Eugene Victor Debs (1855-1926) was an American socialist, political activist, trade unionist, one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World, and five-time candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States. In the fateful presidential election of 1919, Debs won 901,1551 votes, which was 6% of the ballots cast.
Debs was sentenced to ten years in prison for his antiwar speech in Canton, Ohio, on 16 June 1918. The prosecution of Debs was only one part of the massive repression of dissent during World War I directed at anti-war activists. In that speech, Debs made no reference to the war or President Woodrow Wilson’s conduct of the war. He confined his remarks to a general socialist critique of war as a product of capitalism. Nonetheless, he was convicted. The Supreme Court upheld the conviction and ten-year prison sentence in Debs v. United States (10 March 1919).
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| Former Presidential Candidate Eugene Debs Leaving the White House after His Pardon by President Harding |
President Woodrow Wilson rejected pleas to pardon Debs after the war ended. Debs was ill while in prison, but ran for president in 1920 on the Socialist Party ticket, receiving almost the same number of votes as in 1912.
On Christmas Day 1921, President Warren G. Harding pardoned him on the condition that he would get to meet Debs at the White House. Harding greeted him by saying, “I have heard so damned much about you.” Later in the day, Debs was greeted by many well-wishers at Union Station where he took the train home to Terre Haute, Indiana.
Debs spent his remaining days trying to recover his health, which was severely undermined by prison confinement. He made several speeches, wrote many articles, and finally in 1926 went to Lindlahr Sanitarium just outside of Chicago, where he died on 20 October 1926. His body was brought back to Terre Haute where it lay in state in the Terre Haute Central Labor Temple.
Sources: The Eugene Debs Foundation; Today in Civil Liberties History
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