Sedition Act Pros And Cons

The Espionage Act was passed in April of 1917 shortly after the United States entered World War I. The law made it criminal for any person to communicate information that would undermine the war effort of the U.S. Military or promote the success of the countries enemies. In May of 1918, Congress passed the Sedition Act, another piece of legislation designed to protect and support the U.S. war effort. The Sedition Act imposed harsh penalties on those found guilty of making false statements that damaged the war effort, insulting the U.S. government or military, or advocating for such acts to be carried out by others. Those found guilty would be punished with up to a $10,000 fine and 20 years in prison. These law targeted dissenters and sentenced

many of those tried spent time in jail. Many of those found guilty were socialists, and under the jurisdiction of this law a few cases even reached the Supreme Court.
On June 16, 1918, Eugene V. Debs, a well-known socialist leader, gave a speech in Canton, Ohio at the annual Ohio Socialist Party picnic. Oddly, Debs spent little time in the speech discussing the Great War. For the most part, he was urging his listeners to coincide with the socialist doctrine. But when he did talk about the war, the crowd thundered with deafening applause. The audience was mostly local socialists who had come to celebrate, but there were a few persons present concerning themselves only with collecting evidence in attempt to put Debs in jail. Two weeks later, Debs was arrested for ten counts of sedition and tried in Cleveland, Ohio’s United States District Court. He was sent to the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary to serve his time. While in prison, he continued to write and speak—even venturing a presidential run that won the highest popular vote in the history of the Socialist Party. Eugene Debs was a moving speaker, but despite his eloquence, his raging defense of imprisoned radicals and contempt for the war in his speech compelled the courts to find him guilty.
The chamber of justice Ohio’s Northern United States District Court is constructed of oak and marble, with windows stretching two stories high and a ceiling of gold.

The judge sits up and behind him the full width of the wall is filled with a magnificent painting. It is a painting of angels with harsh faces and flaming swords, guarding the tablets upon which the Ten Commandments are inscribed. Guarding them against the approach of a man in a business suit and black gown, trying to read something clever out of a black book. At the other end of the room was a crowd of people waiting up eagerly in anticipation for the trial of Eugene Debs. Judge David Westenhaver was a magisterial looking man with a taut facial expression. His words came off kindly but with a revealing tone—he was not so magisterial as he appeared.
Two weeks earlier, on June 16, 1918 Eugene V. Debs prepared to give a speech in front of a crowd of over one thousand people in Canton. The then four-time Presidential nominee for the Social Democratic Party began by reading the Declaration of Independence with not a single American flag in sight. Ironically, the closest American flag was likely on the campus of a local prison from which Debs had just returned. Comrades Wagenknecht, Baker, and Ruthenberg had been convicted of assisting and supporting another in failing to register for the

draft.
Debs was tall and gangly with cheerful amiability that made listening to him easy and pleasant. A master of body language and tone, he spoke with an earnest affection for humble words in a way that never felt rehearsed. From a bandstand, Debs gave his full speech in less than an hour. Among the crowd were local socialists, but also federal agents, newspaper reporters, and a stenographer who was there to record the speech for prosecutors considering criminal charges. Debs began by noting, “In speaking to you this afternoon, there are certain limitations placed upon the right of free speech. I must be exceedingly careful, prudent, as to what I say, and eve more careful and prudent as to how I say it.” He was well aware who was watching and listening, “I may not be able to say all I think, but I am not going to say anything I do not think.” The crowd fully understood what he was referencing. He knew he could not deliberately tell one thousand people to burn their draft cards; instead, he would condemn the war with such contempt as to incite them to do so.
The prosecution opened their case and declared Debs ought be “judge by his own words, by his own words condemned.” Seymour Stedman, Eugene Debs’s defense attorney and life-long socialist friend, said in the conclusion of his own opening statement, “Yes, ye shall judge him by his own words, and not by his words only, but by his works—the works of his whole life!” A massive applause echoed in the courtroom. But the celebration was only temporary. Rising to an intimidating stature, Judge Westenhaver extended his accusing arm and shouted: “Arrest that man! And that woman! And arrest everybody else that you saw clapping their hands!” It was certain that everyone in the courtroom would have been arrested had it not been for the wit of William Cunnea, counsel for the defense. Cunnea stepped forward and reminded His Honor of the “wide distribution of the frailties of human nature.” Judge Westenhaver replied with gruffness, “Are you defending these defendants?” Cunnea was cunning, “I never decline to represent anybody who needs me.” He continued, saying he would not watch as the Judge sat up there and “play[ed] God” to his fellow man. By some miracle, Cunnea was convincing. Judge Westenhaver postponed the hearing until the next day, when he might be a little less “unduly vexed.” The next day he fined some of the cheerers and lectured the rest on how to properly conduct themselves in a court of law.
The prosecution frequently quoted Debs’s speech. One quote in particular had little to do with the case at hand, but was used, in my opinion, to exacerbate the tension between Judge Westenhaver and the defense. A prosecutor read from Debs’s speech:
Who appointed the Federal Judges? The people? In all of the history of the country the working class have never named a Federal Judge. There are one hundred and twenty-one, and every solitary one of them hold his position, his tenure through the influence and power of corporate capital. The corporation and trusts dictate their appointment. And when they go to the bench, they go, not to serve the people, but to serve the interest that placed them where they are.

It was likely upsetting to the defense in the moment, but funny from a stranger's point of view.
When the ham-handed prosecutor had finished, there was a sort of awkward silence in the court. Before too long, Judge Westenhaver called for a ten-minute recess before Debs would conduct his own defense. Everyone who had a good seat stayed put. They waited quietly, watching intently. Debs got up calculatingly, gathered some of his papers, and looked Judge Westenhaver in the eyes for a long pause. He began quietly, and slowly intensified in his speech. He did not offer any argument upon evidence. He did not ask the jury not to convict him. Instead, assuming they would, sought to make it clear what it was they were convicting him for:
I believe, as the revolutionary fathers believed in their day, that a change was due in the interests of the people, that the time had come for a better form of government, an improved system, a higher social order, a nobler humanity and a grander civilization…You may hasten the change, you may retard it; you can no more prevent it than you prevent the coming of the sunrise on the morrow.

If the jury would find him guilty, it was to slow down the movement and to prevent the coming of a new order. To Debs, putting him in prison was of no avail to the jury, the judge, or America. Instead, it would push further the social revolution. Before the jury gave their final comments, Judge Westenhaver reminded them that Debs was not on trial for his political beliefs, and instead was to be judged for the intent of his speech in relation to the Espionage and Sedition Acts.
At the sentencing hearing, Judge Westenhaver asked Eugene Debs if he had any last words before his sentence was pronounce. Never one to miss a chance to exalt his doctrine, Debs made a most impassioned address that Journalist Heywood Broun would call “one of the most beautiful passages in the English language.” He stood in front of Judge Westenhaver and the jury for a final statement before receiving their sentence:
If I had my way there would be no soldiers. But I realize the sacrifice they are making…I have been doing what little has been in my power to bring about a condition of affairs in this country worthy of the sacrifices they have made and that they are now making in its behalf…Your honor, I thank you, and I thank all of this court for their kindness, which I shall remember always. I am prepared to receive your sentence.

The court sentenced Eugene V. Debs to three concurrent ten-year terms in federal prison and disenfranchised him for life. Quick as the trial had ended, Stedman and is associates began preparing their appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court had heard two previous Espionage Act cases in January 1919 and was quick to deliver their opinion in Debs v. United States. Justice Oliver W. Holmes wrote what became famous opinions and dissents regarding the first amendment during this time. In the case Schenck v. United States, he wrote: “The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to protect.” That standard set by Justice Holmes was the standard under which Debs would be tried. Debs’s lawyers argued tried to argue his speech was protected by the first amendment, but the entire court rejected the argument. Justice Holmes wrote the opinion of the court in which the nine justices unanimously affirmed the Ohio District Court verdict. The Constitutional issue regarding the first amendment had been settled in Schenck. It was the “natural tendency” and “reasonably probable effect” of Debs’s speech that mattered in their decision. A month later Debs reported for imprisonment in the federal penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia.
While he was in prison, Debs wrote a number of columns criticizing the justice and prison system of the United States. The articles were published by Bell Syndicate and later collected and published together in his only book, Walls and Bars. In 1920, he ran for president for the fifth and final time. Prisoner #9653 received over 900,000 votes, almost one percent of the U.S. population at the time. President Woodrow Wilson intended to pardon all American citizens who were in prison or under arrest on account of “anything they have said in speech or print concerning their personal opinions during the war.” It turned out Wilson grew more vindictive and retracted his word, as he often did. He made sure to specifically speak about Eugene Debs: “This man was a traitor to his country and he will never be pardoned during my administration.” Debs’s health was declining rapidly. In January of 1921, Attorney General Mitchell Palmer asked President Wilson if Debs could receive a pardon that would free him on February 12, Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. Wilson returned the paperwork to Palmer and denied the request. It was not until December of the same year, under President Warren G. Harding, that Debs was pardoned—effective on Christmas Day. A statement from the Harding Administration summarized the Harding Administration’s opinion on Eugene Debs’s case: “There is no question of his guilt…He is a man of much personal charm and impressive personality, which qualifications make him a dangerous man calculated to mislead the unthinking and afford excuse for those with criminal intent.” Eugene Debs’s health continued to decline until he gave in. He died in hospice care in Illinois on October 20, 1926. He was seventy years old.
Because of his long arduous battle with the law, many civil libertarians have come to praise Debs for his fight for freedom of speech. Zechariah Chafee wrote a scathing critique of Justice Oliver W. Holmes in the aftermath of Debs v. United States. Chafee criticized Holmes’s argument in Schenck and his misuse of the same argument in Debs. He contended that if the Supreme Court were to apply its clear and present danger argument to the Debs case it would be “hard to see how he could have been held guilty.” He continues to criticize Justice Holmes’s arguments about the Espionage Act, the he discusses the “constitutionality of the Espionage Act of 1917 rather than its construction.” Chafee could see it was a constitutional law, but its interpretation caused its application to violate the free speech clause. He concludes on the Debs case when he writes that “bad tendency” is a bad test of criminality. “…A test which this article has endeavored to prove wholly inconsistent with freedom of speech.” Chafee, like many civil libertarians, believes that there should be a more objective way to judge the limitations first amendment in wartime.
After reading about Eugene V. Debs and other free speech cases during wartime, I return to a constant inner battle between rights and danger. Justice Holmes’s opinion in Schenck is most convincing. There should be limitations on speech if they present a danger to United States. But I’m not sure Debs qualified for punishment under that jurisprudence. His speech was provoking, but was it a case of clear and present danger? The majority of the speech was Debs bloviating about socialism. The little he did talk about the war, there were no instances where he declared, “assert your right” in opposition to the draft. I have a hard time bringing myself to understand the arrogance of Woodrow Wilson when he said, “that man will never be pardoned under my administration.” After the war had ended, Debs was plodding around prison old and weak. Even though I think his doctrine is deplorable and idiotic, Eugene V. Debs had his first amendment rights violated. In times of war, I will be the first to understand that desperate times call for desperate measures. But when the desperate time is over, and there is just the lingering arrogance of Woodrow Wilson preventing an old Debs from returning to his own for the last of his days, I find myself sympathizing with a socialist.