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 →