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The Free Press Crisis of 1800: Thomas Cooper’s Trial for Seditious Libel
Thomas Cooper and the Revolution of the free Press Crisis of 1800 discuss an influential Sedition Act of 1978 that was introduced in order to suppress Republican support of imposed fines, imprisonment as well as French revolutionaries. This paper thus puts in the picture the boundaries of American nationhood, both in the conventional international context and by exploring hierarchies and distinctions within republican society and political entity.
Discussion
Horn is of the opinion that, a more extensive line of attack into the revolution of 1800 enables people to provide a more complicated and distinct answer to the question of revolutionary credentials. To a great extent, The Free Press Crisis of 1800 depended on who you were and who or what you stood for. There was the bitterly contested presidential election of almost two hundred years in the midst of another hotly contested presidential election, the outcome of which was still in the balance, or, to be more precise, was still in the courts. Also, within this period, it was so unpopular that statutory restrictions on free writing and speaking were imposed again for more than one hundred years. Many newspapers made extremely violent attacks upon the government and the conduct of the war and a great political party raised an issue at a presidential election that the war was a failure. The same reaction in the time of the time of the French Revolution which was behind the Sedition Act led to contemporary prosecutions for sedition in England. Before the agitation for reform of Parliament and complaints as to abuses in public office led to a long series of prosecutions for Seditious libel which, as the case (32).
Cooper’s trial took place on April 19, and he served as his own counsel. Most of his efforts, like those of prosecuting attorney Rawle, focused on Cooper’s intent and the nature of his charges, as was appropriate in a trial for Seditious Libel. Surrounding these arguments, however, was the logic and language of honor (Horn 93). Cooper, for instance, appealed to the jury by touching on their natural concern for their character and reputation. Since Cooper owed their offices to President Adams, he ensured he defended himself to the latter. The judges and district attorney trying his case would doubtlessly be biased against him. However, members of the jury, had no ties to President Adams, and therefore would undoubtedly remain unbiased, for they had some characters to support and some to character to lose. They would therefore abide by their own sworn oaths of impartiality.
With regard to the case, the juxtaposition of democracy and race in his subtitle, Oliver Wendall Holmes, is not intended to discount, diminish, or deconstruct the former term by putting the latter in the foreground, but sets the tone with his careful study of the range of possible outcomes. Again, overstress upon this public interest has led to restrictions upon the individual interest in free association with others. It has often been felt that the state was endangered by the growth of powerful organizations had, which, therefore could overshadow or dominate the latter. They seem to inhere in repressive legislation which sees only the interest of the state as personifying politically organized society. In addition, there would have been no crisis if the presidency had not come to be so overwhelmingly important (Horn 67).
Work Cited
Horn, James. The Revolution of 1800: Democracy, Race, and the New Republic. Charlottesville [u.a.: Univ. of Virginia Press, 2002. Print.
