Cause and effect of Palmer Raids?

Question

Please help

Answer 1

The crackdown on radical left-wing political groups had actually begun during World War I. After a series of bomb attacks of court buildings, police stations, churches and homes tied to violent immigrant anarchist groups, the Department of Justice and its small Bureau of Investigation (BOI) (predecessor to the FBI) had begun to track their activities with the approval of President Woodrow Wilson.

The Russian Revolution in 1917 was a direct cause of the raids as radical communist and anarchist views were becoming more prevelant in American society as a result.

The result was that on June 15, 1917, Congress passed the Espionage Act. The Act authorized stiff fines and prison terms of up to 20 years for anyone who obstructed the military draft or encouraged "disloyalty" against the U.S. government.

Congress also passed a series of immigration, anti-anarchist, and sedition acts (including the Sedition Act of 1918) that sought to criminalize or punish advocacy of violent revolution.

In response, on June 2, 1919 a number of bombs were detonated by Galleanist anarchists in eight American cities, including one in Washington that damaged the home of newly appointed Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer.

Answer 2

First off, pretty much everyone has forgotten the Palmer raids, though they were the worst assault on civil liberties in the history of the US -- and yes I know about the Alien & Sedition Acts, Lincoln's suspension of habeus corpus, and that nasty period known by Joe McCarthy's name. Palmer was Wilson's Attorney General, though whether Wilson knew who he was is an open question.

Who really knows what creates a national hysteria? Apart from the 9/11 business the last I remember was in the 80s, when people were being arrested all over the country for running child-abuse rings, and the more absurd the charges the better; I reckon there are still some perfectly innocent people in jail left over from that one.

In the period just after the Great War the scare was Reds. It developed directly out of the wartime hysteria that allowed vigilante roundups to see who might be a draft evader and threw people into prison for daring to suggest that war might be a bad idea, and melded into the postwar pursuit of anyone with leftish ideas. Among other abuses, a good many legal immigrants were simply tossed aboard ships and steamed away from their homes.

A shameful period like this should not be so easily forgotten.

Answer 3

The Palmer Raids were part of the "Red Scare" of 1919 and 1920. As the name implies, the Red Scare was about Communists -- usually identified as labor union organizers, primarily immigrants.

The cause was a crack-down on dissent within the US in the immediate aftermath of World War I.
Palmer refers to A Mitchell Palmer, the Attorney General at the time, who was an arch anti-communist.

The biggest effect was to severely curtail radicalism in the US labor movement, a chilling effect that would last for many years.

The Palmer Raids were part of the one the periodic "reign of witches" that Thomas Jefferson warned about in the 1790s.

Answer 4

What Is The Palmer Raids