A One-Man Wave of Terror Struck America in 1915

Bomb Damage in the U.S. Senate

Shortly before midnight on Friday2 July 1915 police responded to the U.S. Capitol where an explosion had just rocked the Senate wing. Fortunately they found no fatalities–a byproduct of the fact that Congress was not in session and the building was lightly staffed at night. But, there was plenty of destruction and, obviously, great concern about security.

The next evening, Washingtonians opened their Evening Star newspaper to find a peculiar letter under the headline "Letter Received by the Star Thought to Have Bearing on the Explosion." The diatribe began "Unusual times and circumstances call for unusual means" and quickly moved into a critique of American businesses supplying warring European countries with armaments.

Paradoxically, the letter claimed that the attack on the Capitol was a call for peace "Europe needs enough noncontraband material to give us prosperity. Let us not sell her EXPLOSIVES! Let each nation make her own man-killing machines. Sorry I had to use explosives. (Never again.) It is the export kind and ought to make enough noise to be heard above the voices that clamor for blood money. This explosion is the exclamation point to my appeal for Peace!"

The letter was signed, "R. Pearce" and included a postscript: "We would, of course, not sell to the Germans either, if they could buy here." It had been postmarked less than two hours before the bomb went off.

Beside the letter ran an account of the other big news of the day.

The morning after the Capitol explosion, banker J.P. Morgan had been attacked in his summer home on Long Island, New York, by an assailant who carried two revolvers and a briefcase packed with dynamite. Morgan suffered two flesh wounds before house servants overpowered the man and tied him up on the front lawn to await police.

Erich Muenter

When Glen Cove, New York, detectives arrested him, the gunman identified himself as Cornell University German Professor Frank Holt. He told authorities that he had never intended to hurt Morgan–he just wanted to scare him. In a statement to the Justice of the Peace, Holt claimed, "My motive in coming here was to try to force Mr. Morgan to use his influence with the manufacturers of munitions in the United States and with the millionaires who are financing the war loans to have an embargo put on shipments of war munitions so as to relieve the American people of complicity in the deaths of thousands of our European brothers.

District of Columbia Chief Detective Robert Boardman found the similarities between Pearce's letter and Holt's statement curious. After applying pressure the investigators got Holt to confess. It turned out that his name wasn’t even Frank Holt. . .  or R. Pearce. It was Erich Muenter. And Erich Muenter had quite a past. He was a committed German Nationalist and connected with Germany's network of saboteurs in America. Unfortunately, on 6 July he committed suicide in his jail cell and took many secrets with him.

Source article from WETA Television Network's Blog