilcox, American Extremists: Militias, Supremacists, Klansmen, Communists, and Others

178

10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

Notes (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1996), p. 364; and Toy, “Right-Wing Extremism,” p. 141. Garson and O’Brien, “Collective Violence,” p. 237. Garson and O’Brien, “Collective Violence,” p. 236. Garson and O’Brien, “Collective Violence,” p. 245. Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, p. 343. Bennett, Party of Fear, p. 347, and Christopher Hewitt, “Patterns of American Terrorism 1955–1998: An Historical Perspective on TerrorismRelated Fatalities,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 12, No. 1 (2000), pp. 6, 11. Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, pp. 349–50, 356–65; George and Wilcox, American Extremists, p. 366; and Gurr, “Political Terrorism,” p. 207. George and Wilcox, American Extremists, p. 369, and Hewitt, “Patterns of American Terrorism,” p. 12. Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, p. 351, and Christopher Hewitt, Understanding Terrorism in America: From the Klan to Al Qaeda (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 94. Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, p. 350, and Toy, “Right-Wing Extremism,” p. 142. Hewitt, Understanding Terrorism, p. 96. Cf. George and Wilcox, American Extremists, pp. 335–40. Fogelson, “Violence as Protest,” p. 343, and Janowitz, “Collective Racial Violence.” De la Roche, “Collective Violence.” Hewitt, “Patterns of American Terrorism,” p. 17. Janowitz, “Collective Racial Violence,” p. 276. Davis, “American Perceptions,” p. 235. Marx himself believed that terrorism was likely to be a counterproductive strategy and, therefore, did not approve of its use. Cf. Brent L. Smith and Kelly R. Damphousse, “Two Decades of Terror: Characteristics, Trends, and Prospects for the Future of American Terrorism,” in Harvey W. Kushner, (ed.), The Future of American Terrorism: Violence in the New Millennium (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998), p. 140. George and Wilcox, American Extremists, pp. 120–1. George and Wilcox, American Extremists, p. 116. Bell and Gurr, “Terrorism and Revolution,” p. 342. Hewitt, “Patterns of American Terrorism,” p. 17. Gurr, “Political Terrorism,” p. 225; Ted Robert Gurr, “Protest and Rebellion in the 1960s: The United States in World Perspective,” in Gurr (ed.), Violence in America, p. 109; and Hewitt, “Patterns of American Terrorism,” p. 7. Gurr, “Protest and Rebellion,” p. 215. Gurr, “Protest and Rebellion,” p. 225. Pillar, Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy, pp. 18–9, 57. Walter Enders and Todd Sandler, The Political Economy of Terrorism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 41. Davis, “American Experiences,” p. 237. Pillar, Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 63.

Notes

179

37. Andrew Corsun, “Group Profile: The Revolutionary Organization 17 November in Greece (1975–1991)”, in Yonah Alexander and Dennis A. Pluchinksy (eds.), European Terrorism: Today and Tomorrow (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1992), pp. 93, 116, and Marco Rimanelli, “Italian Terrorism and Society, 1940s–1980s: Roots, Ideologies, Evolution, and International Connections,” Terrorism, Vol. 12, No. 4 (1989), p. 276. 38. Robert J. Kelly, “Armed Prophets and Extremists: Islamic Fundamentalism,” in Kushner (ed.), The Future of Terrorism, p. 22, and James M. Lutz and Brenda J. Lutz, “Terrorism as Economic Warfare,” Global Economy Journal, Vol. 6, No. 2 (2006), p. 5. 39. Lutz and Lutz, Terrorism: Origins and Evolution, p. 111. 40. Davis, “American Perception”, p. 236. 41. Brian M. Jenkins, Embassies under Siege: A Review of 48 Embassy Takeovers, 1971–1980 (Santa Monica: RAND, January 1981), p. 20. 42. Gurr, “Political Terrorism,” p. 226. 43. Gurr, “Political Terrorism,” pp. 220–1, and Hewitt, “Patterns of American Terrorism,” pp. 5–6. 44. Dennis Pluchinsky, “Ethnic Terrorism: Themes and Variations,” in Tan (ed.), Politics of Terrorism, p. 49. 45. Lutz and Lutz, Global Terrorism, p. 41; Alex P. Schmid, “Terrorism and Democracy,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 4, No. 4 (1992), p. 16; and J. Brent Wilson, “The United States’ Response to International Terrorism,” in David A. Charters (ed.), The Deadly Sin of Terrorism: Its Effect on Democracy and Civil Liberty in Six Countries (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984), p. 174. 46. Bell and Gurr, “Terrorism and Revolution,” p. 344. 47. Bell and Gurr, “Terrorism and Revolution,” p. 337; Gurr, “Political Terrorism,” pp. 221–2; and Philip Jenkins, Images of Terror: What We Can and Can’t Know about Terrorism (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 2003), pp. 52–3. 48. Hewitt, Understanding Terrorism, p. 36, and Jenkins, Images of Terror, p. 53. 49. Hewitt, “Patterns of American Terrorism,” p. 5. 50. Gurr, “Political Terrorism,” p. 224. 51. Allan C. Brownfeld, “Jewish/Zionist Terrorism: A Continuing Threat to Peace,” Global Dialogue, Vol. 2, No. 4 (2000), p. 108. 52. George and Wilcox, American Extremists, pp. 306–10; Hewitt, Understanding Terrorism, p. 97; and Brownfeld, “Jewish/Zionist Terrorism,” p. 109. 53. Rubenstein, “Rebellion in America,” p. 322. 54. George and Wilcox, American Extremists, p. 312, and Hewitt, Understanding Terrorism, p. 97. 55. George and Wilcox, American Extremists, p. 314, and Lutz and Lutz, Global Terrorism, p. 67. 56. Bell and Gurr, “Terrorism and Revolution,” p. 338; Gurr, “Political Terrorism,” p. 217; and Hewitt, Understanding Terrorism, p. 17. 57. Hewitt, Understanding Terrorism, p. 17. 58. Hewitt, Understanding Terrorism, p. 106.

180

Notes

59. Gurr, “Political Terrorism,” p. 219. 60. Bell and Gurr, “Terrorism and Revolution,” p. 338, and Hewitt, Understanding Terrorism, p. 102. 61. Bell and Gurr, “Terrorism and Revolution,” p. 339. 62. Davis, “American Perception”, p. 234. 63. Dennis Piszkiewicz, Terrorism’s War with America: A History (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), p. 6. 64. Gurr, “Protest and Rebellion,” p. 118. 65. Hewitt, Understanding Terrorism, pp. 94–7. 66. Schrecker, Age of McCarthyism, p. 105. 67. Ezell, McCarthyism, p. 29. 68. Bell and Gurr, “Terrorism and Revolution,” p. 335.

7 Into the Twenty-First Century: International and Domestic Attacks 1. George and Wilcox, American Extremists, p. 310, and Jenkins, Images of Terrorism, p. 62. 2. Jenkins, Images of Terrorism, p. 62. 3. Gurr, “Political Terrorism,” p. 218. 4. Nadine Gurr and Benjamin Cole, The New Face of Terrorism: Threats from Weapons of Mass Destruction (London: I. B. Tauris, 2000), p. 148. 5. Smith and Damphousse, “Two Decades of Terror,” p. 137. 6. Mark S. Hamm, American Skinheads: The Criminology and Control of Hate Crime, Praeger Series in Criminology and Crime Control Policy (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993), p. 72. 7. Mark S. Hamm, “Terrorism, Hate Crime, and Antigovernment Violence: A Review of the Research,” in Kushner (ed.), Future of Terrorism, p. 11. 8. George and Wilcox, American Extremists, p. 370. 9. Jeffrey Kaplan, “The Context of American Millenarian Revolutionary Theology: The Case of the ‘Identity Christian’ Church of Israel,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 5, No. 1 (1993), pp. 44–5. 10. George and Wilcox, American Extremists, p. 350. 11. Gurr and Cole, New Face of Terrorism, p. 148. 12. Jeffrey Kaplan, Radical Religion in America: Millenarian Movements from the Far Right to the Children of Noah (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1997), p. 61. 13. Kaplan, Radical Religion in America, p. 6, and George Michael, Confronting Right-Wing Extremism and Terrorism in the USA (New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 98. 14. George and Wilcox, American Extremists, p. 341, and Michael, Right-Wing Extremism, p. 103. 15. Kaplan, Radical Religion in America, p. 66, and Michael, Right-Wing Extremism, pp. 102–3.

Notes

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16. Hamm, American Skinheads, pp. 5–6, 125. 17. Neil A. Hamilton, Militias in America: A Reference Handbook (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1996), p. 19. 18. George and Wilcox, American Extremists, p. 344. 19. Michael Barkun, “Violence in the Name of Democracy: Justifications for Separatism on the Radical Right,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 12, No. 3/4 (2000), pp. 195–7. 20. Brian Levin, “The Patriot Movement: Past, Present, and Future,” in Kushner (ed.), Future of Terrorism, p. 108. 21. Kaplan, Radical Religion in America, p. 5. 22. Wilkinson, Terrorism versus Democracy, p. 57. 23. Bennett, Party of Fear, p. 378, and Gurr and Cole, New Face of Terrorism, p. 148. 24. Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, p. 112; Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000), pp. 151–2; and Jeffrey Kaplan, “Right Wing Violence in North America,” in Bjorgo (ed.), Terror from the Extreme Right, p. 51. 25. Kaplan, “American Millenarian Revolutionary Theology.” 26. Mark Pitcavage, “Camouflage and Conspiracy: The Militia Movement from Ruby Ridge to Y2K,” American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 44, No. 6 (2001), p. 960. 27. David W. Brannan, “Left- and Right-Wing Political Terrorism,” in Tan (ed.), The Politics of Terrorism, p. 67. 28. Bennett, Party of Fear, p. 349, and Kaplan, Radical Religion in America, pp. 5, 61. 29. Bennett, Party of Fear, pp. 351–2; Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God, p. 133; and Michael, Right-Wing Extremism, pp. 104–5. 30. Michael Barkun, “Religion, Militias and Oklahoma City: The Mind of Conspiratorialists,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1996), p. 51; Hamilton, Militias in America, p. 42; and Pitcavage, “Camouflage and Conspiracy,” p. 965. 31. Mack Mariani, “The Michigan Militia: Political Engagement or Political Alienation?” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 10, No. 4 (1998), pp. 122–48, and Pitcavage, “Camouflage and Conspiracy,” p. 959. 32. Joshua D. Freilich, Jeremy A. Pienik, and Gregory J. Howard, “Toward Comparative Studies of the U.S. Militia Movement,” International Journal of Comparative Sociology, Vol. 42, No. 1 (2001), pp. 167–8, and Robert L. Snow, The Militia Threat: Terrorists among Us (New York: Plenum Trade, 1999), p. 28. 33. Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, pp. 109–10; Pitcavage, “Camouflage and Conspiracy,” pp. 968–9; and Snow, Militia Threat, pp. ix, 104–5. 34. Levin, “The Patriot Movement,” p. 119, and Snow, Militia Threat, p. 118. 35. Brad Whitsel, “Ideological Mutation and Millennial Belief in the American Neo-Nazi Movement,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Vol. 24, No. 2 (2001), p. 99. 36. Gurr and Cole, New Face of Terrorism, p. 61.

182

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37. Snow, The Militia Threat, p. 118, and Jonathan B. Tucker and Jason Pate, “The Minnesota Patriots Council,” in Jonathan B. Tucker (ed.), Toxic Terror: Assessing the Terrorist Use of Chemical and Biological Weapons (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), pp. 159–83. 38. Jessica Stern, “The Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord (1985),” in Tucker (ed.), Toxic Terror, pp. 139–57. 39. Gurr and Cole, New Face of Terrorism, p. 156. 40. Kaplan, Radical Religion in America, p. 34. 41. Kaplan, Radical Religion in America, p. 61. 42. Michael, Confronting Right-Wing Extremism, p. 103. 43. Barkun, “Violence in the Name of Democracy,” p. 201, and Harvey W. Kushner, “The New Terrorism,” in Kushner (ed.), Future of Terrorism, p. 15. 44. Kaplan, Radical Religion in America, p. 35. 45. Kaplan, “American Millenarian Revolutionary Theology,” p. 39; Michael, Confronting Right-Wing Extremism, p. 119; and Brent L. Smith, “Moving to the Right: The Evolution of Modern American Terrorism,” Global Dialogue, Vol. 2, No. 4 (2000), p. 59. 46. Levin, “The Patriot Movement,” p. 113. 47. Hewitt, “Patterns of American Terrorism,” p. 6; Kushner, “The New Terrorism,” p. 17; and Michael, Confronting Right-Wing Extremism, pp. 105–6. 48. Jenkins, Images of Terror, p. 29. 49. Kushner, Terrorism in America, p. 92. 50. Michael, Confronting Right-Wing Extremism, p. 115. 51. Brannan, “Left- and Right-Wing Political Terrorism,” p. 68. 52. Brannan, “Left- and Right-Wing Political Terrorism,” p. 68, and Martin A. Lee, The Beast Reawakens (Boston: Little Brown, 1997), p. 347. 53. Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, pp. 105–6; Levin, “The Patriot Movement,” p. 114; Mariani, “The Michigan Militia,” p. 126; and Pitcavage, “Camouflage and Conspiracy,” p. 961. 54. Michael, Confronting Right-Wing Extremism, pp. 106–7. 55. Hamilton, Militias in America, p. 45. There have even suggestions that President Clinton staged the attack much like Hitler and the Nazis staged the Reichstag fire as a means of discrediting the communists in Germany. 56. Pitcavage, “Camouflage and Conspiracy,” p. 962. 57. Beau Grosscup, “Terrorism-at-a-Distance: The Imagery that Serves US Power,” Global Dialogue, Vol. 2, No. 4 (2000), p. 83. 58. Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, p. 106. 59. Pitcavage, “Camouflage and Conspiracy,” p. 958. 60. Freilich, Pienik, and Howard, “Toward Comparative Studies,” p. 177. 61. Bennett, Party of Fear, p. 378; Juergensmeyer “Religious Roots,” p. 185; and Lutz and Lutz, Terrorism: Origins and Evolution, p. 148. 62. Gary R. Perlstein, “Anti-abortion Activists’ Terror Campaign,” in Crenshaw and Pimlott (eds.), Encyclopedia of World Terrorism, Vol. 3, pp. 542–4. 63. Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God, pp. 21–4. 64. Peter Chalk, “The Evolving Dynamic of Terrorism in the 1990s,” Australian Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 53, No. 2 (1999), p. 157.

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65. Brannan, “Left- and Right-Wing Political Terrorism,” p. 71, and Michael, “Confronting Right-Wing Extremism,” p. 106. 66. Perlstein, “Anti-abortion Activists’ Terror Campaign,” p. 544, and Michele Wilson and John Lynxwiler, “Abortion Clinic Violence as Terrorism,” Terrorism, Vol. 11, No. 4 (1988), p. 266. 67. Patricia Baird-Windle and Eleanor J. Bader, Targets of Hatred: Anti-abortion Terrorism (New York: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 142–4, and Wilson and Lynxwiler, “Abortion Clinic Violence,” pp. 266–7. 68. Walter Laqueur, The New Terrorism: Fanaticism and the Arms of Mass Destruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 229. 69. Jenkins, Images of Terror, p. 176. 70. Hamm, “Terrorism, Hate Crime, and Anti-government Violence,” p. 65, and Smith and Damphousse, “Two Decades of Terror,” p. 137. 71. Lutz and Lutz, Global Terrorism, pp. 123–4. 72. Brad Knickerbocker, “Mink Wars: Animal Rights Activists Get Violent,” Christian Science Monitor, Vol. 89, No. 193 (1997), p. 5. 73. Kushner, Terrorism in America, p. 100, and Luther Tweeten, Terrorism, Radicalism, and Populism in Agriculture (Ames, IA: Iowa State Press, 2003), p. 185. 74. Gary A. Ackerman, “Beyond Arson? A Threat Assessment of the Earth Liberation Front,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 15, No. 4 (2003), pp. 143–70; Sean P. Eagen, “From Spikes to Bombs: The Rise of Ecoterrorism,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Vol. 19, No. 1 (1996), pp. 1–18; Robert F. Service, “Arson Strikes Research Labs and Tree Farm in Pacific Northwest,” Science, Vol. 292, No. 5522 (2001), p. 1622–3; and Tweeten, Terrorism, Radicalism, and Populism, p. 6. 75. Eagen, “From Spikes to Bombs.” 76. Stephen Leader and Peter Probst, “The Earth Liberation Front and Environmental Terrorism,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 15, No. 4 (2003), p. 37. 77. Lutz and Lutz, “Terrorism as Economic Warfare,” p. 15. 78. Eagen, “From Spikes to Bombs,” pp. 7, 10. 79. Ackerman, “Beyond Arson?”, and Bron Taylor, “Religion, Violence and Radical Environmentalism: From Earth First! to the Unabomber to the Earth Liberation Front,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 10, No. 4 (1998), p. 9. 80. Michael, Confronting Right-Wing Extremism, p. 128. 81. Lutz and Lutz, Global Terrorism, pp. 56–9. 82. Alison Jamieson, “The Use of Terrorism by Organized Crime: An Italian Case Study,” in Bjorgo (ed.), Root Causes of Terrorism, pp. 167–8, and Max G. Manwaring, “Non-state Actors in Colombia: Threats to the State and to the Hemisphere,” Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 13, No. 2 (2002), p. 70. 83. Pillar, Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 57. 84. Wilson, “The United States’ Response to International Terrorism,” pp. 175–6. 85. Piszkiewicz, Terrorism’s War, pp. 50–2. 86. Piszkiewicz, Terrorism’s War, pp. 54–6. 87. Piszkiewicz, Terrorism’s War, p. 57, and Tan, The Politics of Terrorism, p. 117.

184

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88. Michael Scott Doran, “Somebody Else’s Civil War,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 81, No. 1 (2002), pp. 28–9, and Pillar, Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 68. 89. Hoffman, “Rethinking Terrorism,” p. 310. 90. Jason Burke, Al-Qaeda: Casting a Shadow of Terror (London: I. B. Tauris, 2003), pp. 127–33, and Magnus Ranstorp, “Interpreting the Broader Context and Meaning of Bin-Laden’s Fatwa,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Vol. 21, No. 4 (1998), p. 323. 91. Piszkiewicz, Terrorism’s War, pp. 99–100. 92. Burke, Al-Qaeda, p. 129, and Piszkiewicz, Terrorism’s War, p. 129. 93. Tan, The Politics of Terrorism, pp. 225–6. 94. Tan, The Politics of Terrorism, p. 168. 95. Pillar, Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 87, and Tan, The Politics of Terrorism, p. 145. 96. Pillar, Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 105. 97. Burke, Al-Qaeda, p. 179. An earlier attempt failed when an overloaded speedboat sank. 98. Piszkiewicz, Terrorism’s War, pp. 92–4. Not too long after this attempt, Yousef was arrested while in Pakistan and turned over to U.S. authorities. 99. Brenda J. Lutz and James M. Lutz, “Terrorism,” in Alan Collins (ed.), Contemporary Security Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 299. 100. Gaetano Joe Ilardi, “Redefining the Issues: The Future of Terrorism Research and the Search for Empathy,” in Silke (ed.), Research on Terrorism, p. 217. 101. Of course, there are times when successfully attacking a heavily guarded target increases the feeling of vulnerability and the fear. The World Trade Center survived the first attack but not the second. Groups in Lebanon attacked the US embassy and then came close to destroying the temporary embassy facilities. 102. Harvey W. Kushner with Bart Davis, Holy War on the Home Front: The Secret Islamic Terror Network in the United States (New York: Sentinel, 2004), and Brigitte L. Nacos, “The Terrorist Calculus behind 9–11: A Model for Future Terrorism,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Vol. 26, No. 1 (2003), p. 13. 103. Cf. Paddy Hillyard, Suspect Community: People’s Experience of the Prevention of Terrorism Acts in Britain (London: Pluto Press, 1993) and Brenda J. Lutz, James M. Lutz, and Georgia Wralstad Ulmschneider, “British Trials of Irish Nationalist Defendants: The Quality of Justice Strained,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Vol. 25, No. 4 (2002), pp. 227–44, for examples of miscarriages of justice that can occur with suspect communities. 104. Kushner with Davis, Holy War on the Home Front, especially Chapter 8. 105. Jeffrey Kaplan, “Islamophobia in America?: September 11 and Islamophobic Hate Crime,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 18, No. 1 (2006), pp. 1–33. 106. Lutz and Lutz, “Terrorism as Economic Warfare,” pp. 9–11. 107. Kydd and Walter, “Strategies of Terrorism,” p. 69. 108. Don P. Chipman, “Osama bin Laden and Guerrilla War,” Studies in conflict and Terrorism, Vol. 26, No. 3 (2003), pp. 165–8; Hoffman, “Rethinking

Notes

109. 110. 111. 112. 113.

114.

185

Terrorism,” p. 308; Kydd and Walter, “Strategies of Terrorism,” p. 71; Nacos, “Terrorist Calculus,” pp. 11–3; and Kumar Ramakrishna, “Countering the New Terrorism of Al Qaeda without Generating Civilizational Conflict: The Need for an Indirect Strategy,” in Tan and Ramakrishna (eds.), The New Terrorism, pp. 233–45. Burke, Al-Qaeda, p. 102. Laqueur, The New Terrorism, p. 200, Smith and Damphousse, “Two Decades of Terror,” p. 139. Hewitt, Understanding Terrorism, p. 120. Moorhead Kennedy, “The 21st-Century Conditions Likely to Inspire Terrorism,” in Kushner (ed.), Future of Terrorism, p. 192. Tore Bjorgo, “Conclusions,” in Bjorgo (ed.), Root Causes of Terrorism, p. 261; Lutz and Lutz, Terrorism: Origins and Evolution, p. 153; and Tamara Makarenko, “Terrorism and Transnational Organized Crime: Tracing the Crime-Terror Nexus in Southeast Asia,” in Paul J. Smith (ed.), Terrorism and Violence in Southeast Asia: Transnational Challenges to States and Regional Stability (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2005), pp. 169–87. Manwaring, “Non-state Actors in Colombia.”

8 Conclusion:Two Hundred and Fifty Years of Terrorism in the United States 1. Jenkins, Images of Terror, p. 149. 2. Gus Martin, Understanding Terrorism: Challenges, Perspectives, and Issues, 2nd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2006), p. 443. 3. Wilkinson, Terrorism versus Democracy, p. 45. 4. Hollon, Frontier Violence, p. 208. 5. Crane and Larson, “The Chinese Massacre,” p. 50, and Hollon, Frontier Violence, p. 99. 6. Max Abrahms, “Why Terrorism Does Not Work,” International Security, Vol. 31, No. 2 (2006), pp. 79–115, and Caleb Carr, The Lessons of Terror: A History of Warfare against Civilians, Why It Has Failed and Why It Will Fail Again (New York: Random House, 2002). 7. Cf., for example, Timothy Garton Ash, “Is There a Good Terrorist?” in Kegley (ed.), New Global Terrorism, p. 63; Kydd and Walter, “Strategies of Terrorism”; and Lutz and Lutz, Global Terrorism, pp. 246–8. 8. Yehezkel Dror, “Terrorism as a Challenge to the Democratic Capacity to Govern,” in Crenshaw (ed.), Terrorism, Legitimacy and Power, p. 71. 9. Crenshaw, “Causes of Terrorism,” p. 98. 10. David Cole and James X. Dempsey, Terrorism and the Constitution: Sacrificing Liberties in the Name of National Security (New York: New Press, 2002), pp. 153–5. 11. Cole and Dempsey, Terrorism and the Constitution, Chap. 11. 12. Jenkins, Embassies under Siege, p. 20, and Walter Enders and Todd Sandler, “What Do We Know about the Substitution Effect in Transnational Terrorism,” in Silke (ed.), Research on Terrorism, p. 131.


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Index

Abdel Rahman, Sheik Omar 129 abolitionists 44–5, 46, 50–1, 52, 53, 60, 142, 146 abortion, opposition to 111, 122–3, 136, 137, 146, 148, 150 Achille Lauro hijacking 127 Adams, President John Quincy 30 Afghanistan 126, 128, 129–30, 132, 134, 135, 141, 142, 154 airline hijackings 106–7, 127, 130, 131 Alabama 28, 31, 33 ALF—see Animal Liberation Front Algeria 130, 131 al Qaida 124,128–32, 133, 134, 135, 136, 141, 150, 154 American Defense Society 81 American Legion 81, 84, 91 American Protective Association (APA) 67, 143, 153 American Revolution 9, 13, 21, 22, 23, 38, 50, 60, 144, 149, 152 anarchists 5, 55, 71–3, 76, 80, 82–3, 91, 92, 118, 135, 142, 148, 150 Angola 126 Animal Liberation Front (ALF) 124–5 anti-black riots 33–4, 44, 45, 49–50, 58, 61, 77, 87–8, 91, 92, 144, 149 anti-Castro exiles 95–6, 104–5, 108, 109, 111, 126, 135, 141

anti-Semitism 67, 86, 89, 107, 111, 113, 114, 116, 117, 122, 123, 143 anti-war dissenters (as targets) 49, 50, 78, 79 anthrax 123–4 APA—see American Protective Association Arizona 79, 117 Arkansas 57, 58, 88 Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN) 106, 139 Armenia 104 Army of God 122–3 arson 39, 57, 63, 99, 122 Articles of Confederation 21 Aryan Nations 116 assassination 5, 34, 72 101, 105, 127 attempt against President Truman 106 of President William McKinley 72, 73 of Rabbi Meir Kahane 105 in New Mexico 67–8, 145 of Joseph Smith 36–7 Atlanta Olympics 123 Australia 43 authoritarian systems 7, 8 Baader-Meinhoff Gang 103 Bacon’s War 15 Bali 132

206

Index

Baltimore 39, 41, 42–3, 50, 52, 53 Berlin Blockade 96 Beirut 127 bin Laden, Osama 128, 129–31, 132, 135 biological weapons 117 black Americans (as targets) 33–4, 44, 45, 50, 53, 55, 56–7, 58, 59, 60–2, 75, 87–8, 91–2, 100, 101, 107, 111, 113, 121, 144 and KKK 55–60, 85–6 race riots 33–4, 44, 45, 49–50, 58, 66, 77, 88–9, 91, 92, 95, 100–1, 144, 149 Black Legion 90–1, 92, 93 Black Liberation Army (BLA) 101–2 black militias 57, 59 black nationalists 95, 101–2, 107, 108, 109, 111, 112, 144, 148 Black Panthers 101 Bolsheviks 80, 85 bombs 1, 72–3, 81, 83, 91, 93, 99, 102, 104, 105, 106, 109, 120, 122, 123, 127, 129, 130, 132 anarchists 72–3, 80–1, 82–3, 91 Wall Street 80–1 Boston 23, 24, 39, 40, 50 Boston Tea Party 19–20, 23, 53, 140 Branch Davidians 119–20 Bray, Mike 122 British East India Company 19 Brown, John 48–9, 53, 60, 99, 140, 142, 149 Brown vs. the Board of Education 99 Buchanan, President James 48 Buffalo, New York 87, 133 Bush, President George, Jr. 72, 133 Cali Cartel 126 California 28, 32–3, 43–50, 51, 53, 62, 63–4, 66, 88, 143, 144, 149, 153

Canada 17, 33, 45, 49, 53 capitalism 5, 10, 81, 95, 101, 102, 103, 104, 107, 124, 131, 136 Carter, President Jimmy 127 Catholics 32, 34, 43, 44, 70–1, 74, 102, 143 and KKK 84–5, 86–7 and Know-Nothings 27, 40–3, 50, 52 opposition to 27, 38–42, 43–4, 50, 51, 52, 53, 55, 60, 67, 70, 74, 75, 89, 91, 107, 143–4, 146, 149, 150–1, 153 Chechnya 128 chemical weapons 117 Cherokees 28–30, 31, 33, 53, 145, 153 Chickasaws 31, 53, 153 Chicago 72–3, 82–3, 110 Democratic National Convention 110 Chile 32, 105 Chinese 33, 50, 51, 52, 53, 55, 60, 62–7, 69, 71, 74–5, 145, 146, 147, 149, 151, 153 Chinese Exclusion Act 66, 75 Choctaws 31, 53, 145, 153 Christian Identity 115–6, 117 Christiana, Pennsylvania 45–6 Christianity 9, 113, 119, 153 CIA 103, 127 Cincinnati 33, 51, 149 civil liberties 8, 79, 82, 92, 109, 132–3, 140, 150–2, 155 civil rights movement 95, 99, 100 Civil War 27, 49–50, 55, 56, 58, 59, 60, 63 civil wars 2, 7, 127 clash of civilizations 7, 9, 154 Clay, Henry 37 cold war 95, 96, 108, 125, 141, 142 Colombia 111, 126, 137 colonialism 2, 4, 9, 13, 25, 44, 108, 112, 126

Index Colorado 69 communal terrorism 4, 5–6, 10, 52, 74–6, 90–1, 95, 107, 135, 139, 142–3, 144–5, 146, 150, 154 communist 82, 83, 95, 96, 97, 98, 100, 107, 112, 126, 182n Compromise of 1820 44 Compromise of 1850 44 Connecticut 83 conscientious objectors 96 conscription (draft riots) 49–50, 53 Conscription Act 49 Contras 126, 141, 142 Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord (CSA) 116, 117 Creeks 28, 31, 33, 53, 145, 153 criminal groups 3, 5, 17, 43, 62, 70, 77, 90, 93, 111, 126, 137, 145–6 Croatia 104 CSA—see Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord Cuba 77, 95–6, 104–5, 106, 108, 109, 111, 126, 131, 141, 142 death squads 3, 6 democracy 8, 9, 10–11, 89, 136, 151, 152 Democrats 36, 41, 42, 43, 44, 47, 53, 56, 59, 60, 68, 80, 89, 102, 149 Detroit 88 1968 National Convention 102 dissident terrorism 3, 4–6, 16, 18, 21, 22–3, 24, 53, 56, 57–8, 59, 60, 70, 75, 76, 83, 91, 106, 111, 112, 114, 125, 126, 130, 131, 136–7, 140, 142, 144, 146, 148, 149, 154 Dominican Republic 77 Dozier, General James 103 drug traffic 5, 111, 126, 137 Earth Liberation Front (ELF) 124, 125

207

East African embassy attacks 111, 129, 131 economic deprivation 7 economic sanctions 98 Egypt 127, 129 émigré groups 95, 104–5, 107, 108, 109, 111, 125–6, 135, 136, 142 England (see Great Britain) environmental groups 111, 112, 124–5, 136, 137, 142, 148 ethnic cleansing 14, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 33, 34, 50, 52, 56, 63, 66, 75, 145, 149 ethnicity 4, 5, 6, 10, 34, 52, 63, 90, 116, 135, 139, 141, 142, 143–4, 146, 147, 150, 154 Eureka, California 63–4 Europe 5, 10, 147 Evansville 50 FALN—see Armed Forces of National Liberation fascism 5, 77, 89–90, 91, 92, 93, 97, 98, 148 FBI 98, 103, 119, 147 Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) 116 Federal Reserve Board 115 Florida 13, 31, 123 Forrest, Nathan Bedford 56, 57 France 13, 17, 38, 127 French Revolution 9 free blacks 33–4, 44, 45, 46, 49–50, 51, 52, 53, 66 free soil 27, 46–8, 50, 140, 150 Freedmen (Montana) 115 freedmen 55, 56–7, 58, 59, 60 Fugitive Slave Act 45, 46, 53 frustration as cause 7, 11, 100 Gaspee incident 19 gays 113, 114, 116, 121, 123, 146 general strike 79–80, 83 genocide 2, 32

208

Index

Gentlemen’s Agreement 66 Georgia 28–30, 31, 33, 61, 84 Georgia Guard 29, 30 Germans 38, 42, 78 Germany 5, 78, 89, 103, 133, 182n ghetto riots 88, 95, 101 globalization 7, 8, 9–10, 11, 93, 122, 125, 129, 137, 141, 153–4 gold 13 in California 32–3, 51, 63, 153 in Georgia 29–30 Grant, President Ulysess S. 58 Great Britain 13–14, 17–21, 22–3, 24–5, 28, 140, 141, 142, 144, 148, 149, 152 Great Depression 93 Greece 103 guerrilla tactics 7, 10, 14, 20, 77, 103, 126 Haiti 77, 104 Harpers Ferry 49, 53, 150 Haun’s Mill massacre 35 Hawaii 77 Haymarket Square bomb 72–3, 82–3 Hearst, Patty 176 hijacking 106–7, 127, 130, 131 Hindus 144 Hispanics 32–3, 51, 53, 55, 62, 67, 74, 88, 143, 144, 145, 146, 149, 150, 151, 153 Hitler 89, 113, 182n Hizballah 127 Homestead, Pennsylvania 68, 72 House of Representatives, Puerto Rican attack on 106 House Un-American Activities Committee 98 Idaho 64, 69, 119–20 ideology 2, 4, 5–6, 10, 52, 72, 73, 75, 78, 80, 81, 82, 90–1, 95, 101, 107–8, 113, 116, 117,

121, 124, 135, 139, 141–2, 144, 145, 146, 147, 152, 154 Illinois 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 53, 61, 73, 149 immigrants, opposition to 10, 27, 38, 40–2, 43–4, 50, 51, 52, 55, 66, 67, 71, 73, 74–5, 78, 82, 84–5, 86, 89, 91, 114, 121, 145, 151 impressment by Royal Navy, opposition to 17, 18 Indiana 85 Indian Removal Act 28, 30–1 Indians 2, 13–15, 16, 22, 27–32, 33, 50, 51, 53, 55–6, 77, 102, 144–5, 146, 149 and ethnic cleansing 28, 29, 31, 33, 52, 56, 144–5, 149 Indochina 95, 102 Indonesia 132 instrumental terrorism 5, 6, 10, 52, 122, 136, 139, 145–6 International Workers of the World (IWW) 78–9, 81, 82, 83, 87, 92, 150 internet 122–3, 128 Intolerable Acts 23 Iowa 35, 38 Iran 127 Iraq 112, 132, 134, 135–6 US invasion 112, 135–6 Ireland 70 Irish 34, 38, 39, 42, 43, 49–50, 52, 70–1, 74, 143, 150 Iron Guard 5 Islam 9, 127, 128, 134, 135 Islamic extremism 127, 128–30, 133, 134–5, 136–7, 141, 152 Israel 103–4, 105, 127–8, 141 isolationism 93 Italians 67, 73, 80, 82, 93, 143 Italy 5, 89, 103, 133 IWW—see International Workers of the World

Index Jackson, President Andrew 30, 31 Japanese 9, 66, 96, 145 Japanese-American relocation 96 Jersey City 50 Jewish Defense League (JDL) 105, 108, 111, 112, 136 Jews 67, 74, 75, 84, 85, 86, 91, 105, 108, 112–14, 116, 122, 144 Kahane, Rabbi Meir 105 Kansas 27, 46–8, 49, 50, 52, 53, 60, 140, 142, 148, 149–50, 153 Kenya 129 Khobar Towers 129 kidnapping 103, 126, 127 of General Dozier 103 of Patty Hearst 102 in Latin America 103 King Philip’s War 14 KKK—see Ku Klux Klan Know Nothings (American Party) 27, 40–3, 44, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 143, 149, 153 Korean War 96 Koresh, David 119–20 Ku Klux Klan (KKK) 1, 56–8, 75, 77, 86, 89, 91, 93, 99–100, 107, 108, 109, 110, 113, 136, 139, 140–1, 147, 153 after Civil War 55, 56–60, 75, 144, 148, 150 and Catholics 84, 85, 86, 91 and Jews 84, 85, 86, 91 in 1920s 84–7, 90, 143, 147, 148, 153 as target 87 and unions 84, 91 after World War II 95, 99–100, 107, 108 Ku Klux Klan Act (1871) 59–60 labor 34, 44, 46, 55, 56, 68–71, 72, 73–4, 75–6, 78, 79–80, 82,

209

83, 84, 87, 90–1, 95, 96, 97, 109, 146, 147, 148, 149 Latin America 5, 9, 103, 126, 141, 154 Lawrence, Kansas 47 leaderless resistance 3, 72, 118–19, 120, 121, 123, 124, 128, 137 Lebanon 127, 128, 184n left-wing groups 5, 10, 81, 91, 95, 97–8, 101, 102–4, 106, 107, 108, 109, 111, 112, 114, 124, 125, 126, 136, 137, 139, 141, 142, 148, 154 Liberia 44 London, transit system attack 132 Los Angeles 63, 73 Louisiana 58 Louisville 41–2, 43, 52, 53 Loyalists 19, 20–1, 23, 24, 149 loyalty oaths 97 Ludlow, Colorado 69 lynching 47, 49, 60–2, 67, 71, 75, 77, 87, 88, 91, 92, 96, 99, 121, 144 lynch law 20 McCarthy, Senator Joseph 97–8, 99, 107 McCarthyism 95, 97, 98–9, 107, 108, 109, 140, 142, 146, 149, 150, 153 McKinley, President William 72–3 McVeigh, Timothy 120 Macheteros 106 Madrid commuter train attack 132 Marshall, John 30 Maryland 19, 33, 43, 45 Massachusetts 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 149 Mathews, Robert 114, 118 Medellin Cartel 126 media 4, 8, 36, 47, 49, 104, 107, 158n Mexico 13, 32, 38, 52, 77

210

Index

Michigan 88, 89, 120 Michigan Militia 120 Middle East 111–12, 127, 128, 134, 137 militia movement 113, 116–17, 120, 121, 142 mining 29, 32–3, 50, 53, 64–6, 68–9, 70–1, 75, 148 Minnesota Patriots Council 117 Minutemen 100, 116, 142 Mississippi 31, 61 Missouri 34, 35, 36, 38, 46–7, 48, 53 modernization 8, 9, 93, 122, 125, 129, 134, 137 Molly Maguires 68, 70–1, 74, 139, 148, 150–1 Montana 115 Mormons 27, 34–8, 47, 48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 60, 143, 144, 146, 149, 150, 151 murders 32, 35, 37, 38, 47, 48, 53, 57, 58, 61–2, 64, 66, 67, 69, 70, 78, 86, 88, 90, 99, 100, 105, 122, 123, 127 Murrah Federal Office Building 1, 113, 120 Mussolini 89 Napoleonic Wars 9 nationalism 4, 7, 9, 78, 90, 105, 108, 144 National Civic Federation 81 National Guard 68, 69, 73, 147 National Security League 81 nativism 42, 50, 65, 71, 82, 84–6, 90, 91, 107, 139, 143, 149, 151, 153 Nazism 5, 89, 97, 113, 118 neo-Nazis 113–14, 116, 117 Netherlands 14–15, 22 Newark 50 New England 18, 39, 40 New Mexico 62, 67–8, 145 New Netherlands 14–15, 25

New Orleans 39, 41, 43, 52, 58 New York 19, 34, 39, 87, 133 New York City 33, 39, 40, 49–50, 51, 111, 114, 149, 162n Nicaragua 77, 126, 135, 142 Nichols, Terry 120 Nixon, President Richard 102 North Carolina 61 Ohio 34, 35, 36, 38, 53 Oklahoma 30, 32 Oklahoma City 1, 111, 113, 120–1, 132 Olympics 123 Omega 7 104 Order, The 114, 118 Oregon 28, 32, 64 Oslo Accords 127–8 pacifists 78 Pakistan 132, 184n Palestinians 103–4, 105, 107, 111, 127–8, 136, 141 Palestinian Liberation Front 127 Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) 103, 127–8 Palmer, Attorney General A. Mitchell 80–1, 82 Palmer raids 80 paramilitary groups 3, 6, 29, 31, 59, 69, 101, 119 Patriot Act 132 patriotism 77–8, 81, 82, 84, 85, 86, 91, 92, 96–7, 98, 116 Pelley, William Dudley 89 Pennsylvania 16–17, 19, 21–2, 24–5, 34, 45, 50, 68, 70–1, 72, 79–80, 150–1 Pentagon 1, 130, 134 Peru 13, 32 Philadelphia 16–17, 19, 24, 25, 34, 39–40, 44–5, 51, 82, 139, 143 Philippines 77, 130 Pierce, President Franklin 47 Pierce, William 118

Index Pinkerton Detective Agency 68 Pinochet, General 105 PLO—see Palestinian Liberation Organization Posse Comitas 115, 142 Pottwatomie Creek massacre 48 Prohibition 90 propaganda of the deed 72, 114, 118 propaganda of the word 72 Puerto Rican nationalists 96, 105–6, 107, 108, 109, 111, 112–13, 135, 136, 139, 144, 148 Puerto Rico 77, 96, 105, 106, 112 Quaker faction 16–17 race riots 33–4, 44, 49–50, 58, 61, 63, 74, 77, 87–9, 91–2, 95, 101, 144, 149 racial equality 46, 67, 86, 95, 99, 101, 112 racism 27, 32, 33, 34, 52, 55, 63, 64, 65, 66, 74, 85, 86, 91, 96, 100, 112, 113, 140, 143, 150 radicals 77, 79, 80, 81, 82–3, 84, 86, 91, 92, 93, 96, 97, 98, 150 railroads 62–3, 65, 70, 147 rebellions 2, 7, 15, 16, 21, 34, 58, 72 Reconstruction 56, 58, 60, 62, 74, 75, 84, 87 Red Army Faction (RAF) 103 Red Brigades 103 Red Scare 79–83, 84, 90, 91, 92, 95, 96, 97, 107, 140, 142, 146, 149, 150, 153 Reed, Richard 132 Reichstag fire 182n religion 4, 6, 8, 9–10, 13, 27, 34–8, 40, 52, 85, 89, 90, 99, 113, 116, 117, 118, 120, 121, 122, 133, 135–6, 139, 141, 142–4, 146, 147, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154

211

repression 2, 3, 7, 59, 72, 81, 97, 120, 148 Republicans 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 68, 89, 144, 150 Revolution of 1848 38, 42 Rhode Island 19, 33 ricin 117 right-wing groups 5, 10, 93, 99–100, 108–9, 111, 113–22, 124, 125, 134, 135, 136–7, 139, 141, 142, 143, 144, 148, 152, 153 riots 7, 21, 38–9, 40, 41, 44, 50, 51, 61, 74, 77, 87–9, 95, 101, 143, 149, 153 in colonial America 17, 18 in Baltimore 42 in Louisville 41–2 in New York City 49–50, 149 in Philadelphia 34, 38–9, 40, 44–5, 143 racially based 33–4, 44, 49–50, 58, 61, 63, 74, 77, 87–9, 91–2, 95, 101, 144, 149 in Washington DC 42 Rock Springs, Wyoming 64, 65–6, 74–5, 146, 147 Roosevelt, President Franklin 89 Roosevelt, President Theodore 72 Ruby Ridge, Idaho 119–20 Rudolph, Eric 123 Rumania 5 Samoa 77 San Francisco 41, 43, 52, 53, 63, 64, 74, 147, 149 Saudi Arabia 129 SDS—see Students for a Democratic Society Seattle 64, 65, 74, 79, 83, 125, 147 Second Amendment 115, 117, 119 secularism 8, 9, 10, 122, 128, 130, 134, 135 segregation 60, 100

212

Index

Seminoles 31, 53 September 11th, 2001 1, 4, 111, 112, 114, 123, 130–2, 134–5, 140, 151 Shay’s Rebellion 13, 21, 24, 25, 148 Shi’ite 127 Sikhs 104, 144 Silent Brotherhood 114 Silver Shirts 89 Simmons, William J. 84 Six Day War 103 skinheads 114–15, 117 skyjacking—see hijacking slavery 2, 27, 33–4, 44–9, 52, 140, 142, 150, 152–3 sleeper cells 133 Smith, Joseph 34–6, 37, 38 assassination of 36–37 socialists 78, 80, 81, 83, 91 Somalia 128–9 Sons of Liberty 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 140 South Africa 126 South Carolina 20, 58 South Dakota 102 Soviet Union 5, 95, 96, 97, 105, 112, 125, 128, 141 Spain 13–14, 38, 77, 82, 132, 133 Springfield, Illinois 61, 149 Stamp Act 17–19, 20, 22, 24 states in transition 8 status quo terrorism 3, 23, 51, 53, 62, 74, 76, 86, 87, 88, 91–2, 108, 136, 139–40, 146, 147, 148, 152, 153, 154 Stephenson, D. C. 85 structural violence 121 Students for a Democratic Society 102 Sudan 104 Supreme Court (United States) 30, 92, 99 suspect community 43, 73, 79, 92, 133–4, 151–2, 155, 184n

Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) 102 Tacoma 64, 65, 74 Taiwan 104 Tanzania 129 tarring and feathering 15, 16, 19, 20, 21, 34, 40, 47, 49, 78, 86, 96 tax protests 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21–2, 113, 115, 117, 121 Tennessee 31, 57 Texas 61, 67, 119–20 terrorism as technique 7, 14, 41, 57 government acceptance or support of 3, 5–6, 15, 22, 25, 29–30, 33, 36, 37, 38, 45, 51, 53, 60, 61, 64–5, 66, 70, 71, 73, 74, 75, 79, 82, 83, 86, 87, 88, 91, 92, 96, 97, 100, 108–9, 140, 143, 145, 146, 149 Toledo 50 totalitarian systems 7, 8, 97 Trail of Tears 31 train derailment 117 Truman, President Harry 106 Turner Diaries 118 Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) 126 United Flight 93 131 United Kingdom—see Great Britain United Nations 116 US interests abroad as targets 95, 96, 103–4, 112, 126–7, 128, 129, 132, 133, 134, 135, 141, 142, 152, 154 USS Cole 130 US support for terrorism abroad 105, 108, 109, 111, 126, 127, 135, 141, 142 Utah 38, 48, 53, 143

Index van Buren, President Martin 51 Vieques Island 112 Vietnam 5, 95, 102–3 vigilantes 3, 17, 20, 38, 43, 47, 51, 52, 61–2, 69, 71, 73, 79, 82–3, 91, 109, 134, 137, 140–1, 145, 147, 148, 149 in San Francisco 43, 52, 149 Virginia 20, 45 Waco, Texas 119–20 war protesters 5, 49, 50, 78–9, 95, 102, 103 Washington (state) 32, 64–5, 74, 79, 83, 114, 125, 147 Washington, DC 33, 41, 42–3, 52, 53, 80, 105, 111, 114, 125 Washington, President George 22 weak states 7–8, 10, 147, 150, 152–3 Weathermen 5, 102, 103, 107, 108 Weather Underground 102 Weaver, Randy 119 West Germany 178 Whigs 36, 37, 41, 42, 44

213

Whiskey Rebellion 1, 21–2, 24, 25, 27, 148–9 White Caps 43, 62 white supremacy 95, 99, 113, 121, 150 Wilmington, North Carolina 61 Wilson, President Woodrow 80 Wisconsin 97 World Bank 125 World Trade Center 1, 111, 129, 130, 131–2, 134–5, 184n World Trade Organization 125 World War I 78, 82, 83, 84, 87, 91, 93, 96, 149 World War II 5, 93, 96, 101, 113, 149 Wounded Knee 102 Wyoming 64, 65–6, 74–5, 146, 148 Yemen 128, 130, 132 Young, Brigham 38 Yousef, Ramzi 129, 130, 184n Zionist Occupation Government (ZOG) 113–14

Terrorism in America

Terrorism in America

Terrorism in America

Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism

Terrorism in Southeast Asia

Terrorism in asymmetrical conflict

Domestic Terrorism (Roots of Terrorism)

Terrorism in India, Volume 3

Lucent Terrorism Library - America Under Attack: Primary Sources (Lucent Terrorism Library)

What Is Terrorism? (The Roots of Terrorism)

Lucent Terrorism Library - The History of Terrorism

Terrorism (Disasters)

Inside Terrorism

Global Terrorism

Glorifying Terrorism

Discouraging Terrorism

Will Terrorism End? (Roots of Terrorism)

Middle Eastern Terrorism (Roots of Terrorism)

Global Terrorism

Financing terrorism

Terrorists in Our Midst: Combating Foreign-Affinity Terrorism in America (Praeger Security International)

Will Terrorism End? (Roots of Terrorism)

The Muslims of America (Religion in America)

The Muslims of America (Religion in America)

America America

America America

Annie Quinn in America

Catholic Faith in America

Misfit in Middle America

Misfit in Middle America

Sherlock Holmes in America

Terrorism in America