Free speech, "the people's darling privilege" : struggles for freedom of expression in American history
"Modern ideas about the protection of free speech in the United States did not originate in twentieth-century Supreme Court cases, as many have thought. Free Speech, "The People's Darling Privilege" refutes this misconception by examining popular struggles for free speech that stretch back through American history. Michael Kent Curtis focuses on struggles in which ordinary and extraordinary people, men and women, black and white, demanded and fought for freedom of speech during the period from 1791 - when the Bill of Rights and its First Amendment bound only the federal government to protect free expression - to 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment sought to extend this mandate to the states
History
x, 520 pages ; 25 cm
9780822325291, 0822325292
43641418
English and Colonial background
Debate over the Sedition Act of 1798
Sedition in the courts : enforcement and its aftermath
Sedition : reflections and transitions
Declaration, the Constitution, slavery, and abolition
Shall abolitionists be silenced?
Congress confronts the abolitionists : the Post Office and petitions
Demand for northern legal action against abolitionists
Legal theories of suppression and the defense of free speech
Elijah Lovejoy : mobs, free speech, and the privileges of American citizens
After Lovejoy : transformations
Free speech battle over Helper's impending crisis
Daniel Worth : the struggle for free speech in North Carolina on the eve of the Civil War
Struggle for free speech in the Civil War : Lincoln and Vallandigham
Free speech tradition confronts the war power
New birth of freedom? the Fourteenth Amendment and the First Amendment
Where are they now? a very quick review of suppression theories in the twentieth century