Yet , in 1918 , before the bombings , President Woodrow Wilson had pressured the Congress to legislate the anti-anarchist Sedition Act of 1918 to protect wartime morale by deporting putatively undesirable political people . Law professor David D. Cole reports that President Wilson 's " federal government consistently targeted alien radicals , deporting them ... for their speech or associations , making little effort to distinguish terrorists from ideological dissidents . " Initially , the press praised the raids ; '' The Washington Post '' said , " There is no time to waste on hairsplitting over the infringement of liberty " , and '' The New York Times '' said the injuries inflicted upon the arrested were " souvenirs of the new attitude of aggressiveness which had been assumed by the Federal agents against Reds and suspected-Reds " . In the event , the Palmer Raids were criticized as unconstitutional by twelve publicly prominent lawyers , including ( future Supreme Court Justice ) Felix Frankfurter , who published '' A Report on the Illegal Practices of The United States Department of Justice '' , documenting systematic violations of the Fourth , Fifth , Sixth , and Eighth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution via Palmer-authorized " illegal acts " and " wanton violence " . Defensively , Palmer then warned that a government-deposing left-wing revolution would begin on 1 May 1920 — May Day , the International Workers ' Day . When it failed to happen , he was ridiculed and lost much credibility . Strengthening the legal criticism of Palmer was that fewer than 600 deportations were substantiated with evidence , out of the thousands of resident aliens arrested and deported . In July 1920 , Palmer 's once-promising Democratic Party bid for the U.S. presidency failed . Wall Street was bombed on September 2 , 1920 , near Federal Hall National Memorial and the JP Morgan Bank . Although both anarchists and communists were suspected as being responsible for the bombing , ultimately no individuals were indicted for the bombing in which 38 died and 141 were injured
bombed
Wall Street bombing
Red Scare