A. Mitchell Palmer

Alexander Mitchel Palmer
51st United States Attorney General
In office March 5, 1919 – March 4, 1921
President	Woodrow Wilson
Preceded by	Thomas Watt Gregory
Succeeded by	Harry M. Daugherty
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania's 26th district
In office March 4, 1909 – March 3, 1915
President	William Howard Taft Woodrow Wilson
Preceded by	Jefferson Davis Brodhead
Succeeded by	Henry Joseph Steele
Personal details
Born	(1872-05-04)May 4, 1872 White Haven, Pennsylvania
Died	May 11, 1936(1936-05-11) (aged 64) Washington, D.C.
Political party	Democratic Party
Spouse(s)	Roberta Dixon (d. 1922) Margaret Fallon Burrall
Profession	Statesman, lawyer

Alexander Mitchell Palmer (May 4, 1872 - May 11, 1936) was the Attorney General of the United States from 1919 to 1921. He was nicknamed The Fighting Quaker and he directed the controversial Palmer Raids.

Judicial, Congressional, and party service

He was appointed official stenographer of the forty-third judicial district of Pennsylvania in 1892. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1893 and practiced in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. Palmer became director of various banks and public-service corporations and a member of the Democratic State executive committee of Pennsylvania. Palmer was elected as a Democrat to the 61st, 62nd, and 63rd Congresses (March 4, 1909 - March 3, 1915); he was not a candidate for renomination in 1914, but ran unsuccessfully for the United States Senate. Palmer was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1912 and 1916, and a member of the Democratic National Committee from 1912 - 1920.

He was a progressive reformer who had supported and fought for legislation protecting workers, especially women and children, in dangerous jobs. He was a supporter of the League of Nations.

Attorney General

President Woodrow Wilson offered Palmer the post of Secretary of War, but Palmer declined because of his belief in pacifism. Instead, he was appointed Alien Property Custodian on October 22, 1917, by Wilson, and served until March 4, 1919, when he resigned to become Attorney General of the United States. He has been accused of enriching his cronies while in control of alien property.

He served as Attorney General from March 5, 1919, until March 4, 1921. He started out well, releasing 10,000 aliens taken into parole during the war and disbanded a vigilante group which had, like all such groups, adopted a name that disguised what it really did: American Protective League. He was denounced by the New York Times, perhaps not ordinarily a badge of honor, but in this case the paper had characterized the immigrants among the four million workers on strike at the time as "seditionaries, anarchists, plotters against the Government of the United States," all of whom should be deported -- Palmer standing in the way.

Palmer Raids

Main article: Palmer Raids

Three months after becoming Attorney General, Palmer narrowly escaped death. Carlo Valdinoci, an anarchist bomber placed a bomb on Palmer's porch; the bomb went off and killed Valdinoci. Palmer was not at home at the time.

The First Red Scare followed, and Palmer became a zealous opponent of anarchist communists, insurrectionary anarchists, and other radicals who advocated the violent overthrow of the Federal government of the United States. His campaign against radicalism culminated in what came to be called the Palmer Raids. These were a series of police roundups, warrantless wiretaps (authorized under the Sedition Act), and mass arrests of suspected leftists and radicals, during which a total of at least 10,000 individuals were arrested. Fearful of extremist violence and revolution, the American public widely supported the raids, and outside of protests by innocents apprehended, some civil libertarian groups, and the radical left, condemnation of the raids did not surface until many years later.

Hundreds of people in New England alone had been arrested who had absolutely no connection to extremism of any kind, according to Samuel Eliot Morison, who also adds:

"The raids yielded almost nothing in the way of arms or revolutionaries, but Palmer emerged [from] the episode a national hero. And what made his action the more abominable is that he was a practicing Quaker, even using the traditional 'thee' instead of 'you.'" The Oxford History of the United States, p. 883.

Morison does not mention it but Palmer had recruited a recent law school graduate and file clerk to help him, J. Edgar Hoover. Deportation was thought the easiest way to deal with all these people, but since some actual evidence was needed, the numbers deported were small, not much above 5%, compared to the numbers arrested and infinitesimal compared to the numbers whose names appeared on manila folders kept by file clerk Hoover. J. Edgar, an admirer of the way in which Anthony Comstock had used the civil service to enforce his own views of morality did go down to Ellis Island to see the first batch, 249 people, off -- to Finland.

Palmer's rhetoric now put to shame his rhetoric of compassion upon first taking office. Revolution was a blaze threatening American workmen, "licking at the altars of the churches, leaping into the belfry of the school house, crawling into the corners of American homes, seeking to replace the marriage vows with libertine laws, burning up the foundations of society." (If you don't mind a little mixing of metaphors, it can be said as an aside that this is certainly more interesting than modern official prose, worthy perhaps even of appearing at the opening of a 1950s TV series about the Federal Bureau of Investigation).

One important American who was responsible for keeping the deportation from being used more often than it would otherwise have been was Louis Freeland Post, Acting Secretary of Labor. More than one historian has noted that he looked a little like Leon Trotsky, but in fact was a mild-mannered bureaucrat of the best sort. The United States Department of Labor had authority when workmen were proposed for deportation, and Post demanded evidence justifying such an action in each individual case. He was not deterred from this even when (inevitably) his own patriotism was questioned. Called to testify before Congress, he not only stood his ground, but persuaded irate Congressmen in case after case that evidence was lacking.

There was one plot, that helped to promote the general hysteria regarding the "reds"- in 1919 an anarchist mail bombing plot aimed to assassinate prominent figures such as Palmer himself, and Woodrow Wilson, and also business leaders such as John D. Rockefeller. Thirty six bombs were mailed from New York. This was not a very well planned attempt, however, as the United States Postal Service detained half the packages due to insufficient postage, and most of the others were intercepted prior to delivery. Just one exploded- in the home of Senator Thomas W. Hardwick of Georgia, where it blew off the hands of a maid.

Palmer famously predicted that Communists would attempt to overthrow the United States government on May Day 1920. He had some reason for putting his reputation on the line by this statement, as the previous year's anarchist mail bombing had been timed to ensure delivery of the bombs by the Post Office on May Day 1919. The National Guard of the United States was mobilized and the entire New York City Police Department was put on 24-hour duty (at great expense, no doubt), but the date came and went without incident, causing many to think Palmer "had cried wolf once too often."

On September 16 of that year, however, Wall Street was rocked by a violent blast, later known as the Wall Street bombing. The bomb was constructed using 100 pounds of dynamite and was wrapped with metal shrapnel in order to cause indiscriminate casualties. Concealed in a horse-drawn wagon, the bomb was precisely timed to catch people leaving for their lunch break. The Wall Street bombing killed 38 people and wounded or maimed over 400, causing extensive property damage and leaving visible marks on several Wall Street buildings to this day.

In spite of the Palmer raids, the Galleanist (followers of Luigi Galleani) bomb campaign would continue for another twelve years, until most of its members had been prosecuted, deported, or become inactive.

Later years

Palmer sought the nomination for President at the 1920 Democratic National Convention. but lost out to the bland James Cox. Like many a Washington bureaucrat, especially lawyers, Palmer then went into private practice.

Death

He died on May 11, 1936.

See also

• Luigi Galleani
• Sacco and Vanzetti
• Communist Party USA

References

Avrich, Paul, Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background, Princeton University Press, 1991

Multimedia

• Listen to Palmer speak

Sources

• United States Congress. "A. Mitchell Palmer (id: P000035)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• The Political Graveyard
• Who Built America V.II