It’s a time of war in the US. The Allies against the Central Powers, the Germans against the good guys. While bullets were fired and blood was shed overseas from 1914 to 1918, a different type of fighting ensued back home in America.
This fighting was due to the Espionage and Sedition Acts that were put into place. The Espionage Act was established in order to prevent aiding the enemy, giving false reports, or to interfere with the war effort. The Sedition Act was established to keep people from speaking out against the war publicly, which sounds great at first, until you figure out that it goes completely against the Constitution. Eugene V. Debs was a socialist leader and a particularly big target for these laws, along with pacifists (Appleby). He was one of the citizens who know their rights were being violated, and he chose to act on it.
Born to Alsatian immigrants in Indiana, Debs grew up in a poor family and eventually joined the workforce as a locomotive paint-scraper. This social status caused him to sympathize with the “common fellow” and became the working man’s voice.
Around the turn of the 19th century, America’s economy was thriving, but it’s wealth was controlled by a select few such as Rockefeller and Carnegie. This ticked the lower classes off and Debs began joining the masses in fighting for eight hour workdays, suitable wages, and workplace improvements. After six months of incarceration due to charges of contempt of court after confronting troops who were trying to break of the Pullman Strike, Debs began reflecting socialist views and ran for president in 1900 as the socialists’ nominee.
He lost, but that didn’t keep him from continuing to run as the party’s candidate in subsequent elections. When World War One rolled around, it became obvious that Debs was entirely against the idea of sending troops across the Atlantic. However, because of the Espionage and Sedition Acts, he couldn’t let it show too much. In 1918, Debs made a speech which was dubbed an “anti-war speech” despite just mentioning the war once. Debs was arrested under the Espionage Act, but despite his detainment, campaigned from his jail cell and received almost a million votes. This was kind of a slap in the face for the government and President Wilson, and eventually Debs was released early from prison on Christmas day in 1921 (Eugene).
Eugene V. Debs left behind a legacy that I think all Americans should believe in. Our rights should never be silenced, put aside, or weaseled around. The more “loopholes” the government finds in our Constitution, the less free the citizens become. The document that founded our government states it loud and clear at the top of the list of our Bill of Rights: “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech or of the press”. Yes, Debs technically broke the law by speaking negatively against the war, but he was wrongfully accused in the fact that his rights should’ve been upheld.
Debs believed as I do, that our the Bill of Rights should always be put first despite its’ age, despite the situation around us, and despite the attempts to “revise” or “modernize” it. Rights make us free. Freedom is the bases on which America was founded, and is the reason that it’s the greatest country in the world.
