History of the United States II / Unit 8 USH2 1080 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Liberty in Wartime
The idea
The war produced the course's first sustained test of civil liberties. The Espionage and Sedition Acts made opposition a crime, and more than two thousand people were charged. Postal officials could bar publications from the mails. Private citizens in the American Protective League watched their neighbours. The Yawp says the laws stripped dissenters of their right to resist the war publicly. In Schenck the Supreme Court upheld the laws unanimously, and Eugene Debs went to prison for ten years.
In practice
A socialist candidate campaigning from a cell, and a Supreme Court test that permitted it.
Where people slip
The anchor reports these events plainly, and so does the course. The pattern is the point: in wartime, the government narrowed the right to dissent, and the courts allowed it. Unit twelve's internment of Japanese Americans and unit seventeen's Patriot Act return to the same question. Ask, each time, what the danger was and who decided.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Builds on
Unlocks
- Nothing yet depends on this.
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