Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Unsafe for Democracy: World War I and the U.S. Justice Department's Covert Campaign to Suppress Dissent (Large Print Edition)

Unsafe for Democracy: World War I and the U.S. Justice Department's Covert Campaign to Suppress Dissent (Large Print Edition)

Thomas, William H.

Paperback

Series: Studies in American Thought and Culture

20th Century United States HistoryInternational RelationsWorld War I

ISBN10: 0299228967
ISBN13: 9780299228965
Publisher: Univ Of Wisconsin Pr
Published: Aug 15 2009
Pages: 470
Weight: 1.79
Height: 0.95 Width: 7.00 Depth: 10.00
Language: English
During the First World War it was the task of the U.S. Department of Justice, using the newly passed Espionage Act and its later Sedition Act amendment, to prosecute and convict those who opposed America's entry into the conflict. In Unsafe for Democracy, historian William H. Thomas Jr. shows that the Justice Department did not stop at this official charge but went much further-paying cautionary visits to suspected dissenters, pressuring them to express support of the war effort, or intimidating them into silence. At times going undercover, investigators tried to elicit the unguarded comments of individuals believed to be a threat to the prevailing social order. In this massive yet largely secret campaign, agents cast their net wide, targeting isolationists, pacifists, immigrants, socialists, labor organizers, African Americans, and clergymen. The unemployed, the mentally ill, college students, schoolteachers, even schoolchildren, all might come under scrutiny, often in the context of the most trivial and benign activities of daily life. Delving into numerous reports by Justice Department detectives, Thomas documents how, in case after case, they used threats and warnings to frighten war critics and silence dissent. This early government crusade for wartime ideological conformity, Thomas argues, marks one of the more dubious achievements of the Progressive Era-and a development that resonates in the present day.

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