The Alien and Sedition Acts
The early days of the United States under the Constitution were tumultuous and divisive, as political factions began to form parties and the earliest indications of sectionalism became evident. George Washington managed to form the basis of American government largely through the force of his personality but when John Adams succeeded him he lacked the first President’s sterling reputation and national popularity. A potential war with Revolutionary France loomed. There was rebelliousness on the western frontier. Adams reacted by taking steps to control immigration and naturalization, and by attempting to suppress negative coverage in the press. The result was the Alien and Sedition Acts.
Adams and the members of the Federalist Party opposed the revolutionaries in France and supported an alliance with Great Britain. By 1790 France was descending into anarchy and Adam’s feared a similar fate for the United States when the opposing political party, the Democratic-Republicans of Jefferson and Madison, vocally supported the French Revolution. The Sedition Act made it illegal to oppose the position of the federal government in the area of foreign affairs. It protected the President and the Congress from “seditious attacks” but not the Vice-President, who was at the time Thomas Jefferson. There were numerous arrests and prosecutions for seditious behavior under the act before it was overturned.
James Callendar (who would later accuse Jefferson of miscegenation with his slave Sally Hemmings) was arrested under the Sedition Act, fined $200 (about $3,600 today) and sentenced to nine months in jail for comments he made in his book The Prospect Before Us. One of the passages deemed seditious referred to the Adams Administration as a “tempest of malignant passions.” Another writer, Benjamin Franklin Bache, wrote in the Philadelphia Aurora describing President Adams nepotism in the White House. Adam’s had appointed his son in law, his son John Quincy, and Quincy’s father in law to prominent positions in his administration. Franklin Bache was arrested under the Sedition Act but died before he could be tried.
Under President John Adams the Sedition Act was used to describe any commentary regarding the President or his administration which was critical of their actions as seditious and therefore harmful to the United States. Not only written commentary but verbal remarks critical of the President were prosecutable under the Act. Using the threat of fines and imprisonment to silence critics under the guise of national security began with the second President of the United States, and became a major issue in the election of 1800, when Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans won office and control of the Congress.
Jefferson pardoned all those convicted and imprisoned under the Sedition Act in one of the earliest acts of his Presidency. Although the Sedition Act was never argued before the Supreme Court it has been mentioned in the opinions of several justices when discussing other cases over the years, and none of them have discussed it favorably. Interestingly portions of the Alien Act, recodified, remain in effect in the 21st century. It was under the authority of the Alien Enemies Act that FDR issued the executive orders which allowed the seizure and detainment of Japanese, German, Italian, and Hungarian citizens during World War II.