The Roaring Twenties: Schenck V. United States

The jove atmosphere of the “Roaring Twenties” first cracked in 1918 when a bout of paranoia, originally provoked by the success of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917, turned into mass hysteria, as the American people came to believe that a communist takeover was imminent. A grim reminder of years past, the “Red Scare” justified the employment of such repressive laws, and did so at the expense of the American people, who had become accustomed to losing their civil liberties during times of perceived danger under President Wilson’s wartime administration. During this time Congress passed the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, placing restraints on citizens’ right to free speech and freedom of the press with the prohibiting of acts of considerable aggression or abusive language against the …show more content…
Teachers were forced to sign loyalty oaths, while the citizen’s right to due process was continually revoked. The Espionage Act was used in the case of Schenck v. United States in 1919, which oversaw the trial of the General Secretary of the American Socialist Party, Charles Schenck, who had been found printing anti-war documents meant to be shipped to men slated for conscription. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Espionage Act, despite Schenck’s protests that his right to free speech had been ignored, with Justice Holmes explaining that a citizen’s civil liberties cease to exist once if they themselves are found to be a “clear and present danger” to society. Another significant case in which the Espionage Act was used was that of Debs v. United States in 1918, in which Eugene V. Debs, a well-known socialist and head of the American Railway Union, was imprisoned for anti-war speech. Meanwhile, the fear of subversive violence strengthened already present xenophobic sentiments in the nation, specifically