Sedition: How America’s Constitutional Order Emerged from Violent Crisis

Gadson (law, Campbell Univ.) explores histories of six U.S. state constitutions in six vignettes, divided into two sections. The first section contains three pre–Civil War examples: 1838’s Buckshot War in Pennsylvania, Dorr’s rebellion in 1841 Rhode Island, and the 1850s fight in Kansas between Free-Staters and proponents of slavery. Part Two covers incidents occurring after the Civil War: Arkansas’s Brooks-Baxter War in 1874, a South Carolina terrorist campaign during Reconstruction, and the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898 in North Carolina. The people and political climates of each example are well researched, creating compelling narratives that illustrate the pressure points within a state constitution, both then and now. Even readers who aren’t well versed in U.S. history will recognize how, as the definitions of liberty, equality, and “the people” change, the goals of the reigning political parties also change. The racism, classism, and violence that constituents faced in each of the six states profiled in this volume still exist today. Gadson urges readers to understand their respective state’s constitution and not to take the document’s existence and effectiveness for granted.