TY  - BOOK
AU  - Eldridge,Larry
TI  - A Distant Heritage: The Growth of Free Speech in Early America 
T2  - Critical America
SN  - 9780814721926
AV  - E448.R96 J36 2010eb
U1  - 966.62/02092 22
PY  - 2020///]
CY  - New York, NY : 
PB  - New York University Press, 
KW  - African American intellectuals
KW  - Biography
KW  - African Americans
KW  - Colonization
KW  - Liberia
KW  - History
KW  - 19th century
KW  - Sources
KW  - Pan-Africanism
KW  - HISTORY / General
KW  - bisacsh
KW  - A
KW  - Distant
KW  - Heritage
KW  - century
KW  - colonists
KW  - criticize
KW  - dramatic
KW  - during
KW  - expansion
KW  - experienced
KW  - freedom
KW  - government
KW  - occurred
KW  - officials
KW  - only
KW  - seventeenth
KW  - shows
KW  - their
KW  - this
KW  - when
N1  - Frontmatter --; Contents --; Charts --; Acknowledgments --; Abbreviations --; Introduction: Leaving the Shadow --; ONE. The Boundaries of Colonial Speech --; TWO. Seditious Speech Law --; THREE. The Nature of the Words --; FOUR. Between the Millstones --; FIVE. Sanctions in Decline --; SIX. A Growing Leniency --; SEVEN. Fruits of Circumstance --; Notes --; Bibliography --; Index; restricted access
N2  - Historians often rely on a handful of unusual cases to illustrate the absence of free speech in the colonies-such as that of Richard Barnes, who had his arms broken and a hole bored through his tongue for seditious words against the governor of Virginia. In this definitive and accessible work, Larry Eldridge convincingly debunks this view by revealing surprising evidence of free speech in early America.Using the court records of every American colony that existed before 1700 and an analysis of over 1,200 seditious speech cases sifted from those records, A Distant Heritage shows how colonists experienced a dramatic expansion during the seventeenth century of their freedom to criticize government and its officials. Exploring important changes in the roles of juries and appeals, the nature of prosecution and punishment, and the pattern of growing leniency, Eldridge also shows us why this expansion occurred when it did. He concludes that the ironic combination of tumult and destabilization on the one hand, and steady growth and development on the other, made colonists more willing to criticize authority openly and officials less able to prevent it. That, in turn, established a foundation for the more celebrated flowering of colonial dissent against English authority in the eighteenth century.Steeped in primary sources and richly narrated, this is an invaluable addition to the library of anyone interested in legal history, colonial America, or the birth of free speech in the United States
UR  - https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814722534.001.0001
UR  - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780814722534
UR  - https://www.degruyter.com/document/cover/isbn/9780814722534/original
ER  -