On October 16, 1859, John Brown led a heavily armed attack against the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, West Virginia. Brown hoped that his attack would be the catalyst needed to cause slave revolt in the south, hastening the end of an abominable practice. Instead, his attack failed, and he was wounded and captured two days later. Brown was tired of waiting for something to be done about slavery, and decided to take matters into his own hands. On April 16, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote a letter from the Birmingham jail. King had been arrested while protesting for equal civil rights. He too was tired of waiting for the government to grant black citizens equal footing in America, and decided he was the one to take action. Though Brown and King fought for similar goals, their methods were very different. King engaged in non-violent civil disobedience, holding sit-ins and marches. Brown took armed men and attacked a federal arsenal, risking the lives of not only the men who supported him, but also the lives of the men whom he attacked. Both of these tactics are often lumped together under the umbrella of civil disobedience, but really the two are not at all the same. Violence as a form of civil disobedience, though possibly effective in its outcomes, is not supportable on moral grounds. Through taking the rights of others, violent activities cross a line from civil disobedience to moral disobedience.
Civil disobedience, or intentional public disobedience, has a long history in the annals of American politics. Most famous are the tactics employed and promoted by Martin Luther King, Jr. in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. King believed that individuals have a moral obligation to be just, and therefore this duty must trump the bindings of law when the two collide. In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, King succinctly summarizes his views on law.
``There are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that 'an unjust law is no law indeed''' (4).In the letter, King points out several historical cases where action was taken that was illegal, but morally just and even morally required. Likewise, Henry David Thoreau's 1849 essay Civil Disobedience stresses the necessity of putting moral obligation ahead of law. ``A government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it ... Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward'' (2). Both King and Thoreau subscribed to the philosophy that one cannot justly obey an unjust order, and that moral doctrines must override any man-made law that would try to contradict them. Where King and Thoreau differed, however, is in how this just disobedience ought to be carried out.
The civil disobedience of Martin Luther King, Jr. was characterized by the belief that a conscientious lawbreaker must do his deeds publicly, be prepared to accept the consequences of his actions, and above all be nonviolent. In the eyes of King, it was in no way immoral to disobey an unjust law provided you did so with a willingness to also endure the punishment specified for such an act. ``In no way do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist.'' King says, ``That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks a law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty'' (5). Civil disobedience for King was characterized not by lawlessness, but an acute awareness of the law and a methodical protest of it. In fact, King posits that this kind of conscientious objection ``is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law'' (5).
There are some who would decry even this form of civil disobedience as a wrong. Lewis H. Van Dusen, Jr., in his essay titled Civil Disobedience: Destroyer of Democracy, says that ``law violations, even for ends recognized as laudable, are not only assaults on the rule of law, but subversions of the democratic process'' (572). He argues that civil disobedience for causes commonly accepted as just creates a slippery slope, where soon those with other beliefs farther from the norm are disobeying laws they believe to be unjust. Thus ``when the civil disobedient disobeys one law, he invariably subverts all law'' (573). On the surface these arguments seem hard to refute, but they are flawed in that they fail to acknowledge the prioritization of morality and government. For Thoreau and King, the requirements of morality must supersede the man-made obligations of government and law whenever the two come into conflict.
Thoreau again came to the aid of disobedience in his 1859 address titled A Plea for Captain John Brown. This time, however, the offense supported was not a mere refusal to pay a poll tax. John Brown was arrested after attacking the Harper's Ferry federal arsenal with twenty-two heavily armed men. Brown and his men took and held dozens of hostages, mostly prominent citizens from the area. Though his intention was to incite slaves to revolt, none joined Brown's cause. He and his men were quickly outnumbered by military, and their quest ended in defeat. Brown himself was wounded and captured. It was at this point that Thoreau stepped in to advocate for Brown and his actions. In his address Thoreau paints a picture of Brown as a stark patriot, old-fashioned and hard-working. He praises Brown's efforts, and demonizes the government that ``reveals itself a merely brute force'' (13). Thoreau calls Brown a ``heroic liberator'' and the government ``hypocritical and diabolical'' (13). To Thoreau, Brown had committed no crime, and was in no way worthy of the sentence given him.
This sentimental look at Brown ignores the problems that lie at the base of his crime. Brown did not simply risk his own life in his attack, he also put at risk the lives of those guarding the arsenal, the lives of all those he took hostage, and the lives of the troops sent to squelch his uprising and apprehend him. In this lies the crux of the argument against violent disobedience. It is unjust for a man to infringe upon the rights of others in order to promote his own interests. All men have a right to life, and no man has a right to take that right from another. When John Brown took hostages, he put in jeopardy each of their rights to life. While this may have been the most expedient means to the end Brown desired, that in no way made it morally permissible. The fact that Brown's cause, ending slavery, was just in no way made it morally acceptable for him to take hostages. Brown's justification does not serve to set apart his act from others of its type. ``Society must censure those demonstrators who would trespass on the public peace, as it must condemn those rioters whose pillage would destroy the public peace'' (Van Dusen 572). Thoreau's appeals to Brown's character and purity of intent serve merely to divert attention away from the real problems with Brown's attack.
Boiled down, the attitudes of civil disobedience as practiced by King and those of violent disobedience as practiced by Brown are fundamentally different. The civil disobedience practiced by King, though consisting of illegal acts, makes no attempt to usurp the power of government. King's tactics rely on public awareness and the theory that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. As Thoreau said in Civil Disobedience, ``If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose'' (7). King and Thoreau both felt that given enough of a reminder of injustice, government would be forced to reform. Brown's violence, however, attempts to take justice into its own hands. Violent action, even when in support of a worthy cause, can not be justly taken. The very nature of a violent act is that it bypasses the legal system and attempts to directly effect social change. The old saying that ``two wrongs don't make a right'' is very applicable in this situation. Though society may indeed be plagued with a grave injustice, that does not make it permissible for another injustice to be committed in the form of a violent act, even if it would serve to ease the injustice. If Brown's attack had been successful, and he had been able to make slaves revolt, it would have had no effect on the moral permissibility of his action. Taking hostages and infringing upon others right to life to reach a political end is never permissible, regardless of the outcome desired.
Healthy society requires that all citizens have a means to voice their complaints. The ability to exact change in government is fundamental to the democratic ideal. If a government enacts unjust laws, citizens are morally justified in engaging civil disobedience. However, violent disobedience crosses the line of acceptability by placing at risk the lives of others who have subscribed to no such cause.