PALMER, A. MITCHELL 1872-1936

ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES, 1919-1921

"The Fighting Quaker."

A member of a Pennsylvania Quaker family, A. Mitchell Palmer was known as "The Fighting Quaker." In 1908 he left an active law practice to run for the U.S. House of Representatives and served in the House through 1915. In 1912 he was an early, vocal supporter of Woodrow Wilson's successful presidential bid.

Antiradicalism

In 1917, after the United States had entered World War I, Wilson named Palmer head of an agency to supervise the expropriation of commercial properties owned by German nationals living in the United States. In February 1919 Wilson appointed Palmer attorney general of the United States. Until that time individuals in that post had displayed scant interest in the issue of political subversion, but after October 1919, when he survived an assassination attempt staged by anarchists, Palmer became a willing partner of J. Edgar Hoover, then deputy director of the Bureau of Investigation, in plans to suppress domestic radicalism.

The Palmer Raids

In January 1920, during a series of coordinated roundups in thirty-three cities, some four thousand suspected radicals were arrested by federal agents, who routinely violated the basic civil liberties of the suspects. These so-called Palmer Raids came at a time when the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia (1917)—and the widespread belief that the Communists hoped to foment similar upheavals worldwide—had created a major "Red Scare" in the United States. Palmer hoped that his antiradical activities would further his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, but his candidacy received little support at the national convention in San Francisco in July 1920. "The Fighting Quaker" ceased to be a force in American politics. Leaving his cabinet post when Republican Warren G. Harding was inaugurated in March 1921, Palmer remained in Washington, D,C.? and began a private law practice.