Free speech, "the people's darling privilege"

"Modern ideas about the protection of free speech in the United States did not originate in twentieth-century Supreme Court cases, as many have thought. Free Speech, "The People's Darling Privilege" refutes this misconception by examining popular struggles for free speech that stretch back through American history. Michael Kent Curtis focuses on struggles in which ordinary and extraordinary people, men and women, black and white, demanded and fought for freedom of speech during the period from 1791 - when the Bill of Rights and its First Amendment bound only the federal government to protect free expression - to 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment sought to extend this mandate to the states. A review chapter is also included to bring the story up-to-date."--BOOK JACKET.