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Eugene Debs and Canton, Ohio back in the spotlight because of Donald Trump's conviction
Canton Repository, 06/01/24
Eugene V. Debs, the voice of the Socialist Party a century ago, and his connection with Canton are back in the national spotlight.
Debs was the first man to run for U.S. president while in prison. He ended up behind bars because of a speech against World War I that he delivered in Canton on June 16, 1918.
With Donald Trump being found guilty Thursday in his New York criminal hush money trial and the possibility of prison time when he's sentenced on July 11, the Debs name has found its way back into the political lexicon.
What did Eugene V. Debs say in Canton, Ohio?
Debs, who died in 1926, visited Canton during a Socialist convention in the city. The speech he delivered from a gazebo in Nimisilla Park is considered his most well-known discourse on war and the fate of the working man.
He knew his words would be heard and remembered and judged long after he spoke them.
"I must be exceedingly careful, prudent, as to what I say, and even more careful and prudent as to how I say it," Debs said. "I may not be able to say all I think; but I am not going to say anything that I do not think. I would rather a thousand times be a free soul in jail than to be a sycophant and coward in the streets. They may put those boys in jail — and some of the rest of us in jail — but they can not put the Socialist movement in jail. Those prison bars separate their bodies from ours, but their souls are here this afternoon. They are simply paying the penalty that all men have paid in all the ages of history for standing erect, and for seeking to pave the way to better conditions for mankind."
The founder of the Socialist Party and the party's presidential candidate during multiple campaigns early in the 20th century went on to speak that day in strong terms for workers and against World War I.
Debs, then 62, "launched into one of the most famous addresses in American history against war, for civil liberties and for socialism," Tom Twiss, librarian emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh and author of “Trotsky and the Problem of Soviet Bureaucracy”, wrote in an opinion piece published in The Canton Repository in 2018.
Eugene Debs convicted in federal court because of Canton speech
Watched by federal agents in the audience, Debs was jailed for his words, with which he urged resistance to the military draft. That speech would become known as one of Debs’ most famous anti-war speeches. Although federal agents initially found no cause to hold Debs, what he said in Canton eventually contributed to him being convicted by a federal court in Cleveland and sentenced to 10 years in prison on a charge of sedition.
He began serving his sentence in Moundsville, West Virginia, on April 12, 1919. Later, he was transferred to a prison in Atlanta.
With his health deteriorating, Debs ran for president — for the fifth and final time — on the Socialist Party ticket in 1921. Late in 1921, President Warren G. Harding commuted the sentence to time served, and released Debs from prison. It was Christmas Day.
Includes reporting by Repository correspondent Gary Brown.
Twiss spoke for an event in Canton marking the 100th year of the Debs speech.
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