TL/DR: A timely and thought-provoking new book takes a look at American constitutional crises that have arisen from state constitutions almost from the beginning of our nation.

************

If you are a typical American it’s probably safe to say that you have at least a passing familiarity with the US Constitution. You surely know that our Constitution contains a Bill of Rights. You are likely aware that there are several Amendments to the Constitution, even if you’re not sure how many exactly, or how we as a nation go about amending our Constitution.

It’s also probably safe to say that you aren’t very familiar with the Constitution of the state in which you live. When was it adopted? How is it amended? What would it take to revise or replace it, if that’s even possible?

State constitutions, their importance and the history of violence and sedition that revolves around the creation, adoption, and amending of some of those constitutions is the heart of law professor Marcus Alexander Gadson’s new book Sedition.

Gadson examines six violent constitutional crises that have arisen around state constitutions. It seems that state constitutions have a longer and bloodier history than we might realize.

The long history goes back to the beginning of the Revolutionary War. Gadsen points out that during the American Revolution state constitutions were written first and helped to inform the later writing of the national constitution drafted by the Second Continental Congress in the late 1780s. The right of free expression and the separation of powers are just two concepts that started out in state constitutions.

While Gadson covers violent incidents before the Civil War, much of the bloodiest history of state constitutions occurred in the South during Reconstruction. Two of the six constitutional crises that Gadson dives into in this book were in South Carolina and North Carolina after the Civil War, as white supremacists fought to restore the social order that existed before the end of slavery.

The bloodiest events surround the constitution of North Carolina. Gadson takes us through many of the shocking events, including white-led race riots and cold-blooded murder that were so ably covered in the 2020 book Wilmington’s Lie, by Victor Bevine (which I reviewed here).

In his conclusion Gadson takes us through some of the ramifications of this bloody history that are still with us today. For one thing, the history of violence is part of the reason why state constitutions are more easily amended than the US Constitution, as a way to vent off the steam of public sentiment arising over time. The violent history has also left federal courts unwilling to intercede in gerrymandering, even as the US Constitution gives the federal government the duty to ensure that states have “a Republican Form of Government”. Finally, this history has also led to a relative lack of respect for state constitutions among us, the governed. Which explains why you probably know more about the US Constitution than you do about the constitution of your own state.

While you might think a book about state constitutions would be a dry affair, there is enough unknown history to learn (especially the cases from before the Civil War), and enough drama around the post-Civil War examples to keep you reading. I thought this was a great book.

It’s also a relatively short book (about 250 pages including index and notes) meaning the writing is concise and mostly easy to follow. (I will say that events were moved through so quickly in the story of Thomas Dorr in Rhode Island that I had a bit of trouble keeping all the names straight, but no such problems with the rest of the book.)


RATING: Four Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐

This book is exactly what you would expect it to be and for me that was great. If you are not a history enthusiast then it probably is not a good book to get you into the genre. I personally found it informative and interesting, a good reminder of what our little American experiment has been through. I enjoyed the fact that there was information that I had not ever heard of before and not just the same ol' repeated stories over and over.

Gadson's book is a great examination of what it means to go against one's country and the social order. Of course, people familiar with history will recognize some stories, like Bleeding Kansas and the events of Reconstruction in South Carolina. However, the book's strength lies in discussing what surely can be classified as more unknown history. The Buckshot War? The Brooks-Baxter War? I had never heard of these. They both were fascinating to read about, and maybe as our country continues to deal with polarization and division, they might continue to pop up. Gadson, though, does a great job of introducing readers to events in Arkansas and Pennsylvania, showing that these events that threaten to tear the country apart just don't happen within the capital beltway, or even the east coast.

It's worth considering: how do we remember these events, and what narratives do we, as Americans, spin to explain these stories? We see it with January 6 and Gadson makes it clear that similar events have taken place in all of these stories, too. His analysis of Bleeding Kansas and South Carolina, therefore, shouldn't be skipped. His presentation puts these events not just in the larger context of the other events in the book, but he helps readers understand that there is another layer to the story that is often missed. So many see both of those events as tied to the civil war, which would no be inaccurate. What this book does is make a convincing argument that there is something deeper going on: rival views, sometimes based on race, sometimes based on class, about the fundamental nature and identity of America and its make-up. It's clear that we have consistently argued about our fundamental identity, to the point of violence. In that respect, we should not have been terribly surprised at the developments of January 6, nor should we believe that it will never happen again.

When people feel threatened, especially at what I would call a civic level, this book shows that people are willing to do whatever they can to protect their way of life from changing. There is no extremism when the destruction of your way of life seems to be seeping into your community. While this argument may be unsettling, maybe we can think positively: knowing our instincts can help us combat them in the future.

Thank you, NYU Press, for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

I just finished Sedition: How America’s Constitutional Order Emerged from Violent Crisis, by Marcus Alexander Gadson.

This book will be published on May 13, 2025.

This book is about the writing of state constitutions and the battles that ensued from that. The book covered six incidents of rewriting state constitutions in the 19th century. There are stories of vote fraud, near violence, actual violence and plenty of white supremacy. There was plenty of good information in the book and stories that even big history buffs won’t already be familiar with.

I give this book an A.

Goodreads and NetGalley require grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, an A equates to 5 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

This review has been posted at NetGalley, Goodreads and Mr. Book’s Book Reviews

I finished reading this on December 27, 2024.