Even though anti-radical policing dates back to the 1870s and 1880s, the immediate roots of the Red Scare can be traced to the suppression of anti-war elements during World War I. On 7 April 1917, the day after the United States entered the war on the side of the Entente Powers, representatives of the Socialist Party passed the St. Louis Declaration, announcing their continued opposition to the war. They were joined in their anti-war dissent by the International Workers of the World (IWW), a radical labor union. The federal government quickly put measures into place to quell such opposition, including the 1917 Espionage Act and the 1918 Sedition Act. Together these acts hindered freedom of speech, making it practically illegal to criticize the war or interfere with the war effort in any way. Postmaster General Albert Burleson (1863-1937) used this legislation to censor the press. He revoked the second class mailing privileges of radical publications. The Justice Department indicted a number of prominent Socialists, such as Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926) and Victor Berger (1860-1929), under the Espionage Act. Debs was sentenced to prison for ten years and Berger was denied his congressional seat after being duly elected. The IWW led a wave of strikes in the summer of 1917 that government authorities interpreted as violating the Espionage Act. In September of 1917, federal agents raided forty-eight IWW headquarters across the country, arresting much of the group’s leadership and forcing the remaining members underground. At the local level, vigilante violence was directed at dissenters and “slackers” who escaped the notice of the federal government. Rise of Domestic Disturbances↑Following the Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917, anti-war repression of radicals and anti-socialist hysteria slowly began to converge. Americans felt betrayed by the Bolsheviks’ separate peace with Germany and their anti-capitalist ideology. Soaring inflation and high unemployment following the November 1918 armistice and the subsequent demobilization of troops and wartime industries influenced labor unrest and a growing number of strikes. The IWW instigated one of the largest of these, the Seattle General Strike, in February of 1919. About 60,000 strikers from a variety of industries shut down the entire city. This strike and other labor unrest heightened false fears that America was under assault by socialist agitators. Events taking place overseas only reinforced this fear. In March, the Third Communist International met to proclaim their goal of spreading the socialist revolution worldwide. Meanwhile parts of Europe were suffering from revolutionary unrest and violence. In April 1919, anarchists sent thirty-six bombs through the mail to prominent politicians and government employees. Soon thereafter, May Day parades in Boston, New York, and Cleveland met with police and vigilante violence. In June 1919, the bombings continued: the most significant of these was a failed attempt on the life of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer (1872-1936). Hysteria set in as the public began clamoring for an investigation into the growing red menace, even though the bombs were likely sent by a single Italian anarchist group. Government Response↑Palmer, partly seeking to further his own political career by capitalizing on public hysteria, requested and received additional funding from Congress to combat the red menace. He created the Radical Division with a young J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972) at its head, who began planning a roundup of suspected foreign radicals during the summer of 1919 with the goal of deporting them under a 1918 immigration law. The first of the Palmer Raids, which targeted the Union of Russian Workers, took place in November of 1919 and made nearly 1,000 arrests in twelve cities. In December of 1919, close to 250 suspected radicals, including well-known anarchists Emma Goldman (1869-1940) and Alexander Berkman (1870-1936), were deported on the USS Buford, otherwise known as the “Soviet Ark.” A second series of raids took place in January 1920 across thirty-four cities and resulted in the arrest of more than 4,000 members of the newly formed Communist Party and Communist Labor Party. Flush with victory, Palmer and Hoover began to plan an expansion of their countersubversive program to include the arrest of American citizens pending the passage of a peacetime sedition law. Reaction to the Raids↑In the meantime, lawmakers, government officials, and civil liberties advocates had begun to question the legality of the raids which Justice Department agents had conducted with so little respect for due process or constitutional rights. As the growth of communism slowed to a halt overseas and further domestic disturbances failed to materialize it became clear that the red threat had been greatly exaggerated. Legacy↑The Red Scare was largely over by late 1920, but it had long-lasting and severe consequences. A precedent had been set which sacrificed civil liberties for national security. Immigration policy became increasingly politicized - legislation passed in the early 1920s set quotas designed to deny radical immigrants entry into the United States. And the trope of the red agitator would, henceforth, be used again and again, particularly during the Second Red Scare of the 1950s, to impugn the intentions of any nonconformist seeking to change the political, social, or economic status quo through revolution or reform.
Section Editor: Lon Strauss
Enraged by the bombings, the United States government responded by raiding the headquarters of radical organizations and arresting thousands of suspected radicals. Several thousand who were aliens were deported. The largest raids occurred on January 2, 1920 when over 4000 suspected radicals were seized nationwide. Over 800 were arrested in New England from locations that included Boston, Brockton, Chelsea, Fitchburg, Lawrence, and Lynn. On April 29, 1920, several days before the arrests of Sacco and Vanzetti, Attorney General Palmer warned the nation that the Department of Justice had uncovered plots against the lives of over twenty federal and state officials as part of planned May Day (May 1st) celebrations. May Day, also known as International Workers' Day, was celebrated by many socialists, communists, anarchists, and unionists. The failure of these plots to materialize, coupled with increased criticism of the Palmer Raids, brought these raids to an end.
In the end, President Eisenhower had no choice but to fight back against Senator Joseph McCarthy—and he did
Senator Joseph McCarthy In the early 1950s, American leaders repeatedly told the public that they should be fearful of subversive Communist influence in their lives. Communists could be lurking anywhere, using their positions as school teachers, college professors, labor organizers, artists, or journalists to aid the program of world Communist domination. This paranoia about the internal Communist threat—what we call the Red Scare—reached a fever pitch between 1950 and 1954, when Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin, a right-wing Republican, launched a series of highly publicized probes into alleged Communist penetration of the State Department, the White House, the Treasury, and even the US Army. During Eisenhower’s first two years in office, McCarthy’s shrieking denunciations and fear-mongering created a climate of fear and suspicion across the country. No one dared tangle with McCarthy for fear of being labeled disloyal.
It has long been a subject of debate among historians: Why didn’t Eisenhower do more to confront McCarthy? Journalists, intellectuals, and even many of Eisenhower’s friends and close advisers agonized over what they saw as Ike’s timid approach to McCarthyism. Despite his popularity and his enormous political capital, they believed, Ike refused to engage directly with McCarthy. By avoiding the Red-hunting senator, some have argued, Eisenhower allowed McCarthyism to continue unchecked. In this letter to his brother Milton, Eisenhower explains, "As for McCarthy. Only a short-sighted or completely inexperienced individual would urge the use of the office of the presidency to give an opponent the publicity he so avidly desires."By contrast, later scholars working from the documentary record perceived a design in Eisenhower’s strategy with McCarthy. Ike adopted an “indirect approach.” Instead of going right at McCarthy, Eisenhower worked behind the scenes to undercut and stymie the senator and his attacks. The political scientist Fred Greenstein, for example, argued that Eisenhower’s handling of McCarthy provides evidence of a “hidden hand” approach to government. In this interpretation, Ike rode above the fray of politics while secretly pulling levers and using White House influence to obstruct McCarthy and his allies.
Late in his first presidential campaign, Eisenhower excised a defense of General George C. Marshall from a speech he gave in McCarthy's home state of Wisconsin. He addressed the issue more abstractly, stating, "The right to question a man's judgment carries with it no automatic right to question his honor." Looking at all the evidence, the clearest conclusion is that Eisenhower did not want to confront Joe McCarthy at all. And during 1953, he tried to avoid the whole issue, hoping the Senate would silence the explosive senator. McCarthy was a Republican, after all, and many fellow senators supported him. Ike needed to keep his party unified to pass bills in other areas; battling McCarthy would only stir up a civil war inside the GOP. Furthermore, Eisenhower did not want to appear “soft” on the problem of internal subversion. There had, after all, been real spies who penetrated into the State Department, notably Alger Hiss. Alger HissAnd Communist agents had stolen classified secrets from the wartime Manhattan Project that built the atomic bomb. When Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were condemned to die in the electric chair as punishment for their theft of atomic secrets, Eisenhower did not for a moment consider granting them clemency. On June 19, 1953, they were both put to death.
The first two paragraphs of the March 13, 1954 New York Times story on McCarthy, Cohn, and David Schine But at the start of 1954, the picture changed. Joe McCarthy turned his investigatory resources on the US Army and on members of the administration itself. Eisenhower had no choice but to fight back. The first move the White House made was to try to discredit the men around McCarthy, notably the lawyer Roy Cohn, who was leading the investigation, and Cohn’s assistant David Schine, who had recently been drafted into the Army. The Army compiled a damaging dossier of dirt on Cohn, showing that he used threats and intimidation to demand that Schine be given plum assignments and easy duty. The White House leaked this dossier to the press and Congress. McCarthy and Cohn now stood accused of abuse of power. A 2003 report from NBC News reviewed newly released documents related to the McCarthy hearingsIke went one step further. In order to close down McCarthy’s reckless use of subpoenas to compel witnesses to testify before his committee, Eisenhower invoked executive privilege. In this May 17, 1954 memo to the Secretary of Defense, Eisenhower ordered, “You will instruct employees of your Department that in all of their appearances before the Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Operations regarding the inquiry now before it, they are not to testify to any such conversations or communications or to produce any such documents or reproductions. This principle must be maintained regardless of who would be benefitted by such disclosures.”In May 1954, Ike simply said that administration officials and all executive branch employees would ignore any call from McCarthy to testify. Eisenhower explained his action, declaring that “it is essential to efficient and effective administration that employees of the executive branch be in a position to be completely candid in advising with each other on official matters,” without those conversations being subject to Congressional scrutiny. It was a bold and daring move, and it worked. McCarthy, his credibility in tatters and now starved of witnesses, hit a brick wall—and his fellow senators turned against him. In early December 1954, the Senate passed a motion of condemnation, in a vote of 67 to 22. McCarthy was ruined—and within three years he was dead from alcohol abuse. The era of McCarthyism was over. Ike had helped bring it to a bitter end. Senate Resolution 301 censured McCarthy for conduct that “tends to bring the Senate into disrepute” |