Ann Hagedorn, Savage Peace: Hope and Fear in America, 1919 (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2007), 543 pp., $27.00.
The more awful the war, the more joyous the peace, or at least the moment the war ends. The peace itself often disappoints, like that after World War I, which acted as a mere interlude before a far more horrible conflict.
Journalist and author Ann Hagedorn vividly paints the year 1919, which began in hope and ended in frustration for many Americans. The shameless demagoguery of ambitious politicians, brutal government assault on basic liberties, violent enforcement of white supremacy, and careless planting of seeds for future conflict all helped dissipate people’s dreams. Many of these themes echo today. The people and organizations defending our basic freedoms are stronger, but the public deceits and government abuses are no less common or dangerous.
America’s participation in World War I was a result of Woodrow Wilson’s delusional desire to remake the globe. Here, too, history repeats, though it is hard for anyone to match Wilson’s extraordinary hubris, obnoxious sanctimony, and pretentious messianism. On the other hand, Wilson’s eloquence gained an international following today denied President George W. Bush.
The year 1919 seemed to dawn bright for one reason: the war, in which tens of thousands of Americans, and millions of others, died had ended on November 11, 1918. Writes Hagedorn:
“It was at once a magnificent and a brutal day. After 1,563 days of war on the Western Front, no one, on the front lines or at home, would forget the moment news of peace entered their lives. Especially moved were those who carried in their hearts and minds the greatest hopes for what the end of the war could mean. In the parlors and factories and fields of their future lives, they would tell the stories of where they were and what they were doing on the day in 1918 when the Armistice came. The would talk of lost friends and of bold dreams, or expectations and of plans for the world they had risked their lives to save.”
It was a moment of triumph for Woodrow Wilson, who was lauded by congressmen, to whom he announced the conflict’s end, and cheered by celebratory crowds as he and his wife drove down Pennsylvania Avenue. To many, and especially himself, the hopes of mankind seemed to rest on his shoulders.
Still, not everyone shared this hopeful vision of a better future. For instance, Roger Baldwin, future cofounder of the American Civil Liberties Union, was imprisoned for protesting the war and refusing to fight. Nor was he alone. Observes Hagedorn:
“Baldwin was one of thousands of Americans in jail in November of 1918 for violating the 1917 Selective Service Act or for violating the Espionage Act of 1917 or its amended 1918 version, known also as the Sedition Act, which condemned dissenting voices that allegedly threatened the security of the nation at war. In October one man had been sentenced to six months in the workhouse for saying he preferred Germany’s kaiser to President Wilson. Another was sentenced to ten years in prison for delivering speeches in which he called conscription unconstitutional. Yet another received a twenty-year sentence and a fine of $10,000 for telling a Liberty Bond salesman that not only did he not want to buy any bonds but he also hoped the ‘government would go to hell.'”
Armistice Day also provided deliverance to few African-Americans. Some 42,000 black troops fought in Europe, many heroically, but their country continued to treat them with contempt. Indeed, the 55th and 56th lynchings of the year occurred on November 11. Another ten African-Americans, including two women, would die at the hands of vigilante injustice before 1918 ran out.
Other Americans, too, were dissatisfied. Thousands of U.S. soldiers who were left fighting an undeclared, purposeless, and nearly secret war against the revolutionary Bolshevik regime. Intellectuals who were longing to retrieve the public freedoms they had lost. Union activists who were seeking a better economic deal. Average people who were desiring a return to normalcy.
Emblematic of the distance between America’s promise and reality was Mollie Steimer, a 21-year-old Russian who spent Armistice Day in jail, having been convicted of violating the Sedition Act for distributing leaflets opposing America’s war on Russia. It was a curious conviction, since Russia was formally an ally, not an enemy, of the U.S. “Peace has come,” Steimer told her cellmate, “but not for us. Our struggle will be all the more bitter now.”
And it was, for many Americans. Savage Peace covers that struggle.
Ann Hagedorn spins an entertaining tale, filled with eccentric and intriguing personalities. More fascinating than fiction is an overused line, but it applies to Savage Peace. Current events in 1919, like today, were driven by a host of human characters whom it would be impossible to dream up.
Above all swirled the national political battle. There was Wilson’s failure at Versailles, his acceptance of a treaty that violated most of his supposedly sacred principles and imbedded triggers for conflict in virtually every provision. There was rising Republican opposition, which ultimately destroyed Wilson’s misbegotten creation and self-important reputation.
There’s the sordid tale of A. Mitchell Palmer, who as the newly appointed Attorney General sought to use groundless hysteria over the supposed Bolshevik menace to advance his presidential ambitions. There’s a young Justice Department lawyer, John Edgar Hoover, who used the fear of communism and anarchism to begin a steady rise to the top of American law enforcement.
Sen. Hiram Johnson, a California Republican, provided a rare beam of sunshine when he pushed to end America’s intervention in the Russian civil war. Another bright spot was Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who rethought his prior support for draconian government free speech restrictions. His dissent planted an important seed for the rebirth of American civil liberties.
The case was brought and argued by attorney Harry Weinberger. Weinberger died with a reputation as a copyright attorney, but in 1919 he was tenaciously defending, against long odds, the basic liberties upon which the American republic was founded.
A variety of fascinating stories swirl throughout Hagedorn’s narrative. Slipping in and out of view is Mollie Steimer who, along with a handful of fellow anarchists and leftists, accumulated convictions for new offenses committed while out on bail. Weinberger defended her, springing her from jail by arranging her deportation to Russia. Then she was expelled from the Soviet Union because of her protests against Bolshevik injustices.
Hagedorn devotes much attention to the forlorn efforts of black activists to hold America to the same standards that President Wilson was publicly advancing during the Versailles Treaty negotiations. So determined were they to be heard and so frightened was the supposedly liberal Wilson of criticism that the U.S. government denied passports to several leading black Americans who planned to travel to Paris to publicize their concerns. In response, William Monroe Trotter, a newspaper editor who also headed the National Equal Rights League, signed onto a small steamer as an assistant cook and jumped ship in France. In a series of escapades which offer rare moments of cheer in Savage Peace, he embarrassed President Wilson and the U.S. by pointing out how far America fell short of its professed ideals.
Far sadder was the story of Sergeant Harry Lincoln Johnson, a black soldier celebrated for his wartime heroism until he spoke out against racial injustice. Even worse was the tragedy that befell Mabel Emeline Puffer, a white heiress, and her black handyman, Arthur Garfield Hazzard. The two planned to marry, but Puffer’s family found a compliant judge to declare her mentally incompetent, not only breaking the engagement but, conveniently, seizing control of her assets.
Perhaps most tragic of all, of course, the world would again be at war a generation later. From 1939 to 1945 the globe was convulsed in a conflict in which tens of millions were slaughtered. While not Woodrow Wilson’s intention, World War II was the logical outgrowth of a treaty which generated an entirely new set of grievances while providing a convenient pause for the putative combatants to rearm. Wilson’s end was sad, but deserved. Disabled by a stroke while campaigning for Senate ratification of his treaty, Wilson hid his illness and allowed his wife to effectively run the government. After leaving office in 1921, he was, writes Hagedorn, “nearly blind, partially paralyzed, and sadly bitter.”
There is much that we can, and should, learn from history. But we rarely do so, which is why we constantly repeat it. Savage Peace ably fulfills its primary goal of enthralling us while describing a critical moment in American history. The book does something perhaps even more important, however. It teaches us about the dangers of deceptive and ambitious politicians, as well as enshrining as law the evils of social intolerance and public hysteria. There is a lesson for us today, trite though it might sound: if we give up our liberties to fight terrorism, the terrorists really will have won.
