Pettigrew was courageous, risked imprisonment for speaking out

“Profiles in Courage,” a book by Sen.(and future President) John F. Kennedy, was published in 1955. Its topic was the courage shown by a few U.S. Senators, in history. However, Kennedy neglected to mention Richard F. Pettigrew, the most courageous of all. Pettigrew risked imprisonment by speaking out, just as Army Private Bradley Manning has done, currently.

Congress, in 1917, passed a “Sedition Law,” that provided for penitentiary imprisonment of anyone who published forbidden information about World War I. Pettigrew had the courage to break that law. He immediately published such information, as a letter in the “Sioux Falls Argus-Leader.”

When he was subsequently indicted under the Sedition Act, Pettigrew framed the indictment and hung it on the wall of his law office.

Pettigrew, who had served two terms as a U.S. Senator, certainly met the criteria for inclusion in Kennedy's book. However, Pettigrew's own book, “Triumphant Plutocracy,” published in 1922, was an exposé of greedy Wall Street profiteers and corrupt politicians. Those people feared Pettigrew, just as they fear WikiLeaks, today.

I believe Kennedy chose to exclude Pettigrew from his book to avoid annoying other federal politicians. He makes this comment, in the first chapter: “The way to get along,” I was told when I entered politics, “is to go along.”

Pettigrew's book, recently republished, is available at Amazon, at university libraries, and online. For a link to an online version, Google “Pettigrew Triumphant Plutocracy.”

Gerald Baker

Cedar Falls