Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday August 15, 1922 Christmas Eve 1920: Eugene Debs Is Guest of Honor at Prison Banquet
From the Appeal to Reason of August 12, 1922:
Christmas in Prison
By EUGENE V. DEBS
[Part II of II]
Eugene Debs Leaving Atlanta Penitentiary Christmas Day 1921
Some weeks before Christmas [of 1920] a case containing 500 copies of a book, entitled “Debs and the Poets” was shipped to the prison. It was an anthology of verse and comment collected by Ruth Le Prade and published by Upton Sinclair at Pasadena, Cal.
It was the desire of the author and publisher that I autograph the books to be sold by them in the interest of a fund being raised to continue the agitation for general amnesty for political prisoners.
When the books arrived, a copy was scrutinized by Warden Zerbst, who decided that the introduction supplied by Upton Sinclair was not particularly complimentary to the prison idea, nor was some of the poetry. So a copy was sent to Attorney General Palmer, who ruled there was nothing objectionable in it, and that I might be permitted to autograph the copies.
Some friends outside the prison asked the warden if I might be permitted to inscribe the books Christmas Eve night. The request was granted and the hour to begin was fixed at seven o’clock. I went to the clerk’s office, where I found my friends.
The books were piled on either side of me at the clerk’s desk and the work of autographing them commenced.
Ginger Ale Suspected.
In the corridor outside a dozen or more prisoners were assembling the last of the Christmas packages for the convicts and there was an atmosphere of fellowship that pervaded the entire scene.
From time to time prisoners slipped in and out of the room where I was at work to drop a kindly word, and my friends from the outside world remarked upon the amiable manner in which every convict conducted himself.
Later that evening it was suggested by one of my visitors that maybe the prisoners assorting Christmas boxes would like to have a soft drink, so the matter was put up to the chief clerk, who was superintending the work, and he agreed to it. Thereupon my friends went out of the prison and down to a little store outside the gates, where they purchased two dozen bottles of ginger ale.
It happened that when they asked to be readmitted to the penitentiary Deputy Warden Gregory was in the main corridor and he came to the gate to inquire what was in the box they carried.
He was told of its contents and that permit had been secured to bring it in the prison for the men who were at work over the Christmas gifts. The deputy warden felt that he should have first been consulted about the matter and he refused to allow the refreshment to be given to the convicts.
This is but one indication of how senseless and needlessly harsh are prison rules.
Later the deputy attempted to explain in a somewhat apologetic manner to one of my friends that: “Who knows but that those bottles might contain ‘dope’ and ‘files’!”
This, in spite of the fact that he could have reassured himself on that score in a moment by observing that every bottle was sealed.
Hellraisers Journal – Monday August 14, 1922 Christmas 1920: Eugene Debs Denied Release from Prison by President Wilson
From the Appeal to Reason of August 12, 1922:
Christmas in Prison
By EUGENE V. DEBS
[Part I of II]
Eugene Debs Leaving Atlanta Penitentiary Christmas Day 1921
A nation-wide holiday campaign had been inaugurated for my release so that I might return home for Christmas [of 1920]. It has long been a custom with the pardoning power at Washington to grant a meritorious prisoner his freedom as an act of grace at the season of “peace on earth and good will among men.”
President Wilson granted the Christmas pardon as usual, but in this instance it was not in response to the numerously signed petitions representing every state in the union which had been presented to him-the boon was granted to an Indian serving a life sentence for murder.
Attorney General Palmer had finally filed with the President his long delayed and expected report on my case. Speculation was rife as to whether the recommendation would be favorable or otherwise.
The doubt was summarily dispelled when the report flashed over the wires that President Wilson had refused to grant the petition circulated and forwarded to him in my behalf, notwithstanding the Attorney General’s recommendation for my release.
Wilson Wrote Denial.
When Mr. Palmer’s report was placed before the ailing President, the latter had but one word to offer as signifying his attitude toward me. Over the face of the recommendation he scrawled, “DENIED.”
I have been a trifle more than casually interested in the reason that prompted Mr. Wilson to arrive at that state of mind and that reason is furnished by his former private secretary, Joseph P. Tumulty, who, in his book, “Woodrow Wilson as I Knew Him,” sets down this record of the President’s comment in my case:
One of the things to which he paid particular attention at this time, the last days of his rule, was the matter of the pardon of Eugene V. Debs. The day that the recommendation arrived at the White House he looked it over and examined it carefully and said:
“I will never consent to the pardon of this man. I know that in certain quarters of the country there is a popular demand for the pardon of Debs, but it shall never be accomplished with my consent.
“Were I to consent to it, I should never be able to look into the faces of the mothers of this country who sent their boys to the other side. While the flower of American youth was pouring out its blood to vindicate the cause of civilization, this man Debs stood behind the lines, sniping, attacking and denouncing them.
Placed Incommunicado.
“Before the war he had a perfect right to exercise his freedom of speech and to express his own opinion, but after the Congress of the United States declared war, silence on his part would have been the proper course to pursue.
“I know there will be a great deal of denunciation of me for refusing this pardon. They will say I am cold-blooded and indifferent, but it will make no impression on me. This man was a traitor to his country, and he will never be pardoned during my administration.”
Personally I have no fault to find, nor any criticism to level at President Wilson for what he considered to be his proper course. But the interest is quite naturally aroused when we come upon an expression such as the following from Mr. Wilson:
“I have no fault to find, Tumulty, with the men who disagree with me, and I ought not to penalize them when they give honest expression to what they believe are honest opinions.”
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday July 15, 1922 Eugene Debs Shares Letter from Inmate at Atlanta Penitentiary
From the Buffalo New Age of July 6, 1922
From Atlanta Prison: A Letter from a Prisoner with a Warning by Eugene V. Debs ———-
Eugene Debs Leaving Atlanta Penitentiary Christmas Day 1921
I have received a letter from a prisoner in the United States penitentiary in Atlanta that makes interesting and profitable reading. The name of the writer for the present at least must remain unknown. The letter would never have been permitted to go out of the prison in the regular way. Not a word of criticism of the prison, of anyone connected with its management is allowed to pass the censor. No matter what practices may prevail or what outrages may be perpetrated, no report thereof is permitted to pass the walls. The general public, which supports the prison, is not allowed to know what goes on there except as it may please the officers in charge to let the people known what a fine place it is and what a privilege to be locked up there.
Just at this writing a huge scandal has been uncovered at the United States penitentiary at Atlanta. A “dope ring,” headed by a prison physician and several guards, has been long operating there making dope fiends of young prisoners and supplying all who could pay for it at robber rates with the poisonous drug that would ruin them for life. And this is the benevolent United States government institution where drug addicts are sent to be reformed. And truly it is a fine bourgeois reformation they get at this walled-in inferno.
Underground Kite.
The letter, which follows, was sent out underground or it would never have left the prison. It is from a man who served a term of years in the navy and has been rewarded for his patriotism by a long prison sentence. There are several hundred inmates at Atlanta who were soldiers, marines, and sailors, some of them of many years standing, who for more or less trifling offenses were court-martialed by their “superiors” and sent to the penitentiary to contemplate the beauty of their reward for putting on a uniform and fighting to make their country “safe for democracy.” The writer of this letter is one of those victims and the letter speaks eloquently for itself. Here it is:
Through your many friends and comrades in prison here I have learned of your suffering for the noble cause of the human race. Your martyrdom will blaze the trail to the goal which the working class are destined to reach. With a few more such martyrs the cause will be won. Your undying devotion to your noble principles and your untiring efforts to secure liberty and justice for all, to make this country a fit place to live in, will be crowned with victory at last. From now on my life belongs to your cause.
Having thrown away 11 years in the navy, the lessons of experience have at last been a blessing to me. I have learned what our navy really stands for and that is not for the protection against invasion, but simply a school that teaches the doctrines of the rich.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday March 3, 1922 “Poems of Revolution” in Honor of Eugene Victor Debs
From Debs Magazine of March 1922:
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NOTE:-The verses, “We’re Glad to Say Good-bye,” were written by a prisoner as a farewell tribute to ‘Gene on his leaving the prison, and read at the meeting of prisoners ‘Gene addressed at the memorable Christmas Eve celebration in the prison, at which ‘Gene took his farewell from the boys behind the bars, he so loved, and whose leaving behind filled him with a sadness that took the joy out of his liberation. The verses were written by an inmate of the hospital. If ever poetry issued from the hearts of human beings it is to be found in this expression of appreciation and love inspired by a fellow-feeling as holy and divine as ever sprang from the fellowship of mutual suffering, sorrow and sympathy. These verses are published precisely as they are written, for it would only mar the real poetry they express to have them polished and prettified.
Hellraisers Journal – Sunday February 5, 1922 First Hand Account of the Release of Eugene Debs from Atlanta Penitentiary
From The Liberator of February 1922:
The Uncaging of Debs
IT was Christmas morning. By the President’s order a man was to be released from prison in Atlanta some time that day and proceed to Washington-no one seemed to know just when.But at six o’clock we newspaper men were tipped off to go to the warden’s house, where Debs was said to be having his breakfast.We waited. An hour passed and then Debs, in his blue denim prison raiment, was ushered out a side door of the Warden’s house into a car and shot back to prison. We then were certain the President had not succeeded in getting his prisoner past our lines during the night. That was something, for few men have left prison supposedly free under circumstances as mysterious as these which attended the release of Eugene V. Debs. And, perhaps, no handful of reporters ever faced so strange a task as that of watching a prison so the President of the United States couldn’t sneak a prisoner up to Washington without anybody knowing it.
Playing this curious game against Presidential secrecy, we had to chase every car that came from the prison, overtake it, look in, satisfy ourselves Debs was not there, and then return to our station in the road two hundred yards from the prison. And this all morning, until eleven o’clock, when we boarded the train that took Debs to Washington.And this, we learned, waswhat happened at the prison.
One by one they came to say good-bye to Debs. One man, a hospital patient, fainted in his arms. Sam Moore, the life-term Negro murderer made over by Debs, wept, and Debs kissed him and promised him he would constantly advocate his freedom. Moore has been in prison thirty years, since he was twenty. A lawyer, also a lifer, imprisoned for killing his wife in a fit of drunken jealousy, embraced the man he said was the best friend he ever knew. The way over from the hospital to the great prison building was choked with men in blue denim, all with outstretched hands. There were tears, and there were smiles, according to temperament. Up the corridors they blocked his way, crowded about him, followed him as he advanced. The warden had suspended all rules. All, all, could come to the front. On every tier they rushed forward to the great barred windows of the building that is as broad as a city block. From the outside, out beyond the prison foreground and beyond the gates, those windows now were pictures of bars and faces, faces, faces.Debs reached the end of the corridor by the warden’s office and the big front door. It opened. Then the shout went up, and as Debs was going down the granite steps it resounded through the vast place and carried out over the free air to the ears of those away out in the road.
But it was no longer a shout. For it would not die. It steadily increased in volume. It was twenty-three hundred caged men crying to see the one who was loose. He walked away out over the grass foreground where he could see them all and they could see him. Cheers mingled with fanatical screams, and yells of his name. For a half a minute he stood with his hat high in air. Then his hand fell, then his head and he wept. He walked back to the warden’s automobile, and away he went with the great noise in his ears.
We all got in the train with Debs and rode with him to Washington, and not yet do any of us know why it was that the President of the United States took so great an interest in this man, whom he does not think worthy of the rights of citizenship.
Hellraisers Journal – Saturday December 31, 1921 Comrade Eugene V. Debs Will Continue to Wage War on War
From The Atlanta Tri-Weekly Journal of December 29, 1921:
SCENES AT THE FEDERAL PRISON ON CHRISTMAS DAY
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RELEASE OF DEBS IS NOW PERPLEXING TO ADMINISTRATION
Harding and Daugherty Are Not Sure It Was Wise to Free Unconverted Radical —————
BY DAVID LAWRENCE
(Leased Wire Service to The Journal._
(Copyright, 1921.)
WASHINGTON, Dec. 28.-Eugene V. Debs has left behind him here a trail of mingled emotions. The administration which set him free is somewhat sadder and wiser this morrow morn.
For both President Harding and Attorney General Daugherty, who have tried their gospel of “understanding” in trying to convert Debs to a life of peace instead of agitation are not so sure that they have succeeded. Their disposition is to say no more about the case and hope that Debs will not abuse the liberty that has been given him by becoming a center for more agitation, a rallying device for radicalism and professional exploitation of the working classes.
The Harding administration tried a unique experiment-one that has been clouded somewhat in mystery because of the very delicacy of the undertaking. It is a fact that Debs could have had a pardon long ago if he would have agreed to withdraw the views he expressed against this country’s entrance into the war…..
DEBS SAYS HE WILL WAGE WAR ON WAR
Washington, Dec. 27.-War against war is to occupy a great part of the future activities of Eugene V. Debs, freed from Atlanta penitentiary by executive clemency on Christmas day, according to his own announcement here today. The Socialist leader said he could make no concrete plans for the future until he reached his home in Terre Haute, Ind., for which he will leave Washington at 6:20 o’clock tonight.
Debs announced his determination to obtain if possible a vow from every man, woman and child in this country and every other country which he might visit, that they refuse to take up arms and go to war. But until world relations undergo a reformation, he asserted, wars would continue.
[He said:]
There will be war, in some form, and war growing progressively more and more destructive until a competitive world has been transformed into a co-operative world. Every war for trade sooner or later and inevitably becomes a war of blood.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday December 27, 1921 Atlanta Penitentiary – Debs Weeps as 2,300 Convicts Cheer His Release
From The Indianapolis Star of December 26, 1921:
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(Special to The Indianapolis Star.)
ATLANTA, Ga. Dec. 26.-Eugene V, Debs left prison today. His going was the occasion of the most unique demonstration in American prison history.
Twenty-three hundred men, convicted of crimes unnumbered, their faces pressed against the bars of the windows on three floors of the big Federal penitentiary, shouted and cheered him and before them all, in the great foreground, he broke down and cried like a child.
Recovering himself, he stepped into an automobile and was driven off, the voices of the 2,300 following him for half a mile.As this is written, on a train bound for Washington, with Debs as a passenger in a day coach, the mystery surrounding the celebrated convict deepens. Why is he going to the capital? He refuses to say, but he has admitted he has a mission there. Whether or not the trip is a condition of his release he declines to say, but the fact that he was driven to the station in the automobile of the warden, four of whose deputies are aboard this train, would indicate that while Debt is out of prison he is not yet free.
“Citizen of the World.”
So far as he himself is concerned, however, he construes himself a liberated “citizen of the world,” the phrase having to do with President Harding’s refusal to grant a pardon which would have restored the prisoner’s civil rights.
Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday April 5, 1921 Atlanta Federal Penitentiary – Debs Returns After Unguarded Visit to Washington
From the Appeal to Reason of April 2, 1921:
Dramatic Story of Debs’ Sensational Visit to Attorney General Daugherty
BY SAMUEL CASTLETON Personal Attorney for Eugene V. Debs and member of Debs Amnesty Lobby.
By Telegraph to the Appeal.
Atlanta, Ga.—In spite of the mysterious secrecy that shrouded Gene Debs’ dramatic departure for Washington to hold his conference with the United States Attorney General, a leak was sprung from the effort to suppress all information about his movements when it became rumored a few hours after his departure that he had been pardoned and had left the city.
I immediately telegraphed to the Appeal’s Amnesty Lobby in Washington for Verification at the department of Justice. The rumor also had reached the city editors of the three Atlanta newspapers and reporters went scurrying to the federal penitentiary in taxi cabs and to the office of the Warden. Some of them even went at midnight to the Federal prison farm on the McDonough road ten miles from the outskirts of the city, over almost impassable highways. All communication with the prison officials was completely shut off and it was impossible to obtain either a verification or denial of the rumor. An error of the Western Union Telegraph Company caused my message to Washington to miscarry and I was unable to learn anything from that source.
The next day the Attorney General issued a statement relating to the conference between Debs and himself. Then it became known in Atlanta that the rumor of the day before was partially based on facts and that Gene had been extended an invitation by the Attorney General to clarify misunderstandings.
I was certain that this administration, well as the preceding one, knew that Gene was adamant and uncompromising in his principles and ideals and that the administration did not summon him for the purpose of the decantation of his convictions or retraction of his views.
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IT was Christmas morning. By the President’s order a man was to be released from prison in Atlanta some time that day and proceed to Washington-no one seemed to know just when. But at six o’clock we newspaper men were tipped off to go to the warden’s house, where Debs was said to be having his breakfast. We waited. An hour passed and then Debs, in his blue denim prison raiment, was ushered out a side door of the Warden’s house into a car and shot back to prison. We then were certain the President had not succeeded in getting his prisoner past our lines during the night. That was something, for few men have left prison supposedly free under circumstances as mysterious as these which attended the release of Eugene V. Debs. And, perhaps, no handful of reporters ever faced so strange a task as that of watching a prison so the President of the United States couldn’t sneak a prisoner up to Washington without anybody knowing it.
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