On Sunday night, Oct. 16, 1859, John Brown and a troop of 18 men entered the sleeping town of Harpers Ferry, Va., where they began an assault on slavery that would lead first to civil war and eventually to emancipation. They quickly took control of a federal arsenal, but shots were fired in the encounter, killing a black railroad worker and alerting the town that a raid was under way. By mid-morning the following day, Brown and his men were surrounded by local militia whose constant fire killed many of the raiders.

Late Monday, Oct. 17, a detachment of federal Marines arrived under the command of Robert E. Lee, and Brown’s fate was sealed. At dawn on Tuesday morning, only five of Brown’s men remained standing — several had fled and the others were dead or gravely wounded. When Brown refused a demand to surrender, a squadron of Lee’s troops stormed the armory. Brown was taken alive along with four other survivors.

Brown was turned over to the state of Virginia for prosecution. He was soon indicted on the capital counts of murder, inciting servile rebellion, and treason against the state of Virginia. Gov. Henry Wise had decided to use the prosecution as a means to assail the entire abolitionist movement, and the indictment therefore blamed the raid not only on Brown, but also on the “counsel of other evil and traitorous persons.” 

John Brown, too, understood the potential political impact of his trial. Refusing secret offers to organize his rescue, he explained that “I cannot now better serve the cause I love so much than to die for it; and in my death I may do more than in my life.” Then Brown set about orchestrating the events leading up to his own execution, using the courtroom as a platform from which he could explain and justify his war on slavery.

In the days immediately following the raid, Brown had been disowned by leaders of the abolitionist movement, nearly all of whom were fearful of being tarred by association. Republican newspapers referred to Brown as a “solitary madman,” and a “lawless brigand.” When he was finally given an opportunity to address the court, however, Brown’s deeply emotional speech succeeded in stirring northern consciences and, astonishingly, turning the reviled leader of a suicidal raid into an abolitionist hero.

The trial itself was held in nearby Charlestown, beginning on Oct. 26. The evidence against Brown was overwhelming, with numerous witnesses recounting the killings committed by his men. Following a day of procedural motions and four days of testimony, it took the jury only 45 minutes to return a verdict of guilty on Monday, Oct. 31. Sentencing was set for the following Wednesday morning.

The defendant appeared almost serene when court reconvened. The trial judge did not anticipate what was coming when Brown was asked whether he “had anything to say why sentence should not be pronounced upon him.”

Brown arose and delivered a ringing attack on slavery. “This Court,” he said, “acknowledges, too, as I suppose, the validity of God’s law,” which teaches us “to remember them that are in bonds.” In attempting to free slaves, he declared, “I did no wrong, but right. Now if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with … the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel and unjust enactments, I say, let it be done.”

Brown’s speech drew convulsive reactions on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. In the North, significant public opinion swung behind Brown, who was suddenly seen as a martyr to the slave power. Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Wendell Phillips all gave lectures lauding Brown. More than anything else, a phrase of Emerson’s captured and intensified reaction to Brown’s transformative speech, describing him as, a “new saint” who “will make the gallows glorious like the cross.”

Abolitionists in the North were energized, but Southerners were universally enraged, using the occasion to demonize not only Brown but also every political figure associated with the anti-slavery movement. Jefferson Davis, then a senator from Mississippi, called for New York Sen. William Seward (later Lincoln’s secretary of state) to be hanged for supposedly encouraging Brown’s raid.

After decades of mistrust and recrimination over the conflict between slavery and free labor, many in the North and South now found themselves even more fundamentally at odds. As Northerners increasingly hailed Brown as a hero, panicky Southerners execrated him as the devil himself. The tempest over John Brown appeared to shatter any hope of regional reconciliation. As one South Carolina editor put it, “The day of compromise is passed [and] there is no peace for the South in the Union.”

It would be too much to claim that John Brown’s raid made the Civil War inevitable. But it is fair to say that it helped to create an unbridgeable gap between the free states and the slave power that could only be, as Brown himself put it, “purged away with blood.” There are many lessons that can be drawn from John Brown’s raid, but the experience of the Civil War ought to stand as a permanent rebuke to the irresponsible incitement of contemporary political figures who trade so easily in rage and resentment. 

On Jan. 3, I published an article in Salon that identified a series of gaffes in the pilot naturalization exam that is now, in February, being administered in 10 cities around the country by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service. The new test is being taken by 6,000 volunteers in a trial run before it is rolled out nationwide in 2008.

Before I weighed in, the test had already drawn plenty of criticism from immigrants’ rights advocates, who called it unnecessarily difficult and pointlessly obscure. There are three questions about the Louisiana Purchase and another asks for the name of the president during World War I — good things to know, but hardly crucial for good citizenship. The degree of difficulty can be overcome by diligent study, but the test had a deeper defect. As I discovered when I reviewed the full examination, much of it was, well, wrong. Of the 144 pilot test questions, as then posted on the USCIS Web site, 19 were flawed. Some were either misleading or ambiguous, others accepted plainly wrong answers, and still others excluded clearly correct answers.

The article generated a fair number of letters to Salon, as well as some blog buzz, but there was no public response from USCIS and I assumed that was the end of it. Recently, however, I revisited the USCIS Web site, and I was surprised to see that several of the more flagrant errors had been quietly corrected. Unlike the original pilot test, the revised version now accurately states that a member of Congress represents “all people” in his or her district, and not only “citizens.” It no longer claims that the president must be born in the United States, or that public safety and education are exclusively the functions of state governments, or that elections in the United States are always held in November.

On the other hand, not every problem was remedied. For example, the test answers still inexplicably insist that only citizens may apply for federal jobs, even though — as I pointed out in January — that assertion is flatly contradicted on the U.S. Postal Service Web site, not to mention the fact that legal immigrants serve in the armed forces. There’s no telling how many qualified immigrants will be deterred from enlisting by that bit of misinformation, and there’s the rub. Aspiring citizens will inevitably use the pilot test as a study guide, carefully memorizing the approved answers without doubting their accuracy, questioning their relevance, or wondering about the ideological implications. Thus, they will be led to believe that “everyone living in the U.S. [has the] right to bear arms.” The key word here is “everyone” (a different question asks about citizens’ rights), which puts individual gun ownership on the same level as freedom of speech and religion. Such an expansive interpretation of the Second Amendment (apparently extending even to illegal aliens) would probably shock most members of the National Rifle Association, and it goes well beyond the consensus in the federal courts. What’s more, the list of everyone’s rights rather glaringly omits the rights to due process and equal protection under the law, as well as the right to counsel and to a speedy and public trial, the freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures, and the writ of habeas corpus.

The Second Amendment question suggested a slight conservative tilt to the test, and the newly posted version of the test actually pushes it a little further right. There are suddenly two new questions about the “The Federalist Papers.” Am I a conspiracy theorist if I suspect that to be the anonymous handiwork of some Federalist Society sympathizer? Who else but a member of that conservative organization would care if immigrants know that “Publius” was the pen name used by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay? Another new question asks, rather awkwardly, “What does it mean that the U.S. Constitution is a constitution of limited powers?” An approved answer is that “the states have all powers that the federal government does not.” That revelation might warm unreconstructed hearts in certain extreme states-rights circles, but it is manifestly untrue according to the Supreme Court’s long-standing interpretations of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The federal government does not have the power to establish a religion, for example, or to abridge freedom of the press, and neither do the states.

Still, the pilot naturalization exam is obviously a work-in-progress, so I suppose I should be happy that USCIS seems to have accepted at least a few of my corrections, or the corrections of someone very much like me. Of course, it would have been nice to see some acknowledgment of the recent changes. Perhaps the USCIS could publish a note on its Web site recognizing Salon’s influence or, better yet, attributing the improvements to me. Maybe if I changed my name to Publius…

The pilot test and the approved answers (as posted on the USCIS Web site) are riddled with misinformation, inaccuracies and outright errors. As many as 19 of the 144 questions are flawed. They either are woefully ambiguous, or accept simplistic answers that are factually wrong, or exclude answers that are clearly correct. While none of the individual mistakes is earthshaking, the wrong answers will mislead earnest citizenship applicants who use the pilot test as a study guide. It will distort the constitutional understanding of thousands of would-be Americans, and actually penalize those who are the most serious students of the Constitution.

Let’s start with the second question, which gets the whole test off on the wrong foot constitutionally. Pilot question No. 2 asks, “What is the supreme law of the land?” The sole allowable answer is “The Constitution.” That is only partially right, however, because it excludes at least two other correct answers. Anyone who has read Article VI would know that the supreme law of the land includes the “Constitution, and the laws of the United States … and all treaties made … under the authority of the United States.” True, the Constitution might be called the most supreme of the supreme, but it’s still only one-third of the triad. Someone might answer quite correctly with either of the other two answers and still be marked wrong. Or worse, someone might foolishly decide to take the “concept” concept to heart and provide a more conceptual answer — like, say, “The supreme law of the land is the law that judges in every state shall be bound by, even if the Constitution or laws of that state are to the contrary.” That moderately profound response would presumably be counted wrong, even though it is lifted from the language of Article VI itself.

Pilot question No. 11 introduces another important ideal, but provides another incorrect answer.

Question: What does freedom of religion mean?

Answer: You can practice any religion you want, or not practice at all.

Yeah, right. Just tell that to Muslim women who want to keep their faces veiled while passing through airport security, or rattlesnake-handling Pentecostals, or polygamists, or peyote eaters, or, well, you get the idea. Religious belief — Jefferson called it “freedom of conscience” — is protected by the First Amendment, but that has never been extended to cover any and all practices. Thus, according to the Supreme Court’s opinion in Human Resources Department of Oregon v. Smith, freedom of religion means that while you may believe anything you want, your religious practices are subject to limitation, or even criminalization, by a “neutral, generally applicable law.” But don’t write that on your citizenship test, or you might find yourself stateless.

So far, we have mentioned only approved answers that are incomplete or imprecise, but pilot question No. 33 takes the inaccuracies to another level. Its only allowable answer is just plain wrong, and anyone who gave the right answer would no doubt have it marked incorrect.

Question: The president must be born in what country?

Answer: The United States (or, alternatively, America).

The correct answer, however, is that the president may be born in any country whatsoever, or no country at all (at sea or in a plane). The Constitution requires only that the president be a “natural born citizen,” and that status is achieved either by birth in the United States or by birth to parents who are both U.S. citizens, the latter potentially living and reproducing absolutely anywhere in the world.

That fah-lunking noise you hear is the sound of the citizenship door slamming shut in the face of the best-informed test takers.

The dumbed-down answers to the pilot questions end up penalizing applicants who actually understand the Constitution. Thus, anyone who wants to guarantee a passing score should probably memorize the many misconceptions found in the USCIS pilot answers, such as the following:

A member of Congress represents all citizens in that representative’s district (wrong; he or she represents all people in the district, including noncitizens).

Only state governments can provide police protection and fire departments, issue drivers’ licenses, and provide education (wrong; the federal government can, and does, provide those services on military bases and in the District of Columbia).

Elections in the United States are always held in November (wrong; federal elections are in November, but state and local elections — and federal primaries — are held in many other months).

It is the responsibility of U.S. citizens, and only citizens, to vote and serve on juries (idealistic, but still wrong; jury service can be legally required, but voting is strictly optional — and in any event, noncitizens may be allowed to vote in certain state and local elections).

Only U.S. citizens may apply for federal jobs (seriously wrong, especially given the context; permanent resident aliens — meaning pretty much everybody who takes the citizenship test — are eligible for employment by many agencies of the federal government, including the U.S. Postal Service).

“Inalienable rights” are “individual rights that people are born with” (wrong; inalienable rights are those that cannot be denied by government; they may or may not arise at birth; and some rights at birth are, in fact, alienable).

Everyone has the right to bear arms. (This is basically wrong, and probably ideologically motivated; the Second Amendment makes it clear that the right to bear arms is connected to a “well regulated militia,” and the Supreme Court has held that this right does not belong to individuals — and in any event, it is an “alienable” right, as in the case of convicted felons.)

And so on. There are half a dozen more like these, ranging from the subtly misleading to cringe-worthy. Although only one-eighth of the 144 pilot questions have imprecise or erroneous answers, the threat to hard-studying immigrants is palpable. The actual test for any applicant includes only 10 questions, selected at random, of which six have to be answered correctly. Simply by luck of the draw, a hapless aspiring citizen might end up facing five or more questions for which the most accurate answers would be disallowed, making a passing grade impossible for the best students and the most critical thinkers.

Fortunately, this is only a pilot test. During a trial period early this year, it will be given in just 10 cities, and anyone who misses a question will be immediately permitted to take the regular exam. That will allow USCIS “to work out any problems and refine the exam before it is fully implemented nationwide.” Refining the exam will presumably involve double-checking the answers and reading the text of the Constitution, but we still have to wonder why no one appears to have done that before issuing the test in the first place.

Then again, this is the Bush administration we’re talking about, and it hasn’t exactly demonstrated scrupulous respect for the Constitution in other settings. Come to think of it, President Bush (not to mention Vice President Dick Cheney and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales) would probably have a fair bit of trouble with some of the pilot questions, given their, shall we say, uniquely aggressive view of executive authority:

Pilot question: Why do we have three branches of government?

Pilot answer: So no branch is too powerful.

Bush answer: So the president can ignore the other two if he decides to wiretap American citizens or declare someone an unlawful combatant.

Pilot question: Who makes federal laws?

Pilot answer: Congress.

Bush answer: The president, pursuant to his inherent, unenumerated and unchallengeable powers as commander in chief.

Given the foul-ups, it’s hardly surprising that USCIS is a division of the Department of Homeland Security (which also runs FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Administration). USCIS, you’re doing a heckuva job!