American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis, Hochschild - A*

                 This "is a story of how a war supposedly fought to make the world safe for democracy became the the excuse for a war against democracy at home." "The toxic currents of racism, nativism, Red-baiting, and contempt for the rule of law have long flowed through American life. Never was this raw underside of our nation's life more revealingly on display than from 1917 to 1921." "Although the government first used the war in Europe to justify the ferocity at home, the repression continued, and in some ways grew worse, in the several years after the fighting ended..." 

                A month after Germany declared unrestricted submarine warfare, Wilson asked Congress for a Declaration of War. It would be a "war to make the world safe for democracy." 

                 The army set up a bureau to spy on Americans. Anything less than absolute fealty was problematic if not treasonous. Congress passed the inappropriately-named Espionage Act which criminalized opposition to the war. The Postmaster General had the ability to censor newspapers by not allowing them to be mailed. The War Dept. censored books in the country's libraries. The day the Draft Law was signed, federal agents arrested anarchist Emma Goldman for publishing anti-draft leaflets. A trial two weeks later led to a conviction and a two year prison sentence. The militant wing of the labor movement was also targeted. In Arizona, 1156 IWW strikers at a copper mine were put on trains, sent two days away and told not to return. Civil liberties apparently did not exist in war time. A filmmaker went to jail for 3 years for a negative depiction of George III at a time when we were allies of the UK. People were tarred and feathered for not buying war bonds. A famous labor activist in Butte was lynched. In September, agents of the Bureau of Investigation (predecessor to the FBI) raided 48 IWW offices, took away all their files and documents, and arrested 166 men for violating the Espionage Act. Adding fuel to the fire of fear and paranoia, in November the Bolsheviks took over Russia. Conscientious objectors were often treated so badly in prison that many died. Lynching of Blacks in the South accelerated. The year 1918 saw the passage of the Sedition Act, a set of laws strengthening the Espionage Act. In Chicago, a noted businessman found the American Protective League, a vigilante organization that worked with the Bureau of Investigation. Civilians with no legitimate policing power but wearing badges conducted a series of raids seeking out draft evaders.* They checked the draft cards of men in public places and raided Wrigley Field. The Boston Symphony's German born Swiss conductor was imprisoned when someone claimed he was radioing to U-boats in the Atlantic. A trial of 97 Wobblies before Judge Landis saw all convicted on all counts after an hour of jury deliberations. He handed out over 800 years of sentences. The IWW was decimated, and never recovered. The former presidential candidate for the Socialist party, Eugene Debs, was a widely admired man of great integrity. When he said that the people never got a say in war declarations, he too was arrested. At this trial, he said "men are fit for something better than cannon fodder and slavery." He was sentenced to ten years in jail. The fighting finally stopped in November. "At home, the worst was yet to come." 

                   Many hoped that those imprisoned in the year-and-a-half of war would be pardoned. Instead, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the constitutionality of the Espionage Act. Raging inflation in the US added 50% to the price of food leading to widespread discontent. Factories ceased arms production and laid off workers. Hundreds of thousands went on strike. The continuing success of the Bolsheviks in Russia generated ongoing Red scares throughout the world. In June 1919, bombs were exploded in multiple east coast cities. One of the bombs was at the house of Attorney General Palmer. The DOJ set up a Radical Division and named J. Edgar Hoover as its head. America engaged in a full-scale Red scare. The government had a free hand deporting non-citizens and it pursued that course vigorously in the fall of 1919. Emma Goldman was one of the first to go. Ironically, the deportation center and holding pens were on Ellis Island. Throughout the winter, the so-called 'Palmer Raids' were led by Hoover, who supervised the arrest of thousands around the country. It is estimated that 10,000 were arrested in what one historian called "the greatest single violation of civil liberties in American history." As Hoover and Palmer hoovered up everyone they could find, they ran into an unexpected surprise. Deportation orders required the signature of the Dept. of Labor, and the leadership of the department fell to a man who was unabashedly progressive.  Lewis Post not only opposed the indiscriminate arrests, he had been a founder of the NAACP. In the six weeks he was interim secretary, he derailed 80% of Palmer and Hoover's planned deportations. Palmer, who was now seeking the Democratic nomination, told the nation that there would be mass assassinations on May Day. When no communist uprising took place, cracks appeared in the Red scare movement. When the Senate attempted to impeach Post, he wittily ran circles around them citing the unconstitutionality of the raids. Soon, jurists and law professors were criticizing Hoover and Palmer for acting like a "mob" by violating people's rights. The Democrats rejected Palmer's extremism, and the Republicans did the same by not nominating Gen. Leonard Wood, a vocal proponent of 'Americanism.'

                 Harding began to release prisoners, and at year end, released Eugene Debs. He went so far as to say that he wished he hadn't voted for the war as senator, and that Debs was right for opposing it. The most impactful consequence of the excesses of the era was the passage in 1924 of the Reed-Johnson Act limiting immigration to the nations of northern Europe through a quota system that cut off people from eastern and southern Europe, Latin America and Asia. For forty years, there was minimal immigration to the US. Adolf Hitler applauded the new law. "The Socialist Party would never recover from the mass mailings...The IWW was similarly shattered." Many states adopted criminal syndicalism laws to restrain organized labor. America returned to right-wing extremism in the early '50's and again in 2017, when a man whose father had been arrested in Queens in 1927 while wearing a KKK white hood, became president. "America's version of democracy is far from perfect, and every generation or two we learn anew just how fragile it can be." It will require "a vigilant respect for civil rights and constitutional safeguards, to save ourselves from ever slipping back into the darkness again."

               

*The First World War had a higher ratio of draft resistance than did Vietnam half-a-century later.