Oh, please. He ran Emma Goldman out of the country and all of the Sacco-Vanzetti gang of Boston murderers and thugs. Emma’s boyfriend nearly stabbed Frick to death. There is not one silent comedy film made during this period that doesn’t have a joke about anarchist bombs! I just wish our modern attorney generals had the balls of Mr. Palmer!
“They constituted a horrific, shameful episode in American history, one of the lowest moments for liberty since King George III quartered troops in private homes.”
I don’t think the author understood the Quartering Act; troops sent to protect the colonists themselves from Indian raids (and a decade earlier, the French as well) needed somewhere to stay. The colonists eventually tired of it as the last French & Indian War became a memory, but like many of the taxes caused by the war it was a measure which benefited the colonists themselves. A few decades later, the War of 1812 showed how the Indian threat had not disappeared altogether.
I wouldn’t like it (seen through the prism of modern times), but at the time it was an understandable measure.
One bit of irony, looking back from 2020:
This writer dares to suggest that the sainted FBI might cross any line in trying to get their man.
We now know that Hoover certainly was known to cross a few lines to get his man.
Investigations soon established that Germany had developed an extensive espionage and sabotage network in the U.S. Moreover, various German ethnic organizations in America actively collaborated with the German government in those activities and in covert propaganda against the Allies.
So confident was the German ambassador in his country's hold on the loyalties of German Americans that he famously warned the American Secretary of State that if America declared war on Germany, a million German Americans would rise in rebellion against the government. The Secretary of State, Robert Lansing, replied that would not deter the government because we had a million and one lamp posts available.
After World War I, America remained on edge due to massive immigration and the growing prominence of anarchism and radical socialist ideologies, and of labor and political disputes and the murders and bombings they spawned. Wall Street itself was bombed on September 16, 1920, at lunch hour, resulting in dozens of deaths and hundreds wounded. Italian anarchists were suspected, but no one was charged.
America's domestic politics was deeply unsettled by those and many similar events. Critics of the Red Scare and the Palmer Raids ought not to ignore the genuine and well-founded concerns that prompted them.
Deporting Emma and arresting two armed robbers is fine. But Wilson’s attack on free speech is the worst in our nation’s history. Palmer unleashed a young progressive homo named J Edgar Hoover on America.
The organization he created and imprinted his lack of values on tramples on the constitution to this very day.
It sure would be nice to see Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton running for the hills... 8-)
Bump to my own self.