Part Two: Thomas Kerl’s Life Speaks to Us Today

Recap of Part One: Thomas Kerl’s German immigrant parents provided him a good home, education and a role model for living a life of hard work and integrity. He became a successful farmer with farms in Nebraska and Washington and a home in Coeur d’Alene. His first-born son died at 6 months, followed by the death of his first wife. He traveled extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe, where he met philosophers and politicians, such as Gladstone and Roosevelt. He remarried, but soon suffered a humiliating divorce. Being wealthy, the divorce was covered in detail by the press. WWI was beginning to involve the U.S., and anti-German sentiment was building daily. Considering himself a patriotic American citizen with freedom to speak his mind, he was surprised to find himself in serious trouble as defined by the new Espionage Act of 1917, and later reinforced by the Sedition Act of 1918.

By 1917, President Woodrow Wilson’s insistence that the U.S. stay out of the war was being assaulted on all sides. The Germans were aware the U.S. had increased aid to the British from $2 billion to $4 billion since the war’s beginning in 1914. Food and goods were vital to the British. The German U-Boats began torpedoing U.S. ships. Still, Wilson stayed neutral, until the U.S. intercepted the “Zimmerman cable” from Germany which asked Mexico to declare war on the U.S. In return Germany would help Mexico regain territory lost to the U.S., namely Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. That did it, the U.S. was in for the fight.

American patriotism went wild. Searching out fellow Americans who were against the war effort in any way began in earnest. Kerl had spoken out many times about his misgivings of going to war in Europe. Now that Congress had enacted the Espionage Act in 1917, there was a standard by which private citizens could serve as self-appointed spy hunters. The Act clearly indicated that any dissent of U.S. involvement in the war would be evidence of disloyalty. The Sedition Act of 1918 criminalized any disloyal language. The “Hunt for Huns” was on with a vengeance.

Kerl’s antiwar speeches, writings and casual conversations soon were noted and reported to authorities. The Bureau of Investigation (forerunner of the FBI) notified Kerl in February of 1918 that they had started an investigation into his alleged disloyalty. What followed was a persistent and growing amount of evidence supporting the belief that Kerl was a German spy, much of it contradictory, taken out of context and hearsay. He was arrested at his home in Coeur d’Alene, charged and released after posting bond.

His trial began Dec. 12, 1918, a month after the end of WWI. When the jury received the case for deciding the verdict, they only deliberated for 10 minutes before delivering a verdict of guilty. The sentence was a fine of $2,000. Kerl decided not to appeal.

Fifteen U.S. citizens were convicted from April 1918 to March 1919 of crimes under the Espionage Act. Sentences would range from $200 to $2,000. Kerl’s was the largest.

Seven defendants were imprisoned. Finally, President Wilson and, later, Harding, would commute over a hundred of these cases, but there is no evidence that Kerl was one of these.

What followed was decades of shaming. Kerl was disbarred by the supreme courts of Nebraska and Idaho. He continued to live in Coeur d’Alene despite local sentiment being against him.

Unable to practice law he focused on business. He fathered three children with wife Lola.

The Great Depression would badly affect his finances. A much-favored daughter, 9-year-old Margaret, died Feb. 16, 1933, which seemed to be one last tragedy. Eight days after Margaret died, he hanged himself in the attic of their home.

The last sentence of Steven B. McCrea’s book, "Silencing Thomas Kerl," sums it up best: “His final gift could be a warning that this country’s spirit of friendship, its tradition of civil discussion of contentious issues, and the freedoms afforded to us by the Constitution can sometimes be subverted by the very institutions created to protect those values.”

In obtaining permission to quote from this book, the author informed me that he had agreed to donate all proceeds from the book to the Museum of North Idaho. Thus, by visiting the museum one could see a great exhibit of Cd'A during WWII, visit the bookstore, buy this book and also pick up an application for membership. Walk past the site of our new museum bordering McEuen Park. We are making real progress. www.museumni.org

Richard Sheldon is a member of the Museum of North Idaho Board of Trustees.