Free speech, "the people's darling privilege" struggles for freedom of expression in American history - Curtis, Michael Kent 1942- (Duke University Press, 2000)
Contents: 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