Red Scare

After World War I, a “red scare” gripped the United States. One reflection of this climate of hysteria was in the “Palmer raids” on radicals. Striking without warning and without warrants, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer’s men smashed union offices and the headquarters of Communist and…

Alien and Sedition Acts

In 1798, the Federalist-controlled Congress passed four acts to empower the president of the United States to expel dangerous Aliens from the country; to give the president authority to arrest, detain, and deport resident aliens hailing from enemy countries…

The climate of repression established in the name of wartime security during World War I continued after the war as the U.S. government focused on communists, Bolsheviks, and “reds.” The Red Scare reached its height in the years between 1919 and 1921. Encouraged by Congress, which had refused to…

The Case Against the "Reds"

A powerful reaction against "radicalism" in various forms swept the country immediately after the end of the war. One of the leading progenitors and sponsors of the "Red Scare" was the Attorney General of the United States,…

<p><span class="deck"> In 1919 the U.S. Attorney General swooped down on a alleged Bolshevik revolutionaries and deported them by the boatload. For a while he was a national hero; he dreamed of the White House. But then…</span> </p>

<p>Republican Senator Margaret Chase Smith was the first in Congress to stand up to the bullying of Joe McCarthy.</p>