Neil Gandhi reviews Marcus Alexander Gadson’s Sedition: How America’s Constitutional Order Emerged from Violent Crisis (NYU Press, 2025, 264p)
The saying goes that you should ‘never waste a good crisis’. The greatest crisis is certainly a constitutional one, and therefore the greatest opportunity. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were pivotal in the United States of America, as the country expanded in geography and population, leading to multiple state-level and national constitutional crises. Marcus Alexander Gadson’s latest publication Sedition unpacks these frequent crises, their underlying dynamics and the elite groups seizing opportunities for personal gain, with repercussions for modern-day politics.
Instead of the familiar and comforting narrative of the independence movement, Gadson focuses on the more violent, manipulative and turbulent process of state constitution-making before and after the Civil War. He writes regularly on constitutional and legal reform, with a particular focus on the historical and contemporary dynamics of state-level governance. Gadson is currently an Associate Professor of Law at Campbell University and a specialist in state constitutions. His most recent work reveals the role of elites, violence and racism – a sharp contrast with the quiet and enlightened story of the constitution-making process at national level.
Sedition uncovers an under-researched area of constitutional history that is highly relevant for modern politics. Gadson demonstrates the inter-play between state-level constitutional crises and national politics but, more alarmingly, highlights the role of conservative elites in preserving the status quo through extra-legal including bribery, voter fraud, violence, and the manipulation of the security apparatus.
The book’s focus is on state-level constitutional crises. Gadson zeroes in on two reoccurring questions from the period (one of which remains today): who counts as the people? And how do we deal with former slaves and former slave-owners? While the repression of black Americans is an important part of the story, Gadson’s primary focus is on the strategies employed by conservative elites to shape constitutions in their favour.
Gadson’s work contrasts with Daniel Ziblatt’s recent work ‘Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy’, which explores constitution-making in Britain and Germany through the lens of political parties (you can check RevDem’s podcast with Ziblatt and Levitsky here). Gadson’s book is distinctly American with its questions about race and slavery more pertinent to the context, whereas Ziblatt focuses on political parties, industrialization and the later process of democratic constitutions in two European countries. Both offer valuable insights into elite resistance in constitutional processes and offer valuable insights into how these forces shaped modern democratic systems.
Gadson investigates six constitutional crises in different American states. These crises were resolved through a mix of debate, federal intervention, and, at times, brute force. He argues that the role of the federal government in resolving state-level constitutional crises has contributed to the diminished reverence for state constitutions compared to the national constitution. His central contribution lies in exposing the mechanisms by which conservative elites maintained dominance through manipulation, coercion, and violence.
These elites, motivated by economic interests tied to slavery and fears of black political power that would lead to retribution, used constitutional reform as a tool to entrench privilege.
The dense and rich narrative reveals how extra-legal measures including violence and insurrection were employed to shape constitutional outcomes. The study serves as a sobering reminder of how privilege can be embedded in legal frameworks and offers a cautionary tale for reformers about the lengths to which actors will go to influence foundational laws and retain privilege. Gadson argues that the American Revolution unleashed a precedent for violence in constitutional processes, a legacy that reverberated throughout the nineteenth century and perhaps through to today.
The meticulous narrative provides deep insight into the context and strategies behind each constitutional crisis. Gadson’s engagement with the interplay between state and federal dynamics enriches the analysis, offering a nuanced understanding of the shaping of constitutional reforms.
By illuminating the violent and corrupt nature of state constitution-making, Gadson challenges the sanctified view of the national process and underscores the complexity of American constitutional history.
While informative, the book’s dense descriptions can overwhelm the readers by obscuring the thematic analysis. A more structured analytical framework might have helped to draw connections across the cases.
Another of Sedition’s limitations is that it underplays of the role of the economy of slavery. The fear of Black political empowerment and the desire to preserve slavery-driven economic models were central to many constitutional manipulations. Many years after the American Revolution, Rhode Island attempted constitutional reform led by Thomas W Dorr. The ‘Dorr Rebellion’ was a move against the elite that led to the establishment of a parallel government to side-step the land-owning class. The rebellion used violence which was met by martial law and eventually the arrest of Dorr. Whilst Gadson explores the elite versus anti-elite sentiment of the rebellion, the underlying economic dynamics are under-developed as drivers of change and preservation.
Moreover, Gadson stops short of connecting historical crises to contemporary ones. Today’s constitutional debates such as those surrounding immigration, birthright citizenship, and access to justice could easily be related to previous debates over the definition of ‘the people’ and exclusion of minorities. Following the Brooks-Baxter War, Gadson argues that black people no longer considered part of ‘the people’, despite the constitution insisting on equality between all men. This contradiction between de facto definitions of ‘the people’ and de jure ones certainly has modern day reverberations which might have strengthened the book’s relevance. Sedition is a powerful work of historical scholarship and a compelling call to reexamine the role of state-level constitutions in shaping American democracy.
Gadson’s detailed case studies reveal the fragility of constitutional processes and the lengths to which elites will go to preserve power.
While the book could more fully explore the centrality of economics and the connections to contemporary crises, it remains an essential resource for those engaged in constitutional reform or resisting authoritarian tendencies, particularly policymakers, social reformers and scholars. This is a compelling and insightful read, with a detailed exploration of the corrupt, violent and manipulative constitutional processes of the period. The underlying question of who constitutes ‘the people’ persists today, as do some of the methods of contestation, with important repercussions for the shape of modern democratic institutions.
Neil Gandhi is an international development, democracy and governance expert. He works for the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and is currently the Senior Governance Adviser based in Bangladesh. Previously, he worked across Eastern Europe and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He holds a BA in History with French from Bristol University, MPhil in Economic and Social History from Cambridge University and MA in Corruption and Governance from Sussex University. Views are his own.
