Crackdown on Dissent

NARRATOR: President Woodrow Wilson had long argued for a law that gave him the power to penalize disloyalty and root out subversion wherever it could be found.  

On June 15th, 1917 Congress passed the Espionage Act, an unprecedented measure that made it a crime to “collect, record, publish or communicate” information that might be useful to the enemy.

RICHARD RUBIN, writer: The Espionage Act was passed ostensibly to prevent espionage but really it clamped down on dissent.  It was used to battle any kind of antiwar vocalization.

CHRISTOPHER CAPOZZOLA, historian: The Espionage Act was considered not even strong enough, so it’s amended in 1918 with the Sedition Act that basically creates enormous penalties for not only speaking out against the war effort or obstructing it, but really for criticizing America in almost any way.

RUBIN: The maximum sentence was twenty years, for going to a bar and grumbling about food restrictions. Or questioning what we were really fighting for. Anything at all that might interfere with the war effort, with morale of troops. 

NARRATOR: The passing of the Sedition Act prompted a wave of new crackdowns and arrests. A poet who wrote a satirical piece about the United States was imprisoned. The conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra supposedly refused to play the Star Spangled Banner and found himself in an internment camp. 

No one was safe from the reach of the new law. Even one of the nation’s most articulate and respected political figures, the socialist and labor leader Eugene Debs, was arrested. 

CAPOZZOLA: Eugene Debs was an unyielding spokesman for working class and labor concerns. He also strongly opposed the U.S. entry into the war. He believed that workers of the world had more in common with each other than they did with the ruling parties of the nations that were at war.

MICHAEL KAZIN, historian: He gives a speech at a picnic in Canton, Ohio, saying things he’s said before. But the Justice Department decides he has to be cracked down on at this point. So he’s arrested and put in jail.

He gives a speech at a picnic in Canton, Ohio, saying things he’s said before. But the Justice Department decides he has to be cracked down on at this point. So he’s arrested and put in jail.

JENNIFER KEENE, historian: These two acts really become tools to shut up people who refuse to be quiet about their opposition to the war, especially left wing organizations. 

CAPOZOLLA: You can’t actually measure the impact of wartime repression solely by the number of prosecutions - and there were tens of thousands. But for every prosecution there might be tens, hundreds, thousands of “friendly” visits by government agents warning someone not to say what they said or write what they wrote. We also need to look at the chilling effect that this repression had on every American.

There was a sense that you were being watched.  But it wasn’t always clear who was watching you. ...

At times it was an official in a uniform, but as often as not, it was your teacher, your minister, who was keeping an eye on you.

A. SCOTT BERG, writer: The Sedition Act is probably the greatest suppression of free speech that the country has ever seen. 

Wilson had a very firm conviction that he was going to do everything he could to protect his fighting men. That meant if anyone was going to say something that might put an American soldier in further harm’s way, he, the president, could step in and stop it. 

JAY WINTER, historian: A draft which forced people to put on a uniform is a very severe curtailment of the liberty of individuals. For Wilson the nation has to be united in order to justify this possible death sentence. Civil liberties became a price that had to be paid in order for a democratic nation to wage war.