Wall Street bombing 1920 - [NYC and terrorists]
President Woodrow Wilson faced trying times. The nation had come through the slaughter of World War I, followed by the even more deadly Spanish Flu pandemic. Returning soldiers clashed with immigrants for jobs, the newspapers were full of stories of labor unrest and general strikes, wages didn’t keep up with inflation, deadly race riots broke out in Chicago and St. Louis, wartime shortages for essentials like sugar persisted and crime was rapidly on the increase. As if that wasn’t enough, small but vocal groups of socialists, communists and anarchists fervently preached the downfall of the corrupt capitalist system and the coming revolution of the proletariat. Wilson, kept a clamp on vocal opposition to the war by passing the Espionage Act, which prescribed prison terms and fines for anyone who spoke out against conscription, criticized the armed forces, or otherwise gave aid and comfort to the enemy Hun. The 1917 Espionage Act was followed by the Sedition Act of 1918 which forbid ‘’disloyal, profane, scurrilous or abusive language,’’ against the U.S. government. These laws were still in force in the summer of 1919 when Wilson appointed fellow Democrat A. Mitchell Palmer as his attorney general. Several months later, Wilson was felled by a stroke and was incapacitated for the remainder of his presidency. Many of the nation’s problems fell to Palmer, including the problem of what to do about the radicals, many of whom were immigrants to the country.
Thanks for the account and the link, seems there are some similarities.