The Free Press Crisis of 1800

The Free Press Crisis of 1800
Title The Free Press Crisis of 1800 PDF eBook
Author Peter Charles Hoffer
Publisher University Press of Kansas
Pages 168
Release 2011-02-22
Genre Law
ISBN 0700617655

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The far-reaching Sedition Act of 1798 was introduced by Federalists to suppress Republican support of French revolutionaries and imposed fines and imprisonment "if any person shall write, print, utter or publish . . . scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States." Such a broadly and loosely defined offense challenged the freedom of the American press and gave the government the power to drag offending newspaper editors into court. The trial of Thomas Cooper in particular became an important showcase for debating the dangers and limits of the new law, one with great implications for both the new republic and federal constitutional law. Cooper's trial has now been rescued from long neglect and illuminated by Peter Charles Hoffer, one our nation's preeminent legal historians. While most modern students of the Sedition Act regard it as an extreme measure motivated by partisan malice, Hoffer offers a much more nuanced view that weighs all the arguments and fairly considers the position of each side in historical and legal context. Hoffer sets the stage by revisiting both the much better known 1735 trial of Peter Zenger and the subsequent fashioning of the First Amendment during the first meeting of the U.S. Congress.. He then describes the rise of political factions in the early republic, congressional debate over the Sedition Act, and Thomas Jefferson's and James Madison's Kentucky and Virginia Resolves. After a close reading of Cooper's allegedly seditious writings, Hoffer brings the trial record to life, capturing prosecution and defense strategies, including Cooper's attempt to subpoena President Adams and Federalist trial judge Samuel Chase's management of the prosecution from the bench. Long after the Federalists had departed the scene, echoes of the free-press crisis continued to roil American politics-reappearing in the debates over antislavery petitions, the suppression of dissent during the Civil War and two world wars, and most recently in the trials of suspected terrorists. Hoffer's book is an authoritative review of this landmark case and a vital touchstone for anyone concerned about the role of government and the place of dissent in times of national emergency.

The Free and Open Press

The Free and Open Press
Title The Free and Open Press PDF eBook
Author Robert W. T. Martin
Publisher NYU Press
Pages 372
Release 2001-08-01
Genre Law
ISBN 0814764193

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The current, heated debates over hate speech and pornography were preceded by the equally contentious debates over the "free and open press" in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Thus far little scholarly attention has been focused on the development of the concept of political press freedom even though it is a form of civil liberty that was pioneered in the United States. But the establishment of press liberty had implications that reached far beyond mere free speech. In this groundbreaking work, Robert Martin demonstrates that the history of the "free and open press" is in many ways the story of the emergence and first real expansions of the early American public sphere and civil society itself. Through a careful analysis of early libel law, the state and federal constitutions, and the Sedition Act crisis Martin shows how the development of constitutionalism and civil liberties were bound up in the discussion of the "free and open press." Finally, this book is a study of early American political thought and democratic theory, as seen through the revealing window provided by press liberty discourse. It speaks to broad audiences concerned with the public square, the history of the book, free press history, contemporary free expression controversies, legal history, and conceptual history.

Jefferson's Second Revolution

Jefferson's Second Revolution
Title Jefferson's Second Revolution PDF eBook
Author Susan Dunn
Publisher HMH
Pages 385
Release 2004-09-09
Genre History
ISBN 0547345755

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An “excellent” history of the tumultuous early years of American government, and a constitutional crisis sparked by the Electoral College (Booklist). In the election of 1800, Federalist incumbent John Adams, and the elitism he represented, faced Republican Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson defeated Adams but, through a quirk in Electoral College balloting, tied with his own running mate, Aaron Burr. A constitutional crisis ensued. Congress was supposed to resolve the tie, but would the Federalists hand over power peacefully to their political enemies, to Jefferson and his Republicans? For weeks on end, nothing was certain. The Federalists delayed and plotted, while Republicans threatened to take up arms. In a way no previous historian has done, Susan Dunn illuminates this watershed moment in American history. She captures its great drama, gives us fresh, finely drawn portraits of the founding fathers, and brilliantly parses the enduring significance of the crisis. The year 1800 marked the end of Federalist elitism, pointed the way to peaceful power shifts, cleared a place for states’ rights in the political landscape—and set the stage for the Civil War. “Dunn, a scholar of eighteenth-century American history, has provided a valuable reminder of an election in which the stakes were truly enormous and the political vituperation was far more poisonous than the relatively moderate attacks heard today. . . . An excellent work that effectively explains this critical contest that shaped the history of the new republic.” —Booklist “Dunn does a superb job of recounting the campaign, its cast of characters, and the election’s bizarre conclusion in Congress. That tense standoff could have plunged the country into a disastrous armed conflict, Dunn explains, but instead cemented the legitimacy of peaceful, if not smooth, transfers of power.” —Publishers Weekly “Dunn simultaneously teaches and enthralls with her eloquent, five-sensed descriptions of the people and places that shaped our democracy.” —Entertainment Weekly

The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication

The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication
Title The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication PDF eBook
Author Kate Kenski
Publisher Oxford University Press
Pages 977
Release 2017-06-23
Genre Political Science
ISBN 0199793484

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Since its development shaped by the turmoil of the World Wars and suspicion of new technologies such as film and radio, political communication has become a hybrid field largely devoted to connecting the dots among political rhetoric, politicians and leaders, voters' opinions, and media exposure to better understand how any one aspect can affect the others. In The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication Kate Kenski and Kathleen Hall Jamieson bring together leading scholars, including founders of the field of political communication Elihu Katz, Jay Blumler, Doris Graber, Max McCombs, and Thomas Paterson,to review the major findings about subjects ranging from the effects of political advertising and debates and understandings and misunderstandings of agenda setting, framing, and cultivation to the changing contours of social media use in politics and the functions of the press in a democratic system. The essays in this volume reveal that political communication is a hybrid field with complex ancestry, permeable boundaries, and interests that overlap with those of related fields such as political sociology, public opinion, rhetoric, neuroscience, and the new hybrid on the quad, media psychology. This comprehensive review of the political communication literature is an indispensible reference for scholars and students interested in the study of how, why, when, and with what effect humans make sense of symbolic exchanges about sharing and shared power. The sixty-two chapters in The Oxford Handbook of Political Communication contain an overview of past scholarship while providing critical reflection of its relevance in a changing media landscape and offering agendas for future research and innovation.

A Magnificent Catastrophe

A Magnificent Catastrophe
Title A Magnificent Catastrophe PDF eBook
Author Edward J. Larson
Publisher Simon and Schuster
Pages 355
Release 2007-09-18
Genre History
ISBN 1416568409

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CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title "They could write like angels and scheme like demons." So begins Pulitzer Prize-winner Edward Larson's masterful account of the wild ride that was the 1800 presidential election—an election so convulsive and so momentous to the future of American democracy that Thomas Jefferson would later dub it "America's second revolution." This was America's first true presidential campaign, giving birth to our two-party system and indelibly etching the lines of partisanship that have so profoundly shaped American politics ever since. The contest featured two of our most beloved Founding Fathers, once warm friends, facing off as the heads of their two still-forming parties—the hot-tempered but sharp-minded John Adams, and the eloquent yet enigmatic Thomas Jefferson—flanked by the brilliant tacticians Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, who later settled their own differences in a duel. The country was descending into turmoil, reeling from the terrors of the French Revolution, and on the brink of war with France. Blistering accusations flew as our young nation was torn apart along party lines: Adams and his elitist Federalists would squelch liberty and impose a British-style monarchy; Jefferson and his radically democratizing Republicans would throw the country into chaos and debase the role of religion in American life. The stakes could not have been higher. As the competition heated up, other founders joined the fray—James Madison, John Jay, James Monroe, Gouverneur Morris, George Clinton, John Marshall, Horatio Gates, and even George Washington—some of them emerging from retirement to respond to the political crisis gripping the nation and threatening its future. Drawing on unprecedented, meticulous research of the day-to-day unfolding drama, from diaries and letters of the principal players as well as accounts in the fast-evolving partisan press, Larson vividly re-creates the mounting tension as one state after another voted and the press had the lead passing back and forth. The outcome remained shrouded in doubt long after the voting ended, and as Inauguration Day approached, Congress met in closed session to resolve the crisis. In its first great electoral challenge, our fragile experiment in constitutional democracy hung in the balance. A Magnificent Catastrophe is history writing at its evocative best: the riveting story of the last great contest of the founding period.

Losing the News

Losing the News
Title Losing the News PDF eBook
Author Alex Jones
Publisher Oxford University Press
Pages 257
Release 2009-09-02
Genre Law
ISBN 0199720568

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In Losing the News, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Alex S. Jones offers a probing look at the epochal changes sweeping the media, changes which are eroding the core news that has been the essential food supply of our democracy. At a time of dazzling technological innovation, Jones says that what stands to be lost is the fact-based reporting that serves as a watchdog over government, holds the powerful accountable, and gives citizens what they need. In a tumultuous new media era, with cutthroat competition and panic over profits, the commitment of the traditional news media to serious news is fading. Indeed, as digital technology shatters the old economic model, the news media is making a painful passage that is taking a toll on journalistic values and standards. Journalistic objectivity and ethics are under assault, as is the bastion of the First Amendment. Jones characterizes himself not as a pessimist about news, but a realist. The breathtaking possibilities that the web offers are undeniable, but at what cost? Pundits and talk show hosts have persuaded Americans that the crisis in news is bias and partisanship. Not so, says Jones. The real crisis is the erosion of the iron core of news, something that hurts Republicans and Democrats alike. Losing the News depicts an unsettling situation in which the American birthright of fact-based, reported news is in danger. But it is also a call to arms to fight to keep the core of news intact. Praise for the hardcover: "Thoughtful." --New York Times Book Review "An impassioned call to action to preserve the best of traditional newspaper journalism." --The San Francisco Chronicle "Must reading for all Americans who care about our country's present and future. Analysis, commentary, scholarship and excellent writing, with a strong, easy-to-follow narrative about why you should care, makes this a candidate for one of the best books of the year." --Dan Rather

The Long Affair

The Long Affair
Title The Long Affair PDF eBook
Author Conor Cruise O'Brien
Publisher University of Chicago Press
Pages 390
Release 1996
Genre Biography & Autobiography
ISBN 9780226616568

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As controversial and explosive as it is elegant and learned, this examination of Thomas Jefferson, as man and icon, through the critical lens of the French Revolution, offers a provocative analysis of the supreme symbol of American history and political culture and challenges the traditional perceptions of both Jeffersonian history and the Jeffersonian legacy. 15 illustrations.