The Only Badge Needed Is Your Patriotic Fervor

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The Only Badge Needed Is Your Patriotic Fervor: Vigilance, Coercion, and the Law in World War I America Author(s): Christopher Capozzola Source: The Journal of American History, Vol. 88, No. 4 (Mar., 2002), pp. 1354-1382 Published by: Organization of American Historians Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2700601 . Accessed: 26/01/2011 12:41

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http://www.jstor.org The Only Badge Needed Is Your PatrioticFervor: Vigilance, Coercion, and the Law in WorldWar I America

ChristopherCapozzola

On July26, 1918, PresidentWoodrow Wilson condemned mob rule.Almost four monthshad passedsince Robert Prager, a GermanAmerican coal miner,had been lynched.Wilson was angeredthat the enemy German press had used thekilling of Pragerin itswartime propaganda, and he feltincreasing pressure from civil libertarians at home.In a widelyreprinted proclamation, Wilson insisted on therule of law. He claimedthat "no manwho lovesAmerica, no manwho reallycares for her fame and honorand character,. . . can justifymob actionwhile the courts of justiceare openand thegovernments of theStates and theNation are ready and ableto do their duty."The mob spirit,Wilson averred, was irreconcilablewith American democracy. I sayplainly that every American who takespart in theaction of a mob or givesit anysort of countenance is no trueson ofthis great Democracy, but its betrayer, and does moreto discredither by thatsingle disloyalty to herstandards of law and of rightthan the words of herstatesmen or the sacrificesof herheroic boys in the trenchescan do to makesuffering peoples believe her to be theirsavior.1 In theearly twentieth century, there was farless consensus about the nation's "stan- dardsof law and of right"than Wilson suggested. During and afterWorld War I, Americans debated the place of extralegalviolence in American political life. Through words and actions, they negotiatedthe boundaries of legitimatepolitical

ChristopherCapozzola is a visitinginstructor in theDepartment of American Literature and Civilizationat Mid- dleburyCollege. This essayreceived the Louis PelzerMemorial Award for 2001. This essaywas firstpresented at the Workshopin Twentieth-CenturyAmerican Politics and Historyat Columbia University.For comments,I would like to thankAlan Brinkley,Elizabeth Blackmar, and Ira Katznel- son;Joanne Meyerowitz, Susan Armeny, Kevin Marsh, the Pelzer Prize committee, and thestaff of, and an anony- mous readerfor, the Journal ofAmerican History; and mygraduate student colleagues in theColumbia University Departmentof History,without whose support this essay would not have been written.Funding has been pro- vided by the Columbia UniversityInstitute for Social and Economic Researchand Policy,the Social Science ResearchCouncil Programon Philanthropyand the NonprofitSector, and the Sophia SmithCollection and SmithCollege Archives. Readersmay contact Capozzola at .

l WoodrowWilson, "A Statementto theAmerican People," July 26, 1918, in ThePapers of WoodrowWilson, ed. ArthurS. Link et al. (69 vols.,Princeton, 1966-1994), XLIX, 97, 98. On thekilling of RobertPraget, see Donald R. Hickey,"The PragerAffair: A Studyin WartimeHysteria," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, 62 (Summer1969), 117-34; FrederickC. Luebke,Bonds of Loyalty: German-Americans and WorldWar I (DeKalb, 1974), 3-26; and Carl Weinberg,"The Tug of War: Labor,Loyalty, and Rebellionin the SouthwesternIllinois Coalfields,1914-1920" (Ph.D. diss.,Yale University,1995), 452-521.

1354 The Journalof American History March2002 Vigilance,Coercion, and theLaw in WorldWar I America 1355 coercion.These ongoingdebates shed light on therelationship between voluntarism and stateauthority in twentieth-centuryAmerican political culture. WoodrowWilson's proclamations notwithstanding, violence has been a persistent featureof American political life, especially in thetumult of World War I. Politicalvio- lenceclaims a centralplace in manynarratives of the American past. To readthem is to learnthat violence is as Americanas applepie, a pointthat would not have been lost on thecrowd that strung Robert Prager up on thebranch of a lonehuckleberry tree on the outskirtsof Collinsville,Illinois, and thendropped his bodythree times, in the wordsof one participant,"one for the red, one forthe white, and one forthe blue."2 Butif violence is integralto Americanhistory, why were Wilson's words so compel- lingto manyreaders in 1918? Why did the "lawlesspassion" that Wilson decried strikeGeorge Creel, the nation's leading war propagandist, as so un-Americanthat he couldexplain it onlyas thework of German spies? Why-or, moreimportant, how- did incidentsof violence in 1918 leadso readilyto a ritualof denunciation? The years surroundingWorld War I marka highpoint of one kindof political violence in Amer- ican historyas the actionsof repressivestate institutions, private organizations, and spontaneouscrowds left dozens of Americans dead and led to temporarydetainment ofthousands on war-relatedcharges. Yet those years also witnessed the invigoration of politicalarguments that questioned all extralegalauthority and laid thegroundwork forthe legal and politicaldismantling of vigilantism in thetwentieth century.3 One keyto understandingthis debate turns on thedistinction between vigilance andvigilantism made during this period. On theWorld War I Americanhome front, citizensproudly called themselves vigilant and believedthat they were doing work needed and explicitlyrequested-by the national government. In thatassumption, theywere not wrong.Leading public figures, drawing on long-standingtraditions equatingcitizenship with obligation, did call on Americansto standvigilant during thewar. Appealing to habitsof voluntaryassociation, they supported the organization of vigilancemovements nationwide: committees of safety,women's vigilance leagues,home guards. State actors depended on thevoluntary work of suchgroups forthe success of the nation's war mobilization effort. Yetsome of thosefigures also spokeout againstvigilantism, few more eloquently thanWilson in hisJuly 1918 statement.When they did so, theydid nothave the vig-

2 Weinberg,"Tug of War,"484. See also RichardHofstadter and MichaelWallace, eds., American Violence: A DocumentaryHistory (New York,1970). On thehistory of citizenship,see GaryGerstle, "Liberty, Coercion, and theMaking of Americans,"JournalofAmerican History, 84 (Sept. 1997), 524-58; and RogersM. Smith,Civic Ide- als: ConflictingVisions of Citizenshipin U.S. History(New Haven, 1997). On WorldWar I-era repression,see StephenM. Kohn, AmericanPolitical Prisoners: Prosecutions under the Espionage and SeditionActs (Westport, 1994); H. C. Petersonand GilbertC. Fite,Opponents of War, 1917-1918 (Seattle,1968); and WilliamPreston Jr., Aliensand Dissenters:Federal Suppression of Radicals, 1903-1933 (Urbana,1994). For a heatedexchange on the place ofviolence in AfricanAmerican history, see "WhatWe See and Can'tSee in thePast: A Round Table,"Jour- nal ofAmericanHistory, 83 (March 1997), 1217-72. 3Responses fromWilson's readers include Robert Russa Moton to WoodrowWilson, July 27, 1918, in Papers of WoodrowWilson, ed. Link et al., XLIX, 113-14; and GeorgeFoster Peabody to Wilson,July 29, 1918, ibid., 125. GeorgeCreel, "Unite and Win," Independent,April 6, 1918, pp. 5-6. For historians'debate on thesignificance of Wilson'sstatement in relationto the issue of lynchingsof AfricanAmericans, see HenryBlumenthal, "WoodrowWilson and theRace Question,"Journal ofNegro History, 48 (Jan.1963), 4, 10-12; StephenR. Fox, The Guardianof Boston:William Monroe Trotter (New York,1971), 221; and RobertL. Allen withPamela P. Allen,Reluctant Reformers: Racism and SocialReform Movements in theUnited States (Washington, 1974), 98. 1356 The Journalof American History March2002 ilancesocieties in mind.What Wilson and thosewho sharedhis outlookmeant was somethingmore specific and rarer:the mob, conceived as a violent,spontaneous, and extralegalpublic group. As nationalleaders denounced the mob in evermore fre- quentcalls for "law and order,"they attempted to separatevigilance and vigilantism. They castthe former as a valuablework of serviceand voluntarismthat embodied Americandemocracy and delegitimatedthe latter as incompatiblewith what Wilson had calledthe nation's "standards of law and ofright." The distinctiontook on greatsignificance. Americans who engagedin extralegal actionsto supportthe war effort insisted that they were exemplars of vigilant citizenship.Their victims denounced them as lawlessvigilantes unworthy of the nation's honor.The suddenpreoccupation with the distinctionbetween legitimate and ille- gitimatepolitical coercion marked a partialrevision of the place of law in thesystem of politicalobligation. The attackon themob and vigilantismgave new energies to civillibertarians; the wartime events that made political violence possible and visible also underminedits legitimacy. The linebetween vigilance and vigilantismwas contestedthroughout the war and postwaryears. Government officials who denouncedlawless vigilantism also praised vigilanceorganizations' policing. They insistedthat only uncontrolled physical vio- lencewas politicallyillegitimate-precisely because it subvertedthe spirit of a nation of laws.The wartimeand postwarconcern with mob violenceled manyto ignore legal and nonviolentforms of stateand privatecoercion that arose alongside, and outlasted,crowd actions. The distinctionobscured the way politicalviolence was woveninto American political culture during this period.

The Obligationof Vigilance in Peace and War

The conceptof vigilanceas a formof collectiveself-defense has long accompanied claimsto self-rule;in theearly American republic it was intimately tied to conceptsof popularsovereignty. But vigilanceas an obligationof citizenshiphas been notjust a rhetoricalflourish, but a politicalpractice in whichcollective policing by private citi- zenscontributed to communitydefense. By the time of the United States' entry into WorldWar I in April1917, Americans were accustomed to theidea thatcitizens had a positiveobligation to police one another.Such policingcould involvecoercion, manybelieved. "Mob violence,"that is, uncontrolledphysical coercion, was largely (althoughnever entirely) denounced. But drawingthe line of legitimacybetween controlledand uncontrolledphysical coercion created political difficulty.4 Vigilantismtoo has playeda recurrentrole in Americanhistory. Vigilantism is oftenequated with mob violenceand thoughtto consistof politicalterror and vio- lentcoercion. Use ofthe term conjures up imagesof night riders and frontierjustice. The historianRichard Maxwell Brown has documentedmore than 5,400 deathsby organizedand unorganizedgroups between 1767 and 1951. But whilevigilantism

4 GordonS. Wood, The Creationof the American Republic, 1776-1787 (New York,1967), 319-28; Richard MaxwellBrown, "The Historyof Vigilantism in America,"in VigilantePolitics, ed. H. JonRosenbaum and Peter C. Sederberg(Philadelphia, 1976), 103-4. Vigilance,Coercion, and theLaw in WorldWar I America 1357 couldand oftendid becomedeadly, neither killing nor physical violence is necessary forvigilantism. Rather, vigilantism is fundamentallyabout law. Politicalarguments about vigilantismarticulate relationships between the politicalbehavior of citizens and thesystem of law in whichthey operate. Vigilante actions are undertaken by citizenswho arenot public officials, even if they sometimes cooperate with officials or claimto act in thename of thestate. Vigilantes operate outside the strictures of law as articulatedby the legitimate regime, but they typically aim to establishsocial order, whetherdefense of the state, control of crime, or maintenanceof racial, class, or gen- derhierarchies. "What is paradoxicalabout the vigilante position is, of course, that it seeksto perpetuatethe existingorder, but withoutlaw and withoutaccepting the actionsof the society'spolitical institutions," according to the politicalscientist EdwardStettner.5 Americantraditions of citizenvigilance and vigilantismin 1917 fallinto four maincategories, each of which long predated the war but was transformedby it: citizen policing,antilabor vigilance, moral vigilance, and racialvigilance. The traditions of Anglo-Americancommon law had long demandedthat citizens-particularly malecitizens-participate in defendingthe community. Self-defense could be seenin formsof community policing: Individuals could initiate a citizen'sarrest or be depu- tizedby local authorities;those who heardthe "hue and cry"of distressedpersons wereobliged to cometo theiraid; militiasgathered most able-bodied adult men for service;the common-law rule of posse comitatus gave sheriffs the power to summon thesame men to preservethe public peace. In theyears immediately preceding World WarI, thosepractices appeared to be on thedecline. The tasksof policing had been partlyprofessionalized, particularly in urban areas, and the newlyreorganized NationalGuard had largelyreplaced state and local militias.But whilethe institu- tionsof law enforcementhad displacedthe posse and thehue and cryin mostof the UnitedStates by 1917, theprocess was hardlycomplete and universal,as extralegal actionsin theJim Crow South demonstrated. Nor weremyths and memoriesof colo- nial daysand thewestern frontier far from the minds of eitherthe national elite or thegeneral public.6 In 1917 laborrelations were dominated by private and communitymethods for the maintenanceof order. Corporations regularly employed private policing forces such as

5Here I am borrowingand modifyingdefinitional categories suggested by H. JonRosenbaum and PeterC. Sederberg,"Vigilantism: An Analysisof EstablishmentViolence," in VigilantePolitics, ed. Rosenbaumand Seder- berg,3-29. RichardMaxwell Brown, the leading historian of vigilantism in theUnited States, never fully defined theterm, using as a workingdefinition "taking the law intoone's own hands."See Brown,"History of Vigilantism in America,"79; and RichardMaxwell Brown, Strain of Violence: Historical Studies ofAmerican Violence and Vigi- lantism(New York,1975), 95-96. For a definitionfrom political anthropology, see RayAbrahams, Vigilant Citi- zens: Vigilantismand theState (Cambridge, Eng., 1998), 4-10. The OxfordEnglish Dictionary defines a vigilance committeeas "a self-appointedcommittee for the maintenanceof justiceand orderin an imperfectlyorganized community,"highlighting voluntarism, the organizednature of the undertaking,and its relationshipto institu- tionsof law. OxfordEnglish Dictionary, 2d. ed., s.v. "vigilancecommittee." The term"vigilante" was not widely used in Americandiscourse until the Virginia City movement in theMontana Territory in 1863-1865, according to Brown,"History of Vigilantismin America,"85. For thefigures, see ibid.,80-81. EdwardStettrner, "Vigilan- tismand PoliticalTheory," in VigilantePolitics, ed. Rosenbaumand Sederberg,70. 6Eric H. Monkkonen,The Police in UrbanAmerica, 1860-1920 (New York,1981); SidneyL. Harring,Policing a ClassSociety: The Experience of American Cities, 1865-1915 (New Brunswick,1983). For TheodoreRoosevelt's engagementwith the romance of theOld West,see Gail Bederman,Manliness and Civilization:A CulturalHistory of 1358 The Journalof American History March2002

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iP theDuring ,,inkrtnand after t bekWorldc, upWar strike African n AmericansAinfiltrt facedunions.To organizedsuppirtlti';i~ill^eim violence endedicated such merce-~to maintainingthe racial status quo. In Tulsa,Oklahoma, on Mab31-June 1, 1921,white riot- ersdestroyed nearly a thousand buildings, including several churches. The MountZion Bap- tistChurch, shown here, had been dedicated just seven weeks earlier. Courtesy Tulsa Rae Riot Collection,McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa. the Pinkertonsto break up strikesand infiltrateunions. To supplementsuch merce- nary forces,business leaders seeking to maintain surveillanceover labor activities recruitedvolunteer citizen groups. State and federalofficials, who saw little active role forthe statein economiclife, generally supported antilabor vigilance groups. From timeto time,state actors disputed the methods of vigilance groups, and labor organiza- tionsconsistently challenged their extralegalityv. Butin thepre-World War I era,when thecourts were no moresympathetic to laborthan were other arms of theAmerican government,workers often saw little to gainby appealing to therule of law.' The obligationof vigilancealso made Americansthe guardiansof the moral wel- fareof theirfellow citizens, as in the national prohibitioncampaigns that gathered forcebefore World War I. Similarly,efforts to curtailprostitution coalesced in the

Genderand Racein theUnited States, 1880-1917 (Chicago,1995), 170-215. In 1915 Rooseveltclaimed that the workof vigilantes in thenineteenth-century West was "in themain wholesome." Brown, "History of Vigilantism in America,"105. The philosopherJosiah Royce explored the impact of vigilantism on communityin hiswritings on theAmerican West; see RobertV. Hine,Josiah Royce: From Grass Valley to Harvard (Norman, 1992), 151, 169. On privatepolicing, see RhodriJeffrevs-Jones, Violence and Reformin AmericanHistory (New York,1978), 6. Eventhe U.S. Departmentof Justice relied on Pinkertonsas itsinvestigators prior to 1893; seeJoan M. Jensen,The Priceof Vigilance(Chicago, 1968), 12. On citizenvoluntarism in the maintenanceof industrialorder, see Melvyn Dubofsky,We Shall Be All: A Historyof the Industrial Workers ofthe World (Urbana, 1988), 376-97; EugeneE. Leach, "The Literatureof RiotDuty: Managing Class Conflictin theStreets, 1877-1927," Radical History Review (no. 56, Spring1993), 23-50; and StevenC. Levi,Committee of Vigilance: The San FranciscoChamber of Commerce Law and OrderCommittee, 1916-1919: A CaseStudy in OfficialHysteria (Jefferson, 1983). On thecooperation of the federal governmentin thesuppression of strikes,see Jerry M. Cooper,The Army and CivilDisorder: Federal Military Inter- ventionin LaborDisputes, 1877-1900 (Westport,1980). On therelationship between labor and thelegal system, see WilliamE. Forbath,Law and theShaping of the American Labor Movement (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), 59-127. Manyadvocates for workers placed their faith in thelegal system despite repeated failures. Mother Jones wrote that Vigilance,Coercion, and theLaw in WorldWar I America 1359

191Os into a movementto abolishit. Supportersof the prohibition and puritymove- mentsdid not restricttheir efforts to legislativecampaigns but establishedvigilance societies.Anthony Comstocks New YorkSociety for the Suppression of Vice sought to purifythe city's night life for over thirty years. Beginning in 1910, theProgressive reformerMaude Minerrecruited working-class young women into the New York Girls'Protective League, a volunteerpolice force meant to disciplineyoung women. Acrossthe countrymassive networks of volunteerssurveyed and apprehendedsus- pectedprostitutes. Anti-vice activists had an ambivalentrelationship to the law. Often,frustrated by what they saw as a corruptpolicing and legalsystem, they chose to workoutside it. At othertimes they cooperated with the police and the courts, eitherusing the law to crackdown on prostitutes,madams, and pimpsor seekingto aid thewomen they patrolled through special courtroom procedures and thereform of women'sprisons. Their actions,both insideand outsidethe legal system,were rarelychallenged, except by accused prostitutes themselves.8 A similartradition of collective policing, active predominately in the South, was dedi- catedto suppressingAfrican American militancy and controllingAfrican American labor.White vigilance groups enforced white racial supremacy. They enjoyed the support of formalstate institutions at everylevel of American government, which consistently declinedto intervenein whatthey deemed local or wholly private matters. The number oflynchings had peaked in the1 890s, but the war years saw an increasein racialviolence andthe formation of new white supremacist citizen groups, including the Ku KluxKlan, reorganizedin 1915.Although leading black reformers strongly challenged the methods andeven the existence of such groups, they had made little headway by 1917.9 In manyareas of everydaylife, therefore, Americans were accustomed to partici- patingin or enduringcitizen vigilance, and theywere already debating how to reinin extralegalcoercion. As partof thewar mobilizationeffort, citizen vigilance move- mentsexpanded. The relationshipof those movements to thestate changed as private

thecourts "are the bulwark of our institutionsand theirintegrity must be preserved."Mother Jones to SaraJ. Dorr, Dec. 16, 1918, in TheCorrespondence ofMotherJones, ed. EdwardM. Steel(Pittsburgh, 1985), 185. 8 Anti-viceactivity reached its peak in the 191Os, according to RuthRosen, The Lost Sisterhood: Prostitution in America,1900-1918 (Baltimore,1982), 12-15. See also JohnD'Emilio and EstelleB. Freedman,Intimate Mat- ters:A Historyof Sexuality in America(New York,1988), 208-15. On AnthonyComstock, see TimothyJ. Gil- foyle,City of Eros: New YorkCity, Prostitution, and theCommercialization ofSex, 1790-1920 (New York,1992), 185-96; on Maude Miner,see BarbaraMeil Hobson, UneasyVirtue: The Politics of Prostitution and theAmerican ReformTradition (Chicago, 1990), 173. On antiprostitutioncampaigns, see MarkThomas Connelly,The Response toProstitution in theProgressive Era (Chapel Hill, 1980); and David J. Langum,Crossing over the Line: Legislating Moralityand theMann Act (Chicago, 1994). On the experiencesof working-classwomen who ended up in the wartimenet, see Joanne J. Meyerowitz, Women Adrift: Independent Wage Earners in Chicago,1880-1930 (Chicago, 1988); and KathyPeiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisurein Turn-of-the-CenturyNew York (Phila- delphia,1986). On Progressives'involvement in moralvigilance and socialreform, see EstelleB. Freedman,Their Sisters'Keepers:Women's Prison Reform in America,1830-1930 (AnnArbor, 1981). 9 W. FitzhughBrundage, Lynching in theNew South:Georgia and Virginia,1880-1930 (Urbana,1993); W. FitzhughBrundage, ed., UnderSentence of Death: Lynching in theSouth (Chapel Hill, 1997); CrystalNicole Feim- ster,"'Ladies and Lynching':The GenderedDiscourse of Mob Violencein theNew South,1880-1930" (Ph.D. diss., PrincetonUniversity, 2000); RobertP. Ingalls,Urban Vigilantesin theNew South: Tampa,1882-1936 (Knoxville,1988); Leon F. Litwack,Trouble in Mind: BlackSoutherners in theAge ofJim Crow (New York,1998). For the riseof the second Ku Klux Klan, see David Chalmers,Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan (Chicago, 1968); KathleenM. Blee, Womenof the Klan: Racismand Genderin the1920s (Berkeley,1991); Nancy MacLean, Behindthe Mask of Chivalry:The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan (New York,1994); and LeonardJ. Moore, CitizenKlansmen: The Ku KluxKlan in Indiana,1921-1928 (Chapel Hill, 1991). 1360 The Journalof American History March2002 policingefforts were enfolded in stateagendas: vigilance organizations gained force andauthority as they spoke in thename of the wartime state, but their new position alsogave new weapons to thosewho denied their legitimacy. The wartimedebate aboutpolitical violence, while not entirely new, was conducted on an alteredterrain.

Mobilizationfor war against Germany changed the significance ofcitizen vigilance. Governmentofficials and otherleading public figures called on Americancitizens, maleand female, to standvigilant for the duration. A posterfrom New York's Con- ferenceCommittee on NationalPreparedness urged defense against spies and trai- tors:"Men of America, be of clearvision! . . . Promptlydeliver up theseadvance agentsto public scorn and to the law, so thatwhen you go toyour home at night you canlook into the innocent eyes of your children and be unafraid."A similar poster printedby the New Hampshire Committee on PublicSafety urged "promptness in recognizingand reporting suspicious or disloyal actions to your local authorities orto us"and "helping your local Committee on PublicSafety in everyway." In his1917 FlagDay speech,President Wilson warned that "vicious spies and conspirators" had "spreadsedition amongst us" and "sought by violence to destroyour industries and arrestour commerce," and throughoutthe war he consistentlyencouraged private citizenvigilance. "Woe be to theman or groupof men that seeks to standin our way,"Wilson ominously concluded.10 Americanswho wanted to do theirpart found explicit instruction ina notunusual editorialin New York State's Alba ny Journal: If you ever,on thestreet or in a trolleycar, should hear some soft-shell pacifist or hard-boiledbut poorlycamouflaged pro-German, make seditiousor unpatriotic remarksabout your Uncle Sam you havethe right and privilegeof taking that person bythe collar, hand him over to thenearest policeman or elsetake him yourself beforethe magistrate. You do notrequire any official authority to do thisand theonly badge needed is yourpatriotic fervor. The same thingapplies to women.Every American, under provisionsof the code of civilprocedure, has the authorityto arrestany person makinga remarkor utterancewhich "outrages public decency."" Hundredsof thousands of men and women responded to callsfor national defense on thehome front by forming voluntary vigilance associations. They varied widely in theiraims, structures, and membership,from elite societies such as theNational

1OConference Committee on NationalPreparedness, The Advance Agents of the Hun, broadside,[1917], portfolio 315, no. 2, BroadsideCollection (Rare Book Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.); New HampshireCom- mitteeon PublicSafety, People of New Hampshire, Wake Up! WeAre at War!,broadside, [1917], portfolio 98, no. 3, ibid.; WoodrowWilson, "A Flag Day Address,"June 14, 1917,in Papersof Woodrow Wilson, ed. Linket al.,XLII, 499, 504. 11"Citizens May ArrestDisloyal Persons," Albany Journal, April 17, 1918, clippingenclosed with Dudley Paul Babcock to AmericanUnion againstMilitarism, April 17, 1918, AmericanCivil LibertiesUnion Archives: The RogerBaldwin Years, 1917-1950 (microfilm,293 reels,Scholarly Resources, 1996), reel5, vol. 35. The Albany editorialist'sclaim is oversimplified:only a felonyjustified a citizen'sarrest. Espionage Act violations were felonies; breachesof peace or outragesof public decencywere generally misdemeanors. Few vigilantAmericans bothered withsuch proceduraldistinctions, and even civillibertarians such as RogerBaldwin did not apparentlyunder- stand,or insistupon, them until very late in thewar. Vigilance,Coercion, and theLaw in WorldWar I America 1361

SecurityLeague and American Defense Society to moremenacing organizations such as theSedition Slammers and theTerrible Threateners to theBoy Spiesof America. Over250,000 men,and somewomen, enrolled in thelargest such organization, the AmericanProtective League.'2 Not a singleGerman spy was uncoveredduring World War I thanksto thework of thesevigilant citizens, and muchof what they did was ineffectualor evenabsurd. Volunteersin New Haven,Connecticut, kept a round-the-clockwatch at an antiair- craftdevice they had installedto protectthe city against an (unlikely)aerial invasion fromGermany. The earnestpatriots of a vigilancegroup in Portland,Maine, seized a suitcaseabandoned in downtownLongfellow Square. They "gingerly"brought the bag to policeheadquarters, where it was "carefullyexamined and was foundto con- taina quantityof men's soiled underwear."'13 Otherstories, however, offer little comic relief. During the war, vigilance societies targetedpacifists, suffragists, ethnic minorities,religious fundamentalists, trade unionists,and socialists.Incidents of violent,spontaneous prowar crowd action abound,but organized groups working with the institutions of government and civil societyalready in place in local communitiesconducted most politicalcoercion. Those organizationsrepeatedly glossed over or ignoredissues of legal processand wastedlittle energy on establishingwith precision their authority to makearrests- on what groundsand consistentwith, or despite,what specificstructures of law. Theywere not thoughtless mobs who believedthe Constitution a meaninglessscrap of paper,even as theyappeared to treatit as such,but organizedmen and women deeplyconcerned about the survival of American democracy as theyunderstood it. The wartimecontext mattered. Calls forcitizen vigilance raised the demandfor volunteerpolicing, and wartime rhetoric and fearof subversion heightened its significance.The war also alteredthe relationship between private political coercion and the state.Americans were accustomed to privatecitizens' policing their neighbors' ideasand behaviors,their labor and leisure,before World War I. Yetit was onlydur- ing thewar as ideas,behaviors, labor, and leisurehad to be mobilized,regulated, and governedin orderto defeatthe enemy thatthe practicesof citizenpolicing cameto be stateprojects, even when they were not conductedunder state auspices. As the needs of modernwar blurredthe line betweenstate and society,between mobilizationand socialcontrol, the war tied private coercions to stateinterests. This essaytakes up fourepisodes that demonstrate the vitality of thefour tradi- tionsof vigilance outlined above. In eachcase, wartime vigilance societies drew from, and altered,existing patterns of coercion, and eachdemonstrates the interpenetration of vigilanceand vigilantism.Wartime groups both used and ignoredlegal institutions,as theyengaged in practicesranging from persuasion to coercivepersecution. Finally,the essay examines how thepostwar debate about mob violence and law and

12 Petersonand Fite,Opponents of War, 18. On theAmerican Protective League, see Harold M. Hyman,To Try Men'sSouls: Loyalty Tests in American History (Westport, 1981), 267-97; and Jensen,Price of Vigilance. 13 RollinG. Osterweis,Three Centuries of New Haven,1638-1938 (New Haven, 1953), 404; PortlandTele- gram,quoted in ClarkT. IrwinJr., "From a GildedAge onto a WorldWar," in GreaterPortland Celebration 350, comp.and ed. AlbertF. Barnes(Portland, Me., 1984), 124. 1362 The Journalof American History March2002 orderresponded to eventson thewartime home front and how it attemptedto rec- oncilethe conflicts between vigilance, obligation, and the law in national citizenship.

Defendingthe Connecticut Home Front The warobliged American citizens to servein thenation's defense. Those who did notgo to thetrenches of France would fight the war at home.Against the imagined dangersof German attack and domestic subversion, vigilance against invasion, disloyalty,and sabotage became basic tasks. Members of the Citizens' Protective League in Covington,Kentucky, stockpiled arms while other townspeople volunteered as publicspeakers. Their patriotic counterparts in New Jersey formed espionage com- mitteesand a women'sgun club as theyknitted socks and scarves. Whether federal or stategovernments had legally authorized the groups was not always on theirminds. Goodcitizenship for the wartime civilian required voluntary service for the war effort andvigilance in all matters. Events in the industrial state of Connecticut demonstrate therole of volunteer policing in war mobilization.'4 On March9, 1917,nearly a month before the United States declared war on Ger- many,the Connecticutlegislature authorized the formationof the Connecticut HomeGuard, "a bodyof armed troops for constabulary duty within the state." By thetime of the armistice, 19,336 citizens had worn its makeshift secondhand uni- forms.All were men, mostly above draft age or otherwise exempt. The guard's leaders werebankers, lawyers, and doctors, but its rank and file included small businessmen, farmers,traveling salesmen, and clerks. Most were experienced members of fraternal organizations;only a fewwere military veterans. Nearly all werenative-born white Protestantsina statedeeply divided by ethnic and religious tensions.'5 The ConnecticutHome Guard was dedicated to thedefense of the state and its industries,especially munitions. Charles Burpee, a local historian and himself a colo- nelin the Home Guard, later wrote, "Though the mass of the so-called 'foreign' pop- ulationwas devoted to Connecticutprinciples, Germans included, a verycontrary socialisticelement . . . hadorganized, and the Deutschland genius for working mis- chiefbehind the lines had beenevidenced, as was to be expected."The Home Guard'sauthorizing legislation limited its power: it had no legalauthority for much ofits work, and its members were specifically forbidden tomake arrests. The guardsmen,however, regularly disregarded legal formalities.'6

14 EdwardF. Alexanderto RogerN. Baldwin,Sept. 16, 1918,American Civil Liberties Union Archives, reel 12, vol. 72; A Historyof the New Jersey State Federation of Womens Clubs, 1894-1958 (Caldwell,1958), 54; Kimberly S. Jensen,"Minerva on theField of Mars: American Women, Citizenship, and MilitaryService in theFirst World War"(Ph.D. diss.,University of Iowa, 1992), chap. 1. 15 "AnAct Concerningthe Home Guard,"in ConnecticutHome Guard,Regulations for the Connecticut Home Guard(Hartford, 1917), 1; ConnecticutMilitary Emergency Board, Report to the Governor:November 1, 1918 (Hartford,1918), 1. On themakeup of theHome Guard,see BruceFraser, "Yankees at War: Social Mobilization on theConnecticut Homefront, 1917-1918" (Ph.D. diss.,Columbia University, 1976), 97-99, 351-60; Connect- icut Home Guard,Register of Officers([Hartford], 1917). Hartfordand New Haven had some reserveunits in whichall theofficers had Italiansurnames. African Americans, who numberedfewer than 20,000 in thestate's pop- ulationin 1917, arementioned nowhere in thepublications of theHome Guardor otherrecords of the home front vigilanceorganizations, which leads me to thetentative conclusion they were completely excluded from service. 16 CharlesW. Burpee,Burpees the Story of Connecticut (New York,1939), 958; "AnAct Concerningthe Mili- Vigilance,Coercion, and theLaw in WorldWar I America 1363

The Home Guardquickly got to work,in closecollaboration with other voluntary associations,industrial corporations, and thefederal government. The firsttask was to coordinatethe state's military census of May 1917,which aimed to recordvital data on everyadult man in thestate in preparationfor military conscription. The guardlater stoodwatch during the registration calls of the Selective Service System and showedits strengthin Home Guardparades in townsacross the state just before the registration day.As theguard noted in itsofficial report, the parades "gave to certaininhabitants of the Statea salutaryobject lesson and warningwhich they needed" at a timewhen manyof Connecticut'syoung men were surely considering draft evasion. The Home Guardsalso vigilantlyprotected the state'srailroad bridges and powerinstallations fromenemies foreign and domestic.In January1918, acting on a spurioustip that the radicalunionists of the Industrial Workers of the World (iww) were planning to setfire to industrialfacilities and to bombthe bridges of the New York, New Havenand Hart- fordRailroad, four thousand guardsmen stood watch through the cold winter night.'7 In April1917, afterthe federal government ruled that enemy aliens could not live nearmunitions manufacturers, the Home Guardforcibly evacuated New Havenresi- dentsfrom homes near the Winchester Repeating Arms factory. The guardalso col- laboratedwith otherwartime organizations, particularly the AmericanProtective League.Together, the two groups invaded the weekly meeting of a Hartfordsocialist groupin April1918 afterthe U.S. attorney'soffice had refusedto indictthe radicals forsedition. Seizing the stage,Charles Burpee demanded that the socialistspledge allegianceto theflag and warnedthem of the dangers of their disloyalty: Thiscity must be purified.The lawwill act according to thelaw's own course. In thiscity we haveplenty of citizens ready to backup thelaw and show the law its course.... Alllaw depends on publicopinion. Public opinion makes law. No law canbe supportedwithout public opinion. When the people enter a greatwar like this,they are the law."8 Herewas thevigilant citizen's attitude: not bald-faced disrespect for the law (although it musthave seemed that way to theassembled socialists), but a theoryof citizenship tia,"in ConnecticutHome Guard,Regulations, 3. Home Guardswere active in dozensof statesduring the war. Manywere initiated after the federalization of the National Guard made thoseunits unavailable to stategovernors. In Portland,Maine, theSons of Veteranscollaborated with the CumberlandCounty Power and LightCommis- sion to guardagainst German sabotage. Clark T. IrwinJr., "WWI GalvanizesRegion's Activities," in GreaterPort- land Celebration,comp. and ed. Barnes,136. On similarwork in Marylandand Texas,see MarylandWar Records Commission,Maryland in theWorld War, 1917-1919: Militaryand Naval ServiceRecords (Baltimore, 1933), 99- 101; Mrs. Ralph E. Randel,ed., A Timeto Purpose: A Chronicleof Carson County (4 vols.,Hereford, Tex., 1966- 1972), I, 280, IV, 293; and Roy Eddins,ed., Historyof Falls County,Texas ([Marlin, Tex.], 1947), 212-13. The Texas Rangersspent most of WorldWar I along the Mexicanborder. Charles M. RobinsonIII, TheMen Who Wearthe Star: The Story of the Texas Rangers (New York,2000), 269-79. 17 "Connecticut'sMilitary Census," Review of Reviews, 55 (May 1917), 534; MarcusH. Holcomb,"Connecti- cut in theVan," ibid.,57 (May 1918), 520; ConnecticutMilitary Emergency Board, Report to theGovernor, 3-4. The reportnotes that the tip was providedby the U.S. SecretService, but it probablycame fromthe volunteer operativesof theAmerican Protective League. 18 Osterweis,Three Centuries of New Haven, 403-4. Some6,300 aliensnationwide were arrested in enforcementof enemyalien legislation; see Luebke,Bonds of Loyalty, 255-56; and HarryN. Scheiber,The Wilson Administration and CivilLiberties, 1917-1921 (Ithaca,1960), 14. CharlesBurpee, "Connecticut in theWars," in Historyof Connecticut in MonographicForm, ed. NorrisGalpin Osborn (5 vols.,New York, 1925), V, 127; "SocialistMeeting Packed by Patriots," New YorkTribune, April 8, 1918, clippingin AmericanCivil Liberties Union Archives, reel 8, vol. 70; "Home Guards BreakUp SocialistRally," New YorkCall, April 8, 1918,ibid. For Burpee's statement, see Fraser,"Yankees at War,"307. 1364 The Journalof American History March2002 thatlocated sovereignty in thepeople and wouldnot separatethe power of thestate fromthat of the citizenswho constitutedit and had been authorizedto act in its name. The men of the ConnecticutHome Guarddescribed themselves as the descen- dantsof the minutemen who had defendedthe New Englandcountryside more than a centurybefore, and thework they did was unexceptionalin Connecticut'slong historyof industrial strife and ethnictension, in whichthe technicalities of law had fre- quentlybeen ignored in theinterests of order. The menof the Home Guard,fearing revolutionor subversionand preoccupiedwith the needs of thenation during war, viewedthe law as a toolto manipulate,rather than a setof institutional constraints to obey.Nor, it appears,did theydeem violent coercion illegitimate, as theirsummary evictionsand theirraid on the Hartfordsocialists demonstrate. As Burpeelater noted,the guardsmen"were comfort and satisfactionespecially to the munitions plantsand themanagers of therailroads." Not onlycorporate bosses, but the thank- fulcrowds who filledHartford's streets on ArmisticeDay cheeredthem, and Gov. MarcusHolcomb decorated them in frontof thestate capitol. Their coercions were notunknown in prewarindustrial centers such as urbanConnecticut, but theywere shapedby the war effort and foldedinto the national war project in waysthat high- lightedtheir ambiguous legal status. In Connecticutthere was littlepublic opposi- tion to thatambiguity. Elsewhere the actionsof vigilanceorganizations led some criticsto tryto disentanglethe interwoventhreads of publicand privatethat these groupsrepresented.19

KeepingVigil over Labor in theArizona Copper Mines Connecticutwas notthe only state in whichquasi-military organizations formed and dedicatedthemselves to citizenpolicing and the suppressionof labormilitancy. In Bisbee,Arizona, a smallcopper-mining city on theMexican border, the summer of 1917 witnesseda crisisof coercion,authority, and politicallegitimacy that demonstratesthe contestedbarrier between vigilance and vigilantismin thewartime era. The ruleof law did not have a firmhold in Arizonain 1917. Miningcompanies wieldedenormous power at theirown mines,and theyemployed both private police forcesand groupsformed by citizenvolunteers. State and local governmentofficials regularlysided withthe corporationsagainst the workers.But in the summerof 1917, the statewas in politicalcrisis, as the sittingDemocratic governor G. W. P. Hunt had refusedto turnover the reins of powerto RepublicanThomas E. Camp- bellafter a heatedand almostcertainly corrupt election. The crisisin thestatehouse leftthe day-to-day governance of muchof thestate almost entirely in thehands of themining bosses.20 Warmobilization changed both the copper industry and thesignificance of anti- laborvigilance. Every bullet used at thefront required almost a quarterounce of pure

19 Fraser,"Yankees at War,"107; Burpee,"Connecticut in theWars," 127. 20 "A Statewith Two Governors,"Independent, Jan. 15, 1917, p. 96. Vigilance,Coercion, and the Law in World War I America 1365

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21Carlos A. Schwantes,"Toil and Trouble:Rhythms of WorkLife," in Bisbee:Urban Outpost on theFrontier, ed. CarlosA. Schwantes(Tucson, 1992), 121. Forthe suggestion that both unions were sympathetic to theIndus- trialWorkers of theWorld by the summer of 1917, see Dubofsky,We Shall Be All,370. The Bisbeework force was a mix of northern,southern, and easternEuropean immigrant workers, as well as AfricanAmericans, Mexicans, and someChinese, who wereexcluded from the town of Bisbeeitself. See CharlesS. Sargent,"Copper Star of the ArizonaUrban Firmament," in Bisbee,ed. Schwantes,35-36. On thedomination of thetown by "northern Euro- peansand American-bornwhites," see Tom Vaughan,"Everyday Life in a CopperCamp," ibid.,59-61. 1366 The Journalof AmericanHistory March 2002

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Residentsof Bisbee, Arizona, volunteered to aid SheriffHarry E. Wheelerin thedeportation. One of theirwhite armbands, symbols of voluntarism and ofan assumedlegal authority, can be seenon the rightarm of the man in the middledistance. Courtesy Arizona Historical Society/Thcson,A -IS 4-3171.

Phelps-Dodge Corporation(who "happened to be in Bisbee on the day of the deportation"),were deputized by SheriffHarry E. Wheeler of Cochise County,a former Rough Rider. Wheeler told the men that the federalgovernment had authorized them to deportthe strikers(although they had not been so authorized),gave his new deputies white armbands,and set them to work rounding up "on the charges of vagrancy,treason, and of being disturbersof the peace of Cochise County all those strangemen who have congregatedhere." The deportationitself was a politicalcircus that indiscriminatelydetained men, women, and children,regardless of theiropin- ions on the war or theiractions duringthe strike.By midday,approximately twelve hundredtownspeople were held underarmed guard in a baseball park in a neighbor- ing town. By late afternoon,they were marchedat gunpointonto trainsprovided by the El Paso and SouthwesternRailroad and deported to New Mexico, where they were unceremoniouslydumped in the deserttown of Hermanas.-22

2" WalterDouglas, president of Phelps-Dodge,quoted in TiicsonCitizen, May 29, 1918, in JohnH. Lindquist and JamesFraser, "A SociologicalInterpretation of the Bisbee Deportation,"Pacific Historical Review, 37 (Nov. 1968), 417. On SheriffHarry E. Wheeler'sproclamation (printed in theBisbee Daily Review, July 12, 1917, p. 1), see ibid.,408. The Citizens'Protective League had hoped to deliverthe deporteesto the U.S. Armycamp in Columbus,New Mexico,but angrycivilians in thetown refused the shipment. The mostextensive source on the Bisbeedeportations is JamesW. Byrkit,Forging the Copper Collar: Arizonas Labor-Management War of 1901-1921 (Tucson,1982). See also Dubofsky,We Shall Be All,385-9 1; VernonH. Jensen,Heritage of Conflict: Labor Rela- tionsin theNonferrous Metals Industry up to 1930 (Ithaca, 1950), 381-410; Lindquistand Fraser,"Sociological Interpretationof the BisbeeDeportation," 401-22; PhilipJ. Mellinger,Race and Labor in WesternCopper: The FightforEquality, 1896-1918 (Tucson,1995), 174-203; and Schwantes,ed., Bisbee.On theprivately hired detec- tives,see RobertW. Bruere,"Copper Camp Patriotism,"Nation, Feb. 21, 1918, p. 202. Vigilance,Coercion, and theLaw in WorldWar I America 1367

For the next fourmonths, the Citizens' ProtectiveLeague and the more patrician Chamber of Commerce in nearbyDouglas effectivelyruled Bisbee froma building owned by the copper companies. The league issued "passports"to town residents afteroral examinationsthat mingled questions about the war with questions about the strike.No one could enteror leave Bisbee withouta pass; no one foundwork-or got a draftexemption-without one either.Men and women who failedthe league's loyaltytests were excludedfrom the city,deported, or imprisonedand sentto workat the copper mines in convictlabor gangs. The rule of the Citizens' ProtectiveLeague continued until late November 1917, despite the pleas of PresidentWilson and orders fromArizona's attorneygeneral. The competition between the state's two competinggovernors left a power vacuum in which the corporationsand the vigilance organizationsheld control.23 The Citizens' ProtectiveLeague claimed that its work was vital to the war. Its spokesmenargued that they had takenthe law into theirown hands to defendlaw, not to violateit. In a telegramto the president,Governor-elect Campbell noted that"citizens in the many mining communitiesaffected, feeling that peace officerscannot affordadequate protection,are acting,. . . meantimepraying for federal intervention." Campbell,Wheeler, and the corporationsinsisted that it was theiww strikerswho were lawless.As Wheeler told the stateattorney general, "If we are guiltyof takingthe law into our own hands,I can only cite to you the UniversalLaw thatnecessity makes.... I would repeatthe operationany time I find my own people endangeredby a mob composed of eightyper cent aliens and enemiesof my Government."The leadersof the raids sought to claim the mantle of lawfulvigilance and to distance themselves fromlawless vigilantism. Across the country,many Americans cheered their work. The LosAngeles Times congratulated the posse, notingthat "the citizens of Cochise County, Arizona, have writtena lesson that the whole of America would do well to copy." Formerpresident Theodore Roosevelt insistedthat "no human being in his senses doubts thatthe men deportedfrom Bisbee werebent on destructionand murder."24 Criticsof the Bisbee deportationsplaced the leagues on the otherside of the divide betweenvigilance and vigilantism.They distinguishedbetween legitimate and illegitimate political coercion and insistedon the need for legal process. From Florence, Arizona,J. Sheik claimed thatthe copper companies "had taken,as it were,the gov- ernmentfrom out of [the governor's]hands and were runningit to suit theirneeds." Samuel Gompers, the presidentof the American Federationof Labor, also blamed the leagues: I assumeit is not necessaryfor me to give any assuranceof how utterlyout of accordI am withthe I.WW. and any such propaganda;but some of the men

23 Bruere,"Copper Camp Patriotism,"203; RobertBruere, "Copper Camp Patriotism:An Interpretation," Nation,Feb. 28, 1918, p. 235; Lindquistand Fraser,"Sociological Interpretation of the Bisbee Deportations," 405-7. Passescould also be issuedby thechief of police and thechambers of commercein El Paso and Tucson. For an earlierexample of theuse of privatelyissued passes, see D. G. Thiessenand CarlosA. Schwantes,"Indus- trialViolence in theCoeur d'AleneMining District," Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 78 (July1987), 83-90. 24 Thomas E. Campbell to Wilson, telegram,July 12, 1917, in Papersof WoodrowWilson, ed. Link et al., XLIII, 157. For HarryWheeler's statement, see Dubofsky,We Shall Be All, 386. For thestatements from the Los AngelesTimes and Roosevelt,see Petersonand Fite,Opponents of War, 55-56. 1368 The Journalof American History March2002

deportedare said to be law-abidingmen engagedin an earnesteffort at improve- ment of theircondition.... There is no law of which I am aware thatgives authorityto privatecitizens to undertaketo deportfrom the state any man. If therebe lawlessness,it is surelysuch conduct.25 RobertBruere, an investigativelabor journalist,observed events in Bisbee afterthe deportation.In the midstof World War I, even Bruerecould not countenancesubver- sion of the war effortby strikingworkers, and he echoed the copper corporationsin his criticismsof iww radicalism.But Bruerequestioned the entiresystem of vigilance when he insistedthat the wartimeneed fororder did not outweighthe value of legal process.The citizens'leagues, he suggested,were the dangerousand lawlesselements in southernArizona. "When ... we look more closelyat the thingswhich the copper companiesdid, we are startledto findtheir policy inspired by the same distrustof the State, of the constitutedauthorities of Arizona and the Federal Government,for which theythemselves condemned the I.WW, as an 'outlaw' organization."26 The Bisbee raids prompted a conflictedresponse fromofficials in Washington. Immediatelyafter the workerswalked out, Secretaryof Labor William B. Wilson was pleased thatthe secretaryof war had decided not to dispense "troopsor secretservice men to deal with the situationin Bisbee. But the federalgovernment encouraged citizenvigilance through its supportfor Arizona Home Guards. Writingfrom Camp Sevierin Greenville,South Carolina, theArizona nativeClifford C. Fairesnoted that: The LoyaltyLeague of Globe [anotherArizona mining town] was organizedfor the purposesof preservinglaw and orderand of fosteringpatriotism in a community whereit was sadlylacking. The outgrowthof this organization has beenthe formationof a Home Guard,which has beendrilling since August, to preserveorder after thetroops are withdrawn. Very recently notice was receivedfrom Washington that thiseffort at safeguardingthe peace is to be rewardedby Federalrecognition and supervision.27 Faires perceptivelyidentified the complicated and contradictoryresponse of a gov- ernmentthat depended on citizenvigilance yet activelytried to reinin vigilantism. As the details of the Bisbee deportationreached the White House, key figuresin the administrationcame to regrettheir slow responseto the raids. Hours afterthe raid, PresidentWilson assuredGovernor-elect Campbell that federaltroops were on theirway to quiet the town but added, "Meantime may I not respectfullyurge the greatdanger of citizenstaking the law in theirown hands as you reporttheir having done. I look upon such action with graveapprehension. A veryserious responsibility is assumed when such precedentsare set."28

25 J. Sheik,"Autocracy in Arizona,"Public, Feb. 16, 1918, pp. 216-17; SamuelGompers to Wilson,July 20, 1917, in Papersof WoodrowWilson, ed. Link et al., XLIII, 231. For two otherviews from labor, see Jeannette Rankinto Wilson,Aug. 1, 1917, ibid.,339-40; and J. L. Donnellyand ThomasA. Frenchto Wilson,telegram, Aug. 6, 1917, ibid.,373. 26 Bruere,"Copper Camp Patriotism,"202; Bruere,"Copper Camp Patriotism:An Interpretation,"235. 27 WilliamB. Wilsonto NewtonD. Baker,June 22, 1917, in Papersof WoodrowWilson, ed. Linket al., XLII, 563; CliffordC. Faires,"I.WW. Patriotismin Globe,"Nation, March 21, 1918, p. 320. 28 Wilsonto Campbell,telegram, July 12, 1917, in Papersof Woodrow Wilson, ed. Linket al., XLIII, 158. Vigilance,Coercion, and theLaw in WorldWar I America 1369

Wilsonassigned the President's Mediation Commission (PMc), a boardof lawyers and laborbureaucrats generally liberal and sympatheticto labor,to investigateevents in Bisbee.The PMc, underthe direction of Felix Frankfurter, worked in southernAri- zona throughoutfall 1917 and issueda reporthighly critical of the deportations. The reportalso condemnedthe postdeportation reign of law and orderby the Citizens' ProtectiveLeague and the Chamberof Commerce;as a curefor industrial strife, it urgedgreater cooperation between labor and management,to be facilitatedby the federalgovernment. But thePMc's greatestconcern was thatthe leagues had under- minedthe effectiveness ofother wartime loyalty organizations: "Such agencies of the 'public'as theso-called 'loyalty leagues' only serve to intensifybitterness, and, more unfortunately,to the minds of workers in theWest serve to associateall loyaltymove- mentswith partisanand anti-unionaims."29 The wartimemobilization of American industry had changedthe context of the tenserelations between labor and management.Accustomed to maintainingorder throughcitizens' groups and privatepolice forces,the coppercompanies and the townleaders who supportedthem turned to long-standingtraditions of antilabor vigilancein Bisbeein summer1917. In part,the war was a pretextto continuepre- warlabor battles on newterms. But it was more.League members tied their work- and theactions of thestrikers-to the fortunes of thewar effort, claiming to speak withthe authority of thestate in theirongoing contests over power. Sheriff Wheeler justifiedthe July 12 raidby saying of the strike, "This is no labortrouble. We aresure ofthat; but it is a directattempt to embarrassthe government of the United States." The wartimeneed forindustrial mobilization made the governmentdependent on suchorganizations even as someof its officialsquestioned their legitimacy. Most of theleagues' actions were supported, even in theUnited States Supreme Court, which hearda challengeto the deportationson the groundsthat it infringedfreedom of movement.The Courtdismissed the claim as a stateissue in whichthe federal gov- ernmenthad no interest.30 By makinga labor disputeinto a high-stakesmatter of war mobilization,the leaguesalso openedthe door for workers to use thatformulation as a weaponand to call on stateinstitutions in theirown defense.The leagues'more violent forms of coercionwere debated in thepress and condemnedwithin the Wilson administration. The fundamentalidea that citizenshad a duty of vigilance-whichhad promptedthe formation of such organizationsas the Citizens'Protective League- was neverfully discredited. But the courtchallenges and federalinvestigations laid thegroundwork for new approaches that would come to thefore in laterdecades.

29 Bruereclaims to quote thisdirectly from the President'sMediation Commission (PMC) report;see Bruere, "CopperCamp Patriotism,"202. But it does notappear in U.S. Departmentof Labor,Report on theBisbee Depor- tationsMade bythe Presidents Mediation Commission to thePresident of the United States (Washington, 1918). On the PMC, see Jensen,Heritage of Conflict,411-29; and JosephA. McCartin,Labor's Great War: The Strugglefor IndustrialDemocracy and theOrigins ofModern American Labor Relations, 1912-1921 (Chapel Hill, 1997), 77-80. 30 BisbeeDaily Review,July 12, 1917, p. 1, quotedin Lindquistand Fraser,"Sociological Interpretation of the BisbeeDeportation," 408; UnitedStates v. Wheeler,254 U.S. 281 (1920). 1370 The Journalof American History March2002

MoralVigilance around Military Camps The importanceof moralvigilance was also heightenedduring the war, particularly in communitiesadjacent to thenation's military camps. There, the large congrega- tionsof soldiersgathered in hastilyconstructed military installations had a sudden impacton local communities.Many residentswelcomed their presence and orga- nizedrecreational and socialservice opportunities; others worried that the popularity of the campswith young women from town betokened imminent moral collapse. Someof the young women were commercial prostitutes, but most were guilty only of offendingmiddle-class understandings of properfemale behavior. Military police operatingwith the authorityof law undertookmuch of the anti-vicework of the WorldWar I era;the Selective Service Act had madeit a federaloffense to sellalcohol or operatea houseof ill reputewithin five miles of a camp.But theenforcement of thatlegislation folded into-and dramaticallytransformed-patterns of moral vigilanceand citizenpolicing of personalbehavior and femalesexuality. The warraised thestakes for those who sawwomen's personal freedom as a subversiveassault on the effectivenessofU.S. troops.As D. J.Poynter of Albion, Nebraska, wrote to Secretary ofWar Newton D. Baker:"Shoot the lewd women as youwould the worst German spy;they do moredamage than all thespys." The workof moralvigilance societies revealsthe outer limits that coercion could reachwhen legal authorities cooperated closelywith private policing and feworganized to opposeit.31 Soon afterthe passageof the SelectiveService Act, the War Departmentestab- lished,in conjunctionwith its Commission on TrainingCamp Activities,a Commit- tee on ProtectiveWork for Girls (CPWG) to patrol the areas around military establishmentsin order to protectsoldiers from the dangers of prostitution. The suppressionof vice was a federalpolicy, and womenand menin officialpositions domi- natedthe bureaucracy that oversaw it, but volunteers conducted the nightly work of surveillance,investigation, and internmentin communitiesnationwide. In everycity thathad a militarytraining camp, the CPWG establisheda ProtectiveBureau. Con- ceivedas officialpolice forces, the bureaus were in practicestaffed largely by volunteers,due mostlyto the CPWG'sinsistence that the enforcersbe female,for, in the wordsof one WarDepartment official, "it is a woman'sjob to workwith women."32 The stateendeavors of theCPWG intersected with the private initiatives of middle- classwomen's clubs in militarycommunities. The convergenceof governmentaland privatepolicing brought the structuresof coerciondown hard on allegedlyloose women.As HenriettaS. Additon,the program'sassistant director, noted, "all the

31 D. J. Poynterto Baker,Aug. 6, 1917, quoted in NancyK. Bristow,Making Men Moral: SocialEngineering duringthe Great War (New York,1996), 135. 32 HenriettaS. Additon,"Work among DelinquentWomen and Girls,"Annals of theAmerican Academy of Politicaland SocialScience, 79 (Sept. 1918), 152-60; MarthaP. Falconer,"The Segregationof DelinquentWomen and Girlsas a War Problem,"ibid., 165. On thegovernment's wartime attack on prostitution,see Bristow,Making Men Moral,114; D'Emilio and Freedman,Intimate Matters, 211-12; Connelly,Response to Prostitution in thePro- gressiveEra, 136-50; and David J.Pivar, "Cleansing the Nation: The War on Prostitution,1917-1921," Prologue, 12 (Spring1980), 29-41. On the similarwork of volunteerpolicewomen in Britain,see Lucy Bland, "In the Name of Protection:The Policingof Women in the FirstWorld War," in Women-in-Law:Explorations in Law, Family,and Sexuality,ed. JuliaBrophy and Carol Smart(London, 1985), 23-49. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~...... rs,6-8

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J_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ...... N1rs._D Th Bibedprainwsntasotnoscodatobtacrflycodntdeetta eurdtemblzto fvouteesn thi uo oie.T eeent lodre crwso3nokrsm fwo a ese ee oreyAioaHsoia oitlusn H 4269 1372 The Journalof American History March2002 resourcesof occupation, education, health, recreation and religionin thecommunity are broughtinto play." During the war Maude Minertransferred her energies from volunteerprotective work to governmentservice. In a lectureto theWar Work Coun- cil of theYoung Women's Christian Association (YWCA) National Board, Miner urged thewomen of theY to practicevigilance, and she toleratedno slackers:"Every one whohas beenaround can help.At timesyou are too busyat workand too tiredto do anything.Combine a littletrolley car ride with some scouting work. You will find you cannothelp but follow some of theseyoungsters home and helpthem." When asked afterthe lecture how women could get authority for the patrols, she told her listeners, "Justby asking for it.... All ofus havea certainamount of power. We can stopa little girland findout abouther and learnof the danger and startthe work, and thengo to theChief of Policeand to thedifferent officials of thecity." Miner gave voice to her understandingof women'sobligations, but she also exertedagency and thereby claimeda spacefor vigilant women in thecoercive work of the war effort.33 Antiprostitutionsquads already existed in some communities;in others,the war led to theirformation. Women's patriotic leagues could be foundon thestreets of cities acrossthe country. In Massachusetts,the social worker Helen Pigeonand hercol- leagueshid in thebushes of BostonCommon at nightto spyon and detainwomen who wereconsorting with soldiers. In Chillicothe,Ohio, just outsideCamp Sher- man,an armycaptain found the patrols effective: "The worstkind of women do not paradethe streets as theGirls' Protective League operates under the 'arrest on suspi- cion'rule, and strangersare not in townlong before being picked up."34 Womensuspected of prostitutionwere detained, interned, and frequentlyforced to submitto medicalexamination, often without any legal chargesbeing pressed againstthem. At best, women were quicklyreleased; others, particularly those infectedwith venereal disease, languished indefinitely in thenation's hospitals, prisons, or makeshiftdetention centers-some behind barbed wire-where they per- formedmanual labor under the watchfuleye of armed guards.The vigilance societies'definition of prostitutionwas frequentlyvague: Juanita Wright, a young womanoriginally from Spartanburg, South Carolina, was committedindefinitely to theSherborn Reformatory for Women in Massachusettsafter word reached the Pro- tectiveBureau there that she was livingwith a soldierwithout benefit of marriage.35

33Additon, "Work among Delinquent Women and Girls,"155-56; MaudeMiner, "Probation Work," [1917], "Lec- turesunder the Auspices of theWar Work Council of theYWCA," typescript,pp. 52, 63-64, box 28a, YoungWomen's ChristianAssociation of theU.S.A. NationalBoard Records (Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Mass.).The GeneralFederation of Women's Clubs and theNational Association of Colored Women were active nationwide in anti-viceactivities. See CaliforniaFederation of Women'sClubs, Diamond Jubilee History Highlights (n.p., 1975), 16; Sallie SouthallCotten, History of theNorth Carolina Federation of Women'sClubs, 1901-1925 (Raleigh, 1925), 110; MaryJean Houde, TheClubwoman: A Storyof the Illinois Federation of Women's Clubs (Chicago, 1970), 92; MarthaLavinia Hunter, A Quarterof a CenturyHistory of the Dallas Woman'sForum, 1906-1931 (Dallas, 1932), 67; Maude T Jenkins,"The Historyof theBlack Woman's Club Movementin America"(Ph.D. diss.,Teachers College, ColumbiaUniversity, 1984), 81, 97; Membersof thePast Presidents Association of theDallas Federationof Women's Clubs,eds., History of the Dallas Federationof Women's Clubs, 1898-1936 (Dallas,1936), 81; Maude G. Palmer,comp., TheHistory of the Illinois Federation of Women's Clubs, 1894-1928 (n.p.,1928), 91; Rosen,Lost Sisterhood, 52, 116; and CarrieNiles Whitcomb, Reminiscences ofthe Springfield Womens Club, 1884-1924 (n.p.,[1924]), 137. 34 Hobson, UneasyVirtue, 177; Capt. Paul Popenoeto Major Joy,Feb. 20, 1919, quoted in Bristow,Making Men Moral,130. 35 In wartimeraids on prostitution,women were the only targets; during war mobilization,the calls of some Vigilance,Coercion, and theLaw inWorld War I America 1373

Moralvigilance and statepower intersected with the emergingdiscipline of psychology,as suspectedprostitutes were subjectedto psychologicalexaminations. Womenfound to be "feebleminded"were regularly turned over to institutionswith- out theirconsent and withno publichearing. Further complicating matters, between 1910 and 1917, sixteenstates had passedlaws authorizingthe sterilizationof the feebleminded,and someof thepresumptive prostitutes were sterilized. It is unclear how manywomen faced the strong arms of thelaw, of medicine,and of thenation's moralvigilance groups during the war. Official documents from the period report as fewas 15,000women arrested as prostitutes,but the historian Allan M. Brandtsug- geststhat 30,000 wereheld in federalfacilities alone, excluding an evengreater num- berwho encounteredlocal laws and organizationsbut were not formally arrested.36 That thepolicing of women's sexuality was considereda specificallyfemale obliga- tiondemonstrates the distinctly gendered aspects of citizenshipin theWorld War I UnitedStates. Men's service in themilitary posited a directequation between man- hood and fullcitizenship, one thatthe statehome guardsmimicked through their exclusionarymembership patterns. But patrioticwomen on the home frontcould choose fromoptions that ranged well beyondwomen's moral vigilance societies. Womenformed gun clubsfor armed self-defense. Within days of thedeclaration of war,the American Defense Rifle club, under the leadership of June Haughton, "an expertrifle shot," established a riflerange on theroof of theHotel Majesticin New York City.The women of the AlbanyColony of the National Societyof New EnglandWomen learned how to use riflesin self-defenseunder the directionof a staffmember from the nearbyarmory. In Bayonne,New Jersey,nineteen women formedthe Women's Revolver League and, using borrowed weapons and an instruc- torborrowed from the local police station, trained at thepolice practice ranges at the BayswaterYacht Club. Throughtheir actions, these women reworked the gendered structureof obligationand embeddedthemselves in theinstitutions and rhetoricof self-defenseand citizenvigilance.37

reformersto crackdown on maleswho solicitedprostitution were generally ignored. Hobson, UneasyVirtue, 176; Freedman,Their Sisters' Keepers, 147; Bristow,Making Men Moral, 118-19; Mary Macey Dietzler,Detention Housesand Reformatoriesas Protective Social Agencies in theCampaign of the United States Government against Vene- realDiseases (Washington, 1922), 64. MarthaP. Falconersuggested a nationalinternment camp system for women who were"a menaceto themen in training."See Falconer,"Segregation of DelinquentWomen and Girls,"160. For a summaryof actionsagainst alleged prostitutes, see Bristow,Making Men Moral,124. 36 Rosen,Lost Sisterhood, 22-23; Allan M. Brandt,No Magic Bullet:A SocialHistory of VenerealDisease in the UnitedStates since 1880 (New York,1987), 234n118. No morethan one-third of internedwomen were commercial prostitutes,according to Hobson, UneasyVirtue, 176-77. Psychologicaltesting procedures were borrowed fromthe U.S. Army,according to Falconer,"Segregation of DelinquentWomen and Girls,"161. On the prob- lematicnature of thetests, see Daniel J.Kevles, "Testing the Army's Intelligence: Psychologists and theMilitary in WorldWar I," Journalof American History, 55 (Dec. 1968), 565-81. In one studya whopping42 of the 88 womenexamined were found to be feebleminded,according to Additon,"Work among Delinquent Women and Girls,"156. On thesterilization of the feebleminded,see D'Emilio and Freedman,Intimate Matters, 215; Hob- son, UneasyVirtue, 191-92; and Daniel J. Kevles,In theName ofEugenics: Genetics and theUses of Human Hered- ity(Berkeley, 1985), 96-112. On clubwomen'sadvocacy of sterilizationlaws, see VernettaMurchison Hogsett, TheGolden Years: A Historyof the Idaho Federation of Womens Clubs, 1905-1955 (Caldwell,1955), 82. 37New YorkTimes, April 8, 1917, sec. 1, p. 5; NationalSociety of New EnglandWomen, Tidings from Far and Near (Chicago,1918), 14, pamphlet,folder 3, box 23, NationalSociety of New EnglandWomen Records (Sophia SmithCollection); New YorkTimes, April 15, 1917, sec. 1, p. 16. For a fascinatingand nuancedhistory of the genderedpolitics of women's wartime use ofguns, see Jensen, "Minerva on theField of Mars." 1374 The Journalof American History March2002

Womenformed patriotic leagues, surveillance societies, and women'sauxiliaries to all-malemilitias and guards.Connecticut women, for example, could not enroll in the Home Guard,but the Minute Women of New Havenand Bridgeportformed a quasi- militaryuniformed alternative that drilled and paradedjust as mendid. Somewomen evenjoined men's vigilance organizations. A few women were members of the American ProtectiveLeague, and women were among the perpetrators ofthe Bisbee deportations, evenas Bisbee'smorning paper on July12, 1917, urged,"All Women and Children Keep offStreets Today." The obligationsof citizenship were gendered, but the barriers betweenthe gendered variants of citizenshipwere permeable. Women's wartime vigilancealso demonstratesthe divisions among women along lines of raceand class.In Utica,New York,the elite members of theNational Society of New EnglandWomen helpedguard the Utica Gas and ElectricCompany, the Savage Arms Corporation, and nearbybridges against sabotage by Germanspies and strikingworkers. But theradical socialistElla ReeveBloor also spent much of the war in Utica,organizing women work- ersat SavageArms, who struck in an effortto obtainequal pay for equal work.38 The workof the moral vigilance societies on theWorld War I homefront represents anotheraspect of wartime citizen policing. Nothing that occurred, from the formation of vicesquads to forcedsterilization, was entirelynew. But moralvigilance took new formsduring the war, as ongoingcampaigns for citizen vigilance were incorporated into warmobilization efforts. Moral vigilance work also had newmeanings for the citizens whoundertook it, as womenfolded private policing efforts into state institutions. Ques- tionsabout coercion were answered differently in this instance than in others.Radicals in Connecticutand elsewherehad vigorouslyprotested the Home Guard'sbreakup of the socialistmeetings in Hartford.In thewake of the Bisbeedeportations, national laborunions and liberalintellectuals called for defending labor against the leagues. But feworganizations or individualsspoke out on behalfof theworking-class women who wereinterned as feeblemindedprostitutes, and a farwider range of state and voluntary activitieswere deemed legitimate forms of coercion. With governments, laws, voluntary associations,psychologists, and reformers arrayed against them, and the relative political powerlessnessoftheir gender and class and sometimes race as well,these Americans bore a heavyburden of political coercion on theWorld War I homefront.39

KeepingVigil over the Racial Order

WorldWar I had a profoundimpact on AfricanAmerican life. Many black veterans, concurringin W. E. B. Du Bois'sstrident claim "we return from fighting, we return fighting,"began to agitatefor political rights both in the South and in the urban

38 Osterweis,Three Centuries of New Haven, 405; Caroline Ruutz-Rees,"The Mobilizationof American Women," YaleReview, 7 (July1918), 810; FredT. Frazerto AmericanProtective League, Jan. 8, 1918, box 5, AmericanProtective League Correspondencewith Field Offices,1917-1919, Recordsof the Departmentof Jus- tice,RG 65 (NationalArchives, Washington, D.C.); Schwantes,"Toil and Trouble,"127; BisbeeDaily Review,July 12, 1917, quoted in Lindquistand Fraser,"Sociological Interpretation of the Bisbee Deportation,"408n43; NationalSociety of New EnglandWomen, Tidings from Far and Near,26; Ann Barton,Mother Bloor (New York, 1935), 16-17. For a theoreticalconsideration of vigilantism and gender,see Abrahams, Vigilant Citizens, 137-52. 39 Exceptfrom a smallgroup of Progressivewomen reformers, the draconian anti-vice measures of thehome frontfaced no publicopposition, although women did voice theirown protestsfrom within prisons and intern- Vigilance,Coercion, and theLaw in WorldWar I America 1375

North,where African Americans had migratedin largenumbers during the war. But whitevigilance organizations in the Southhad dedicatedmuch effort to enforcing AfricanAmerican participation in the draftand suppressingblack militancy. Ten- sionsboiled over in thesummer of 1919, withat leasttwenty-five episodes of racial violencein citiesnationwide, from Washington, D.C., and Knoxville,Tennessee, to Birmingham,Alabama, and Longview,Texas. In Chicago,at least38 peopledied in twodays of rioting that began on July27, 1919. In Omaha in lateSeptember 1919, a crowdof six thousand attempted to lynchthe city's mayor when he defendedWill Brown,an AfricanAmerican packinghouse worker who was thetarget of themob; federaland statetroops had to interveneto end theepisode. In theyear following the armistice,at least76 AfricanAmericans were lynched, 10 of themstill in theirmili- taryuniforms. African Americans found that they could affirm their loyalty and law- fulnessand pleadfor the rule of law, or theycould form their own vigilance societies forself-defense. They attempted both approaches.40 Some triedto stop the lynchingsand race riotsof 1919 by convincingwhite Americansthat black people needed state and legalprotection from the rule of mob violence.This was an old techniquein theantilynching movement, but the message was madeclearer and moreurgent by pointing to AfricanAmericans' loyalty during and afterthe war. The NationalAssociation for the Advancement of ColoredPeople (NAACP), in its annualreport for 1919, called forlaw and orderand affirmedthe rightsof blackAmericans by insistingthat the fact that "lawabiding colored people aredenied the commonest citizenship rights, must be broughthome to allAmericans who lovefair play." Writing in theIndependent, W. S. Scarborough,president of Wil- berforceUniversity, a historically black college in Xenia,Ohio, appealedto therule of law and concludedby asking,"Will not theAmerican white people come half- way-put asidetheir prejudices and playfair with this people that has doneso much to helpwin thiswar?" Such positionswere the culmination of overtwo decadesof organizedantilynching activity, much of it drawingon theextensive networks of voluntaryassociation among AfricanAmerican clubwomen. Hopes for a vigorous responsefrom the government foundered in theWhite House, where President Wil- son dismisseda petitionbearing thirty thousand signatures and protestingthe treat- mentof African Americans in theWashington riots. Wilson insisted that the fight for theLeague of Nations treaty required all hisattention.4' In theMississippi River Delta, however, where patient appeals to law and fairness wereignored by white listeners, another version of fairplay arose. Citizens of Phillips mentfacilities. Hobson, UneasyVirtue, 168-71. 40 The statisticsare from John Hope Franklinand Alfred A. MossJr., From Slavery to Freedom: A HistoryofAfrican Americans(New York, 1994), 346-52. See alsoWilliam M. Tuttle,Race Riot: Chicago in theRed Summer of 1919 (New York,1970); James C. Olsonand RonaldC. Naugle,History ofNebraska (Lincoln, 1997), 289-92; andTera W. Hunter, To JoyMy Freedom: Southern Black Women' Lives andLabors after the Civil War (Cambridge, Mass., 1997), 221. 41 "TenthAnnual Report of theNAACP forthe Year 1919," 1920, in CivilRights and African Americans: A Docu- mentaryHistory, ed. AlbertP. Blausteinand RobertL. Zangrando(Evanston, 1991), 339; W. S. Scarborough,"Race Riotsand TheirRemedy," Independent, Aug. 16, 1919, p. 223; Jeffreys-Jones,Violence and Reformin American His- tory,151. On theopposition to lynching,see Bederman,Manliness and Civilization,45-76; Feimster,"'Ladies and Lynching,"'164-234; JacquelynDowd Hall, Revoltagainst Chivalry: Jessie Daniel Ames and theWomen's Campaign againstLynching (New York,1993); Jenkins,"History of theBlack Woman's Club Movementin America,"89-95; 1376 The Journalof American History March2002

County,Arkansas, formed an organizationto keepwatch over their fellow citizens and maintainpeace and orderin theircommunity. They met in secret,swore oaths of allegianceto "defendthis Government and herConstitution at all times,"and perhaps stockpiledarms for self-defense. These were not the night riders of the Klan. These vigi- lantAmericans were the black sharecroppers ofthe Progressive Farmers and Household- ers'Union of America. Their story demonstrates the multiple uses of citizen vigilance in theearly-twentieth-century United States and the contest about its significance.42 On October1, 1919,black sharecroppers filled the pews of a smallchurch in Hoop Spur,Arkansas, near the townof Elaine,to hearabout the work of the Progressive Farmers.Although accounts of the earliest incidents are conflicting, the sharecroppers endedup in a gun battlewith a groupof whitemen outsidethe church, triggering threedays of violenceacross Phillips County. Crowds of local whitesroamed the countryside,and AfricanAmericans returned fire; 200 peoplemay have died. U.S. Armyforces restored order, but theyturned over control of thecounty to theCom- mitteeof Seven,a privatelyorganized white vigilance organization composed of local businessand politicalelites. The Committeeof Seven quickly established its own rule oflaw in Elaine,launched an investigationof theriots, and arrested79 AfricanAmer- ican men.In thewake of thecommittee's investigations, the trial that followed can hardlybe dignifiedwith the name: deprived of counsel and forbiddento callwitnesses on theirown behalf, every one ofthe black defendants was convictedby the all-white jury,some afterjust sevenminutes of deliberation.Twelve men weresentenced to deathand 67 othersto lengthyprison terms in whatMary White Ovington, chairman of theboard of theNAACP, called a "lynchingby law."The ProgressiveFarmers and Householders'Union was seenno morein PhillipsCounty.43 Comingat theend of a months-longwave of racial violence in the"red summer" of 1919,the riots in Elainecontributed to a movementby African American activists to puta stopto lynchingand mobviolence. The NAACPcalled a Conferenceon Lynching andMob Violencein 1919,while Ida B. Wells-Barnettpublicized the violence in Phil- lipsCounty through a fund-raisingcampaign, articles in the ChicagoDefender, and a

RosalynTerborg-Penn, "African-American Women's Networks in theAnti-Lynching Crusade," in Gender,Class, Race,and Reformin theProgressive Era, ed. NoraleeFrankel and NancyS. Dye (Lexington,Ky., 1991), 148-6 1; and RobertZangrando, The NAAcP Crusadeagainst Lynching, 1909-1950 (Philadelphia,1980). 42 Forthe oath, see Walter F. White,"'Massacring Whites' in Arkansas,"Nation, Dec. 6, 1919,p. 715. On events in Elainein 1919, see RichardC. Cortner,A Mob Intenton Death: TheNAACP and theArkansas Riot Cases (Middle- town,1988); 0. A. Rogers,"The Elaine Race Riotsof 1919,"Arkansas Historical Quarterly, 19 (Summer1960), 142-50; KieranTaylor, "'We Have JustBegun': Black Organizingand White Responsein the ArkansasDelta, 1919," ibid.,58 (Autumn1999), 265-84; ArthurI. Waskow,From Race Riot to Sit-In, 1919 and the1960s: A Study in theConnections between Conflict and Violence(Garden City, 1966); and Nan ElizabethWoodruff, "African-Ameri- can Strugglesfor Citizenship in theArkansas and MississippiDeltas in theAge of Jim Crow," Radical History Review (no. 55, Winter1993), 33-51. Foran accountthat erroneously reports that the twelve men convicted in thewake of theriots were executed, see Lee E. Williamsand Lee E. WilliamsII, Anatomyof Four Race Riots: Racial Conflictin Knoxville,Elaine (Arkansas),Tulsa and Chicago,1919-1921 (Jackson,1972), 38-55. Also unreliableis J.W. Butts and DorothyJames, "The UnderlyingCauses of theElaine Riot of 1919,"Arkansas Historical Quarterly, 20 (Spring 1961), 95-104. Fora comprehensivehistoriographic overview, see Jeannie M. Whayne,"Low Villainsand Wicked- nessin High Places:Race and Class in theElaine Riots," ibid., 58 (Autumn1999), 285-313. 43 The officialdeath toll of theCommittee of Sevenwas 30 people,but fewscholars believe that number. See White,"'Massacring Whites' in Arkansas,"715; WilliamB. HixsonJr., Moorfield Storey and theAbolitionist Tradi- tion(New York,1972), 183; and CarolynWedin, Inheritors of the Spirit: Mary White Ovington and theFounding of theNAAcp (New York,1998), 190. Vigilance,Coercion, and theLaw in WorldWar I America 1377

pamphletthat she circulated in Arkansas.Public criticism of theviolence in Arkansas was supplementedby courtroomchallenges. Speaking in Columbia,South Carolina, in the summerof 1919, MoorfieldStorey, a distinguishedformer president of the AmericanBar Association, told his audience that "there never was a timein thehistory ofthe world when it was more important to teachthe knowledge of and respectfor the law."Like othercritics of mobviolence, Storey insisted, "that all menmust obey the law is thedoctrine on whichfree governments rest"; he arguedthat "there is no more dangeroustyranny" than "mobocracy." Storey would later collaborate with the NAACP on courtcases resulting from the 1919 Arkansasriots that eventually brought ques- tionsof legal authority and mobviolence before the nation's highest court.44 In his briefto theSupreme Court, Storey argued that the formal mechanisms of law wereinsufficient protections when the entire atmosphere of sociallife was per- vadedby coercion: "If any juror had had thecourage to investigatesaid charge,with anyspirit of fairness, and votefor acquittal he himselfwould have been the victim of the mob." The legal system,claimed Storey, might be an insufficientsafeguard againstthe mob, even when it operatedaccording to itsrules. In a dramaticdeparture fromearlier decisions, the Court agreed, ruling in 1923 to overturnthe verdicts. As JusticeOliver Wendell Holmes wrote in themajority opinion in Moorev. Dempsey: If the case is thatthe whole proceeding [of a trial]is a mask-that counsel,jury, and judgewere swept to thefatal end byan irresistiblewave of publicpassion ... neitherperfection in themachinery for correction nor the possibility that the trial courtand counselsaw no otherway of avoiding an immediateoutbreak of the mob can preventthis Court from securing to thepetitioners their constitutional rights.45 The law,in otherwords, could itself be a formof mob violence.In sucha situation, saidHolmes, the Court could intervene to guaranteea fairtrial. The rulingin Moore v. Dempseydemonstrates how widespread postwar concerns about mob violenceand legitimateauthority found one resolutionin thejudicial process. It heldout thepos- sibility,eagerly hoped for by civil libertarians and African American activists, that the law mightact as thearbiter of the boundaries of political coercion.

The PostwarDebate overLaw and Order

Even as theymarched in ArmisticeDay paradesin November1918, fewof the nation'svigilance societies felt that their work was done. The ConnecticutHome Guard,for example, petitioned Governor Holcomb to forestallhis attemptto dis- band theorganization. Members noted that "the State should have at itscommand

44 Jenkins,"History of the Black Woman'sClub Movementin America,"93; Zangrando,NAACP Crusade againstLynching, 23-50; Ida B. Wells-Barnett,CrusadeforJustice: TheAutobiography ofIda B. Wells,ed. AlfredaM. Duster(Chicago, 1970), 397-404. Wells-Barnett'swork was not alwayswelcomed by theNAACP. See ibid.,400- 401. MoorfieldStorey, Obedience to the Law: AnAddress at theOpening of Petigru College in Columbia,South Caro- lina (Boston, 1919), 3-5, 7. On the NAACP's legal campaign,see Cortner,Mob Intenton Death, 106-84; and Waskow,From Race Riot to Sit-In, 143-74. 45 Hixson,Moorfield Storey and theAbolitionist Tradition, 184; Moorev. Dempsey,261 U.S. 86, 91 (1923). But seeJustice James C. McReynolds'sdissent: "The delaysincident to enforcementof our criminallaws have become a nationalscandal and giveserious alarm to thosewho observe."Ibid., 93. 1378 The Journalof AmericanHistory March 2002

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includingthe one picturedhere in Tulsa,Oklahoma, in 1921, and throughlegal channels: The NationalAssociation for the Advancementof Colored People succeededin persuadingthe SupremeCourt to overturnthe convictions of twelveblack men condemned to deathafter riots in Elaine,Arkansas, in 1919 (Moorev. Dempsey,1923). CourtesyTulsa Race Riot Collection} Mc .arlinLibrary. University ofThisa. during the time of reconstructionand readjustmentof public and privateaffairs, a well-disciplinedand reliable militaryforce of sufficientstrength to protectlife and propertywithin its bordersin any emergency."The governorgranted their request, and guard membersprobably helped quell the town-gownbattle of New Haven of May 28, 1919, when threehundred soldiersand five thousand townspeople,out- ragedby studentcatcalls at a militaryband concert,stormed the Yale Universitycam- pus and beat studentsuntil they were forciblydisbanded.46 The largestpostwar vigilance organizationwas the American Legion. Founded soon afterthe war as a veterans'organization, the legionjumped wholeheartedlyinto the tumultuous conflicts of the postwar period, and legionnaires frequently attemptedto impose theirvision of Americanismand social orderthrough extralegal means. The legionworked closely with public and privateespionage and surveillance organizations,as in Cleveland, Ohio, on May 1, 1919, when legionnairesand former membersof theAmerican Protective League brokeup the city'sMay Day parade and torered flagsfrom the hands of socialistveterans who dared marchin theirown uni- forms.Later in the year,Armistice Day broughtviolence to Centralia,Washington,

46 ConnecticutMilitary Emergency Board, Report to theGovernor, 7; "Two Men Shot as 5,000 Mob Yale Stu- dents,"New YorkTribune, May 28, 1919, clippingin AmericanCivil LibertiesUnion Archives, reel 8, vol. 70. RollinG. Osterweisclaims that the Connecticut National Guard broke up theriot, but itwas probablythe Home Guard.Osterweis, Three Centuries of New Haven,408. Vigilance,Coercion, and theLaw in WorldWar I America 1379

wherelegionnaires stormed the local iwwhall and exchangedgunfire with the men inside.They then captured local iww leader Wesley Everest, castrated and killedhim, and draggedhis body through the city streets wrapped in an Americanflag.47 Despitecalls from across the political spectrum to reinin thepostwar violence, the continuingpower of the American Legion and similargroups, including the Ku Klux Klan,which made overtwo hundredappearances in twenty-sevenstates and added one hundredthousand names to itsmembership rolls in theyear after the armistice, demonstratesthat extralegal political coercion persisted after the war. Throughout the 1920s, the legion and theKlan continued to exerciseforms of political coercion, rang- ingbetween the legitimate and theillegitimate, that reflected wartime precedents.48 In responseto theviolence of thewar and postwaryears, many called for the rule of law. In OklahomaCity, where an aggressivestate council of defenseand groups suchas theKnights of Libertyacted with the support of thestate government, Har- lowsWeekly editorialized on thedangers of suspending the rule of law: Armedwith the greatauthority of publicopinion, the Councilsrapidly assumed judiciaryand almostlegislative rights. In some instances,the same men actedas accuser,prosecutor, judge and jury.... No autocraticgovernment in thepast cen- turyever suspended the great fundamental principle, that a personcharged with an offenseagainst the law musthave the right of trial,to facehis accusersor to have thecounsel of one versedin thelaw.49 Or, as the Omaha World-Heraldeditorialized in October1919 in thewake of the riotthere: We havelearned how frailis thebarrier which divides civilization from the primal jungle,and we havebeen given to see clearlywhat that barrier is. It is thelaw. It is themight of the law wisely and fearlesslyadministered. It is therespect for and obe- dienceto the law on the partof the membersof society.When thesefail us, all thingsfail. When these are lost, all willbe lost.50 Such a vision-thatlegal process, not violence,divides legitimate from illegitimate politicalcoercion-rested on a differentcharacterization of mob violenceand vigilantismand differentviews of the place of law in politicallife from those held by membersof vigilance societies.51

47 WilliamPencak, For God and Country:The American Legion, 1919-1941 (Boston,1989); MarcusDuffield, King Legion(New York, 1931); Thomas A. Rumer,TheAmerican Legion: An OfficialHistory, 1919-1989 (New York, 1990). On eventsin Cleveland,see "TheMay Day Rioting,"Nation, May 10, 1919,p. 726. On a similarevent in Gary,Indiana, see "Red ChiefBeats It As Mob Threatens,"New YorkWorld, May 4, 1919, clippingin AmericanCivil Liberties Union Archives,reel 8, vol.70. On Centralia,see Dubofsky,We Shall Be All, 455-56; Tom Copeland,The Centralia Tragedy of 1919:Elmer Smith and theWobblies (Seattle, 1993); and thelightly fictionalized account in John Dos Passos,1919 (New York,1932). For an exampleof battles between the American Legion and the NAACP, seeWedin, Inheritors ofthe Spirit, 193. 48 Franklinand Moss,From Slavery to Freedom, 348. 49 Harlow'sWeekly, Dec. 11, 1918,p. 4, quotedin Edda Bilger,"The 'OklahomaVorwirts': The Voiceof German- Americansin Oklahomaduring World War I," ChroniclesofOklahoma, 54 (Summer1976), 252. Bilgersuggests that therewas widespread support for mob violence in newspapersin OklahomaCity and Tulsa in 1917 and early1918, but thatopposition to itbecame more common by late 1918. Ibid., 256. 50 Omaha World-Herald,quoted in "Omaha,"Literary Digest, Oct. 11, 1919, p. 16. 51 On thisdistinction, see Brown,"History of Vigilantism in America,"108-9. Foran overviewof key words in dis- cussionsof lynching and mobviolence, see Feimster,"'Ladies and Lynching,"'18-44; and ChristopherWaldrep, "War ofWords: The Controversyover the Definition of Lynching, 1899-1940," Journal of Southern History, 66 (Feb.2000), 75-100. 1380 The Journalof American History March2002

Formost Americans, the call was for"law and order,"for a strengtheningof con- stitutedlegal authorities' control of politicalcoercion. The 1918 "slackerraids"-in whichAmerican Protective League members circulated on streets,in ballparks,and in otherpublic places demandingthat men show theirdraft cards and detaining thosewho did not comply-prompteda flareupof dissentthat brought the league's ambiguouslegal status into focus. The APL was quicklyshut down, but theJustice Departmentwas simultaneouslyhiring a dozen new federalagents a week.Postwar legislationsimilarly took power to regulateprostitution away from women's volun- teervigilance societies while it dramaticallyexpanded the reachof statepower by authorizingthe interventionof boardsof healthand local police.Harlows Weekly, whichhad spokenout passionately for the rule of law, hoped that it would be usedto reinin lawlessGerman Americans "because they failed to use thecaution so necessary in thistime of stress."In thewake of theWashington, D.C., riots,some sought to use law to control,not whiterioters, but African American citizens. "Already a bill beforethe Senate seeks to separatethe races on streetcars," noted the Independent. In thewake of the events of 1919, Congressconsidered a billmaking lynching a federal crimebut did notadopt it. The nationwideMay Day violenceof 1919 led one sena- torto statethat he would"at once introduce a billin Congressmaking it unlawfulto advocate,among other things, by a 'generalcessation of industry,'the 'overthrowing ofthe Government of the United States, or anyother Government.' In Californiathe wholesalearresting of 'undesirablealiens' is alreadyunder way."52 In theimmediate aftermath of thewar, the political situation was presentedas a choicebetween law and orderand socialchaos. Among the growing community of civillibertarians, a stark picture of American politics also prevailed,but viewed from a differentangle. The activistsof the NationalCivil LibertiesBureau-like their opponents,the law-and-order conservatives who clamoredfor stricter loyalty laws- wantedmore laws, and theywanted them more consistently enforced.53 Anotherarea in whichcivil libertarians and conservativesconcurred was in their denunciationof "mobviolence." Where one sidesaw jingoistic superpatriots, another fearedsubversive anarchist strikers, but both understood the mob to be madeup ofthe same social types,and both thoughtmob rule posed similardangers to American democracy.As one commentatorwrote of the July 1919 raceriot in Washington,D.C.: Themobs that broke the long record of good order in the National capital ... were madeup almostwholly of boys between eighteen and twenty-five years of age. In

52 Harlow'sWeekly quoted in RichardC. Rohrs,The Germansin Oklahoma(Norman, 1980), 45; E. H. Rush- more to Capt. CharlesD. Frey,Oct. 4, 1918, box 7, AmericanProtective League Correspondencewith Field Offices,1917-1919, Recordsof theDepartment of Justice; "The WashingtonRiots," Independent, Aug. 2, 1919, p. 147; "May Day Rioting,"726. See also EldridgeF. Dowell,A Historyof Criminal Syndicalism Legislation in the UnitedStates (1939; New York,1969). "Law and order"was a prominentissue in the 1920 presidentialcam- paigns.Candidates considered for the Republicanand Democraticnominations included many who had made theirnames as defendersof law and order-Gov. Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts,Gov. JamesCox of Ohio, MayorOle Hanson of Seattle,Attorney General A. MitchellPalmer, and Gen. LeonardWood-while theSocial- istparty made mob violencea centerpieceof itscampaign on behalfof EugeneV. Debs, thenin federalprison in Atlanta.See Donald R. McCoy,"Election of 1920," in HistoryofAmerican Presidential Elections, 1789-1968, ed. ArthurM. SchlesingerJr. and FredL. Israel(9 vols.,New York,1985), VI, 2349-85. 53 For an exampleof publicationsissuing from the National Civil LibertiesBureau (later renamed the Ameri- can Civil LibertiesUnion), see EverettDean Martin,The Mob Mind vs.Civil Liberty (New York,1920). Vigilance,Coercion, and theLaw in WorldWar I America 1381

partthese were composed of youngroughs of thecity. The restwere soldiers and sailors,either discharged or fromnear-by camps, and fromtheir appearance doubt- lessof the hoodlum element of their home towns.54 Such statementsattributing social disorderto spontaneous,disorganized gatherings of lower-classmen were common throughout1919. Some leading postwarintellectuals contributed to this vision of the mob as they reformulatedtheir thoughts on crowd psychologyand mass politics. European soci- ologistsat the turnof the centuryconsidered the significanceof mob psychologyin an extendeddebate that gave voice to theirconcerns about mass democracy.Prewar Americanthinkers often challenged the antidemocraticassumptions of thisliterature. Writingbefore the war, the historianAllan Nevins chastiseda European theoristof crowd psychologyfor ignoring "the immensehopefulness in the gradual rationaliza- tion of the crowdwhich is going on all around us" and suggesteda progressiveinter- pretationof the crowd. "Not even in the backwardparts of the world is the crowd,in any sense of the term,so excitableand blind as it once was." That view would not prevailin the postwaryears. By then,intellectuals had come to fearthe mob instinct and its power over the American mind; Walter Lippmann worried that "at the presenttime a nation too easilyacts like a crowd."55 In theirsociological and intellectualassumptions, the criticsof mob violence-who had witnessedthe violence of the Americanhome frontfirsthand-were not entirely wrong.But such a viewpointacted to make theworkings of American political coercion invisible,in two ways.First, it obscuredthe centralrole played by organizedgroups and local elitesin the narrowcategory of eventscalled "mob violence."Second, by focusing on violentpassion and ignoringthe ways that vigilance groups had exercisedtheir pow- erswith the consentof the government,this literature helped sweep the more system- atic,organized, and passionlesscoercions under the rugof politicallegitimacy.56

In fall 1917 Bisbee witnessedwhat the city'sDaily Reviewcalled "a splendidgathering of high-class,patriotic business men and workersand professionalmen of the district." SheriffHarry Wheeler, who had led the deportationsthat July and who was viciously rebuked in the President'sMediation Commission report,was the guest of honor. Acceptingthe accolades of his fellowcommunity leaders, Wheeler said, "My friends, you pay me too much honor in thismatter. There werescores of men in thatdrive the

54 "RacialTension and Race Riots,"Outlook, Aug. 6, 1919, p. 533. 55 AllanNevins, "Crowds and Crowd-Psychology,"Dial, May 11, 1916, pp. 465-66. Nevins'sessay is a review ofMartin Conway, The Crowdin Peaceand War(New York,1916). WalterLippmann, Liberty and theNews (New York,1920), 56. See also WalterLippmann, The Phantom Public (New York,1925); and, fora contrastingview, JohnDewey, The Publicand Its Problems(New York,1927). For an extendedconsideration of Lippmannand Dewey on "thepublic," see RobertB. Westbrook,John Dewey andAmerican Democracy (Ithaca, 1991), 275-318. 56 On therelationship between class, gender, race, and crowdviolence, see Feimster,"'Ladies and Lynching"'; Paul A. Gilje,Rioting in America (Bloomington, 1996); and LeonardL. Richards,Gentlemen of Property and Stand- ing:Anti-Abolitionist Mobs in JacksonianAmerica (New York,1970). The long-standingtradition of excusingthe crowdactions of "gentlemen of propertyand standing"helped elites distinguish their own politicalcoercions from ones thatthreatened their social privileges. 1382 The Journalof American History March2002 morningof July 12 who areentitled to morehonor than I, who did morethan I that dayfor the district and ourhome fires. I merelydid myduty. I couldn'tshirk."57 On the WorldWar I Americanhome front,there were many men and women who,like Sheriff Wheeler, felt they could not shirk the duty of vigilance in serviceof thewar effort.And so theyresponded, drawing on socialpractices they knew and creatingothers as theywent along. During the war Americans policed their fellow citizensas partof a mobilizationeffort that pervaded nearly every facet of national life.At thefactory and at school,in churchesand in dancehalls, on thestreets and on thetelephone, ordinary Americans were watched and governedby theirfellow citizens.The apparatusof surveillancewould not havebeen constructed had not many Americansviewed vigilance as basic to good citizenshipand had not officialsat all levelsof governmenttolerated and evenencouraged that vision of politicalobligation. In May 1919 thePublic, a reform-mindedmagazine, editorialized on therole of law in Americanlife: This is a countryof law. If it is notthat it is nothingat all. And beinga countryof law thosewho assumeto setup privatejudgment are undermining its foundation. Everyword spoken and everyact committedis subjectto law,and menhave been appointedto see to itsenforcement.... If thissystem is not self-sustainingthen democracyitself is at fault.58 Eventson theWorld War I homefront demonstrate that the system was not self-sus- tainingas theeditorialist had suggested. Those who called for the rule of law while they oversawa systemof coercionthat continued to operateoutside the law wereneither devious,duplicitous, nor hypocritical. They were obedient citizens trapped in a paradox oftheir own making, dedicated to a nationof laws that asked them to ignore laws. In the postwarpush for law and order,the worst manifestation ofcitizen vigilance-mob violence-had beendenounced, and even as itpersisted into the postwar years, the intellec- tual,legal, and institutional weapons wielded against it would grow more powerful. But thevast structures of citizenvigilance remained in place;vigilance societies that had donethe work of the state outside its boundaries now saw those actions folded within it. The mob,narrowly defined, had been publicly renounced. But the coercion had not.

57 Bruere,"Copper Camp Patriotism,"203. 58 "Mob Violence,"Public, May 10, 1919, p. 481.