’76, a film about the Revolutionary War that depicted the British, who were
now our allies, unfavorably.^27 Textbook authors suggest that wartime
pressures excuse Wilson’s suppression of civil liberties, but in 1920, when
World War I was long over, Wilson vetoed a bill that would have abolished the
Espionage and Sedition acts.^28 Textbook authors blame the anticommunist and
anti-labor union witch hunts of Wilson’s second term on his illness and on an
attorney general run amok. No evidence supports this view. Indeed, Attorney
General Palmer asked Wilson in his last days as president to pardon Eugene V.
Debs, who was serving time for a speech attributing World War I to economic
interests and denouncing the Espionage Act as undemocratic.^29 The president
replied, “Never!” and Debs languished in prison until Warren Harding
pardoned him.^30 The American Way adopts perhaps the most innovative
approach to absolving Wilson of wrongdoing: Way simply moves the “red
scare” to the 1920s, after Wilson had left office!