151: The First Red Scare - Bombings, The Palmer Raids, Eugene Debs, and J. Edgar Hoover 01:02:22

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near you. That's the letter K, the number 12.com slash HTDS. K12.com slash HTDS. It's about 11 o'clock at night, Monday, June 2nd, 1919. Alexander Mitchell Palmer, or Mitchell as he's known to his friends, or even just Mitch, is reading in the library of his DC row home located at 2132 R Street in Northwest Washington, DC. Whether the book is business or pleasure, I can't say.

Either would make sense, though. The husky, handsome 47-year-old with a full set of salt and peppered hair is currently serving as President Woodrow Wilson's U.S. Attorney General, but still waiting for Senate approval of his recess appointment, which is questionable considering that a congressional investigation has Mitchell under a microscope for his role as the alien property custodian. Will Congress conclude that he used this position to give plush jobs to Democrat friends while selling German trusts on the cheap?

Or will they find the fighting Quaker, as he's known, an honorable public servant? Even if exonerated and confirmed as Attorney General, how might this impact his 1920 presidential ambitions? Yes, Mitchell has every reason to be reading tonight, be that the law or something to distract himself. But now it's time for bed. Turning off the lights in the library, Mitchell heads to the stairs and slowly makes his way up. Once at the top, he takes a moment to check on his curly-haired daughter, Mary, already nine years old.

My, they grow up so quickly. It's now 11:15. Entering his own room, the acting Attorney General is ready for a good night's sleep. Just like his wife, Roberta. He changes out of his suit and tie and puts on some pajamas. And that's when it happens. Never willing to give in to his fears, the fighting Quaker heads downstairs to investigate the loud crashing sound. The sight is ghastly. His windows are blown in. Every photo and painting is on the glass-strewn floor.

His front door has been blown off its hinges and crashed into the door to his library. Reality strikes as Mitchell thinks about how much worse this could have been. What if Roberta or Mary had been downstairs? What if he was only five minutes slower going to bed tonight? Mitchell's heart pounds out of his chest as it dawns on him. Someone wants him dead. Just across the street, the blue-eyed, brown-haired, 37-year-old Assistant Secretary of the Navy reacts to the blast.

Having just walked in the door minutes ago with his wife, he leaps and bounds up the stairs, flying as fast as his strong and capable legs will carry him. Well, strong at this point in his life, that is. This is Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He finds his son, little 11-year-old James, at the window, staring at the Palmer's wrecked home and the debris scattered street.

The relieved father seizes James and holds him so tightly that the young Roosevelt will later recall, "He grabbed me in an embrace that almost cracked my ribs." And now that he knows his family is safe, Franklin's mind turns to his neighbor across the street. Stepping over shards of glass, strewn papers, and more, Franklin enters Mitchell's doorless home. He follows the same path as the now-wrecked front door toward the library. Here, Franklin finds his fellow Democrat and public servant, Mitchell Palmer.

The fighting Quaker is putting on a strong front. Still, he can't hide just how shaken he is and grateful to see a familiar face. His Quaker roots come out strong as these and those fly from his lips. "Thank thee, Franklin." The two men survey the damage and as they do, they find body parts. Was this an innocent victim walking in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or did the perpetrator make a fatal error?

The police soon arrive, roping off the street and bringing in searchlights. They find more clues, besides the chunks of human flesh lying on Franklin D. Roosevelt's doorstep and at the homes of other neighbors, like Senator Claude Swanson and Norway's envoy plenipotentiary, Helmer Brin. The street is covered in some 50 6x10 inch pamphlets with the following message:

Plain words. The powers that be make no secret of their will to stop here in America the worldwide spread of revolution. Class war is on and cannot cease but with a complete victory for the international proletariat. There will have to be bloodshed. There will have to be murder. We will kill because it is necessary. We will destroy to rid the world of your tyrannical institutions.

Long live social revolution. Down with tyranny. The anarchist fighters. That's right. It appears that this is the work of violent radicals, of anarchists. And as senators and congressmen alike gather at Mitchell Palmer's home that morning, they let the yet-to-be-confirmed Attorney General know that they stand with him. As one congressman from Massachusetts says, Palmer,

Ask for what you want and you will get it. The government is behind you in whatever you do to root out this kind of revolutionary organization in this country. And as Mitchell looks at his destroyed home, he does indeed intend to root these rad revolutionaries out. Every root and branch. So help him God. Welcome to History That Doesn't Suck. I'm your professor, Greg Jackson, and I'd like to tell you a story.

This wasn't the first time anarchists tried to bomb Mitchell Palmer. A month and a half prior, in late April 1919, anarchist immigrant Luigi Galliani's followers, known as Gallianists, mailed bombs to 36 eminent leaders across the United States. That list included acting AG Mitchell Palmer.

Only one bomb was delivered and exploded, sadly obliterating a maid's hands at Senator Thomas Hardwick's Georgia home and perhaps not experiencing an explosion himself kept that one from rattling Mitch. But this one, and again part of a multi-victim anarchist attack, oh it rattled him. With the remains of his failed assassin, Carlo Valdinossi, all over the street, this attack also left its mark on Mitch's mind.

Today, our tale is that of America's first red scare. A moment when very real radical violence on the heels of Russia's Bolshevik or communist revolution gave rise to a fear of leftist radicals that grew into a witch hunt. We'll start by backing up the clock a century for a broad history and breakdown of the ideologies at play.

socialism, specifically from utopian socialism through Karl Marx's scientific socialism, aka Marxism, to other terms like Bolshevism, communism, and anarchism. With this background, we'll return to the post-World War I U.S. to find a nation seeing foreign influence and red everywhere. So much so that even non-radical, democracy-loving American working men in trade unions feel the heat.

will bear witness as A.G. Mitchell Palmer and his young protege at the Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover, go on the hunt. Their Palmer raids will sweep up radicals, but also a lot of innocents as they use a very broad and constitutionally questionable net.

We'll listen to famed American socialist Eugene Debs test the limits of the First Amendment while on trial and experience a clash of views as Assistant Secretary of Labor Louis Post pushes back on the zealous red-hunting AG. We'll then end this episode with a scene that will touch your heart no matter where your political sympathies lie in all of this, as a Republican president offers liberty to incarcerated Gene Debs. The only question is, will the old socialist accept this gift?

So very much to do. So let's make our way to the early 19th century and get a beat on the historical context and evolution of these several leftist terms. AP History students, you're welcome. Rewind. In our efforts to understand the radical left of the early 20th century, we begin with an important predecessor, utopian socialism.

In the early 19th century, as classical liberalism's ideas on individual freedom and free market capitalism mixes with industrialization to yield a powerful, productive, but highly disruptive impact on the world, the utopian socialists want to offset the worst aspects. The answer, they assert, is a society less focused on the individual and more on the whole. They want to create a perfect society, hence utopian, by restructuring society on a communal basis.

What does that look like? Depends on the philosopher. And they have wildly different ideas. Henri de Saint-Simon still believes in hierarchy but wants one based on productivity, not inheritance, valuing those in, say, business and farming over kings and priests.

Charles Fouillé claims that humanity's 810 distinct personalities should live in cooperative communities of exactly 1,620 people. In 1825, British industrialist Robert Owen establishes a community in New Harmony, Indiana that rejects personal wealth, social status, and organized religion. A valiant effort, but it bombs after two years.

The list of utopian socialists is long, but by the 1830s and 40s, other socialist thinkers are in the fray. This includes Karl Marx. Born in the Germanic Rhineland, educated at the University of Berlin, and a former resident of Paris, Karl of the 1840s finds himself in England. He becomes good friends with Friedrich Engels, who, in 1845, writes Condition of the Working Class in England.

In a sentence, this book argues that industrialization is more harmful than beneficial to workers. Marx digs it. Three years later, in 1848, Frederick serves as junior author on the primarily Karl Marx-authored Communist Manifesto. In this and future writings, like Das Kapital, Karl explains his scientific socialism. We'll call it Marxism. Let's wrap our heads around it.

According to Karl's theory on history, which he calls historical materialism, history moves through stages. And for this brief definition of Marxism, we have four. Stage one was life before the 1789 French Revolution, a feudal world run by nobles as a burgeoning business class, that is, the bourgeoisie, sought to assert itself. Stage two began as the French Revolution delivered a bourgeois victory over the nobles.

Now ruling an industrializing world, the bourgeoisie wield their power by owning and thus controlling where people work, factories, and the raw materials used to work. Carl calls all this physical stuff the means of production.

But the bearded German says there's a third stage coming, imminently in fact, where the working class, aka the proletariat, will unite, revolt, and take down the bourgeoisie just as the bourgeoisie did the nobles. This forthcoming revolution, Karl says, will yield a socialist state in which the workers control the means of production. A fourth stage will follow. At this point, private property ceases to exist.

In fact, government no longer needed ceases to exist. This is pure communism. Ah yes, our next term: communism. It goes further than socialism. Communism calls for zero private ownership. Everything is communal. Marxism's radical ideas are quite attractive to 19th century workers. Feeling they've drawn the short end of the liberalism and industrialization stick, overworked and underpaid laborers believe it offers a better world.

Workers do unite, they strike, and sometimes clash violently with industrialists' hired hands or government troops. This includes the United States. We experienced such deadly strikes in episodes 97 and 98. But as the 19th century closes, Karl Marx's prediction of an imminent workers' revolution still hasn't occurred. Instead, various takes on Marxism emerge, many softer ones, creating a big tent on the political left.

As historian George Brinkley explains, quote,

Most Marxists had observed that progress in expanding democracy and providing a broader sharing in the benefits of capitalism by the masses, at least in the West, had made this revolutionary interpretation obsolete and largely irrelevant. The compromise between liberalism's demand for freedom and the socialist demand for using the state to correct the injustices of unrestrained capitalism had apparently created something Marx's laws had held impossible.

the achievement of a more just society through democracy. Close quote. We saw such compromises in the progressive era episodes. It wasn't a cakewalk, but corporations and unions compromised on wages while the nation's representative government responded to the people with new laws and regulations to protect its working citizens, all while not destroying the free market incentives that drive innovators and corporations. But that doesn't mean revolution-seeking radicals disappear.

For instance, anarchists, a group that differs from Marxists in not seeing stages as much as wanting to jump right to a government-free world of communism, are violent enough that Ellis Island rejects immigrants who adhere to the philosophy. The nation reels when anarchist Leon Cholgosh assassinates President William McKinley in 1901. Yikes! In 1905, the Industrial Workers of the World, or the IWW, organizes in Chicago.

A mixture of some 200 radicals, they include Marxists, other socialists, and anarchists. They seek to unite all workers under a single union. Some of their members, which are called Wobblies, are or will be famous, like songwriter Joe Hill, or our old acquaintance from a few past episodes, Indiana native and several times socialist candidate for U.S. president, Eugene, or just Gene, dabs.

But even with famous Gene in the ranks, their radicalism scares many. On November 5th, 1916, when 300 Wobblies head to Everett, Washington, to support striking shingle workers, authorities respond by arming and deputizing some 200 men. This only escalates things. We don't know who fired first, but scores are injured while two civilian deputies and five or more Wobblies end up dead. 74 Wobblies are also arrested.

They're all acquitted, but the blood spilt in Everett only further solidifies the IWW's image not just as radicals, but violent radicals. Meanwhile, the Great War is exacerbating America's concerns about radicals overall. First off, the war proves a catalyst for an actual workers' revolution in Russia.

We got the broad strokes of this in episode 130, but briefly, the war enables balding, exiled Russian radical Vladimir Lenin to return in 1917 and emerge as the revolutionary leader of a socialist state. In his take on Marxism, stage three doesn't have to be initiated by a swelling of class-conscious workers in an industrialized nation.

A minority, like his brilliantly if disingenuously named party, the Bolsheviks, or majoritarians, will do nicely. Nor does the state have to be fully industrialized. Lenin says a state dictatorship can step in and plan the economy.

The success of Russia's Bolsheviks, or Communists as, after the war, the term "Communist" is used to describe Marxism's full-on revolutionaries as opposed to more democratically inclined socialists, increases America's fear of the far left. To pull from episode 133, these fears contribute to Congress clamping down on possible dissent with the Espionage, Sabotage, and Sedition Acts. They make even speaking against the war effort or the US government a crime.

It doesn't take long for outspoken socialist Gene Debs to run afoul of laws like that. Speaking in Canton, Ohio, on June 16th, 1918, he tells his audience that war is wrong, that it forces workers to kill each other in the name of nationalism. He states his solidarity with Russia's radical Bolsheviks. Gene is soon arrested. The Hoosiers' trial will have a far-reaching impact. It's a cloudy afternoon, September 11th, 1918.

We're in Cleveland, Ohio, inside the white granite federal building's two-story oak and marble courtroom, where America's famed socialist, Eugene Debs, is on trial, charged with violating the Espionage Act while speaking in Canton. Currently in the middle of a 10-minute recess, the room is relatively quiet. Jowled, bespectacled Judge David Westenhaver sits at the bench. The packed courtroom spectators sit on the gallery's creaking wooden benches. All are anxious.

While the prosecution is struggling to prove Gene's speech had malicious intent or made any in the crowd turn anti-draft, the defense is entirely focused on one thing: the First Amendment's guarantee to the right of free speech. Gene is determined to challenge the Espionage and Sedition Acts themselves. He insists that "I have nothing to take back." So, what will happen? Well, the recess is up. Let's find out. Gene rises.

Though here with counsel, the 62-year-old famed orator and former presidential candidate is ready to speak on his own behalf. He walks toward the judge. They stare at each other for a full minute before the socialist turns toward the jury. With thunder cracking in the distance, Gene begins. For the first time in my life, I appear before a jury in a court of law to answer to an indictment for crime.

I am not a lawyer. I know only that you gentlemen are to hear the evidence brought against me. I would not retract a word. I have been accused of having obstructed the war. I admit it. Gentlemen, I abhor war. I would oppose the war if I stood alone. I believe in the right of free speech in war as well as in peace. I would not under any circumstances gag the lips of my bitterest enemy.

I have told you that I am no lawyer, but it seems to me that I know enough to know that if Congress enacts any law that conflicts with this provision in the Constitution, that law is void. If the espionage law finally stands, then the Constitution of the United States is dead. Gentlemen, I am the smallest part of this trial. There is an infinitely greater issue that is being tried today in this court, though you may not be conscious of it.

American institutions are on trial here before a court of American citizens. My fate is in your hands. I am prepared for the verdict. Responding to this speech, Prosecutor Edwin Wertz makes an analogy that will forever impact America's understanding of free speech.

He tells the jury, a man could go into a crowded theater and yell fire when there was no fire and people trampled to death and he would not be punished for it because the constitution says he has the right of free speech. The next day, the jury finds Gene guilty. He's sentenced to 10 years in prison. Gene's sentencing, which he's appealing, doesn't end the nation's concern over the Reds.

That same September 1918, as American doughboys prepare for the Meuse-Argonne offensive, North Carolina Democrat Senator Lee Slater Overman sets up a committee to investigate claims of Russian Bolshevik and German influence in the U.S. Their investigation of foreign radical influence will go well into next year. And as the Overman committee investigates, dock workers in Seattle strike to end wage controls put in place during the Great War and still in place despite the armistice.

They're greeted with threats rather than negotiation. So, the Seattle Central Labor Council calls for a general strike. More than 60,000 workers respond on February 5th, 1919. Seattle grinds to a stop. Sounds effective, but not in the current political climate. Three days later, the Los Angeles Times front page headline screams, Reds directing Seattle strike. Indeed, newspapers the nation over are blaming the strike on Bolshevism.

Oof, that's not what these unions want. But between this national narrative and Mayor Ole Hansen upping the city's police force, Seattle workers decide this strike isn't helping. It's only making them look like radicals. They end the strike on February 11th. Seattle workers' folding doesn't slow the nation's growing fears of Bolshevik influence, though. As we learned in the last episode, doughboys returning from France are met with little work, low wages, and inflation.

Some do as American workers have done for generations. They turn to the unions. Now, as was the case in Seattle, most of these veterans and unions are thinking about wages, not seizing the means of production. But as Vladimir Lenin and his crew found the Communist International, aka the Third International, in March 1919, and as the U.S. sees hundreds of strikes that same month and in April, newspapers blame the strikes on Russia and radicals.

America is seeing red. And sadly, actual radical revolutionaries like the anarchist immigrant Luigi Gagliani and his followers, the Gaglianists, see opportunity within this growing red hysteria. Yes, as I mentioned earlier, the Gaglianists mail their largely unsuccessful bombs in late April for a May Day, that is, an International Workers' Day, delivery.

But unrelated to those bombings, April is also when the Supreme Court rules on Gene Debs' appeal, upholding his verdict as guilty. American leftists and unionists are outraged, and in blue-collar immigrant Cleveland, this means protest. And what better day than May Day? The plan is to parade, but in this current political climate, that's a recipe for blood. It's about 2:30 p.m., May 1st, or May Day, 1919.

We're in Cleveland, Ohio, where some 30,000 are in the streets parading, or rather, protesting. Red clothes and flags abound. Some are uniformed vets. The throngs carry signs with various slogans. Workers unite, freedom for devs. And they run the left's political spectrum. Some are wobblies, others are socialists, while some are just union workers marching under the American Federation of Labor's banner.

But many spectating Clevelanders, some of whom are booing, see no differences. With the newspapers reporting anarchists are nailing bombs, a union man might as well be a Bolshevik, a communist. All they see are a bunch of reds. Still, things are peaceful. Until the parade reaches Superior Avenue's Colonial Theater, that is. It's here that a group of disapproving Great War veterans confront the parade. The former doughboys grab at the red flags.

Mounted police ride forward as a struggle ensues, but in the blink of an eye, all turns riotous. The parade route becomes a melee. Knives slash, guns discharge in the air, fists and clubs fly. Thousands of nearby Victory Loan workers, vets and marchers, including other vets, clash while hundreds of police try to keep order. On Woodland Avenue, Detective Charles Woodring charges in with his revolver drawn. He shouts, Stand back!

But as a man charges forward, the detective fires, hitting the rioter in the chin and killing him instantly. Meanwhile, Sergeant Robert Barrett is shot in the leg at the corner of Euclid and 9th. And elsewhere, a protester strikes Police Lieutenant Nelson Meeker on the head, fracturing his skull. When the parade route is finally cleared, hundreds are injured or arrested. Two or three are dead.

Meanwhile, the red flags are gathered and burned as the Socialist Party headquarters on Prospect Avenue is trashed. Cleveland goes to sleep that night to the sound of breaking glass, typewriters crashing onto the pavement, and crackling flames. This message is sponsored by Greenlight.

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Cleveland's experience isn't an outlier to labor-related violence on May Day, 1919. That same day, Boston and New York City both see blood-soaked riots.

This violence, on top of the anarchist mail bombings intended to strike 36 American leaders, drives a national call for retribution against these violent radicals, particularly as many fearfully, though incorrectly, assume that foreign Bolsheviks are now leading the whole American left in a revolutionary effort to turn the United States red. Yet, despite being among the targets of the largely failed anarchist bombings, Acting Attorney General Mitchell Palmer refuses to cast such a broad net.

Indeed, among his first actions as AG is releasing thousands of detained German descent immigrants. That disposition shifts on June 2nd, as Mitch stands in the smoldering ruins of his library, knowing that luck alone saved him, his wife, and his daughter from dying at the hands of an anarchist bomber. And further, as he learns that his home was but one in a coordinated bombing with targets in eight cities. This second round of anarchist bombings in 1919 only kills two people.

Night Watchman William Boehner, and, as we know, Mitchell's assailant. But the combination of these bombings and riots paint a powerful red picture. Thus, our soon-Senate-confirmed Attorney General is ready to fight the Red Menace. To do so, he looks to his Department of Justice's Bureau of Investigation. Now, you might be thinking I meant the Federal Bureau of Investigation. That's a future name.

Right now, this federal force, founded in 1908 by then-President Theodore Roosevelt to investigate government corruption, is called the Bureau of Investigation, or the BOI. And like other federal offices, the Great War expanded its power, particularly its power to push for the deportation of radical immigrants.

October 1918's immigration bill empowered the executive, and thus the AG-run Department of Justice and the BOI, to deport non-citizens who are members of or affiliated with any organization, association, society, or group that supports sabotage or violence against the United States. In fact, this law leads directly to the deportation of anarchist Luigi Gagliani.

Well, given this law, Attorney General Mitchell Palmer sees a path to ridding the United States of what he now believes to be a largely foreign, radical attempt to destroy his nation and, frankly, to make a name for himself in national headlines while he's at it. Like New York State's Lusk Committee, Mitchell wants to carry out sweeping raids on leftist organizations.

To that end, he and his two right-hand men, director at the BOI, mustachioed and heavy set William Flynn, aka Big Bill, and assistant attorney general Francis Garvin, craft a plan on June 17th. It's twofold. One, foreign radicals picked up in these raids will be sent packing. To quote Mitch, the deportation statute ought to be used liberally against these alien anarchists, these alien troublemakers. Close quote.

Two, the Department of Justice will pressure the states to prosecute any citizens they catch as well. Now, how will these raids operate? And who will run point? Again, the trio has a plan for both. They decide to create a new office within the BOI called the Radical Division, which will focus specifically on collecting information on radical groups across America.

As for who will run it, well, Assistant AG Francis Garvin suggests the Department of Justice's sharp, clean-shaven, 24-year-old recent George Washington law graduate who's an expert on immigration law and a full-on workaholic: J. Edgar Hoover. As Big Bill's agents conduct surveillance and Edgar creates a filing system for all the incoming case files, Mitchell's actually losing heart. Or perhaps having second thoughts?

Acting on Big Bill's and Francis Garvin's warning, New York City has 11,000 policemen ready to protect the city from an insurgency on the 4th of July. But the only explosions are fireworks. And how come all the information that Edgar is collecting is so boring? Intel is finding very few groups actually calling for violence.

While the Union of Russian Workers calls for taking up arms in its membership agreement, it appears most of these Russian immigrant workers are there less for radical revolution and more to meet Russian women. Mitch and his boys are looking for a massive, coordinated, underground Bolshevik socialist or anarchist conspiracy, but all they're finding is big talk from small potatoes. Yet, the nation's fears are not diminishing as we enter late 1919.

Radical unrest is on the rise. Could it be, as Edgar wonders, that black Americans are going communist? Meanwhile, Americans take note as famed anarchist and immigrant Emma Goldman, sent to prison for denouncing the draft in 1917, is released.

The nation's citizens listened earnestly that September as President Woodrow Wilson, touring the country to drum up support for his League of Nations, warns an audience in Des Moines, quote, Close quote.

With the summer of apparent inactivity in the Radical Division, shouts coming from coast to coast for action, and news of Woodrow Wilson falling sick making a 1920 presidential bid sound more and more possible for interested Democrats, Mitchell Palmer can't wait any longer. With Edgar's help, the Attorney General picks a target for a big raid. It's about 8 or 9 o'clock on a chilly evening, Friday, November 7th, 1919.

We're at the Russian People's House, or the Union of Russian Workers headquarters, located in the four-story red brick building at 133 East 15th Street in Gramercy Park, New York City. Longtime educator and Russian immigrant, 50-year-old bespectacled Mitchell Lavrovsky is teaching algebra to a group of fellow immigrants from his country.

Mitchell loves teaching here. It's a great way to use his time as he waits for his citizenship to go through. Suddenly, a police officer pushes through the door, revolver at the ready. He barks at the startled Russians. Out into the hall, everybody. Line up there and don't make any noise. Nobody panics. This is the third police raid on the Russian people's house this year. They know the drill. But still, one of the women present asks what the purpose of the raid is.

She gets a quick reply. Shut up, bear you, if you know what's good for you. BOI agents in collared shirts, ties, and winter coats mix with the boys in blue as they rush into the building. They search through every nook and cranny, bagging any writings or books they find, while others search the men and women. It's at this point that, according to Mitchell, without any provocation, an agent struck me on the head, and simultaneously two others struck and beat me brutally.

Mitchell tumbles down the staircase to the lobby. But did he fall or was he thrown? He and the agents will recall it differently. However it happens, newspaper reports confirm that after Mitchell lands in the building's lobby, the police and BOI agents continue to beat the Russian math teacher. Per BOI director Big Bill Flynn's instructions, who's personally overseeing this raid, everyone who can't produce citizenship papers or won't answer questions is placed in the waiting police wagons outside.

The officers arrest 211 here tonight. Most of those arrested at the Russian people's house are innocent, as one Russian will later tell the newspapers, They're released by morning. 38, however, are identified as actual Reds. They're sent straight from BOI headquarters to Ellis Island. According to the Chicago Tribune, they're wearing bandages and have black eyes.

One detainee yells to the watching crowds, We are going back to Russia. That's a free country. New York isn't the only city to see such raids on November 7th, 1919. Boston, Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, and yes, Cleveland. 18 cities are hit simultaneously, all targeting the Union of Russian Workers, resulting in 1,182 arrests. Most are ultimately released.

Only 249 are deported, leaving that December aboard the Buford, or the Soviet Ark, as the Russia-bound vessel is dubbed. But even though these raids, called the Palmer Raids, failed to produce mass deportations, A.G. Mitchell Palmer is a hero. Newspapers acknowledge that the raids are indeed violent, but that's easy to overlook with famous anarchists like Emma Goldman shipping out.

Furthermore, Mitch and his team report that they've captured a plan for the overthrow of America as well as a counterfeit money press in Newark. Meanwhile, the nation's coal strike is suddenly ending as unions grow timid, not wanting to come across as radicals. Things are looking good for Mitchell then, who's moving to the front of the line for Democratic presidential hopefuls. So good, in fact, that he has to hand off the next big raid to J. Edgar Hoover entirely. That raid goes down on January 2nd, 1920.

It's massive. Edgar hits hard across dozens of cities. Over 3,000 people are arrested and at least as many taken and held in custody, sometimes for hours, sometimes for months awaiting charges. Despite the pushback against Palmer Raid violence last November and orders to the BOI to remain peaceful, these January raids are so vast that the Bureau has to call on local police and citizen groups for help, which means these raids are often just as bad, if not worse.

Anyone without citizenship papers could expect to face interrogation, and if they refuse to confess, well, Edgar is forced to admit, quote, there had been clear cases of brutality in the raids, close quote. But even when the rounded up immigrants are not beaten, they're often detained in tight, overcrowded, and ill-prepared jails. Secretary of Labor William B. Wilson, who oversees the Bureau of Immigration and is not related to the president, is frustrated.

He tells AG Mitchell Palmer that his office can't handle all the deportation cases being shoved at him. Furthermore, as a proud Scottish immigrant, Pennsylvania coal miner, and union man, Secretary William Wilson is not a fan of how Mitchell fails to delineate between union workers and radical Marxists or anarchists.

But while William is willing to write angry letters, Mitchell gets his first real opponent when William falls ill and is forced to hand the reins to Assistant Secretary of Labor Louis Post. This 71-year-old New Jersey native may look like a philosophy professor. Picture Sigmund Freud, but with thick, dark hair, a full gray beard, and all glowed up. But Louis comes into the office armed with an extensive knowledge of immigration law and a soft heart for the underdog.

Now, Lewis is not a socialist, and he supports deporting violent radicals, but the assistant labor secretary is shocked at what he finds looking into these deportation cases. Some warrants were mimeographed copies that weren't even completely filled out. Some called for the arrest of people that simply attended a socialist meeting, even though they weren't members.

Working day and night through March and April of 1920, he covers 1,600 cases and scraps 1,141 of these warrants in the process. Mitchell is enraged. His presidential campaign is built on the success of these raids, and now they're being undermined by this Van Dyke-bearded bureaucrat? Labor Secretary William Wilson is healthy and comes back on the job by April, but Lewis has already canceled the warrants.

And so, as President Woodrow Wilson calls for his first cabinet meeting since his stroke some six months ago, Mitchell is ready to have words with Lewis' boss. It's about 10:00 a.m., Wednesday, April 14th, 1920. President Woodrow Wilson sits at the desk in his study at the White House, smiling as Chief Usher Ike Hoover announces each member of his cabinet upon entering. Ike does so to help Woodrow remember their names.

This is the first meeting since September, before Woodrow's collapse in October, and none of these men know the full extent of what happened. Woodrow's wife, Edith, and his doctor, Admiral Kerry Grayson, have helped to keep his stroke a guarded secret. The cabinet soon gets down to business. Strikes have erupted across the country again. Railroad workers, truckers, elevator operators, and more. Attorney General Mitchell Palmer is certain he knows what's behind all of this.

Bolsheviks, and the IWW. Secretary of Labor William Wilson tries to temper this fiery take. The Scottish-born, Pennsylvania-Colefield-raised union supporter answers, Mitchell isn't having it, though. The AG and Labor Secretary are soon in a heated argument.

Mitchell rages against Assistant Secretary of Labor Louis Post, shouting, If acting Secretary Post had deported them, the strike would have ended. William fires back in defense of his Assistant Secretary. All who committed overt acts or joined the Communist Labor Party by signing have been deported. If Post were removed from office, it would end the strike. It might well aggravate it. First Lady Edith Wilson and Dr. Kerry Grayson push into the room.

Naval Secretary Josephus Daniels will later recall that both have, quote, anxiety written on their faces, close quote. Woodrow smiles at his wife and then his cabinet. The men wince as the professorial president staggers and limps toward his wife and doctor. Edith tells the gathered cabinet, holding this cabinet meeting is an experiment, you know.

But as he leaves, Woodrow, who's been so out of it since his stroke that he's learning much about his Attorney General's red hunt in this meeting, stops and looks at Mitchell and William. Gently, he says to the AG, "Palmer, do not let this country see red." And with that, the President limps into his wife's arms and leaves his cabinet behind. Don't let the country see red. What did President Woodrow Wilson mean?

Does that mean stop the raids or to push harder? The phrase clearly stuck with A.G. Mitchell Palmer as that same day he tells reporters, quote, Some people thought in January when I made my statement about the red activities and began the raids that I was seeing red, close quote. But nevertheless, Mitch isn't caving. He goes on to assure the reporters that more strikes and unrest can be expected.

Meanwhile, Mitch finds congressional allies ready to attack Assistant Labor Secretary Louis Post. Congressman Homer Hooch of Kansas moves to impeach Louis. Ohio's Congressman Martin Davey supports this, using the AG's cabinet meeting claims almost verbatim, saying that the nation's current strikes only continue because Louis stopped those deportations.

But Labor Secretary William Wilson hits back. He immediately holds a new hearing on the Communist Labor Party, further interrogating whether the head of the Bureau of Investigation's Radical Division, J. Edgar Hoover, is in the right to deport its immigrant members. On April 24, 1920, Edgar makes a great show entering the hearing with stacks of seized communist literature. But the defense attorneys refuse to be intimidated. They put the squeeze on the Department of Justice.

Who are Edgar's informants? How involved were they in setting up meetings before the January raids? Young and inexperienced, Edgar fails to keep his cool. He accuses the defense of attacking him personally. This emotional outburst only leads to more thinking that perhaps Lewis is right. Maybe these red raids have gotten out of hand. That impression only grows when the radical division warns the country that this year's mayday will be far worse than last year's.

This time, Americans can expect a widespread, violent Bolshevik revolution. Even with concerns mounting that Mitchell and Edgar might be crying wolf, the country prepares. Thousands of policemen are ready to meet the threat. D.C. itself is put under a lockdown that papers call, quote, unequaled in the history of Washington, close quote. Then it arrives. May Day, 1920. Nothing happens.

It's not just less than last year, it's positively peaceful. Putting insult to injury, one newspaper leads with the headline, Palmer Riot Predictions Fail. Nobody Murdered Yet. Ouch. It's not long after this that Lewis appears before Congress for his impeachment hearing. Speaking for 10 hours in his own defense across May 7th and 8th, 1920, he not only provides legal and technical details, he cracks jokes.

Where Edgar looks like a petulant child, Louis appears as the informed adult. But stepping back for a moment, the difference between the two men is a matter of perspective. To Edgar, membership alone in a radical group makes a person radical and thus justifies deportation or prosecution. But not to Louis. He looks at the cases individually, asking if the person in question actually shares the group's radical beliefs. And even then, has this individual pursued those goals with violence?

While Edgar is quick to look at the numbers, Lewis is just as quick to dismiss people as not grasping what these groups actually stand for. These raids did capture real, violent, and revolutionary radicals, like the mail bombing Gallienists. But these groups were so small and factionalized that they would have had a hard time overthrowing the Denny's, much less the US government. This becomes clearer as the hearing continues.

Eventually, Congressman Edward Poe asks Lewis if he realizes that his high bar will make deportation significantly more difficult. The Assistant Labor Secretary answers, quote, Every rule in the interest of personal liberty makes it more difficult to take personal liberty away from a man who is entitled to his liberty. Close quote. Damn.

Showing himself to be not a champion of the Reds, but the values of individual liberties upon which the United States stands, and which do indeed conflict with Marxism's values of heavy state intervention in the name of protection, even congressmen initially hostile to Lewis start to think the man has a point.

Following this crushing blow and decrease in deportations, A.G. Mitchell Palmer and Director Edgar Hoover face damning claims from groups like the National Popular Government League and the National Civil Liberties Bureau or the American Civil Liberties Union, as the latter will soon be known. They're accusing the Justice Department of operating a spy ring. Edgar responds by having his BOI agents steal documents from them.

This will not be the last time that Edgar will use his agents to find dirt on those who criticize him or his agencies. Meanwhile, Mitchell is trying to find the balance between taking the credit for attacking the Red Menace and distancing himself from any overreach. Remember, he's got a presidential campaign to run, and it's built on the idea that he's the nation's protector. Unable to back down, he insists that Lewis Post has, quote, perverted sympathy for the criminal anarchists of the country, close quote.

Even as criticism for his raids mount on all sides, and Mitch has to admit that some suspects were taken without warrants and beaten, and that some in his department acted illegally, the AG maintains that Lewis spared admitted anarchists. With controversy brewing, Congress asks Mitchell to testify about his raids before the Rules Committee as it decides on Lewis' impeachment on June 1, 1920.

Edgar spends the rest of May preparing testimony, exhibits, and talking points for their defense. For two days, the committee listens as the gray-haired AG reads the 209 pages prepared by his young protege. Mitchell rails against the liberal press and their allies in Congress, assuring all that the Red Menace is real and only waiting to strike. I wonder, as Mitchell reads, does his mind drift to his wife and curly-haired daughter and how radicals nearly killed them almost exactly one year ago?

Whatever his intentions, Congress decides to end the impeachment inquiry by doing nothing to Lewis and going into recess. Neither Mitchell nor Lewis have definitively won this battle. Meanwhile, the nation seems ready to move on from the Red Scare. But it's easy to move on when the streets are quiet. How will America respond if there's another bomb? It's a warm but damp late morning, Thursday, September 16th, 1920.

we're at 23 wall street in new york city just outside the four-story tall tennessee marble headquarters of jp morgan and company this world-famous bank may be progressively surrounded by more and more skyscrapers but even now more than seven years since jp's death the house of morgan still stands apart

Outside this impressive monument to capitalism, another celebration of the dollar takes place as messenger boys dash around, cars motor by, and push cart vendors jockey for sales, all in the echo of a constantly growing concrete jungle. Just another busy day for the Big Apple. As all of this daily commotion goes on, bells at the nearby Trinity Church chime the noon hour. Nobody notices the horse-drawn cart that pulls up outside Morgan Bank.

The driver doesn't stand out, nor does the horse or the worn wooden cart. Nobody thinks twice as the driver hops off the cart and walks away. And that's when it happens. The massive deafening explosion echoes throughout downtown Manhattan. It shatters the windows of the Morgan Bank and every building around for half a mile while throwing men, women, and children alike to the ground and enveloping the whole area under an ominous green cloud.

Some run for safety, others help those around them. Still more lie on the ground, unable to even scream. The wounded and dead are scattered everywhere amidst the shattered glass and debris. Inside the bank, shrapnel kills Bill Joyce, while John Donahue will die later from his burns. Ultimately, 38 die and 300 are injured, as is the House of Morgan. The blast leaves deep pockmarks in the bank's marble exterior that will remain visible forever.

Was it a bomb? Was it an accident? The Bureau of Investigation takes the case, but witnesses can't agree on anything. Worse still, albeit for good intentions, the Board of Governors for the New York Stock Exchange has the streets cleaned overnight, unintentionally sweeping away most of the evidence. With little to go on, the BOI initially decides that the explosion was an accident. America's radical groups quickly agree. They're quite happy not to have the finger pointed at them.

Still, as the BOI continues its investigation, a few threatening flyers surface, bearing the same signature as the flyers found after the bombing at Mitchell Palmer's home: the American Anarchist Fighters. But ultimately, there isn't enough to solve the case. Though quite possibly an anarchist attack, the truth of the 1920 Wall Street bombing will forever remain elusive.

This bombing leaves a deep impact. For a generation, New York bankers will ask one another where they were when that explosion devastated Wall Street. And yet, the nation is also exhausted with seeing red. It seems that Americans just want, to borrow a phrase from this year's Republican presidential nominee, Warren G. Harding, a return to normalcy. While Warren's presidential run is a story for another day, Mitchell's is not.

In the summer of 1920, he loses at the Democratic National Convention, which instead chooses Ohio Governor James Cox as its candidate for president, and Mitchell's friend Franklin D. Roosevelt for vice president. In the end, it seems the Palmirades kill rather than help Mitchell's political ambitions. When his tenure as Attorney General ends on March 4, 1921, so does his political career.

He lives quietly with his wife, remaining friends with Franklin D. Roosevelt until a heart attack ends the former Red hunting AG's life on May 11th, 1936. As for J. Edgar Hoover, he survives the bad press that comes from the Palmer Raids, but he tries to distance himself from them as much as possible. The Radical Division gets rebranded with a name change to the General Intelligence Division. Edgar continues to work there until he's promoted in 1924 as Director of the Bureau of Investigation.

He'll hold that position well through its name change to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1935, ultimately leading the Bureau for 48 years until he too dies of a heart attack on May 2nd, 1972. But that's a ways away. This isn't the last we'll hear from Ettinger. But keeping our eye on the early 1920s, President Warren Harding's call for a return to normalcy starts to sink in.

While the Espionage Act sticks around, Congress repeals the Sedition Act in March of 1921, even as Gene Debs continues to rot in prison for violating this law. In fact, he even made his fifth run for president in 1920 from his prison cell. Many Americans want to see mercy extended to the aging socialist. That's something wartime President Woodrow Wilson refused to do, but Warren is sympathetic.

And so, on Christmas Eve, Gene receives word that he's going to get a Christmas present from the US President, his freedom. It's almost noon, Christmas Eve, December 24th, 1921. Just like the last three Christmases, Gene Debs is in his prison cell at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. But this Christmas could be his last here, if he accepts the President's offer, that is. He's a bit torn about leaving.

That may sound crazy, but while President Warren Harding has commuted his sentence along with about 24 others, Gene isn't sure it's right to accept his freedom while more than a hundred of his fellow radicals remain behind bars. Further, questions about the limits of free speech during wartime will remain unanswered if he accepts. Then again, he's so tired.

The bald and gaunt First Amendment fighter is now 66 years old. With friends and family insisting that he can better fight his battles as a free man, he finally decides he should do it. He'll accept his freedom. It's now the following day, Christmas morning.

Having shared a nice breakfast with Warden J.E. Deich and said a few goodbyes to inmates who are now dear friends, the old and balding socialist, with $5 in a pocket of his cheaply made suit, walks down the prison's halls. Then, the moment comes. He breathes fresh air as he steps outside of the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. Newsreel cameras and press capture the famous radical walking toward a car, but then suddenly, he stops.

Perhaps this is his real Christmas present. The warden has let the prisoners come to the windows to say goodbye. Three stories of incarcerated men press against the barred windows of the heavy white stone fortress, clapping and cheering. Gene turns, waves his hat at them, and weeps. He'll later call this, quote, "the most deeply touching and impressive moment and most profoundly dramatic incident in my life."

Their cheers are audible for half a mile as Gene is driven away to the train station. Once there, he tells the trailing reporters that he isn't going straight home to his wife over 500 miles away in Terre Haute, Indiana. First, he's visiting Washington, D.C. The old radical will be joining President Warren Harding for a late Christmas dinner at the White House. The two men will largely keep this meeting between themselves.

But I can tell you that when Gene arrives at the White House the next day, December 26th, Warren shakes the aging troublemaker's hand and says, "I have heard so damned much about you, Mr. Debs, that I am now very glad to meet you personally." Gene offers his classic toothy smile, missing tooth and all. Gene Debs spends the next few years thinking and writing, but in bad health. He'll die five years later in 1926.

But as we wrap the life of this high-profile radical in A.G. Mitchell Palmer's crusade, the close of America's first red scare feels a bit inconclusive. Nothing definitive comes on the constitutionality of the raids. J. Edgar Hoover's new General Intelligence Division will be no more restrained than the Radical Division was. Gene's fight over the limits of free speech end with little more than the idea that you cannot yell fire in a crowded theater.

Even as a fatigued nation stops viewing unions as being completely analogous to violent revolutionaries, it seems Americans will have more questions to answer on all of the above in years ahead. As for Mitchell Palmer, it's easy to view him as a man mad with power, seeing red everywhere. But I see him with some compassion. He was a different man before a revolutionary anarchist literally brought violence to his doorstep. Small wonder that the reds loomed so large in his eyes.

At the same time, Lewis Post's criticisms seem to have been a necessary check, reminding us of how fears, even if well-founded or at least understandable, can give way to excess, to a witch hunt. But a red witch hunt and questions about a citizen's responsibilities and the limits of free speech aren't the only challenges the nation is facing in these early post-war years. Renewed racial tension, violence, and cold-blooded murder are sweeping across the land.

Next time, we'll hear a deadlier story. The story of a renewed Ku Klux Klan.

History That Doesn't Suck is created and hosted by me, Greg Jackson. Episode researched and written by Greg Jackson and Will King. Production by Airship. Sound design by Molly Bach. Theme music composed by Greg Jackson. Arrangement and additional composition by Lindsey Graham of Airship. For bibliography of all primary and secondary sources consulted in writing this episode, visit htbspodcast.com.