Red Scare

Following World War I, a nationwide Red Scare seized the United States. It arose out of the fervent patriotism of World War I and was fueled by a fear that the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, as well as various communist successes in central Europe, would spread to the United States. The focus of this Red Scare was communists, socialists, anarchists, and other radicals (“reds”). In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson's administration embarked on a campaign of investigation and often repression of the suspected radicals and dissidents. This campaign had implications for Fourth Amendment rights, especially because investigations and arrests were often executed without warrants.

During World War I, and especially after America's entry into the war, the patriotic fervor gripping the nation had a negative side. People suspected of being antiwar or anti-American were sometimes the object of public scorn or hostility or even government oppression. The Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, for instance, were federal laws directly aimed at curbing the civil liberties of those groups and individuals.

The end of World War I hardly brought a sense of peace and tranquillity to the United States. In 1919, the Senate rejected the Versailles Treaty, effectively killing any hope that the United States would participate in a peaceful new world order. And aside from the disappointments surrounding the prospects for international peace, conflict was occurring at home, in the form of labor strikes and urban riots. A general strike occurred in Seattle; a nationwide steel strike took place in 1919, and the bloody Illinois coal wars raged from 1920 to 1922. After a series of anarchist bombings, riots or radical demonstrations ensued in many cities, including Boston, New York, Chicago, Omaha, and Cleveland. The unrest in Gary, Indiana, was so violent that martial law was declared on October 5, 1919. Social tensions were further increased when in 1920 Eugene V. Debs, socialist candidate for the presidency, pulled in 900,000 votes, even though he was an inmate in a federal penitentiary.

All these events stoked the fear that a communist-type revolution could be spreading to the United States. In response to these fears, Wilson's attorney general, A. Mitchell Palmer, set about investigating and arresting thousands of suspected radicals. In this climate of fear and hysteria, civil liberties came under attack. In 1919, Attorney General Palmer launched a two-year “red hunt,” highlighted by mass arrests without benefit of habeas corpus, hasty prosecutions, and deportations of communists and other radicals. Seeking to uncover communist conspiracies and deport conspirators, Palmer oversaw a campaign—called the Palmer Raids—that resulted in the imprisonment or deportation of thousands of suspected radicals. And these arrests were often made at the expense of civil liberties, since they were often executed without warrants and involved suppression of First Amendment rights. Thus, the patriotic fervor of the war period evolved into a somewhat hysterical and reactionary assault on civil liberties of political dissidents during the postwar period.