In 1920, socialist leader Eugene V. Debs ran for president while serving a ten-year jail term for speaking against America’s role in World War I. Though many called Debs a traitor, others praised him as a prisoner of conscience, a martyr to the cause of free speech. Nearly a million Americans agreed, voting for a man whom the government had branded an enemy to his country.

In a beautifully crafted narrative, Ernest Freeberg shows that the campaign to send Debs from an Atlanta jailhouse to the White House was part of a wider national debate over the right to free speech in wartime. Debs was one of thousands of Americans arrested for speaking his mind during the war, while government censors were silencing dozens of newspapers and magazines. When peace was restored, however, a nationwide protest was unleashed against the government’s repression, demanding amnesty for Debs and his fellow political prisoners. Led by a coalition of the country’s most important intellectuals, writers, and labor leaders, this protest not only liberated Debs, but also launched the American Civil Liberties Union and changed the course of free speech in wartime.

The Debs case illuminates our own struggle to define the boundaries of permissible dissent as we continue to balance the right of free speech with the demands of national security. In this memorable story of democracy on trial, Freeberg excavates an extraordinary episode in the history of one of America’s most prized ideals.

Democracy's Prisoneris a superb account of the battle over free speech and civil liberties in the WW I era, beautifully argued and engrossing to read. Freeberg brings a wonderfully fresh perspective to this study of citizens' heroism, showing us the courage and shrewdness of the ever admirable Debs. But perhaps more important, he reveals for the first time the critical role that ordinary citizens, led by a political novice, played in mobilizing moderate Americans on his behalf. This book could not be more timely.

This account of the trial and jailing of Eugene V. Debs for sedition in opposing WWI will be read by many as a warning for our times, yet it stands on its own as solid history...Freeberg relates this tale in a fast-paced narrative...The most enduring consequence of this whole affair is the fuel it contributed to the growth of civil liberties consciousness and organization in the United States. Not for the first time, administrations brought about the very results they most opposed.

Freeberg argues that Debs's case illustrates the problems associated with silencing public discourse, most especially during a time of war. Debs was never a threat to national security; instead, he was a principled individual expressing his political beliefs. This excellent introduction to Debs and the Socialist Party is also an engaging examination of an issue that still tensely engages us today.

The Eugene V. Debs story is a moving, albeit instructive one, though he likely will never be given his due as one of the great figures of American history. Jailed for speaking out against the so-called “war to end all wars,” Socialist Debs ran for president in 1920, garnering a million votes. By the way, when he was finally released from that same Atlanta penitentiary, the whole of the prison’s population--guards and prisoners--cheered him.

If history is what the present wants to know about the past, Democracy’s Prisoneris teeming with lessons. But above all, it’s the story of one extraordinary man’s showdown with the establishment--and how that confrontation turned into a complex political struggle whose outcome was up for grabs. Carefully researched and expertly told, Debs’ story also brings a fascinating era into sharp, vivid focus.

Ernest Freebergis Associate Professor of History at the <>University of Tennessee.

• List of Illustrations

• Prologue: Free Speech Campaign

1. Dangerous Man
2. Never Be a Soldier
3. War Declarations
4. Canton Picnic
5. Cleveland
6. Appeal
7. Long Trolley to Prison
8. Moundsville
9. Atlanta Penitentiary
10. An Amnesty Business on Every Block
11. Candidate 9653
12. The Trials of A. Mitchell Palmer
13. The Last Campaign
14. Lonely Obstinacy
15. Free Speech and Normalcy
16. Last Flicker of the Dying Candle

• Epilogue: Amnesty and the Birth of Civil Liberties

• Notes
• Archives Consulted
• Acknowledgments
• Index