Perilous Times won the 2004 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History, but I’m surprised it hasn’t gotten wider acclaim, much like A Bright Shining Lie, And the Band Played On, and Hitler’s Willing Executioners have. Of course, those works brought information to light that previously hadn’t been widely known. Perilous Times covers ground that has been tread before, but from much different directions.
Geoffrey Stone’s book is a detailed examination of the United States treatment of free speech during wartime
. I put that term in quotes because several of the eras discussed weren’t times of war, declared or otherwise. In the late 1790s, fear of an impending war with France swept the nation, and the Federalists in Congress and President John Adams enacted and enforced the Sedition Act of 1798 as well as several other laws designed to limit the liberty of residents of the United States. Following that, despite several intervening wars, the next period that that saw a significant attempt to restrict free speech was during the Civil War under Abraham Lincoln. Following those two periods, Stone also inspects our record during the first World War and the red scare
shortly thereafter, during World War II, during the Cold War
, and during the Vietnam War.
In each era, Stone offers a history of the conflict and the U.S. government’s response to dissent during the conflict, focusing on the expression of dissent through free speech in particular. Each section additionally includes Stone’s analysis of the response by three institutions that make up the federal government: the Congress, the executive branch, and the courts. For each, he examines the actions they took and the justifications for each and measures how well the reasoning holds up in hindsight. Far from being knee-jerk criticism of repression, Stone understand the tendency to clamp down on dissent during times of crisis and offers reasoned analysis giving much consideration to the understanding of the First Amendment at the time. In a couple of cases, Stone also examines the responses by state institutions, non-governmental bodies, and individuals.
Abraham Lincoln first rose to national prominence during the Mexican-American War as a result of his criticism of President James Polk’s handling of that war. Just a few years later Lincoln’s own election to the Presidency kicked off the war; Southern States would not accept a Republican as President. If ever there was a war where dissent and free speech could cause danger, it was the Civil War. Loyal subjects and rebels were mixed together, sometimes splitting families. On the other hand, the proximity of the belligerents made it much harder to suppress free speech. At a minimum, smuggling printed materials across the border and the lines was easy. Lincoln also did not want to risk losing more border states by clamping down hard.
However, his military wasn’t quite so deliberative. In the biggest free speech incident of the war, Congressman Clement Vanlandigham violated a anti-sedition order promulgated by the military commander in Ohio, Ambrose Burnside, without consulting Lincoln. Once done, Lincoln felt he had no choice but to uphold his military. Even though he would not have prosecuted the case, he wrote thoughtful epistles justifying the action in response to criticism from his opponents. Generally, he allowed criticism of his policies to appear unabated, and the opposition pilloried him.
One of the most surprising things to me, is that in each period Stone discusses with the exception of the Cold War, there was effective deliberation in government in the handling of free speech restrictions. By that, I mean that Congress and/or the President held back on some of the most extreme restrictions. The Sedition Act of 1798 had an explicit sunset provision. Lincoln only suspended habeas corpus in limited and narrow circumstances, Congress toned down President Wilson’s requests for nearly unlimited power to control dissent, and Roosevelt’s Attorneys General Murphy, Jackson, and Biddle were committed civil libertarians who held in check Roosevelt’s tyrant tendencies. Still, however effective these people were, they were not nearly effective enough and extreme abuses stifled opposition during each of these periods.
I have only one criticism of this book, which was extremely informative and thought-provoking in it’s entirety. And by thought provoking, I do not mean Stone confirms my civil libertarian tendencies. Quite the opposite in fact. After reading the book, I can understand the legal logic that justifies these restrictions, even if I completely disagree with the need to subdue dissent during wartime except in extremely narrow circumstances (e.g., revealing troop movements). My one criticism has to do with the formatting. Stone uses extensive footnotes and endnotes. I’m a habitual footnote reader, particularly when both endnotes and footnotes are used in the same work. If it appears in a footnote, it’s probably interesting to read. Most of the footnotes here were. But the asterisk marking most of them never stood out well enough for me to notice it. So I’d get to the bottom of the page with the footnote, and then need to rescan the page looking for the text to which the footnote related. Really really annoying.
Title: Perilous times: free speech in wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism
Author: Geoffrey R. Stone
Award: 2004 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Format: Paperback
Length: 558 p. (730 p. including notes and index)
Publication date: 2005
ISBN-10: 0-393-32745-0
Subject: Freedom of speech — United States — History
LC classification: JC591 .S76 2004
