Ernest Freeberg: President Wilson waged a war on free speech – Knoxville News Sentinel

Ernest Freeberg, Guest columnist 5:05 a.m. ET April 2, 2017

The Dough Boy, a memorial to veterans of World War I, sits in front of the Old Knoxville High School, pictured May 27, 2010. (NEWS SENTINEL ARCHIVE)(Photo: KNS Archive, J. Miles Cary/News Sentinel)Buy Photo

Today, Americans will pause to remember the centenary of President Woodrow Wilsons stirring message to Congress, asking for a declaration of war on Germany. We have no selfish ends to serve, he told lawmakers in 1917. We desire no conquest, no dominion. Instead, the United States would join this terrible conflict in order to bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.

Many Americans were deeply inspired by Wilsons call for the nation to fight in the name of a just and lasting peace. After Germany was beaten, Wilson predicted, the United States would lead in the creation of a new international order that would defend the rights of small nations and,through collective action, make the world safe for democracy.

While the Great War marks a major turning point in the nations engagement in international affairs, it is well for us also to remember the terrible toll that this war took on Americas democracy on the home front.

Ernest Freeberg(Photo: Submitted)

First, we must understand that a great number of Americans remained unpersuaded by Wilsons arguments. A vibrant peace movement had seen the war coming for more than a decade, and had warned against the threat that militarism posed to American values a bloated budget, higher taxes, and an expansion of federal authority that would distort the nations democratic values. Further, a third of Americans in 1917 were either immigrants or the children of immigrants, and fighting with the Allies tugged on the conflicting loyalties felt by German, Irishand Jewish Americans. Christian pacifists, such as Tennessees Alvin York, felt religious scruples against violence, and political radicals scoffed at Wilsons lofty sentiments, declaring the war a turf battle between Europes economic rivals. The only victors, they warned, would be American bankers and arms manufacturers; this would be a rich mans war and a poor mans fight.

This is a 1919 photo of Sgt. Alvin York of the U.S. Army in an unknown location. Two Tennessee researchers who think they pinpointed the World War I battlefield where Sgt. Alvin C. York's valor earned him a Medal of Honor. (AP Photo/Department of U.S. Army)(Photo: DEPARTMENT OF U.S. ARMY, ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Desperate to draft, train and ship an army of 4 million men to France, the Wilson administration decided that free and open debate was a luxury that the nation could not afford. The attorney general asked citizens to report anyone who seemed suspiciously unenthusiastic about the war, and federal agents soon spent countless hours tracking down bogus tips. Congress passed the Espionage Act, a law that proved useless in catching spies but empowered prosecutors to send thousands of anti-war speakers to jail, some for 10-year sentences. Another federal law threatened similar harsh punishment for anyone who spoke or wrote any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the government, the Constitution, the flagor the armed forces. The U.S. Post Office used these laws to silence any publication that dared to challenge the governments policy.

memday4.SY--met-- A detail of a battle scene on the pedestal of World War I Doughboy statue at Fifth Ave. in front of the Old Knoxville High school building has been completely restored and cleaned. 2005 Saul Young/News Sentinel (Photo: Saul Young)

This intolerant fervor spread to state lawmakers, who passed their own sedition laws, forced teachers to take loyalty oaths, and struck a blow for liberty by taking the German language out of the public-school curriculum.

Not content to silence its critics, the Wilson administration took unprecedented control of the marketplace of ideas. Recruiting some of the nations finest writers, scholars and artists, the government advertised America at home and abroad. When the war broke out in August1914, few observers on either side of the Atlantic could agree on the causes of this horrendous conflict. But by 1917, government propaganda portrayed the war as a cosmic clash between the forces of darkness and light. As a concerned journalist observed, the government conscripted public opinion as they conscripted men and money and materials. They goose-stepped it. They taught it to stand at attention and salute.

World War I soldiers visit a Red Cross canteen at the Southern Railway station. (McClung Historical Collection)(Photo: McClung Historical Collection)

All this fake news had a terrifying effect. Across the country, Americans with a bad case of war fever attacked immigrants, pacifists, political radicalsand sometimes just those stubborn individualists who dared to speak their mind in public. Men exercised their patriotism by flogging, tar and feathering, and lynching their fellow citizens.

In the end, American soldiers made a decisive contribution to the Allies victory. But Wilson proved unable to deliver the more rational and just postwar order he had conjured in his 1917 war declaration. Disillusioned, a growing number of Americans came to recognize the enormous pressures that war puts on the nations democratic traditions. Among them was a small group of lawyers, from all sides of the political spectrum, who created the American Civil Liberties Union, first organized to defend the rights of those jailed for opposing the nations role in World War One. An important but often forgotten legacy of the Great War, the ACLU has been working ever since to defend the right of citizens to speak their minds in times of war.

Ernest Freeberg is the head of the University of Tennessee History Departmentand the author of "Democracys Prisoner: Eugene V. Debs, the Great War, and the Right to Dissent" (Harvard University Press, 2008).

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Ernest Freeberg: President Wilson waged a war on free speech - Knoxville News Sentinel