Free Speech League

Examples of Free Speech League in the following topics:

• The League of Nations

  • The league was the brainchild of U.S.
  • President Woodrow Wilson, who first unveiled the idea in his famed speech to Congress on January 18, 1918 outlining the Fourteen Points, his blueprint for global postwar peace and diplomacy.
  • Representation at the league was often a problem.
  • Harding, continued American opposition to the League of Nations.
  • The league cannot be labeled a failure, however, as it laid the groundwork for the United Nations, which replaced the League of Nations after World War II and inherited a number of agencies and organizations founded by the league.

• The Populist Party and the Election of 1896

  • He gave speeches, organized meetings, and adopted resounding resolutions that eventually culminated in the founding of the American Bimetallic League, which then evolved into the National Bimetallic Union, and finally the National Silver Committee.
  • The ultimate goal of the League was to garner support on a national level for the reinstatement of the coinage of silver.
  • Jones of the St Louis Post-Dispatch was put on the platform committee and Bryan's plank for free silver was adopted sixteen to one, and silently added to the Chicago Democratic Platform in order to avoid controversy.
  • Bryan delivered speeches across the country for free silver from 1894 to 1896, building a grass-roots reputation as a powerful champion of the cause.
  • His "Cross of Gold" speech made him the sensational new face in the Democratic party.

• Wilson's Fourteen Points

  • Wilson's speech translated many of the principles of Progressivism that had produced domestic reform in the U.S. into foreign policy objectives for all nations, including free trade, open agreements, democracy, and self-determination.
  • Restoration of the Balkan nations and free access to the sea for Serbia.
  • Protection for minorities in Turkey and the free passage of the ships of all nations through the Dardanelles.
  • Establishment of a League of Nations to protect "mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small nations alike."
  • Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points speech outlined his goals for postwar cooperation.

• Domestic Conservatism

  • Davis (1924) and Al Smith (1928), who mobilized businessmen into the American Liberty League.
  • Opposition to the New Deal also came from the Old Right, a group of conservative free-market anti-interventionists, originally associated with midwestern Republicans led by Hoover and Robert A.
  • His first radio speech was broadcast on September 15, 1939 over all three of the major radio networks.
  • Lindbergh urged listeners to look beyond the speeches and propaganda they were being fed and instead look at who was writing the speeches and reports, who owned the papers, and who influenced the speakers.
  • Nothing did more to escalate the tensions than the speech he delivered to a rally in Des Moines, Iowa on September 11, 1941.

• The Progressive Stake in the War

  • While many historians disagree over the exact dates of the Progressive Era, most see World War I as a globalized expression of the American movement, with Wilson's fight for the League of Nations envisioned in his Fourteen Points as its climax.
  • The Fourteen Points was a speech given by Wilson to a joint session of Congress on January 8, 1918.
  • Delivered 10 months before the armistice with Germany, the speech became the basis for the terms of the German surrender as negotiated at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.
  • Wilson's speech translated many of the principles of Progressivism that had produced domestic reform in the U.S. into foreign policy encompassing free trade, open agreements, democracy, and self-determination, which was the ideal of nations determining their own futures without outside political or military interference.
  • The speech was the only explicit statement of aims by any of the nations involved in World War I and led to Wilson receiving the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to create a peaceful global community.

• Civil Liberties in Wartime

  • In their view, the public was making its own attempts to punish unpopular speech due to the government's unwillingness or inability to do so.
  • The acts met considerable opposition in the Senate, almost entirely from Republicans like Henry Cabot Lodge and Hiram Johnson, the former defending free speech and the latter assailing the administration for failing to use laws already in place.
  • Attorney General Gregory supported the work of the American Protective League (APL), which was one of the many patriotic associations that sprang up to support the war and, in coordination with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, identify anti-war organizations and those it deemed slackers, spies or draft dodgers.
  • In a July 1917 speech, Max Eastman complained that the government's ongoing aggressive prosecutions of dissent meant, "You can't even collect your thoughts without getting arrested for unlawful assemblage."
  • Debs, the Socialist Party presidential candidate in 1904, 1908 and 1912, was arrested in June 1918 for making a speech in Canton, Ohio, denouncing military conscription and urging listeners not to take part in the draft.

• The Debate over American Imperialism

  • The League also argued that the Spanish-American War was a war of imperialism camouflaged as a war of liberation.
  • Many of the League's leaders were classical liberals and "Bourbon Democrats" (Grover Cleveland Democrats) who believed in free trade, a gold standard, and limited government; they opposed William Jennings Bryan's candidacy in the 1896 presidential election.
  • The 1900 presidential election caused internal squabbles in the League.
  • By 1920, the League was only a shadow of its former strength.
  • The Anti-Imperialist League disbanded in 1921.

• White Terror

  • After the Civil War, a number of white-supremacist groups formed as a reaction to the liberation of African-American former slaves, who were free to compete for paying jobs and opportunities in the South.
  • The White League was effective; voting by Republicans decreased and Democrats regained control of the state legislature in 1876.
  • The Klan attacked black members of the Loyal Leagues and intimidated Southern Republicans and Freedmen's Bureau workers.
  • A Harper's Weekly cartoon from October 1874 depicting White League and Klan opposition to Reconstruction.
  • A man from the White League and the KKK shake hands as they loom over the family.

• Women's Rights after Suffrage

  • In the early years of Sanger's activism, she viewed birth control as a free speech issue, and when she began publishing her newsletter, one of her goals was to provoke a legal challenge to the federal anti-obscenity laws banning dissemination of information about contraception.
  • Prominent civil rights attorney Clarence Darrow offered to defend Sanger free of charge.
  • In 1921, Sanger founded the American Birth Control League (ABCL) to enlarge the base of supporters to include the middle class.

• Postwar Isolationism

  • One of the points proposed in the speech was the establishment of the League of Nations -  an international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace.
  • The Fourteen Points speech was the only explicit statement of war aims by any of the nations fighting in World War I.
  • While European powers allied with the United States welcomed the speech, some of the most influential European leaders considered it too idealistic.
  • The Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles, which automatically rejected the United States' membership in the League of Nations.
  • These events led to rhetorical condemnations by the League of Nations and official American response was muted.