The Sedition Act Trials
Select Bibliography and Resources
Secondary sources
Austin, Aleine.
Matthew Lyon: “New Man” of the Democratic Revolution, 1749–1822
. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1981.
Brown, Richard D. “The Disenchantment of a Radical Whig: John Adams Reckons with Free Speech.” In
John Adams and the Founding of the Republic
. Edited by Richard Alan Ryerson, 171–85. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2001.
Casto, William R.
The Supreme Court in the Early Republic: The Chief Justiceships of John Jay and Oliver Ellsworth
. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995.
Durey, Michael.
“
With the Hammer of Truth”: James Thomas Callender and America’s Early National Heroes
. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1990.
Elkins, Stanley, and Eric McKitrick.
The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788–1800
. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Levy, Leonard W.
Emergence of a Free Press
. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Pasley, Jeffrey L.
The Tyranny of Printers: Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic
. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001.
Preyer, Kathryn.
“
United States v. Callender
: Judge and Jury in a Republican Society,” in
Origins of the Federal Judiciary: Essays on the Judiciary Act of 1789
. Edited by Maeva Marcus, 173–95. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Rosenberg, Norman L.
Protecting the Best Men: An Interpretive History of the Law of Libel
. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986.
Smith, James Morton.
Freedom’s Fetters: The Alien and Sedition Laws and American Civil Liberties
. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1956.
Court records
United States v. Matthew Lyon
, Case files, U.S. Circuit Court, District of Vermont, RG 21, National Archives and Records Administration – Northeast Region (Boston).
United States v. Thomas Coop
er, #21 April Session 1800, U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Pennsylvania, Record Group 21, National Archives and Records Administration, Mid Atlantic Region (Philadelphia).
Published primary sources
Cooper, Thomas.
An Account of the Trial of Thomas Cooper of Northumberland; on a Charge of Libel against the President of the United States
. Philadelphia: John Bioren, 1800.
Lyon, James. A
Republican Magazine; or, Repository of Political Truths
. Fairhaven, Vt.: 1798.
[Robertson, David, comp.].
Trial of James Thompson Callender, For Sedition On Tuesday, the third day of June, 1800, in the middle Circuit Court at Richmond, in the District of Virginia
. Richmond: 1804.
Wharton, Francis.
State trials of the United States during the administrations of Washington and Adams, with references, historical and professional, and preliminary notes on the politics of the times
. New York: B. Franklin, 1849.
Documentary History of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1789–1800
. vol. 3:
The Justices on Circuit, 1795–1800
. Ed. Maeva Marcus, et al. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990.