by: Pro­fes­sor Samuel Walker

School of Crim­i­nal Justice

Uni­ver­sity of Nebraska at Omaha

This is the first part in a series that was intro­duced ear­lier.

The fight for civil lib­er­ties dur­ing World War I orig­i­nated with the Civil Lib­er­ties Bureau (CLB), formed as a com­mit­tee of the Amer­i­can Union Against Mil­i­tarism (AUAM) imme­di­ately after the United States declared war on April 6, 1917. Led by Crys­tal East­man and Roger Bald­win, the Bureau lob­bied Con­gress and the Wil­son admin­is­tra­tion regard­ing pro­vi­sions for con­sci­en­tious objec­tors in the Selec­tive Ser­vice Act and pro­vided advice to young men fac­ing the draft. Lead­ers of the par­ent AUAM, how­ever, soon thought these activ­i­ties would alien­ate the admin­is­tra­tion of Pres­i­dent Woodrow Wil­son and as a result the Bureau became a sep­a­rate orga­ni­za­tion, the National Civil Lib­er­ties Bureau in the fall of 1917. In 1918 Mil­i­tary Intel­li­gence began inves­ti­gat­ing the NCLB for vio­la­tions of the Espi­onage Act, and finally on August 30, 1918 the Jus­tice Depart­ment raided the NCLB office and seized its records. (See the doc­u­ments in the topic, The National Civil Lib­er­ties Bureau and the Woodrow Wil­son Admin­is­tra­tion.) Pros­e­cu­tion appeared pos­si­ble, but never occurred. In Jan­u­ary 1920 the NCLB was recon­sti­tuted as the Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union (ACLU). (See the doc­u­ments in the topic, The Found­ing of the ACLU.)

 

 

 

 

 

The AUAM pam­phlet, Con­cern­ing Con­scrip­tion, circa May-June 1917, presents its views regard­ing selec­tive ser­vice and con­sci­en­tious objec­tion to par­tic­i­pa­tion in war, while Con­gress was debat­ing the selec­tive ser­vice bill. The prin­ci­pal issues involved the cri­te­ria for eli­gi­bil­ity as a con­sci­en­tious objector.

The AUAM hand­bill, circa May-June 1917, while Con­gress was still debat­ing the selec­tive ser­vice bill. It attacks the idea of a draft and argues for a com­pletely vol­un­tary sys­tem for mil­i­tary service.

 

 

 

These three April 1917 let­ters between the AUAM and Sec­re­tary of War New­ton D. Baker reflect the close and cor­dial rela­tions between mem­bers of the Wil­son admin­is­tra­tion and the civil lib­er­tar­i­ans in the early months of the war. These indi­vid­u­als knew each other from their pre-war pro­gres­sive reform activ­i­ties. Baker, for exam­ple, had been a reform mayor of Cleve­land, Ohio. The AUAM mem­o­ran­dum here sets forth its views on what cat­e­gories of peo­ple should be eli­gi­ble for con­sci­en­tious objec­tor sta­tus. The cor­dial rela­tions ended in the spring of 1918 when Mil­i­tary Intel­li­gence and some Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cials con­cluded that the NCLB was vio­lat­ing the Espi­onage Act.

 

This May 15–17, 1917 cor­re­spon­dence with Frank Walsh, a Kansas City, Mis­souri, attor­ney dis­cusses a pos­si­ble legal chal­lenge to the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ity of the draft. Walsh was a promi­nent Pro­gres­sive Era reformer and advo­cate of the labor move­ment. Some anti­war and paci­fist lead­ers regarded the draft as a vio­la­tion of the Thir­teenth Amend­ment. The Supreme Court even­tu­ally rejected this argument.

 

 

 

 

 

The AUAM pam­phlet, Con­sti­tu­tional Rights in War-Time (May 1917) rep­re­sents the organization’s first for­mal state­ment of the range of civil lib­er­ties issues at the out­set of the war.

 

 

 

 

 

The arti­cle by Nor­man Thomas, “War’s Heretics,” The World Tomor­row (August 1917) was an early and impor­tant state­ment of the role of free­dom of speech in a democ­racy. Thomas is best known as a long-time leader of the Social­ist Party of Amer­ica and six-time can­di­date for pres­i­dent of the United States. He was an impor­tant leader of the Civil Lib­er­ties Bureau and later of the Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union (ACLU). The cen­tral argu­ment in “War’s Heretics” rep­re­sents in layperson’s terms the views embod­ied in Jus­tice Oliver Wen­dell Holmes’s impor­tant dis­sent­ing opin­ion in Abrams v. United States (1919).

 

This June 1917 hand­bill by the AUAM, par­ent of the Civil Lib­er­ties Bureau, advises young men who believe they are con­sci­en­tious objec­tors on how to use the Selec­tive Ser­vice Act which required young men to reg­is­ter for the draft on June 5, 1917.

 

 

In this cor­re­spon­dence between Wal­ter Nelles and Roger Bald­win, July 1917, Nelles offers his ser­vices as a lawyer to the Civil Lib­er­ties Bureau. Nelles became the chief attor­ney for the Bureau dur­ing the war and then for the ACLU begin­ning in 1920.

 

 

This Octo­ber 6, 1917 let­ter from Roger Bald­win informs Edmund C. Evans, Philadel­phia, Penn­syl­va­nia, of the cre­ation of the National Civil Lib­er­ties Bureau as an inde­pen­dent orga­ni­za­tion. Evans and his brother Harold Evans were impor­tant founders of both the NCLB and later the ACLU. In 1943 the ACLU recruited Harold Evans to argue Hirabayashi v. United States before the U.S. Supreme Court, the first chal­lenge to the evac­u­a­tion of the Japan­ese Amer­i­cans in World War II.

This Octo­ber 12, 1917 let­ter from Lil­lian Wald to Roger Bald­win explains why she had resigned from the Amer­i­can Union Against Mil­i­tarism, of which she had been co-Chairperson. In fact, Wald resigned because she believed the work of Bald­win and Crys­tal East­man with the Civil Lib­er­ties Bureau risked alien­at­ing the Wil­son admin­is­tra­tion with which she wanted to main­tain cor­dial rela­tions. The split between the Civil Lib­er­ties Bureau and the lead­ers of the AUAM marked the birth of the NCLB as an inde­pen­dent organization.

 

 

This hand­bill announces the for­ma­tion of the National Civil Lib­er­ties Bureau as an inde­pen­dent orga­ni­za­tion, sep­a­rate from the Amer­i­can Union Against Mil­i­tarism. The state­ment describes the work of the NCLB.

 

 

This Novem­ber 1917 NCLB pam­phlet describes the ini­tial pro­gram of the organization.

 

 

 

This NCLB pam­phlet, The ‘Knights of Lib­erty’ Mob and the I. W. W. Pris­on­ers at Tulsa, Okla­homa, describes a mob attack on the Indus­trial Work­ers of the World. A rad­i­cal labor union in the pre-war years, the IWW was a pri­mary tar­get for both the gov­ern­ment and pri­vate vig­i­lantes dur­ing the war. The attacks were typ­i­cal of numer­ous other such inci­dents against anti-war activists, paci­fists, or sus­pected “slack­ers” (young men believed to be avoid­ing mil­i­tary ser­vice) dur­ing the war. A list of such inci­dent is con­tained in the NCLB report (Doc­u­ment # 22), Wartime Vio­la­tions and Mob Violence.

 

This Jan­u­ary 1918 NCLB hand­bill announces a mass meet­ing in New York City to protest the mob attack on Rev. Her­bert S. Bigelow in Cincin­nati, Ohio. The Bigelow inci­dent was one of the most highly pub­li­cized of the many attacks on anti-war activists dur­ing World War I. A list of such attacks is found in the report Wartime Vio­la­tions and Mob Vio­lence (Doc­u­ment # 22).

 

 

This NCLB hand­bill, circa. 1918, lists its pub­li­ca­tions, which rep­re­sented a major part of its pub­lic edu­ca­tion efforts.

 

 

 

In these let­ters of April 29 and May 1, 1918 Roger Bald­win invites John Nevin Sayre to join the Direct­ing Com­mit­tee of the NCLB, and Sayre accepts. Sayre’s brother, Fran­cis B. Sayre, was the son-in-law of Pres­i­dent Woodrow Wil­son. As a result, the NCLB had a direct chan­nel to the White House dur­ing the war, although it appar­ently used this con­nec­tion only rarely.

 

 

This let­ter from Edmund C. Evans, Philadel­phia, Penn­syl­va­nia, June 5, 1918, con­grat­u­lates Roger Bald­win on hav­ing obtained a pol­icy change by the Wil­son admin­is­tra­tion regard­ing the treat­ment of con­sci­en­tious objec­tors. On the one hand it reflects the abil­ity of the NCLB on some occa­sions to suc­cess­fully lobby the Wil­son admin­is­tra­tion on impor­tant poli­cies. On the other hand, how­ever, Fred­er­ick Kep­pel, Third Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of War, had recently sev­ered his ties with the Civil Lib­er­ties Bureau because Mil­i­tary Intel­li­gence and the Jus­tice Depart­ment sus­pected it of vio­lat­ing the Espi­onage Act. For doc­u­ments on the rela­tions between the NCLB and the Wil­son admin­is­tra­tion go to the Topic, “The Wil­son Admin­is­tra­tion and the Civil Lib­er­ties Bureau.”

This March 1919 NCLB report on Wartime Pros­e­cu­tions and Mob Vio­lence is the best sum­mary of the vio­la­tions of civil lib­er­ties dur­ing World War I, as known to the NCLB. The dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories of vio­la­tions include mob vio­lence, crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion, vio­la­tions of the right of assem­bly, search and seizure issues, the mis-treatment of con­sci­en­tious objec­tors, and loss of employ­ment because of polit­i­cal views.

This Feb­ru­ary 21, 1919 let­ter to NCLB sup­port­ers advises them about the peace time sedi­tion bill pend­ing in Con­gress. The 1918 Sedi­tion Act had expired with the end of the war; the peace time bill did not pass.

For more of the col­lec­tion that has been dig­i­tized you may browse the Find­ing Aid.