![]() The day before, Wilson had delivered a warning in his Flag Day address: “Woe be to the man or group of men who seeks to stand in our way in this day of high resolution when every principle we hold dearest is to be vindicated and made secure for the salvation of the nation.” The president issued a secret executive order authorizing the firing of federal employees seen as disloyal. ![]() The federal government used this authority to convict 1,000 Socialists, anarchists, and pacifists who opposed the war under the 1918 amendments to the act, commonly called the Sedition Act. The Committee on Public Information managed propaganda, the Eighteenth Amendment prohibited alcohol, Congress passed immigration restrictions based on literacy tests, and a wave of repressive legislation limited free speech and other civil liberties.Įncouraged by Wilson, Congress had quickly passed the Espionage Act (in June 1917), which expanded the government’s power to control suspected espionage and sabotage. Federal executive agencies curbed and controlled individuals’ rights in the public interest. During the war, Wilson stated he would not tolerate anyone who would “inject the poison of disloyalty into our most critical affairs.” The administration saw the war as a progressive crusade to “make the world safe for democracy” and to promote a rational social order, harmony, patriotism, and Americanization at home. The postwar fears of subversion and radicalism were rooted in part in wartime demands for loyalty and national unity by the administration of President Woodrow Wilson. But the war had raised the question of the scope of the federal government and Justice Department’s legitimate powers and necessary responsibilities to protect both national security and the rights of individuals.Ī photograph of Attorney General Palmer taken in 1919. ![]() The individual rights of citizens and non-citizens to discuss, hold, and express unpopular beliefs under the First Amendment was a cornerstone of American constitutionalism. Antiradicalism hardly disappeared, but the panicked fears that the nation was in peril subsided. Mitchell Palmer, initially were praised as necessary acts, but they also incited a counterreaction that was one reason for the Red Scare’s demise by mid-1920. The Justice Department raids, which were known as the “Palmer Raids” because they had been ordered by Attorney General A. The state of New York went further still when, in 1920, its legislature refused to seat five Socialist members on the grounds that they had been “elected on a platform that is absolutely inimical to the best interests of the State of New York and of the United States.” By far the most extreme measures were the massive dragnet campaigns of the Wilson administration’s Justice and Labor Departments, aimed at locating and then deporting anarchists and communists who were not citizens and who made up perhaps 90 percent of the war era’s radical parties and organizations. Another war, the internal battle against revolutionaries and radicalism, soon intensified into a national fury that became the twentieth century’s first “Red Scare.” In the name of protecting the nation from revolution, vigilante mobs fought deadly battles with labor radicals, and state legislatures passed laws criminalizing radical beliefs and actions, banning the display of red communist flags and banners, and demanding that teachers sign loyalty oaths declaring they would not teach un-American doctrines. The fighting in World War I ended on November 11, 1918, but the ceasefire halted only one of wars America was engaged in during the years 1917-1920. Use this Narrative with the Mitchell Palmer, “The Case against the Reds,” 1920 Primary Source and the Ellison DuRant Smith, “Shut the Door,” 1924 Primary Source to have students discuss the increased anxiety about radicalism and immigrants during the Red Scare. ![]()
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