The Alien and Sedition Acts were four bills passed in 1798 by the Federalists in the 5th United States Congress in the aftermath of the French Revolution's reign of terror and during an undeclared naval war with France, later known as the Quasi-War. They were signed into law by President John Adams. Opposition to Federalists among Democratic-Republicans reached new heights at this time since the Democratic-Republicans had supported France. Some even seemed to want an event similar to the French Revolution to come to the United States to overthrow the Federalists.[1] When Democratic-Republicans in some states refused to enforce federal laws, and even threatened possible rebellion, Federalists threatened to send in an army and force them to capitulate.[2] As the paranoia sweeping Europe was bleeding over into the United States, calls for secession reached unparalleled heights, and the fledgling nation seemed ready to rip itself apart.[3] Some of this was seen by Federalists as having been caused by French and French-sympathizing immigrants. The acts were thus meant to guard against this real threat of anarchy. Democratic-Republicans denounced them as being both unconstitutional and designed to stifle criticism of the administration, and as infringing on the right of the states to act in these areas, though they did use them after the 1800 election against Federalists.[4] They became a major political issue in the elections of 1798 and 1800. They were very controversial in their own day, as they remain to the present day. Opposition to them resulted in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolves, authored by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, which were foundational to the states rights theory that helped lead to the Civil War.
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Four separate laws constituted what is commonly referred to as the "Alien and Sedition Acts"
Republican editors, a member of Congress, and private individuals were targets of prosecution under the Sedition Act. Twenty-five people were arrested. Of them, eleven were tried, one died awaiting trial, and ten were convicted of sedition, often in trials before openly partisan Federalist judges.
Benjamin Franklin Bache, the grandson of Benjamin Franklin, was editor of the Aurora, a Republican newspaper. Bache had accused George Washington of incompetence and financial irregularities, and "the blind, bald, crippled, toothless, querulous ADAMS" of nepotism and monarchical ambition. The Adams administration did not wait for the passage of the Sedition Act but arrested Bache on common law libel charges on June 27, 1798, two weeks before the Act was signed by the President. Bache died of yellow fever in 1798 while awaiting trial.[5]
James Thomson Callender, a Scottish citizen, had been expelled from Great Britain for his political writings. Living first in Philadelphia, then seeking refuge close to Jefferson in Republican Virginia, he wrote a book entitled "The Prospect Before Us" (read and approved by Jefferson before publication) in which he called the Adams administration a "continual tempest of malignant passions" and the President a repulsive pedant, a gross hypocrite and an unprincipled oppressor". Callender, already residing in Virginia and writing for the Richmond Examiner, was indicted under the Sedition Act. Justice Samuel Chase of the Supreme Court presided at Callender's trial. Callender's counsel attempted to argue the unconstitutionality of the Sedition law, but Chase refused to permit the jury to determine the constitutionality of a federal statute. Callender was convicted, and Chase fined him $200 and sentenced him to nine months in jail. Jefferson pardoned Callender when he became President, as he did the others convicted under the Sedition Act, and also gave him fifty dollars towards his fine, the last in a series of payments he made to support the journalist. Callender however, enraged by what he perceived as a slight by the new President, wrote a series of attacks on Jefferson similar to those earlier launched against Adams, and which included the assertion that Jefferson had fathered children by a slave woman.[6]
Anthony Haswell was an English immigrant and Jeffersonian printer in Vermont. Haswell called for a lottery to raise the money required to pay the fines of Congressman Lyon, while speaking ill of Federalist marshal Jabez Fitch, calling him a "hard-hearted savage".[7] Haswell also often reprinted parts of the Aurora, including Bache's claim that the federal government had employed Tories.[8] Haswell was found guilty of seditious libel by judge William Paterson, and sentenced to a two month imprisonment and a $200 fine.[9]
Matthew Lyon, born in Ireland, was a Democratic-Republican congressman from Vermont. He was indicted under the Sedition Act for an essay he had written in the Vermont Journal accusing the administration of "ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation, and selfish avarice". While awaiting trial, Lyon commenced publication of Lyon's Republican Magazine, subtitled "The Scourge of Aristocracy". Supreme Court justice Paterson presiding at trial, denied Lyon's defense of unconstitutionality of the statute, fined Lyon $1,000 and sentenced him to four months in prison. While in prison, Lyon continued to write, and also won re-election. After his release, he returned to Congress.[10][11]
Luther Baldwin, a private citizen, was indicted for a comment he made during a visit by President Adams to Newark, New Jersey. The President was greeted by a crowd and by a committee that saluted him by firing a cannon. A bystander said, "There goes the President and they are firing at his ass." Baldwin replied that he did not care "if they fired through his ass." He was convicted in the federal court for speaking "seditious words tending to defame the President and Government of the United States" and fined $100.[12][13]
In November 1798, David Brown led a group in Dedham, Massachusetts in setting up a liberty pole with the words, "No Stamp Act, No Sedition Act, No Alien Bills, No Land Tax, downfall to the Tyrants of America; peace and retirement to the President; Long Live the Vice President".[14][15][16] Brown was arrested in Andover, Massachusetts, but because he could not afford the $4,000 bail, he was taken to Salem for trial.[17] Brown was tried in June 1799.[14] Brown pled guilty but Justice Samuel Chase asked him to name others who had assisted him.[14] Brown refused, was fined $480,[17][18] and sentenced to eighteen months in prison, the most severe sentence ever imposed under the Sedition Act.[14][17]
The Republican prediction that the Sedition Act would be used as a tool to assure the primacy of the Federalists was confirmed by the fact that no Federalist editor was indicted for equally rough language towards Republicans. John C. Miller writes that "the Sedition Act was not construed to mean that the Federalists were to cease maligning and whipping Jefferson", who was, among numerous other assertions, called a "vain author, false prophet, and thorough-bred Frenchman".[19] It has been said that the Alien Acts were aimed at Albert Gallatin, the Jeffersonian from Geneva; and the Sedition Act aimed at Benjamin Franklin Bache's Aurora.[20][21]
While government authorities prepared lists of aliens for deportation, many aliens fled the country during the debate over the Alien and Sedition Acts, and Adams never signed a deportation order.[22]
The Democratic-Republicans used the Alien and Sedition Acts as one of their principal issues in the 1800 election, in which Federalists at all levels, were turned out of power. Thomas Jefferson, upon assuming the Presidency, pardoned all of those still serving sentences under the Sedition Act[23] though he also used the acts to prosecute some of his own critics before the acts expired.[24] In 1802, the House Judiciary Committee denounced the Sedition Act as unconstitutional, permitting the refund of fines which had been paid under it.[25]
The Alien and Sedition Acts were, however, never appealed to the Supreme Court, whose right of judicial review was not established until Marbury v. Madison in 1803. The Court in 1798 was composed entirely of Federalists, all appointed by Washington. Many of them, particularly Associate Justice Samuel Chase, were openly hostile to the Federalists' opponents. Individual Supreme Court Justices, particularly Chase, sitting in circuit, heard many of the cases prosecuting opponents of the Federalists. Subsequent mentions in Supreme Court opinions have assumed that it was unconstitutional. In the seminal free speech case of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, the Court declared, "Although the Sedition Act was never tested in this Court, the attack upon its validity has carried the day in the court of history." 376 U.S. 254, 276 (1964). In a concurring opinion in Watts v. United States, which involved an alleged threat against President Lyndon Johnson, William O. Douglas noted, "The Alien and Sedition Laws constituted one of our sorriest chapters; and I had thought we had done with them forever ... Suppression of speech as an effective police measure is an old, old device, outlawed by our Constitution."[26] The Alien Enemies Act remained in force and was used as a basis for the internment of Japanese citizens during World War II.
Vice President Thomas Jefferson denounced the Sedition Act as invalid and a violation of the constitution.[27][28] Jefferson and James Madison also secretly drafted the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions denouncing the federal legislation, though state legislatures rejected these resolutions.[29] Though the resolutions followed the "interposition" approach of James Madison, Jefferson advocated nullification and at one point drafted a threat for Kentucky to secede.[30] Jefferson's biographer Dumas Malone argued that this might have gotten Jefferson impeached for treason, had his actions become known at the time.[31] In writing the Kentucky Resolutions, Jefferson warned that, "unless arrested at the threshold," the Alien and Sedition Acts would "necessarily drive these states into revolution and blood." Historian Ron Chernow says of this "he wasn't calling for peaceful protests or civil disobedience: he was calling for outright rebellion, if needed, against the federal government of which he was vice president." Jefferson "thus set forth a radical doctrine of states' rights that effectively undermined the constitution."[32]
Chernow argues that neither Jefferson nor Madison sensed that they had sponsored measures as inimical as the Alien and Sedition Acts themselves.[33] Historian Garry Wills argued "Their nullification effort, if others had picked it up, would have been a greater threat to freedom than the misguided [alien and sedition] laws, which were soon rendered feckless by ridicule and electoral pressure"[34] The theoretical damage of the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions was "deep and lasting, and was a recipe for disunion".[35] George Washington was so appalled by them that he told Patrick Henry that if "systematically and pertinaciously pursued", they would "dissolve the union or produce coercion".[36] The influence of Jefferson's doctrine of states' rights reverberated right up to the Civil War and beyond.[37] Future president James Garfield, at the close of the Civil War, said that Jefferson's Kentucky Resolution "contained the germ of nullification and secession, and we are today reaping the fruits".[38]