Analysis of the Red Scare
Analysis of the Red Scare"The tumult and the shouting dies, The captains and the kings depart."
-Kipling, The Recessional
Mr. Kipling was wrong. War does not always end with the last
cry on the battlefield. World War I certainly did not. After the war
formally ended on November 18, 1918, there was an ideological war
still going on in the US. An ideological war which prompted mass
paranoia and caused, among many other things, what would be known as
the Red Scare, which began in 1919 and ended in 1921. Red Scare was
the label given to the actions of legislation, the race riots, and the
hatred and persecution of "subversives" and conscientious objectors
during that period of time. It is this hysteria which would find
itself repeated several decades later in history when Senator Joeseph
R. Macarthy accused high government officials and high standing
military officers of being communist. Undoubtedly the most important
topic of an investigation into a historical occurrence is its
inception. What caused the Red Scare?
At the heart of the Red Scare was the conscription law of May
18, 1917, which was put in place during World War I for the armed
forces to be able to conscript more Americans. This law caused many
problems for the conscientious objector to WWI, because for one to
claim that status, one had to be a member of a "well-recognized"
religious organization which forbade their members to participation in
war. As a result of such unyeilding legislation, 20,000 conscientious
objectors were inducted into the armed forces. Out of these 20,000,
16,000 changed their minds when they reached military camps, 1300 went
to non-combat units, 1200 gained furloughs to do farm work, and 100
did Quaker relief work in Europe. 500 suffered court-martial, and out
of these, 450 went to prison. However, these numbers are small in
comparison with the 170,000 draft dodgers and 2,810,296 men who were
inducted into the armed forces. Nevertheless, the conscientious
objectors were targeted in the Red Scare after the war. They were
condemned as cowards, pro-German socialists, although that was not
everything. They were also accused of spreading propaganda throughout
the United States. Very few conscientious objectors stood up for
themselves. Roderick Siedenberg, who was a conscientious objector,
wrote that "to steal, rape, or murder" are standard peacetime causes
for imprisonment, but in time of war "too firm a belief in the words
of Christ", and "too ardent a faith in the brotherhood of man" are
more acceptable.
Some organizations such as the National Civil Liberties
Bureau, which would later be renamed the American Civil Liberties
Union, took up the task of standing up for the rights of conscientious
objectors. Before the war, the NCLB-ACLU opposed American involvement,
and afterward defended the rights of the objectors. Later, the ACLU
would gain a reputation for helping people with liberal cases who were
too poor to...
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