In 1798, the Federalist Congress passed four laws to check a perceived French threat during the Undeclared Naval War with France. The Naturalization Act (18 June) extended required residence from five to fourteen years before an alien could become a citizen. The Alien Friends Act (25 June) allowed the president to deport any alien deemed dangerous to “peace and safety” and the Alien Enemies Act (July 6) allowed the deportation of any alien from a country at war with the United States. The Sedition Act (14 July) rendered it a crime to make statements intended to defame or bring the president, Congress, or government into contempt or disrepute. Those convicted could be fined up to $2,000 and jailed for two years. The Naturalization and Enemies Acts were permanent; the Alien Friends Act would expire in 1800, and the Sedition Act in 1801. Not vigorously enforced, the Alien Acts convinced many aliens to leave the United States.
Ultimately twenty‐one people were indicted for sedition, and eleven were convicted, receiving sentences of up to eighteen months and fines of $1,000 or more. Influential Republican editors and leaders were the main targets, but any criticism was a federal crime. The Federalists argued that by allowing truth as a defense, the Sedition Act advanced civil liberties. Federal judges at sedition cases, however, interpreted the law so as to guarantee convictions: the accused must prove the truth of their opinions.
In November 1798, Vice President Thomas Jefferson and former congressman James Madison secretly drafted resolutions adopted by the Kentucky and Virginia legislatures challenging the Alien and Sedition Acts. These resolutions argued that the states had not delegated power to punish libel to the federal government, and that free government rested on the people's free opinions. As president (1801), Jefferson pardoned all convicted under the Sedition Act and helped pay their fines.
Four security laws signed by President John Adams and passed by the U.S. Federalist Congress in 1798 during the Quasi-War with France of 1798-1800. The three laws restricting aliens were the Naturalization Act, Alien Friends Act, and Alien Enemies Act. The Sedition Act diminished freedom of speech and press and was the first federal law that punished as a crime any statement made against the government or its members.
See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.
Four laws passed by the U.S. Congress in 1798, in anticipation of war with France. The acts, precipitated by the XYZ Affair, restricted aliens and curtailed press criticism of the government. Aimed at French and Irish immigrants (who were mostly pro-France), they increased the waiting period for naturalization and authorized expulsion of aliens considered dangerous. The Alien and Sedition Acts were opposed by Thomas Jefferson and others and helped propel Jefferson to the presidency. They were repealed or had expired by 1802.
Congress has not always been able to tolerate criticism from the press. In 1798, there was a distinct threat of war between the United States and France because of the French navy's interference with American shipping. The majority Federalist party in Congress reacted angrily to attacks from the minority Democratic-Republican party press by enacting the Alien and Sedition Acts.
The Alien Act allowed the President to deport any noncitizen he considered “dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States.” This provision was aimed at the many Democratic-Republican editors who were born abroad. The Sedition Act made it a crime to publish anything false or malicious about either house of Congress or about the executive branch. Benjamin Franklin Bache, editor of the Philadelphia Aurora, predicted that “to laugh at the cut of a coat of a member of Congress will soon be treason.” In fact, many editors went to prison for writing critically about Congress and the President. Even Representative Matthew Lyon (Democratic-Republican-Vermont) spent time in jail for condemning the government in his newspaper. Democratic Republicans considered these laws unconstitutional. “Men who engage in public life, or are members of legislative bodies, must expect to be exposed to…attacks on their principles and opinions,” said Senator Charles Pinckney (Democratic-Republican-South Carolina). When they gained the majority in the election of 1800, Democratic-Republicans allowed the Alien and Sedition Acts to expire.
The Alien and Sedition Acts were passed by Congress in 1798 in preparation for an anticipated war with France. Interpreting the prominent participation of immigrants in the Republican opposition party as evidence of a relationship between foreigners and disloyalty, Federalists championed tighter restrictions for foreigners and critics of their policies.
The Naturalization Act of 1798 increased the residency requirement for American citizenship from five to fourteen years, required aliens to declare their intent to acquire citizenship five years before it could be granted, and made persons from "enemy" nations ineligible for naturalization. The act consequently deprived Republicans of an important source of political support. Aliens were specifically affected by two other acts, which authorized their deportation if they were deemed "dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States" and their wholesale incarceration or expulsion by presidential executive order during wartime.
Under the Sedition Act, even the rights of American citizens were curtailed by prohibiting assembly "with intent to oppose any measure ... of the government" and made it illegal for any person to "print, utter, or publish ... any false, scandalous, and malicious writing" against the government.
Armed with these statutes, Federalists attempted to suppress Republican opposition on the basis of ideological differences--most successfully prosecuting newspaperman Thomas Cooper and Republican congressman Matthew Lyon. These controversies provoked the first probing of the constitutional limits on free speech, the press, and the rights of an organized political opposition. When Thomas Jefferson became president, enforcement of the Alien and Sedition Acts ended. The sedition and incarceration provisions of the acts, however, were resurrected during later wars.
Alien and Sedition Acts, 1798, four laws enacted by the Federalist-controlled U.S. Congress, allegedly in response to the hostile actions of the French Revolutionary government on the seas and in the councils of diplomacy (see XYZ Affair), but actually designed to destroy Thomas Jefferson's Republican party, which had openly expressed its sympathies for the French Revolutionaries. Depending on recent arrivals from Europe for much of their voting strength, the Republicans were adversely affected by the Naturalization Act, which postponed citizenship, and thus voting privileges, until the completion of 14 (rather than 5) years of residence, and by the Alien Act and the Alien Enemies Act, which gave the President the power to imprison or deport aliens suspected of activities posing a threat to the national government. President John Adams made no use of the alien acts. Most controversial, however, was the Sedition Act, devised to silence Republican criticism of the Federalists. Its broad proscription of spoken or written criticism of the government, the Congress, or the President virtually nullified the First Amendment freedoms of speech and the press. Prominent Jeffersonians, most of them journalists, such as John Daly Burk, James T. Callender, Thomas Cooper, William Duane (1760-1835), and Matthew Lyon were tried, and some were convicted, in sedition proceedings. The Alien and Sedition Acts provoked the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions and did much to unify the Republican party and to foster Republican victory in the election of 1800. The Republican-controlled Congress repealed the Naturalization Act in 1802; the others were allowed to expire (1800-1801).
Bibliography
See J. C. Miller, Crisis in Freedom (1951, repr. 1964); J. M. Smith, Freedom's Fetters (1956); L. Levy, Legacy of Suppression (1960).
In the first years of the United States, Congress's major legislation was concerned with establishing the federal government. It provided for a federal judiciary through the Judiciary Act of 1789 and established a census bureau, to calculate the population of each state for purposes of determining representation in Congress. Congress also set about promoting the economy, through the Copyright and Patent Acts and tariffs. Moreover, it laid the groundwork for new states through the Northwest Ordinance and provided for limited social programs by supplying Revolutionary War veterans with pensions. Political disputes between Federalists—those who wanted a strong central government—and their opponents appeared in much of the legislation. The Federalists won many of those contests. Their views prevailed with the Judiciary Act of 1789, as well as the Alien and Sedition Acts. By the early 1800s, Congress passed a Prohibition of the Slave Trade, as the North and South became increasingly divided over slavery, and as the United States headed into a second war with Great Britain.
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.
The Federalist designs with the Alien and Sedition Acts backfired. As the crisis with France calmed, public support for the acts quickly dissipated. Popular outrage against the laws not only helped unify the Republicans, but provided a powerful platform for their campaign in 1800. The election of 1800 saw Thomas Jefferson defeat John Adams in the presidential contest, and Republicans regained a majority in the Congress. The Republican Congress repealed the Naturalization Act in 1802. The two Alien Acts and the Sedition Act contained provisions to expire automatically in the first years of the new century.
Many of the issues raised by the controversy over the Alien and Sedition Acts remained prominent. During the War of 1812 Republicans sought to destroy the Federalists for their support of a foreign enemy. The arguments that the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions advanced on behalf of state rights would reappear in controversies over secession in the nineteenth century. Most fundamentally, the delicate challenge of preserving civil liberties in the face of wartime concerns over national security continued into the twenty-first century.
Bibliography
McKitrick, Stanley, and Eric McKitrick. The Age of Federalism: The Early AmericanRepublic, 1788–1800. London: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Schudson, Michael. The Good Citizen: A History of American Civic Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.
Sharpe, James Rogers. American Politics in the Early Republic: The New Nation in Crisis. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993.
Smith, James Morton. Freedom's Fetters: The Alien and Sedition Laws and AmericanCivil Liberties. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1956.
The Alien and Sedition Acts were four bills passed in 1798 by the Federalists in the 5th United States Congress, who were waging 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 United States from alien citizens of enemy powers and to stop seditious attacks from weakening the government. The Democratic-Republicans, like later historians, attacked 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. One act—the Alien Enemies Act --is still in force in 2009, and has frequently been enforced in wartime[citation needed]. The others expired or were repealed by 1802[citation needed]. Thomas Jefferson[dubious– discuss] held them all to be unconstitutional and void[citation needed], and pardoned and ordered the release of all who had been convicted of violating them.
There were actually four separate laws making up what is commonly referred to as the "Alien and Sedition Acts"
The Naturalization Act (officially An Act to Establish a Uniform Rule of Naturalization; ch. 54, 1 Stat.566) extended the duration of residence required for aliens to become citizens to 14 years. Enacted June 18, 1798, with no expiration date, it was repealed in 1802.
The Alien Friends Act (officially An Act Concerning Aliens; ch. 58, 1 Stat.570) authorized the president to deport any resident alien considered "dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States." It was enacted June 25, 1798, with a two year expiration date.
The Alien Enemies Act (officially An Act Respecting Alien Enemies; ch. 66, 1 Stat.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.
The Sedition Act (officially An Act for the Punishment of Certain Crimes against the United States; ch. 74, 1 Stat.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.
Constitutionality
While Jefferson did denounce 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 the unconstitutionality of the act 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.[1]
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 JusticeSamuel 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 was set to expire in 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).
Although the Federalists hoped the Act would muffle the opposition, many Democratic-Republicans still "wrote, printed, uttered and published" their criticisms of the Federalists. Indeed, they strongly criticized the act itself, and used it as one of the largest election issues. It also had enormous implications on the Federalist party after that point, and ended up being a major contributing factor of its demise. The act expired when the term of President Adams ended in 1801.
Ultimately the Acts backfired against the Federalists; while they 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 but also 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 that were convicted for crimes under the Alien Enemies Act and the Sedition Act.
Elkins, Stanley M. and Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism (1995), the standard scholarly history of the 1790s.
Miller, John Chester. Crisis in Freedom: The Alien and Sedition Acts (1951)
Rehnquist, William H. Grand Inquests: The historic Impeachments of Justice Samuel Chase and President Andrew Johnson (1994); Chase was impeached and acquitted for his conduct of a trial under the Sedition act.
Rosenfeld, Richard N. American Aurora: A Democratic-Republican Returns: The Suppressed History of Our Nation's Beginnings and the Heroic Newspaper That Tried to Report It (1997), clippings from a Republican newspaper
Smith, James Morton. Freedom's Fetters: The Alien and Sedition Laws and American Civil Liberties (1967).
Stone, Geoffrey R.Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from The Sedition Act of 1798 to The War on Terrorism (2004).
Alan Taylor, "The Alien and Sedition Acts" in Julian E. Zelizer, ed. The American Congress (2004) pp. 63–76
Wright, Barry. "Migration, Radicalism, and State Security: Legislative Initiatives in the Canada's and the United States c. 1794–1804" in Studies in American Political Development, Volume 16, Issue 1, April 2002, pp. 48–60
Bill Ong Hing, Anthony D. Romero, "Defining America Through Immigration Policy" Chapter 1, Pgs 17-19., Published by Temple University Press, 2004
Primary sources
Randolph, J.W. The Virginia Report of 1799–1800, Touching the Alien and Sedition Laws; together with the Virginia Resolutions of December 21, 1798, the Debate and Proceedings thereon in the House of Delegates of Virginia, and several other documents illustrative of the report and resolutions,.
US History Companion. The Reader's Companion to American History, Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, Editors, published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more
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