Mosvick on Free Speech for None: Mobs, Abolitionists, and Democrats and the Public Constitutional Fights over the First Amendment During the American Civil War @nmosvick

Nicholas Mosvick, National Review Institute, Buckley Legacy Project, is publishing Free Speech for All or None: Mobs, Abolitionists, and Democrats and the Public Constitutional Fights over the First Amendment During the American Civil War as a Liberty & Law Center Research Paper. Here is the abstract.

Legal historians and First Amendment scholars have long appreciated the unique constitutional challenges of wartime conditions, from the questions of prosecuting seditious conspiracy and speech to interference with the military draft to public figures and newspapers calling to the public to oppose and obstruct the war effort. Unlike the major wars of the 20th century from World War I to the Vietnam War, the American Civil War saw no free speeches before the Supreme Court during the war and therefore, the constitutional battles on major free speech questions generally took place outside courtrooms and in the area of public discourse. The most significant wartime free speech case resulted from the military arrest and trial of one of President Abraham Lincoln’s greatest domestic political opponents during the war, Democratic Congressman Clement Vallandigham of Ohio. That particular case, along with many other instances of riots, attacks on presses, arrests, and antiwar speeches, brought about a public constitutional debate in the partisan press in which both Democratic and Republican papers claimed fidelity to the founding principles of free speech and accused their opponents of rank hypocrisy. This debate shows how constitutional principles and idea suffused the public discourse of antebellum and Civil War America.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.