ABSTRACT
The Palmer raids blatantly and brazenly denied many Americans the basic civil liberties guaranteed them by the US Constitution. Assisted by a young J. Edgar Hoover, Palmer's agents arrested several thousand people suspected of plotting a Communist revolution in the United States. Several hundred resident aliens were summarily deported as alleged security risks. One official manifestation of the concern was a series of mass arrests conducted by US Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer against real and suspected opponents of US style democracy. A. Mitchell Palmer, a former Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania, became President Woodrow Wilson's attorney general in 1919, shortly after the end of World War I in Europe. He decided to seek the Democratic nomination for president in 1920, and he hoped to capitalize on Americans' fear of communism. The raids he conducted against supposed "radical" political and labor groups and individuals, therefore, were at least partially the result of his political ambitions.
