Eugene Victor Debs was the greatest American socialist, a labor leader whose moral passion and oratorical gifts made him the beloved champion of working people. Five times the Socialist Party's presidential candidate, Debs won nearly a million votes in 1920—while imprisoned for opposing World War I.
Debs began as a railroad worker and union organizer. The Pullman Strike of 1894 and his subsequent imprisonment converted him to socialism. 'While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.'
Debs's socialism was distinctly American—democratic, moralistic, rooted in Christianity and the Declaration of Independence rather than Marxist theory. He opposed WWI as a capitalist war and was imprisoned under the Espionage Act. His 1920 campaign from prison cell #9653 remains American socialism's high-water mark. Debs died broken in health but unbroken in spirit, the conscience of the American left.