Brown Shirts in America: Part II

In Part I of this essay the abuses of civil rights that are the natural consequences of the substitution of mob hysteria for constitutional law were reviewed. This section will describe a period of time, lasting from about the time of the Armistice of 1918 to the end of the Wilson Administration, which is now called "The First Red Scare."

The fall of the Russian provisional government in October, 1917 had emboldened socialist and communist movements in both America and in other countries. The successes of the Russian Communists, however, had also strengthened the resolve of the Wilson Administration to eliminate any opposition to its wartime policies. The cessation of hostilities in Europe now meant the Wilson was free to use his newly-acquired political leverage, and America's equally new authority as a world power, to push for the realization of his great passion: a league of nations and the end of warfare at the international level.

In the United States the revocation of Wilson's harsh policies regarding political dissent were essentially complete by the summer of 1919. The American communists and socialists, their pent-up revolutionary zeal finally released, promptly took to the streets with their demands for a new American "government of the people."

On June 2, 1919 a series of bombs were detonated in major American cities including the nation's capital where the bomb damaged the house occupied by newly appointed Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer sustained moderate damage. Although no group was identified or claimed responsibility for these bombings, a note had been left at or near the scene of each explosion:

"War, Class war, and you were the first to wage it under the cover of the powerful institutions you call order, in the darkness of your laws. There will have to be bloodshed; we will not dodge; there will have to be murder: we will kill, because it is necessary; there will have to be destruction; we will destroy to rid the world of your tyrannical institutions."

The note was all the justification the Wilson Administration needed to unleash a furious Attorney General Palmer on the radical leftists of the day. Under the provisions of the Sedition Act of 1918 and the existing immigration laws Palmer brought together the Immigration Service and the Justice Department's own Bureau of Investigation (a young man named John Edgar Hoover was placed in charge of the Intelligence Division, where he was responsible for gathering the names of known or suspected radicals).

The first of the "Palmer Raids took place less than 2 weeks following the bombings. Prominent leftists such as anarchist Luigi Galleani were simply detained, given a perfunctory hearing before an Immigration Administrative Board, and then deported.

By December of that year the tactics of Palmer and Hoover had led to the detention (but not formal arrest) of over a thousand "suspects." Some 250 previous immigrants from Russia, including well-known radicals Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, were deported in masse and placed them on a ship bound for the Soviet Union.

In January 1920 another 6,000; the majority being members of the Industrial Workers of the World union were arrested in separate raids. In the most "successful" of the Palmer raids, more than 4,000 individuals taken into custody in a single night. Any alien detained during these raids was deported. By the end of January Palmer and Hoover had staged the largest mass arrest in U.S. history. The public's support of Palmer's tactics would soon collapse.

Based on "intelligence" developed by Hoover's agents, Palmer announced that an alliance of Communists and other leftist organizations would undertake an armed revolution against the United States government on May 1, 1920. When that day passed without a major incident, much less a revolution, Palmer was discredited within both the public and political arenas.

While Palmer was extinguishing the fires of revolutionary discord Wilson had been in Paris where he had hoped to create his ideal, the League of Nations.

As historians have noted, however pure and noble his reasoning may have been, Wilson had to make concessions to the French regarding war reparations payments to the France. The harshness of these terms of peace would lead to the later collapse Germany's economy and the subsequent rise of National Socialism under a former corporal in the German Army named Adolph Hitler.

The Treaty of Versailles and its provision of a League of Nations proved unpopular with the American public and Wilson was forced to undertake a grueling schedule of speechmaking to rally the public's support. He collapsed during an appearance in Pueblo, CO, on September 25, 1919and was forced to return to the White House, where he suffered a disabling stroke on October 2, 1919. The United States Senate refused to ratify the charter for the League of Nations a month later.

Palmer went on to seek the 1920 Democratic Presidential nomination but, his judgment questioned and his reputation tarnished, he was defeated by James M. Cox. Cox himself would lose to Warren Harding in the November elections. His associate John Edgar Hoover, who had "hitched his star" to the fortunes of Palmer, would not enjoy a position of authority in the Justice Department for another decade.

The actions of the Wilson Administration in the years 1917 to 1921 illustrate the dangers to democracy which can result from substituting misguided social and political dogma for constitutional law and then placing the responsibility for enforcing that dogma in the hands of an undisciplined mob.

If one were asked to describe that period in a single sentence, it would probably be taken from the Roman orator Cicero's Pro Milone:

"Inter arma enim silent leges (In time of war the law is silenced)."