[American Freedom Convention]: [Socialist Party]:

$950 · Offered by William Reese Company

DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES ADOPTED BY THE AMERICAN FREEDOM CONVENTION SEPTEMBER 25-28, 1919. A bombastic, unrecorded pamphlet printing the resolutions of the American Freedom Convention in September 1919. The Convention was a three-day event hosted by the American Socialist Party from September 25-28, gathering some 300 delegates from their own ranks, trade and labor unions, pacifist organizations, and other "dissidents" from across the nation. It came less than a month after the party's own convention, in which the disgruntled "Left-Wingers" formally split off to found the Communist Party of America. The American Freedom Convention in particular, while clearly steeped in Socialist Party rhetoric, focused specifically on abuses committed by the United States government in the name of national security during the First World War, and more particularly on the persecution wrought under the Espionage Act of 1917.The act, while used to prosecute spies on rare occasions, was primarily wielded as a blunt instrument against radicals, newspaper printers and publishers, and anyone expressing anti-war sentiments during World War I. This is the act that was used to deny Victor L. Berger (of the Socialist Party) his legitimate seat in Congress and to sentence Eugene V. Debs, among thousands of other labor leaders, conscientious objectors, and others, to years in prison. The delegates of the Convention, who open their declaration by bluntly stating that "Democracy no longer exists in the Un

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