<P> While most press coverage continued to be positive, with criticism only from leftist publications like The Nation and The New Republic, one attorney raised the first noteworthy protest . Francis Fisher Kane, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, resigned in protest . In his letter of resignation to the President and the Attorney General he wrote: "It seems to me that the policy of raids against large numbers of individuals is generally unwise and very apt to result in injustice . People not really guilty are likely to be arrested and railroaded through their hearings...We appear to be attempting to repress a political party...By such methods we drive underground and make dangerous what was not dangerous before ." Palmer replied that he could not use individual arrests to treat an "epidemic" and asserted his own fidelity to constitutional principles . He added: "The Government should encourage free political thinking and political action, but it certainly has the right for its own preservation to discourage and prevent the use of force and violence to accomplish that which ought to be accomplished, if at all, by parliamentary or political methods ." The Washington Post endorsed Palmer's claim for urgency over legal process: "There is no time to waste on hairsplitting over infringement of liberties ." </P> <P> In a few weeks, after changes in personnel at the Department of Labor, Palmer faced a new and very independent - minded Acting Secretary of Labor in Assistant Secretary of Labor Louis Freeland Post, who canceled more than 2,000 warrants as being illegal . Of the 10,000 arrested, 3,500 were held by authorities in detention; 556 resident aliens were eventually deported under the Immigration Act of 1918 . </P> <P> At a Cabinet meeting in April 1920, Palmer called on Secretary of Labor William B. Wilson to fire Post, but Wilson defended him . The President listened to his feuding department heads and offered no comment about Post, but he ended the meeting by telling Palmer that he should "not let this country see red ." Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, who made notes of the conversation, thought the Attorney General had merited the President's "admonition", because Palmer "was seeing red behind every bush and every demand for an increase in wages ." </P> <P> Palmer's supporters in Congress responded with an attempt to impeach Louis Post or, failing that, to censure him . The drive against Post began to lose energy when Attorney General Palmer's forecast of an attempted radical uprising on May Day 1920 failed to occur . Then, in testimony before the House Rules Committee on May 7--8, Post proved "a convincing speaker with a caustic tongue" and defended himself so successfully that Congressman Edward W. Pou, a Democrat presumed to be an enthusiastic supporter of Palmer, congratulated him: "I feel that you have followed your sense of duty absolutely ." </P>

Attorney general who led government attacks against suspected radicals