The Palmer Raids used the Sedition Act.
Fear of Dissent
A. Mitchell Palmer
The Case Against the "Reds"
A powerful reaction against "radicalism" in various forms swept the country immediately after the end of the war. One of the leading progenitors and sponsors of the "Red Scare" was the Attorney General of the United States, who summarizes his fears of Bolshevism and his methods of extirpating it.
SOURCE. A Mitchell Palmer, "The Case Against the 'Reds,'" Forum (1920), 63:173- 185.
In this brief review of the work which the Department of Justice has undertaken, to tear out the radical seeds that have entangled American ideas in their poisonous theories, I desire not merely to explain what the real menace of communism is, but also to tell how we have been compelled to clean up the country almost unaided by any virile legislation. Though I have not been embarrassed by political opposition, I have been materially delayed because the present sweeping processes of arrests and deportation of seditious aliens should have been vigorously pushed by Congress last spring. The failure of this is a matter of record in the Congressional files.
http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/hist409/palmer.htmlhttp://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USApalmerR.htmIn 1919 Woodrow Wilson appointed A. Mitchell Palmer as his attorney general. Palmer recruited John Edgar Hoover as his special assistant and together they used the Espionage Act (1917) and the Sedition Act (1918) to launch a campaign against radicals and left-wing organizations.
Worried by the revolution that had taken place in Russia, Palmer became convinced that Communist agents were planning to overthrow the American government. His view was reinforced by the discovery of thirty-eight bombs sent to leading politicians and the Italian anarchist who blew himself up outside Palmer's Washington home. Palmer recruited John Edgar Hoover as his special assistant and together they used the Espionage Act (1917) and the Sedition Act (1918) to launch a campaign against radicals and left-wing organizations.