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A bombastic, unrecorded pamphlet printing the resolutions of the American Freedom Convention in September 1919. The Convention was a three-day event hosted by the American Socialist Party from September 25-28, gathering some 300 delegates from their own ranks, trade and labor unions, pacifist organizations, and other "dissidents" from across the nation. It came less than a month after the party's own convention, in which the disgruntled "Left-Wingers" formally split off to found the Communist Party of America. The American Freedom Convention in particular, while clearly steeped in Socialist Party rhetoric, focused specifically on abuses committed by the United States government in the name of national security during the First World War, and more particularly on the persecution wrought under the Espionage Act of 1917. The act, while used to prosecute spies on rare occasions, was primarily wielded as a blunt instrument against radicals, newspaper printers and publishers, and anyone expressing anti-war sentiments during World War I. This is the act that was used to deny Victor L. Berger (of the Socialist Party) his legitimate seat in Congress and to sentence Eugene V. Debs, among thousands of other labor leaders, conscientious objectors, and others, to years in prison. The delegates of the Convention, who open their declaration by bluntly stating that "Democracy no longer exists in the United States," describe the dangers of wartime laws as follows: "So long as the vicious, repressive laws denying free speech, free press and free assemblage in the United States are on the books; so long as the steel trust barons are permitted to forbid steel workers peaceably to assemble for organization into Unions; so long as there is danger of a settled policy of conscription for military service; so long as our Prussian court-martial system exists so long will democracy continue to be dead in the United States and our government will be a republic only in name." To combat this, they resolve "to urge.the utter futility of merely petitioning Congress for passing resolutions or begging those who should be servants of the people to be loyal to the people, when their bread and butter depends on their betraying the people in favor of the private owners of industry.[and] in addition that all elements of the population who love freedom proceed with all possible speed to organize in such a way that, if the usurpers of tyrannical power do not heed the will of the people, effective means may be invoked to compel them to do so." Their fears were well founded; the Act was unanimously upheld by the Supreme Court and remained on the books, becoming the primary legal weapon of the Red Scare in the short term, and of McCarthyism later in the century. Aside from these Principles, the convention adopted resolutions for the withdrawal of troops from Siberia and for immediate resumption of diplomatic relations with Russia, as well as in support of Irish independence, against the deportation of Indian revolutionaries, and against efforts to foment war with Mexico. Appropriately for the event, this pamphlet features the union bug of Allied Printing Trades Council #428 in Chicago. We locate no further copies of this document, institutionally or otherwise, although the text was printed in the September 29 issue of the Milwaukee Leader. Single bifolium. Pencil note reading "World War Collection" on front page, edges tanned with a few small chips, strong vertical crease, else very good.
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