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Progressivism and Anarchism: Judge Henry D. Clayton and the Abrams Trial
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 October 2011
Extract
A highly symbolic confrontation occurred in a New York City courtroom on October 21, 1918. On the witness stand was Jacob Abrams, a thirty-two year old Russian immigrant, an alien, a Jew, a dedicated anarchist. On the bench sat Henry DeLamar Clayton, Jr., a sixty-one year old federal judge, a man who had represented Alabama in Congress for eighteen years, and who was an ardent Wilsonian progressive. Abrams, who came from Uman, a village near Odessa, had landed at Ellis Island in 1908. He worked as a bookbinder, and lived, in 1918, in a teeming, largely Jewish ghetto in East Harlem. Clayton's ancestors had emigrated to the colonies before the American Revolution. A fifth-generation American, he had lived, for most of his life, on his plantation near Eufala, a small town on the west bank of the Chattahoochee River. Now, Clayton was questioning the witness and Abrams was defending his anarchist beliefs. ‘This Government was built on a revolution’, Abrams said, ‘…When our forefathers of the American Revolution—’ That was as far as he got. ‘Your what?’ Judge Clayton interrupted. ‘My forefathers’, Abrams replied. ‘Do you mean to refer to the fathers of this nation as your forefathers?’ Clayton asked. Abrams said that indeed he did, that ‘we are all a big human family’ and ‘those that stand for the people, I call them father'. But the judge had made his point, and the jury had no doubt gotten it.
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References
1. New York Times, October 22, 1918, 10.
2. Cited in Fleming, Walter J., Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama (Cleveland, 1911), 385–86Google Scholar. Biographical information on Henry DeLamar Clayton may be found in Memorial Record of Alabama, 2 vols. (Spartanburg, 1976Google Scholar; reprint of 1898 ed.), i, 407–09; and Owen, Thomas McAdory, History of Alabama and Dictionary of Alabama Biography 4 vols., (Spartanburg, 1978; reprint of 1921 ed.), iii, 347–48Google Scholar.
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13. Gompers to Clayton, November 19, 1914, American Federation of Labor-Samuel Gompers Ms. (Cornell University), Reel 78.
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19. Bertram Clayton to Henry Clayton, April 5, 1917, Clayton Ms., Box 528.
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27. Copies of the indictments may be found in the Department of Justice Files. A fifth defendant, Hyman Rosansky, who had helped distribute the leaflets but then cooperated with the police when he was apprehended, was also found guilty and sentenced to three years in prison. A sixth, Gabriel Prober, a friend of Abrams, was also indicted but was found innocent.
28. Trial transcript, 387. When I consulted the Records of the U. S. District Court for the Southern District of New York at the National Archives Records Center in Bayonne, New Jersey, the actual transcript of the trial was missing. Fortunately Professor Fred Ragan had, years ago, photocopied it for his own use. Professor Ragan graciously made his copy available to me, and another copy has been made for the N.A.R.C.
29. Ibid, at 389.
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38. Ibid, at 832–65; a slightly different version is provided in Nicholas Biddle to Director, Military Intelligence Division, October 25, 1918, Military Intelligence Division Ms. (National Archives).
39. Clayton to Selmon Stephens, September 24, 1918, Clayton Ms., Box 530.
40. Clayton to Charles C. Thach, September 16, 1918, Clayton Ms., Box 530.
41. Trial transcript, 865.
42. Ibid, at 864.
43. Ibid, at 870.
44. New York Times, October 28, 1918, 10.
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