Teaching With Documents, Volume 1

Contents:

The Red Scare and A. Mitchell Palmer

As World War I ended, the United States slipped into a period of antialien hysteria that made no distinction between anarchists, communists, socialists, labor organizers, and immigrants.

This "Red Scare" resulted from a number of converging factors. In March 1919, the Soviets had announced that the Third International (Comintern) would be organized to export world revolution; subsequently, communist uprisings occurred in Germany and Hungary.

Private and public war propaganda successfully stereotyped foreigners as radicals, prompting a resurgence of nativism. Business propaganda equated labor organizing and union activities with bolshevism. Some politicians used public hearings to exploit public fear. Violent incidents, including mailing bombs to 38 prominent business and government figures and an attempted bombing of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer’s home by an Italian anarchist, were sensationalized by the newspapers.

Finally, there was massive disruption throughout 1919, caused by acrimonious strikes. Starting with a February general strike in Seattle, continuing through the Boston police officers’ strike in the fall, including the national steelworkers’ strike and the national coal miners’ strike, there were in all 3,630 strikes and lockouts in 1919 that involved more than 4 million workers.

It was convenient for businessmen to associate unionism and strikes with communist world revolution.

Ironically, American socialism fragmented in September 1919 into the Socialist Party, the Communist Labor Party, and the Communist Party of America. Their combined membership was less than .5 percent of the total population of the United States. Furthermore, the communists considered terrorism an ineffective strategy for overturning capitalism. Nonetheless, citizens came to fear the bolshevik threat more and more.

Palmer, one of the leading figures of the period, was appointed Attorney General in March 1919. Up to that time, Palmer had been a Progressive Democrat, but upon appointment to the Justice Department, he launched an anti-Red crusade. In August, he established a General Intelligence Division under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover to seek out radicals for detainment and deportation, and in early autumn he authorized wiretaps of telephones of all known radicals.

By November, the Department of Justice had conducted its first raid, directed against the Union of Russian Workers. Although several hundred people were arrested, cause was found for deporting fewer than 50. By December 22, however, enough detainees had been assembled to deport 249 people to Russia on a transport nicknamed "the Soviet ark."

On January 2, 1920, coordinated raids were initiated in 33 cities across the nation and continued into May. By then, the "Palmer raids" had effected the arrest of approximately 6,000 persons. Many accused people were seized without warrant, held in prisons and bull pens (often incommunicado),and forced to sign confessions. People were arrested on suspicions who were neither aliens nor communists. Some visitors of prisoners were arrested merely because they knew the prisoners. Ultimately, 566 innocent people were deported. Few individuals or groups objected to these violations of the constitutional rights of the accused.

This was not the case in January 1920 when the New York legislature expelled five properly elected members because they were socialists. The expulsion prompted sharp denunciations by prominent figures, including former Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes and Governor Alfred E. Smith.

Palmer predicted that there would be major outbreaks of violence on May Day, 1920. When the outbreaks failed to materialize, Palmer was discredited, his bid for the 1920 Democratic presidential nomination faded, and the Red Scare began to recede. Assistant Secretary of Labor Louis E Post figured prominently in the Immigration Bureau’s refusal to deport people denied due process by the Department of Justice. Critics threatened Post with impeachment for his stand.

1920 Bomb Explosion

A September 1920 bomb that killed 38 people at Broad and Wall Streets in New York City briefly rekindled concern, but by the end of 1920 the witch-hunts were over.

The rights of thousands of Americans had been violated, however, and hundreds of innocent people had been deported. A third of the states had enacted sedition laws more stringent than those of World War I. In the hysteria, teachers were required to sign loyalty oaths, liberal newspapers were harassed, and suspect books were banned. Finally, resurgent nativism revitalized the Ku Klux Klan and prompted severe restriction of immigration under the Emergency Quota Act of 1921.

The document featured here is a June 1920 letter from Harvey M. Watts of the editorial staff of the Philadelphia newspaper Public Ledger to Palmer supporting the Attorney General’s policies.

In a scrawled postscript, Watts alludes to Palmer’s presidential aspirations: "I hope you win out at San Francisco, but I suppose McAdoo is to be the Philippe ’Egalite’ candidate on a radical platform. I like Harding and Coolidge; they’re real folks and my kind." This document is located in the General Records of the Department of Justice, Records Group 60, Straight Numerical Files (1904-1937), 20964, Box No. 3269.

Teaching Suggestions

1. Ask students to locate the following words in the letter and define each term: editorial, testimony, aliens, bolshevism, abstract, anarchist, radical, platform.

2. The term ’Red Scare’ has come to mean reckless and unsupported attacks against people by the use of such techniques as guilt by association, discriminatory imposition of loyalty oaths, scrutiny by secret informants, blacklists, suppression of citizens’ freedoms of speech and assembly, interrogation and intimidation of the accused by public committees, and submission of unsupported allegations against the accused.

Ask students to read the document and underline examples of these techniques. When the students have completed marking up their copies of the letter, ask them to share their findings as a class. Ask the following question: If Palmer’s predictions of communist subversion had been correct, would his means have been justified?

3. In a general class discussion, pose the following questions:

a. Can democracy exist only if extremes of opinion are tolerated?

b. Is outlawing any political faction consistent with the First Amendment?

c. Is "making America pure as we can make it" an ideal consistent with freedom and democracy?

d. What is pluralism? What is its role ina democracy?

e. What effect has media coverage had on national events? Cite examples of significant instances in which media coverage of an event in progress may have altered its outcome.

4. Ask students to examine other periods in U.S. history when people were obsessed with malign influences. The students should compare and contrast the atmosphere and methods of the Red Scare with those of McCarthyism, the Know-Nothing movement, and the Salem witch trials. Ask students to share their findings through oral or written reports.

5. The Red Scare has been compared by many to the hysteria of the Salem witch trials. In her book The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Inquiry into Salem Witch Trials, Marion Starkey develops the hypothesis that such periods of persecution follow a pattern. A genuine problem generates such fear that authorities curtail liberties of people who are poor, lacking in status, or unpopular. The persecution spreads to people who consider themselves middle-class, "respectable" folk, then rages on to threaten the powerful and wealthy before it wanes. Ask students to identify how this document fits into this general pattern.

Note: Kane and Wallerstein were defense attorneys for accused "Reds." William G. McAdoo was President Wilson’s son-in-law, Secretary of the Treasury, and a rival to Palmer for the 1920 Democratic presidential nomination with backing of the party’s liberals. French nobleman Louis Philippe Joseph d’Orléans renounced his title and assumed the name Philippe-Égalité; he was a liberal reformer who worked to overthrow Louis XVI.

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Chicago: "The Red Scare and A. Mitchell Palmer," Teaching With Documents, Volume 1 in Teaching With Documents: Using Primary Sources from the National Archives, ed. United States. National Archives and Records Administration and National Council for the Social Studies (Washington, D.C.: National Archives Trust Fund Board, 1989), 103–107. Original Sources, accessed March 28, 2024, http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=2ER42B5TV4UUKQL.

MLA: . "The Red Scare and A. Mitchell Palmer." Teaching With Documents, Volume 1, in Teaching With Documents: Using Primary Sources from the National Archives, edited by United States. National Archives and Records Administration and National Council for the Social Studies, Vol. 1, Washington, D.C., National Archives Trust Fund Board, 1989, pp. 103–107. Original Sources. 28 Mar. 2024. http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=2ER42B5TV4UUKQL.

Harvard: , 'The Red Scare and A. Mitchell Palmer' in Teaching With Documents, Volume 1. cited in 1989, Teaching With Documents: Using Primary Sources from the National Archives, ed. , National Archives Trust Fund Board, Washington, D.C., pp.103–107. Original Sources, retrieved 28 March 2024, from http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=2ER42B5TV4UUKQL.