Japanese Internment
Summary: The President's executive order authorizing the Secretary of War and other designated military commanders to create internment camps was short, and extremely vague. However, its intentions and effects were not. As a result of the executive order and the following act of Congress giving the President the authority to enforce it, the Federal Government arrested and detained thousands of Japanese Americans with no reason other than the "general suspicion of espionage." The obviously racially-charged motion had little effect, and few "spies" were ever found among thousands of people whose lives were uprooted on no evidence other than their race.
(Alongside the Japanese Internment of WWII, the shameful treatment of native peoples in the 18th and 19th Century also takes its place as part of the accumulation of blemishes on American national history).
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