Alexander Mitchell Palmer
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Alexander Mitchell Palmer (May 4, 1872 - May 11, 1936) was an American lawyer and politician. He directed the infamous Palmer Raids.
Palmer was born near White Haven, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, on May 4 of 1872; he attended the public schools of his area and prepared for college at the Moravian Parochial School in Bethlehem. Palmer graduated from Swarthmore College in 1891 and was appointed official stenographer of the forty-third judicial district of Pennsylvania in 1892.
He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1893 and practiced in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. Palmer became director of various banks and public-service corporations and a member of the Democratic State executive committee of Pennsylvania. Palmer was elected as a Democrat to the Sixty-first, Sixty-second, and Sixty-third Congresses (March 4, 1909 - March 3, 1915); he was not a candidate for renomination in 1914, but ran unsuccessfully for the United States Senate. Palmer was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1912 and 1916, and a member of the Democratic National Committee from 1912 - 1920.
President Woodrow Wilson offered Palmer the post of Secretary of War, but Palmer declined because of his belief in pacifism. Instead, he was appointed Alien Property Custodian on October 22, 1917, by Wilson, and served until March 4 of 1919, when he resigned to become Attorney General of the United States, in which capacity he served from March 5, 1919, until March 4, 1921. His tenure as Attorney General was concurrent with the first Red Scare, and Palmer became a zealous opponent of socialists and immigrants. The bombing of his Washington, D.C. home, which killed the bomber and slightly damaged his building, may have influenced his actions in this area. His campaign against radicalism culminated in the Palmer Raids, for which he has been heavily criticized.
His tenure as Attorney General led to his candidacy during the 1920 Democratic National Convention. Neither he nor fellow front-runner and Wilson Cabinet member William G. McAdoo could break the deadlock, and the nomination went to the dark-horse Governor of Ohio James M. Cox.
Palmer then engaged in the practice of law in Washington, D.C., and Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania and died in Washington, D.C., on May 11, 1936. He is buried in Laurelwood Cemetery, Stroudsburg.
Multimedia
- Listen to Palmer speak (http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/nfor:@field(DOCID+@range(90000017+90000018)))
| Preceded by: Thomas Watt Gregory | United States Attorney General 1919–1921 | Succeeded by: Harry M. Daugherty |