History of The Red Scare during Woodrow Wilson's Presidency
History of The Red Scare during Woodrow Wilson's Presidency
When Woodrow Wilson was elected in 1916, he narrowly gained victory on the platform “He kept us out of war,” referring to World War I. Wilson was against US involvement in the war for several reasons; the US was isolated geographically from the nations of Europe, and detached from the issues that were argued there, the confusing entanglements and causes of the war in Europe, and the many ethnic groups and divisions in the US at the time.
However, by April of 1917, with German U-boats attacking US merchant ships, Wilson realized that America could not continue to remain neutral in the war that had been going on in Europe since 1914. He asked Congress for a declaration of war from Congress on April 2 of 1917 and four days later Congress agreed.
Because of the many ethnic divisions in the US at the time, the government knew that it would have to take measures to make sure that the US citizens were on its side. Wilson undertook a massive propaganda effort in which the Committee of Public Information was formed, headed by George Creel, which sent 75,000 speakers around the country to give patriotic speeches in schools and churches and produced over 75 million pamphlets in several languages explaining the US’s relation to the war. Needless to say, there were many in the US opposed to the war, not only because of their ethnicity, but because of their political and philosophical views.
During that same year, Congress passed a controversial measure called the Espionage Act. It stated that anyone who disclosed information compromising national defense would face a $10,000 fine and 20 years in prison. The act went further than simply imprisoning people who compromised national defense, it said that “Whoever, when the United States is at war… shall willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States, or the flag… shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both....” Many people believed the act to be unconstitutional but when challenged was apparently ruled to be constitutional in Schenck v. United States, and Debs v. United...