The phenomenon of terror and resistance As noted by Linebaugh and Rediker (50), the system of terror from the colonial period through the civil war was methodically structured and entailed acts such as criminal sanctions, community searches, imprisonment, enforcement of military laws, child stealing, burning of women, and assault on paganism, capital sentence, forced manual labor, and colonization. The judicial system used brutal legislation to beat, hang, and burn hundreds of men and women while the court system denied common rights to villagers and propertyless commoners. n England, the prison was the institution in which most activities of terror took place. Prisons were characterized by acts such as the locking poor and starving men as a way of inflicting pain and intimidation, while the women, as explained by Linebaugh and Rediker (45), seemed like the main targets of acts of horror such as hanging whenever they were suspected of practicing witchcraft, an act viewed by the Christian society as being evil and against Biblical teachings. The other type of terror experienced during that period took the shape of forced labor, which also went by the name of the slave trade. This entailed prisoners being selected from prisons and shipped to America to serve as laborers in the vast American plantations. The issue of commoners disposing of their land meant the adoption of enclosure land systems instead of communal land systems, which in turn resulted in many slaves being made available for shipment. However, the terror caused by the slave trade did not go unchallenged and experienced forms of resistance throughout the country staged by different groups of people, including some who openly opposed the dispossession of their land. An example of this resistance took place in 1919 when children destined to be shipped to Virginia organized a revolt that attracted the world’s attention towards the evil of the slave trade. There were also other groups that resisted the white masters, including the Native Americans, who fought the ‘holy war’ to guard their land against being forcefully taken away from them. The other group of individuals is the Canaanites, who were made up of Africans, Europeans who lost their land to the Israelites. They comprised the Europeans, Africans, and Americans. Additionally, there was a group of assassins who targeted King Hercules and other leaders and were also known to execute their victims secretly (Linebaugh and Rediker 63). Women’s role in popular politics In 1649, King James of England issued a decree targeted at getting rid of all those perceived as wrongdoers in the community. In this decree, women were ranked sixth in the list of enemies of Hercules. In those days, women carrying weapons were said to be the ones behind aggressive acts, and there was even a claim of the private army being under the leadership and influence of women. The unfair treatment of women continued into the colonial Virginia, where most women were reduced to slaves to work in the plantation together with other slaves from Africa and Europe, particularly during the trans-Atlantic slave trade period. Women, in particular, were poorly treated compared to their male counterparts and were always hurt by their ma