Topic: Sedition

Today we remember Eugene Victor Debs, the union organizer and socialist leader who was born on this date in 1855.

Debs was also a five-time presidential candidate who ran his final presidential campaign (for the 1920 election) from prison, where he had been sentenced to a ten year term. His crime? Sedition. In a speech in June of 1918, a year and a day after the Espionage Act was adopted and a month after the adoption of the Sedition Act, Debs had spoken out against the Great War.

The Sedition Act made it a crime to "utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States . . ." while the United States is at war.

So what does the word sedition mean? The roots of sedition are roughly equivalent to "civil discord; faction;" its Latin ancestor translates as separation. In English, sedition names the incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority; or conduct consisting of speaking, writing, or acting against an established government or seeking to overthrow it by unlawful means. Sedition is applied to conduct tending to the more serious crime of treason but without an overt act. Throughout American history, various movements have been declared seditious.

Not so incidentally, the Sedition Act was repealed in 1921 and Debs lived to see his sentence commuted.

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