Wars, Sedition, and Defining a ‘Clear and Present Danger’

In ‘This Week in History,’ subversives attempt to refute war legislation, forcing the U.S. court system to redefine the parameters of free speech.

Eleven of the American Communist Party's top leaders who were tried and convicted of conspiring to teach about and advocate for the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. It was one of the top news stories of 1949. Public Domain

On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson stood before a joint session of Congress requesting a declaration of war against Imperial Germany. Citing Germany returning to unrestricted submarine warfare and its attempt to ally Mexico against America, the president, who had recently won his second term on the campaign slogan “He Kept Us Out of War,” now found himself asking America to enter it.

“It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance,” Wilson stated to Congress.