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

Abstract

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.