On June 16, 1918, Eugene V. Debs gave a speech at Nimisilla Park in Canton, Ohio before 1,200 people.  Read the speech today, and it is difficult to see why it led to his arrest and prosecution for sedition.  As Debs’s foremost biographer, Nick Salvatore, explains, Debs had said many of the same things before during his long career as a trade union leader and Socialist orator.  Nevertheless, he understood that the political climate of the day did not tolerate his political ideas, so to give voice to them anyways was an act of bravery.

Debs entered the public eye as the leader of the American Railway Union during its infamous strike against the Pullman Palace Car Company in 1894.  Arrested for violating a court injunction during that dispute, he emerged from jail six months after beginning his sentence as an ardent Socialist.  He ran for president of the United States five times on Socialist tickets, gaining almost a million votes during the hard-fought election of 1912.  However, he spoke out against the war in 1918 not because it would improve his political prospects but in spite of the effect on those prospects.

Debs began speaking across the country in 1918 because the Socialist press that he had depended upon to distribute his writings was wiped out by government censorship.  In 1917 and 1918, America passed the Espionage and Sedition Acts, which made expressing spoken and written opposition to either the war or the government that waged that conflict a federal crime.  He knew he was risking his already-failing health and his freedom by speaking out.  He toured anyway.   Except for a few specific references to Ohio, this speech was little different from the ones he had made at earlier stops on his tour.  What made this speech different was the presence of a government stenographer and the willingness of the local U.S. attorney, E. S. Wertz, to prosecute him for what he said against the advice of Wertz’s superiors in Washington.

Much of the Canton speech deals with controversies like the case of the jailed trade unionist Tom Mooney that do not really resonate down to this day.  However, there are also many passages in the text that still demonstrate Debs’s ability to inspire.  For example, near the beginning of the speech, Debs jokes openly about the possibility of getting arrested.  Indeed, he suggests that he would rather be arrested than to remain silent about the injustice around him.

Notably, much of the speech is devoted to attacks not on the government but on Wall Street.  Debs attacks corporate interests for greed and the short-sightedness in the exploitation of their employees.  In the course of doing this, Debs argues that that the worse conditions got, the better Socialism would go over with average Americans.  In fact, Debs suggests that the triumph of Socialism in America was near, an argument that might have seemed strange at a time when Socialists and Socialism had been largely silenced by government repression.

In his two hour speech, Debs made no direct reference to World War I, which raged in Europe at the time.  Instead, he attacks war in general, most notably in this famous passage:  “The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.  The master class had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose–especially their lives.”  That quotation is nothing but an eloquent way of associating military warfare with class warfare, a point that has been made many times since.  Unfortunately for Debs, the government and much of the public was unwilling to accept any public opposition to a conflict that was fairly unpopular compared to other wars throughout American history.  Simply pointing out that different social classes are affected by war differently was enough to get Debs arrested.

At his trial, Debs did not deny the charges against him.  “I wish to admit the truth of all that has been testified to in this proceeding…,” he told the jury that eventually convicted him.  “I would not retract a word that I have uttered that I believe to be true to save myself from going to the penitentiary for the rest of my days.”  Indeed, Debs refused to mount any defense at all.  Debs ran his final campaign for president in 1920 as a protest candidate from his jail cell.  A famous campaign button from that election read “For President–Convict No. 9653.”

Though convicted, Debs did not die in prison or even serve his entire ten-year sentence.  Combat in World War I ended in 1918, but the United States did not sign a peace treaty to formally end the war until after Warren Harding became president in 1921.  With peace officially at hand, Harding pardoned Debs and other political prisoners who opposed the war effective that Christmas.  Debs was in poor health before he ever went to jail.  His time in prison undoubtedly accelerated the onset of his death.

Debs’s willingness to express unpopular opinions during a time of war might serve as an inspiration to those who oppose modern government policies like the war in Iraq but who fear the backlash such a stand might generate.  Whether Debs’s Canton speech or any of his other writings and speeches can play such a role depends upon the willingness of readers to take his arguments at their merits and see past the political label that their author adopted.  Indeed, the fact that almost a million Americans were not once but twice willing to vote for a presidential candidate as radical as Eugene V. Debs ought to serve as a reminder that Socialism might not be as alien to American political culture as modern political observers generally believe.

Jonathan Rees is associate professor of history at Colorado State University–Pueblo. His academic specialties are American labor and economic history. He blogs (mostly) about historical subjects at More or Less Bunk.