John Walters

This is a very emotional book. As the author explains resistance movements and principles from early American history, he does not claim impartiality. It is clear that he is all for resistance against unjust governmental policy. In fact, at the end of the book he offers “A Resistance History Toolkit,” which is a step-by-step guide to applying the tactics described in the book’s main section to the injustices of our modern era.

Each of the nine chapters deals with various struggles of oppressed peoples against domineering powers. The first, for instance, concerns Native Americans in New England and their helpless battles to retain their homelands when confronted with overwhelming hordes of settlers. This is followed by an account of the Salem witch trials, in which Stoermer clarifies that convictions and subsequent executions had nothing to do with evidence but rather with a dominant hierarchy of white males who wanted to preserve their oppressive system at all costs. There is a chapter on the Boston Tea Party, which was a reaction to the British authorities attempting to mitigate the losses of the British East India Company by taxing colonists. Another chapter concerns the difficulties in getting the Bill of Rights amendments affixed to the Constitution.

Subsequent chapters focus on various resistance movements against Black slavery, the legality of which was a founding principle that the new American government sought to preserve at any cost. That’s why during the revolution Black slaves fled to British lines, and many of them managed to escape to live lives of freedom in England or its worldwide colonies. Stoermer says: “This was a mass movement, a resistance facilitated by the British that freed tens of thousands in the greatest act of abolition in America before the Civil War.” The British passed a law forbidding slavery throughout its empire. In contrast, George Washington, the first U.S. president, was a slave owner and, using the notorious Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, relentlessly pursued slaves that escaped from his estate; he was steadfast in regarding slaves, his and others, as property rather than people. The author describes Henry David Thoreau’s refusal to support slavery by paying taxes and his subsequent jail time as an inspiration for his essay “Civil Disobedience,” one of the most important resistance documents of all time, which influenced such luminaries as Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. And there is a fascinating look at the Underground Railroad, an elaborate network set up by abolitionists to assist runaway slaves in fleeing to Canada.

In all of these examples, as I mentioned above, Stoermer does not attempt to be impartial. Instead, he takes the resistance standpoint that unjust authority must be opposed, nonviolently if possible but violently if not. And indeed, the nefarious deeds that he depicts as worthy of fervent resistance are truly evil: genocide of Native Americans, execution of freethinking colonists by accusing them of witchcraft, and, of course, the capture and buying and selling of human beings as if they were commodities. Several of the stories in this books were eye-openers for me. I had heard most of them before, but the way they are presented here, with the authoritarian justifications expunged, makes them more powerful and pressing. It is impossible to read this without considering its lessons in terms of our modern era, as the author obviously intends.

One caveat I have about this book is that there is no citation of sources, which is unusual in what appears to be a well-researched historical work. There are no notes; there is no bibliography; there are no listings at all of where the author obtained the information he is imparting in his text. There is also no index. It all rings true; it all has verisimilitude, but a listing of sources allows scholars to easily find further information that piques their interest. Also, the author tends to get a bit repetitious and longwinded in parts where he is trying to press points. These slow bits don’t last long, and ultimately they are minor reading impediments. And this book is a valuable tool for uncovering some of the uncomfortable truths of American history and for putting our modern struggles against injustice in historical perspective.

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In all honesty, when I wrote the above I had not quite finished reading the book, so I would like to now add some final thoughts. The last two chapters are about John Brown’s raid of the armory at Harper’s Ferry in 1859 and the passage of the 13th and 14th amendments to the Constitution at the conclusion of the Civil War. In these chapters Stoermer clarifies his stance that violence is often a necessary part of civil resistance. Up to this point I was fervent in my support of most of what he had been expounding, but when he began to discuss violence as an essential element in a resistance movement, I backed away. I took particular objection to the way he used Thoreau’s admiration of John Brown as a tacit assumption that Thoreau advocated violent rebellion. In singling out this one example of Thoreau’s rhetoric, I think he makes an unfounded presumption without considering the greater body of Thoreau’s works, which are much deeper and more nuanced. Walden, “Life Without Principle,” and yes, “Civil Disobedience” were essential texts for me in my early years, when I was formulating my own philosophy of life. And though Thoreau fervently believed in the duty of disobedience to an unjust government, in none of his writings does he advocate taking up arms against it. In fact, Thoreau’s writings, particularly “Civil Disobedience,” were instrumental in the adoption of nonviolent tactics by Gandhi and King. It reminds me of a quote from the film Gandhi, which may be a paraphrase of what he actually said but which effectively sums up what he and King and other nonviolent leaders advocated: “For this cause I too am willing to die, but there is no cause for which I am willing to kill.”

In the conclusion, “The American Way of Resistance,” in the epilogue, “The Return of the First Republic,” and in “A Resistance History Toolkit” the author veers from the retelling of American history into historical interpretation and his own personal opinion. He becomes quite judgmental and dogmatic, presenting his perspective as if it is the only one possible. I have to admit that my eyes tended to glaze over a bit as I read these sections. I understand that he is using analogies to the past to provide guidelines for the present, but I feel that he sets his parameters in too rigid a framework, as if his conclusions and no others must be adhered to, as if ongoing history has no choice but to follow the patterns he delineates and those attempting to resist evil must conform to his expostulated axioms. The word nuance comes back to me again. Stoermer makes it clear that to him, a resister that does not precisely follow his outline is a failure. However, as individual human people we are all different. We each have our own separate backgrounds, skills, and strengths, and we each must follow our consciences the best we can.

In closing, I would recommend the nine chapters in the main body of this book as powerful reminders of courageous people who resisted evil authority in the past. (Although I reiterate that I sorely miss a list of sources to back up the stories.) As for the end matter, it is fervent, powerful, opinionated rhetoric that you should balance against your own conscience and beliefs.