About the Work
A Woman without a Country presents the courtroom address of Emma Goldman, delivered during her trial alongside co-defendant Alexander Berkman. The work is a first-person speech, given before a jury, in which Goldman defends herself and Berkman against charges related to conspiracy and the No Conscription activities. The text captures her opening remarks, her detailed rebuttal of the prosecution’s evidence, and her closing arguments, weaving together legal defense with broader philosophical statements on law, progress, patriotism, and democracy. The address is framed by Goldman as a three-act comedy, beginning with the arrest, moving through the bail proceedings, and culminating in the trial itself. The work is presented as a direct transcript of her spoken words, preserving the rhetorical style and argumentative structure of her defense.
Context
The address takes place against the backdrop of the United States’ involvement in World War I and the implementation of conscription. Goldman notes that the arrest occurred following the announcement by the U.S. Marshal and the District Attorney’s office that the “big fish” of the No Conscription activities had been caught. The raid targeted the offices of THE BLAST, MOTHER EARTH, and the No-Conscription League, publications and organizations with which Goldman and Berkman were associated. The trial occurred during a period of heightened patriotism and suppression of dissent, with Goldman observing that free speech was being suppressed and assemblies broken up by “overbearing and brutal gangsters in uniform.” She references President Wilson’s February 3, 1917, phrase about “the righteous passion for justice upon which all war, all structure of family, State and of mankind must rest as the ultimate base of our existence and our liberty,” which she cites as the impetus for the conscientious objector’s position. The May 18th meeting, which became a focus of the prosecution, took place before the Draft Bill took effect, as the President signed it late that evening. Goldman also notes the trial day coincided with city officials welcoming the Russian Commission, whose members had recently been released from exile, drawing a contrast between the treatment of Russian revolutionaries and her own prosecution.
Structure of the Book
The work is structured as a continuous courtroom address, divided into three main sections. The first section covers Goldman’s opening remarks, in which she addresses the jury for the first time, describes the circumstances of her arrest, and begins to dismantle the prosecution’s evidence regarding conspiracy. The second section presents her detailed defense of her stance on political violence, her explanation of the conscientious objector’s position, and her critique of the prosecution’s witnesses and methods. The third section contains her concluding arguments, in which she expands on the nature of law and progress, the meaning of patriotism, the state of democracy in America, and the jury’s role in the verdict. The address moves from specific factual rebuttals to broader philosophical reflections, ending with a final plea to the jury and a statement of personal conviction.
Detailed Section-by-Section Summary
Part 1
Goldman opens by noting that she addresses the jury for the first time in her life, as is also true for her co-defendant Alexander Berkman, having previously spoken only to three judges. She recounts that following their arrest, the U.S. Marshal and the District Attorney’s office announced that the “big fish” of the No Conscription activities had been caught. Goldman mocks this announcement, comparing the effort to a weak net that breaks when pulled ashore, wasting the anglers’ labor. She describes the arrest methods of Marshal McCarthy and his men as sensational, fit for Barnum & Bailey, with a dozen or more officers rushing up two flights of stairs expecting danger, only to find Berkman and Goldman quietly working at their desks with pens. She argues that two officers with a warrant would have sufficed, as neither defendant runs away. The raid also targeted the offices of THE BLAST, MOTHER EARTH, and the No-Conscription League. The Marshal and his helpers did not produce a search warrant, which she contrasts with how they would treat the offices of Morgan or Rockefeller. The office was left looking like invaded Belgium, but the invaders were American patriots, not Prussian barbarians.
Goldman frames the events as a three-act comedy. The first act was the arrest, with a madly dashing automobile breaking traffic regulations. The second act was the demand for fifty thousand dollars bail, with real estate refused from a man whose property is rated at three hundred thousand dollars, after the District Attorney had promised to accept it for Berkman. The third act, the trial, fell flat. She declines to re-examine the conspiracy evidence, as Berkman covered it. The prosecution’s proof of conspiracy rested on: MOTHER EARTH and THE BLAST being printed by the same printer and bound in the same bindery; the same expressman delivering both; and on June 2nd, both being given gratis to a reporter at his request. She questions the reporter’s conscriptable age. Witnesses showed MOTHER EARTH was published for twelve years, went through the U.S. mail as second-class matter, and was sold or given away at the office.
The District Attorney did not examine reporters about whether they counseled young men not to register. A New York Times reporter, who turned material over to the District Attorney, would have been happy to oblige, but Mr. Content neglected this. She suggests the reporter must have said they would not tell people not to register. Patrolmen and detectives, like Mr. Randolph and Mr. Cadell, were employed as tenth-rate stenographers, but their notes failed to prove they advised against registering. These men resorted to the old standby: “We believe in violence and we will use violence.” Goldman argues this sentence, even if used at the May 18th meeting, would not prove the conspiracy charge. Even if indicted for advocating violence, a “Not Guilty” verdict would be required, as belief or announcement of belief is not a crime. She emphatically denies uttering that phrase at the May 18th meeting or any other, as it would be incoherent and illogical. She reads her position on political violence from an essay, “The Psychology of Political Violence,” identifying as a social student whose mission is to diagnose social wrongs, comparing herself to a physician who finds the cause of a disease rather than condemning the patient.
Part 2
Goldman defends her stance on political violence, stating she has only explained its causes, never advocated it. Her core argument is that “organized violence on top” (state or institutional violence) creates “individual violence at the bottom”; accumulated indignation against organized injustice drives the political offender. She refuses to condemn the offender, comparing herself to a physician who must not condemn a patient for disease, and notes that the indifferent public shares responsibility for such acts. She quotes Jesus: “He who is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone,” and rejects the charge of advocating violence by analogy, noting Jesus did not advocate prostitution by defending Mary Magdalene.
The May 18th meeting aimed to voice the conscientious objector’s position and conscription’s evils. She defines the conscientious objector as not a shirker or coward but impelled by President Wilson’s phrase about “the righteous passion for justice upon which all war, all structure of family, State and of mankind must rest as the ultimate base of our existence and our liberty.” The May 18th meeting occurred before the Draft Bill took effect, as the President signed it late that evening, so it cannot prove an overt act even if she had counseled non-registration. She criticizes the Prosecuting Attorney for dwelling on that meeting, noting no stenographic notes existed and he refused Mr. Weinberger’s request for a transcript, relying instead on patrolman Randolph and Detective Cadell, whose notes she says were “doctored” — she did not say those things.
She proved via unimpeachable witnesses that at Hunts’ Point Palace, on the eve of registration, she expressly said she “cannot and will not tell people not to register”; this stand was reiterated in her statement from Springfield read May 23rd. She insists the prosecution testimony contains no point sustaining conspiracy or overt acts. They had to bring an 80-year-old witness to counter rumors of German money, involving a fake bank receipt for $2,400; the old man, a lifelong radical, contributed money for her work. She notes the burden of proof was shifted to the defense, and fifty more corroborating witnesses, including writers, poets, and conventional magazine contributors, could have been called. She and Alexander Berkman have been in public life 27 years, never denied their position, and proudly claim responsibility even for others’ writings, so they refuse conviction on a “trumped-up charge” or “perjured testimony” merely for being Anarchists.
She challenges the Court’s instruction that jurors need only convict if ideas are “within the law,” arguing that no new faith or idea has ever been considered within the law by those in power; the history of human growth is the history of illegal new ideas. She cites Jesus, put to death as against the law; American revolutionaries who threw tea into Boston harbor, with “Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God” and the Declaration of Independence, for which a young man recently got 90 days in a New York Court — they were “Anarchists of their time.” She cites French Revolution figures, including Dantes, Robespierres, Marats, Herberts, Camille Desmoulins, and the Marseillaise’s composer, as extra-legal; otherwise France would have stayed under Louis XVI, who cared more for shooting jack rabbits than his people. She notes that on the trial day, city officials welcomed the Russian Commission with music; nearly all members had just been released from exile; from 1825 to 1917, Russia’s “Tree of Liberty” was watered by martyrs’ blood — none worked within the law.
Part 3
Goldman opens her concluding argument by stating that countless men and women in every land and period redeemed the world because their ideas were “not within the law.” A new idea can never move within the law, whether in political, social, scientific, literary, or musical domains. The law is “stationary, fixed, mechanical,” like “a chariot wheel” grinding all alike without regard to time, place, condition, cause and effect, or the complexity of the human soul. Progress, by contrast, knows no fixity, cannot be pressed into a mould, and is “ever renewing, ever becoming, ever changing.”
If this be crime, she says, then they are criminals like Jesus, Socrates, Galileo, Bruno, John Brown, and others. They are in company with those whom Havelock Ellis, “the greatest living psychologist,” describes as political criminals — recognized by the whole civilized world except America — who out of love for humanity and devotion to an ideal pay with their blood. The political criminal is “the precursor of human progress,” becoming the hero, martyr, and saint of the new age.
The Prosecuting Attorney and press call this doctrine “dangerous and unpatriotic.” Goldman argues there may be different kinds of patriotism as there are different kinds of liberty. Love of country need not consist in blindness to its faults. Many not born in America nor naturalized love America with deeper passion than natives whose patriotism manifests by insulting those who do not rise for the national anthem. Their patriotism is like a man loving a woman with open eyes — enchanted by her beauty yet seeing her faults. They love America’s mountains, canyons, forests, Niagara, deserts, and people, but hate her superficiality, cant, corruption, and worship of the Golden Calf.
If America entered the war to make the world safe for democracy, she must first make democracy safe in America. Democracy at home is daily outraged — free speech suppressed, assemblies broken up by “overbearing and brutal gangsters in uniform,” free press curtailed. A democracy conceived in military servitude and economic enslavement is not democracy but despotism, which the Declaration of Independence gives people the right to overthrow.
The District Attorney emphasized “Resist conscription” from the Manifesto, but that is not the charge. She asks whether there is only one kind of resistance — the gun, bayonet, bomb, or flying machine — or whether people may fold their hands and declare they will not fight when they do not believe in war’s necessity. The indictment charges conspiracy against registration, not conscription, and the prosecution has not proven conspiracy or an overt act.
The jury is not called to accept or approve the defendants’ views, nor decide whether they are within the law, but whether the prosecution proved that Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman conspired to urge people not to register, and whether their speeches and writings represent overt acts. Whatever the verdict, it cannot affect the rising tide of discontent against war — “a war for conquest and military power” — nor the opposition to conscription, nor those who hold human life sacred. The verdict only adds to the world’s opinion of whether justice and liberty are a living force in America or “a mere shadow of the past.” Even if convicted and shot dead, she would cry with Luther: “Here I am and here I stand and I cannot do otherwise.”
Berkman said the eyes of America are upon the jury — not from sympathy with Anarchism, but because it must be decided whether democracy can be given to Europe when there is none here, whether free speech, free assemblage, and criticism — which even the espionage bill did not include — shall be destroyed or remain the heritage of the American people. Goldman has held her ideas publicly for twenty-seven years and would change them only if proven wrong, untenable, or lacking historic fact — never because found guilty. She recounts Emerson visiting Thoreau in jail, asking “David, what are you doing in jail?” and Thoreau replying “Ralph, what are you doing outside, when honest people are in jail for their ideals?”
She asks the jury to forget that they are Anarchists, forget the violence claim, forget something that appeared in MOTHER EARTH three years ago when she was thousands of miles away. The defense says conspiracy and overt acts have not been proven, so the verdict must be not guilty. Whatever the decision, the struggle must go on — they are “atoms in the incessant human struggle towards the light” — the ideal of economic, political, and spiritual liberation of mankind.
Main Arguments
Goldman’s central argument is that the prosecution failed to prove conspiracy or any overt act. She systematically dismantles the evidence presented, from the shared printer and bindery of the two publications to the testimony of patrolmen and detectives whose notes she claims were “doctored.” She argues that the May 18th meeting occurred before the Draft Bill took effect, so it cannot constitute an overt act. She also argues that belief or announcement of belief in violence is not a crime, and that she never advocated violence but only explained its causes. Her broader argument is that new ideas are never “within the law,” and that the law is a fixed, mechanical force that grinds all alike, while progress is ever-changing. She contends that the political criminal is the precursor of human progress, and that the defendants stand in the company of Jesus, Socrates, Galileo, and the American revolutionaries. She argues that patriotism does not require blindness to a country’s faults, and that if America entered the war to make the world safe for democracy, she must first make democracy safe in America. Finally, she argues that the jury’s role is not to decide whether the defendants’ views are within the law, but whether the prosecution proved the specific charges of conspiracy and overt acts.
Key Concepts
The work introduces and develops several key concepts. The first is the distinction between “organized violence on top” and “individual violence at the bottom,” with Goldman arguing that state and institutional violence creates the conditions for individual acts of violence. The second is the figure of the political criminal, described through Havelock Ellis as one who out of love for humanity and devotion to an ideal pays with blood, and who is “the precursor of human progress.” The third is the nature of law as “stationary, fixed, mechanical,” contrasted with progress as “ever renewing, ever becoming, ever changing.” The fourth is the definition of the conscientious objector, not as a shirker or coward, but as one impelled by the highest ideals of justice. The fifth is the concept of patriotism with open eyes, loving a country’s beauty while seeing its faults, and hating its superficiality, cant, corruption, and worship of the Golden Calf. The sixth is the idea that democracy must be made safe in America before it can be given to Europe, and that a democracy conceived in military servitude and economic enslavement is despotism.
Themes
The work is dominated by themes of law versus justice, the individual versus the state, and the nature of true patriotism. Goldman presents the trial as a conflict between a fixed, mechanical law and the living, changing force of human progress. She frames the defendants as political criminals in the tradition of Jesus, Socrates, Galileo, and the American revolutionaries, suggesting that their prosecution places them in the company of those who redeemed the world through ideas that were “not within the law.” The theme of patriotism runs throughout, with Goldman distinguishing between a blind, superficial patriotism that insults those who do not rise for the national anthem, and a deeper love of country that sees its faults and hates its corruption. The theme of democracy is also central, with Goldman arguing that America cannot claim to make the world safe for democracy while suppressing free speech, free press, and free assemblage at home. The work can be read as a meditation on the meaning of resistance, with Goldman asking whether resistance must take the form of the gun, bayonet, bomb, or flying machine, or whether people may fold their hands and declare they will not fight when they do not believe in war’s necessity. The theme of personal conviction is also present, with Goldman stating she would change her ideas only if proven wrong, never because found guilty, and invoking Thoreau’s response to Emerson in jail.
The Author’s Conclusions
Goldman concludes that the prosecution has not proven conspiracy or any overt act, and therefore the verdict must be not guilty. She argues that whatever the verdict, it cannot affect the rising tide of discontent against war, nor the opposition to conscription, nor those who hold human life sacred. The verdict only adds to the world’s opinion of whether justice and liberty are a living force in America or “a mere shadow of the past.” She affirms her personal conviction, stating she would cry with Luther, “Here I am and here I stand and I cannot do otherwise.” She concludes that the struggle must go on, as they are “atoms in the incessant human struggle towards the light” — the ideal of economic, political, and spiritual liberation of mankind. Her final plea to the jury is to forget that they are Anarchists, forget the violence claim, and focus solely on whether the defense has shown that conspiracy and overt acts have not been proven.
Significance
The work is significant as a primary document of a political trial during World War I, capturing the voice of a prominent anarchist and activist at a moment of national crisis. It preserves Goldman’s legal defense and her broader philosophical arguments, offering insight into the tensions between dissent and patriotism, individual conscience and state power, and law and progress. The address is notable for its rhetorical power, combining legal argument with historical allusion and personal conviction. It also documents the specific methods of the prosecution, including the reliance on patrolmen’s notes, the refusal to provide transcripts, and the shifting of the burden of proof to the defense. The work stands as a testament to Goldman’s commitment to her ideals, her refusal to be convicted on a “trumped-up charge” or “perjured testimony” merely for being an Anarchist, and her belief that the struggle for economic, political, and spiritual liberation must go on regardless of the verdict.
