Seditious speech

“ In this respect the citizens of both sections are amply protected.
Mr. STEPHENS:—I earnestly hope this amendment may be rejected. We have come here to arrange old difficulties, not to make new ones. Adopt this, and you lay the foundation stone of disunion. It is an encouragement to seditious speeches and purposes. The clause is well enough as it is. We do not wish to encourage men to come among us and excite discontent among our slaves. We will not permit them to do it. Our safety requires that we should not. Our own citizens do not connive at the escape of slaves. ”

“ They are not content with plotting sedition in secret places, but they go up and down the public streets uttering treason, vainly seeking to provoke arrest in order that they may complain of a denial of the liberty of speech. ”

“ But this would be impracticable by any created being, if there could be no legal restraint of those scandalous misrepresentations of his measures and motives which directly tend to rob him of the public confidence; and equally impotent would be every other public officer, if thus left to the mercy of the seditious. ”

“ This Nation has never suffered from an enforced conformity of expression or a limitation of criticism. But neither are we compelled to endure espionage and sedition. Wide as are the freedoms of the First Amendment, this Court has never hesitated to deny the individual's right to use the privileges for the overturn of law and order. Reasonable restraints for the fair protection of the Government against incitement to sedition cannot properly be said to be 'undemocratic' or contrary to the guarantees of free speech. ”

“ To me, they have ever seemed more prone to vent their seditious discontent. But 'tis the nature of man to be niggardly of praise and lavish of censure. This decree of the tribunal must not be suffered to die, with the mere justice of the case. Our friends should dwell on it, openly, in the cafés, and at the Lido. They will have no cause to fear, should they give their tongues a little latitude. A just government hath no jealousy of comment."
"True, Signore." ”

“ It accordingly proscribed sedition against all government in the nation-national, state and local. Congress declared that these steps were taken 'to provide for the common defense, to preserve the sovereignty of the United States as an independent nation, and to guarantee to each State a republican form of government * * *.' [22] Congress having thus treated seditious conduct as a matter of vital national concern, it is in no sense a local enforcement problem. As was said in the court below:
'Sedition against the United States is not a local offense. It is a crime against the Nation. ”

“ If this were a case where those who claimed protection under the First Amendment were teaching the techniques of sabotage, the assassination of the President, the filching of documents from public files, the planting of bombs, the art of street warfare, and the like, I would have no doubts. The freedom to speak is not absolute; the teaching of methods of terror and other seditious conduct should be beyond the pale along with obscenity and immorality. ”

“ Legal truth, by the sedition law policy, is moral falsehood; the alternative lies between betraying the principles of a good government, or submitting to be considered as libellous, seditious and traitorous. It proposes to us to wound our consciences, by becoming traitors to our constitutions ”

“ Gentlemen, sir, have been charged with giving birth to sedition in America. They have spoken their sentiments with freedom against this unhappy act, and that freedom has become their crime. Sorry I am to hear the liberty of speech in this House imputed as a crime. But the imputation shall not discourage me. It is a liberty I mean to exercise. ”

“ If the characters of private men are insulted, or injured, a double remedy is open to them, by action and by indictment."—"With regard to strictures upon the characters of men in office, and the measures of government, the case is a little different. A considerable latitude must be allowed in the discussion of public affairs, or the liberty of the press will be of no benefit to society." But he no where contends for the right to publish seditious libels; and, on the contrary, through his whole reasoning he admits the duty to punish those, which are really so. ”

“ Now, sir, if I have correctly stated the principle which runs through all the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, I would ask whether the bill now before the Senate is not a more palpable violation of this principle than the sedition law. I shall now proceed to establish this position.
In the first place, then, the sedition law did not interfere with the freedom of speech. The citizen might speak what he thought and say what he pleased without subjecting himself to its penalties. Under the despotisms of Europe there is a strict censorship over the press. ”

“ We are paying dearly to-day for our zeal and enthusiasm for the American war. The voice of honest men is stifled by members and cabals. Men disregard principles to bind themselves to words, and to multiply attacks on individuals. The seditious will drag the State to its ruin rather than renounce their intrigues."
And in her second letter she specifies some of the Opposition by name ”

“ The Government of this country, and those States which are parties concerned, cannot be too much alive to this fact. The public generally ought to understand it; and if the knowledge and conviction should generally obtain, that this Society is a seditious organization, and engaged in a work of sedition, which, by continuance, may grow into treason, it is believed, that no more acquisitions to its numbers and power could be made, and that it would gradually die away, and cease to agitate the public mind, without the intervention of the public authorities. ”

“ The case, then, gentlemen, is shortly and simply this: A man of the first family and fortune and character and property among you reads a proclamation stating the country to be in danger from abroad and at home, and thus alarmed—thus upon authority of the prosecutor alarmed—applies to that august body before whose awful presence sedition must vanish and insurrection disappear.
You must surrender, I hesitate not to say it, your oaths to unfounded assertion, if you can submit to say that such an act of such a man, so warranted, is a wicked and seditious libel. ”

“ I believe that the Court is mistaken if it thinks that requiring proof that statements were 'malicious' or 'defamatory' will really create any substantial hurdle to block public officials from punishing those who criticize the way they conduct their office. Indeed, 'malicious,' 'seditious,' and other such evil-sounding words often have been invoked to punish people for expressing their views on public affairs. Fining men or sending them to jail for criticizing public officials not only jeopardizes the free, open public discussion which our Constitution guarantees, but can wholly stifle it. ”

“ It is perfectly true that some words which have been uttered here and in other places, and which, when taken together with the context and candidly construed, will appear to mean nothing but what was reasonable and constitutional and moderate, have been distorted and mutilated into something that has a seditious aspect. ”

“ Professor Schofield is of the opinion (Freedom of the Press in the United States, p. 87) that “Liberty of the Press as declared in the First Amendment and the English common-law crime of sedition cannot co-exist”; but certain it is, that without impairing the freedom of the press, Congress may punish seditious utterances counseling the use of force or unlawful means, and falsely defaming public officials. ”

“ If opposition to the National Government should arise from the disorderly conduct of refractory or seditious individuals, it could be overcome by the same means which are daily employed against the same evil, under the State Governments. ”

“ We never desire to alter the practice in cases of high treason. The learned gentleman, he supposed, would allow that there might be seditious libels without treason in them. It was shallow, the artifice of attempting to draw in gentlemen to condemn seditious warrants by coupling the word treasonable to them, which aggravates the offence; but by not daring to let the question stand simply on its own merits, on the case of a general warrant issued against a seditious libel, not a treasonable one, they tacitly avowed that the libel not being treasonable, their own conduct had been illegal. ”

“ The state court further gave its interpretation of the third clause of the statute, that is, in relation to the display of a flag or banner 'as an aid to propaganda that is of a seditious character.' Both opinions dealt with the meaning of this clause. Thus in one opinion it is said: 'Appellants' counsel concedes that sedition laws which 'interdict against the use of force or violence' are consistently upheld by the courts, and all of the authorities cited by him support that proposition. ”

“ If such a question as I asked of the Speaker is a direct invitation of the slaves to insurrection, forfeiting all my rights as representative of the people, subjecting me to indictment by a grand jury, conviction by a petit jury, and to an infamous penitentiary cell, I ask you, not what freedom of speech is left to your representative in Congress, but what freedom of speech, of the press, and of thought, is left to yourselves. ”

“ The suggestion on which the authority over the press is founded, is, that seditious writings have a tendency to produce opposition to Government. What has a greater tendency to fit men for insurrection and resistance to Government, than dissolute, immoral habits, at once destroying love of order, and dissipating the fortune which gives an interest in society? ”

“ If 'reckless disregard of the truth' is the basis of seditious libel, that nebulous standard could be easily met. The presence of 'actual malice' is made critical in seditious libel, as well as in civil actions involving charges against public officials, when in truth there is nothing in the Constitution about it, any more than there is about 'clear and present danger.'
While the First Amendment remains the same, the gloss which the Court has written on it in this field of the discussion of public issues robs it of much vitality. ”

“ And not a few of them are, perhaps, secretly glad that the prohibition of seditious speaking and writing, of political meetings, and of the free movement of political firebrands through the country, enables them to keep quiet, without actually themselves taking a strong line against the propaganda, and, to do them justice, they behave reasonably well under the pass and other regulations necessary for that purpose, as long as care is taken not to make these regulations too irksome to them in the conduct of their business, or in their daily lives. ”

“ It may be tolerated for an American by birth, to use on his own soil the freedom of speaking and writing which is guaranteed him, and abuse our Constitution, our Union, and our people. But that a foreigner should use such seditious language, in a circular letter addressed to a portion of the American people, is a presumption well calculated to excite the indignation of all. [684] The party known in this country as the abolition party has long since avowed the sentiments you express, and adopted the policy you enjoin. ”

“ Ours is a Government of forbearance, because it is the Government of the people. As we have reason to suppose, that the public generally have not even yet discovered the true position of the Anti-slavery Society, in relation to the Constitution, much less can we presume to say, that the members of that Society, as a body, have ever imagined, that they were involved in the responsibility of seditious action against the Government of their country. ”

“ The mob, who at the same time appeared ready enough to murder some of the magistrates in the streets, had nothing in their mouths but the names and services of the Princes, who next day disowned their humble servants in the assemblies of the several courts. Though this conduct gave occasion to severe decrees, which the Parliament issued at every turn against the seditious, it did not hinder the same Parliament from believing that those who disowned the sedition were the authors of it, and consequently did not lessen the hatred which many private men conceived against them. ”

“ The Constitution does not tolerate actions for libel on government. State defamation laws, therefore, whether civil or criminal, cannot constitutionally be converted into laws against seditious libel. ”

“ I've even stood for your ridiculing our Watch Gopher Prairie Grow campaign. But one thing I'm not going to stand: I'm not going to stand my own wife being seditious. You can camouflage all you want to, but you know darn well that these radicals, as you call 'em, are opposed to the war, and let me tell you right here and now, and you and all these long-haired men and short-haired women can beef all you want to, but we're going to take these fellows, and if they ain't patriotic, we're going to make them be patriotic. ”

“ It is, it appears, impossible to prevent men, heated by party, and seeking only the gratification of their own passions, from trampling in the dust the charter which we have sworn to support; for though our constitution has said, in the broadest terms which our language knows, that the freedom of speech and of the press shall not be abridged, men have been found so lost to all sense of their country's good, as to pass the act, commonly called the sedition act, and to send out our judges to dispense, not law, but politics from the bench. ”