The 1798 Alien Enemies Act was reinvoked.  Thereafter, 63 German aliens were immediately seized and imprisoned.  By the beginning of 1918, 1,200 others were arrested, and 10 months later, 6,300 Germans had been sent to internment camps.

The Selective Service Act of 1917 allowed the US to raise an army after war was declared.  All males between 20 and 30 (later changed to 18-45) were required to register for the draft.  Unlike previous draft laws, the new act placed COs under military authority before they obtained religious exemptions, thus making them subject to military justice.  In 1917, over 8,000 indictments were filed mostly against Socialists, CO’s, or union members.  In total, 450 CO’s were found guilty of disobeying the Act at court-martial hearings.  Some were allowed to accept noncombatant service; however, 17 were sentenced to death, 142 to life in prison, and 73 to 20 years in prison.  All had their sentences commuted after the war.

The Espionage Act of 1917 outlawed statements "obstructing the war effort" and "aiding the enemy;" forbade "false statements" designed to "obstruct" enlistment into the armed services, conspiracies designed to cause "disloyalty," and banned from the mails materials considered to be treasonable. Those found guilty were subject to heavy fines and imprisonment up to twenty years.  One well-known example of enforcing this Act occurred after Socialist party leader Eugene Debs delivered a speech in the summer of 1918 that praised socialism and claimed that freedom of speech in America included the freedom to criticize President Wilson for taking the U.S. into war.  Federal agents arrested him.  In court, Debs told the jury the Espionage Act was "a despotic enactment in flagrant conflict with democratic principles and with the spirit of free institutions."  He received a 10-year sentence but was pardoned in 1921.

The Immigration Act of 1917 excluded the entrance into the US of people who belonged to revolutionary organizations and allowed deportation to an alien’s homeland if he or she expressed revolutionary views after entering the U.S.
 
The Sedition Act of 1918 prohibited the utterance or publication of anything "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive" about the US government, emphasizing that any disloyal opinion an demeaning references to the government or flag could be punished by a 21-year prison sentence. More than 2000 people were prosecuted under the both the Espionage and Sedition Acts; thousands of others were intimidated into silence.

The Committee on Public Information (CPI) employed many of the nation’s most talented writers to shape the public’s opinion of and support for the war; to create anti-German propaganda and films; to speak at schools and churches; and to encourage citizens to spy on their neighbors and report any suspicious activities to the authorities.

The Department of Justice created the American Protective League which organized 12,000 local units across the nation.  Its members, primarily business and professional men, spied on draft dodgers, gathered gossip about those suspected of disloyalty, and checked up on people who failed to buy Liberty Bonds.  Theirs was a subtle terror - browbeating the silent into public confessions of loyalty to the U.S., warning those who criticized the government and the war effort, and forcing "suspects"  to prove their loyalty.

The Department of Justice created a General Intelligence Division (GID), the predecessor of the FBI, to assemble information on all suspected American "Reds" - socialists, communists, labor agitators, political dissidents.

On November 7, 1919 GID officials descended on Russian meeting places in eleven cities and seized hundreds of members of the Union of Russian Workers, 650 in New York City alone.
 
One month later, 249 aliens were deported from the United States and sent to Russia, via Finland.

Palmer Raids of January 1920.  In 33 cities, over 4,000 aliens and suspected members of the two communist parties were seized at home, in their offices, at meetings, and in pool rooms by federal officers without search warrants.  All seized were jailed and denied council. About 600 were eventually departed.  While all were scheduled for deportation, in the wake of the controversy surrounding the raids, the remainder of those seized were eventually released.

• Schenck v. U.S. (1919). When the Espionage Act was challenged in court, the Supreme Court unanimously decided that the First Amendment could be restricted in time of war.

In what came to be the famous words of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, "Free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing panic."

He further declared that if words "are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantial evils that Congress has a right to prevent," free speech could be limited.
 

•  Abrams v. U.S. (1919).  The Sedition Act was constitutionally upheld by Supreme Court.

"Large advertisements are appearing in the metropolitan newspapers, skillfully written for the purpose of stirring up class hatred and suspicion and thus dissuading Americans from enlisting in the war that is coming...  At this time, when the United States is on the verge of war, the Washington Post believes that the advertisements in question are an abuse of the right of free speech. It does not presume to judge other newspapers which print these advertisements, but for itself, it will not print them...

An effort to prevent the voluntary enlistment of American citizens for the defense of their country is treasonable in time of war.  It is sedition at any time.  ‘The hope of impunity is a strong incitement to sedition," said Hamilton.  The pacifists will not long enjoy impunity.  If they are wise they will cease their agitation before they are legally classified as public enemies and punished accordingly."

... As quoted in Jim R. McClellan, Changing Interpretations of America’s Past, Volume II )p. 201);  Educational Goals of the University and the Student

1. Educational goal was to teach students to master their physical environment through a type of "finishing school training."
2. Students were gentlemen-in-waiting - waiting to take their pre-determined role in society as parsons, merchants, scholars, teachers.
3. Success was measured by how well the student acquired grace and style in doing what was appropriate to his position.

19th Century Colleges began changing with growing democratic beliefs.
1. Educational goal was to help students master their economic environment by emphasizing vocational training.
2. Students became vocational apprentices striving for upward mobility.
3. Success was measured by hard work, determination, and an eye for opportunity.

Early 20th Century Colleges continued with some slight changes.
1. Educational goal was to help students master their human environment  through socialization training.
2. Around 240,000 students became social apprentices.
3. Success measured by the Big Man on Campus image, the national prestige of one’s sorority/ fraternity, one’s role in student gov’t.

Colleges of the 1960s faced student protest that forced changes.
1. Educational goals were to foster critical thought and encourage student involvement in true politics.
2. Students now became academics who analyzed, examined, and evaluated American society.  They also became politically active.
3. Success was measured by how well a student was able to make his or her education relevant to individual and group needs.
 Student Radicals of the 1960s - Myth versus Reality

o All students were radicals..  Students were unkept, maladjusted radicals who believed in Marxism, experimented with sex and drugs, were unconventional in daily behavior, frustrated and unhappy.
o The sources of  radical discontent and alienation were the loss of traditional American virtues, the breakdown of the American family, overindulgent parents, and an indulgent university atmosphere.
o Radical protest was a revolutionary threat to American values and traditional society.

The Facts:

• The typical activist of the Sixties tended "to be a better-than-average student, a committed and dedicated ‘intellectual,’ ethnically or even religiously oriented, and a relatively well-balanced and well-liked person," who usually comes from an ordinary, middle-class background.  (Kenniston, 1971:119.)
• Student radicals had valid reasons for their discontent:

1. Disallusionment with worldwide violence - especially Vietnam, consequences of unrestrained war technology, and perceived failure of the government to make any positive changes for America’s future
2. The "hypocrisy" of parents who support racial equality, but disallow their children date from dating a person of color; and who endorse free thinking and independence, but deny it to their children who seek it.
3. Moral indignation about the inequities of and injustice within American society..
• Student protest never posed a threat to society.

• They began their protest with passive educational activities - by sponsoring  study groups and intellectual discussions, writing position papers on subjects dealing with societal injustice and oppression, and educating college students across the nation by distributing the papers to as many universities as possible.

• Protest moved into passive political advocacy in 1962 when Tom Hayden and 45 supporters issued the Port Huron Statement calling for an alliance of students, blacks, peace groups, and liberation organizations to bring about a "progressive realignment" of the Democratic Party.

• Protest moved into an active political advocacy phase during 1963-64 when students at UC Berkeley began the Free Speech Movement.  SDS members sponsored rallies, marches, and building takeovers in which students nonviolently demanded that the university allow them free speech on campus.

• Protest became vehemently political in 1964 after Johnson committed American troops to Vietnam.  At that time, SDS members began to sponsor draft protests and peace demonstrations, attacks on military recruiters on university campuses, raids on military property and war industries, and open confrontation with the police.

 Weathermen Philosophies and Goals

In You Don’t Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows, the group explains its attitudes about capitalism and the ultimate symbols of capitalism, the law enforcement officer or "pig."

"Pigs don’t represent State power as an abstract principle; they are a power that we will have to overcome in the course of struggle or become irrelevant, revisionist, or dead.  We must prepare concretely to meet their power because our job is to defeat the pigs and the army, and organize on that that basis.  Our beginnings should stress self-defense...all the time honoring and putting forth the principle that "political power comes out of the barrel of a gun."  These self-defense groups would initiate pig surveillance patrols, visits to the pig station and courts when someone is busted, etc."

• Working class whites must work in a supportive capacity with the black liberation movement to confront and combat US imperialism against Third World nations, national chauvinism and racism.
• Members must prepare for an armed struggle that would inflict material damage to imperialist and racist institutions by whatever means possible.
• Members had to acquire a mass base of working class, alienated, disenfranchised, and oppressed nonstudent support - "the first revolutionary street gang in history"  - in order to launch a worldwide war against the American empire.

"... a girl from Iowa told the group that although she could accept the Weatherman philosophy in principle, she could not get over the emotional hurdle of going into the street with the intention of killing a policeman.  ‘Although I know he’s a pig and I should hate him for it, I can’t help but think of him as a person.’  The group agreed that this was a problem that many seemed to have.  A girl from Michigan said, "We don’t like to hit people, to hurt people.  We don’t like to get hurt either.  But the pig, whether he’s a person or not, is the only thing that is holding the Man up, and the pig must be smashed.  The way to tear down the Man is to off the pig.  (Tom Thomas, "The Second Battle of Chicago, 1969" in Weatherman,  Harold Jacobs, ed.  Ramparts, 1970)

1. Dissent in America, as well as official and public responses to such dissent, has played a long, evolutionary role in U.S. history.  Indeed, the growth of dissent, has been evolutionary - moving from personal religious statements during the colonial period, to collective political and ideological actions during the 19th Century, and a melding of the two earlier strategies with the outbreak of World War I and continuing through the 20th Century.

2. The American public and government have often condemned and maligned dissenters and protesters, and have even disregarded their basic civil liberties.  In so doing, Americans have neither recognized nor respected the inherent, constitutional right of Americans to question their government and their society through nonviolent dissent and protest.

3. With the outbreak of World War I and the refusal of some Americans to enlist in the war effort, the federal government legalized political repression against protesters.  Such repression was responsible for two major consequences.

• First, political repression allowed the federal government to institutionalize laws that were designed to destroy popular dissident organizations and imprison their leaders.
• Second, political repression provided the ideological and legal underpinnings of the Red Scare and of future governmental intrusions into the political and religious activities of millions of Americans throughout the 20th Century.

5. When the changes in educational goals, student roles, and measurements of student success are examined over the years, it becomes clear that the student protesters of the 1960s were not a bunch of radical revolutionaries, but instead, moved America forward into an evolutionary rather than revolutionary chapter in American history.

6. The vast majority of young protesters were not young men and women who wanted radical change in American society; rather, they wished to fulfill the old promises of American society - they were all too aware of an increasing gap between what they felt to be important, desirable, and possible and what they knew to be reality.

7. Regardless of public perceptions to the contrary, violent student radicals in the 1960s and early 1970s were never numerically strong and never posed any real revolutionary threat to the fabric of American life.    The perception of dangerousness was perpetrated by the media whose tendency was to capture the most visible images of dissent, and by the FBI whose paranoia and lack of real understanding created new "public enemies."

8. Throughout American history, dissenters and protesters who used both non-violent and violent methods often have forced Americans to reevaluate their attitudes and policies and sometimes, have forced the government to make important policy changes.