Fighting Faiths

by Polenberg, Richard

• ISBN13: 9780801486180
• ISBN10: 0801486181
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-09-01
• Publisher: Cornell Univ Pr

Summary

Jacob Abrams et al. v. United States is the landmark Supreme Court case in the definition of free speech. Although the 1918 conviction of four Russian Jewish anarchists-for distributing leaflets protesting America's intervention in the Russian revolution-was upheld, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes's dissenting opinion (with Justice Louis Brandeis) concerning "clear and present danger" has proved the touchstone of almost all subsequent First Amendment theory and litigation. In Fighting Faiths, Richard Polenberg explores the causes and characters of this dramatic episode in American history. He traces the Jewish immigrant experience, the lives of the convicted anarchists before and after the trials, the careers of the major players in the court cases-men such as Holmes, defense attorney Harry Weinberger, Southern Judge Henry DeLamar Clayton, Jr., and the young J. Edgar Hoover-and the effects of this important case on present-day First Amendment rights.

Author Biography

Richard Polenberg is Goldwin Smith Professor of American History at Cornell University. He is the author, most recently, of The World of Benjamin Cardozo: Personal Values and the Judicial Process.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments	vii
Prologue: A Farewell Dinner	1	(3)
Anarchism and War	4	(39)
The Immigrant Experience
The World of Work
Anarchism and East Harlem
The Justice Department and the Sedition Act
Woodrow Wilson and Russian Intervention
The Arrests	43	(39)
August 23, 1918
Two Leaflets
The Bomb Squad
The Confessions
The Indictments
Francis G. Caffey
The Lawyer
Harry Weinberger
The Trial	82	(36)
War Fever
John Reed and the Death of Jacob Schwartz
The Judge:
Henry DeLamar Clayton, Jr.
The Prosecution's Case
Raymond Robins and the Sisson Documents
The Conviction	118	(36)
The Judge as Prosecutor
``The Feminist Radical''
The Verdict
The Sentencing
Bonds for Bail
The Surveillance State	154	(43)
Aliens, Anarchists, and the Law
The Machinery of Surveillance
The World of the Undercover Agent
J. Edgar Hoover and the Anarchists
Social Reform and the Surveillance State
Frederic C. Howe
The Supreme Court	197	(46)
Conservatism and the Court
Oliver Wendell Holmes and the Clear and Present Danger Standard
Holmes and the Libertarians
The Decision
The Dissent
The Response	243	(42)
Flight and Arrest
``Freedom of Thuggery?''
John H. Wigmore
Sir Frederick Pollock and the Common Law
Louis D. Brandeis
Thinking Through the Subject
The ``Trial'' of Zechariah Chafee, Jr., at the Harvard Club
Prison	285	(38)
The American Prison System
Blackwell's Island: the Workhouse
Atlanta: ``Huge Walls of Stone...Tiny, Airless Cages''
Jefferson City: Kate Richards O'Hare and Prison Reform
Exile	323	(37)
Wilson, the Political Prisoners, and Amnesty
Harding and Deportation
November 23, 1921
Lenin, the Cheka, and the Anarchists
Into Russia...and Out
Epilogue: A Reunion in Mexico City	360	(11)
Manuscript Collections, Locations, and Abbreviations	371	(4)
Notes	375	(36)
Selected Bibliography	411	(8)
Index	419