The First Red Scare :: American History

Many historians have examined the post-war rubicund Scare in 1919-1920, but few have explored the continued wreak of the anti-red hysteria throughout the 1920s. This second Red Scare was generally to a greater extent specific in its victimization, targeting mainly the womens pacification movement. This opposition to pacifists grew from a post-war conservativism led by right-wing groups. The documents in this study address the fountainhead What groups attacked the Womens International League for peace of mind and Freedom, and how did League members respond to the attacks? After knowledge domain War I many Americans supported a policy of phalanx preparedness, which they hoped would protect the country from any future attack. The takings Defense playact of 1920, which originally specified a serenitytime army of 280,000 men and a matter Guard of 454,000 men, reflected this sentiment.1 The Womens International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) opposed this act. They believed that governing body policy and spending should be directed towards international arbitration and the packaging of world peace. Their internationalist perspective became the grounds on which nationalist groups denounced the peace movement as an un-American conspiracy of communists, radicals, and socialists. Secretary of War privy W. Weeks was the first public figure to initiate the campaign of slander against the womens peace organizations when he began speaking tours around the United States to counteract the WILPF opposition to the National Defense Act. He encouraged other military men to happen his example and many did, including the director of the Chemical Warfare Service, Brigadier oecumenical Amos H. Fries. (For more on the Chemical Warfare service and peace activism protrude another project on this website, Why Did the Womens International League for Peace and Freedom Campaign against Chemical Warfare, 1915-1930?) In response, WILPF began a policy of di splace letters to their accusers, refuting each slanderous claim one by one. scroll 2 in this project refutes Friess claim that WILPF members took an oath against any interestingness in war. The Woman Patriot took up the slacker oath issue in its pages. Other conservative writers like Fred R. Marvin and R. M. Whitney wrote articles for the magazine that falsely claimed connections among the peace movement and the communist movement, ranking individual members on a color code of radicalism.2 However, these attacks were not viewed as significantly damaging until the famous Spider-web chart appeared in Henry Fords newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, in 1924.