Espionage Act

On April 6, 1917, the United States declared war on Germany, marking U.S. entry into World War I. Two months later, on June 15, 1917, the U.S. Congress passed the Espionage Act, which imposed severe penalties for spying, interfering with military operations, or obstructing the recruitment or enlistment of U.S. service personnel. In May 1918 the Sedition Act made it a crime to discourage the sale of bonds used to finance the war or to make statements critical of the government. A source of occasional confusion is that the Sedition Act consisted of a series of amendments to the Espionage Act and thus is part of the Espionage Act.

With the onset of World War I, anti-German sentiment was widespread in the United States. In St. Paul, Minnesota, for example, the Germania Life Insurance Company was renamed Guardian Insurance in 1918, and the statue of a female Germanic warrior was taken down from its building. The term hot dog was adopted to replace frankfurter (after the German city of Frankfurt), and Salisbury steak, a very British-sounding name, replaced hamburger (after the German city of Hamburg). People of German descent were ostracized, harassed, and in some cases lynched. In this climate, the American public pressured the federal government to take harsh action against those who might be spying for Germany or otherwise trying to undermine the U.S. war effort.

President Woodrow Wilson largely agreed, but he wanted to avoid the proposals of some members of Congress to turn the prosecution of pro-German activity over to the War Department, which would use courts-martial that would probably have been unconstitutional. Accordingly, he supported passage of the Espionage Act, which left prosecution of spies and saboteurs in the hands of the Department of Justice. Wilson would have preferred a less aggressive bill, but he regarded the Espionage Act as a compromise that would allay the fears of the American public. Ultimately, about two thousand people were prosecuted under the law (and the Sedition Act amendments), including the Socialist presidential candidate and labor leader Eugene V. Debs, the anarchist Emma Goldman, and the poet E. E. Cummings.