| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

"Whom Can We Trust Now?": The Meaning of Treason in the United States, from the Revolution through the Civil War. By Brian F. Carso Jr. (Lanham: Lexington, 2006. xii, 266 pp. $32.00, ISBN 978-0-7391-1256-4.)

"Whom Can We Trust Now?" argues that republican principles produced a dramatic reconsideration of the meaning of treason in American law and culture. Brian F. Carso Jr. contends that in a republic, the idea of treason creates a quandary: How can a government protect itself from internal subversion while protecting its citizens' right to dissent? The answer, it seems, is that it cannot, or, that between the Revolution and the end of the Civil War, American jurists never devised a clear legal definition of treason. Where lawyers failed, Carso contends, the court of public opinion succeeded. Authors and orators of all stripes eagerly condemned those suspected of disloyalty to the state, and those convicted in that venue suffered a fate worse than death—eternal damnation in the memory of people of the United States. Consequently, public discussion, not legal precedent, is the means through which Americans define legitimate dissent and the responsibilities of the loyal citizen. That unregulated discussion is often uncomfortable, Carso suggests, but it is a necessary part of life in a republic and is preferable to using a necessarily unstable legal doctrine to police those same boundaries.

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