For the past few years, I’ve watched the first episode of the HBO miniseries “John Adams” with my ninth grade U.S. History classes, as part of our unit on the American Revolution. The students enjoy it, but there’s one scene that always stands out and sparks discussion regarding U.S. political violence.

In it, a tax collector in Boston Harbor is stripped, tarred, feathered, and paraded around by the Sons of Liberty, a paramilitary group. In the foreground, a gleeful mob cheers; in the background, a group of captive Africans stands by, in chains.

Watching on, a shocked John Adams demands answers from his more radical cousin Samuel Adams: “Do you approve of brutal and illegal acts to enforce a political principle, Sam?”

My students react viscerally to the scene, finding it sadistic and cruel. They also point out the irony: brutal acts being committed both in the name of liberty and in pursuit of slavery. This invariably leads to a rich discussion about political violence. Was the violence of the American Revolution justified by the ultimate result? Students tend to be split on this question.

So how do we answer John Adams’ question? How might it apply to other periods in American history, including our own?

Discussing U.S. Political Violence in Its Historical Context

In his Oval Office speech last week, President Joe Biden declared that “there is no place, no place in America for political violence or any violence ever, period.”

Those noble sentiments, which echoed comments he’d made following the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, are ahistorical. Just about any high school student could tell you that.

Violence, especially state-sanctioned violence, has driven much of the nation’s development, from the slave trade to Westward expansion to the 20th-century wars that made the U.S. a superpower. The presidents widely viewed as America’s greatest — Washington, Lincoln, FDR — are heralded for successfully wielding violence during the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War II, respectively.

In my classes, I encourage students to grapple with this legacy while critically assessing the uses of political violence in the American past. In my ninth grade classes, we follow up on our discussion of “John Adams” by reading the Declaration of Independence, which John Adams helped Thomas Jefferson draft. When the rights of the people are being systematically violated, Jefferson tells us, it is the right of the people to “abolish” or “throw off such Government.”

Read the full article about discussing political violence by Michael Woodsworth at Chalkbeat.