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John the Painter: Terrorist of the American Revolution

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Any Americans who pay attention to history take pride in the Revolution that brought the nation its freedom, and all Americans have been shocked by recent attacks by terrorists. What if during the Revolution, there had been a terrorist operating in England on behalf of American freedom? It seems an impossible anachronism, but the strange truth is that there was such a man. He is a historical footnote now, but at the end of his brief life he was one of the most notorious men in England because of his crimes of arson performed against naval targets in furtherance of the American cause against England. This bizarre story is told in _John the Painter: Terrorist of the American Revolution_ (Thunder's Mouth Press) by Jessica Warner, which fetches its subject back from obscurity. The saying "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" does not really apply to John the Painter, whose real name was James Aitken. Shifting through the often obscure vestiges of fact, Warner is not able to document that Aitken was inspired by any patriotic fervor or love of liberty. His motivations remain mysterious, and his crimes ineffectual, at least as far as affecting the American Revolution, so his obscurity is deserved; but this is a lively and welcome examination of a tiny and surprising patch of history.

Aitken was born in 1752, in an impoverished section of Edinburgh. He became a painter, and got an introduction into some basic chemistry and had easy access to flammables, but had small success in his trade. He opted to try his luck in the New World. He arrived in Jamestown in 1773 as an indentured servant. He ran away from his master, and was in different areas of the eastern seaboard for two years. He did not get imbued with the love of liberty while he was there; in fact, he was part of an exodus of Scots back to England in 1775. He heard a conversation in a pub in Oxford to the effect that if the naval dockyards were lost, the navy would be lost, and thus the war would be lost. He then formed the plan of torching Britain's docks. He may have thought that in doing so he could have returned to America as a hero, and become (his great goal) a military officer, but any clear explanation of what he was thinking is impossible. He met with the American representative in Paris, got a small amount of money, and thought he was doing American duty as he torched a few warehouses and docks, with the aim of crippling Britain's navy. He had houses as well as naval buildings as targets, and although no one died, he did (as terrorists do) inflict psychological damage. He was not particularly careful about his work and keeping from suspicion, but policing at the time was primitive. Eventually, someone recognized him, others realized that a housepainter always seemed to be around town before a blaze, and a hunt was begun. It quickly succeeded when a large reward was offered for his capture.

Aitken's efforts terrified Britons, but had none of the effects he had planned. Americans had been suspected of setting the fires (Aitken's incendiary devices had convinced authorities that there was more than one arsonist about) and those who had sympathy for the American cause had reason to be less enthusiastic. He was put on trial for the offence of arson in a naval dockyard, one of the many crimes punishable by death. Warner explains how limited justice was for those accused at the time, and how an informer was hired to befriend the unsuspecting Aitken in jail, in order to get details of his activities. He was found guilty, and sentenced to be hung. There was a customary, but unseemly, race to get his life into print, with different authors vying to be the one responsible for his true final confession. None of them turned out to be very reliable. The prison chaplain refused to give Aitken final communion until he gave a final confession that might be published on its own (with profits to the chaplain). Aitken was hung on high, specifically from a ship's 60-foot mast especially erected in Portsmouth for the occasion. His body was tarred and gibbeted, hanging for years in an iron cage to serve as a warning to others, and pieces of him were taken away for souvenirs. A finger was turned into a tobacco stopper, and was destroyed, as luck would have it, in an incendiary raid on Portsmouth by the Germans in World War II. John the Painter's life was not useful to the Americans, who forgot him entirely, and serves only as a historical anomaly. Warner's telling of a sad tale, however, is full of sympathy for a flawed protagonist and good humor for his peculiar style of making himself famous. He was a failure; his biography is a vigorous, ironic success.

I picked this book up because I am very interested in revolutionary America. I found the subject to be interesting, as I had never heard of John the Painter.

This book is written as history books should be written: Like it involves people and not dates. I was given a great sense of how John the Painter's life must have been and what his motivations were.

I also enjoyed the parallels of John Aitken's life with that of many modern day terrorists. The author does not throw these parallels in your face, instead she lays the facts out and you must draw your own conclusions.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in history or current politics.

This is an excellent, captivating, and well written book. I picked it up the other day on sale and read it in under a day. Warner gives a well documented and investigated account of John the Painter's life and deeds. I read it directly after reading Dan Berg's book on the Weather Underground, and one could, if creative enough, perhaps see some connection between their sabotage oriented propaganda and a sort of lineage coming from John the Painter. Also quite nice about the book is the way that Warner draws out some interesting comparisons between then and now, particularly the way that the Portsmouth and Bristol fires were used to justify the suspension and habeas corpus and other legal rights (in other words, it's not the US who has the first to suspend such in times of danger, real or imagined, and the UK did so before, even if it prides itself on not doing so today, or at least not to the same degree as the US). It is also nice to see someone doing social history / history from below who is interested in their subject, but not totally taken in by it, keeping somewhat of a distance from it at points (which one would one to do with at least certain aspects of John the Painters life even if not others).

This book delivers. It is not an exhaustive treatise on the nature of terrorism (which it could have been had the author bowed to the whims of our modern backdrop) but rather a very real and lifelike account of the brief step into the limelight that characterized the life of James Aitken.

The reader truly sees the era through the eyes of not only Aitken, but of the lawmen who chase him and the harried/bumbling port authority that lamented not acting swifter in his pursuit. We feel inside the story, both saddened at a life led astray as well as excited at the narrow escapes and missed opportunities.

John the Painter is a great story that is told with panache and style.

I saw this book in my local library a few years ago and made a mental note to read it someday....because really, who ever heard of an American terrorist during the Revolution? I certainly hadn't.

Jessica Warner introduces the reader to this interesting story of a misguided soul who, it seems, must have believed he would win fame and fortune with acts of sabotage against the Royal Navy during the American Revolution. I write "seems" because John the Painter doesn't leave much of a "paper trail" behind, forcing Warner to try and piece together his movements and motivations from various random sources. And Warner does a great job of it, weaving a quick-moving story of terrorism and intrigue, a story that involves a somewhat ambitious arson plot, an American ambassador and even a British double-agent!

As most people have never heard of "John the Painter," it's probably not too difficult to conclude that he wasn't very successful in his endeavors. Even so, his story makes a fascinating read for someone interested in this period of history, and I highly recommend it!

Five stars. Jessica Warner has done a lot with relatively little source material. Worth your time!