In my ongoing journey to explore Quaker history, particularly the ironies and counter-ironies that a retelling of the past reveals, I uncovered this interesting personal account. In short, A. Mitchell Palmer was Democratic President Woodrow Wilson’s Attorney General from 1919-1921.
With time, Palmer’s initial political stance changed dramatically—from a more progressive, idealistic one, to a fear-based, reactionary view. Wilson’s own view has suffered considerably in scholarship, as he is seen today without the reverence he once commanded for establishing the League of Nations, the forerunner of the United Nations. These days, Wilson is known better for his unapologetic racism and pettiness.
What to say about our Friend Palmer? He has a curious life story. In many ways, he is the consummate East Coast insider, with elite degrees and Quaker pedigree.
Mitchell Palmer (as he was known to friends) was born into a Quaker family near White Haven, Pennsylvania, in the small town of Moosehead, on May 4, 1872. He was educated in the public schools and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania's, Moravian Parochial School.
Palmer graduated from Swarthmore College in 1891. At Swarthmore, he was a member of the Pennsylvania Kappa chapter of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. After graduation, he was appointed court stenographer of Pennsylvania's 43rd judicial district. He studied law at Lafayette College and George Washington University.
Though initially a strong progressive in his native state of Pennsylvania, Palmer's allegiances radically shifted over time. This was particularly true as regards his views towards war and warfare. Quakers have long felt conflicted over their professed stance as strict pacifists in a world that sees little to nothing wrong with armed conflict.
Even during the American War of Revolution, Friends like Nathanael Greene, the so-called “Fighting Quaker”, thought nothing of tossing their Testimonies and pacific natures aside. Greene was a very successful general for the side of the American colonists.
With the election of Democrat Woodrow Wilson as President in 1912, Mitchell Palmer was offered the position of Secretary of War. He declined. Like many Quakers, his anti-war leadings and upbringing caused him to suffer an enormous existential crisis, or at least so at this stage of his life.
As a Quaker War Secretary, I should consider myself a living illustration of a horrible incongruity...In case our country should come into armed conflict with any other, I would go as far as any man in her defense; but I cannot, without violating every tradition of my people and going against every instinct of my nature, planted there by heredity, environment and training, sit down in cold blood in an executive position and use such talents as I possess to the work of preparing for such a conflict.
“Nevertheless, by 1915, Palmer proved out of step with the public mood” [after the British passenger liner Lusitania was sunk]. The shocking act was thought to be totally unprovoked. Around 120 Americans died in the tragedy, as did 1,000 others. Palmer offered reporters his opinion that ’the entire nation should not be asked to suffer’ to avenge the deaths of passengers who had ignored warnings not to travel on ships that carried munitions. As he put it himself, three years later...”
"The war power is of necessity an inherent power in every sovereign nation. It is the power of self-reservation and that power has no limits other than the extent of the emergency."
Returning to 1915, the American people were out for blood and wanted retribution. Even though it was later revealed that, indeed, the good ship Lusitania had been carrying arms for the Allied Powers during World War I, the brazen attack and sinking of the ship by German U-boats challenged and changed America’s public opinion of the Great War.
Though Wilson would campaign for a successful second term a year later with the slogan “He Kept Us Out of War,” war nonetheless ensued, as American troops entered the conflict shortly thereafter.
Following the United States' entry into World War I in April 1917, Palmer volunteered, despite his Quaker background, to 'carry a gun as a private' if necessary, or to 'work in any capacity without compensation.'
He chaired his local draft board for a time, while Herbert Hoover, ALSO a Quaker, (later President of the United States), head of the new Food Administration, refused to appoint him to a post in his agency. In October, he accepted an appointment from Wilson as Alien Property Custodian, an office he held from October 22, 1917, until March 4, 1919.
War, like politics, makes strange bedfellows.
A wartime agency, the Custodian had responsibility for the seizure, administration, and sometimes the sale of enemy property in the United States. Palmer's background in law and banking qualified him for the position, along with his party loyalty and intimate knowledge of political patronage.
After a few bombings directed by radical anarchists caused a panic, Palmer's perspective began to change dramatically. One of them, it bears noting, nearly killed him and his entire family--detonated as it was on the front porch of the Palmer family residence in Washington, DC. Palmer reacted in sheer panic, seeing enemies in every corner, persecuting labor leaders like equally unapologetic socialist Eugene Debs, casting asunder habeas corpus in the process. To an extent, this First Red Scare built upon existing anxieties, particularly the success of the Bolsheviks in Russia, which would soon become known as the USSR. The list goes on and on.
We do not retain much collective memory of this time in our history, only slightly over a century ago. One hopes that the paranoia of its time does not return—an epoch where we “othered” those who aren’t like us: foreigners, Communists, Socialists, immigrants, leftists—this is an all-too familiar tune. It is often extremely effective. May we be wiser today.
