In order to ensure the safety and general well-being of the citizens of the United States and of the Union itself, it is sometimes necessary to enact legislation and measures that contradict the fabric of this nation’s ideological background. In times of crisis and war, the policy put in place immediately following an emergency is often hasty and driven by paranoia and misplaced anger. This has happened since the inception of this county, and will continue to happen. It is a sad but necessary evil in representative democratic nations. The need for protection is there, but with as many civil liberties and civil rights that we as United States citizens have been granted, we cannot help but infringe upon the expansive rights Americans enjoy and celebrate.
This pattern of preventive policymaking has consistently appeared on the timeline of United State history. It began with John Adams’ 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts and has continued to this day with the Patriot Act of the Bush Administration. The federal government has repressed free speech and free press in almost every significant US conflict since 1812. From the Mexican-American War to Vietnam, the press was rarely “free”.
Amid political and military conflict with both France and Great Britain, the Federalist Adams administration drew up the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 to combat any foreigners and citizens who wished to sabotage the United States politically or violently. This legislation was sparked by an incident involving American diplomats in which the US refused to pay a French foreign minister a quarter-million dollar bribe. Within this group of laws existed four separate but related acts which addressed a number of Federalist concerns. First was the Naturalization Act, which extended the period for citizenship from five years to fourteen. Next was the Alien Act, which gave bureaucrats and government officials the power during peacetime to deport any non-citizen deemed dangerous to the government. Third was the Alien Enemies Act, a law which gave the government the power to deport any alien deemed a threat to the US during war time. Finally there was the Sedition Act, legislation enacted to combat opposition in the general public. This law meted out fines and the threat of imprisonment for those who publicly criticized the government (Alien).
Many parts of these laws were never enforced, including the whole Alien Act. One of the laws that was initially used was the Sedition Act. A number of Republican-leaning newspaper editors were arrested for allowing anti-Federalist administration. This sparked outrage from the supporters of Thomas Jefferson, who claimed that this was a clear violation of the First Amendment’s right to free speech. In response to these preventive measures, the Republican legislatures of Kentucky and Virginia passed resolutions (written by Jefferson and Madison respectively) which stated that the State legislatures have the duty to nullify these unconstitutional laws. Eventually, partly because of the death of former President George Washington, cooler heads prevailed in this situation. The nation was somewhat reunified and the laws were shelved and allowed to run out in the administration of Thomas Jefferson.
During the War of 1812, the federal government, in an attempt to centralize its power and strengthen its position for war, took power from the governments of the states. Also, during this time, the Madison administration took measures to regulate trade more closely, enacting tariffs and seizing control of many merchant operations. Part of this regulation was a backlash from years prior. The Napoleonic Wars made trade a very dangerous and very touchy issue. Ships passing into French harbors had to deal with the threat of British naval backlash. Often, American merchant sailors were seized and impressed into the British military. Because of these threats from British naval attacks, President Madison decided it would be better to allow the economy to slump rather than be drawn into a war.
For the most part, Madison was very respectful of Constitutional rights and rarely hinted at doing anything to infringe upon them. As the so-called “Father of the Constitution”, the Virginian was hesitant to impede the rights of any citizen of the country he helped to build from scratch. Called a weakling throughout his presidency for not acting more dictatorial in a crisis, Madison’s strategy of “constitutional war” was actually, in retrospect, the best possible solution for that situation. Debt incurred from the war was paid back within 20 years and the federal government was soon returning a surplus to its states.
During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln assumed many of the powers of Congress, as well as invading the privacy of private citizens’ mail and telegrams in order to seek out Southern agents. Presidential orders ended the First Amendment right to free speech and free press, leading to the arrest of Confederate sympathizers and opponents of the Lincoln administration in the press. Constitutional rights of criminal processes were suspended. These included habeas corpus and the right to a trial in front of peers. Many trials were held in front of military “star chamber” tribunals, who handed down heavy sentences.
President Lincoln deserves much credit for carrying our nation through what is historically one of his hardest periods; a period which saw more American blood spilled than all other American conflicts combined. Sensationalist historians are now analyzing this man’s policies and screaming “dictator!”, and perhaps that are right. But I am of the opinion that a dictatorial personality was what the country needed during this period of internal struggle.
Lincoln suspended the writ of habeus corpus, in what was his most troubling intrusion into unconstitutionality. This in itself was spawned from an incident of individual crisis inside the enormous problem that was the Civil War. There was an abortive uprising in the city of Baltimore spearheaded by its chief of police. This officer of the law encouraged Confederate supporters to blow up bridges and riot to obstruct the passing of Federal troops from the North into the battlefields of the South. Lincoln used this incident to seize upon the powers of the presidency to act in times of mortal danger for the Union.
World War I produced a familiar patriotic fervor once it was completely certain that we would be entering the war. The problem with this zeal was that it caused the common citizen to mistrust and dislike immigrants or immigrant communities. Discrimination followed against Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, German-Americans and pretty much anything foreign to the core citizenry of the US. In light of this mistrust, Congress passed the Espionage Act in June of 1917. This law stated that any person suspected of given false statements that mislead the authorities would be open to heavy fines and terms of imprisonment. When this act proved to be too broad to enforce, the legislature passed an additional law to bolster the effectiveness of the Espionage Act.
The Sedition Act was passed in the Spring of 1918. It included bans on willfully obstructing enlistment processes, insubordination, refusal of duty to the military, amongst other things. Most notable however, is the law’s attempt to halt any type of dissenting activity within the country. It was illegal to publish anything negative against the government; also it became illegal to be disloyal to the flag, Constitution, and military uniforms of the United States of America. Words that supported in any way a country the US happened to be at war with became a crime. Because of its obvious unconstitutionality, the Sedition Act was repealed in 1921, but the Espionage Act is still on the books. It can be enforced by the executive branch in the event of a war.
World War I also brought us the Trading With The Enemy Act, which forbade any US citizen to trade with any merchant from a country the United States was pitted against in its struggle. It also provided that all published works in foreign languages be available for translation into English, or else they were unacceptable. Censorship of communications was inserted into this law as well. The government granted itself the right to control and read all communiqué coming in and going out of the country. A “Censorship Board” was created to monitor postal and telegraph communications by President Wilson in 1917. This is a clear violation of a person’s right to privacy and of free speech, but at the time the government deemed it necessary to control some aspects of freedom.
Following the devastating attacks on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, public sentiment towards those of Asian descent began to grow. Many Japanese immigrants were settled along the West Coast of the United States and suffered from heavy discrimination based on their ethnicity. The public and the government itself did not trust these Japanese-Americans to be supportive of a US war effort against their ancestral homeland. In February of 1942, just three months after the Japanese bombing of the Hawaiian naval port, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 which began the round-up of 120,000 US citizens of Japanese descent. These people were then corralled into ten separate large internment camps spread all over the country. From Arkansas to eastern California, barbed wire was strung and barracks were built to house these people.
It is reported that the conditions were poor at best for these American citizens. They lived in flimsy shacks with no plumbing and no household utilities for cooking or cleaning. The camps were overcrowded and caused dissent within the Japanese-American internees. Two and a half years after signing his executive order, the president rescinded it, ordering the dismantling of the camps and the release of the Japanese Americans. In the last 20 years, there have been challenges and reparations because of this act of self-preservation by the US government. In 1988, Congress passed legislation which granted every US citizen who suffered in the camps $20,000. Over 5,000 Japanese-Americans renounced their citizenship and moved elsewhere, most back to war-torn Japan (Ng).
Also suffering from curtailed civil liberties and civil rights, Italian and German Americans toiled through four years of discrimination base on their ethnicity. 1,600 Italian citizens were interned with tens of thousands forced to move from their homes close to the sea. They suffered curfews and confiscations of property because they were not yet citizens of the US. German immigrants too suffered because of their links to their homeland. Many were intercepted at Ellis Island, which became a makeshift camp in itself shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Many Germans kept on Ellis Island spent 5 years or more there. Many were not released until 1948. There were dozens of other camps across the country where German immigrants were held through the majority of the war. The internees included deportees from Latin American countries, who the US requested be sent to them in order to keep an eye on them.
In the 1950’s, the Cold War was just beginning to hit its fever pitch. Paranoia following the Russian explosion of an atomic bomb caused the government and the public to suspect everyone of being a communist. Based on this common paranoia, the already formed HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) began probing the film industry, the US Government and the public in general for communists. Here began a witch hunt, led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, which lasted nearly six years (1947-1953) (PBS).
Since September 11th, the Patriot Act has proved to be a useful tool in arresting whoever is deemed suspect of terroristic activity. What is not as public is its infringement of civil rights. In a time of crisis, Congress acted by hastily pushing through this piece of garbled legislation in order to cover its backside and provide some semblance of protection for the American people. Since this time, a few key parts of the act have been struck down as unconstitutional by federal courts as well as the Supreme Court. This curbing of civil rights is apparently for our protection, but one cannot help but flashback to George Orwell’s 1984 and envision a world much like the one of constant monitoring that author creates in his masterpiece. Collecting library reading lists on individuals, roving wire-taps and non-warranted searches are just a few of the invasions of American’s civil rights (Doyle).
Crisis does not always cause infringement of civil rights and civil liberties. Often, history shows that conflict causes progress. According to Shibley Telhami of the Baltimore Sun, “the Cold War was responsible for numerous racially liberal policies. Government officials regarded measures aimed at expanding African-American freedom as crucial to American struggles against the Soviet Union” (Telhami). Also, Woodrow Wilson himself claimed that World War I was the source of women’s suffrage in August of 1920. The role the women played in filling positions left by enlisted soldiers in 1917 led to an increased social stance for women in America.
Civil rights and civil liberties are things worth fighting for, not for sacrificing in order to fight more efficiently. It is important to protect these key parts of what make us American and not allow the government to restrict the rights given to us by nearly sacred documents which also give them the power that they abuse. As a historical trend, constitutional encroachments have been harmful for United States citizens, causing paranoia and negative sentiment towards a group of people based upon their ethnicity.
Works Cited
Alien and Sedition Acts. Yale University: Avalon Project. 27 March 2005. .
“American Masters: McCarthyism.” PBS . 18 April 2005.
“Civil Right/Casualties of Wartime.” March 28, 2005. .
Delgado, Richard. Justice at War: Civil Liberties and Civil Rights During Times of Crisis. New York: New York University Press, 2003.
Doyle, Charles. Terrorism: Section by Section Analysis of the USA PATRIOT Act. Congressional Research Team. 28 March 2005. .
Gore, Al. “Freedom and Security.” Speech given: 9 November 2003.
Jacobs, Arthur D. “History of the Internment of German American Civilians in the United States.” . 20 April 2005.
Ng, Wendy. Japanese American Internment during World War II: A History and Reference Guide. Greenwood Press, 2001.
Rehnquist, Chief Justice William A. “Civil Liberty in Wartime” Speech given at the Director’s Forum, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, November 17, 1999.
Telhami, Shibley. “War and Liberty.” Baltimore Sun 18 November 2003
