Tag Archives: Civil Liberties Bureau

The Birth of the Civil Liberties Bureau and The National Civil Liberties Bureau,1917–1919

Posted on by
Reply
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.)

Reel7/Vol.69/p.345–351

 

 

 

 

 

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.

Reel3/Vol.16/p.3

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.

 

 

 

Reel7/Vol.16/p.4

Reel7/Vol.16/p.5

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.

 

 

Con­tinue read­ing →

The National Civil Liberties Bureau and the Woodrow Wilson Administration

Posted on by
Reply
by: Pro­fes­sor Samuel Walker
School of Crim­i­nal Justice
Uni­ver­sity of Nebraska at Omaha

This is part of a series that was intro­duced ear­lier.

Roger Bald­win and Crys­tal East­man began their work with the Civil Lib­er­ties Bureau con­fi­dent that they had good rela­tions with offi­cials in the Woodrow Wil­son admin­is­tra­tion. Many of these peo­ple knew each other from their pre-war work on Pro­gres­sive Era reform. Begin­ning in early 1918, how­ever, Mil­i­tary Intel­li­gence and the Jus­tice Depart­ment began to regard the Bureau’s work as a vio­la­tion of the Espi­onage Act, on the grounds that it encour­aged draft age young men to either not reg­is­ter for the draft or refuse to par­tic­i­pate if drafted. The doc­u­ments in this sec­tion reveal the dete­ri­o­ra­tion of the rela­tion­ship between the Bureau and the Wil­son admin­is­tra­tion and the final break. Par­tic­u­larly shock­ing to mod­ern per­spec­tives, Bald­win tried to main­tain the rela­tion­ship by coop­er­at­ing with the gov­ern­ment, even to the point of offer­ing to cease cer­tain actions and also by pro­vid­ing con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion to gov­ern­ment offi­cials. In the end, the Jus­tice Depart­ment raided the Civil Lib­er­ties Bureau office (along with the offices of many other orga­ni­za­tions) on August 30, 1918.

Reel2/Vol.15/p.4

These let­ters from Roger Bald­win to Fred­er­ick Kep­pel, Third Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of War and New­ton D. Baker, Sec­re­tary of War, June 1917, offers his assur­ance of his eager­ness to coop­er­ate with the Wil­son admin­is­tra­tion. Kep­pel had been a Dean at Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity, and Baker had been a noted reform mayor of Cleve­land, Ohio. Bald­win states that “We are entirely at the ser­vice of the War Department.”

Reel2/Vol.15/p.7L

This cor­dial let­ter of July 7, 1917 from Sec­re­tary of War Baker to Roger Bald­win indi­cates the degree of trust and coop­er­a­tion that pre­vailed in the early months of the war.

 

 

 

 

Reel2/Vol.15/p.23R

This cor­dial let­ter to Roger Bald­win of Sep­tem­ber 27, 1917 from Felix Frank­furter, an offi­cial in the War Depart­ment, thanks Bald­win and other civil lib­er­tar­i­ans for their help­ful efforts and expresses con­fi­dence that the con­cerns of the Civil Lib­er­ties Bureau will be resolved. Frank­furter was not directly involved in any civil lib­er­ties issues dur­ing the war, and did not object to the government’s actions. He became a mem­ber of the ACLU National Com­mit­tee in 1920 and was appointed a Jus­tice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1939.

Con­tinue read­ing →