Woodrow Wilson trial persuasive essay mock trial

TRIAL EVIDENCE (Exhibits 1 – 10)

Exhibit One First Amendment to the US Constitution (section dealing with freedom of speech)

Congress shall make no lawabridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.

Exhibit Two  The Espionage Act of 1917(Excerpts):

In June 1917, Congress enacted the Espionage Act. Section three stated that whoever shall willfully make or convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States or to promote the success of its enemies and whoevershall willfully cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States, or shall willfully obstruct the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than 20 years, or both.

Title XII, Section 2, said that every letter, writing, circular, postal card, picture, print engraving, photograph, newspaper, pamphlet, book or other publication, matter or thing of any kind, containing any matter advocating or urging treason, insurrection, or forcible resistance to any law of the United States, is hereby declared to be nonmailable. The following section provided that anyone who used or attempted to use the mails for the transmission of any matter deemed nonmailable could be fined up to $5,000 or imprisoned for not more than five years. 

Exhibit Three Sedition Act of 1918 (Excerpts):

In the spring of 1918, Congress amended the Espionage Act to make it even more draconian; these amendments were referred to as the Sedition Act.  The Sedition Act prohibited language tending to incite, provoke and encourage resistance to the United States in said war, and when the United States was at warunlawfully and willfully, by utterance, writing, printing and publication, to urge incite and advocate curtailment of production of things and productsordinance and ammunition, necessary and essential to the prosecution of the war. 

Exhibit Four  Committee on  Public Information:  

President Woodrow Wilson established the committee in April 1917 through Executive Order 2594 in response to the U.S. entry into World War I in an attempt to mobilize public opinion behind the war effort with every available form of mass communication.

One section of CPI coordinated work abroad, and another section oversaw work on the home front. The domestic section consisted of bureaus targeting a wide variety of groups, including laborers, women, industrialists, farmers, and immigrants. In delivering its message to such groups, the CPI sought to make every American a participant in the war effort.

In the effort to build an intellectual justification for U.S. involvement in the war, Creel appointed University of Minnesota history professor Guy Stanton Ford to head the division of civic and educational publications.

Fords section published more than 100 titles that defined American ideals, indicted German militarism, promoted the expansion of the presidents power in foreign relations, told Americans what they could do to speed victory, and endorsed censorship.

Visual images further helped to mobilize support for the war. The division of pictorial publicity joined with the division of advertising to create some of the wars most vivid images in posters designed to demonize the German military. Some of the more infamous posters portrayed a German gorilla with a club labeled kultur and a green-eyed, blue-skinned German soldier with bloody fingers.

Not every American made the distinction between Germans overseas and German-born Americans in the United States. In addition, the government-linked any opposition to the war effort, whether by pacifists or communists, to treason. It trampled First Amendment rights, largely because of the success of the CPI in instilling fear through war propaganda. The CPI often blurred Wilsons political goals with the national interest.

Source: https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1179/committee-on-public-information 

Exhibit Five  Oliver Wendell Holmes Ruling in  the Schenck Case(Excerpts):

When a nation is at war many things which might be said in time of peace a re such a hindrance to its efforts that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight No court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right.The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing panicThe question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.

Exhibit Six  The Masses Cartoons:

The Masses, American monthly journal of arts and politics, socialist in its outlook. It was known for its innovative treatment of illustration and for its news articles and social criticism.

During World War I The Masses took an antiwar stand, and in July 1917 the U.S. postmaster general declared the August 1917 issue unmailable under the Espionage Act of 1917; the magazines second-class mailing permit was later revoked, and it ceased publication at the end of 1917. In 1918 Eastman and several other editors twice stood trial under the Espionage Act; both trials produced hung juries.

Source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Masses 

The Masses cover collection: https://dlib.nyu.edu/themasses/ 

Exhibit Seven  Eugene V. Debs Anti-War Speech in Canton, Ohio (Excerpts):

I realize that, in speaking to you this afternoon, there are certain limitations placed upon the right of free speech. I must be exceedingly careful, prudent, as to what I say, and even more careful and prudent as to how I say it. I may not be able to say all I think; but I am not going to say anything that I do not think. I would rather a thousand times be a free soul in jail than to be a sycophant and coward in the streets. They may put those boys in jailand some of the rest of us in jailbut they can not put the Socialist movement in jail

Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder. In the Middle Ages when the feudal lords who inhabited the castles whose towers may still be seen along the Rhine concluded to enlarge their domains, to increase their power, their prestige and their wealth they declared war upon one another. But they themselves did not go to war any more than the modern feudal lords, the barons of Wall Street go to war. The feudal barons of the Middle Ages, the economic predecessors of the capitalists of our day, declared all wars. And their miserable serfs fought all the battles. The poor, ignorant serfs had been taught to revere their masters; to believe that when their masters declared war upon one another, it was their patriotic duty to fall upon one another and to cut one anothers throats for the profit and glory of the lords and barons who held them in contempt. And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to loseespecially their lives. 

They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people. 

And here let me emphasize the factand it cannot be repeated too oftenthat the working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish the corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace. 

Yours not to reason why;
Yours but to do and die.

Exhibit Eight  Excerpts from Pamphlets in the Abrams vs. The United States (translated from Yiddish)

Workers, Russian emigrants, you who had the least belief in the honesty of our government must now throw away all confidence, must spit in the face of the false, hypocritical military propaganda which had fooled you so relentlessly, calling forth your sympathy, your help, to the prosecution of the war.

With the money which you have loaned, or are going to loan them, they will make bullets not only for the Germans, but also for the workers soviets of Russia. Workers in the ammunition factories, you are producing bullets, bayonets, cannon, to murder not only the Germans, but also you dearest, best, who are in Russia and are fighting for freedom.

Workers, our reply to the barbaric intervention has to be a general strike! An open challenge only will let the government know that not only the Russian Worker fights for freedom, but also here in America lives the spirit of revolution.

Exhibit Nine Oliver Wendell Holmes dissenting opinion in the Abrams v. United States case

it seems too plain to be denied that the suggestion to workers in the ammunition factories that they are producing bullets to murder their dearest, and the further advocacy of a general strike, both in the second leaflet, do urge curtailment of production of things necessary to the prosecution of the war within the meaning of the Act of May 16, 1918, c. 75, 40 Stat. 553, amending  3 of the earlier Act of 1917. But to make the conduct criminal, that statute requires that it should be “with intent by such curtailment to cripple or hinder the United States in the prosecution of the war.” It seems to me that no such intent is proved.

I do not doubt for a moment that, by the same reasoning that would justify punishing persuasion to murder, the United States constitutionally may punish speech that produces or is intended to produce a clear and imminent danger that it will bring about forthwith certain substantive evils that the United States constitutionally may seek to prevent. The power undoubtedly is greater in time of war than in time of peace, because war opens dangers that do not exist at other times.

But, as against dangers peculiar to war, as against others, the principle of the right to free speech is always the same. It is only the present danger of immediate evil or an intent to bring it about that warrants Congress in setting a limit to the expression of opinion where private rights are not concerned.