Fallacies and Free Speech: Selected Discourses in Early America 3030678768, 9783030678760

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Fallacies and Free Speech Selected Discourses in Early America

Juhani Rudanko

Fallacies and Free Speech

Juhani Rudanko

Fallacies and Free Speech Selected Discourses in Early America

Juhani Rudanko Department of English Tampere University TAMPERE, Finland

ISBN 978-3-030-67876-0    ISBN 978-3-030-67877-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67877-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the ­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and ­institutional affiliations. Cover pattern © Harvey Loake This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgments

It is my pleasure to thank Palgrave Macmillan for including the present volume in the Palgrave Pivot series. I also want to express my thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their statements on the pre-publication version of this book. Their comments led to improvements in the manuscript. Further, I want to thank Paul Rickman and Juha Rudanko for kindly reading through major segments of the book and providing me with helpful comments, which also led to improvements. It goes without saying that all remaining shortcomings are my responsibility.

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Contents

1 Introduction  1 2 Probing Deeper than the Surface of Discourse: Identifying Fallacies in a Political Debate in 1789 11 3 Political Rhetoric in Wartime: A Case Study from 1812 47 4 Attacks on the Madison Administration in the Federal Republican in Early 1813 83 5 James Madison, the Father of Freedom of Speech 99 6 Conclusion125 Index133

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

This book has the broad objective to explore the application of textual and contextual analysis, especially the theory of informal fallacies, to selected debates and writings in the early American Republic. The debates and writings have not been selected at random. Instead, they all bear on freedom of speech in significant ways and they also involve James Madison as a key figure in some way. It is further suggested in the individual chapters that textual and contextual analysis, especially fallacy theory, can shed fresh light on the nature of the debates and writings in question. The debates and writings were instrumental in creating a uniquely broad interpretation of the concept of freedom of speech in American political culture, and the chapters shed light on how this came about. It would be beyond the powers of the present author to attempt a full answer to this question, but it may be hoped that the issues investigated and the analyses proposed supply part of the answer. The purpose of this introductory chapter is first to offer some general comments on the concept of freedom of speech in early America and the state of American politics when the first Congress met in the spring of 1789, and then to introduce the reader to the themes of the individual chapters and the analytic methods used in them. No discussion of the evolution of the concept of freedom of expression in the United States is conceivable without some discussion of the Bill of Rights, with the First Amendment. The text of this amendment is as follows: © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Rudanko, Fallacies and Free Speech, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67877-7_1

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Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

There were three separate and mainly procedural debates, weeks apart from each other, in the House of Representatives in the summer of 1789 before the House decided to take up the subject of amendments to the Constitution for consideration. These took place on June 8, July 21, and August 13, 1789. It is fortunate from the point of view of the historical record that the House of Representatives had decided to allow the reporting of their proceedings. The records of the debates in the early years of the American Republic from 1789 to 1824 were published from 1834 to 1856 with the title The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States, 1789–1824, and, following Rutland (1983: 199, note 20), they are cited in this volume as the Annals of Congress. Each reference to the Annals of Congress is hereafter identified by the year and the relevant page number(s) relating to that year. The political divide in the first Congress was between Federalists and Antifederalists, with the Federalists having a large majority. With respect to amendments, Federalists tended to be doubtful about them, because many of them feared that amendments might have the effect of weakening the position and powers of the Federal government, which was being set up following the adoption of the new Constitution. To have any chance of success, any proposal for amendments had to come from a Federalist, given their lopsided majority in the House of Representatives. (On the Federalist majority, see Bowling 1990: 16–17.) On June 8, 1789 James Madison, who was a leading Federalist at the time, moved, after careful preparation, that the House of Representatives should consider amendments to the Constitution. However, Madison’s motion ran immediately into what looked like procedural opposition, especially from Madison’s fellow Federalists. One measure of the intensity of opposition in the debate of June 8, 1789, to considering amendments in a timely fashion is that Madison spoke five times, with the main opponents also speaking more than once. Chapter 2 offers a perspective for analyzing the nature of the objections to Madison’s motion. The long first debate of June 8, 1789 on the subject of amendments and on whether to consider them in a timely fashion has been investigated before (see, for instance, Labunski 2006: 192–207), but the information gained from earlier investigations is enriched here with the help of the analytic framework developed and applied in Chap. 2.

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The analytic framework applied in examining aspects of the debate of June 8, 1789 in Chap. 2 is largely that of fallacy theory and of informal fallacies. A textbook definition of an informal fallacy is given as a point of departure here: It is customary in the study of logic to reserve the term “fallacy” for arguments that are psychologically persuasive but logically incorrect; that do as a matter of fact persuade but, given certain argumentative standards, shouldn’t. We therefore define “fallacy” as a type of argument that seems to be correct but that proves, on examination, not to be so. (Copi and Burgess-Jackson 1996: 97: original emphasis)

The modal shouldn’t in the definition entails a normative notion of the concept of informal fallacy. Further comments on the notion of an informal fallacy are given in Chap. 2, where the particular approach to informal fallacies adopted here is delineated and defined, but the normative nature of the concept remains unaffected in the more precise formulation developed in the chapter. It should be stated even at this early point that the concept of fallacy adopted and developed in Chap. 2 diverges from some other current treatments in an important respect, but it is argued that the approach used is warranted, and even required, when close attention is paid to the data of the debate. Madison’s role in the enactment of the Bill of Rights has of course been investigated before, and investigators have paid tribute to the contribution that he made. After all, he is known as the Father of the Bill of Rights. However, the methodological perspective of informal fallacies is virtually unique, apart from earlier work by the present author (for instance, Rudanko 2012), in work dealing with Madison’s role. The particular framework applied here can be regarded as innovative, taking into account that the analyses in this book either develop earlier approaches further or concern fallacies not covered  in earlier work on early American history. Building on fallacy theory, Chap. 2 also offers comments on the analysis of deception and manipulative communication on the basis of the debate of June 8, 1789. In Chap. 3 and in Chap. 4 the focus shifts to selected events and discourses about them during the War of 1812. The events and discourses about them were selected because they bear on the notion of freedom of expression in early American history. The War of 1812 began when the United States Congress declared war against Great Britain on June 18,

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1812. At that time, the Republican party were in power, with James Madison as President and with the Federalist party in opposition. It is a matter of historical record that the War of 1812 was controversial: Republicans tended to support it whereas Federalists tended to oppose it, with opposition being especially strong in New England. Outside of New England there were also concentrations of Federalist opposition to the War of 1812. One of the most significant of these was spearheaded by the Federalist newspaper the Federal Republican, published in Baltimore up to June 20, 1812 and in Georgetown from July 27, 1812, onwards. Its editors were two diehard Federalists, Alexander Contee Hanson, and Jacob Wagner. The former was a member of a prominent family in Maryland and he was a Federalist candidate for Congress in 1812. For his part, Wagner had worked in the United States State Department during the tenure of the arch-federalist Timothy Pickering. The Federal Republican was vociferous in its opposition to the War of 1812, both before the war was declared and after the declaration of war, and one reason for selecting it for investigation is the sharply critical stance it took towards the Madison administration during the War of 1812, because a study of the newspaper can then be expected to shed light on the nature of Federalist opposition to the war. At the same time, the city of Baltimore was largely a Republican and pro-administration city, and there was considerable anti-British feeling in the city, especially among recent immigrants. When the Federal Republican attacked the declaration of war in its issue of June 20, 1812, a mob gathered and destroyed the building in Baltimore where the paper was printed. However, while the destruction of the building was outside of the law, the editors were not injured and the action was in a tradition of non-lethal mob action directed against property. Subsequently, the editors moved to Georgetown, but came back and rented a house in Charles Street in Baltimore in late July 1812. Hanson and his Federalist friends then proceeded to distribute their newspaper in Baltimore on July 27, 1812. Thereupon two nights of violent confrontations followed, involving the loss of life and physical injuries on both sides. The violent confrontations in Baltimore at the end of July 1812 are real events in American history and they can be investigated from different points of view. The present investigation does not aim to address all possible research questions that the unrest gives rise to. For instance, it does not aim to shed light on the number of people injured nor on the nature of their injuries. However, it does seek to shed light on the construction,

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in language, of the violent events in question in the Federal Republican, the stridently Federalist newspaper, which can also be viewed as the main vehicle of Hanson’s campaign for Congress. Special attention is paid to the immediate aftermath of the unrest. In order to gain a perspective on the textual construction of the unrest, three perspectives or analytic concepts that have been used in discourse analysis are introduced and illustrated with material from the Federal Republican in Section 3.2.1. One of them is the concept of agency or agentivity, as it emerges, and can be substantiated, in the construction of a key incident during the unrest. The notions of a frame and of a narrative are also employed as analytic tools in the investigation of the articles in the Federal Republican, with the specific senses of the terms defined in the chapter. The notions have been used in the study of recent political discourses in the literature, but their use in the study of texts from the early American Republic is innovative, shedding light on what is said and on what is not said in the writings in question, and on the way events are constructed with linguistic choices. In order to deepen the analysis, the construction of the violent events in the Federal Republican is also compared with the construction of the same incidents in the National Intelligencer, which was a major Republican newspaper close to the Madison administration. Later themes prominent in the newspaper and in Hanson’s campaign are also analyzed in the chapter. The proper construction of the violent events of late July 1812 arose again in August 1812 as an issue when newspapers published letters from Hanson’s associates. The letters revealed information about the nature of Hanson’s preparations for the use of their house in Charles Street in Baltimore, and Hanson’s letter in reaction to the revelations was subsequently published in the Federal Republican. Hanson’s letter is examined in the chapter. Further, issues of freedom of speech were also increasingly prominent in the campaign, and a study of articles in the Federal Republican can be expected to shed light on the nature of argumentation used in support of a prominent Federalist candidate in 1812, who was adamant in his opposition to the war that the United States was engaged in at the time. The theory of informal fallacies is also again used as an analytic tool in the investigation of the rhetoric in favor of Alexander Hanson’s campaign for Congress. As far as the present author is aware, this perspective, similarly to the other analytic tools and concepts employed in the chapter, is quite new in the study of political rhetoric and newspaper language in the early American Republic.

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Alexander Hanson was duly elected to the House of Representatives in October 1812, and with that his campaign for Congress was over. However, the Federal Republican continued on its course as a stridently Federalist newspaper after Hanson’s election, and it continued to be highly critical of the Madison administration. Chapter 4 investigates editorials in the newspaper in the early months of 1813, in order to shed light on the nature of Federalist criticism of the administration at that time in the war. The chapter draws on concepts and analytic distinctions made in politeness theory when examining the editorials in the Federalist newspaper, and further use is also made of fallacy theory. These perspectives are innovative in studying attacks in the Federalist press on Madison and his administration. The Federal Republican continued to be among the most outspoken newspapers in its criticism of the Madison administration, and a study of this newspaper can be expected to provide information on the nature of the attacks that President Madison and his administration were subjected to during that period. Chapter 5 moves onto a bird’s eye view of James Madison’s contribution to the evolution of the American tradition of free speech. Above, it was noted that his contribution to the enactment of the Bill of Rights was essential, so essential that without him the project of amendments might well have died in the debate of June 8, 1789, and there might well never have been a Bill of Rights. However, while the First Amendment is crucial to the evolution of a broad conception of freedom of speech in the United States, no law by itself is necessarily sufficient to ensure a broad interpretation of the concept of free speech. After all, the experience of the enactment of the Sedition Act in 1798 showed clearly enough how a determined political party, the Federalists in this case, had been able to circumvent the provisions of the First Amendment and to use criminal prosecutions in an attempt to stifle and to suppress their political opponents. It may also be recalled that Federalists in 1800 and 1801 wanted to make the Sedition Act enacted by the Federalist Adams administration permanent, and if the Federalists had won the presidential and Congressional elections of 1800, this would no doubt have happened (cf. Rudanko 2012: 108–114). It was only the victory of the Republicans with their presidential candidate Thomas Jefferson that led to the expiry of the Sedition Act, enacted by the Federalist Adams administration. All these circumstances show that there are preconditions of different types for the survival of free speech. One is a law of the type of the First Amendment, but in addition there also needs to be an appropriate

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intellectual climate and a cultural tradition of free speech and of toleration of dissenting views. The chapter provides a perspective for appreciating James Madison’s role in bringing about such a tradition. The key feature of the American tradition of free speech has been succinctly pointed out by Stone (2004). He writes: For 120  years, from the expiration of the Sedition Act of 1798 until America’s entry into World War I, the United States had no federal legislation against seditious expression. (Stone 2004: 145)

The present author does not entirely agree with Stone (2004) regarding the origins of the tradition, and the differing interpretations are explicated in Chap. 5. However, the simple summary of the key feature of the American tradition of free speech in war time quoted above from Stone (2004) is entirely apposite. How that tradition came about is a theme in this book, with all chapters contributing information on the issue. In order to place Madison’s role and the intellectual position underlying it in a broader context, Chap. 5 begins with comments on the political philosophy of Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel, the German philosopher, who lived at approximately the same time as Madison and whose political philosophy, as expressed in his book the Philosophy of Right, has been influential in shaping—and constraining—views and practices of what may be uttered and published in many countries in Europe, especially on the continent of Europe. It is argued that Hegel and Madison may be seen as representing two different approaches to the concept of freedom of speech. The comparative point of view adopted in the chapter is new in the literature on the period, and it offers a new perspective on Madison’s achievement and its enduring significance. In Madison’s case, his role in the enactment of the Bill of Rights in the summer of 1789 was crucial, and he made it clear even in 1789 that he viewed the proposed Bill of Rights as protecting freedom of speech. At the same time, he did not offer comments on the precise meaning of the concept of freedom of speech in the Congressional debates on the Bill of Rights in 1789. Nor did other members of the House of Representatives raise or debate that basic question in these debates. However, in November 1794, only about five and a half years later, James Madison made a highly significant statement shedding light on his view of freedom of speech, stating concisely that “[o]pinions are not the objects of legislation” (Annals of Congress 1794: 934). A few years later he then fleshed out his

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view in great detail, when he authored his Report on the Virginia Resolutions.  As a consequence of the brilliance of his argumentation, “friends of free expression have found aid and comfort” (Ketcham 1990 [1971]: 403) in his words, and Chap. 5 presents some of the highlights of the Report. Further extracts are also given from the Federalist press, this time from New England, to illustrate further the sharp attacks on President Madison and his administration, even when the country was at war. In spite of the attacks and in spite of the advice of some of his closest advisors, President Madison never wavered from his broad view of freedom of speech, and he never proposed a sedition act. The chapter also raises the question, even if only somewhat speculatively, of whether Madison might have thought that freedom of speech was absolute. The outline of this book as given above calls for a comment on the orientation of the project from a disciplinary point of view. It is clear that this book crosses disciplinary boundaries and is therefore cross-­disciplinary. One way to characterize the different strands of this book is to view them as offering a contribution to diachronic discourse analysis and historical pragmatics. The study of historical discourses in the United States Congress, as in Chap. 2, or in the context of controversies of political history, as in Chaps. 3, 4, and 5, can be accommodated in those research traditions. The formulation and application of a number of informal fallacies is a central feature of several chapters of the book, which can also be accommodated under the label of discourse studies. The same goes for the concepts of framing, narrative, and agency, not to mention politeness theory. At the same time, this book also seeks to shed fresh light on some important events in the evolution of a specifically American conception of freedom of speech. This is for instance the case in Chap. 2, where speeches against the consideration of a Bill of Rights by two Federalist members of the House of Representatives are considered, whose tactics of opposition have been almost completely overlooked in the literature. The book thus also seeks to make a contribution to the study of the political history of the United States in its formative period. The format of this book does not make it possible to offer a comprehensive history of writings on free speech or a full survey of events in the history of free speech in American history. This book concentrates on early American history, but even with respect to that time period, the Congressional debates on the Sedition Act of the Adams administration are not covered, except in passing. They are covered in Rudanko (2012), which can be read as a companion volume of the

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present book. Neither does this book cover the debates in 1917 and 1918 on the Sedition Act of the Wilson administration, but they are again covered in Rudanko (2012), at least in part. However, each content chapter of the present book is designed to shed new light on speeches and texts that are important to understanding the evolution of the American tradition of free speech. The use of discourse analytic methods, including the application of fallacy theory, is an approach that is almost unprecedented in work on early American history, apart from the earlier publications of the present author. Historians are of course generally very aware of the need to view political speeches and writings in their historical contexts, but the close textual analysis of such writings and speeches, combined with a consideration of the motivations of speakers where possible, can enrich the understanding of historical events. The application of fallacy theory opens up new perspectives on studying the motivations and goals of politicians and of those commenting on them and their actions. The concepts of framing and of narratives can similarly enrich our knowledge of how the understanding of historical events and incidents is interpreted and constructed in language. The notion of agency, or agentivity, is only employed in Chap. 3, but the example presented there of its use offers another innovative methodological perspective for analyzing the language used in the construction of an historical incident. For its part, the method of comparing Hegel and Madison—their writings and acts bearing on freedom of expression—in Chap. 5 also offers a new perspective for understanding the nature of Madison’s contribution. To conclude this Introduction, it seems appropriate to include a concrete example of how a particular conception of freedom of speech can have serious practical consequences in real life and of why freedom of speech has continued to matter in recent times. The example concerns an incident in Nazi Germany, and it is taken from Zentner (1963: 487). On November 6, 1944, a German court sentenced a 49-year-old woman, Frau Ehrengard Frank-Schultz, to death because in a conversation with a Red Cross nurse she had expressed regret at the failure of the assassination attempt on Hitler on July 20, 1944, and stated that a few years under Anglo-Saxon rule would be better than the current regime based on violence (“die gegenwärtige Gewaltherrschaft”). The court took the view that the accused had made common cause with the “traitors” (“mit den Verrätern”) of July 20, and had lost her honor for ever. (The reference is to those Germans who had attempted a coup against Nazi rule on July 20,

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1944.) The example, and especially the death sentence, may be extreme, but it encapsulates the practical importance of the issue of freedom of speech. The present book is offered in part to honor the memory of Frau Frank-Schultz and others who have been punished for their dissident opinions by those controlling the coercive apparatus of state power.

References Annals of Congress = The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States: With an Appendix, Containing Important State Papers and Public Documents, and All the Laws of a Public Nature: With a Copious Index, 1789–1824. 1834–1856. Washington, DC: Gales and Seaton. Bowling, Kenneth. 1990. Politics in the First Congress, 1789–1791. New  York: Garland Publishing. Copi, Irving, and Keith Burgess-Jackson. 1996. Informal Logic. 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Ketcham, Ralph. 1990 [1971]. James Madison. A Biography. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. Labunski, Richard. 2006. James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rudanko, Juhani. 2012. Discourses of Freedom of Speech: From the Enactment of the Bill of Rights to the Sedition Act of 1918. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Rutland, Robert Allen. 1983. The Birth of the Bill of Rights 1776–1791. Boston: Northeastern University Press. Stone, Geoffrey R. 2004. Perilous Times. Free Speech in Wartime. New  York: W. W. Norton. Zentner, Kurt. 1963. Illustrierte Geschichte des Zweiten Weltkrieges. München: Südwest Verlag.

CHAPTER 2

Probing Deeper than the Surface of Discourse: Identifying Fallacies in a Political Debate in 1789

2.1   Introduction Political discourse may be studied from different points of view and with different methods of analysis, and the present study explores the application of one particular framework of analysis in an important debate in the United States Congress. There is no claim made that the framework is applicable to all political debates, but it is claimed that it is applicable to some aspects of the debate in question. The debate in question took place in the United States House of Representatives on June 8, 1789, and it turned out to be significant from the point of view of American political culture. Most people today would probably agree that the United States Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution, is a distinctive and essential part of American political culture. One reason is that it is a cornerstone of freedom of expression in the United States, and in the age of the internet, it also has an impact on freedom of expression in some other countries today. It was on June 8, 1789, that the first debate on the Bill of Rights took place in the United States House of Representatives. The Constitution of the United States was worked out at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, and it had been ratified by the requisite number of States by the end of the following year. In accordance with article 1, section 1, of the New Constitution, elections to the first House of Representatives took place in © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Rudanko, Fallacies and Free Speech, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67877-7_2

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early 1789. There is no doubt that the new Constitution strengthened the power of the Federal Government, compared to the Articles of Confederation, which the new Constitution replaced. Given this change in the governmental power structure, it is not surprising that the political divide in the United States in 1789 was between Federalists and Antifederalists. As is clear from these labels, Federalists were in favor of a Federal government with strong powers, whereas Antifederalists favored a less powerful Federal government, with a larger role for the individual States. With respect to amending the Constitution and adding a Bill of Rights to it, Antifederalists were generally in favor, but Federalists tended to be less ready to enact a Bill of Rights. After all, it might have weakened the newly established power of the Federal government. Here is how Kenneth Bowling has concisely described the attitudes of the two parties on the possible enactment of amendments and a Bill of Rights in early 1789: … while some Federalists, when pressed, said they supported amendments, the Antifederalists promised to fight for them and constantly brought them up as an issue they knew the Federalists wished to avoid. (Bowling 1990: 128)

The two blocks might be called parties in a broad sense, but they were fairly loose groupings in those early days. It is nevertheless possible to say that in the first elections of the House of Representatives the Federalists scored a decisive victory. There were only some 60 members in the first House and about four fifths of them were Federalists (see Bowling 1990: 16–17). If a proposal for a Bill of Rights was to have any chance of success, it needed to come from the Federalist side. James Madison turned out to be the individual to do it. As one of the authors of the Federalist papers, he was a leading Federalist at the time, and at the Constitutional Convention he had actually opposed the inclusion of a Bill of Rights in the new Constitution (Rutland 1987: 18). However, during the election campaign he modified his position, arguing that with the Constitution now ratified, the situation had changed, and that he now saw merit in a Bill of Rights, for the purpose, in part, of “providing additional guards in favour of liberty” (DenBoer et al. 1984: 330–331; Sheehan 2009: 108). In the elections for a seat in the House of Representatives he ran against his friend James Monroe in a district in Virginia where there was support for a Bill of Rights, and Madison pledged to work for it if elected (Ketcham 1990 [1971]: 276–277). He was duly elected, and in May he announced

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that he would introduce the subject of amendments soon, and on June 8, 1789 he did it. This chapter looks at the nature of the opposition in the debate of June 8, 1789 in the House of Representatives to considering amendments in a timely fashion. It also mentions some other considerations, sometimes neglected, that bear on James Madison’s role as the Father of the Bill of Rights.

2.2   James Jackson’s Fallacy in the Debate of June 8, 1789 This section considers an aspect of the debate of June 8, 1789 in the House of Representatives. To provide some context for assessing the debate and Madison’s status at the time, it is appropriate as a preliminary step to include an example of how central a role Madison played among Federalists when the first Congress met in the spring and summer of 1789. This has to do with the close and friendly relationship that he had with George Washington, the first president of the new Republic, elected unanimously in early 1789. President Washington gave his first inaugural address on April 30, 1789, and historians have noted that the speech had actually been drafted by James Madison (Ketcham 1990 [1971]: 284). In the present context, the key passage of the speech is the following: Besides the ordinary objects submitted to your care, it will remain with your judgment to decide how far an exercise of the occasional power delegated by the fifth article of the Constitution is rendered expedient at the present juncture by the nature of objections which have been urged against the system, or by the degree of inquietude which has given birth to them. Instead of undertaking particular recommendations on this subject, in which I could be guided by no lights derived from official opportunities, I shall again give way to my entire confidence in your discernment and pursuit of the public good; for I assure myself that whilst you carefully avoid any alteration which might endanger the benefits of an united and effective government, or which ought to await the future lessons of experience, a reverence for the characteristic rights of freemen and a regard for the public harmony will sufficiently influence your deliberations on the question how far the former can be impregnably fortified or the latter be safely and advantageously promoted. (Richardson 1897: 45)

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President Washington thus explicitly referred to the fifth article of the Constitution, which deals with amending the Constitution. It is also worth noting how skillfully, from the point of view of promoting amendments, President Washington presented the issue, with the speech having been drafted by Madison. On the one hand, he expressed his conviction that Congress will “carefully avoid any alteration which might endanger the benefits of an united and effective government, or which ought to await the future lessons of experience.” This part of his remarks must have been pleasing to Federalists in the audience. On the other hand, he went on to imply that there were amendments that would not set the benefits of an effective government at risk and which would not need to “await the future lessons of experience.” Further, he said that amendments of this type will fortify the “characteristic rights of freemen” and promote “public harmony.” The term “semantic prosody” may be invoked here. Louw and Milojkovic (2014) write: The semantic prosody of a word is an exploration of the typical shadings of meaning that the word possesses, as revealed by the most common collocations with which it is found. (Louw and Milojkovic 2014: 263; for earlier work on the concept, see also Louw 1993)

It is also possible to say that the term “semantic prosody” designates the property of a word or an expression in being associated with a certain coloring promoted by its habitual collocates. Fortifying the “characteristic rights of freemen” and promoting “public harmony” involve phrases whose associations can be assumed to be notably positive. It may then be suggested that in this way Madison, with his usual foresight and subtlety, was preparing the ground for the introduction of amendments. He may also already have been anticipating the likely objection from his fellow Federalists that virtually no experience had yet been gained of the operation of the new Constitution by implying that there were certain amendments that did not need to “await the future lessons of experience.” Turning to the debate of June 8, 1789, Madison began the debate by moving that the House of Representatives “now resolve itself into a Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union; by which an opportunity will be given, to bring forward some propositions, which I have strong hopes will meet with the unanimous approbation of this House.” However, the motion ran into immediate opposition. Mr. Smith had a procedural objection, preferring a select committee or having the

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propositions printed before they were discussed. After him James Jackson of Georgia made no secret of his opposition to Madison’s motion for an early consideration of amendments. Here is an extract, to give a flavor of his speech: Mr. Jackson.—I am of opinion we ought not to be in a hurry with respect to altering this Constitution. For my part, I have no idea of speculating in this serious manner on theory. If I agree to alterations in the mode of administering this Government, I shall like to stand on the sure ground of experience, and not be treading on air. What experience have we had of the good or bad qualities of this Constitution? Can any gentleman affirm to me one proposition that is a certain and absolute amendment? I deny that he can. (Annals of Congress 1789: 425)

The use of rhetorical questions can be an effective technique in a debate. As regards the first rhetorical question here, even a supporter of amendments would have been forced to agree that they had had no experience as yet of the new Constitution, since they were in the process of setting up the Federal Government. As for the second rhetorical question in the extract, it is not easy to formulate amendments to a Constitution, and it would have been hard for anyone to claim that some proposed amendment, in a particular formulation, is an “absolute” amendment. (On the implicatures of rhetorical questions, see de Saussure 2005: 127.) The expected answers to the rhetorical questions are obvious, but in the case of the second of them, Jackson supplies the expected answer. In the case of the second rhetorical question, he also makes the implicit (and questionable) assumption that only a proposition that is an “absolute amendment” would be worth considering as an amendment. Jackson concluded his speech as follows: Let the Constitution have a fair trial; let it be examined by experience, discover by that test what its errors are, and then talk of amending; but to attempt it now is doing it at a risk, which is certainly imprudent. I have the honor of coming from a State that ratified the Constitution by the unanimous vote of a numerous convention: the people of Georgia have manifested their attachment to it, by adopting a State Constitution framed upon the same plan as this. But although they are thus satisfied, I shall not be against such amendments as will gratify the inhabitants of other States, provided they are judged of by experience, and not merely on theory. For this

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reason, I wish the consideration of the subject postponed until the 1st of March, 1790. (Annals of Congress: 1789: 426)

Jackson thus observed that he was “not against such amendments as will gratify the inhabitants of other States,” but stressed that any amendments should be “judged by experience, and not merely on theory,” and he proposed that the subject be postponed by some nine months, till March 1, 1790. The claim is made here that Jackson’s motion for a postponement of any debate of amendments may be regarded as a fallacious argument, or as a fallacy. The notion of a fallacy is a central concept in informal logic, but not all scholars in informal logic would necessarily agree on what is meant by the term. The textbook definition quoted in Chap. 1 may serve as a point of departure for this study. That definition said in part that arguments are fallacious “that are psychologically persuasive but logically incorrect; that do as a matter of fact persuade but, given certain argumentative standards, shouldn’t” (Copi and Burgess-Jackson 1996: 97). Defined in this way, there is a normative aspect to a fallacy: an argument may be effective, but measured against certain standards, it should not be effective. This basic perspective is adopted here. Walton (2011) also provides comments that are helpful for present purposes: … a fallacy is an argument, a pattern of argumentation, or something that purports to be an argument, that falls short of some standard of correctness as used in a conversational context but that, for various reasons, has a semblance of correctness about it in context, and poses a serious obstacle to the realization of the goal of the dialog. A pattern of argumentation is an ordered sequence of moves by two parties in a dialog. This theory is inherently dialectical in that not only is the structure of the inference from the set of premises to the conclusion taken into account in evaluating argumentation in a particular case, but whether or not an argument is fallacious in that case also needs to depend on the context of how it was used in a sequence of moves in a dialog. (Walton 2011: 380)

Walton speaks of an “ordered sequence of moves by two parties in a dialog,” but a dialog can also be understood in a broader sense, and the concept of a fallacy can also be applied to an argument in a debate among a larger number of speakers, as in the present case. One important aspect of Walton’s view is the emphasis that he places on a fallacy posing a “serious obstacle to the realization of the goal of the

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dialog.” A Congressional debate can reasonably be assumed to have a goal or a purpose. In the present case, the members of the House of Representatives can be assumed to have been engaging in a constructive dialog to decide whether or not to consider amendments, with constructiveness including the idea that members should give their motives or reasons for the positions they took in the debate. The claim made here is that Jackson was not being constructive with his proposal for postponing discussion of amendments till the following March. The term “counter-­ constructive,” introduced into the discussion of fallacies for the first time in Rudanko (2005: 56), may be invoked here. It can be applied to an argument that runs “counter to the proper purpose or the proper purposes of a dialogue” (Rudanko 2005: 56). To explicate the claim that Jackson’s proposal to postpone the consideration of amendments by some nine months was a fallacious argument, it is helpful to use two distinctions relating to a speaker’s intention in saying something. One of them is between first-order and secondorder intentions. These are simple: a first-order intention is an intention about some state of affairs in the world, and a second-order intention is an intention about a first-order intention. This distinction is fairly uncontroversial in the literature and does not call for further comment. The second distinction is between overt versus covert intention: an overt intention is an intention that the speaker wants to make public, that is, wants his/her hearers to recognize, and a covert intention is an intention that the speaker wants to hide, that is, one that the speaker does not want his/her hearers to recognize. The idea of a covert intention and the suggestion that it should be allowed to play a significant role in the analysis of communication is controversial and it is worth quoting Gibbs (1999) to clarify the nature of the notion in question: People often have several intentions motivating their actions. In some instances, people wish to conceal their true intentions from others. For example, imagine that John and Mary are arguing on the edge of a cliff when John suddenly jumps off as if committing suicide. [Note omitted] When the frightened Mary leans over the edge and sees John standing on a small rock a few feet below, she realizes that John has deceived her. The intention that John ostensively displays with a deceitful purpose (i.e., the suicide) is called an overt intention, while the actual intention motivating his

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deceitful act (i.e., to momentarily deceive Mary) is called the covert intention. Of course, in the present example, John realizes that Mary will soon come to grasp both his overt and covert intentions. (Gibbs 1999: 34)

The scenario narrated by Gibbs is simple in that John does not seek to hide his covert intention for long. In political interaction, by contrast, speakers are often much less forthcoming, and may make strenuous efforts to keep their covert intentions covert at all costs. When those two theoretical distinctions are accepted, including the distinction between ostensible and actual intentions, Jackson’s motion for a postponement of debate on amendments may be represented, at one level, as follows: Jackson’s first-order intention (overt or ostensible) Jackson intended to secure a postponement of the consideration of amendments. Jackson’s second-order intention (overt or ostensible) Jackson intended the first-order intention to be recognized by his audience. Jackson’s motivation underlying the first-order intention Jackson believed that it was necessary to gain experience of the Constitution before considering and approving amendments to it. Tactic of argumentation Jackson proposed a postponement of the consideration of amendments till March 1, 1790.

In earlier work, including Rudanko (2012: Chapter 2), the present author used the verb want in stating first-order and second-order intentions. Thus the representation of Jackson’s ostensible first-order intention, for instance, was phrased as “Jackson wanted to secure a postponement of the consideration of amendments.” However, terminology deserves attention in a scholarly investigation, and the earlier usage can and should be improved upon. In particular, Gibbs (1999) makes an insightful distinction between desires and intentions that is highly germane to the representation of ostensible (and actual) intentions. He writes: Desires are psychological states that represent what someone wishes for or wants. Desires represent our feelings about possible goals or objectives and

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are influenced by factors internal to the individual. Intentions are psychological states that represent what someone actually plans to do. They are based on desires but take into consideration which desires actually can be achieved. As a general rule, desires are transformed into intentions before action is taken. (Gibbs 1999: 24)

The representation given of Jackson’s first-order and second-order ostensible intentions makes use of the distinction that Gibbs formulates between desires and intentions. The representation given also makes provision for describing Jackson’s motivation underlying the first-order intention. This is intended to convey the purposiveness of deliberate human actions, such as speaking in a Congressional debate. First-order intentions are not held randomly or haphazardly; instead, they grow out of inner convictions or goals. Further comments on the role of inner convictions are offered below. However, it is suggested here that there was a fallacy involved in Jackson’s motion, and that Jackson had a covert intention when he made it. Or, more precisely, the claim is that he had a covert first-order intention and a covert second-order intention concerning the covert first-order intention. Here is a representation of Jackson’s motion with his covert intentions spelled out. Jackson’s first-order intention (covert or actual) Jackson intended to thwart or prevent the consideration of amendments. Jackson’s second-order intention (covert or actual) Jackson did not intend for the first-order intention to be recognized by his audience. Jackson’s motivation underlying the first-order intention Jackson was opposed to amending the Constitution. Tactic of argumentation Jackson proposed a postponement of the consideration of amendments till March 1, 1790.

Again, the representation modifies earlier work (Rudanko 2012: Chapter 2) in using the verb “intend” in stating Jackson’s first-order and secondorder intentions. Comparing the representations of Jackson’s ostensible and covert intentions, they share one feature in that the tactic of argumentation is the

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same, but otherwise they share little else. A key difference in the representations of Jackson’s argument given above concerns his motivation for his argument: in one case it is only to gather experience of the new Constitution, and in the other case, it is, much more radically, to thwart the project of amendments. The claim that the second scheme, incorporating covert intentions, is applicable to Jackson’s motion for a postponement of debate is tantamount to the claim that he was engaging in a fallacy when he made his motion. The fallacy in question may be termed ad socordiam, often translated as “appeal to laziness,” because this label has been used in the literature for it. In particular, Jeremy Bentham, the famous nineteenth century British philosopher, made this highly pertinent comment: This is the sort of argument which we so often see employed by those who, being actually hostile to a measure, are afraid or ashamed of being seen to be so. They pretend, perhaps, to approve of the measure; they only differ as to the proper time to bring it forward. But only too often their real wish is to see it defeated forever. (Bentham 1962 [1824, 1952]: 129)

Bentham’s comment is insightful, but some further comments can be made on the fallacy of ad socordiam and on Jackson’s argument on June 8, 1789. Taking the notions of overt and covert intentions for granted, it is possible to make the claim that Jackson’s argument in his speech quoted above was not only counter-constructive but that it was also deceptive. To justify this claim, it can be pointed out that the consideration that Jackson gave for postponing any discussion of arguments—lack of experience of the new Constitution—can be regarded as the reason why he wanted to block Madison’s motion on June 8, 1789. This inference follows from Gricean principles of communicative interaction. His well-known Cooperative Principle runs as follows: Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged. (Grice 1975: 45)

Grice’s principle refers to a contribution to a conversation, but it can also be applied to a Congressional debate. Grice then distinguishes several maxims under the Cooperative Principle, including the maxim of Quantity. The first part of that maxim is: “Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange)” (Grice 1975: 45).

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The Cooperative Principle and the maxims can be used to generate (and to explicate) implicatures, and a speaker can for instance “flout” or “blatantly” fail to fulfil a maxim to generate an implicature (Grice 1975: 49). However, as Grice notes, a speaker may also “quietly and unostentatiously violate a maxim,” and in this case he or she may “be liable to mislead” (Grice 1975: 49). Grice’s remark on misleading a listener is further developed by McCornack (1992) in the context of what has been termed information manipulation theory: The production and presentation of messages that are deceptive can be considered a phenomenon in which speakers exploit the belief on the part of listeners that they (i.e., speakers) are adhering to the principles governing cooperative exchanges. Deceptive messages are “deceptive” in that, while they constitute deviations from the principles underlying conversational understanding, they remain covert deviations. [Note omitted] Listeners are misled by their belief that speakers are functioning in a cooperative fashion (i.e., actually adhering to the maxims). (McCornack 1992: 6; the emphasis in the original)

It bears repeating that a speaker can blatantly violate a maxim (Grice 1975: 49) (and thereby create an implicature), but it can be argued that by engaging in the fallacy of ad socordiam, Jackson was covertly violating the Cooperative Principle and a maxim, that of Quantity, part 1. In this way he may be claimed to have been both counter-constructive and deceptive. In addition, it can also be claimed that he was being manipulative. The concept of manipulation is complex, but in recent work the notion of a covert deviation from the Cooperative Principle continues to play an important role. Thus de Saussure (2005), while not referring to McCornack’s work, writes: Manipulative discourses exist not because of formal features; they are produced in order for the speaker to achieve specific goals. Although some formal features may be more present in manipulative discourses than in non-­ manipulative discourses, none are exclusive to manipulative discourses. The main criterion I will use is the one of intention on the part of the speaker, an intention which is not cooperative in the Gricean sense (in particular regarding the respect of the maxim of quality). (de Saussure 2005: 118; emphasis in the original)1

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In the extract de Saussure refers to the maxim of quality, which can be summed up as: “Try to make your contribution one that is true” (Grice 1975: 46). Covert violations of that maxim can of course be important in manipulative discourse, depending on the issue being debated. However, in the case of the fallacy of ad socordiam, it is not a question of the maxim of Quality as such: getting a postponement of a debate on a proposal may well be a subsidiary or initial goal (or subgoal) of a speaker when his or her real goal is to get the proposal defeated. (On the notion of multiple goals in discourse, see Tracy and Coupland 1990: 4.) A speaker may in fact view the subsidiary or initial goal of securing a postponement as the best means of achieving the real goal of defeating a proposal. In any event, in the case of ad socordiam the speaker fails to be “as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange),” to quote Grice 1975: 45) on the maxim of Quantity, part 1, and the speaker covertly violates that maxim. The analysis of ad socordiam presented here may thus extend an aspect of de Saussure’s approach, but the significant point is that in the analysis of manipulation he also places an emphasis on the role played by the “intention on the part of the speaker, an intention which is not cooperative in the Gricean sense.” Building further on Grice’s work, it is also possible to view deceptive communication as designed to operate “at the level of information processing, by constraining the addressee’s access to critical information” (Oswald et al. 2016: 522). Oswald et al. write: If deceptive communication can be construed as a phenomenon that operates constraints on the selection of information during the comprehension process, it can ipso facto be described as a twofold mechanism: on the one hand it tries to make sure that every information set that is mobilised in the process is compatible and coherent with the target deceptive utterance, while on the other it strives to keep critical information sets that would defeat the deceptive attempt concealed (i.e. so as to leave them unprocessed or to get the cognitive system of the addressee to dismiss them). (Oswald et al. 2016: 523)2

In the present case, if Jackson had revealed that he was making the motion to postpone any discussion of amendments by some nine months for the purpose of preventing the consideration of amendments altogether, that revelation would have rendered nugatory his motion for a postponement of debate and would have exposed him to unpopularity in the face of popular support for amendments, especially in the context of President Washington’s inaugural address.

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The role of the addressee in detecting a speaker’s manipulative intention is also emphasized by de Saussure (2005). He writes: … one of the core problems of manipulation in language resides in the identification by the hearer of the manipulative intention through formal and non-formal features; when this detection fails, manipulation is effective. (de Saussure 2005: 118)

The question of identification and detection has to do with admissible evidence, and the question is also acute for the analyst. This issue is explored in Sect. 2.3.

2.3   The Question of Evidence and the Status of ad socordiam The claim that Jackson might have been engaging in a fallacy on June 8, 1789, is naturally of interest from the point of view of American political history and of Jackson’s role in it, but the more significant methodological question concerns the nature of evidence: on what basis can one presume to make such a claim, especially after some 250 years? It turns out that in the present case there is some direct evidence for the claim that comes from the very same debate. For this evidence we only need to consider two speeches that followed Jackson’s first speech in the debate of June 8, 1789. The next speaker was Benjamin Goodhue. Here is the record of his speech: Mr. Goodhue.—I believe it would be perfectly right in the gentleman who spoke last, to move a postponement to the time he mentioned; because he is opposed to the consideration of amendments altogether. But I believe it will be proper to attend to the subject earlier; because it is the wish of many of our constituents, that something should be added to the Constitution, to secure in a stronger manner their liberties from the inroads of power. Yet I think the present time premature; inasmuch as we have other business before us, which is incomplete, but essential to the public interest. When that is finished, I shall concur in taking up the subject of amendments. (Annals of Congress 1789: 426)

For present purposes the key part of Goodhue’s speech is his statement that Jackson’s motion for a postponement was for him the right thing to do “because he is opposed to the consideration of amendments altogether.”

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Madison also spoke again soon after Goodhue’s speech, and in fact began his speech with a reference to Jackson: Mr. Madison.—The gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Jackson) is certainly right in his opposition to my motion for going into a Committee of the Whole, because he is unfriendly to the object I have in contemplation; but I cannot see that the gentlemen who wish for amendments to be proposed at the present session, stand on good ground when they object to the House going into committee on this business. (Annals of Congress 1789: 426–427)

Madison thus made the claim that Jackson was “unfriendly to the object that I have in contemplation.” Jackson spoke again in the later course of the debate, but he made no effort to deny the claim made about him by Goodhue and Madison that he was “opposed to the consideration of amendments altogether,” as Goodhue had put it a few moments earlier. Jackson has in fact been regarded as one of the strongest opponents of the project of a Bill of Rights by historians, including his biographer, who observes that James Jackson became the “chief opponent of the first efforts to amend the Constitution” (Foster 1960: 74). The statements made by Goodhue and Madison in response to Jackson’s speech give warrant to the view that Jackson was engaging in a fallacy when he proposed a postponement of any consideration of amendments to the following spring. The conclusion here is then that there is evidence for invoking the fallacy of ad socordiam to characterize Jackson’s argument on June 8, 1789. It was pointed out above that the fallacy in question was recognized by Jeremy Bentham as a fallacy in work on the language of politics in the early nineteenth century. However, it should also be observed that the fallacy of ad socordiam is conspicuously absent from many more recent discussions of informal fallacies. It is even missing from the one hundred bad arguments or fallacies presented and commented on in Arp et al. (2019). It is therefore appropriate to raise the methodological question of why the fallacy of ad socordiam is missing from so many current discussions of informal fallacies. The basic reason is that many scholars have recently taken a dim or dismissive view of referring to the inner convictions, motivations and purposes of speakers. Van Eemeren and Grootendorst have spelled out their position as follows: … it is not the internal reasoning processes and inner convictions of those involved in resolving a difference of opinion that are of primary importance to argumentation theory, but the positions these people express or project

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in their speech acts. Instead of concentrating on the psychological dispositions of the language users involved in the resolution process, we concentrate primarily on their commitments, as they are externalized in, or can be externalized from, the discourse or text. (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004: 54; the emphasis in the original)3

The position expressed in the quote from van Eemeren and Grootendorst (2004) is coherent. The key part of it is that what matters in argumentation theory are the positions that speakers “express or project in their speech acts.” In the case being analyzed here, Jackson had not expressed or projected the position or the standpoint in his speech that preceded Goodhue’s and Madison’s comments that he (Jackson) was “opposed to the consideration of amendments altogether,” to quote Goodhue’s words once more. In their approach van Eemeren and Grootendorst (2004) would presumably therefore not speak of an informal fallacy in this case. However, that approach, while coherent, seems too narrow for the purposes of fallacy theory, and especially so for analyzing political discourse, because it would prevent the analyst from employing a concept such as covert intention and from examining deceptive fallacies. Bentham recognized the importance of such fallacies in political discourse over two centuries ago, and his comments have not lost any of their relevance. In the present case, it can be presumed that the statements by Goodhue and Madison about Jackson being “opposed to the consideration of amendments altogether” were based on their knowledge of Jackson. Even if it is impossible at this point to recover the precise evidence on which Goodhue and Madison based their comments, their comments were made in the debate and it bears repeating that even though Jackson had every chance in response to deny the claim made by Goodhue and Madison about his position, he chose not to do so. It is then a reasonable inference that the claim about Jackson’s stance was a fair comment, and that there is warrant for thinking that Jackson was indeed engaging in the fallacy of ad socordiam when he presented his motion for postponing any debate on amendments by some nine months. Terminologically, the type of evidence presented here for making an inference about Jackson’s covert intention may be called micro-contextual because it is based on the particular interactional event where he presented his overt intention, that is, the debate of June 8, 1789. To underline the importance of paying attention to covert intentions in assessing the nature of a piece of communication, it is at this point also helpful to refer to Sokal’s (1996) famous article, published in Social Text,

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a leading cultural-studies journal at that time. The article was published as a contribution to an issue of the journal “devoted to rebutting the criticisms leveled against postmodernism and social constructivism by several distinguished scientists” [note omitted] (Sokal and Bricmont 1998: 2). Among other things the article proclaimed “categorically that ‘physical reality’, no less than ‘social reality’, is at bottom a social and linguistic construct” (Sokal and Bricmont 1998: 2). Yet, it was revealed by Sokal soon after the publication of the article that the article was in fact a “parody of the type of work that has proliferated in recent years, to see if they [the editors of the journal] would publish it” (Sokal and Bricmont 1998: 1). The article was “chock-full of absurdities and blatant non-sequitors” (Sokal and Bricmont 1998: 1–2), but the journal still published it, with the editors taking it at face value and apparently not noticing that the article was a parody. With his article Sokal undoubtedly did a major service to scholarship by debunking a major current of modern philosophy. For the concerns of the present book, the point is that in order to understand the nature and the content of the article, it is certainly relevant to realize that the author intended it as a parody, written with the purpose of exposing a seriously flawed trend in modern philosophy. The covert intention was later revealed, but the episode shows the need to allow for covert purposes of speakers when assessing the nature of communicative acts and when wishing to understand the content of a piece of linguistic communication. While some scholars in the field of fallacy theory may still prefer to take a dismissive view of the motivations or purposes of speakers, it should be added that the broader view is often taken for granted in sociolinguistics. Decades ago Hymes made the basic point that “communication itself must be differentiated from interaction as a whole in terms of purposiveness” (Hymes 1986 [1972]: 62). It is also the case that since participants in a speech event have an awareness of purposiveness, they make inferences about the goals and purposes of speakers (Grimshaw 1988: 181–182). Grimshaw (1990: 280) is also worth quoting here. That volume has several studies on the “interactional agendas” of interlocutors, and Grimshaw wrote in his own contribution in part: This [interest in interactional agendas] leads to a focus on what I have called “disambiguation” [note omitted] of participants’ own interpretive and inferential practices and attribution, to participants, of goals (purposes, intentions). This last, i.e., attribution of purposiveness to participant behav-

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iors, will be sharply criticized by those students of talk (e.g., conversation analysts) who argue that this implies the ability to “get into people’s heads” and requires unwarranted inferences and claims. The researchers whose work is reported here do not contest the position that what is in people’s heads is accessible neither to analysts nor to interlocutors (nor even, ultimately, fully accessible to those whose behavior is under investigation). I believe most of them will also argue, however, that the availability of ethnographic context and of an optimally complete behavior record permits analysts to make  such inferences and attributions which are “for-most-practical-purposes” (paraphrasing Garfinkel) no less plausible than those of actual participants. [Note omitted.] This claim is subject to qualification but the disambiguation process is that which we ourselves employ in interaction—where, it must be conceded, we sometimes err. (Grimshaw 1990: 281)

Grimshaw’s reference to “participants’ own interpretive and inferential practices and attribution, to participants, of goals (purposes, intentions)” also makes it possible to invoke the concept of “epistemic vigilance” (from Sperber et al. 2010; see also Sperber 2000), to underline the role of the covert intentions and purposes of interlocutors. It denotes a “general human tendency to assess communication critically and not always to accept the content of a linguistic communication at face value” (Rudanko 2017: 12), and the concept is naturally connected to the need of the hearer to detect and to identify manipulative intentions on the part of the speaker, emphasized by de Saussure (2005: 118) as “one of the core problems of manipulation in language.” As Sperber et al. plausibly suggest, the level of epistemic vigilance is likely to be higher when the matter at hand is of relevance to an interlocutor (Sperber et  al. 2010: 363–364). With respect to the Sokal article published by Social Text, it is possible to say that the editors failed to exercise a satisfactory degree of epistemic vigilance in deciding to publish the article in their journal. For his part, Gibbs (1999) does not use the concept of epistemic vigilance, but makes this pertinent comment on distinguishing overt and covert intentions: A significant part of the richness in our experience of meaning depends on our ability to infer both overt and covert intentions, and, quite importantly at times, to distinguish between these in making sense of human artifacts. (Gibbs 1999: 35)

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The present author basically agrees with Grimshaw and the others in recognizing a significant role for covert intentions and goals of speakers in the study of communicative interaction. A fallacy such as ad socordiam certainly deserves scholarly attention and investigation. Indeed, with respect to the debate of June 8, 1789, the need to pay attention to the inner convictions of speakers is underlined by the consideration that both Goodhue and Madison specifically referred to Jackson’s inner conviction, that is, his attitude of opposition to amendments. If the analyst were to deny that a speaker may have a covert interactional agenda or to assert that such an agenda is not worth investigating, it would be difficult or impossible to make sense of Goodhue’s and Madison’s comments on Jackson’s covert interactional agenda in the debate of June 8, 1789. At the same time, it needs to be added that the role of the inner convictions of speakers is more relevant in some types of discourse than in others. For instance, the inner convictions of a lawyer defending a client in a court of law are of secondary importance in many cultures, and the lawyer is expected to defend his/her client no matter what his/her inner convictions may be. (The present author is indebted to Scott Jacobs, personal communication, for the reference to a courtroom scenario in this context.) A courtroom scenario is a good example of an adversarial type of discourse, where inner convictions are less important. By contrast, the members of a legislative body can reasonably be expected to engage in a collaborative and constructive type of discourse, with the aim of contributing to the common good of the country, and when a member puts forward a motion, he/she is expected to give his/her reasons for the motion and to reveal his/her inner convictions about the motivation for the motion, and not to hide them. Or at least it seems reasonable to think that this was the expectation when the first Congress met in the summer of 1789, with some of those who had taken part in the Constitutional Convention now present as members of Congress. It can be noted that if the two first-order intentions and their motivations are compared, it is the overt first-order intention that is the more creditable one. By contrast, the first-order intention of intending to thwart the project of amendments would have been less attractive for Jackson, given that there was support for a Bill of Rights in the country at that time, as had become clear during the ratification process (see also Curtis 2000: 56 on support for amendments). The present author is inclined to regard Jackson’s motion for a postponement of the consideration of amendments by some nine months as an

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example of the fallacy of ad socordiam. However, this conclusion is one that is in principle contingent and subject to reassessment. It is helpful here to quote Walton (2015). He ponders the question: “how can legal and everyday reasoning about intentions be justified” and gives this answer: The way to do it is to realize that such a form of reasoning is conjectural, and best seen as defeasible, but can be based on external factual evidence that can be verified or falsified by witness testimony or scientific observations and theories. (Walton 2015: 134)

In the present case one could imagine that new factual evidence could come to light, for instance, in the form of a long lost letter showing that Goodhue and Madison made a mistake and that in reality Jackson was favorably disposed to amendments, but sincerely only wanted their consideration to be postponed by nine months. The conclusion that he was engaging in a fallacy in the debate of June 8, 1789, would then be subject to reassessment. The broader point involved is that, in principle, judgments on fallacies based on inner motivations are defeasible. In that case, the representation of Jackson’s motion based on a covert intention could become invalid, and one could not invoke ad socordiam any more. Even in that case, the framework proposed here for analyzing the fallacy of ad socordiam would remain intact. Similarly, the relevance of the notion of epistemic vigilance to the interpretation of linguistic communication would also remain unaffected. However, it should be added that while one may invent imaginary scenarios, in the present case the evidence that Jackson was engaging in a fallacy speaks for itself and is so direct, in view of Goodhue’s and Madison’s unchallenged statements, that for all practical purposes it is reasonable to accept the evidence, with defeasibility only remaining as a theoretical possibility.

2.4   Roger Sherman’s Fallacy in the Debate of June 8, 1789 Madison concluded the speech that began with a reference to James Jackson in the following way: … if we continue to postpone from time to time, and refuse to let the subject come into view, it may occasion suspicions, which, though not well founded, may tend to inflame or prejudice the public mind against our deci-

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sions. They may think that we are not sincere in our desire to incorporate such amendments in the Constitution as will secure those rights, which they consider as not sufficiently guarded. … I only wish to introduce the great work, and, as I have said before, I do not expect it will be decided immediately; but if some step is taken in the business, it will give reason to believe that we may come to a final result. This will inspire a reasonable hope in the advocates for amendments, that full justice will be done to the important subject; and I have reason to believe their expectation will not be defeated. I hope the House will not decline my motion for going into a committee. (Annals of Congress 1789: 427)

The next speaker was Roger Sherman, of Connecticut. He said in part: The State I have the honor to come from adopted this system [the present Constitution] by a very great majority, because they wished for the Government; but they desired no amendments. I suppose this was the case in other States; it will therefore be imprudent to neglect much more important concerns for this. The executive branch of the Government wants organization; the business of the revenue is incomplete, to say nothing of the judiciary business. Now, will gentlemen give up these points to go into a discussion of amendments, when no advantage can arise from them? For my part, I question if any alteration which can now be proposed would be an amendment, in the true sense of the word; but, nevertheless, I am willing to let the subject be introduced. If the gentleman only desires to go into committee for the purpose of receiving his propositions, I shall consent; but I have strong objections to being interrupted in completing the more important business; because I am well satisfied it will alarm the fears of twenty of our constituents where it will please one. (Annals of Congress 1789: 428)

After Sherman’s speech there was further opposition from several members to Madison’s proposal for going into a Committee of the Whole. Soon afterwards Madison was up for his third speech. He began with an apology and he also modified his motion: Mr. Madison.—I am sorry to be accessary to the loss of a single moment of time by the House. If I had been indulged in my motion, and we had gone into a Committee of the Whole, I think we might have rose and resumed the consideration of other business before this time; that is, so far as it depended upon what I proposed to bring forward. As that mode seems not to give satisfaction, I will withdraw my motion, and move you, sir, that a select

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committee be appointed to consider and report such amendments as are proper for Congress to propose to the Legislatures of the several States, conformably to the fifth article of the Constitution. (Annals of Congress 1789: 431)

After changing his motion, Madison went on to give a very long speech, which included his specific proposals for amendments and comments on some of them. The speech contained many points,4 but only three can be mentioned here. First, recalling President Washington’s inaugural speech, drafted by Madison, it is noteworthy how Madison again paid careful attention to the sensitivities of his largely Federalist audience. Thus he emphasized the need to proceed with caution in the business of amendments and went on to say: I should be unwilling to see a door opened for a reconsideration of the whole structure of the Government—for a re-consideration of the principles and the substance of the powers given; because I doubt, if such a door were opened, we should be very likely to stop at that point which would be safe to the Government itself. But I do wish to see a door opened to consider, so far as to incorporate those provisions for the security of rights, against which I believe no serious objection has been made by any of our constituents. (Annals of Congress 1789: 433)

Second, because of the subsequent significance of the First Amendment for American and world history, it is worth noting Madison’s proposal for freedom of speech: The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, to write, or to publish their sentiments; and the freedom of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of liberty, shall be inviolable. (Annals of Congress 1789: 434)

The eventual text of the First Amendment is not exactly the same as Madison’s original formulation, but the point about the inviolability of the freedom of the press points to the formulation “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” Third, the speech contains a passage where Madison presents his view of how what he was proposing as a Bill of Rights compared with constitutional provisions and practices in Great Britain:

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In the declaration of rights which that country has established, the truth is, they have gone no farther than to raise a barrier against the power of the Crown; the power of the Legislature is left altogether indefinite. Although I know whenever the great rights, the trial by jury, freedom of the press, or liberty of conscience, come in question in that body, the invasion of them is resisted by able advocates, yet their Magna Charta does not contain any one provision for the security of those rights, respecting which the people of America are most alarmed. The freedom of the press and rights of conscience, those choicest privileges of the people, are unguarded in the British Constitution. (Annals of Congress 1789: 436)

The extract shows that Madison was anxious to emphasize the difference between his proposal and British constitutional practices. Further, it is unquestionable, in light of the extract, that he visualized his Bill of Rights as going beyond British practices to safeguard freedom of expression. On the other hand, even though his speech was long, he did not seek to analyze, or define, the content of the concept of freedom of expression in it. Erler (1992: 224), in discussing what was to become the Ninth Amendment, has suggested that part of Madison’s thinking with respect to the Ninth Amendment may have been the view that “any definition of a right is a limitation of that right.” This may have been a factor even in the case of what was to become the First Amendment. Madison was certainly also well aware of the composition of the first Congress and of its large Federalist majority, as has been emphasized above, and as is also clear from his letter to Jefferson from March 29, 1789, where he wrote in part: Notwithstanding the character of the Body, I hope and expect that some sacrifice will be made, in order to extinguish opposition to the system, … (Hunt 1904: 336)

The beginning of the extract, “Notwithstanding the character [of Congress]” suggests that he was cognizant of a current of Federalist feeling against a Bill of Rights, in the aftermath of the Federalist victory in the first elections to the House of Representatives. Further, Madison’s remark about James Jackson that he (Jackson) was “unfriendly to the object I have in contemplation,” discussed above, also testifies to an advance awareness of opposition to amendments among Federalists. On June 8, 1789, he then might also have felt that an attempt to go into detail and speak in favor of a broad interpretation of the concept of freedom of

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speech might have exacerbated the doubts among his Federalist colleagues, whose support was crucial for him on June 8, 1789 and in later debates. As it was, even after Madison’s long speech several members continued to argue against considering amendments in a timely fashion, either in a Committee of the Whole or in a select committee. The very next speaker was James Jackson, speaking for a second time. Two aspects of his speech merit attention here. First, even though Goodhue and Madison had made a significant claim about his (Jackson’s) motivation for proposing that any consideration of amendments should be postponed till March 1, 1790, Jackson, as noted, did not comment on, or challenge, the claim by Goodhue and Madison in any way. This failure on Jackson’s part to challenge the claim that his proposal for a postponement was motivated by his opposition to the “consideration of amendments altogether,” as Goodhue (Annals of Congress 1789: 426) put it, is further evidence for thinking that when Jackson made his proposal for postponing any consideration of amendments to March 1, 1790, he was engaging in a fallacy. The other point about Jackson’s speech worth drawing attention to is that Madison’s new motion for a select committee, instead of a Committee of the Whole on the state of the Union, did not weaken Jackson’s opposition to the early consideration of a Bill of Rights. Instead, Jackson concluded his speech as follows: He [Madison] may now accede to what I take to be the sense of the House, and let the business of amendments lie over until next Spring; that will be soon enough to take it up to any good purpose. (Annals of Congress 1789: 444)

That Jackson felt confident enough to speak of the “sense of the House” reveals the precarious state of the project of amendments at that point in the debate of June 8, 1789. Among those speaking soon after Madison’s long speech was also Roger Sherman, who spoke for a second time. His speech is selected for closer analysis here and it is reproduced in full: Mr. Sherman.—I do not suppose the Constitution to be perfect, nor do I imagine if Congress and all the Legislatures on the continent were to revise it, that their united labors would make it perfect. I do not expect any perfec-

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tion on this side of the grave in the works of man; but my opinion is, that we are not at present in circumstances to make it better. It is a wonder there has been such unanimity in adopting it, considering the ordeal it had to undergo; and the unanimity which prevailed at its formation is equally astonishing; amidst all the members from the twelve States present at the Federal Convention, there were only three who did not sign the instrument to attest their opinion of its goodness. Of the eleven States who have received it, the majority have ratified it without proposing a single amendment. This circumstance leads me to suppose that we shall not be able to propose any alterations that are likely to be adopted by nine States, and gentlemen know, before the alterations take effect, they must be agreed to by the Legislatures of three-fourths of the States in the Union. Those States which have not recommended alterations, will hardly adopt them, unless it is clear that they tend to make the Constitution better. Now, how this can be made out to their satisfaction I am yet to learn; they know of no defect from experience. It seems to be the opinion of gentlemen generally that this is not the time for entering upon the discussion of amendments: our only question therefore is, how to get rid of the subject. Now, for my own part, I would prefer to have it referred to a Committee of the Whole, rather than a special committee, and therefore shall not agree to the motion now before the House. (Annals of Congress 1789: 447–448)

In his speech Sherman thus pointed out that it was highly doubtful that it would be possible to obtain the requisite number of States to ratify any amendments, since most of the States had not recommended any amendments. In other words, he was saying that it would be a waste of time to consider amendments. His argument might be viewed as another type of ad socordiam. It can be represented as follows. Sherman’s first-order intention, overt Sherman intended to secure an assurance that enough States will support amendments before the discussion of amendments. Sherman’s second-order intention Sherman intended his first-order intention to be recognized. Sherman’s motivation underlying the first-order intention. Sherman intended to save time. Sherman’s proposal Postpone the discussion of amendments till there is an assurance that the requisite number of States will support the amendments.

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However, the present author believes that there are grounds for thinking that Sherman may have engaged in a fallacy because Sherman may have had a different agenda when he made his proposal. Here is representation of an alternative interpretation: Sherman’s first-order intention, covert Sherman intended to thwart the project of amendments by claiming that the requisite number of States were unlikely to support the amendments. Sherman’s second-order intention, covert Sherman did not intend the first-order intention to be recognized by his audience. Sherman’s motivation underlying the first-order intention. Sherman was opposed to amending the Constitution. Sherman’s proposal Postpone the discussion of amendments till there is an assurance that the requisite number of States will support the amendments.

In this case there is no statement by Madison or by any other speaker in the debate about Sherman’s inner convictions in the debate of June 8, 1789. To use the term introduced above, there is no micro-contextual evidence for making an inference about Sherman’s inner convictions. However, the analyst can take advantage of Grimshaw’s (1990: 281) reference to a behavior record, and consult the article that Sherman composed for publication in selected New England newspapers soon after the debate of June 8, 1789 (Collier 1971: 297). One of these was the Salem Mercury, which published Sherman’s article in two parts, in the issues of June 30, and July 7, 1789, of the newspaper. It bears noting that the article appeared anonymously, with the author given as a “citizen of Newhaven,” and while Sherman’s authorship has been established in the literature (see Collier 1971: 297), the fact that he was the author presumably was not obvious to readers of the article at the time when the article was published. The dates show that the sentiments in the article are from the period when the fate of amendments hung in the balance. In the article Sherman praises several features of the new Constitution, and then makes the following key statement about amendments:

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Restraints in a Constitution upon the Legislature of a free State, are but an abridgment of the liberties of the people to make, alter and repeal laws, when the publick good may require it. Bills of rights, and charters of liberties, in England, were made to limit the prerogatives of Princes, and not the powers of the Legislature. (Sherman 1789)

Sherman had clearly understood the nature of the proposed Bill of Rights correctly—it was to be a limitation on the power of the legislature, and his statement makes clear his opposition to limiting the power of the legislature in this way. The newspaper article can be regarded as evidence of Sherman’s inner convictions. To recall the terminology introduced above, the evidence is not micro-contextual, since it is not based on the debate where he expressed his overt intention. Instead, it may be termed macro-­ contextual, because it is based on the larger context of clues to Sherman’s convictions during the period in question. By employing the fallacious argument of ad socordiam in the debate of June 8, 1789—that there should be an assurance or a guarantee that a sufficient number of States would support the amendments formulated as a precondition for considering them—Sherman avoided having to go on record publicly as an opponent of the very idea of a Bill of Rights. As noted, there was a degree of sentiment in the country in the aftermath of the Constitutional Convention that the Constitution should include a Bill of Rights (cf. e.g. Curtis 2000: 56), and it is understandable that even Federalists were reluctant boldly to go on record against the idea of a Bill of Rights, and Sherman’s resort to a subterfuge and a fallacious argument in the debate of June 8, 1789, can be understood in that context.

2.5   Later Procedural Debates There were many other speeches in the debate of June 8, 1789, but with the benefit of hindsight, it seems possible to say that Madison’s main achievement in the debate of June 8, 1789 consisted in ensuring that the project of amendments and of a Bill of Rights survived the debate on that day. Going beyond the debate of June 8, 1789, Madison had to wait till July 21, 1789 before the subject of amendments was discussed again. Again the discussion was focused on the procedural question of whether to debate amendments in a timely fashion, and it was thus another debate about whether or not to debate the subject. In that debate, the House of Representatives decided to set up a select committee to consider

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amendments, with one member from each State, and with Representative John Vining, Federalist of Delaware, in the chair. Crucially, Madison was also a member of the committee (Brant 1950: 268). The committee worked in an expeditious fashion, reporting the amendments by the end of July (Brant 1950: 268). The choice of Vining was probably fortunate from the point of view of the project of the Bill of Rights. In the debate of June 8, 1789, Vining had been dubious about considering amendments in a timely fashion. In that debate he said in part: … I cannot think this a proper time to enter upon the subject because more important business is suspended; and, for want of experience we are as likely to do injury by our prescriptions as good. (Annals of Congress 1789: 431)

However, when the project came up for discussion again in the whole House of Representatives, which was on August 13, 1789, he made a significant statement that is reported in the Annals of Congress as follows: Mr. Vining, impressed by the anxiety which the honorable gentleman from Virginia had discovered for having the subject of amendments considered, had agreed, in his own mind, to waive, for the present, the call he was well authorized to make, for the House to take into consideration the bill for establishing a Land Office for the disposal of the vacant lands in the Western Territory. In point of time, his motion had the priority; in point of importance, every candid mind would acknowledge its preference; and he conceived the House was bound to pay attention to it as early as possible; … (Annals of Congress 1789: 704)

Vining thus emphasized the importance of taking up a different subject, but he was still yielding to Madison. It seems clear from Vining’s statement that Madison’s stature as a leading Federalist at the time played a role in causing Vining to yield. To invoke a useful term from Jeffries and O’Driscoll (2019), it is possible to say that Vining’s change of heart showed that there was permeability among the original opponents of the early consideration of amendments on June 8, 1789, or that Madison may have brought about that permeability. The House of Representatives took a vote on August 13, 1789, on whether to take up the subject of amendments. As far as the present author is aware, there is no information anywhere on who voted which way when that fateful vote was taken, and in the absence of information it is impossible to say how close the vote on that day may have been. However, it

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seems reasonable, on the basis of Vining’s statement, to suppose that he was among those voting in favor of the motion of considering amendments. Once the motion had been approved, the House of Representatives took up the business of discussing the content of possible amendments without any further delay.

2.6   Conclusion The present study concentrates on the debate in the House of Representatives on June 8, 1789, which was initiated by James Madison when he proposed that the House should consider the subject of amendments. In the course of the debate Madison presented his detailed proposals for amendments, but these were not debated. Instead, the debate of June 8, 1789 was a debate on whether to debate amendments at all in a timely fashion. It has sometimes been suggested that a Bill of Rights would have been enacted without Madison, but the present study suggests otherwise, and points to the strength of opposition from several members, especially from Federalists. Madison prepared the ground with care for softening the opposition, when he drafted President Washington’s inaugural address. Without Madison playing a role and prompting the President, there is little reason to suppose that President Washington would have promoted the cause of amendments in his inaugural address. In spite of the words of the revered Washington implying that some amendments could be approved even without the benefit of experience, it is clear that many Federalists continued to be unhappy about, or even opposed to, entering on a debate of amendments at that time, or that they were opposed to such a project in principle. On June 8, 1789 there were very few members who spoke in favor of the early consideration of amendments, with Madison having to stand almost alone for the most part. In terms of the scale of engagement, to use a helpful term from Jeffries and O’Driscoll (2019: 2), it was largely a debate or a conflict enacted by one against many. The present chapter offers further information on the nature of that opposition and on the nature of their argumentation in the debate of June 8, 1789. It may be added that if the consideration of amendments had been postponed till March 1, 1790, as James Jackson suggested, there is absolutely no guarantee that it would have been taken up at that time. Time was hardly on the side of the project of the Bill of Rights, as became clear

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in November 1794, several years before the Sedition Act of 1798 was enacted, when many Federalists in the House of Representatives were worried about the scope of freedom of speech in the United States (cf. Rudanko 2012: Chapter 4). The worries culminated in the enactment of the Sedition Act of 1798 by the Federalist party, in spite of the clear language of the First Amendment. However, the fact that the Bill of Rights had been approved and had become part of the Constitution with its First Amendment prior to the enactment of the Sedition Act gave an effective platform for Republican opponents of the Sedition Act to argue against it, with Madison and Jefferson leading the way (see Rudanko 2012: Chapter 6). The Republican side eventually prevailed with the election of Jefferson to the presidency in 1801, which meant the end of the Sedition Act and opened the way for a broad interpretation of the concept of freedom of speech.5 Madison did not get everything perfectly right in his efforts to get a Bill of Rights enacted. Historians have often pointed to his preference to have the amendments inserted into the text of the original Constitution, and they have drawn attention to the failure of this attempt. With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to agree that a Bill of Rights separate from the text of the original Constitution was the happier outcome, in the interests of clarity and effectiveness. However, the placing of the amendments is less important than their substance, as Madison himself noted in a later debate (Annals of Congress 1789: 708; see also Madison’s letter to Alexander White of August 24, 1812 in Hunt ed. 1904: 418–419). Overall, it is hard to overestimate the significance of Madison’s achievement for subsequent history, in securing the passage of the Bill of Rights in the first Congress. The main methodological results of the present study concern fallacy theory and the fallacy of ad socordiam, in particular. Compared to earlier work, the fallacy is defined more carefully, taking account of distinctions in Gibbs (1999). Gibbs did not discuss the fallacy of ad socordiam in his book, but he made a distinction between desires and intentions that is highly pertinent to the definition of the fallacy, and it is made use of in the present chapter for the first time. Another methodological finding of the present investigation is that this study strengthens the case that the fallacy of ad socordiam, defined here more carefully than in earlier work, should be reinstated to the arsenal of standard informal fallacies. In other words, it is argued here that the opinion now held by many of those working on informal fallacies that such fallacies can only be based on overt commitments of speakers restricts

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work on fallacies in political debates in an unwarranted way. It seems beyond dispute that listeners are often capable of exercising epistemic vigilance, in varying degrees, and they do make inferences about the goals and motivations of speakers, based on their knowledge of the speakers’ character and past behavior. The role of such inferences and perceptions should not be underestimated or set aside in the study of political discourse, and it is clear that Jeremy Bentham deserves credit for giving prominence to hidden intentions and their role in political discourse about two centuries ago. At the same time, those proposing fallacies based on covert intentions are well advised to justify their proposals with evidence. Goodhue’s and Madison’s comments on James Jackson’s inner convictions in the debate of June 8, 1789, which Jackson did not challenge, are a case in point in illustrating one type of evidence on which to base inferences about inner convictions. This type was termed micro-contextual here, being based on the unfolding of the debate in question. In Sherman’s case, the basis for viewing his argument for postponing any debate on amendments as a fallacy of ad socordiam was of a different type—an article that he published anonymously during the period of the procedural debates in the House of Representatives. This type of evidence was termed macro-contextual, being based on information that came from outside of the debate of June 8, 1789. In any event, the present discussion shows that there is a need in discourse analysis to accommodate and to pay attention to the fallacy of ad socordiam. Grice (1975: 49) of course made provision for “quietly and unostentatiously” violating a maxim many decades ago, which may still serve as a theoretical underpinning for reinstating the fallacy of ad socordiam as a standard fallacy. Building on McCornack (1992) and de Saussure (2005), the present study suggests that ad socordiam may involve a speaker covertly violating the maxim of Quantity, part 1. Such a violation may be viewed as a type of manipulative language use. The present investigation obviously invites further work on the presence of fallacies of the type of ad socordiam in other political debates in later centuries and on the different types of evidence on which inferences about covert intentions can be based. Given the connection of the fallacy with manipulative discourse, the present work also invites further work on manipulative uses of informal fallacies in the analysis of other political debates in the history of the United States and of other countries. A fallacy of the type of ad socordiam, and an awareness of it on the part of investigators, may also enrich the study of major historical events by historians in

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drawing attention to research questions that might otherwise be overlooked in the study of historical events involving language use. Goodhue and Madison showed epistemic vigilance in the debate of July 8, 1789, and that notion may also be worth investigating further as a check on the use of informal fallacies in political debates. Such research questions may turn out to be a fertile field for further investigation for students of discourse, argumentation theory and political history.

Notes 1. In another contribution to work on manipulation, van Dijk (2006) compares persuasion and manipulation and notes that “in manipulation recipients are typically assigned a more passive role: they are victims of manipulation.” He goes on: This negative consequence of manipulative discourse typically occurs when the recipients are unable to understand the real intentions or to see the full consequences of the beliefs or actions advocated by the manipulator. (van Dijk 2006: 361) The reference to the “real intentions” (of the manipulator) in the quotation is pertinent in the context of the fallacy of ad socordiam. However, later in the article van Dijk downplays the role of intentions and instead argues for defining manipulation “in terms of its societal consequences” (van Dijk 2006: 364), writing that “manipulation is illegitimate in a democratic society, because it (re)produces, or may reproduce, inequality: it is in the best interests of powerful groups and speakers, and hurts the interests of less powerful groups and speakers” (van Dijk 2006: 363–364, emphasis in the original). With respect to the present discussion, it would not be clear whether Madison and his supporters or Jackson and his supporters were the more powerful group at that point in the debate. In any event, it seems reasonable to believe that even a minority group or a less powerful group may engage in manipulation (see also Maillat and Oswald 2010: 358–359 and Oswald et  al. 2016: 518), and the present author has therefore not adopted an approach to manipulative communication based on “societal consequences” or on “powerful groups.” 2. In their discussion of deceptive communication Oswald et al. (2016) give prominence to relevance theory. That theory builds on Grice’s work, and there is by now a rich literature on the framework, beginning with Sperber and Wilson (1986). It is beyond the scope of the present study to survey the framework, but the following brief quote brings out a key feature of the framework:

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In a nutshell, RT [relevance theory] postulates that relevant information is information that is easy to process and at the same time information that is useful to the cognitive system in terms of its reliability and informativeness. In this perspective, understanding what a speaker means is therefore the result of working out the best effort/effect ratio by following a path of least effort when selecting the information set against which an utterance is being interpreted. (Oswald et al. 2016: 523) 3. See also Tracy and Coupland (1990: 3–5) on “[a] reticence to treat goals in discourse studies.” For their part, Tracy and Coupland (1990) make a contribution to remedying that reticence. 4. For a survey of the different points made in the speech, see Rutland (1987: 61–64). For instance, they included the argument that if a Bill of Rights is enacted, North Carolina and Rhode Island would join the Union (Annals of Congress 1789: 432). 5. Erler (1992) raises the speculative question of whether the United States would have fared better without a Bill of Rights. He writes: It would be bold to question whether it would have been better if there had never been a Bill of Rights. Yet it is interesting (and perhaps useful) for those who are somewhat timid to speculate about what this country’s situation might be today had there been no Bill of Rights. One thing is fairly certain: we would have a less intrusive government than we do today; the foundations of the administrative state would have been much more difficult to discover or rationalize: government would have been more strictly limited to the exercise of enumerated powers; … (Erler 1992: 226) The present author takes a considerably more positive view of the role and the effects of the Bill of Rights, for instance, with respect to the openness that it promotes in public discourse, with openness tending to work against an intrusive government, since excesses can be made public, with the publication being protected by the First Amendment. In the absence of a Bill of Rights it would certainly have been considerably more difficult for Republicans to argue against the Sedition Act of the Adams administration in 1798 and in the run-up to the presidential and Congressional elections in 1800, which might well have resulted in a Federalist victory in those elections and in the Sedition Act being made permanent, in accordance with Federalist preferences (cf. Rudanko 2012: 108–112). It is hard to imagine that such an outcome would have promoted a less intrusive government.

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References Annals of Congress = The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States: With an Appendix, Containing Important State Papers and Public Documents, and All the Laws of a Public Nature: With a Copious Index, 1789–1824. 1834–1856. Washington, DC: Gales and Seaton. Arp, Robert, Steven Barbone, and Michael Bruce, eds. 2019. Bad Arguments: 100 of the Most Important Fallacies in Western Philosophy. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell. Bentham, Jeremy. 1962 [1824, 1952]. The Handbook of Political Fallacies, ed. Harold A. Larrabee. Revised ed. New York: Harper Torchbooks. Bowling, Kenneth. 1990. Politics in the First Congress, 1789–1791. New  York: Garland Publishing. Brant, Irving. 1950. James Madison. The Father of the Constitution 1787–1800. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company. Collier, Christopher. 1971. Roger Sherman’s Connecticut: Yankee Politics and the American Revolution. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Copi, Irving, and Keith Burgess-Jackson. 1996. Informal Logic. 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Curtis, Michael Kent. 2000. Free Speech, “the People’s Darling Privilege”. Struggles for Freedom of Expression in American History. Durham: Duke University Press. DenBoer, Gordon, editor, Lucy Brown, associate editor, and Charles Hagerman, editorial assistant. 1984. The Documentary History of the First Federal Elections 1788–1789. Vol. II. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press. van Dijk, Teun. 2006. Discourse and Manipulation. Discourse and Society 17 (3): 359–383. van Eemeren, Frans, and Rob Grootendorst. 2004. A Systematic Theory of Argumentation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Erler, Edward. 1992. James Madison and Framing of the Bill of Rights: Reality and Rhetoric in the New Constitutionalism. Political Communication 9: 213–229. Foster, William Omer Sr. 1960. James Jackson: Duelist and Militant Statesman 1757–1806. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. Gibbs, Raymond. 1999. Intentions in the Experience of Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grice, H. Paul. 1975. Logic and Conversation. In Syntax and Semantics, Speech Acts, ed. Peter Cole and Jerry Morgan, vol. 3, 41–58. New York: Academic. Grimshaw, Allen. 1988. Collegial Discourse: Professional Conversation Among Peers. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. ———. 1990. Research on Conflict Talk: Antecedents, Resources, Findings, Directions. In Conflict Talk: Sociolinguistic Investigations of Arguments in Conversations, ed. Allen Grimshaw, 280–324. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Hunt, Gaillard, ed. 1904. The Writings of James Madison, Comprising His Public Papers and His Private Correspondence, Including Numerous Letters and Documents Now for the First Time Printed. Vol. V. 1787–1790. New  York: G. P. Putnam. Hymes, Dell. 1986 [1972]. Models of the Interaction of Language and Social Life. In Directions in Sociolinguistics. With Corrections and Additions, ed. John Gumperz and Dell Hymes, 35–71. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Jeffries, Leslie, and Jim O’Driscoll. 2019. Introduction: The Origins of the Routledge Handbook of Language in Conflict. In The Routledge Handbook of Language in Conflict, ed. Matthew Evans, Leslie Jeffries, and Jim O’Driscoll, 1–9. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Ketcham, Ralph. 1990 [1971]. James Madison. A Biography. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. Louw, Bill. 1993. Irony in the Text or Insincerity in the Writer? The Diagnostic Potential of Semantic Prosodies. In Text and Technology. In Honour of John Sinclair, ed. Mona Baker, Gill Francis, and Elena Tonini-Bonelli, 157–176. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Louw, Bill, and Marija Milojkovic. 2014. Semantic Prosody. In The Cambridge Handbook of Stylistics, ed. Peter Stockwell and Sara Whiteley, 263–280. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Maillat, Didier, and Steve Oswald. 2010. Defining Manipulative Discourse: The Pragmatics of Cognitive Illusions. International Review of Pragmatics 1 (2): 348–370. McCornack, Steven. 1992. Information Manipulation Theory. Communication Monographs 59: 1–16. Oswald, Steve, Didier Maillat, and Louis de Saussure. 2016. Deceptive and Uncooperative Verbal Communication. In Verbal Communication, ed. Andrea Rocci and Louis de Saussure, 509–534. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton. Richardson, James, ed. 1897. A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Vol. 1. Washington, DC: Bureau of National Literature. Rudanko, Juhani. 2005. Freedom of Speech at Stake: Fallacies in Some Political Discourses in the Early Republic. In Opening Windows on Texts and Discourses of the Past, ed. Janne Skaffari, Matti Peikola, Ruth Carroll, Risto Hiltunen, and Brita Warwik, 53–64. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ———. 2012. Discourses of Freedom of Speech. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2017. Towards Characterizing a Type of Aggravated Impoliteness, with Examples from Timon of Athens. Language and Literature 26 (1): 3–17. Rutland, Robert. 1987. James Madison The Founding Father. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press. de Saussure, Louis. 2005. Manipulation and Cognitive Pragmatics: Preliminary Hypotheses. In Manipulation and Ideologies in the Twentieth Century: Discourse, Language, Mind, ed. Peter Schulz and Louis de Saussure, 113–145. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

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Sheehan, Colleen. 2009. James Madison and the Spirit of Republican Self-­ Government. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sherman, Roger. 1789. Observations on the New Federal Constitution, and the Alterations that Have Been Proposed as Amendments. The Salem Mercury, June 30. Sokal, Alan. 1996. Transgressing the Boundaries: A Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity. Social Text 46/47 (Spring/Summer 1996): 217–252. Sokal, Alan, and Jean Bricmont. 1998. Fashionable Nonsense. Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science. New York: Picador. Sperber, Dan. 2000. Metarepresentations in an Evolutionary Perspective. In Metarepresentations: A Multidisciplinary Perspective, ed. Dan Sperber, 117–137. Cary, NC: Oxford University Press. Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson. 1986. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell. Sperber, Dan, Fabrice Clément, Christoph Heintz, Olivier Mascaro, Hugo Mercier, Gloria Origgi, and Deirdre Wilson. 2010. Epistemic Vigilance. Mind and Language 25 (4): 359–393. Tracy, Karen, and Nikolas Coupland. 1990. Multiple Goals in Discourse: An Overview of Issues. In Multiple Goals in Discourse, ed. Karen Tracy and Nikolas Coupland, 1–14. Cleveden, Avon: Multilingual Matters. Walton, Douglas. 2011. Defeasible Reasoning and Informal Fallacies. Synthese 179 (3): 377–407. ———. 2015. Goal-Based Reasoning for Argumentation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

CHAPTER 3

Political Rhetoric in Wartime: A Case Study from 1812

3.1   Background and Historical Context Campaign rhetoric in the early American Republic has not been the subject of much investigation. In the absence of radio, television, the internet and the motor car, political campaigning was different from practices today. It is the purpose of this chapter to inquire into the rhetoric of one particular campaign for a seat in the House of Representatives for the State of Maryland in the run-up to the elections in October 1812. In June 1812, the United States, led by President James Madison, declared war on Great Britain, starting the War of 1812. The reasons for the declaration of war included British restrictions on American trade, the impressment by Britain of American sailors for the Royal Navy because of the Napoleonic wars in Europe, and British support for Indians who were in conflict with the United States, to name a few. Some of these issues had complicated United States relations with Great Britain for years, including during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, Madison’s predecessor. Both Jefferson and Madison were from the Republican Party, and to some extent the strained relationship was also a function of broader political attitudes. Republicans had their power base in Virginia, and they tended to be more oriented towards establishing and maintaining good relations with France, in preference to Britain. By contrast, their opponents, the Federalists, had their power base in New England, especially in Massachusetts and Connecticut, and they tended to have sympathies with © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Rudanko, Fallacies and Free Speech, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67877-7_3

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Great Britain, rather than with France. Jefferson’s predecessor, John Adams, had been a Federalist and Federalists had been dominant in Congress during his tenure. The House of Representatives voted in favor of the declaration of war by a fairly clear majority, but the vote in the Senate was closer, 19 to 13. The votes were to a significant extent along party lines, with most Republicans voting in favor of the declaration of war but with Federalists and some Republicans voting against it (Hickey 1972: 84–85; Stagg 2012: 46) The split along party lines also involved a regional split, with opposition to the war being especially strong in New England. The rhetoric investigated here is that of Alexander Contee Hanson in the context of his candidacy for a seat in the House of Representatives in 1812. Hanson was a high-profile Federalist candidate at a time when passions ran high in the aftermath of the declaration of war. This alone makes his candidacy worth investigating both from the point of view of historical pragmatics and from the point of view of American history. There is also a further reason for choosing to investigate Alexander Hanson’s campaign. Hanson was also the co-editor, along with Jacob Wagner, of a major Federalist newspaper, the Federal Republican, published originally in Baltimore, which was a mainly Republican city, and subsequently in the District of Columbia. He conducted his campaign largely through the newspaper, and it is possible to follow the themes of his campaign by consulting issues of the newspaper. Hanson had a distinguished and indeed aristocratic family background. He and his newspaper held views that were often strident. Pasley (2001) describes him and his newspaper as follows: Under Hanson’s direction, the Federal Republican was an extreme Federalist journal on almost every count. On the one hand, its distaste for democracy and enthusiasm for the British cause in the Napoleonic Wars rivaled anything found in Hartford or Boston. “THE RABBLE,” one early item was headed, more or less summarizing Hanson’s feelings toward the mass of voters who were providing Republican majorities in Maryland, and especially in Baltimore. These rabble were not only stupid but vicious and violent, and granting them political influence would inevitably lead to chaos and mass murder. Hanson sometimes argued that the people of Maryland were merely being misled by Republican demagogues, but in the same breath deplored the “tame and submissive spirit” they showed for following such leaders and thus coupling themselves with the “scum of society.” (Pasley 2001: 241–242)

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The Federal Republican has been labeled “one of the South’s foremost papers” (Ross 2011: 140; see also Humphrey 1996: 93), and in view of Hanson’s personality, well described by Pasley, he and his newspaper can be expected to have published articles that tested free speech to the limit. His newspaper therefore recommends itself as the primary source of data in an investigation of free speech during the early months of the War of 1812. The framework of informal fallacies, introduced in Chap. 2, is again employed where appropriate, and it is supplemented with other analytic tools from historical pragmatics. The remainder of this introductory section provides information on events in Baltimore in June and July 1812 that outline the background of the newspaper articles studied in Sect. 3.2. When war was declared on June 18, 1812, there were appeals from Republican newspapers for unity since the nation was at war. Some Federalist politicians and newspapers moderated their opposition for a time (Hickey 1972: 92), but Hanson’s newspaper, the Federal Republican, took a harshly critical stance against the war both before and after the declaration of war. On June 20, 1812, the newspaper published a strongly worded editorial condemning the declaration of war under the heading “Thou hast done a deed, whereat valor will weep.” Here is an extract from the beginning of the article: Without funds, without taxes, without an army, navy, or adequate fortifications, with one hundred and fifty millions of our property in the hands of the declared enemy, without any of his in our power, and with a vast commerce afloat, our rulers have promulged a war, against the clear and decided sentiments of a vast majority of the nation. (Federal Republican, June 20, 1812)

The article is characterized by a spirit of dissent against the declaration of war from the beginning, and the editors spelled out their position in blunt terms: We mean to represent in as strong colors as we are capable, that it [the war] is unnecessary, inexpedient, and entered into from partial, personal, and as we believe, motives bearing upon their front marks of undisguised foreign influence, which cannot be mistaken.—We mean to use every constitutional argument and every legal means to render as odious and suspicious to the American people, as they deserve to be, the patrons and contrivers of this highly impolitic and destructive war, in the fullest persuasion, that we shall be supported and ultimately applauded by nine tenths of our countrymen,

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and that our silence would be treason to them. … We are avowedly hostile to the presidency of James Madison, and we never will breath under the dominion direct or derivative of Bonaparte, let it be acknowledged when it may. (Federal Republican, June 20, 1812)

The editorial introduces the idea that the Madison Administration and its Republican supporters had been acting under foreign influence, under the influence of Bonaparte, when declaring war on Great Britain. The newspaper speaks of the “contrivers of this highly impolitic and destructive war” and argues that to stay silent about the war would be tantamount to treason to the American people. When the paper came out, there was unrest in Baltimore directed against the premises of the newspaper. Baltimore was a city dominated by Republicans and there was strong anti-British feeling in the city, with many immigrants from Germany, France and Scotland (Cassell 1975: 241). There was also a wave of patriotic feeling following the declaration of war. A mob gathered around the printing house, and the building was destroyed, but there were no deaths or injuries to people. The unrest in June 1812 was in the Anglo-American tradition of “limited popular disorder” in that it stopped short of causing injury to people (see Gilje 1980: 547–548). When the building was destroyed, Hanson and Wagner moved to the District of Columbia, but about a month later they rented a house, a “well-built brick” building deemed “militarily defensible” (Buel 2005: 162), in Charles Street in Baltimore, and settled there, with a group of some 30 supporters. They also collected weapons and ammunition in their house. On the morning of July 27, 1812 they began distributing their newspaper, the Federal Republican, in Baltimore. (It had been printed in the District of Columbia, not very far away.) The newspaper claimed that the attack on June 20, 1812, had been planned well before the issue of June 20, 1812, and the new issue contained further sharp criticism of Republicans, both the national government and the city administration. Here is an extract: The declaration of war was precipitated by the fatal impatience of administration, operated upon by the haughty threats or seductive artifices of an undisguised enemy and oppressor; and a corresponding anticipation ensued in the plot planned against our lives and property. (Federal Republican, July 27, 1812)

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The same evening a crowd gathered around the house in Charles Street, and started throwing stones at the house, breaking windows. Some of the crowd, a “mix of boys, middle-class men, immigrant laborers, and others” (Burstein and Isenberg 2013: 512), forced the front door, and those inside fired warning shots and then they fired on those trying to get in, and one man, Dr. Gale, was shot dead. The crowd retreated but did not leave. They procured a cannon but did not fire it, and some militia troops arrived on the scene. The Mayor made an arrangement for those inside to be taken into the city jail the following morning, where they were kept, guarded by some militia units. However, the following evening the militia were withdrawn, and a crowd forced its way into the jail. Some of the Federalists escaped in the confusion, but some others were severely beaten, and one man, General Lingan, died on the spot. Eventually a medical man, Dr. Hall, a Republican, persuaded the crowd to leave and turned the jail into a makeshift hospital. Alexander Hanson was one of those who were beaten, but he survived.1 To sum up the political impact of the unrest at the end of July, 1812, it is possible to say that when the house in Charles Street was attacked, those inside undoubtedly had the right of self-defense, but the outright killing of Dr. Gale was potentially still embarrassing for the Federalist cause, as was the question of how the group of heavily armed Federalists came to be in the house in the first place. However, the violence of the events at the jail was clearly a much more serious incident. There is no evidence that it was organized by the Republican Party in Maryland, let alone by the national Republican party or by President Madison, but the sympathies of the crowd at the jail were clearly with the Republicans, and the incident was therefore embarrassing for the Republican party, much more so than the killing of Dr. Gale might have been for Federalists.

3.2   Political Rhetoric and Hanson’s Campaign in 1812 Alexander Hanson had been a candidate for Congress from the third district of Maryland since early June, 1812 (cf. the Federal Republican, issue of June 3, 1812). However, the writings in the Federal Republican, which can, in large part, be viewed as promoting his campaign, naturally took on a decidedly different character after the unrest at the end of July 1812. This section examines the first issue of the Federal Republican that came

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out after the unrest and provides some comparison of the account of the unrest in that newspaper and the account of the same unrest in the National Intelligencer, the leading Republican newspaper that was very close to the Madison administration. 3.2.1  Early Accounts of the Unrest: Frames, Narratives and Agency The very first issue of the Federal Republican that was published after the unrest showed clearly that Hanson had not been intimidated by the violence that he had had to endure at the jail. The issue contained an outspoken article presenting the paper’s view of what had happened. It began in this way: The Massacre at Baltimore The history of barbarism scarcely affords a parallel in perfidy and cruelty to the late transactions at Baltimore. Admonished by the manner in which our offices were first destroyed, that no support to our rights was to be expected from the civil or military authorities, whose duty it was to afford it; we had no alternative but to prepare to defend ourselves, on the establishment of the paper on Monday. (Federal Republican, August 3, 1812)

Three concepts employed in discourse analysis are used here to shed light on the title and the content of the article. The first is the notion of a frame. Here is how Fillmore defines it: By the term ‘frame’ I have in mind any system of concepts related in such a way that to understand any one of them you have to understand the whole structure in which it fits; when one of the things in such a structure is introduced into a text, or into a conversation, all of the others are automatically made available. (Fillmore 1982: 111)

For instance, the set of labels for evaluating students is a frame in this sense: interpreting the value of any term “depends on the full list of terms available and on the stipulated position of the given term in its series” (Fillmore 1985: 226). When the term is used in the analysis of political rhetoric, the term “frame” retains the sense of a structured whole, with one term from the whole suggesting a set of other terms from the same structured set, but the use of a particular frame has also been taken to involve a purpose to “guide beliefs and our interpretation of the world”

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(Wilson 2015: 779). In framing, as used in the analysis of political rhetoric, an actor (for instance, a newspaper or a candidate for office) will “select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation and/or treatment recommendation” (Entman 1993: 52). It is also possible to say that to frame an issue or event is to use a particular style of presentation “when relaying information about an issue or event to an audience,” with the chosen frame revealing “what the speaker sees as relevant to the topic at hand” (Chong and Druckman 2007: 100). It seems possible to say that in framing, the speaker seeks to conceptualize or construct an issue or event in a certain way in order to influence the perception of the issue or event on the part of the audience. The title of the newspaper article may be viewed as a frame in this case. Grammatically, the title is the noun phrase the Massacre at Baltimore. The noun phrase consists of the determiner the, the noun massacre and the prepositional postmodifier at Baltimore. Of these the head of the noun phrase is the noun massacre and this is the key part of the frame constituted by the noun phase in that it conceptualizes what happened at the jail as a major incident of mass slaughter. (See the definition of the word “massacre” for instance in Brown ed. 1993.) This meaning is then also carried by the larger noun phrase constituting the frame. Noun phrases can in general be taken to label something that is presumed to exist (see Jeffries 2010: 21), and the title of the article then suggests that the event so named in fact took place. The frame invoked by, and having its source in, massacre is reinforced by the repeated use of the strongly charged word “massacre” in the body of the article, as in a reference to “massacre at the hands of an unbridled rabble” and by the use of other strongly charged expressions, for instance, about Federalists being “assassinated” (Federal Republican, August 3, 1812). (The “spreading and repetition of specific connotative words” is a prominent strategy identified by de Saussure 2005: 129 in his account of manipulation.) The frame invoked by “massacre,” thus reinforced, is then designed to influence the reader’s interpretation of the rest of the article in a certain way or, more specifically, in the direction envisaged by the author of the article. There is no alternative frame offered in the newspaper that would lead a reader to question the frame, and a reader may then accept the frame. If he or she does accept it, he or she is likely to have added sympathy and compassion for the victims of the violence at the jail,

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that is, the group of Federalists who had originally barricaded themselves in the house in Charles Street. And it is no accident that it is the Federalist newspaper that highlights the severity of the incident at the jail, since that is likely to cause embarrassment to their political opponents (because the perpetrators of the violence at the jail had Republican sympathies). The concept of narrative is also helpful in shedding light on the article. The sense of the word “narrative” that is relevant in the present context is apparently relatively recent in English. It is—or grows out of—sense 2.c of the word in the OED: 2.c In structuralist and post-structuralist theory: a representation of a history, biography, process, etc., in which a sequence of events has been constructed into a story in accordance with a particular ideology: … a story or representation used to give an explanatory or justificatory account of a society, period, etc.

The reference to an ideology in the OED definition points to an extension in the use of the term that is common today. The term is often used even when the set of beliefs that is the driving force behind a narrative is not an ideology as such, but a set of political beliefs or a political agenda. A practical contemporary example may be helpful in shedding light on the verbal and interpretive nature of the term “narrative.” Hodges (2011), in discussing what he calls the “Bush War on Terror Narrative,” writes: Although the events of 9/11 are actual happenings in the world, those events do not intrinsically contain their own interpretation. Only through language are such events turned into a full account of that experience. Through language, we name protagonists, ascribe motivations, and provide explanations. Through language, we construct a narrative. (Hodges 2011: 3–4)2

A narrative is thus a verbal construct, and it constructs an interpretation of a series of events (or maybe a single complex event), and in this way it constructs and influences—or seeks to construct and influence—the perception of reality and can guide actions that may flow from a certain perception of reality. The reference by Hodges (2011) to ascribing motivations to protagonists is especially significant for the concerns of the present investigation because of the attention paid to overt and covert intentions in this book. It may be added that the question of ascribing motivations

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arises on two levels: authors of narratives ascribe motivations to protagonists in their narratives, and in addition the authors may have particular motivations themselves for the ascriptions they assign (or do not assign) and the way they present the motivations in question. The narrative of the Federal Republican may be briefly compared with that in the National Intelligencer, a major Republican newspaper published in nearby Washington, District of Columbia, which was very close to the Madison administration. This newspaper used the headline “Dreadful Commotion” to introduce the story of the unrest in Baltimore at the end of July in its issue of August 1, 1812. The frame evoked by “dreadful commotion” is a frame that is an alternative to the “massacre” frame offered by the Federal Republican, in that it is much milder than that evoked by “massacre.”3 Given Grice’s (1975) maxim of Quantity, part 1, and applying it to the title, the implicature carried by the title in the National Intelligencer is that the incident did not amount to anything more than a “dreadful commotion.” The body of the article then also does not contain such charged lexical items as massacre or assassinate, which were found in the account in the Federal Republican. The headline and the body of the article thus evoke less sympathy for the victims of the incident at the jail than the headline in the Federal Republican, and tend rather to downplay the seriousness of the incident. The National Intelligencer condemned the mob action at the jail, but the article also raised the question of what motivated the attack on the house in Charles Street in the first place, and asked in part “whether their indignation was particularly roused by the garrisoning of an armed citadel in the midst of their city” (National Intelligencer, August 1, 1812). That type of question suggests that some of the blame for the events at the end of July might lie with the armed Federalists in the house in Charles Street, and the question would have been unlikely to occur in the narrative in the Federal Republican, because it would not have been in alignment with the political agenda of the Federalist party, or at least not in alignment with Hanson’s political agenda. At the lexical level of analysis, the characterization of the presence of the armed Federalists in the house in Charles Street with the noun phrase “the garrisoning of an armed citadel in the midst of their city” would also have been unlikely in the article in the Federal Republican, because some of the lexical items inside the noun phrase (garrisoning, armed) suggest a critical stance towards Hanson’s scheme, which would have been in conflict with Hanson’s narrative of the event. The comparison of the two narratives thus illustrates the point that in the

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interpretation of political events there can be different and conflicting frames and narratives of the same events and that the conflicting frames and narratives can be in competition with each other, with each seeking to influence public perceptions of the events in question. The third perspective that is helpful in shedding light on the nature of the account of the unrest in the Federal Republican is that of agency. The term “agency” (or the term “agentivity,” which is often used in more narrowly grammatical studies) should be viewed in the context of language providing the “communicative resources for the definition and enactment of (past, present, and future) realities” (Duranti 2004: 451). The Agent role is one aspect of these communicative resources, and the analytic concept has been developed as part of the framework of semantic roles or theta roles, or case roles, as they used to be called in early work. Fillmore (1968) used the term “Agentive,” instead of the term “Agent” used here, defining it as the “typically animate perceived instigator of the action identified by the verb” (Fillmore 1968: 24). For his part, in an equally pioneering article, Gruber proceeded from the point of view of what he called an agentive verb, and defined it as follows: An Agentive verb is one whose subject refers to an animate object which is thought of as the willful source or agent of the activity described in the sentence. (Gruber 1967: 943)

Such definitions are helpful in bringing notions such as “instigator” and “willful source” to the fore, but later and current work on the notion of the Agent role has generally been based on specific features of the Agent, with the Agent viewed as a phrasal category. The work based on features can be viewed as having its origin in Lakoff (1977: 244), who distinguished as many as 14 features of what he viewed as “prototypical agent-­patient sentences.” Some of these are very specific, including number 14 (“the agent is looking at the patient”), and a shorter list has generally been used in later research. In his grammatical work, including Rudanko (2015) and Gentens and Rudanko (2019), the present author has applied a model that gives prominence to three of them. These may be spelled out as follows: [A]n Agent designates an entity that is volitionally involved in an event, activity or state of affairs, has control over it, at least to some degree, and is (or can be held) responsible for it. (Kaunisto and Rudanko 2019: 48)

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The three notions can then be summed up as volitional involvement (see Dowty 1991: 582), control (see Berman 1970) and responsibility. One important feature of the account of the unrest in the accounts of the Federal Republican and of the National Intelligencer concerns the way in which the killing of Dr. Gale is presented and constructed, and accounts of this subevent are here singled out for analysis to illustrate the perspective of agency. In the account in the Federal Republican, the killing is described as follows: …after a cautionary notice had been afforded to the assailants, orders for firing were given to the party appointed to protect the lower story, which was done to the number of 7 to 8 muskets. Here ensued a partial suspension of hostilities by the mob. (Federal Republican, August 3, 1812)

Towards the end of the article and outside of the chronological sequence of events in the article, the killing of Dr. Gale is mentioned more specifically: No part of the defense was more conspicuous, than the patience with which the assault of the mob was borne. Not till the door and windows were demolished, was the blow returned, and not then till warning was given, and the experiment of blank firing tried, without success.–We have flattered ourselves, that not even a member of the mob would be hardy enough to deny this. Gale was killed, boldly entering the front door at the head of a party, after it had been beat open. (Federal Republican, August 3, 1812)

Here is the account of the killing of Dr. Gale in the National Intelligencer. The persons in the interior of the house, after warning the assailants (as they state them to have been, but as others deny, saying mere curiosity drew them together) fired upon them, killed one person (Dr. Gale, the Electrician) and wounded from 20 to 30, some dangerously. The populace, it is said, then retired. (National Intelligencer, August 1, 1812)

Comparing the two accounts from the point of view of agency, the account in the National Intelligencer gives prominence to the agency of those who shot Dr. Gale: “The persons in the interior of the house … fired upon them, killed one person.” The sentence constructs the event as one involving full agency, entailing that the persons in question acted volitionally, that

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they were in control of the firing, and that they were responsible for the killing of Dr. Gale. The account makes use of finite verb forms (fired, killed, wounded) and spells out the agency of the persons who killed Dr. Gale. By contrast, the account in the Federal Republican is suited to obscure the agency of those who killed Dr. Gale. This effect is mainly produced by two linguistic choices. First, the use of the complex noun phrase orders for firing with the nominals or nominalizations order and firing in the description of the event in the first extract in the Federal Republican can be viewed as a means of tending to hide the agency of those involved. (See Dirven et al. 2007: 1230 and van Leeuwen 2018: 52 on this function of nominalizations.) Second, the account in the Federal Republican uses the passive voice when the order to fire on Dr. Gale and others is reported in the first extract, and when the actual killing of Dr. Gale is mentioned later in the article (the second extract), the passive voice is again used. Regarding the function of passives, Shibatani (1985) notes that “passives center around agents, and their fundamental function has to do with the defocusing of agents” (Shibatani 1985: 831). The passive may thus be viewed as an “agent-backgrounding construction” by itself (Wanner 2009: 113), and the omission of a by phrase in the passive Gale was killed is apt to reinforce that effect. Van Oosten (1984) makes the following pertinent comment on one of the uses of agentless passives: The speaker wishes to leave the identity of the agent vague, for such reasons as politeness or expediency, or, sometimes, to reduce the assertion of responsibility for the agent. (Van Oosten 1984: 14)

The absence of a by phrase in the account in the Federal Republican then obscures the identity and the responsibility of the person or persons responsible for killing Dr. Gale (Rudanko 2019: 29; on this property of agentless passives, see also Fowler 1991: 78). It is then no accident that it is the narrative in the Federal Republican that backgrounds the responsibility of the Federalists inside the house for the killing of Dr. Gale, by means of the linguistic choices made. It was noted in Chap. 2, drawing on work by de Saussure (2005) and Oswald et al. (2016), that manipulative and deceptive communication serves specific goals. The overall political agenda of the Federal Republican was to promote Hanson and his supporters and their views, and the backgrounding of the responsibility of these Federalists for the killing of Dr. Gale can be understood in the context of the agenda of the newspaper.

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3.2.2  Later Articles in the Federal Republican, from August to October 1812 Following the issue to August 3, 1812, the events at the jail were repeatedly featured prominently and sharply condemned in articles published in the Federal Republican in August 1812. The “massacre” frame continued to be featured in such articles. To illustrate, here is an extract from an article, originally published by the Boston Messenger, reprinted in Hanson’s newspaper later in August, 1812. Except the bloody massacre of the 9th of September in Paris, we know of no murder stamped with more distinct marks of cruelty and treachery than this outrage at Baltimore. The persons murdered were unarmed, and in a peculiar manner placed under the protection of the laws. Confiding in the promises of the magistrates, they had surrendered their arms and submitted to the jurisdiction of the country, though they had offended against no laws; the civil authority was bound to protect them; but suffered them to be sacrificed. Even the immunity of a prison could not save them from their bloody assassins. (Federal Republican, August 14, 1812)

Words and phrases conforming to the “massacre” frame, including bloody, murder, cruelty, treachery, outrage, and bloody assassins, abound in the short extract. Such expressions reinforce the narrative initiated in the issue of August 3, 1812, emphasizing the outrageous nature of the behavior of the mob and the failure of the authorities to protect them. Here it is also possible to refer to the notion of “narrative accrual,” devised by Bruner (1991: 18). As Bruner notes, narrative accrual may create a “history” of an event, which may well have been an objective on Hanson’s part, even if at a subconscious level. In the weeks following the incident at the jail the newspaper also gave space to resolutions adopted by meetings of citizens that were in line with Hanson’s views. A repeated theme had to do with what the Federal Republican took to be the broader context of the incident at the jail, with the incident being taken as a threat to the very form of government of the country. Here is an extract from August 17, 1812, reporting a resolution adopted by a meeting of citizens of Charles County: Resolved, That the right to investigate the measures of the General Government is guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States to its citizens, as the only means of preserving our political freedom; and that

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every attempt, by the agency of a Mob, to impair this right, tends directly to the prostration of our Republican Government and the erection of a horrible Despotism. (Federal Republican, August 17, 1812)

Two further resolutions from another meeting of citizens may also be cited, because their themes were repeatedly featured on the pages of the Federal Republican in August 1812: Resolved. That the Liberty of Speech and of the Press, ought to be inviolably preserved. Resolved. That the Thanks of this assembly are due to ALEXANDER C. HANSON and his Heroic Companions, who with unexampled bravery and magnanimity risked their lives in defence of this Palladium of our Rights, this surest safeguard against the subversion of our constitution, and the establishment of tyranny on its ruins. (Federal Republican, August 19, 1812)

Such articles in the Federal Republican with laudatory references to Hanson and with the events in Baltimore presented as a stand against the “subversion of our constitution, and the establishment of tyranny” can be viewed as part of his election campaign. On September 7, 1812, Hanson published a long letter, addressed to the voters of the “Congressional district composed of Montgomery and part of Frederick,” to advocate his candidacy even more directly. Here is the first paragraph of the letter: My late attempt to restore the Right of Opinion and revive the Liberty of the Press in Maryland, has been grossly misrepresented. I learn that great pains are taken to poison your minds with injurious doubts, regarding the motives, legality and prudence of my conduct in that transaction. The effects, which I still feel, from the brutal violence of the newly created authorities in Baltimore, and the continued and successful persecution of the appointed guardians of your rights and liberties, prevent me from meeting you in person. I am, therefore, compelled to adopt this mode of addressing you, with a view of counteracting, and I trust successfully, these insidious efforts. (Federal Republican, September 7, 1812)

The beginning of the letter may be seen as an effort on Hanson’s part to establish a frame for conceptualizing the events of July 27 and 28, 1812, and Hanson’s part in them. In particular, he characterizes his actions as an “attempt to restore the Right of Opinion and revive the Liberty of the Press

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in Maryland.” He thus sought to represent his actions as serving the cause of freedom of speech, likely to resonate among many of his constituents. After the opening paragraph Hanson turned to his motives in more detail: My motives, however they may be misinterpreted by my enemies, or misunderstood by some who wish well to me and the cause in which I am engaged, I can safely and do solemnly declare, were disinterested, honorable and patriotic. It is true, the personal interests of the proprietors of the Federal Republican might have been materially promoted by its revival in the place whence it had been driven by violence. But I was actuated by far higher motives than the hope of profit or pecuniary recompense. I had been nurtured in the belief, derived from the earliest precepts of a beloved ancestor, who was himself a conspicuous actor in that revolution which bestowed liberty and independence on his and my native land, that without the Liberty of the Press and the unrestrained Freedom of political enquiry, those invaluable blessings, so dearly bought and so fondly cherished, could not long be preserved. I had seen the liberty of the press violated in my person and in establishment […] To reinstate the establishment I considered the only effectual method of repairing the losses sustained, while at the same time would be closed the breach thus made in the rampart of liberty. (Federal Republican, September 7, 1812)

At the beginning of the extract Hanson makes a confession of sorts, that he might have derived some financial benefit from re-establishing the newspaper. The confession is at least ostensibly in the nature of a proleptic argument: As Walton has pointed out, “[p]roleptic argumentation … refers to the anticipation and answering of an objection or opposed argument before one’s opponent has actually put it forward” (Walton 2008: 143). The example illustrates how a speaker engaging in proleptic argumentation can choose and formulate the opposing argument that he or she wishes to answer. Hanson is then able easily to dispose of the argument that he chose to formulate, and to go on to say that he was “actuated by far higher motives,” namely, to ensure the “Liberty of the Press and the unrestrained Freedom of political enquiry.” At this point it is helpful again to invoke the concept of an informal fallacy in order to shed light on the way Hanson presents his motives. In the present case the interaction was primarily between Alexander Hanson, on the one hand, and the readers of the newspaper, especially those who were voting in the forthcoming elections, on the other. As for goals, Hanson’s

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goal, it seems possible to say, was to support his candidacy and the candidacies of likeminded Federalists, whereas the goal of the readers of the article was primarily to learn more about the candidate, in order to make an informed choice. To consider the concept of an informal fallacy with respect to Hanson’s comments on his motives in his letter in the issue of the Federal Republican of September 7, 1812, the argument from alternatives may be invoked. Walton et al. (2008) offer a helpful analysis of its properties as an argumentation scheme. Major premise: Either X or Y can be the case. Minor premise: X is plausibly not the case. Conclusion: Y is plausibly the case. (Walton 2008 et al.: 318)

In the present case, X refers to pecuniary considerations as a motive for Hanson’s actions and Y concerns his desire to restore the freedom of the press. Hanson disposes of X, pecuniary considerations, and then concludes that Y, that his desire was to restore the freedom of the press. However, it is not clear that Hanson includes all his motives for his actions leading up to the confrontation at the house in Charles Street in his letter. He mentions two, and dismisses the first, then talks at length about the second one, without mentioning any further motive. The implicature here is then that those two were his only conceivable motives, or rather that the second one was, since he dismissed the first one. But it should also be borne in mind that Hanson had a goal with his letter: his goal was to gather support for his candidacy for Congress, and as a candidate he would not have wanted to mention disreputable motives that might have harmed his election campaign. The fact is that Hanson rented a “militarily defensible” (Buel 2005: 162) house in Baltimore, assembled a group of Federalists in the house and armed them with weapons and ammunition, and then distributed, with others, a new issue of his newspaper. The question is whether he might have been trying deliberately to provoke an incident and the loss of life. In spite of its length, Hanson’s letter of September 7, 1812, does not offer relevant information on how a group of armed Federalists came to gather in the house in Charles Street on July 27, 1812. However, the question is of importance from the point of view of understanding the events of July 27, 1812. It is clear that the group of Federalists did not gather in the house in Charles Street by accident. Fortunately, some letters

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have survived from Federalists who were in the loop, so to speak, when Hanson was planning and preparing his Charles Street operation. The Federal Republican did not publish such letters, as far as the present investigator has been able to determine, but there were other newspapers, notable Republican newspapers, that did publish them in August 1812. These newspapers included the Eastern Shore General Advertiser, which was published in Easton, Md. Among Hanson’s correspondents in the days preceding July 27, 1812, were John H. Thomas and John Lynn, both of them being prominent in Federalist politics in Maryland and close to Hanson at that time. Thomas wrote more than one letter between June 22, 1812 and July 27, 1812 to Hanson. In an early letter he called for Federalists to be “immediately rallied” (Eastern Shore General Advertiser, August 11, 1812), but a later letter, dated July 24, 1812, was different in tone. He first expressed his “regret” and “mortification” for not being able to assist Hanson’s “enterprise” in Baltimore, and then went on: You will act advisedly, and take care, should it become necessary, not to use force, that is deadly force, until the attempts of the assailants will justify you in the eye of the law: for I wish your triumph in case of a resort to extremities to be certain and complete so that you shall be sustained, in any event, by the laws of the land, as well as the principles of honor. (Eastern Shore General Advertiser, August 11, 1812)

Thomas’s perceived need to emphasize the “laws of the land” in the letter sounds a cautionary note about Hanson’s scheme. For his part, John Lynn went into some specific details about the scheme in his correspondence with Hanson. In his letter to Alexander Hanson dated July 19, 1812, he wrote about preparing the house in Charles Street, which was to become the scene of the unrest on June 27, 1812. The letter came to be published in a number of newspapers in August 1812. An extract is given here: Secrecy and great caution will be necessary until the party are actually in possession of the house. In the first place, there ought (according to the size of the house) to be a full quantity of gallant men to defend it at every door, window, &c. muskets with the bayonets, and a plenty of good pistols, with a large store of ammunition. Let there be a plenty of buckshot provided for close work, and when they reach closer still, (which will never be, I believe, but it is always best to be well prepared) I would advise that a store of tomahawks

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or hatchets, with dirks for every man, be provided. (Eastern Shore General Advertiser, August 11, 1812)

The letter sheds some light on the nature of Hanson’s scheme for the house in Charles Street. It indicates that considerable planning went into the setting up and arming of the group of Federalists in the house, and that the deadly weapons were collected in order to be used. The most significant warning to Hanson before the unrest in Charles Street came from Augustus Taney, another prominent Maryland Federalist. His letter to Hanson, from July 24, 1812, was also published in several newspapers in August 1812, in the aftermath of the unrest. He began his letter by mentioning several Federalists by name who would not be coming to the house in Charles Street for various reasons to take part in Hanson’s scheme, including John H. Thomas and John Lynn, and then saying that “[w]hen the scheme was first mentioned to me, I stated my objections to it, I believe, to you [Hanson], as well as others” (Eastern Shore General Advertiser, August 11, 1812). After mentioning that he had talked about the scheme to his brother, he went on: I presume none have entered into this plan, supposing, for a moment, that there could be any danger after the battle was over; but upon conversing with my brother, he seems clearly of opinion, that to fire upon the assailants before other means of putting them out of the house, have been used, would be unlawful, and subject to the punishment of manslaughter. Thus in protecting the laws, we should be violating them: […] I have concluded not to go on to Baltimore, as I could not act in such a plan. I hope you yourself will take a fuller view of subject. If the mob should rise to pull down the press in George Town, the mayor or the magistrates may and will be induced to do their duty. We shall then act under the authority of the law, & the feelings of the people will go along with us; but this will seem too much like a plan to provoke an attack, that we may take into our own hands the sword of justice, and you know this the law will not allow. (Eastern Shore General Advertiser, August 11, 1812)

Taney’s letter indicates that Federalists had been discussing opening fire on protesters, and it was published in several newspapers in August 1812 (Cutler 2019: 174). It is reasonable to think that the long letter that Hanson published in the Federal Republican on September 7, 1812, was in fact in response to the publication of Taney’s letter, as Cutler (2019: 173) argues. (At the same time, Lynn’s letter had likewise been made

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public and Hanson was also facing a trial for manslaughter at the time, which may also have been a factor. He was acquitted only after the election.) From Taney’s letter it is not possible to infer all the details of the scheme that Hanson had in mind regarding the use of the house in Charles Street, but it is clear from the reference to manslaughter that Taney viewed the scheme as involving a violation of the law and an acute threat of violence, with imminent loss of life. Taney made it clear that he was not taking part, and the letter was also a warning to Hanson not to pursue his scheme. Renzulli (1972: 273–274) mentions the letters by Lynn and Taney in a footnote, without commenting on their contents, but even on the basis of Thomas’s letter he writes that Thomas’s warning is “indicative of what the Federalists expected when they attempted to re-establish themselves in the city” (Renzulli 1972: 274; on Federalist disapproval of Hanson, see also Scharf 1879: 5). It is clear from the contents of Lynn’s and Taney’s letters that Hanson and the group around him were expecting an assault and an armed confrontation with loss of life. It bears adding that General Lee,4 a Federalist who was among those assembled in the house, is recorded as writing to Hanson a few days before the confrontation that this time the “Federalists would ‘die or conquer’” (Renzulli 1972: 274). The Federalists who Hanson gathered in the house were clearly expecting trouble, and under these circumstances it is possible to think that they, or at least Hanson and Lee, were intending to provoke a violent confrontation with their opponents with their Charles Street operation. Taney’s remark that Hanson’s scheme “will seem like a plan to provoke an attack” supports such an interpretation of Hanson’s intention and his operation, and Lynn’s letter points in the same direction. One might seek to subsume a scheme to provoke a violent confrontation with loss of life under a narrative of pursuing the larger and more reputable objective of defending freedom of speech, but at the same time, the specific actions that Hanson took in preparing for an armed confrontation make it important to draw attention to the possibility of a less reputable aspect of his intentions, since, as Taney noted, it would be wrong to “take into our hands the sword of justice.” It should be borne in mind that Hanson was an extreme Federalist,5 and his co-editor Robert Wagner had worked in the State Department under the Arch-Federalist Timothy Pickering before Pickering was dismissed by the Federalist President John Adams. Further, the account of the confrontation written for, and published in, Hanson’s own newspaper speaks of prostrating hundreds of the assailants:

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The laws of nature and of society sanctioned the employment of the means which were in our hands of prostrating some hundreds of the miscreants … but the suggestions of humanity prevailed with the veterans who commanded … (Federal Republican, August 3, 1812)

The comment suggests that Hanson did believe, contrary for instance to Augustus Taney’s views, as expressed in the letter to Hanson, that the “laws of nature of nature and of society” justified the killing of “some hundreds” of people. If Hanson did have an intention of provoking a confrontation on July 27, 1812, it would have been what may be termed a covert intention from the point of view of his letter of September 7, 1812, that is, an intention that he sought to keep hidden in the letter. (For the notion of a covert intention, see the comments in Chap. 2.) The reason for wishing to keep it hidden in the letter was the incriminating nature of the covert intention: if Hanson was seeking a confrontation, he was at least partly responsible for the violence that ensued. As was noted in Chap. 2, the key question in the study of covert goals and purposes concerns the basis on which it is possible to ascribe covert intentions to speakers. In attributing covert intentions to speakers and in assessing such intentions, it is important to pay close attention to an “optimally complete behavior record” of the speaker in question, as Grimshaw (1990: 281) has emphasized. In the present case, what gives warrant to ascribing a covert intention to Hanson is his fanaticism and his extremism, which are apparent from his readiness to kill “some hundreds” of opponents. Further, his close relations with the British side are a matter of historical record, for he was the publisher of a pamphlet in 1810 that was based on materials that he had received from James Jackson, the British minister to Washington, and the “British government, which may even have paid for its publication” (Burns 2011: 144). It may be added that Hanson had carried on a “voluminous correspondence” with the British minister “concerning American affairs” (Schauinger 1940: 354–355) and that the Federal Republican had been used as an outlet or conduit of ideas and stories supplied by Jackson (see Fisher 1935). Further, the warnings issued by John H. Thomas and Augustus Taney, who, similarly to Hanson, were Federalists, indicate that an outbreak of violence was seen as a possible outcome of Hanson’s plan. There is no way of finding out with absolute certainty, some two centuries later, what went on in Hanson’s mind as he set up the “Tory Garrison,” as Republicans called it, in a house in Baltimore. However,

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because of his extremism, his background of close collaboration with the British, the evidence of the letters by Thomas, Lynne and Taney in the days preceding July 27, 1812, and his readiness, by his own admission, to kill hundreds of opponents, contrary to the advice that he got for instance from his fellow Federalist Augustus Taney, it is possible to think that one motive for his behavior may have been a desire to provoke a confrontation with his opponents, risking the loss of life. There is therefore some warrant for a narrative of the unrest of July 27, 1812, that differs from Hanson’s public narrative in that it also assigns a degree of responsibility for the violence on that day to the Federalists in the house in Charles Street. As the Eastern Shore General Advertiser put it on August 18, 1812, “[t]hat the plan [Hanson’s plan] was murderous in the intent the preparations and issue have fully proven.” From a broader discourse analysis perspective, the present discussion draws attention to the need in textual analysis to examine the “text in terms of what is present and what could have been but is not present” (Richardson 2007: 38; emphasis in the original). In the present case, the modal could in the quotation may be modulated to the modal should. Hanson’s letter of September 7, 1812, shows how a narrative constructed in accordance with a political agenda leads to a representation of an event that suppresses particular aspects that would have been germane to the understanding of the event. In this case Hanson suppressed pertinent information about the question of how the confrontation came about, especially information about the nature of his correspondence with other Federalists in setting up the house in Charles Street and in collecting deadly weapons for those Federalists whom he had persuaded to occupy the house with him. In suppressing such pertinent information Hanson was covertly violating the cooperative principle and the maxim of Quantity, part 1. Drawing on de Saussure (2005), as in the previous chapter, it is also possible to say that Hanson was engaging in manipulative discourse. The suppression of information was no doubt dictated by Hanson’s political agenda in his campaign for Congress. (As Renzulli observes, Taney’s letter indirectly marks Hanson and his helpers as “little more than criminals” Renzulli 1972: 306.) The episode thus highlights the need for readers to maintain epistemic vigilance, to use the term from Sperber et al. (2010; see also Sperber 2000: 135–137), introduced in Chap. 2, when evaluating political statements. It also highlights the need for the free dissemination of information, because if the Federal Republican and other Federalist newspapers following its stance were the only source of

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information on the events of 1812, the letters by Thomas, Lynn and Taney would probably never have been published. In the same letter in the Federal Republican on September 7, 1812, Hanson also commented on two types of prudence: To save our country from impending danger, so far as may depend on individual exertions is also a duty, and what danger more terrible than when the sentinels who guard the citadel of freedom are destroyed or intimidated by its enemies. These are sacred duties, which in my humble sphere, I was called on to fulfill, & I am yet to learn when duty calls, that the cold calculating suggestions of what is called prudence are to outweigh imperious obligations—not that enlarged and exalted wisdom which having resolved on noble and honorable or necessary purposes, wisely scans the best means for its attainment, but that little short sighted narrow policy, which cloaks fear under the disguise of discretion, and weighs the injunctions of duty against the danger of performance. This was not the prudence of Washington, Hamilton, Hancock, Pickering, and the other worthies who achieved our revolution. It would have been more conformable to the dictates of this kind of prudence for our indiscreet forefathers to pay an inconsiderable duty on painter’s colours, tea, and stamps, than to risk their lives and fortunes in a contest with a nation possessing ten times their force. (Federal Republican, September 7, 1812)

Hanson here reaffirms General Lee’s statement “die or conquer,” quoted above. At the same time he seeks to place his actions on the level of what he regards as the heroes of the American War of Independence. Regarding Hanson’s list of heroes, no-one would question the names of Washington, Hamilton and Hancock in the list, but one might balk at Pickering, who has been associated with the merciless and partisan enforcement of the Sedition Act of 1798. But setting this aspect of the list aside, the larger argument may be viewed as a fallacy. To identify the fallacy, it seems helpful to begin with the well-recognized fallacy of “guilt by association.” This fallacy is represented by Walton (1998: 257). a is a member of or is associated with group G, which should be morally condemned. Therefore a is a bad person. Therefore a’s argument α should not be accepted. (Walton 1998: 257)

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The fallacy in Hanson’s letter may then be viewed as the positive counterpart of the fallacy of “guilt by association,” and the fallacy is here called “self-elevation by association.” As far as the present author is aware, it has not been discussed in the literature, but it seems possible to construct an analysis of it on the basis of Walton’s representation of the fallacy of “guilt by association.” a is a member of or is associated with group G, which should be commended, Therefore a is a good person. Therefore a’s argument should be accepted.

The nature of the association between Hanson and Washington and the others might be that they were all Federalists, or, perhaps more plausibly, that Hanson’s actions, in his view, were similar to those of Washington and the others. The critical question is whether the actions were really similar, and whether Hanson can be associated with Washington and the others. In the next paragraph of his letter Hanson seemingly disavows or retracts the association set up in the paragraph considered above. Here is an extract: Far be it from me to place my name, my humble name, and my feeble endeavors, on a level with those illustrious patriots, I have been taught to look up to for examples of virtue, and who, spurning the dictates of a low and sordid prudence, bravely, wisely, and successfully resisted, at every hazard, the first encroachments of tyranny. But though I dare not hope ever to emulate their glory, much less to equal their usefulness, I may be allowed to act upon their principles whenever [one word illegible] occasions may be presented. It is too true these occasions have abounded within the last few years … (Federal Republican, September 7, 1812)

Hanson thus denies wishing to place himself on the same level with “those illustrious patriots,” and it seems appropriate here to invoke the rhetorical figure of paralipsis. Paralipsis is the name of the “device by which a speaker draws attention to a topic by claiming not to speak of that very same topic” (Greene et al. 2012). It may also be viewed as a “rhetorical device by which a speaker draws attention to an idea that he pretends to pass over” (Crosby 2013: 121). Crosby’s reference to pretension seems relevant in the present case, since Hanson goes on to reaffirm an association with the “illustrious patriots,” based on acting “upon the same

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principles.” In a comment on paralipsis, Crosby also refers to the potential “spell-binding power” of the device: the “speaker creates the illusion of an idea while undermining any critical discussion of it” (Crosby 2013: 123). In the present case, Hanson’s invocation of the “illustrious patriots” seems in line with, and perhaps a play on, the “spell-binding power” of paralipsis. From a less abstract point of view, the concept of a “narrative of belonging” has been associated with a Congressional candidate highlighting his local roots or his connections with ordinary people (Duranti 2006), and the association with the “illustrious patriots” in Hanson’s case may also be seen as a variant of the theme of belonging. In later issues in September 1812 the Federal Republican published further resolutions and declarations from meetings of citizens in various localities, and these typically included statements that were highly laudatory of Hanson, similarly to those published in August 1812. For instance, the issue of September 14, 1812, contained a declaration adopted by a meeting of citizens in Frederick County, which included the following statement: That, under a great and devout acknowledgement of the merciful interposition of Divine goodness, we tender our sincere and fervent congratulations to Alexander Contee Hanson, Esq., and his gallant band of associates, for the providential preservation of their lives from the tortures through which they have passed with unexampled fortitude, and from the perils they encountered, after being assailed in the dwelling house, in a manly, lawful and heroic stand for the defence of constitutional privileges, the liberty of the press, and the civil and sacred immunities appertaining to the domestic asylum of every free citizen consecrated and guaranteed by the Bill of rights of Maryland, … (Federal Republican, September 14, 1812)

The statement on Hanson goes one step further from comments featured above in that it now invokes Divine intervention in favor of Hanson and his associates. The elections to the House of Representatives in Maryland took place on October 12, 1812 (Dubin 1998), and close to the election, on October 2, 1812, the Federal Republican published an article that may be regarded as another chapter in Hanson’s election campaign. This article has a focus on France and the relations of the Madison administration with France, and it uses a circular handed out to travelers in Calais to develop an argument against Republicans. Here is the first paragraph:

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The first effects of the fatal war declared against Great Britain, of a tendency to render us the vassals of France, are manifest in the copy of the Prefect’s Circular, delivered in July last to the Americans departing from Calais. That it may meet with more than ordinary attention, and excite those sentiments of alarm and indignation, which it is so well calculated to produce, we republish it. (Federal Republican, October 2, 1812)

The author of the article then endeavors to establish the authenticity of the document. As for its contents, the article in the Federal Republican gives the following quote from the French document: I am charged by my government to inform you, that it will endeavor to protect those, who keep within the bounds of reason, in proportion as it will punish those, who, carried away by unruly passions, partaking of the rage of our enemies, spread alarming reports of France, and by false conjectures engender animosity. The eyes of France are turned to the new world as well as this, and the hero who governs her, knows well how to distinguish the friends of peace and concord from the enemies. (Federal Republican, October 2, 1812; the emphasis in the original)

The Federal Republican takes the following to be the substance of the document: Since the war and alliance, Bonaparte has turned his attention to this side of the Atlantic, and means to take cognizance of our thoughts and actions.— He will protect those who are for him, and will punish those who are against him. Such is the substance of this official paper. (Federal Republican, October 2, 1812; emphasis in the original)

In a later paragraph of the same article the Federal Republican gives its take on what the document means by “protect and punish”: But how will he protect and punish? Where are his instruments? Where are they! Look to those who have cotemporaneously held the same language upon the same subject. How many men in high stations have we heard using the same threats. These are surely his instruments, who bear his marks upon them. Those are the men, who declared that all opposition to the war with England must be hushed. These are the men who have conspired against the liberty of speech & of the press; who have threatened hanging, assassination, and tar & feathers; who, on a recent occasion, dyed the city of Baltimore with blood, proscribed the innocent, and murdered the revolutionary

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patriot, or justified those who did. By such men Hanging Societies are formed, Yes! Hanging Societies, … (Federal Republican, October 2, 1812; emphasis in the original)

The extract contains strong language against the actions of the Baltimore mob and against major Republicans, including the editors of the National Intelligencer, which had in its issue of May 14, 1812 stated that once war is declared, “disaffection must be hushed.” The schema of “guilt by association” may be invoked here to describe the argument in this part of the article in the Federal Republican. Major Republicans have used the same language as Napoleon, whose language should be condemned. Napoleon is a bad person. Major Republicans are bad persons and the instruments of Napoleon.

The argument is a fallacy because even if a person uses language similar to the language of another person, it does not follow that the person becomes an instrument of the other person. However, there is another type of argument involved in the extract, when the article claims that major Republicans “have conspired against the liberty of speech & of the press.” This may be seen as an argument from fear appeal. The structure of such an argument is more complex than that of “guilt by association,” but Walton et  al. (2008) present the following helpful argumentation scheme: Premise 1: If you do not bring about A, then D will occur. Premise 2: D is very bad for you. Premise 3: Therefore, you ought to prevent D if possible. Premise 4: But the only way for you to prevent D is to bring about A. Conclusion: Therefore, you ought to bring about A. (Walton et al. 2008: 333–334)

The symbol “A” in Walton’s scheme stands for an action that the proponent (speaker) wants the respondent (audience) to undertake, and the symbol “D” stands for “danger,” a bad outcome from the point of view of the audience (see Walton 2000: 22). As Walton (2000: 23) notes, A typically denotes something more immediate than D, with the latter designating a “long-term consequence that may well occur at some future, unspecified time.”

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Applying the argumentation scheme of the argument from fear to the present scenario and limiting the discussion to the first danger mentioned by Hanson, it is possible to offer the following representation: Premise 1: If you do not bring about a Federalist victory, then freedom of speech will be lost. Premise 2: Loss of freedom of speech is very bad for you. Premise 3: Therefore you ought to prevent the loss of freedom of speech. Premise 4: But the only way to prevent the loss of freedom of speech is to bring about a Federalist victory. Conclusion: Therefore, you ought to vote for the Federalists.

A critical question then concerns the status of one or more of the premises. In particular, premise 4 may be called into question. It is appropriate here to quote part of the editorial of the National Intelligencer from August 13, 1812, published weeks before the Federal Republican article: We trust we never shall be, as we have never been, the advocates of riots, mobs, or any other illegal assemblies of people, nor of violence of any description, but more especially of that which is directed against the freedom of the press. This is one of those unalienable rights which, as republicans, we will always support, and, as conductors of a press, if attempted to be violated thro’ us, we will not cease to defend to the last extremity. This is a doctrine we have always maintained, and we defy any man, be he friend or foe, to exhibit a line from our pen breathing a thought to the contrary. Entertaining these sentiments, we have cordially united with all good citizens in deprecating the events which have lately taken place at Baltimore; but our sympathies have not been of that convenient character that expands or contracts, as the enormities by which they are attracted assume one or another political hue. (National Intelligencer, August 13, 1812)

The first paragraph of the extract from the National Intelligencer unambiguously condemns the violence in Baltimore, and the second paragraph reminds readers how Republicans had fought hard to maintain freedom of expression and the First Amendment some fifteen years earlier, when the Federalist Adams administration had introduced the Sedition Act of 1798, which had been used to suppress Republican newspapers and even a Republican Congressman, with Hanson’s hero Pickering being among the most active in persecuting Republicans. The article in the Federal Republican appeared several weeks later than the article in the National

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Intelligencer, but the author of the later article took no notice of the earlier article. Of course, high-sounding principles mean little if they are not put into practice. It is therefore important to note that the sentiments of the National Intelligencer were already being put into effect in Baltimore: when the August 3, 1812 issue of the Federal Republican, with further sharp criticism of Republicans, reached the post office in Baltimore, a crowd gathered near the building. However, after some verbal exchanges the militia “easily” dispersed the crowd (Hickey 2012: 62). The Republican authorities in Baltimore thus safeguarded the freedom of the press in Baltimore. Later issues of the Federal Republican were also freely distributed in Baltimore. By October 2, 1812 no militia were needed any more, but there can be little doubt, because of what had happened on August 3, 1812, that, if necessary, the Republican authorities in Baltimore would likewise have safeguarded the free distribution of the October 2, 1812, issue of the Federal Republican in Baltimore. The editorial in the Federal Republican makes no mention of the fact that after the unrest on July 27 and 28, 1812, the free distribution of the Federal Republican had been safeguarded by the authorities in Baltimore. The article was no doubt part of Hanson’s campaign, and from his point of view he did not want to engage with what the Republican authorities had been doing to safeguard public order and freedom of speech ever since the unrest. However, from the point of view of his audience, it would have served the purposes of the dialogue better if he had done so, even if only to cast doubt on whether it was safe to think that the Republican authorities would continue to safeguard the distribution of Hanson’s newspaper after the election. As it is, premise 4 of the argument had become questionable in the weeks after August 3, 1812, suggesting that the argument from fear may be fallacious in the present case. The editorial of the Federal Republican of October 2, 1812, concludes with a reference to the upcoming elections in Maryland: The most intractable mind is thus compelled to acquiesce in the belief that this threat was bottomed upon a real foundation of power established among us. Of its solidity and duration, we shall be able to form a better judgment in a few weeks hence, when the effects of the past upon public opinion will have been tested. (Federal Republican, October 2, 1812)

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Hanson was duly elected to a seat in the House of Representatives about a week later. He took the seat of a retiring Federalist.

3.3   Conclusion Hanson’s position as an editor of a major Federalist newspaper makes it possible to shed light on the nature of his campaign in more detail than is the case with many other Congressional campaigns in the early American Republic. He may have campaigned in other ways, but such other ways are difficult or impossible to substantiate today, and the present investigation is restricted to considering articles published in his newspaper. From the articles surveyed above it is clear that Hanson’s campaign was dominated by national themes. If the narrative of belonging is invoked with reference to his campaign, he did not highlight his associations with the particular district, preferring to link himself to well-known national figures. Another reflex of the national character of the campaign is that Hanson paid little or no attention to his Republican opponent in his campaign rhetoric. On the other hand, the unrest in Baltimore, especially the serious incidents of July 27 and 28, 1812, had aroused considerable interest beyond Maryland, and it provided the backdrop for much of his campaign. In the aftermath of the unrest Hanson’s narrative put an emphasis on what was viewed as the outrageous behavior of the mob, contrasted with what was presented as the faultless actions of the Federalists in the house in Charles Street. With respect to the killing of Dr. Gale, it was shown how the narrative in the Federal Republican was designed to obscure the agency of the group of Federalists in the house for the killing. Another aspect of Hanson’s narrative was his endeavor to exonerate himself from any blame for the unrest in Baltimore, instead framing his actions in establishing the armed group of Federalists in the house in Charles Street as necessary and the only alternative in order to defend freedom of speech. He must have been well aware of anti-British and pro-war feeling in Baltimore after the declaration of war, but he still went ahead with arming a group of Federalists in the house that he and Wagner had rented in Baltimore. A discussion of surviving letters from the time preceding the unrest, written by Federalists in Maryland closely associated with Hanson at the time, suggests that the group of Federalists who established themselves in the house in Charles Street, with weapons and ammunition, might have been seeking a violent confrontation with those who were expected to gather

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outside. If this was the case, it was proposed that Hanson may have used the argument from alternatives in a fallacious way. The proposal relies on the purposive quality of speech acts and on the assumption that it is legitimate for the analyst to make inferences about covert intentions and motives of speakers when seeking to understand the nature of interactional moves. Even if such inferences cannot be made with absolute certainty, participants engaging in dialogic interaction undoubtedly make them, with varying degrees of confidence, which means that the analyst should be open to taking them into account in his or her analytic approach. Whatever his degree of responsibility or blame for the events in Charles Street, in his narrative Hanson used the events at the jail as an opportunity to represent the actions of the mob as a threat to freedom of speech more generally. He repeatedly sought to associate major Republicans with the mob violence in Baltimore as part of his narrative of the unrest. There was no evidence of direct involvement of the Republican party in Maryland in the violence, nor of any involvement of the national Republican administration in it, but Hanson still used the issue as a prominent part of his campaign. He also sought to portray the national Republican administration as an instrument of Napoleon. It is suggested here that the theory of informal fallacies again can shed light on the nature of the rhetoric that Hanson used. The fallacies included the well-known fallacies of “guilt by association” and the “fallacy from fear,” and the new, or less well-known, fallacy of “self-elevation by association.” This study reveals that Hanson conducted his campaign by employing highly partisan rhetoric. Seeking to capitalize on the unrest in Baltimore, he was intent on portraying the leaders of the other party as seeking to abolish basic freedoms. From the point of view of freedom of speech, it is noteworthy that the Republican authorities in Baltimore protected and safeguarded the free distribution of Hanson’s newspaper in spite of its highly harsh rhetoric. The study also suggests that fallacy theory offers a way to analyze Hanson’s overblown rhetoric. This study naturally invites further work on political campaigns in the early American Republic and the use of informal fallacies in their study. This chapter also invites further work on the role of different and conflicting frames and narratives in the linguistic construction of other real-world events and on the role of political agendas involved in such frames and narratives.

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Notes 1. For fuller accounts of the unrest in Charles Street and at the jail, see Scharf (1874), Cassell (1975: 247–256), Hickey (2012: 56–60) and Cutler (2019: Chapter 7 to Chapter 13). 2. On the content and use of the term “narrative,” see also Richardson (2007: 71–74) and De Fina and Johnstone (2015). 3. For a fuller comparison of the two articles dealing with the same incident, one from the Federal Republican and the other from the National Intelligencer, a leading Republican newspaper, see the discussion in Rudanko (2019). 4. General Henry Lee, a Virginian, had served with distinction in the Revolutionary War, but had later had financial problems and had only “recently emerged from prison” (Burstein and Isenberg 2013: 512; see also Heidler and Heidler 1997). 5. Taylor (2010) makes this comment regarding Alexander Contee Hanson: “Only a fool or a brave man would publish a Federalist paper in Republican Baltimore, and Alexander Contee Hanson was both” (Taylor 2010: 177).

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CHAPTER 4

Attacks on the Madison Administration in the Federal Republican in Early 1813

4.1   Introduction The present chapter considers and illustrates the nature of verbal attacks on the Republican administration headed by James Madison in the Federal Republican in the first four months of 1813, from January 1 to April 30, 1813. The time period was chosen for two reasons. It follows the successful conclusion of Alexander Contee Hanson’s campaign in 1812 for a seat in the House of Representatives and it is also a period from the first year of the War of 1812. It is reasonable to think on common sense grounds that if the Republican administration had been contemplating the introduction of a sedition act for the duration of the war, they would have acted early, rather than late, in the course of the War of 1812. In a sense the chapter has the objective of shedding light on the writings in a Federalist paper that might have given a rationale for the introduction of a sedition act. This study does not cover the full range of the Federalist press, but the reputation of the Federal Republican as a fiercely partisan Federalist newspaper gives warrant to the assumption that writings in this newspaper might represent an important strand of writings likely to have been considered by the Republican administration, if they had wanted to introduce a sedition act. Another reason for choosing the Federal Republican for investigation is that in this way it is possible to continue the focus on the editorial statements in that newspaper that was initiated in the previous chapter. A practical consideration is that as far as the present author is © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Rudanko, Fallacies and Free Speech, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67877-7_4

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aware, articles in the Federal Republican for that period have not been studied before in the literature. The study draws its material from editorials of the Federal Republican for the time period selected. Each issue of the newspaper almost invariably contained an editorial, which was easy to identify because it appeared under the heading consisting of the word “Georgetown” and the date of the issue. Issues also often contained additional articles that were also in the nature of editorial comment, expressing evaluative judgments of a political nature, following the editorial generally on the same page, and these have also been taken into account. Separating such additional editorial comments from the editorials proper does not seem to yield any useful heuristic perspective, and the additional editorial comments have been considered together with editorials proper, without making a terminological distinction between the two. Most often issues of the newspaper during the time period selected contained four pages, and the editorials and editorial articles were commonly found on page 3 of each issue. It would be possible to adopt a chronological approach and to examine critical commentary in the newspaper on the Republican administration in each issue from the beginning of the period to its end. However, that would run the risk of being mechanistic, and it seems more suitable to organize the present discussion on the basis of the themes of the criticism. Such a theme-based approach may sometimes face a problem in that the boundaries between themes can be fuzzy, with one theme overlapping with another. However, for the most part it seems possible to identify certain themes in a fairly straightforward fashion, and a theme-based approach can be expected to highlight the preoccupations of the Federalist newspaper.

4.2   The Origins of the War and the Alleged Nature of the Republican Administration The United States was at war in 1813, following the American declaration of war on Great Britain in June 1812. As noted in Chap. 3, the declaration of war had been carried by majorities in both the House of Representatives and in the Senate, but the decisions had been by no means unanimous. Many Federalists opposed the decision and opposition to the war was especially strong in New England, particularly in Massachusetts and Connecticut. The place of publication of the Federal Republican was

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outside of New England, but the newspaper had been highly critical of the movement towards a war against Great Britain from the very beginning and the journal did not alter its stance following the declaration of war. One editorial from the period under investigation has the title “Short Answers to Short Questions” and three of the questions, with their answers, as formulated by the Federal Republican, are given in (1): (1) Question 1. “How came this war?” Answer. Mr. Madison recommended it and Congress decided it. Q. 2. “Was it ambition which declared it?” A. Yes, low, sordid, despicable ambition. The ambition to be dignified by the title of Ally of Imperial France, and to be handed down in history as an abettor in the overthrow of her powerful rival, whose empire was thought to “totter to a fall.” Q. 11. “Or is it to curry popularity with their own people; to induce you to praise them, or to vote for them?” A. Madison’s re-election was declared by his most ardent partizans to depend upon the war. He was told so, a recommendation of war demanded of him, and he was re-elected by conforming to their wishes. He was beset by a gang of treasury harpies, speculators and would-be army contractors, who enchained his reason and stifled his little remnant of patriotism. By the war they hoped to raise to a high pitch of exasperation the popular resentment and animosity against England, and thus to continue in power as they got there, by swimming upon the tide of old British antipathies. (Federal Republican, April 7, 1813)

The editorial is harshly critical of Madison and those who had advocated the declaration of war, characterizing their motives as sordid and despicable. There is no mention made of the British practice of impressment and there is no reference to British restrictions on American trade, which had been important points of friction for years before the War of 1812, and which have since then been regarded as the main causes of the war. Instead, the newspaper alleges that Madison’s “most ardent partizans” had demanded a “recommendation of war” from him, and that he had made the recommendation of war with the objective of securing his re-election. That is, that Madison had advocated war from his own selfish motives. Such a narrative was not purely Hanson’s own invention. Brant (1956) writes:

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The conjecture that Madison was coerced by the War Hawks passed into history and was widely credited until scholars of a more critical period looked for credible supporting evidence and found none. (Brant 1956: 452)

The intervention by the “partizans” was supposed to have happened in April 1812 (see Brant 1956: 453). However, Brant points out that Madison’s candidacy within his party became secure well before that, on March 7, 1812: Madison’s position within his party was insured against the only threat to it—the rival ambition of DeWitt Clinton—on March 7, when the Republicans of the Pennsylvania legislature followed Virginia’s example and selected a solid slate of Madisonian electors. (Brant 1956: 455)

While the false narrative, apparently “set off by a union of two erroneous reports,” (Brant 1956: 454) was not purely Hanson’s own invention, he was happy to embrace it, and the content of the allegation was serious in that it concerned the integrity of President Madison and of his motives. The Federal Republican also makes the charge in the extract that Madison’s “most ardent partizans”, and by extension, Madison himself, hoped by going to war to exacerbate the “popular resentment and animosity against England.” This is another serious charge concerning the motives of Republicans that lacks evidence. Further, the Federal Republican also links the reasons for the war to promoting French objectives, with the Republican administration claimed to aspire to the “title of Ally of Imperial France.” The argument represents a case of guilt by association. Bonaparte is not mentioned by name, but the reference to “Imperial France” implicates a reference to him. The argument may be represented as in (2): (2) Those supporting the War of 1812 are associated with Imperial France and Bonaparte. Imperial France and Bonaparte deserve to be condemned. Conclusion: Those supporting the War of 1812 deserve to be condemned.

The association of those supporting the War of 1812 with Bonaparte is a recurring theme in editorials in the Federal Republican. No evidence is produced for the claim that it was the ambition of those who had

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supported the declaration of war to aspire to the “title of Ally of Imperial France” and in the absence of evidence the argument lacks credibility. Another editorial offering comments on the nature of the War of 1812 proceeds by comparing that war to the American War of Independence, fought under George Washington. An extract from the beginning of the editorial is given in (3): (3) The birth day of the great founder of your republic is come. The moment is of more than ordinary importance. The contrast, which you cannot help drawing, between those virtues, which conducted you through the vicissitudes of a necessary war, and gave you peace and liberty, with the wicked prosecution of an unnecessary one, that puts both in jeopardy, cannot fail to awaken the most lively emotions. (Federal Republican, February 22, 1813)

The earlier war is thus contrasted with the present one, with the latter depicted as “unnecessary” and dangerous, and its prosecution as “wicked.” Another editorial offers a prediction of where the fate of the United States is heading in the war, which may be viewed as supplying commentary on why the war against Great Britain is unnecessary and dangerous: (4) The fate of the United States will be that of every nation, modern and ancient, that has been inveigled into a union of destiny with a perfidious tyrant. England conquered, we may read our destiny in that of the nations of the European continent: England triumphant, we shall find ourselves where we were when the war commenced, except that our resources will have been exhausted, that we shall be left like the wounded on the field of battle, groaning and crying for help—that we shall find ourselves sinking under an immense national debt, and above all, we shall then find our honor gone, our commerce, our prosperity, perhaps the integrity of this rising empire, at the mercy of a selected enemy, … (Federal Republican, January 20, 1813)

The editorial views the war as a “lose-lose” situation for the United States—if England loses, the United States will be subjugated in the manner of the nations in Europe and if England wins the war, the United States will be back to where it was before the war, except that it will have spent its resources. The “lose-lose” scenarios involve speculative

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prognostications of what may or may not happen in the future, and they are reductive, being based on the assumption that the future of the United States is solely a function of the Napoleonic wars in Europe. The Federal Republican also identified a “triumvirate” ruling America. Consider the extract in (5): (5) A Jefferson, a Madison and a Gallatin govern the destinies of the freemen of America! Buoyed up by the emotions of prejudice, passion, ambition and interest, how many have blindly followed where they have led the way? Of all the instruments they have worked with, such foreign incendiaries as Duane, Binns, Irwin and Gales have been the most prominent. The outcasts of Europe have been the cut-throats of your liberties! But you must yet be free. The Anglo-Saxon blood, that fires your frames, brooked not slavery on the other side of the Atlantic, and will not on this. The destroyer of the repose of the world, has by the blessing of Heaven, met the reward of his views.—God is just! He is the sure and final punisher of wickedness! And those who have sought to link our fate with the fate of the tyrant, must sink with him! (Federal Republican, February 22, 1813)

The author associates the triumvirate with such reprehensible qualities as prejudice, passion, and ambition. The person characterized as the “destroyer of the repose of the world” and the “tyrant” is Bonaparte, and the Republican leaders are linked to him by way of guilt by association. The lack of evidence for such an association reduces the force of the narrative and the force of the prophesy of doom for the Republican administration.

4.3   “Gulling Material” and Personal Attacks on President Madison The Federal Republican also offered comments on the way that it thought the Republican leadership sought to keep the people “subservient” to carrying on the war. Consider extract (6): (6) … there is no longer a question, that the chief reliances for carrying on the war, are dependence upon the subserviency of the people, and the effect to be produced by keeping up a constant and abundant supply of “gulling matter.” The reported fate of Gen. Winchester affords one remarkable instance. The first “authentic,” “official,” “court account,” represented the General,

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as literally torn to pieces, butchered, inhumanly mangled by the savages in the employment of the enemy. While this tale was going the rounds, no man dare deny its authenticity—to question it was conclusive proof of political impurity, and to attempt stemming the torrent, was evidence of quixotism. It turned out, in the end, that the whole tale was a fabrication, and Gen. Winchester was a prisoner, and not a hair of the head was hurt. Nevertheless, the feeling towards the British remained the same—the desired effect was produced, and the lie was as good for the purposes of its inventors, as it is bad for the character of the court & the future history of this people … (Federal Republican, March 8, 1813)

At this distance in time, it is hardly possible to prove whether the original narrative about General Winchester was based on what information there was initially available about his fate or whether it was a deliberate fabrication on the part of someone. (On General Winchester and the events after the surrender of the American troops at Frenchtown in early 1813, see Heidler and Heidler 1997: 556.) Suffice it to say that such narratives are only too familiar from later wars. A rather more elaborate scheme to deceive the public in order to maintain support for the administration is alleged by the Federal Republican to have taken place in the case of the Russian attempt at mediation in the war. In its issue of February 1, 1813, the Federal Republican had the brief item given in extract (7): (7) It is said that the Russian Minister latterly offered his mediation for the restoration of peace between the United States and Great Britain, but it was declined by Mr. Madison. (Federal Republican, February 1, 1813)

Several weeks later, on March 10, 1813, the Federal Republican came up with an editorial under the title “Russian Mediation and Peace.” The editorial included what according to the Federal Republican had been “extracted” as a quotation from the National Intelligencer from the day before. The passage in question is given in extract (8), as presented in the Federal Republican: (8) It is understood that the Emperor of Russia offered to the U. States and Great Britain, his mediation, with a view to promote peace between them, and that a communication to this effect has just been made to our govern-

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ment by Mr. Daschkoff. This proposition is believed to have originated in motives no less honorable to His Imperial Majesty, than friendly to both parties. It is to be presumed, that our government, steadily ­adhering to its principles, will not hesitate to accede to a measure which, having peace solely & simply for its object, may be beneficial, and cannot be injurious, to the U. States. (Federal Republican, March 10, 1813)

The paragraph in the Federal Republican is faithful to the original (except that the original does not have the italics). After the quotation from the National Intelligencer, the editorial in the Federal Republican goes on as in extract (9): (9) If by saying that a communication has just been made by the Russian embassy, Mr. Madison means that a communication was not made upon that subject some considerable time before the adjournment of Congress, we are at issue with his palatine highness, and refer to our files of last month which must settle the point against him, unless we are endued with the spirit of divination, and knew a month ago what Mr. Daschkoff would “just” have done yesterday. The tribe of politicians denominated gulls and jackanapes, may snap at the article in the Intelligencer as a peace augury, but its true meaning will be understood by all who understand the policy and practice of “blowing hot and cold” and are not altogether unacquainted with Mr. Madison’s character for cunning and his habitual deceit and hypocrisy. Altho’ a fact, that Mr. Madison rejected the proposed mediation of Russia more than a month ago, men of intelligence and reflection in forming their judgment, would not regard the absence or adduction of such evidence, when they know that several weeks subsequent to the “honorable” and “friendly” interposition of Russia, the message of epithets was sent to Congress and the inaugural speech delivered. (Federal Republican, March 10, 1813)

The Federal Republican then goes on to argue that the more conciliatory stance implied by the item in the National Intelligencer was motivated by political considerations, being an attempt to influence the outcome of forthcoming elections in Virginia. When one comes across this narrative in the Federal Republican for the first time, the reader may be puzzled about the alleged sequence of events and about how the Federal Republican put forward such claims. The puzzle has been solved by later historians and the narrative in the Federal Republican involves an unwarranted and tendentious construction of the

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events in question. The item of news in the Federal Republican on February 1, 1813, originated from the Russian minister Daschkoff, who had “remained at Madison’s dinner table on January 31, 1813, when the other guests withdrew,” and had expressed the thought that the “time had come for the United States to make peace with Great Britain,” but also making clear that “he had no instructions from his court” in the matter (Brant 1961: 154–155). President Madison’s reaction to that after-dinner remark is described in (10), quoted from Brant (1961): (10) The President then seemed to reflect and he said ‘I acknowledge your offer is very liberal and the moment very favorable, but will you or can you guarantee to us all the rights we claim?’ Mr. D. replied ‘That is out of my power.’ Mr. D. and the President then went into another room and joined the company. (Brant 1961: 155)

The brief conversation can hardly be regarded as an offer of mediation by Russia, since the Russian envoi did not have the appropriate instructions from his government, and it was only on February 24, 1813 that Mr. Daschkoff did have the necessary authority to offer mediation, and the offer was then promptly accepted by President Madison (cf. Brant 1961: 155). The account of the Daschkoff incident in the Federal Republican shows how news stories were sometimes manipulated in an unscrupulous way— Brant (1970: 536) uses the word “perversion”—and it illustrates “fake news,” to use a very modern term, even in the early Republic. The manipulation in question may not have become obvious for readers of the newspapers in 1813, but later research has exposed the manipulation involved on the part of the Federal Republican. For present purposes, the main point of the narrative of the Daschkoff incident in the Federal Republican illustrates the lengths to which the newspaper went in its attacks on President Madison, in seeking to defame him with expressions such as “cunning” and “habitual deceit.” The distortion in the narrative of the Federal Republican also illustrates the lengths to which the newspaper was ready to go in attempting to represent Republican announcements as “gulling material.” One more type of personal attack on President Madison is illustrated by the extract in (11):

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(11) Suppose, in accordance with the plan given in the London papers, the British should determine to destroy Baltimore, which, for the sake of the families of worth that reside there, we should sincerely lament, where and what are the preparations for defence made by Mr. Madison, who would rejoice in their sacrifice, if his popularity and that of the war, could be promoted by it? Suppose three frigates should go up the Chesapeake, and cut off the communication with Annapolis, Baltimore, and the Eastern-­Shore, where would the farmers of that rich part of Maryland, find a market for their crops? Whence would the metropolis of Maryland obtain supplies? […] None heartily concerned for the honor, dignity and security of this country, can think of these things, of the folly and infatuation of our rulers, without the strongest emotions of indignation. (Federal Republican, April 2, 1813)

The Federal Republican here speaks of the “infatuation of our rulers,” and suggests that President Madison would “rejoice” in a British attack on Baltimore, “if his popularity and that of the war, could be promoted by it.” The claim that President Madison would “rejoice” in an attack on Baltimore is another smear on his reputation and integrity, rendered all the more gratuitous by its speculative nature.

4.4   Aggravated Impoliteness Overall, the extracts above show that the Federal Republican went to great lengths in the spring of 1813 in order to bring the Republican administration of James Madison into disrepute. To shed further light on the nature of the attacks illustrated above, it is possible to invoke the concepts of impoliteness and aggravated impoliteness at this point. Both concepts designate “communicative strategies designed to attack face, and thereby cause social conflict and disharmony” (Culpeper et al. 2003: 1545). The difference between the two is a matter of degree or gradience, in that “aggravated impoliteness represents the high end of the impoliteness spectrum” (Rudanko 2017: 14). When assessing impoliteness in a text, whether aggravated or not, it is also helpful to take into account linguistic behavior that is politic, to use a term from Watts (2003). Watts writes:

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… linguistic behavior which is perceived to be appropriate to the social constraints of the on-going interaction, i.e. as non-salient, should be called politic behavior. (Watts 2003: 19)

It is not the case that every negative statement about a person or his or her opinions or actions necessarily represents an instance of impoliteness, let alone aggravated impoliteness. The “social constraints” can come into play in different ways. One obvious aspect concerns the text type of the present material. It consists of editorial comments in a newspaper that supported the Federalist opposition against the governing Republicans during the War of 1812. It is then reasonable to expect that an opposition newspaper is liable to criticize the views and actions of the party in power and that in the absence of a sedition act such criticism is neither necessarily improper nor impolite. An example from the material presented above may illustrate the point. In extract (11) above, the Federal Republican observes that there is a danger that the British might choose to attack and destroy Baltimore, causing suffering to the “families of worth that reside there,” and asks the question “where and what are the preparations for defence made by Mr. Madison.” The rhetorical question clearly invites an answer of the type that the preparations are insufficient or maybe even non-existent. However, this type of criticism seems legitimate, drawing attention to the need to prepare for an attack, and it would be questionable to view it as an instance of impoliteness, let alone of aggravated impoliteness. Regarding the type of criticism in question, it may be viewed as exhibiting “reasonable hostility,” to use a term from Tracy (2008). Also, while the speculations about future scenarios in extract 4 above are reductive, they do not rise to the level of aggravated impoliteness. By contrast, consider the relative clause following the extract just quoted “… Mr. Madison, who would rejoice in their sacrifice, if his popularity and that of the war could be promoted by it.” The claim that Mr. Madison would rejoice in the sacrifice of the families of worth who reside in Baltimore “if his popularity and that of the war could be promoted by it” concerns an emotion that might or might not be felt by Madison in a scenario in the future, and it is gratuitous and quite speculative. The only purpose of the comment appears to be to cast an unsubstantiated aspersion on Madison’s character, in order to exacerbate or boost the face threat conveyed by the politic criticism relating to the lack of defensive preparations that went before in the extract. (For the notions of exacerbating or boosting face threats, see Bousfield 2008: 72.) It should be

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recognized that conceptions of what counts as aggravated impoliteness and what counts as merely impoliteness may shift over time and may be a function of the community of practice, but it seems reasonable in the present context to apply the label of aggravated impoliteness to the comment about President Madison allegedly rejoicing in an attack on Baltimore. Because of its speculative and gratuitous nature designed to demean President Madison’s character, the statement represents “impoliteness raised to a higher degree,” to recall a characterization from Rudanko (2017: 14). Similarly, the accusation in extract (1) above that those who supported the declaration of war against Great Britain did it in order to “raise to a high pitch of exasperation the popular resentment and animosity against England” is a charge serious and unsubstantiated enough to rise to the level of aggravated impoliteness. Further, the charge in extract (7) that President Madison’s character is marked by “cunning” and “habitual deceit and hypocrisy” is so serious, being directed at a President, that it can be labeled an instance of aggravated impoliteness. Such charges cast a slander on President Madison’s personal integrity and honor, and the seriousness of the charges is emphasized by the historical consideration that conceptions of reputation and personal honor and integrity were taken seriously in the early American Republic (see Freeman 2001 on the code of honor in early America), probably more so than what is the case today. It is also possible to invoke two other properties here that are identified as prototypical of aggravated impoliteness in Rudanko (2017: 14–15) and that are on display in the illustrations singled out. The first is that “aggravated impoliteness prototypically involves cool calculation or careful planning by the speaker” (Rudanko 2017: 14). The opposite would be a case where the speaker “may appear to have acted innocently,” and where the offense “seems to be unwitting or unintended” (Goffman 1967: 14). Careful and deliberate planning can be assumed in newspaper articles that are written to be published. Another property also identified as characterizing aggravated impoliteness in Rudanko (2017: 14–15) is that an “act of aggravated impoliteness is prototypically seriously disruptive of social relationships in the interaction in which it occurs.” In the present case, it would thus have been hard for the editors of the Federal Republican—if they had wanted to—to make amends for the harshly derogative comments that they made in those attacks on the integrity and honor of President Madison and other Republicans.

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4.5   Coda: Praise for Great Britain in the Federal Republican In 1813 the United States was at war with Great Britain. It has become clear that the Federal Republican engaged in sharply worded attacks on the United States government during the period investigated. The question may then be raised as to what stance the newspaper took towards Great Britain during this period. Overall, there are fewer comments during the time period considered in this chapter on Great Britain than on the United States and the Madison administration, but there are some. The extract in (12) is an example: (12) The Prince Regent of England has set forth, in a plain, temperate and dignified declaration, the injustice of our rulers in declaring war and issuing letters of marque. It exhibits a striking contrast to the manifesto promulged by Mr. Madison, and the vindictive and abusive message in relation to the license trade. […] The people have been told that England desired war with us because she was jealous of our growing greatness and increasing commerce. It is the policy of our own government, which has destroyed commerce; and even now the enemy offers a trade which our rulers deny them. The people have been induced to believe, that the enmity of the British was such against the United States, that they would omit no opportunity to inflict the deepest injuries upon the country during the war. We have invaded the territory of Great Britain; invited her subjects to rebel, & spared no pains to raise her animosity to the highest pitch of exasperation. In return, she spares our seaport towns, which are at her mercy, and contents herself with blockading our waters, or such of them as afford a refuge for privateers, and from which an active trade had been carried on with her enemy. (Federal Republican, March 3, 1813)

The first paragraph of the extract in (12) offers a noteworthy difference in the choice of evaluative adjectives when the newspaper compares the British and the United States administrations: the adjectives “temperate” and dignified,” linked to Great Britain, have positive connotations—or a positive semantic prosody—as opposed to the negative semantic prosody of the adjectives “vindictive” and “abusive,” predicated of the Madison administration. (For the notion of semantic prosody, see Louw 1993 and Louw and Milojkovic 2014.) In the second paragraph the accusations

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leveled by others against Great Britain are turned around and claimed to hold of American policy. In the third paragraph the newspaper praises the restraint of the British, in comparison to what are claimed to have been the more belligerent actions of the American side in the war.

4.6   Conclusion This chapter has illustrated some of the harsh criticisms of the Republican administration published in the Federal Republican in the early months of 1813.1 The framework of impoliteness theory was invoked to characterize the criticisms. When doing so, it is important to bear in mind that criticism can represent “reasonable hostility,” to invoke Tracy’s (2008) term, and it is also important to recognize that there may be differing assessments of the severity of face attacks. However, examples of aggravated impoliteness were found to be prominent in articles published in the newspaper. For instance, the newspaper did not pay attention to American grievances in the lead-up to the war, such as the impressment of sailors off American ships, and British restrictions on trade. Instead, the newspaper offered a rival narrative according to which by declaring war, Republicans “hoped to raise to a high pitch of exasperation the popular resentment and animosity against England” (Federal Republican, April 7, 1813). The newspaper also made the claim that if the British were to attack Baltimore, President Madison would “rejoice,” provided that “his popularity and that of the war, could be promoted by it” (Federal Republican, April 2, 1813). The gratuitous nature of such an attack on President Madison’s face gives warrant to considering the claim in question an instance of aggravated impoliteness. By contrast, the newspaper praised the British for their restraint in not attacking American seaports, even though these were “at her mercy” (Federal Republican, March 3, 1813). The attacks on President Madison and his administration were harsh. It is a measure of President Madison’s integrity that even in the face of the harsh attacks he did not raise the possibility of a sedition act, let alone propose it to Congress.

Note 1. Later in the war, when the first British terms for peace became known, Hanson did moderate his position, as has been noted by historians (see for instance Buel 2005: 210).

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References Bousfield, Derek. 2008. Impoliteness in Interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Brant, Irving. 1956. James Madison. The President 1809–1812. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. ———. 1961. James Madison. Commander in Chief 1812–1836. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. ———. 1970. The Fourth President. A Life of James Madison. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. Buel, Richard, Jr. 2005. America on the Brink: How the Political Struggle Over the War of 1812 Almost Destroyed the Young Republic. New  York: Palgrave Macmillan. Culpeper, Jonathan, Derek Bousfield, and Anne Wichmann. 2003. Impoliteness Revisited: With Special Reference to Dynamic and Prosodic Aspects. Journal of Pragmatics 35: 1545–1572. Freeman, Joanne. 2001. Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic. New Haven: Yale University Press. Goffman, Erving. 1967. Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behaviour. New York: Pantheon Book. Heidler, David, and Jeanne Heidler. 1997. Encyclopedia of the War of 1812. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio. Louw, Bill. 1993. Irony in the Text or Insincerity in the Writer? – The Diagnostic Potential of Semantic Prosodies. In Text and Technology: In Honour of John Sinclair, ed. Mona Baker, Gill Francis, and Elena Tognini-Bonelli, 157–176. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. Louw, Bill, and Marija Milojkovic. 2014. Semantic Prosody. In The Cambridge Handbook of Stylistics, ed. Peter Stockwell and Sara Whiteley, 263–280. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rudanko, Juhani. 2017. Towards Characterizing a Type of Aggravated Impoliteness, with Examples from Timon of Athens. Language and Literature 26 (1): 3–17. Tracy, Karen. 2008. “Reasonable Hostility”: Situation-Appropriate Face Attacks. Journal of Politeness Research 4 (2): 169–191. Watts, Richard. 2003. Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

CHAPTER 5

James Madison, the Father of Freedom of Speech

5.1   Introduction and Background The present chapter inquires into an aspect of the contribution made by James Madison to the emergence of the distinctive American concept of freedom of speech. He is well known as the Father of the American Constitution and as the Father of the Bill of Rights, and he fully deserves those titles. Chapter 2 offered some comments on his crucial role in the enactment of the Bill of Rights, and the First Amendment of course remains a significant and unique document supporting freedom of speech. However, a law is not enough by itself to guarantee freedom of speech. There also needs to be a tradition respecting a broad interpretation of the concept of freedom of speech, and the weight of the discussion here is centered on Madison’s important role in creating such a tradition. The discussion begins in a slightly roundabout way. Section 5.2 is devoted to some comments on ideas of another political philosopher of the same period, the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who was born in 1770, and died in 1831. He of course wrote several books, but his mature work Elements of the Philosophy of Right is the one where he presented his views on freedom of expression in their clearest and most unambiguous form. It is also the one that has had the most serious practical impact on the way that freedom of speech has been understood, and sometimes restricted, especially on the continent of Europe. Because of its practical impact on the conception of freedom of speech on © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Rudanko, Fallacies and Free Speech, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67877-7_5

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the continent of Europe, it has been chosen as a suitable source for identifying a particular stance of freedom of expression in this chapter. The discussion also includes information and comments on the practical implementation of the Hegelian stance, as evidenced in Hegel’s own behavior after the book in question had come out. The comments on Hegel’s stance are included in order to highlight the nature of Madison’s contribution. Much has been written about both Hegel and Madison, but as far as the present author is aware, the two have not been considered together in relation to the concept of freedom of speech, in spite of the fact that they lived and were active in the same historical period, and even though both were authors of important publications bearing on freedom of speech. In Sect. 5.3 the discussion turns to James Madison. The emphasis is on those aspects of his contribution to the evolution of a broad concept of freedom of speech that have sometimes been neglected in the literature and on those aspects that most clearly define and illustrate his stance.

5.2   Hegel’s Stance on Freedom of Speech in the Philosophy of Right The mature Hegel’s views on freedom of speech and of the press come out most clearly and concisely in his major book Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, generally translated as Elements of the Philosophy of Right or just Philosophy of Right. Hegel, of course, wrote in German, and a prerequisite of any work on Hegel is—or should be—an awareness of and a familiarity with the actual language that he used. For this reason, the original formulations are here given in footnotes, and some comments are also made on translations of key expressions. The key section of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right from the point of view of his conception of freedom of speech is paragraph 318 of the book. Two extracts reveal the core of Hegel’s thinking. Here is the first in Houlgate’s (2008: 302) translation: To define freedom of the press as freedom to say and write whatever we please is parallel to the assertion that freedom as such means freedom to do as we please. Talk of this kind is due to wholly uneducated, crude, and superficial ideas. Moreover, it is in the very nature of the thing that formalistic thinking should nowhere be so stubborn, so unintelligent, as in this matter of free speech, because what it is considering is the most fleeting, the most

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contingent, and the most particular side of opinion in its infinite diversity of content and tergiversation.1

At the beginning of the passage Hegel makes the reductive assumption that those whose view of freedom of speech is broader than his own believe in an absolute concept of freedom of speech. The assumption is set up in the nature of a straw man. Walton et al. (2008) have made the following comment on this fallacious tactic: The fallacious tactic consists of exaggerating or distorting an interpretation of an argument in order to make it look more extreme than it is, thereby making it easier to attack or refute. (Walton et al. 2008: 192)

It is then easy for Hegel to attack the straw man that he had himself set up. It is also possible to view the present example of a fallacious tactic as an instance of the fallacy of false choice, which was brought up in Sect. 3.2 above, drawing on Walton et al. 2008: 318). By setting up a straw man version of a conception of freedom of speech, rejecting it, then presenting his own view of the concept and taking it for granted, Hegel reductively obscures other alternative views of the concept of freedom of speech. In other words, his argument is designed to constrain the “addressee’s access to critical information,” to recall the comment by Oswald et  al. (2016: 522), invoked in Sect. 2.2 as a feature of manipulative communication. Informal fallacies are constructs from informal logic, not formal logic, and sometimes more than one can be invoked for the same argument. In any event, the effect is that of manipulative communication. Hegel further reduces concerns with freedom of speech to what he terms “der Formalismus,” translated adequately enough by Houlgate as “formalist thinking,” and conveys his negative stance toward such thinking with the German adjective hartnäckig. It is not wrong to translate the adjective as “stubborn,” as in Houlgate’s translation, but the word, which literally means “stiff-necked,” has a strong negative semantic prosody, conveying a negative stance on Hegel’s part toward such thinking and the individuals who engage in it. (For the notion of semantic prosody, see Louw 1993 and Louw and Milojkovic 2014.) Going beyond abstractions, Hegel makes the following key statement in his Philosophy of Right, given in Houlgate’s (2008: 303) translation:

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But the substance of the matter is and remains that traducing the honour of anyone, slander, abuse, bringing government, its official bodies and civil servants, and in particular the person of the monarch into contempt, defiance of the laws, incitement to rebellion, etc., are crimes or misdemeanors with many gradations.2

The key part of the passage is that “bringing government, its official bodies and civil servants … into contempt” amounts to criminal conduct. The complex predicate “bring [someone] into contempt” is Houlgate’s translation of Hegel’s German nominalization “Verächtlichmachung” (Moldenhauer and Michel 1970: 488). The nominalization involves two parts, the nominalized form of the verb machen, meaning “make,” or “render,” and the adjective verächtlich, which may be translated as “contemptible,” or “despicable” (see Oxford Duden German Dictionary 1990). Other standard translations of Hegel’s nominalization include “contemptuous caricature” (Knox 1952: 207) and “vilification,” (Wood 1991: 357), but Houlgate’s complex phrase “bringing [somebody] into contempt” expresses Hegel’s original most accurately, capturing its perlocutionary flavor. In this key passage Hegel thus places “bringing government, its official bodies and civil servants … into contempt” on a par with “defiance of the laws” and “incitement to rebellion,” suggesting by means of listing them in this way that the three are similar, and regards them as being among “crimes or misdemeanors with many gradations.” Hegel’s language, in fact, has a noteworthy similarity to the language of the United States Sedition Act of 1798. One part of that Act restricts freedom of speech in this way: Sec. 2. And be it further enacted. That if any person shall write, print, utter or publish … any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States, with intent to defame the said government, or either house of the said Congress, or the said President, or to bring them, or either of them, into contempt or disrepute, … shall be punished by a fine not exceeding two thousand dollars, and by imprisonment not exceeding two years.3

The Sedition Act of 1798, with its key “bring into contempt” provision, is similar to Hegel’s conception of what freedom of speech means, and it led to partisan prosecutions of Republicans, in opposition at the time, who had written something critical of the sitting President John Adams or of

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the ruling Federalist administration. Among those convicted was even a sitting member of the House of Representatives.4 The example of the Sedition Act shows how easily a “bring into contempt” provision, of the type envisaged by Hegel, can be used as an instrument of suppression. Turning now to the way that Hegel reacted to the practical exercise of free speech, the Fries incident is probably best suited to reveal Hegel’s mindset in this respect. In his Philosophy of Right Hegel had included a comment on a philosophical position that he associated with Jakob Fries, a fellow philosopher and professor of the period. The translation given is from Knox (1952: 5): … this self-styled ‘philosophy’ has expressly stated that ‘truth itself cannot be known’ [note omitted], that that only is true which each individual allows to rise out of his heart, emotion, and inspiration about ethical institutions, especially about the state, the government, and the constitution.5

Hegel had then proceeded to call Fries a “ringleader of these hosts of superficiality, of these self-styled ‘philosophers’” (Knox 1952: 5).6 The comments on Fries were taken up in a book review of Hegel’s book published in Die Allgemeine Literaturzeitung (Halle) in February 1822 (Nr. 40)7 (see Moldenhauer and Michel 1970: 520; the translations into English have been supplied by the present author). The reviewer observed that Herr Fries had not had a happy fate and that Hegel’s behavior towards him amounted to the mocking and deliberate insulting of an already bent man. The reviewer added: Noble is such behavior not. (“Edel ist ein solches Betragen nicht” Moldenhauer and Michel 1970: 520). So far there is nothing very remarkable here, with Hegel criticizing Fries in his book and a book reviewer expressing mild criticism of one part of Hegel’s opinion. However, what makes the Fries episode noteworthy and revealing from the point of view of Hegel’s conception of the freedom of speech is that, subsequently, after the review of his book came out in Die Allgemeine Literaturzeitung, Hegel took the extraordinary step of writing to the Prussian Ministry of Education in order to demand protection against this “denunciation” (Denunziation), because he felt that it was outrageous (“abscheulich”) that a Prussian government official (“ein preussischer Beamter”) could be suspected in this way in a newspaper financially supported by the Prussian State and that he wanted to provide an example of where too much freedom of the press can lead (Moldenhauer and Michel 1970: 520–521). That is, the mild criticism of Hegel’s

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treatment of his fellow philosopher Fries caused Hegel formally to demand that the Prussian State should take punitive action against the newspaper, maybe the book reviewer as well. Hegel’s reaction, with his reference to himself as a “Prussian government official” invoking social hierarchy, betrayed a strikingly thin skin on his part.8 The self-righteous action against a newspaper daring to criticize him, however mildly, illustrates and confirms the authoritarian view that Hegel took of the concept of freedom of the press and shows what it means in practice.

5.3   Madison’s Stance on Freedom of Speech Proceeding to James Madison, he is the person who, more than any other, is responsible for getting the United States Bill of Rights, with its First Amendment, enacted in the first Congress. As argued in Chap. 2, the project of amending the Constitution in the first Congress would never have got off the ground if Madison had not made an extraordinary effort, especially in the debate of June 8, 1789, to get it onto the agenda. Whether it would have got off the ground at a later point is also doubtful, because with the passage of time, there might well have come a feeling, especially among members of the party in power, that the country can manage without a Bill of Rights. As noted in Chap. 2, the debate of June 8, 1789, revealed that the First Amendment was intended by Madison to safeguard freedom of speech in the United States. This is for instance clear from his statement that the “freedom of the press and the rights of conscience, those choicest privileges of the people, are unguarded in the British Constitution” (Annals of Congress 1789: 436), and from the fact that this state of affairs in Great Britain was one reason for introducing amendments. To frame the discussion of Madison’s views, it is helpful to set it against the background to two different approaches to the notion of freedom of speech in early America. Curtis (2000) has contrasted the two traditions succinctly: There were two traditions in great tension with each other: a more protective tradition associated with the Radical Whig heritage and the popular practice of press freedom, and an older more repressive legal tradition from England. Broad power to punish all speech and press critical of government or public officials was inconsistent with the protection of free speech advocated in the Radical Whig tradition and by Cato, Zenger, and American

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colonists in one revolutionary declaration. But it was fully consistent with English common law. (Curtis 2000: 49–50)

The key feature of English common law was spelled out by Sir William Blackstone before American independence: Every freeman has an undoubted right to lay what sentiments he pleases before the public; to forbid this, is to destroy the freedom of the press; but if he publishes what is improper, mischievous, or illegal, he must take the consequence of his own temerity. (Blackstone 1873 [1765–1769]: 151–152)

When Madison presented his proposals for amendments, he pointed out, as noted in Chap. 2, that the freedom of the press was “unguarded in the British Constitution” (Annals of Congress 1789: 436), which suggests a rejection of the English common law tradition, but he avoided any more specific comments on his view of the meaning of the concept of freedom of speech, and he was careful to embed the issue of freedom of speech in the broader context of the “choicest privileges of the people,” using language with a positive semantic prosody. Both decisions were probably well taken, from the point of view of the Bill of Rights in the context of the debate of June 1789, because of the Federalist dominance of the first Congress. Among the most original and prophetic points Madison made in his major speech in support of a bill of rights on June 8, 1789 was his comment on the role that he envisaged for courts when a bill of rights is enacted. Madison started by conceding that sometimes bills of rights in particular States had been violated, but then went on: It is true, there are a few particular States in which some of the most valuable articles have not, at one time or other, been violated; but it does not follow but they may have, to a certain degree, a salutary effect against the abuse of power. If they are incorporated into the Constitution, independent tribunals of justice will consider themselves in a peculiar manner the guardians of those rights; they will be an impenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the Legislative or Executive; they will be naturally led to resist every encroachment upon rights expressly stipulated for in the Constitution by the declaration of rights. (Annals of Congress 1789: 439)

Feldman (2017) makes the following comment on the significance of Madison’s vision, described in the extract:

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This was the first time Madison—or possibly anyone—had ever made the argument that a written bill of rights would transform judges into protectors of fundamental liberties. Far from being a commonplace, this view would not become part of constitutional orthodoxy for many years. State judges had no serious track record of enforcing fundamental rights against the will of majorities. Today, the idea that judges are the guardians of constitutional rights is the foundation stone of liberal constitutional thought around the world. (Feldman 2017: 273)

Feldman’s comment draws attention to an aspect of Madison’s legacy that is not always fully appreciated. It would be hard to imagine Hegel viewing judges as guardians of freedom of speech. Madison’s project was duly approved by both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and it became part of the Constitution in 1791. Only a few years later there took place a noteworthy debate in the House of Representatives that does shed light on Madison’s own conception of freedom of speech in a significant way. The debate, which extended over several days, came after President Washington had made a disapproving reference to “certain self-created societies” in the aftermath of the Whiskey Rebellion. The reference was to Democratic societies, whose “members defined themselves by their vigilance against government and its perceived encroachment on personal liberties” (Estes 2006: 53; for the nature of Democratic societies, see also Foner 1976). When formulating a response to President Washington’s speech, Federalists wanted the House of Representatives to express “reprobation of the self-­ created societies” because of their alleged support for the Whiskey Rebellion. For instance, here is the formulation expressing reprobation from a speech by Congressman Thomas Fitzsimmons on November 24, 1794: As part of this subject, we cannot withhold our reprobation of the self-­ created societies, which have risen up in some parts of the Union, misrepresenting the conduct of the Government, and disturbing the operation of the laws, and which, be deceiving and inflaming the ignorant and the weak, may naturally be supposed to have stimulated and urged the insurrection. (Annals of Congress 1794: 899)

The charge of misrepresenting the conduct of the Government is bound up with a narrow concept of freedom of speech. However, in 1794, James Madison was still in the House of Representatives, though now, instead of

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being a leading Federalist, he was a leading Republican. He made a noteworthy speech in the debate, arguing against the proposal that the House of Representatives should censure such societies. He said in part: When the people have formed a Constitution, they retain those rights which they have not expressly delegated. It is a question whether what is thus retained can be legislated upon. Opinions are not the objects of legislation. You animadvert on the abuse of reserved rights: how far will this go? It may extend to the liberty of speech, and of the press. It is in vain to say that this indiscriminate censure is no punishment. If it falls on classes, or individuals, it will be a severe punishment. […] If we advert to the nature of Republican Government, we shall find that the censorial power is in the people over the Government, and not in the Government over the people. (Annals of Congress 1794: 934)

Madison’s statement “Opinions are not the objects of legislation” makes it clear that he held a view of the concept of freedom of speech that was in the Whig tradition and very different from Hegel’s view in his Philosophy of Right. Hegel’s (and Blackstone’s) view was narrow and authoritarian, but in those seven words, Madison summed up a stance that rejects the suppression of opinions and instead allows for a broad degree of freedom of speech. His further statement that the “censorial power is in the people over the Government,” and not the other way around, underlines his broad conception of freedom of speech. It would be hard to find statements of this kind in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. With respect to an American context, it may be added that Madison’s statement also contrasted with views expressed by some of the delegates at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 portraying citizens and the people as children, easily duped and misled.9 Madison developed his view of freedom of speech most fully and most famously about five years later in the context of the Sedition Act, when he authored the Report on the Virginia Resolutions, directed against the restrictions on freedom of speech in the Sedition Act. Three extracts may be sufficient here to convey the flavor of Madison’s broad view of freedom of speech. First, he articulated a crucial point about what freedom of speech and of the press should mean if it is to be effective: … in the United States the great and essential rights of the people are secured against legislative as well as against executive ambition. They are secured, not by laws paramount to prerogative, but by constitutions para-

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mount to laws. This security of the freedom of the press requires that it should be exempt not only from previous restraint by the Executive, as in Great Britain, but from legislative restraint also; and this exemption, to be effectual, must be an exemption not only from the previous inspection of licensers, but from the subsequent penalty of laws. (Hunt 1906: 387, vol. 6)

Madison’s reference to an exemption “from the previous inspection of licensers” harks back to Blackstone’s view of the concept of freedom of speech. Madison’s statement that the press should be exempt from the “subsequent penalty of laws” takes his position far beyond Blackstone’s view, and it is also clearly empowering from the point of view of individual citizens.10 Madison’s stance is significant in the context of the Sedition Act, because Blackstone’s view and the repressive legal tradition that it is linked to played an important role in the speeches of key Federalists when they sought to justify the Sedition Act in Congress. For example, Harrison Otis, a prominent Federalist from Massachusetts, explicitly acknowledged his indebtedness to Blackstone: The terms “freedom of speech and of the press,” he supposed, were a phraseology perfectly familiar in the jurisprudence of every State, and of a certain and technical meaning. It was a mode of expression which we had borrowed from the only country in which it had been tolerated, and he pledged himself to prove that the construction that he should give to those terms, should be consonant not only to the laws of that country, but to the laws and judicial decisions of many of the States composing the Union. This freedom, said Mr. O., is nothing more than the liberty of writing, publishing, and speaking one’s thoughts, under the condition of being answerable to the injured party, whether it be the Government or an individual, for false, malicious, and seditious expressions, whether spoken or written; and the liberty of the press is merely an exemption from all previous restraints. In support of this doctrine, he quoted Blackstone’s Commentaries, under the head of libels, and read an extract to prove that in England formerly, the press was subject to a licenser; and that this restraint was afterward removed, by which means the freedom of the press was established. (Annals of Congress 1798: 2147–2148)

Further, political sermons also formed a strand in support of the repressive tradition in the context of the Sedition Act, especially against the background of the French Revolution. Here is an illustration from a sermon by John Thayer delivered in 1798:

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If you wish to escape the horrors which Jacobinism has produced in France, and wherever else its pestilential maxims have gained ground, you must strive to destroy it in the bud; that is, you must suppress all insubordination, disobedience, or even disrespect, towards your civil rulers, as well as towards your ecclesiastical superiors. You have heard much of the rights of man, it is high time now to attend to the duties of man. (Thayer 1991 [1798]: 1360)

In the United States the debates and writings of the Sedition Act period thus brought into sharp focus the libertarian or tolerant tradition, developed and spelled out explicitly by Madison, and the repressive tradition, spelled out explicitly and endorsed by Otis, among others. Second, it is recalled that Hegel wanted to protect government officials and civil servants from being brought into disrepute, and it is therefore refreshing to note Madison’s comments on the content of freedom of expression with reference to those who administer the government. Madison writes: … it is manifestly impossible to punish the intent to bring those who administer the Government into disrepute or contempt, without striking at the right of freely discussing public characters and measures; because those who engage in such discussions must expect and intend to excite these unfavorable sentiments, so far as they may be thought to be deserved. (Hunt 1906: 396, vol. 6)

Madison’s comment here is the opposite of Hegel’s view that governments and their officials should be protected by law against being brought into disrepute. On the contrary, Madison does not object to them being brought into disrepute according to what they deserve. Third, Madison anticipated an objection that might be brought against a broad view of freedom of speech: Some degree of abuse is inseparable from the proper use of every thing, and in no instance is this more true than in that of the press. It has accordingly been decided by the practice of the States, that it is better to leave a few of its noxious branches to their luxuriant growth, than, by pruning them away, to injure the vigour of those yielding the proper fruits. And can the wisdom of this policy be doubted by any who reflect that to the press alone, ­chequered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression; (Hunt 1906: 389, vol. 6)

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Madison’s remark about leaving a “few of its noxious branches to their luxuriant growth” shows that his position both in the context of the debate on Democratic Societies in 1794 and in the context of the Sedition Act 1798 to 1800 was in favor of a broad interpretation of the concept of freedom of speech. Overall, Madison’s 1800 report has been well summed up by Ketcham: Partly under the brilliant reasoning of the 1800 report, the Sedition Act died ignominiously a year later, and ever since, those attempting to restrict free expression have had to confront Madison’s words, while friends of free expression have found aid and comfort in them. (Ketcham 1990 [1971]: 403)

Madison’s positions in the context of the attempt to censure Democratic societies in 1794 and in the context of the Sedition Act in 1798 to 1800 in favor of a broad concept of freedom of speech are clear, and there were also some others in the context of the Sedition Act who argued against a narrow interpretation of the concept of freedom of speech (cf. Levy 1999: 126). For instance, Tunis Wortman (1800) may be cited here. He writes: If I have mistaken the character of an influential personage, or misconceived a particular transaction of Government, my mistake should be corrected by Reason, and not by the laceration of my body. If I have willfully misstated the measures of administration, or uttered malevolent invectives against a public officer, Coercion cannot be necessary to vindicate the character of the one or to remove an erroneous impression of the other, nothing more is necessary than the unequivocal representation of Truth. (Wortman 1800: 171–172)

Wortman (1800) is an eloquent defense of a broad conception of free speech and of the need to counter mistaken claims with truth, but Madison’s contribution reflected his experience in practical politics and Ketcham (1990 [1971]) is right to point to its emblematic status. At the same time, it is important to bear in mind that Madison was not in power during the period of the Sedition Act, and it was by no means a logical necessity that he would have adhered to the same philosophy during the War of 1812, when he was President. It is instructive to quote Wittes and Singh on how attitudes of leaders may change when they gain power:

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Many presidents have taken strident constitutional positions before coming to power and have lived to enjoy the embarrassment of taking the opposite view when changed power arrangements counseled it. (Wittes and Singh 2012: 116)

Wittes and Singh also point to the maxim “inter arma silent leges,” which they paraphrase by saying that the “law, along with the liberty that it protects, falls by the wayside when a country is threatened” (Wittes and Singh 2012: 98). As regards the War of 1812 as a period in American political history, they also include this pointed comment: … this was the period immediately following the era of the Alien and Sedition Acts, the latter of which had criminalized criticism of the federal government and its policies. It had also been deployed barely a decade earlier against members of Madison’s political party by the very same Federalists who were now opposing the president’s policies. If ever a moment in American political history justified a measure of political repression, the War of 1812 was surely one. (Wittes and Singh 2012: 98)

There were Republicans close to Madison who advocated or recommended introducing repressive legislation against political opponents during the War of 1812, including his own Attorney General and his own Vice President (Wittes and Singh 2012: 116, see also Jefferson’s letter to Madison of June 29, 1812 in Stagg 1999: 519–520). Madison’s restraint in not putting forward legislation of the type of the Sedition Act was a remarkable policy choice on his part, but it is fully in line with his earlier position in 1794 and during the Sedition Act controversy. He was a person of integrity, not a person who was changed or “corrupted” by power. Historians have chronicled many different forms that Federalist resistance took during the War of 1812. Ketcham writes: Once the war began Madison faced a series of largely New England-based obstructions: to recruiting officers, to militia mobilizations, to tax collectors, to credit needs, to court orders, to trade regulations, and even to movements of the federal army and navy. (Ketcham 1978: 130)

There is no need to rehearse these forms of obstruction in further detail here. Instead, the editorials presented in Chap. 4 may be recalled. As noted, they were repeatedly characterized by aggravated impoliteness,

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casting slanders on the character and motives of President Madison and other leading Republicans. The illustrations of aggravated impoliteness illustrated in Chap. 4 came from the Federal Republican in the spring of 1813. They may be supplemented by three other examples of subversive criticism from other newspapers published during the War of 1812. All three are from prominent newspapers published in the Federalist stronghold of New England, the Connecticut Mirror, the Boston Gazette, and the Columbian Centinel. The first presents a partisan and highly critical view of Madison’s actions and motives when he led the United States into the war: This war was undertaken from no principle of patriotism–but from sinister and profligate motives. Mr. Madison was actuated by views of interest and popularity. There is no doubt that he dreaded war, and tried for a long time to avoid it, because he feared it would endanger his election. But when the Kentucky-men told him, that if he flinched from actual hostilities, the western States would not support his election, his mind was promptly made up–and war was declared. Their views were equally corrupt. They wanted a legitimate pretext for exterminating the Indians. (The Connecticut Mirror, September 27, 1813)

The charge in the extract that the President had led his country into war for corrupt reasons, to further his own personal career, is certainly serious and takes up a theme commonly found in the Federal Republican, as illustrated in Chap. 4. Here is the second extract: With this host of monsters [French revolutionaries], was Thomas Jefferson intimately associated; he corresponded with them–he quoted them–he admired their maxims, and adopted their sentiments; his companions, were Mazzei, Barlow, and Paine–his idols, were Voltaire, Rousseau, D’Alembert, and Condorcet!–He followed them thro’ thick and thin–he never deserted them in all their twistings and turnings; he made a proselyte of Madison, and in the fury of zeal, they became French citizens together; by virtue of which citizenship, they irrevocably linked themselves in subjection to France, insomuch, that if France had commanded them to deliver up the United States, they must have complied, under the penalties of perjury. But worst of all, by the right of French citizenship, they became the subjects of Bonaparte–in consequence of which, the people of this country were governed by a French Viceroy, when they imagined they were under the guardianship of an inde-

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pendent President, freely elected by themselves! (The Boston Gazette, July 25, 1814)

In the second extract President Madison and his predecessor are accused of being subservient to Napoleon, and even of having become “French citizens,” with the theme of subservience to France likewise being a familiar theme in the writings in the Federal Republican in early 1813, as noted in Chap. 4. These are harsh accusations that were designed to bring the President and his administration into disrepute and into contempt. Such accusations were also designed to aid Great Britain in the War of 1812 and to undermine the American war effort. Here is the third extract: The New-England States dread a separation. They see in it great and embarrassing evils;—but they see, in the present course of things, evils of a much more imposing and ruinous character. (Columbian Centinel, November 26, 1814)

The third extract goes beyond a personal attack on the President’s character or his actions. It actually brings up the prospect of the separation of the New England States from the rest of the country as the preferred course of action “in the present course of things.” The comment in the Columbian Centinel came on the threshold of the Hartford Convention. This was a gathering of delegates from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island in Hartford, Connecticut, from December 15, 1814 to January 5, 1815, where Federalist grievances were aired, with proposals made for instance for “impounding federal revenues” and for “declaring neutrality” (Heidler and Heidler 1997: 10; Stagg 2012: 147). The delegates did not decide on such radical measures, and with hindsight, it is easy to praise the moderation of that convention. However, in the run-up to the convention, its outcome was far from certain. Wittes and Singh (2012) write: … the extraordinary fact that several states would gather, in the middle of war, even to consider withdrawing from the union and forging a separate peace with the enemy has no analog in any subsequent American conflict. (Wittes and Singh 2012: 103; emphasis in original)

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Madison was the legally elected President of the United States at that time, his Republican party had majorities in Congress, and the declaration of war had been legally approved by Congress. A person less principled than Madison would have been tempted to introduce some type of sedition act to curb critical comments in the interests of the security of the country, because such comments might endanger the war effort or threaten the survival of the country or indeed because they might cause a civil war. Madison’s restraint showed, like nothing else could, that he truly believed in the tolerant conception of freedom of speech that he had articulated in 1794 and again in 1798–1800 in connection with the Sedition Act controversy. Ketcham’s comment on his conduct is worth quoting here: To be imperious, or domineering, or grand was to him simply inappropriate in a president who was the agent of the people, the follower of Congress in matters of policy, and the creature of the Constitution in the definition of his powers. (Ketcham 1978: 133–134)

Madison was indeed guided by the Constitution, including the First Amendment, when he resolutely refrained from introducing a sedition act during the War of 1812.

5.4   Absolute Freedom of Speech? Given that Madison took a broad view of the concept of freedom of speech, both in the 1790s and as President, the question may be asked whether he believed in an absolute freedom of speech. Did he espouse the view that freedom of the press is absolute, meaning the “freedom to say and write whatever we please,” to recall a formulation used by Hegel? The present author holds the view that Madison did not believe that freedom of speech was absolute. The view is based on what transpired in the context of the violence in Baltimore in 1812. To substantiate the view, it is advisable to consider some extracts from the National Intelligencer from the period. A short time before war was declared, the National Intelligencer published an editorial with an appeal for unity in wartime. Here is an extract: When the will of the majority on this head [on whether to go to war] is once fairly expressed through their representatives, disaffection must be hushed.

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The happiness of the people, their liberties, their existence perhaps, and certainly their honor and that of republican institutions, will all depend upon the undivided exertions of the whole nation against a common enemy. Peace may be sought through legitimate channels, but, until so obtained, war must be waged with union and vigor. (National Intelligencer, May 14, 1812)

The meaning of hush in the sentence “disaffection must be hushed” is not very clear, and about three months later the National Intelligencer came back to the sentence with the following clarification: “Disaffection must be hushed”—How? By honorable and virtuous men uniting in reprobation of those, who, in the day of danger, to gratify their own personal inglorious purposes, instead of aiding, slander and resist the constituted authorities of their country. Not by mobs; but by the correct exercise of the same political right which disaffection abuses when it raises its voice against its own government. If it will come out as the champion of our enemy and reprobate an honest government for vindicating our rights, would it not transcend the bounds even of Christian forbearance to expect that public opinion would abstain from denouncing it as ignoble and base, and its authors as unworthy of all confidence. (National Intelligencer, August 15, 1812)

There is an explicit reference to mob action in the extract, condemning it, and given that the article came out in the immediate aftermath of the Baltimore riots, it clearly reprobates the action of the mob in Baltimore. A second pair of articles provides a more specific clue to Madison’s stance. It is recalled that the violence in Baltimore occurred during two nights: the first episode took place around and in the house in Charles Street during the night from July 27 to July 28, 1812. After that night, the remaining Federalists were led to the jail on the morning of July 28, 1812, and the second episode of violence took place in the jail during the night from July 28 to July 29, 1812. What is of interest is that after the first night of violence, and before the second, a local Republican newspaper, the Whig, also called the Baltimore Whig, published an article that can only be regarded as inflammatory. Here is the key paragraph: We need not express an abhorrence of disorder; we have done so repeatedly; but, when traitors excite it, ample vengeance should be taken. No man or set of men ought to assail property or person, unlawfully—none had a right to

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attack even the dwelling or publishing office of traitors,—as the law must exact the penalty; but, so help us heaven, as our sincere opinion is that since a band of murderous traitors did provoke the people, the people ought to have razed their garrison to the ground & put them every man to death. This outrage was premeditated and is unpardonable.—We conjecture, that it was exclusively concerted and executed by those wretches who commit treason, in the name of the revered Washington,—by members of the Washington societies, who have branches through the state. (The Whig, July 28, 1812, as reprinted in the Eastern Shore General Advertiser, August 4, 1812)

The article in the Whig was published after the first night of the mob violence, when Dr. Gale had been shot dead, and before the second episode, and it can only have exacerbated and inflamed the emotions in Baltimore, which were already running high in the aftermath of the killing of Dr. Gale. As far as the present author is aware, President Madison did not directly comment on the article. However, on August 13, 1812, the National Intelligencer, the newspaper that was very close to him and his administration (see Humphrey 1996: 85–86), published an article that is significant and worth recalling in this context. Here is the beginning of the article: Mobs and Riots.—We trust we never shall be, as we never have been, the advocates of riots, mobs, or any other illegal assemblies of people, nor of violence of any description, but more especially of that which is directed against the freedom of the press. This is one of those unalienable rights which, as republicans, we will always support; and, as conductors of a press, if attempted to be violated thro’ us, we will not cease to defend to the last extremity. This is a doctrine we have always maintained, and we defy any man, be he friend or foe, to exhibit a line from our pen breathing a thought to the contrary. Entertaining these sentiments, we have cordially united with all good citizens in deprecating the events which have lately taken place at Baltimore; but our sympathies have not been of that convenient character that expands or contracts, as the enormities by which they are attracted assume one or another political hue. … (National Intelligencer, August 13, 1812)

The article unequivocally condemns the mob violence in Baltimore, specifically mentioning Baltimore and showing no sympathy for the mob. It also clearly repudiates the sentiments expressed in the Whig on July 28, 1812. Because of the close links of the newspaper to President Madison

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and his administration, the repudiation can be regarded as reflecting the view of President Madison. He took a broad view of the concept of freedom of speech, but on the basis of the articles in the National Intelligencer on August 13 and 15, 1812, it is reasonable to think that he did not advocate the view that freedom of speech is absolute.

5.5   Conclusion Hegel has sometimes been linked to the concept of freedom, but the present investigation shows that in his Philosophy of Right, his publication with the most marked political impact, he was not a champion of freedom of speech. On the contrary, his view of freedom of speech in his Philosophy of Right is unmistakably authoritarian and repressive. Furthermore, it is impossible to dispute his attempt to influence the Prussian government to punish Die Allgemeine Zeitung for printing a review that was mildly critical of his book. It is therefore possible and appropriate to cite his authoritarian position on freedom of speech as a justification when an authoritarian regime decides to prosecute and to penalize as criminal views that diverge from those favored by that regime at a particular time. For his part, Madison was seen as advocating a position that permits a broad degree of freedom of speech and of thought, even when these run counter to the “spirit of the age,” which often means the opinions held by those in power and their supporters in any given period. Madison of course spelled out his tolerant view of freedom of speech in the context of the Sedition Act when he and his party were in opposition to the reigning Federalist administration of John Adams. The true test of his principles came only when Madison’s Republican party was in power, beginning with Thomas Jefferson’s administration and continuing with his own administration. It was especially during Madison’s own administration that Madison was very sharply and harshly criticized in opposition newspapers when the United States was at war with Great Britain. Several examples of such criticism are given in this study, including the claim that Madison had become a “French citizen.” Such criticisms were designed to bring him into contempt and disrepute, and in Hegel’s conception of freedom of speech the perpetrators of such claims would have been subjected to criminal prosecution. However, the noteworthy aspect of Madison’s reaction was that he did not seek to enact any sedition act to suppress such criticism, even though the United States was at war at the time. Of course, the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights is a formal and

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indeed unique guarantee of freedom of speech, but it did not prevent the Sedition Act from being enacted in 1798, sponsored by President John Adams and his Federalist supporters. (At that time, the United States was facing the danger of war with France, but the country was not actually at war.) Madison’s extraordinary restraint in the face of hostile attacks by Federalists during the course of the War of 1812 has been recognized in the literature before, for instance, by Wittes and Singh (2012), but what has been lacking in the literature is a more detailed illustration and discussion of the attacks on the President and his Republican administration. The illustrations and comments in Chapter 4 and the additional comments in Chapter 5 do not of course exhaust the subject, but they, together with Chapter 7 of Rudanko (2012), begin to shed light on this largely neglected aspect of the War of 1812. The application of concepts of politeness theory to the attacks in question is unprecedented, apart from the work of the present author, and the present book develops the approach presented in Rudanko (2012: Chapter 7) further, for instance, by introducing and applying the concept of politic behavior in assessing the nature of the attacks and criticisms in question. Regarding freedom of speech in the history of the United States, Geoffrey Stone has made this comment: For 120  years, from the expiration of the Sedition Act of 1798 until America’s entry into World War I, the United States had no federal legislation against seditious expression. [Note omitted] The lessons of 1798 had carried the nation through the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War, and the Spanish-American War. [Note omitted] But by World War I the lessons had been forgotten. (Stone 2004: 145)

The present author would prefer to place more emphasis on Madison’s role during the War of 1812 in establishing a tradition of free expression even in wartime, because his toleration of dissent set a precedent for the later wars. That precedent did not exist in 1798, and there is therefore a case for saying that the tradition started only in 1812. (It may be recalled that powerful members of Madison’s administration had been proposing restricting free expression during the War of 1812, but Madison had refused to propose such legislation.) However, it is possible to agree with Stone as regards the force of the cultural tradition in the later wars listed by Stone.

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Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, did propose a sedition act in 1917, in the context of the First World War. From the point of view of the present discussion, it is important to note that the cultural tradition in favor of free speech, and the collective memory of that tradition established by Madison had in fact not been entirely forgotten even during World War I. Instead, it was an argument used in Congress in opposition to Wilson’s proposal for a sedition act. For instance, Representative LaGuardia, Republican of New  York, addressing the House of Representatives on May 2, 1917 invoked the similarity of Wilson’s sedition act to the Sedition Act of 1798, and went on to say: It [the Sedition Act of 1798] became one of the most prominent points of attack upon the then administration. The appeal made to the people was more successful and more consonant with their feelings than any other upon that occasion. […] The liberty of the press, guaranteed by the Constitution, has been so clearly defined, construed, and limited by the courts of this country for the past 130 years. (Congressional Record, House, May 2, 1917)

Nor was LaGuardia the only Congressman in the debates on Wilson’s proposals for a sedition act to appeal to the cultural tradition against a sedition act even in wartime (see Rudanko 2012: 160, 173–174), which shows the continuing reality of the tradition in the collective memory of Americans. Wilson’s first attempt to enact a sedition act failed in 1917, but he did ultimately succeed in pushing through a sedition act in 1918. The Act led to the persecution of dissenters, as was to be expected. However, Wilson’s sedition act was repudiated by the succeeding Republican administration, showing the strength of the tradition established by James Madison. One manifestation of this tradition, in the wake of World War I, is the famous doctrine of “clear and present danger,” associated with Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis, which holds, in essence, that “government interference with speech and press is tolerable only when there is a ‘clear and present danger’ created by the material in question” (Schaefer and Birkland 2007: 85). James Madison had passed away much earlier, but it seems possible to say that his broad view of freedom of speech anticipated the doctrine of clear and present danger by more than a century. By contrast, in Germany there emerged no corresponding tradition of toleration of dissent. It is of course well known that dissent was ruthlessly suppressed during the Nazi period, as was illustrated in Chap. 1 with

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reference to the action of a German court in 1944. What is far less well known is that suppression was often practiced in Germany even before the Nazis ever came to power in January 1933. For instance, in the summer of 1932, when a newspaper published a cartoon featuring Chancellor Papen and his wife at a meal, with the wife asking him what emergency decree he had enacted that day, the Chancellor had the newspaper banned because of the cartoon (Fulda 2006: 62). This was by no means an isolated incident prior to the rise to power of the Nazis at the end of January 1933. The general public in Germany had grown accustomed to such practices of suppression and did not find them strange when the Nazis made rigorous use of the means of control that were practiced even before their rise to power (see Koszyk 1972: 342). It is also worth noting that the authoritarian intellectual climate in Germany and the concomitant distaste of political elites for democracy have increasingly come to be recognized as significant factors that led to the Nazi takeover at the end of January 1933 in the first place (see Kolb 2004: 226). Of course, Hegel’s legacy of an authoritarian view of freedom of speech cannot be regarded as the sole reason for the rise of totalitarianism in Germany. However, the effect of Hegel’s writings underlining and glorifying the supremacy of the power of the state should not be underestimated as a factor in fostering that type of intellectual climate in Germany, in view of the self-righteous authoritarianism of his stance and of his behavior with regard to freedom of speech. The continuing appeal of such views may explain in part why even today it is in Germany where efforts to censor the internet (see the German Network Enforcement Act of June 30, 2017, as reported in the Guardian, issue of January 5, 2018) are being pursued with more vigor than in many other countries in Europe. It is also worth noting, as does Bejan (2017), that in some European countries there has recently been a notable openness to hate speech legislation, which stands in “marked contrast” with the “American view that toleration demands unrestricted free expression” (Bejan 2017: 15).11 It is in part a tribute to James Madison, his writings and his stance on freedom of speech during his tenure as President that even today in the United States freedom of speech continues still to be widely recognized and treasured as a valuable feature of political culture by major segments of both the Democratic and Republican parties.

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Notes 1. The definitive edition of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right is Moldenhauer and Michel (1970). Here is the key passage in the German original: Pressfreiheit definieren als die Freiheit, zu reden und zu schreiben, was man will, steht dem parallel, wenn man die Freiheit überhaupt als die Freiheit angibt, zu tun, was man will.—Solches Reden gehört der noch ganz ungebildeten Roheit und Oberflächlichkeit des Vorstellens an. Es ist übrigens der Natur der Sache nach nirgends, dass der Formalismus so hartnäckig festhält und so wenig sich verständigen lässt, als in dieser Materie. Denn der Gegenstand ist das Flüchtigste, Zufälligste, Besonderste, Zufälligste des Meinens in unendlicher Mannigfaltigkeit des Inhalts und der Wendungen; … (Moldenhauer and Michel 1970: 486–487) 2. The German original runs as follows: Das Substantielle aber ist und bleibt, dass Verletzung der Ehre von Individuen überhaupt, Verleumdung, Schmähung, Verächtlichmachung der Regierung, ihrer Behörden und Beamten, der Person des Fürsten insbesondere, Verhöhnung der Gesetze, Aufforderung zum Aufruhr usf. Verbrechen, Vergehen mit den mannigfaltigsten Abstufungen sind. (Moldenhauer and Michel 1970: 488) 3. United States Statutes, Fifth Congress, Session II, July 14, 1812. 4. For discussion of the Sedition Act of 1798, see Miller (1951) and Smith (1956). For the prosecution of Republicans, see also Rosenberg (1986: 87). 5. The German original in Moldenhauer and Michel (1970: 18) runs as follows: Ohnehin hat sich die sich so nennende Philosophie es ausdrücklich ausgesprochen, dass das Wahre selbst nicht erkannt werden könne, sondern dass dies das Wahre sei, was jeder über die sittlichen Gegenstände, vornehmlich über Staat, Regierung und Verfassung, sich aus seinem Herzen, Gemüt und Begeisterung aufsteigen lasse. 6. The German original runs: Ein Heerführer dieser Seichtigkeit, die sich Philosophieren nennt, Herr Fries, … (Moldenhauer and Michel 1970: 18) 7. The discussion of the book review and Hegel’s reaction to it is based on Moldenhauer and Michel (1970: 519–520). See also Rosenkranz (1963 [1844]).

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8. Bejan (2017) invokes John Locke and makes the following general comment on how to deal with hurt feelings: Rather than indulging these [hurt] feelings by seeking revenge at dawn or in the courts, Locke would argue that tender consciences needed to toughen up. (Bejan 2017: 170) Bejan of course does not discuss the incident reviewed here, but the comment, with its reference to the courts, seems salient in the context of Hegel’s thin-­skinned reaction to the newspaper review. 9. For a discussion of views at the Constitutional Convention portraying the people as children, see Mercieca (2010: 94–97). 10. Mercieca (2010) pays a great deal of attention to how the role of individual citizens was conceptualized in early America, but the present discussion enriches the picture from the point of view of freedom of speech. 11. Similarly to the present study, Bejan (2017) gives prominence to the background of the “peculiar institutional arrangements associated with liberal toleration [of free expression] in the United States,” contrasting with recent restrictions of freedom of speech in some European countries and she asks “should we keep them [the peculiar institutional arrangements in the United States]” (Bejan 2017: 16). She answers her question with a “yes,” and the experiences of the Sedition Acts of 1798 and 1918 can be viewed as a reason to agree with her answer. At the same time, in her book Bejan does not engage with Madison’s role, instead privileging Williams, Hobbes and Locke. The difference in perspective may enhance the salience of the present study, in that Madison’s role in the evolution of an American tradition of free speech can be appreciated.

References Annals of Congress = The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States: With an Appendix, Containing Important State Papers and Public Documents, and All the Laws of a Public Nature: With a Copious Index, 1789–1824. 1834–1856. Washington, DC: Gales and Seaton. Bejan, Teresa. 2017. Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Blackstone, Sir William. 1873 [1765–1769]. Commentaries on the Laws of England. 4 vols, ed. Thomas M. Cooley. [Oxford: Clarendon Press] Reprint Chicago: Callaghan. Curtis, Michael Kent. 2000. Free Speech, “The People’s Darling Privilege.” Struggles for Freedom of Expression in American History. Durham: Duke University Press. Estes, Todd. 2006. The Jay Treaty Debate. Public Debate and the Evolution of Early American Political Culture. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.

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Feldman, Noah. 2017. The Three Lives of James Madison: Genius, Partisan, President. New York: Picador. Foner, Philip. 1976. The Democratic-Republican Societies, 1790–1800. A Documentary Sourcebook of Constitutions, Declarations, Addresses, Resolutions, and Toasts. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Fulda, Bernhard. 2006. Die Politik der Unpolitischen. Boulevard- und Massenpresse in den zwanziger und dreissiger Jahren. In Medialisierung und Demokratie in 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Frank Bösch and Norbert Frei, 48–72. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag. Heidler, David, and Jeanner Heidler, eds. 1997. Encyclopedia of the War of 1812. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. Houlgate, Stephen. 2008. G. W. F. Hegel Outlines of the Philosophy of Right. Trans. T.M.  Knox, revised, edited and introduced by Stephen Houlgate. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Humphrey, Carol. 1996. The Press of the Young Republic, 1783–1833. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Hunt, Gaillard, ed. 1906. The Writings of James Madison. Vol. VI 1790–1802. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Ketcham, Ralph. 1978. The Unimperial President. The Virginia Quarterly Review 54 (1): 116–136. ———. 1990 [1971]. James Madison. A Biography. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. Knox, T.M. 1952. Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Translated with Notes by T.M. Knox. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kolb, Eberhard. 2004. The Weimar Republic. London: Routledge. Koszyk, Kurt. 1972. Deutsche Presse 1914–1945. Geschichte der deutschen Presse. Teil III. Berlin: Colloquiuum Verlag. Levy, Leonard. 1999. Origins of the Bill of Rights. New Haven: Yale University Press. Louw, Bill. 1993. Irony in the Text or Insincerity in the Writer? The Diagnostic Potential of Semantic Prosodies. In Text and Technology: In Honour of John Sinclair, ed. Mona Baker, Gill Francis, and Elena Tognini-Bonelli, 157–176. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Louw, Bill, and Marija Milojkovic. 2014. Semantic Prosody. In The Cambridge Handbook of Stylistics, ed. Peter Stockwell and Sara Whiteley, 263–280. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mercieca, Jennifer. 2010. Founding Fictions. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press. Miller, John. 1951. Crisis in Freedom. The Alien and Sedition Acts. Boston: Little Brown and Company. Moldenhauer, Eva, and Karl Markus Michel, eds. 1970. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts oder Naturrecht und

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Staatsphilosophie im Grundrisse. Mit Hegels eigenhändigen Notizen und den mündlichen Zusätzen. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Oswald, Steve, Didier Maillat, and Louis de Saussure. 2016. Deception and Verbal Communication. In Verbal Communication, ed. Andrea Rocci and Louis de Saussure, 509–534. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Oxford Duden German Dictionary. German-English, English-German. 1990. Chief editors: W. Scholze-Stubenrecht and J.B. Sykes. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Rosenberg, Norman. 1986. Protecting the Best Men. An Interpretive History of the Law of Libel. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Rosenkranz, Karl. 1963 [1844]. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegels Leben. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek. Rudanko, Juhani. 2012. Discourses of Freedom of Speech: From the Enactment of the Bill of Rights to the Sedition Act of 1918. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Schaefer, Todd, and Thomas Birkland, eds. 2007. Encyclopedia of Media and Politics. Washington, DC: CQ Press. Smith, James Morton. 1956. Freedom’s Fetters. The Alien and Sedition Laws and American Civil Liberties. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Stagg, J.C.A., ed. 1999. The Papers of James Madison. Presidential Series. Vol. 4. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. ———. 2012. The War of 1812. Conflict for a Continent. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stone, Geoffrey. 2004. Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime. New  York: W. W. Norton. Thayer, John. 1991 [1798]. A Discourse, Delivered at the Roman Catholic Church in Boston, on the 9th of May, 1798. In Political Sermons of the American Founding Era 1730–1805, ed. Ellis Sandoz, 1341–1362. Indianapolis: Liberty Press. Walton, Douglas, Chris Reed, and Fabrizio Macagno. 2008. Argumentation Schemes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wittes, Benjamin, and Ritika Singh. 2012. James Madison, Presidential Power, and Civil Liberties in the War of 1812. In What So Proudly We Hailed: Essays on the Contemporary Meaning of the War of 1812, ed. Piero Nivola and Peter Kastor, 97–121. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Wood, Allen W., ed. 1991. G. W. F. Hegel: Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Ed. Allen W. Wood and Trans. H.B. Nisbet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wortman, Tunis. 1800. Treatise Concerning Political Enquiry, and the Liberty of the Press. New York: George Foreman.

CHAPTER 6

Conclusion

This book develops and applies methods of discourse analysis and historical pragmatics to explore some major themes bearing on the concept of freedom of speech at a formative stage of American history. Much has been written on this historical topic, and the conclusion here is that besides being the Father of the Bill of Rights, James Madison is also the Father of Free Speech. This is not altogether a surprising conclusion. However, the analytic tools from discourse analysis and historical pragmatics used in the present book do shed new light on why the conclusion is warranted. It is also seen in the book that the application of the tools to concrete texts can lead to the refinement of the analytic tools themselves. Chapter 2 of the book deals with aspects of the first debate on Madison’s proposal for the enactment of a Bill of Rights on June 8, 1789. Madison had been instrumental in promoting a reference to a Bill of Rights in President Washington’s first message to Congress. However, in spite of Madison’s preparation, the debate of June 8, 1789 turned out to be protracted, with the transcripts covering 26 single-spaced columns in the Annals of Congress. Madison’s proposal that the House of Representatives should consider amendments as a Committee of the Whole ran into determined opposition, especially from his fellow Federalists. It is argued that two of Madison’s chief opponents, both Federalists, like Madison at the time, used arguments that can be analyzed as informal fallacies in their attempt to block Madison’s motion for amendments to be considered in a timely fashion. The use of a framework of informal fallacies in the analysis © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Rudanko, Fallacies and Free Speech, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67877-7_6

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of debates and discourses in the early American Republic is extremely rare in the literature, but the present book offers a specific and updated model that lends itself for this purpose and offers new information on those discourses. One of the chief opponents of Madison’s motion in the debate of June 8, 1789, was James Jackson, Federalist of Georgia, who proposed that the consideration of amendments should be postponed by some nine months. It is argued in Chap. 2 that the proposal represented an informal fallacy, the fallacy being ad socordiam. In his speech Jackson put forward reasons for his motion—he wanted to have experience of the new Constitution and he expressed the view that no one could formulate an “absolute” amendment. However, if his argument was an instance of ad socordiam, it follows that the two reasons did not represent his true reasons for the motion. It is suggested in Chap. 2 that Jackson’s true motive or goal when he put forward the motion was to kill the project of amendments and that the reason why Jackson chose his roundabout or indirect way in his attempt to thwart Madison’s motion was because there was considerable support for amendments in the country at that time. Chapter 2 offers a more precise formulation of Jackson’s motion as an instance of ad socordiam than what has been proposed before. The formulation uses the notion of a covert intention, and in the chapter the discussion of a covert intention is placed in the context of earlier work on such intentions, especially Gibbs (1999). Jackson’s motion for postponing any discussion of amendments by some nine months and the reasoning behind it constitute a not insignificant aspect of the history of the enactment of the Bill of Rights, and therefore they are worth investigating. However, Madison’s way of dealing with it is of more interest, and here fallacy theory, it is argued, comes in useful. From the point of view of fallacy theory, the claim that the intentions or goals of speakers can be taken into account in assessing whether an argument is, or is not, fallacious runs counter to what is assumed or practiced by some major theorists of fallacy theory today, who want to focus on the “positions these people [those involved in resolving a difference of opinion] express or project in their speech acts” (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004: 54), rather than on the covert intentions of speakers. However, in the case of the debate of June 8, 1789, there is direct evidence that Jackson’s inner convictions and goals did matter in the debate. Two speakers, Benjamin Goodhue and James Madison, speaking after Jackson, referred to Jackson’s speech and made the specific point that, to

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quote Goodhue, Jackson was against the “consideration of amendments altogether” (Annals of Congress 1789: 426). Jackson’s motion for postponing any debate on amendments should then be understood in that context. It is worth adding that when Jackson spoke again in the debate of June 8, 1789, after Goodhue and Madison had made their claim about his attitude of opposition to amendments, he did not make any attempt to counter or deny Goodhue’s and Madison’s claims. It was therefore argued that there is warrant for regarding Jackson’s motion for the postponement of any debate on amendments as a deliberate (and quiet) violation of the Cooperative Principle and the maxim of Quantity, part 1 (Grice 1975: 45–49). Drawing on recent work by de Saussure (2005), it is also possible to conclude that in view of the covert violation of the cooperative principle, there is also warrant for regarding the motion as an instance of manipulative discourse. Naturally, analysts need to exercise care when making claims about covert goals or motives of speakers, and such claims are defeasible on the basis of further evidence. However, in the present case the evidence, which was termed micro-contextual, speaks for itself. The broader methodological conclusion is that the fallacy of ad socordiam should be reinstated among standard fallacies. Due credit should also be given to Jeremy Bentham (1962 [1824, 1952]) for having made insightful comments on it about two centuries ago. Madison’s other chief opponent in the debate of June 8, 1789 was Roger Sherman, Federalist of Connecticut, who was also against “entering upon the discussion of amendments” (Annals of Congress 1789: 448) at that time. It is claimed in Chap. 2 that his opposition to Madison’s motion was likewise fallacious in the debate of June 8, 1789 and that it also represented an instance of ad socordiam, though of a different subtype, compared to Jackson’s. In his second speech he expressed the view that those “States which had not requested alterations will hardly adopt them,” and he wanted to have an assurance that a sufficient number of the States would support amendments, as a precondition for agreeing to consider amendments. However, in June 1789, Sherman anonymously published a newspaper article in which he stated that “Restraints in a Constitution upon the Legislature of a free State, are but an abridgement of the liberties of the people.” In other words, his view was that a Bill of Rights would be an “abridgment of the liberties of the people” Sherman (1789), which strongly suggests that he was opposed to the very idea of a Bill of Rights, and that his doubts about whether the requisite number of States would

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adopt a Bill of Rights were disingenuous and that his argument in the debate was a fallacy. In this case the evidence for making an inference regarding his inner convictions was termed macro-contextual, because it originated in a speech event other than the debate of June 8, 1789. Jackson’s and Sherman’s interventions were important events in the debate of June 8, 1789, and overall the fate of the project was in the balance. The entire project of amendments might well have been rejected on that day. However, Madison persevered and was able to prevent that from happening. The chapter sheds new light on the nature of Jackson’s and Sherman’s interventions by developing and applying the fallacy of ad socordiam. Chapter 3 examines Alexander Contee Hanson’s candidacy for a seat in the House of Representatives in the aftermath of the unrest in Baltimore on July 27 and July 28, 1812. Articles published in the Federal Republican in the run-up to the poll in October 1812 make it possible to follow the major themes of Hanson’s campaign for Congress during this period. The violence perpetrated against Hanson and his followers at the jail was termed a “massacre” in the Federal Republican, and it was a central theme in the immediate aftermath of the unrest. The massacre frame was linked to a narrative according to which the mob action at the house in Charles Street and especially at the jail had been outrageous and barbaric. A further important objective of the narrative was to construct a history of the unrest where no blame for the unrest attached to the Federalists who had established themselves in the house in Charles Street and armed themselves with deadly weapons. This narrative did not offer any space for raising the question of what might have motivated the crowd outside. Another aspect of the narrative concerned the obscuring of the agency of the Federalists who killed Dr. Gale. However, letters written to Hanson by several of his Federalist associates in the period prior to July 27, 1812 were also examined. They indicated careful planning and organization on the part of Hanson and his associates in gathering the group of Federalists and bringing them to the house in Charles Street and in arming them with deadly weapons. That evidence did not fit in with the narrative of the unrest that Hanson sponsored as a candidate for Congress in order to get himself and other Federalists elected, and it was not presented in the Federal Republican. The failure to present it illustrates how the goal of a narrative may exclude potentially relevant information. Since the contents of the letters were well known to Hanson and since they were pertinent to the construction of the

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events of the unrest, the failure to reveal them in the Federal Republican was also a covert violation of Grice’s cooperative principle, and of the maxim of Quantity, part one, and on that basis the deliberate failure to reveal them may also be regarded as manipulative, in terms of the notion of manipulative discourse (de Saussure 2005), espoused here. The evidence of the letters provides warrant for a somewhat different narrative of the sequence of events, suggesting that Hanson and his party of followers may have been seeking a violent provocation when establishing themselves in the house in Charles Street. In later articles in the Federal Republican Hanson was concerned to present himself and the Federalist party as defenders of freedom of speech. Hanson also used an appeal based on the emotion of fear, arguing that if Federalists are not victorious in the elections of 1812, the cause of freedom of speech is lost. An analysis of the argument is offered, based on the idea that the argument based on fear, as used by Hanson, is a fallacy, given that the major Republican newspaper, the National Intelligencer, had unmistakably condemned the violence in Baltimore. The Republican newspaper also gave a not so subtle reminder that it had been the Republicans who had defended freedom of speech in the context of the Sedition Act, only some 15 years earlier. It also bears noting that after the indecision of July 27 and 28, 1812, the Republican authorities acted decisively when the August 3, 1812 issue of the Federal Republican reached the post office in Baltimore. Further unrest threatened, but the troops “easily” dispersed the crowd that had gathered (Hickey 1989: 67). The Republican authorities had learned their lesson and freedom of speech flourished again in Baltimore from August 3, 1812 onwards. Chapter 4 examines themes in the Federal Republican in the spring of 1813, with Hanson having been elected to the House of Representatives. The newspaper was seen to continue in its harshly critical stance against the Republican administration. The issues of impressment and British restrictions on American trade are often seen as the causes of the War of 1812, but in one of its editorials the Federal Republican instead claimed that by the war Madison’s “partizans” hoped to exacerbate the “popular resentment and animosity against England,” and that Madison and his supporters aspired to acquire the “title of Ally of Imperial France.” The newspaper went so far as to claim that President Madison would “rejoice” in an attack on Baltimore, “if his popularity and that of the war, could be promoted by it.” The comment shows the lengths to which the newspaper was ready to go to smear the President’s motives and integrity. The notion

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of aggravated impoliteness was invoked to characterize the nature of the attacks. In spite of the harsh attacks President Madison made no move to repress free speech during the war. It was also seen in Chap. 4 that many of the attacks on President Madison in the spring of 1813 concentrated on the alleged motives of his actions. This emphasis reinforces the point made in Chap. 2 that there is a need to recognize the role that imputations of motives can play in the analysis of political discourse. Chapter 5 compares Madison’s philosophy on freedom of speech with the conception that emerges from key passages on freedom of speech in Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Hegel’s conception is argued to be narrow and authoritarian, resembling the conception underlying the Sedition Act of 1798, in that it discountenances criticism that brings the rulers of a State into disrepute. Its narrow view of the concept of freedom of speech can be seen to be akin to the repressive tradition in England associated with Blackstone. For his part, Hegel even tried to persuade the Prussian State authorities to subject a reviewer of his work to punishment for having criticized a remark in his Philosophy of Right. By contrast, Madison took a much broader view of the concept of freedom of speech. In 1794, when still a member of Congress, he observed pithily that “opinions are not the subject of legislation” (Annals of Congress 1794: 934), and in the context of the Sedition Act he wrote of the press that “it is better to leave a few of its noxious branches to their luxuriant growth, than, by pruning them away, to injure the vigour of those yielding the proper fruit” (Hunt 1906: 389). Even as President he maintained the broad interpretation of the concept of freedom of speech, even in the face of extraordinarily harsh attacks on him and his policies. This aspect of Madison’s achievement has often been overlooked. Wittes and Singh write: The story of civil liberties during the War of 1812 is often ignored because it is a story of a dog that didn’t bark—of repression that did not occur, of strong executive actions not taken, and of risks incurred and tolerated, not preempted. While a few ugly episodes caveat Madison’s record of restraint, the overall pattern contrasts sharply with the more familiar narrative of executive excess during times of peril. (Wittes and Singh 2012: 100)

The present author agrees that Madison’s restraint was extraordinary under the circumstances. His equanimity in the face of the verbal attacks on him, illustrated in the present book, but often ignored in the literature

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on the War of 1812, is a measure of that restraint. In the view of the present author, it was that restraint, more than anything else, that led to the uniquely American tradition of free speech even in wartime. At the same time, the present author does not believe that Madison believed that freedom of speech was absolute. This became clear in the context of the unrest in Baltimore in July, 1812: when a Republican newspaper incited the mob to further violence after the first night of violence, the National Intelligencer, often used by the administration to express its views, repudiated the mob action a few days later in unmistakable terms, thereby rebuking the Republican newspaper in Baltimore. The present study raises several lines of investigation for future work. With respect to fallacy theory, the view that the analyst can make inferences about covert intentions of speakers opens up an area of investigation that has been badly neglected in recent times, in spite of Jeremy Bentham’s important work in the nineteenth century. Naturally, care will need to be taken when ascribing covert intentions to speakers, and such ascriptions will need to be substantiated. Some ways to substantiate the imputation of covert intentions were identified in Chap. 2, and two types of evidence were identified and illustrated. However, more work, to be based on other debates, will be desirable in this area of research. With respect of conceptions of freedom of speech, the comparison between Madison’s view and Hegel’s, presented in Chap. 5, can of course be extended to comparing Madison’s view with those of other thinkers from that period and from other periods. Another promising area of investigation is to inquire into the way that Woodrow Wilson was able to get a Sedition Act approved by Congress, even in the face of the First Amendment and in the face of the American tradition of free speech (for one initial study, see Rudanko 2012: Chapter 8), established by James Madison. Of course, Wilson’s Sedition Act was soon repealed, allowing the Madisonian tradition to gain a new lease of life. The essence of the tradition also came to be explicitly articulated in the doctrine of “clear and present danger,” according to which “government interference with speech and press is tolerable only when there is a ‘clear and present danger’ created by the material in question” (Schaefer and Birkland 2007: 85). At the present time, it seems possible to say that major segments of both major parties in the United States, as well as public opinion in the Unites States, respect and value the Madisonian tradition of free speech, which has meant an unprecedented degree of openness and accountability

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in public life. However, that tradition may come under attack at any time, as it did during the Wilson administration, and it is for those who want to honor the memory of Frau Frank-Schultz and of others who have suffered for their dissenting opinions to ensure that the tradition of openness and accountability can continue, in the interest of not only the United States but of other civilized countries.

References Annals of Congress = The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States: With an Appendix, Containing Important State Papers and Public Documents, and All the Laws of a Public Nature: With a Copious Index, 1789–1824. 1834–1856. Washington, DC: Gales and Seaton. Bentham, Jeremy. 1962 [1824, 1952]. The Handbook of Political Fallacies. Ed. Harold A. Larrabee, Revised ed. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. de Saussure, Louis. 2005. Manipulation and Cognitive Pragmatics: Preliminary Hypotheses. In Manipulation and Ideologies in the Twentieth Century: Discourse, Language, Mind, ed. Peter Schulz and Louis de Saussure, 113–145. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Gibbs, Raymond. 1999. Intentions in the Experience of Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grice, H. Paul. 1975. Logic and Conversation. In Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 3. Speech Acts, ed. Peter Cole and Jerry Morgan, 41–58. New  York: Academic Press. Hickey, Donald. 1989. The War of 1812. A Forgotten Conflict. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Hunt, Gaillard, ed. 1906. The Writings of James Madison. Volume VI 1790–1802. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Rudanko, Juhani. 2012. Discourses of Freedom of Speech. From the Enactment of the Bill of Rights to the Sedition Act of 1918. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Schaefer, Todd, and Thomas Birkland, eds. 2007. Encyclopedia of Media and Politics. Washington, DC: CQ Press. Sherman, Roger. 1789. Observations on the New Federal Constitution, and the Alterations that Have Been Proposed as Amendments. The Salem Mercury, June 30. van Eemeren, Frans, and Rob Grootendorst. 2004. A Systematic Theory of Argumentation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wittes, Benjamin, and Ritika Singh. 2012. James Madison, Presidential Power, and Civil Liberties. In What So Proudly We Hailed: Essays on the Contemporary Meaning of the War of 1812, ed. Pietro S. Nivola and Peter J. Kastor, 97–121. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

Index1

A Agency, 5, 8, 9, 52–58, 60, 75, 128 Agentivity, see Agency

E Eastern Shore General Advertiser, 63, 64, 67, 116 Epistemic vigilance, 27, 29, 40, 41, 67

C Communication constructive vs. counter-­ constructive, 17 deceptive, 22, 41n2, 58 manipulative, 3, 41n1, 58, 101 suppression/backgrounding of information, 67 Cooperative principle maxim of quantity, 20, 21, 67, 127, 129 maxim of quality, 21, 22 overt and covert violations of maxims, 67, 127, 129

F Federal Republican, 4–6, 48–53, 55–75, 77n3, 83–96, 112, 113, 128, 129 First Amendment, 1, 6, 31, 32, 39, 42n5, 73, 99, 104, 114, 117, 131 Frames, 5, 52–60, 76, 88, 104, 128 Freedom of speech Hegel’s view, 100, 107 Madison during the Sedition Act of 1798, 102, 118, 130 Madison during the War of 1812, 3, 5, 49, 131 Madison in 1794, 104–114, 130 practices in Great Britain, 31

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

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INDEX

G Goals of speakers, 28, 126 reticence about goals, 42n3 “Gulling” material, 88–92 H Hegel, G. F. W., 7, 9, 99–104, 106, 107, 109, 114, 117, 120, 121n1, 121n7, 122n8, 130, 131 demands punishment of a newspaper, 130 legacy of authoritarian view of freedom of speech, 106, 120 I Impoliteness aggravated impoliteness, 92–94, 96, 111, 112, 130 politic behavior, 93 Informal fallacy ad socordiam, 24, 25, 28, 29, 39, 40, 41n1, 126–128 argument from alternatives, 76 argument from fear, 74 definition, 3 guilt by association, 68, 69, 76 straw man fallacy, 101 Information manipulation theory, 21 Inner convictions, interactional agendas controversial nature of, 28 evidence for inferences about; macro-contextual, 128; micro-contextual, 35, 36 Intentions compared to desires, 18–19, 39 first-order vs. second-order, 17–19, 35 overt vs. covert, 17

N Narratives, 5, 8, 9, 52–59, 65, 67, 70, 75, 76, 77n2, 85, 86, 88–91, 96, 128–130 National Intelligencer, 5, 52, 55, 57, 72–74, 89, 90, 114–117, 129, 131 Nazi Germany, 9 P Paralipsis, 69, 70 Proleptic argumentation, 61 R Report on the Virginia Resolutions, 8, 107 Rhetorical question, 15, 93 S Scale of engagement, 38 Sedition Act of 1798, 7, 39, 68, 73, 119, 121n4 Sedition Act of 1918, 9, 119, 122n11 Semantic prosody, 14, 95, 101, 105 U Unrest in Baltimore June 1812, 50 July 1812, 51, 131 August 1812, 63, 64 The use of rhetorical questions, 15 W War of 1812 causes of war, 85, 129 Federal Republican’s view of causes of war, 129 Russian mediation in, 89–91 Whig of Baltimore, 115