zennistrad:

I wonder how many of the people who say “political violence is never acceptable” remember when they’re speaking that the United States was literally only made possible by a revolution.

And revolutionary violence wasn’t limited to Minutemen and redcoats, either. An important part of colonists coming together to resist the crown was the purging of Loyalists and dissenters.

Patriots abused people, beat them, mocked them, pelted them with rocks, coated their bare skin with hot tar and feathers and ran them out of town on a rail, formed into mobs and laid siege to their houses, drove them from their jobs, homes, cities on threat of death.

America was made possible by a campaign of violent mob harassment.