Archibald Ewing Stevenson (September 23, 1884 – February 10, 1961) was an American attorney and legislative researcher. Stevenson is best remembered for his work as Assistant Counsel of the Lusk Committee of the New York State Senate from 1919 to 1920, the activities of which led to a series of sensational raids and trials of self-professed revolutionary socialists. Stevenson was also the de facto author and editor of the committee's four-volume report, which anticipated congressional investigations of communism conducted in subsequent years.
Biography
Early years Archibald Ewing Stevenson was born September 23, 1884, in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, located in the rural western part of the state. Stevenson's father was a noted geologist and a professor at New York University."John James Stevenson", in The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography. Volume 7, New York: James T. White & Company, 1897; p. 137, accessed May 18, 2011. He was raised as a PresbyterianHerman W. Knox (ed.), "Archibald E. Stevenson" in Who's Who in New York: A Biographical Dictionary of Prominent Citizens of New York City and State. Seventh Edition, 1917-1918. New York: Who's Who Publications, 1918; p. 1017. and later in life was a member of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church of New York City.The Continent, vol. 52, no. 25, June 23, 1921, p. 752.
The precocious Stevenson was a published author at the age of nine, composing a travel memoir called From New York to Alaska and Back Again.See: Archibald E. Stevenson, From New York to Alaska and Back Again. New York: Styles and Cash, 1893.
Stevenson graduated from New York University with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1904, graduating first in his class.McAlister Coleman (ed.), New York: Legislative Committee of the People's Freedom Union by The Nation Press, March 1920; p. 4. Following graduation Stevenson began to follow in his father's footsteps, teaching at NYU as an instructor of mineralogy following graduation. In 1908 Stevenson was placed in charge of the Department of Geology at NYU.
The appeal of science did not hold Stevenson's interest and he studied law in his free time, graduating from New York Law School with a law degree in 1909. He passed the New York State Bar exam in 1910 and was admitted to practice, forming a partnership called Graham & Stevenson. That same year, Stevenson married Katherine De La Vergne, with whom he had three daughters born in 1911, 1915 and 1919.Katherine was the daughter of John Chester De La Vergne, a socially prominent businessman and an early mass manufacturer of refrigerators. Ice and Refrigeration, Vol. 10, no. 6 (June 1896), pp. 387–388, accessed May 18, 2011
In this interval Stevenson was a member of a number of prominent legal and scientific societies, including the New York Academy of Science, the Seismological Society of America, the New York County Lawyers Association, the Sons of the Revolution, and Delta Phi fraternity. Stevenson was also active with the National Vacation Bible School Association, serving as the chairman of the committee for metropolitan New York City in 1915.
Professional anti-radical When the United States entered World War I in the spring of 1917, Stevenson made the move from volunteer work in youth religious education and social work on the New York City's Lower East Side to official patriotic activity. Stevenson was tapped to head the Committee on Aliens of the mayor of New York's Committee on National Defense. This new activity inspired Stevenson to volunteer his services to the U.S. Justice Department in 1917, assisting it in its investigation of so-called "German propaganda." Stevenson began creating a card file indexing the names of individuals in the country whom he suspected of pro-German sympathies and worked in close connection with the War Department's Military Intelligence Division, based in New York City.
Stevenson was neither a special agent of the Justice Department's Bureau of Investigation, nor a member of Military Intelligence, but was rather an activist who cooperated with both as a member of the American Protective League, a non-government agency.Robert C. Cottrell, Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000; p. 78. On August 31, 1918, Stevenson learned the efficacy of the tactic of raiding one's political opponents when he and the American Protective League helped federal agents armed with a search warrant storm the New York headquarters of the National Civil Liberties Bureau, forerunner of the American Civil Liberties Union. Publications, documents, and minutes of the organization's governing body were seized for future scrutiny for potential prosecution.
On January 21, 1919, Stevenson was catapulted into national prominence by an appearance before the so-called Overman Committee of the United States Senate, which was then engaged in the first congressional investigation of "alien propaganda" and Bolshevism in America. During the course of his testimony, Stevenson read into the record a list of 62 names of individuals who held, in his own estimation, "dangerous, destructive, and anarchistic sentiments." Included among these were social worker and pacifist Jane Addams, President of Stanford University David Starr Jordan, journalist Oswald Garrison Villard, Sociology professor Frederic C. Howe, and an array of liberal clerics and academics.
Stevenson's testimony, an early example of a tactic later known as Red-baiting, became national news. With the Wilson administration embarrassed by the characterization of a number of its prominent friends in such a light,Coleman (ed.), The Truth About the Lusk Committee, pp. 4-5. Secretary of War Newton D. Baker quickly entered the debate, declaring:Coleman (ed.), The Truth About the Lusk Committee, p. 5. Quoting The New York Times: "Deploys Pacifist List", January 28, 1919, accessed May 19, 2011
Mr. Stevenson has never been an officer or an employee of the Military Intelligence Division of the War Department.... I personally have no sympathy with the publication of lists of persons classified with reference to their supposed opinions, and grouped under general designations, such as "pacifists," which may mean any one of a dozen things, some of them quite consistent with the finest loyalty to the country and some of them inconsistent with such loyalty.
The attack on Stevenson by liberal critics drew conservative supporters to his defense, including U.S. Senator Lee Slater Overman, who proclaimed in committee that Stevenson had studied "German propaganda" in America for over a year and was thus "probably more familiar with the various groups of German and radical propaganda in the United States than anyone else in this country."Coleman (ed.), The Truth About the Lusk Committee, p. 5.
Though his influence at the War Department had attenuated, Stevenson still exerted considerable influence as a member of the powerful conservative Union League Club, a patriotic organization organized at the time of the American Civil War. On January 9, 1919, a meeting of that influential social organization of New York City's political elite determined to establish a committee of five members given the task of studying radicalism in the city.Julian F. Jaffee, Crusade Against Radicalism: New York During the Red Scare, 1914-1924. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1972; p. 119. Archibald Stevenson was named by the organization to head this new committee. The committee conducted a two-month investigation before presenting its report at the March 13 monthly meeting of the group.Jaffee, Crusade Against Radicalism, p. 120. Upon hearing the report, the membership of the group voted unanimously to petition the New York state legislature to appoint a special committee dedicated to the radicalism question.
Such a push did not come to the legislature out of the blue. During the course of his activity with the Union League Club anti-radicalism committee, Stevenson had frequently found himself in the New York state capital of Albany. There he met with state Republican political leaders, ultimately resulting in the creation of a state legislative committee to study radicalism in New York state – a committee headed by State Senator Clayton R. Lusk.
Lusk Committee service
On March 20, 1919, at the behest of Archibald Stevenson and the New York Union League Club, Republican State Senator Walters introduced a resolution creating a formal sub-committee of the Senate on "Bolsheviki Activities."Coleman (ed.), The Truth About the Lusk Committee This proposal quickly passed the Senate and was sent to the New York State Assembly, which approved the measure on March 26 by a vote of 110 to 10. An appropriation of $30,000 was passed to fund the committee's activities.
A joint committee consisting of four Senators and five Assemblymen was appointed, with majority control in the hands of the Republican Party. Senator Clayton Lusk was elected chairman. The committee was formally established with a limited purview, "to investigate the scope, tendencies, and ramifications" of "seditious activities" and to report on its investigations of the same back to the legislature. Nowhere in its authorizing legislation was this committee given the power to conduct raids or to make arrests.Jaffee, Crusade Against Radicalism, p. 121. Rather, the committee was designed to be merely administrative in nature.
In practice, the Lusk Committee's activity extended significantly beyond its prescribed agenda and it ran appreciably over budget – spending some $80,000 by January 1920.Jaffee, Crusade Against Radicalism, p. 122. The committee exercised search warrants against many of the organizations which it deemed to be centers of revolutionary propaganda, confiscating documents for further use.Jaffee, Crusade Against Radicalism, pp. 122-123.
The Lusk Committee met for the first time on June 12, 1919. That same day the office of the Russian Soviet Government Bureau, the unrecognized diplomatic office of Soviet Russia, located at 110 West 40th Street in New York City, was raided by police authorities working in conjunction with the Lusk Committee.Coleman, The Truth About the Lusk Committee, pp. 10-11. A mass of books, letters, and papers were seized in accordance with the search warrant, providing the Lusk Committee with fodder for further investigation. A set of subpoenas from the committee to leading members of the Russian Soviet Government Bureau, including Ludwig Martens, A. A. Heller, Gregory Weinstein, Isaac Hourwich, and Santeri Nuorteva.Coleman (ed.), The Truth About the Lusk Committee, p. 13.
A second sensational raid directed by the Lusk Committee followed on June 21, 1919, when officers of the state constabulary and members of the American Protective League entered the premises of "The People's House," headquarters of the Rand School of Social Science on East 15th Street.Coleman (ed.), The Truth About the Lusk Committee, p. 20. Fifty raiders led by Deputy Attorney General Samuel A. Berger and Stevenson seized correspondence and other documents belonging to the Socialist Party-related school.
In 1920, McAlister Coleman described Stevenson, his ideological opponent:Coleman (ed.), The Truth About the Lusk Committee, pp. 5-6.
Mr. Stevenson is conventional and sincere. Anyone who talks with him for five minutes will appreciate his sincerity. He sees himself as one of the saviors of American institutions, now threatened by the menace of a foreign philosophy. He believes with all his heart and soul that there is a widespread plot in this country to overthrow the Republic by violent means.... He is convinced that the Socialist Party of America is dominated by the "foreign element" and that its teachings are consequently "un-American." "Americanism" in Mr. Stevenson's mind, is largely determined by an individual's uncritical acceptance of the late war and war spirit.