4/11/2021
Prosecuting Sedition in a Divided Nation is a Challenge as Old as America
News at Home
by William H. Pruden III
William H. Pruden III is the Director of Civic Engagement and an Instructor in History and Social Studies at Ravenscroft School in Raleigh, North Carolina.
With arrests mounting and prosecutors starting to develop their legal strategies to address the January attack on the Capitol, sedition, the centuries old concept broadly defined as conspiring to overthrow or destroy by force the government of the United States, or to forcibly prevent the execution of the law, is back in the news. The frequently referenced stepchild to treason, sedition has long been a dark specter, a sword hanging over the not-really-United States, almost from the beginning of the nation's existence. Indeed, whether we realize it or not, talk of sedition is but another indication of the divisions that have haunted the distinctive experiment that is the United States since its inception.