Editing Palmer Raids (section)

==Aftermath==
In a few weeks, after changes in personnel at the Department of Labor, Palmer faced a new and very independent-minded Acting Secretary of Labor in Assistant Secretary of Labor [[Louis Freeland Post]], who canceled more than 2,000 warrants as being illegal.{{sfn|Coben|1963|page=232}} the 10,000 arrested, 3,500 were held by authorities in detention; 556 resident aliens were eventually deported under the [[Immigration Act of 1918]].{{sfn|Avakov|2007|page=36}}

At a Cabinet meeting in April 1920, Palmer called on Secretary of Labor [[William B. Wilson]] to fire Post, but Wilson defended him. The President listened to his feuding department heads and offered no comment about Post, but he ended the meeting by telling Palmer that he should "not let this country see red." Secretary of the Navy [[Josephus Daniels]], who made notes of the conversation, thought the Attorney General had merited the President's "admonition", because Palmer "was seeing red behind every bush and every demand for an increase in wages."{{sfn|Daniels|1946|pages=545–6}}

Palmer's supporters in Congress responded with an attempt to [[Federal impeachment in the United States|impeach]] Louis Post or, failing that, to [[Censure in the United States|censure]] him. The drive against Post began to lose energy when Attorney General Palmer's forecast of an attempted radical uprising on [[May Day]] 1920 failed to occur. Then, in testimony before the [[House Rules Committee]] on May 7–8, Post proved "a convincing speaker with a caustic tongue"{{sfn|Coben|1963|page=232}} and defended himself so successfully that Congressman [[Edward W. Pou]], a Democrat presumed to be an enthusiastic supporter of Palmer, congratulated him: "I feel that you have followed your sense of duty absolutely." {{sfn|Post|2010|page=273}}

On May 28, 1920, the nascent [[American Civil Liberties Union]] (ACLU), which was founded in response to the raids,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.aclu.org/about/aclu-history|title=ACLU History}}</ref> published its ''Report Upon the Illegal Practices of the United States Department of Justice'',<ref>{{cite book|publisher=[[National Popular Government League]] |last1=Brown |first1=Rome Green|title=Report Upon the Illegal Practices of the United States Department of Justice| date=1920|url=https://archive.org/details/toamericanpeople00natiuoft}}</ref> which carefully documented unlawful activities in arresting suspected radicals, illegal [[entrapment]] by [[agent provocateur|''agents provocateur'']], and unlawful incommunicado detention. Such prominent lawyers and law professors as [[Felix Frankfurter]], [[Roscoe Pound]] and [[Ernst Freund]] signed it. [[Harvard]] Professor [[Zechariah Chafee]] criticized the raids and attempts at deportations and the lack of [[legal process]] in his 1920 volume ''Freedom of Speech''. He wrote: "That a [[Quaker]] should employ prison and exile to counteract evil-thinking is one of the saddest ironies of our time."{{sfn|Chafee|1920|page=197}}

The Rules Committee gave Palmer a hearing in June, where he attacked Post and other critics whose "tender solicitude for social revolution and perverted sympathy for the criminal anarchists...set at large among the people the very public enemies whom it was the desire and intention of the Congress to be rid of." The press saw the dispute as evidence of the Wilson administration's ineffectiveness and division as it approached its final months.{{sfn|Murray|1955|pages=255–6}}

In June 1920, a decision by [[Massachusetts]] District Court Judge [[George W. Anderson (judge)|George W. Anderson]] ordered the discharge of 17 arrested aliens and denounced the Department of Justice's actions. He wrote that "a mob is a mob, whether made up of Government officials acting under instructions from the [[Department of Justice]], or of criminals and loafers and the vicious classes." His decision effectively prevented any renewal of the raids.{{sfn|Murray|1955|pages=250–1}} {{sfn|Post|2010|page=97}}

Palmer, once seen as a likely [[President of the United States|presidential]] candidate, lost his bid to win the [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic]] nomination for president later in the year.{{sfn|Pietrusza|2007|page=257}} The anarchist bombing campaign continued intermittently for another twelve years.{{sfn|Avrich|1991|page=214}}{{sfn|Avrich|1991|pages=140–143, 147, 149–156}}