History of Terrorism in America

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Webster's dictionary defines terrorism as "the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes." Terrorism has been used for centuries in attempts to sway public opinion or governmental action one way or another. Terrorism has no political boundaries, emanating from both the liberal and conservative ends of the political spectrum. Most importantly, terrorism is indiscriminate, and causes harm to anyone unlucky enough to be caught in its path.

The term terrorism was first used to describe the actions of the Committee of Public Safety, headed by Maximillien Robespierre, during the French Revolution. The Committee was the de facto government during the period of the revolution known as the "Reign of Terror" in which the committee used the fear of execution to limit actions of counter-revolutionaries. Since then the term terrorism has been applied to thousands of acts of violence against established governments and societies.

The history of terrorism in America begins with an event know as the Haymarket Affair in 1886. On May 4, during a rally of anarchist and socialist laborers near Haymarket Street in Chicago erupted into violence after a bomb was thrown into a crowd of policeman who had been sent to break up the gathering. The bomb resulted in the deaths of seven police officers and an unknown number of injured laborers. The bombing led to the arrest and conviction of eight prominent anarchist leaders, who may or may not have been directly related to the situation, four of whom were executed. The conviction and execution of these men is often considered to be one of the gravest miscarriages of justice in American history. Many cities honor the affair with parades every year on May Day.

The Haymarket Affair was followed in 1920 by a bombing on Wall Street perpetrated by Mario Buda. The bombing occurred just months after the trail and conviction of Sacco & Vanzetti, two of Buda's friends and fellow anarchists. On the morning of September 15, Buda parked a horse-drawn carriage packed with dynamite and iron shrapnel across the street from J.P. Morgan's headquarters on Wall Street. He left the carriage and disappeared into the lunch time crowd. Shortly after noon, the bomb exploded, sending shrapnel into the surrounding buildings and crowd and killing 40 people in the process. Buda's wagon was, in effect, the prototype for the modern car bomb, although the idea had been used by right-wing French enemies of Napoleon in an assassination attempt 120 years earlier.

The first plane hi-jacking occurred in 1961, when a Puerto Rican calling himself "El Pirata Cofresi" commandeered a National Airlines flight and forced the pilot to fly the plane to Havana, Cuba. The man claimed to have been hired to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro, although he told the pilot of the plane that he intended to inform on the man who hired him and seek political asylum in Cuba. No one on the small plane, which was carrying seven passengers, two pilots and one attendant, was injured and the plane returned to Miami unharmed after unloading the hi-jacker in Havana.

The number of terrorist attacks on Americans increased dramatically through the latter half of the century, although there were only a relative few attacks that occurred within the United States. However, many Americans were kidnapped, assassinated or held hostage in the Middle East, Central America and other parts of the world. Unfortunately, the terrorist attacks would only grow in scope, leading to the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy and a Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, the bombing of Pan-Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in 1995 and the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Terrorism has seen dramatic growth over the last century, and has changed the way that American society functions. With the declaration of the "War on Terror" after the events of September 11, 2001, the United States and its allies have made a concerted effort to deter terrorism on a global scale. Terrorism, unlike nearly any other political issue, is a topic that has finally reached the point of condemnation from nearly every government and society the world over.