Alien and Sedition Acts
The Alien and Sedition Acts were four bills passed in 1798 by the Federalists in the 5th United States Congress during an undeclared naval war with France, later known as the Quasi-War. They were signed into law by President John Adams. Proponents claimed the acts were designed to protect the Catholics from alien citizens of enemy powers and to prevent seditious attacks from weakening the government. The Democratic-Republicans, like later historians, denominated 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. They became a major political issue in the elections of 1798 and 1800.
Acts
There were actually four separate laws making up what is commonly referred to as the "Alien and Sedition Acts"
1. The Naturalization Act (officially An Act to Establish a Uniform Rule of Naturalization; ch. 54, 1Stat.566) extended the duration of residence required for aliens to become citizens of the United States.
2. The Alien Friends Act (officially An Act Concerning Aliens; ch. 58, 1Stat.570) authorized the president to deport any resident alien considered "dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States." It was activated June 25, 1798, with a two year expiration date.
3. The Alien Enemies Act (officially An Act Respecting Alien Enemies; ch. 66, 1Stat.577) authorized the president to apprehend and deport resident aliens if their home countries were at war with the United States of America. Enacted July 6, 1798, and providing no sunset provision, the act remains intact today as 50 U.S.C.§21–24. At the time, war was considered likely between the U.S. and France.
4. The Sedition Act (officially An Act for the Punishment of Certain Crimes against the United States; ch. 74, 1Stat.596) made it a crime to publish "false, scandalous, and malicious writing" against the government or its officials. It was enacted July 14, 1798, with an expiration date of March 3, 1801 (the day before Adams' presidential term was to end).
Constitutionality
While Jefferson denounced the Sedition Act as invalid and a violation of the First Amendment of the United States Bill of Rights, which protected the right of free speech, his main argument on its unconstitutionality was that it violated the Tenth Amendment "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Jefferson more strongly argued the Federal Government had overstepped its limits in the Alien and Sedition Acts by attempting to exercise unjust powers. Virginia and Kentucky passed resolutions openly denouncing the acts; Federalist-dominated state legislatures rejected Jefferson's position through resolutions either supporting the Acts or denying the ability of Virginia and Kentucky to circumvent them.
The judicial redress for unconstitutional legislation under the doctrine of judicial review was not established until Marbury v. Madison in 1803. The Supreme 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. The Alien and Sedition Acts were not appealed to the Supreme Court for review, although individual Supreme Court Justices, sitting in circuit, heard many of the cases prosecuting opponents of the Federalists.
To address the constitutionality of the measures, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison sought to unseat the Federalists, appealing to the people to remedy the constitutional violation, and drafted the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, which called on the states to nullify the federal legislation. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions reflect the Compact Theory, which holds that the United States is made up of a voluntary union of states that agree to cede some of their authority in order to join the union, but that the states do not, ultimately, surrender their sovereign rights. Therefore, under the Compact Theory, states can determine if the federal government has violated its agreements, including the Constitution, and nullify such violations or even withdraw from the union. Variations of this theory were also argued at the Hartford Convention at the time of the War of 1812, and by the southern states just before the American Civil War.
The Sedition Act expired on March 3, 1801, coinciding with the end of the Adams administration. While this prevented its constitutionality from being directly decided by the Supreme Court, subsequent mentions of the Sedition Act in Supreme Court opinions have assumed that it would be ruled unconstitutional if ever tested in court. For example, 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."
Incidents
The Republican Press was often the target of the Alien and Sedition Act. Federalists viewed them as rebellious and opponents to "genuine liberty" for their many critiques of the administration. Matthew Lyon, a congressman of Vermont and editor of Republican Newspaper The Scourge of Aristocracy, was fined $1,000 and sentenced to four months in prison. Likewise, lawyer and physician Thomas Cooper was imprisoned for writings accusing the Adams administration of bias towards Britain.
While the Alien and Sedition Laws were in force, John Adams, en route from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Quincy, Massachusetts, stopped in Newark, New Jersey, where he 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 a**." Luther Baldwin was indicted for replying that he did not care "if they fired through his a**." He was convicted in the federal court for speaking "sedicious words tending to defame the President and Government of the United States" and fined, assessed court costs and expenses, and placed in jail until the fine and fees were paid.
Jury nullification was practiced in many cases involving the Alien and Sedition Acts.
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," referring to then-President John Adams and Vice President Thomas Jefferson. Brown was arrested in Andover, Massachusetts, but because he could not afford the $4,000 bail, he was taken to Salem for trial. Brown was tried in June 1799. Brown wanted to plead guilty but Justice Samuel Chase wanted him to name everybody who had helped him or who subscribed to his writings. Brown refused, was fined $480, and sentenced to eighteen months in prison, the most severe sentence then imposed under the Alien and Sedition Acts.
Elections of 1800
Although the Federalists hoped the Sedition Act would muffle the opposition, many Democratic-Republicans still "wrote, printed, uttered and published" their criticisms of the Federalists. They strongly criticized the act itself and used it as one of their principal election issues. The controversy also had enormous implications on the Federalist party's later history and made a significant contribution to its demise. The Sedition Act expired when the term of President Adams ended in 1801.
Ultimately the Acts backfired against the Federalists. 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. Twenty-five people, primarily prominent newspaper editors such as Benjamin Franklin's grandson Benjamin Franklin Bache and Congressman Matthew Lyon were arrested. Of them, eleven were tried, Bache died awaiting trial, and ten were convicted of sedition, often in trials before openly partisan Federalist judges. Federalists at all levels, however, were turned out of power, and over the following years Congress repeatedly apologized for, or voted recompense to victims of, the enforcement of the Alien and Sedition Acts. Thomas Jefferson, who won the 1800 election, pardoned all of those who had been convicted for crimes under the Alien Enemies Act and the Sedition Act.
Alien and Sedition Acts
In the summer of 1798 the young United States was on the brink of war with France, one of the mightiest powers in the world. Some worried America faced not only a powerful enemy abroad, but also a threatening undercurrent of opposition at home. Hoping to strengthen the nation during war, and at the same time crush their political rivals, the Federalist party in power passed a series of four laws collectively termed the Alien and Sedition Acts. Alexander Hamilton, a leading Federalist, believed as a result of the new laws "there will shortly be national unanimity."
Hamilton, like most other Americans in the eighteenth century, maintained that political factions or parties threatened the stability of the new nation. Yet hardly had the first Congress convened before proto-parties began to form. An array of congressmen known as Republicans joined Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in opposing Hamilton's economic plans. Newly founded political newspapers helped congressmen and party leaders attract the support of ordinary voters. Newspaper editors in the 1790s actively aligned themselves with national figures and parties, while launching fierce attacks against political rivals.
By the middle of the 1790s foreign policy disagreements highlighted the distinction between the proto-parties. As France and England battled for European supremacy against the backdrop of the French Revolution, the American parties sought opposite alliances with the European rivals. In 1794 Federalist concerns about the anarchy of the French Revolution led President George Washington to dispatch John Jay to negotiate a treaty linking American commercial and diplomatic interests with England. Republicans, who saw France as America's natural ally because of the republican values of the Revolution, harshly criticized the Jay Treaty. By 1796 the wartime naval practices of impressment and privateering led the United States into a "Quasi War" naval and diplomatic crisis, with France. Hoping to avoid war, President John Adams sent representatives to negotiate a peace settlement with the French. The French demanded a bribe to avoid war, outraging Americans in what became known as the "X,Y,Z Affair."
Seeking to capitalize on the anti-French and anti-Republican sentiment arising from the X,Y,Z Affair and the Quasi War, Federalists in Congress proposed the four Alien and Sedition Acts in June and July of 1798. Three dealt with aliens—immigrants who had yet to become naturalized American citizens. Federalists knew these European immigrants overwhelmingly voted Republican, and took advantage of public fears that they might aid France during a war. The "Act Concerning Aliens" and the "Alien Enemies Act" established a registration and surveillance system for foreign nationals living in the United States. The laws allowed the president (at the time, Adams, a Federalist) to arrest and deport aliens who might endanger the nation's security. President Adams, however, never used the Alien Acts. The "Naturalization Act" increased the period of residence required to become a naturalized citizen and to vote, from five to fourteen years.
The Sedition Act awakened even more controversy because it stifled the possibility of opposition politics. The act prohibited "any false, scandalous and malicious" writing or speaking against the U.S. government, the president, or either house of Congress. The language of the act specifically cited those who brought the government "into contempt or disrepute," anyone who might "excite ... the hatred of the good people of the United States," stir up "sedition," or "excite any unlawful combinations ... for opposing or resisting any law of the United States." Further, the act applied to anyone who might "aid, encourage or abet any hostile designs of any foreign nation." Violators of the Sedition Act were to be tried in federal court and could be punished by fines of up to $2,000 and imprisonment for up to two years.
Even before 1798, Federalists had prosecuted Republican editors in state courts under the common law of seditious libel. State judges and juries, however, leaned Republican, while the federal judiciary was overwhelmingly Federalist. Under a fiercely partisan application of the Sedition Act, Federalist judges indicted fourteen Republican editors, with ten convicted and imprisoned. The United States had only about fifty Republican-leaning newspapers at the time, so this constituted a substantial portion of the Republican press. Major Republican journalists placed on trial for sedition included John Burk, James Callender, Thomas Cooper, and William Duane. The first and most unusual prosecution under the Sedition Act was of Matthew Lyon, a Congressman from Vermont, who became a martyr for Republicans after being fined $1,000 and sentenced to four months in jail.
The Federalist enforcement of the already unpopular Sedition Act made it even more despised. Jefferson decided that the states themselves offered the best means to protect basic rights and Republican values from the Federalists whom he believed were subverting the Constitution. Jefferson and Madison authored resolutions in the state legislatures of Kentucky and Virginia respectively in the late summer of 1798 to stop the new laws. The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions introduced the doctrine of state interposition, arguing that the national government was a "compact" among the states and that the states could decide to declare null and void the new federal laws they believed to be unconstitutional. Republicans in Virginia went so far as to call for the state to prepare to defend itself militarily against the Federalist-controlled government.