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Explanation:
- La Follette said. “We had, at the hands of Germany. Serious grievances.” He continued, “They had interfered with the right of American citizens to travel on the high seas – on ships loaded with munitions for Great Britain.” This was a partial exaggeration: not all ships the Germans sank had carried military cargoes. But La Follette pointed out – correctly – that the British ocean liner Lusitania had been carrying munitions to England in 1915 when a U-boat sank it, killing 1,193 people, including 123 Americans.
- The crowd cheered La Follette, but the next day he found himself facing a nationwide backlash and a classic bit of “fake news.”
- An Associated Press report on La Follette’s St. Paul speech, printed in hundreds of newspapers nationwide, misquoted him as saying that “We had no grievance” against Germany, while a New York Times headline declared, “La Follette Defends Lusitania Sinking.” Minnesota’s Republican governor announced La Follette’s statements would be investigated. One of the state’s senators, Frank Kellogg, brought a petition to the Senate from the Minnesota Public Safety Commission that denounced La Follette as “a teacher of disloyalty and sedition” and called for the Senate to expel him – which the Constitution allows with a two-thirds vote.
- It was under these circumstances that La Follette addressed the crowded Senate floor. The galleries were packed with spectators eager to hear how the crusader known as “Fighting Bob” would respond to the outrage over his speech in St. Paul.
- Instead of acknowledging the rancor, or the expulsion petition, La Follette delivered a sweeping defense of the right to free speech in wartime. Across the country, La Follette warned, governors, mayors and police were preventing or breaking up peaceful meetings about the war. Dissenters were being unlawfully arrested and jailed for no crime.
