Biography
Dr. Walter A. Matthey, a Davenport, Iowa physician, helped arrange a July 25, 1917 meeting at which Daniel H. Wallace delivered an anti-war and anti-conscription speech. Matthey distributed pamphlets announcing the address, attended and applauded, and reportedly contributed 25 cents. An attorney-general clemency summary later described the case as no more than attending, listening, applauding statements whose exact nature was supposedly unknown, and contributing a quarter, but the Eighth Circuit cited more: he helped organize the meeting, handed out the pamphlets previewing the speech, and applauded, so that his participation was not merely accidental. Federal authorities convicted him in October 1918 of aiding and abetting an attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty and refusal of military duty. He received one year and one day in Leavenworth Penitentiary and a $1,000 fine. The Eighth Circuit affirmed the conviction on August 10, 1921, and the Supreme Court declined review in January 1922. His best reconstructed imprisonment dates are approximately April 3, 1921 to April 3, 1922 — the entry date is inferred from the sentence length and a federal report giving April 4, 1922 as the scheduled expiration of the term, and still requires confirmation from the Leavenworth admission register. A published chronology placing him at Leavenworth continuously from October 18, 1918 cannot be right for a sentence of a year and a day whose appeals ran into 1922. President Warren G. Harding formally pardoned him on or about April 6, 1922, without canceling the fine. One later secondary source gives his middle initial as C., but contemporary medical reporting and newspaper accounts use Walter A. Matthey.
