President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points During World War I

Fourteen Points was a name given to the proposals of President Woodrow Wilson designed to establish the basis for a just and lasting peace following the victory of the Allies in World War 1. The 14 proposals were contained in Wilson's address to a joint session of the US Congress on January 8, 1918. In summary, the 14 points were as follows :
1. abolition of secret diplomacy by open covenants
2. freedom of the seas in peace and war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or part by international action for enforcement of international covenants;
3. removal of international trade barriers wherever possible and establishment of an equality of trade conditions among the nations consenting to the peace
4. reduction of armaments consistent
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Italian immigrants who had arrived in the US in 1908, were charged by the state with the murders of a paymaster and a guard and the theft of more than $15,000 from a shoe factory in south Braintree, Massachusetts, on April 15, 1920. The execution of Sacco, a shoe worker, and Vanzetti, a fish peddler, in 1927 caused a world-wide protest. The trial took place in Dedham between May 31 and July 14, 1921. The state's case was based primarily upon two facts: Sacco possessed a pistol of the type used in the murders. and the accused when arrested were at a garage attempting to claim an automobile that had been seen in connection with the South Braintree crimes. What many regarded as inadequate evidence played a large part in the trial. Also, there was contradictory testimony from witnesses. The judge, Webster Thayer, and the jurors were accused of bias. When the jury returned a verdict of guilty, an outcry arose from socialists, radicals, and many prominent intellectuals throughout the world, who claimed that the two men had been condemned because they were guilty of being immigrants and outspoken anarchists. During the next six years, motions to submit new evidence and appeals for a new trial were frequently made and denied. In 1925, Celestine Madeiros, a man condemned to death for another murder, confessed to having been a member of the gang that committed the South Braintree crimes. In April 1927, however, the death of sentence was pronounced to Sacco and Vanzettia. Appeals to the governor of Massachusetts, Alvan Tufts Fuller, induced him to appoint a committee composed of the president of Harvard University, Abbott Lowell, the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Samuel Wesley Stratton, and a former judge, Robert Grant, to investigate the trial and its aftermath. On August 3, the governor announced that, in accordance