John Brown was the First “Domestic Terrorist”

John Brown, the famously violent abolitionist, attacked a federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia in 1859. He took possession of its armory, and fully intended to use the weapons from the armory to arm slaves for a revolt. He was stopped by the U.S. Army (led by then Colonel Robert E. Lee), tried in a local civil court, found guilty, and hanged.

As much as people like Ralph Waldo Emerson,¹ Victor Hugo,² and the writer of “John Brown’s Body”³ tried to immortalize him after his death, he died like any common criminal.

Fast forward to now. If John Brown did now what he had done then, what would we call him? A domestic terrorist. And under the Patriot Act, he could be tried in a military court as an enemy combatant. Forget that. They might just drone strike him down. His body wouldn’t be “mouldering in the grave.” It would be smoldering in a crater.

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