In other states, citizens deemed not to have bought enough war bonds had their finances investigated. In California, 200 people were quickly interned for disloyalty. They were empowered to compel testimony and to demand records, often forbidding the accused to consult counsel. Councils of Defense were formed to propagandize for the war and investigate suspected dissent. Children’s organizations were recruited to eavesdrop on private conversations and report dubious comments. In four days in September 1918 the APL and Justice operatives in New York City rounded up over 50,000 men from homes and offices and off the streets, charging them with violating draft rules over 16,000 were judged guilty. Gregory condemned those opposed to the war: “May God have mercy on them, for they need expect none from an outraged people and an avenging government.” The Justice Department deputized “patriotic” organizations like the American Protective League to do what officially the Department could not: slander individuals, break into their homes and offices, open their mail, wiretap their phones, and turn over seized materials to the Bureau of Investigation (precursor to the FBI). Many people were disqualified from taking civil service examinations on grounds of disloyalty, a judgement for which there was no appeal.Īttorney General Thomas W. One was censored for reprinting Thomas Jefferson’s judgement that Ireland should be a republic, on the grounds that it defamed the British another was banned for suggesting that the government tax more and borrow less to finance the war. ![]() English-language journals were not exempt. English translations had to be submitted to the Post Office in advance, which increased costs and prevented timely publication even if an article was ultimately approved. They now had to obtain advance approval from the Post Office Department to publish any articles that referred to the government, to the belligerents, or to the war itself. ![]() Postmaster General Albert Sidney Burleson used the Trading with the Enemy Act to suppress foreign-language periodicals that he considered suspect. The Sedition Act, for example, banned “any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States.”įederal agencies were free to interpret these Acts as they saw fit. The Espionage Act, the Sedition Act, and the Trading with the Enemy Act, all passed after the United States entered the war, gave the federal government sweeping but vaguely specified powers to intervene in citizens’ lives. During and after World War I, the federal government and the states, with the eager assistance of private vigilante groups and the approval of much of the press and public, executed a campaign of persecution that dwarfs anything seen since, with the exception of the internment of citizens of Japanese descent in World War II. Americans who watch peaceful protestors being yanked into unmarked vans by unidentified federal agents may understandably believe that the American government has never been so repressive, at least not internally.
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