Imagine going down to your local brewpub or coffee shop. You meet some friends. The talk turns to the war. You criticize the President and his wealthy supporters. Next thing you know, a couple of husky fellows at the next table grab you, hustle you out the door and down to the local police station. You are arrested on a charge of sedition. Within months you are indicted, tried and convicted. The judge sentences you to 5-10 years in prison — and off you go! Think this could never happen? Well, it happened not that long ago — during World War I — to scores of ordinary people in Montana. They discovered very painfully that their free speech rights had been stripped away by the state legislature.

This site is about the 76 men and three women convicted of the crime of sedition in Montana in 1918 and 1919. The law they ran afoul of was possibly the harshest anti-speech law passed by any state in the history of the United States. Forty of those men — and one woman — served prison terms at the state penitentiary in Deer Lodge under sentences of up to 20 years. They were sent there for simply expressing their opinions — about President Wilson, about America's entry into World War I, about the armed forces, or about some other government agency. One man was sentenced to 7 - 20 years for saying the wartime food regulations were a "big joke." Others were convicted but only fined. A handful were found not guilty.

The language these people were convicted for was often harsh and crude, but their words posed no danger to the government or its war effort. Some were critical and contemptuous or disrespectful of the government or scornful of its entry into the war. Many were foolish and incautious, and spoke without thinking or under the influence of alcohol. But they were not dangerous. Yet for their fiery words, they received swift justice — usually very short trials, convictions, and a trip to Deer Lodge. Collectively, these people served 65 years in a prison whose warden had a particular hatred for them.

They should not have served a day. And Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer agrees. On May 3, 2006, Gov. Schweitzer signed a Proclamation of Pardon for 78 persons convicted of sedition in 1918-1919 (one man had already been pardoned in 1921).

Those caught in Montana's sedition net were hardly heroes, but they should not have been scapegoats either. Here you can read their stories and learn about the conditions that led to this dark period in the state's history.

By preserving their stories and telling the details of their lives and the conditions under which they were convicted, we want to preserve the point that their loss of liberty was a loss for us all. In our country, the free exchange of ideas, which necessarily includes unpopular opinions, is at the heart of our democracy, and must be protected. In the words of the famous Kansas editor William Allen White, "only when free utterance is suppressed is it needed, and when it is needed, it is most vital to justice."