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Under the threat of war with France, Congress in 1798 passed four laws in an effort to strengthen the Federal government. Known collectively as the Alien and Sedition Acts, the legislation sponsored by the Federalists was also intended to quell any political opposition from the Republicans, led by Thomas Jefferson.
The first of the laws was the Naturalization Act, passed by Congress on June 18. This act required that aliens be residents for 14 years instead of 5 years before they became eligible for U.S. citizenship.
Congress then passed the Alien Act on June 25, authorizing the President to deport aliens "dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States" during peacetime.
The third law, the Alien Enemies Act, was enacted by Congress on July 6. This act allowed the wartime arrest, imprisonment and deportation of any alien subject to an enemy power.
The last of the laws, the Sedition Act, passed on July 14 declared that any treasonable activity, including the publication of "any false, scandalous and malicious writing," was a high misdemeanor, punishable by fine and imprisonment. By virtue of this legislation twenty-five men, most of them editors of Republican newspapers, were arrested and their newspapers forced to shut down.
The Alien Enemies Act authorized the president to imprison or deport any alien associated with any nation that the United States was fighting in a "declared war."
The Alien Act authorized the president to deport any alien considered dangerous, even in peacetime.
The Naturalization Act extended the duration of residence required for aliens to become citizens, nearly tripling it from five years to 14.
The Sedition Act made it a crime to publish "false, scandalous, and malicious writing" against government or government officials.
The Naturalization Act, which extended the residency period from 5 to 14 years for those aliens seeking citizenship; this law was aimed at Irish and French immigrants who were often active in Republican politics
The Alien Act, which allowed the expulsion of aliens deemed dangerous during peacetime
The Alien Enemies Act, which allowed the expulsion or imprisonment of aliens deemed dangerous during wartime; this was never enforced, but it did prompt numerous Frenchmen to return home
The Sedition Act, which provided for fines or imprisonment for individuals who criticized the government, Congress or president in speech or print. The Alien Acts were never enforced, but the Sedition Act was.
A number of Republican newspaper publishers were convicted under the terms of this law. The Jeffersonians argued quite rightly that the Sedition Act violated the terms of the First Amendment and offered a remedy in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions.
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)
In 1798 the United States stood on the brink of war with France. The Federalists believed that Democratic-Republican criticism of Federalist policies was disloyal and feared that aliens living in the United States would sympathize with the French during a war. As a result, a Federalist-controlled Congress passed four laws, known collectively as the Alien and Sedition Acts. These laws raised the residency requirements for citizenship from 5 to 14 years, authorized the President to deport aliens, and permitted their arrest, imprisonment, and deportation during wartime. The Sedition Act made it a crime for American citizens to "print, utter, or publish . . . any false, scandalous, and malicious writing" about the Government.
The laws were directed against Democratic-Republicans, the party typically favored by new citizens, and the only journalists prosecuted under the Sedition Act were editors of Democratic-Republican newspapers. Sedition Act trials, along with the Senate’s use of its contempt powers to suppress dissent, set off a firestorm of criticism against the Federalists and contributed to their defeat in the election of 1800, after which the acts were repealed or allowed to expire. The controversies surrounding them, however, provided for some of the first testings of the limits of freedom of speech and press.
Alien and Sedition Laws
Enacted in 1798, the Alien and Sedition Laws were the nation's first legislative acts designed to stifle political dissent in wartime. Congress enacted four laws to discourage domestic criticism and protest of the "Quasi-War" against France. The laws set a precedent for strengthening national and public security at the expense of civil liberties.
The Alien and Sedition Laws sprang from American responses to the French Revolution. On one side, led by Alexander Hamilton and including most of the Federalist Party, were shopkeepers, merchants, and tradesmen who viewed the French Revolution, with its execution of opponents, abolition of many religious laws and practices, and forcible seizure of property from the nobility and aristocracy, as horrifyingly radical. They sympathized more with England than France, maintaining that French aid in the War of American Independence was an act of naked self-interest. Not so, retorted a large number of farmers, small landowners, laborers, and newly arrived European immigrants. Articulated through the emerging Republican Party and the speeches and writings of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison-authors of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions that would denounce the Alien and Sedition Laws-they viewed the French as brethren in a global march of democracy against monarchy, class-based privilege, and centuries-old traditions. The French Revolution, as they saw it, continued the American Revolution, and the 1778 treaties between the two nations were morally binding on Americans to support the French.
The controversy over Edmund Genet typified the dispute. Genet, French ambassador to the United States, traveled the United States to raise money for the revolutionaries, sailors for service aboard French privateers, and troops for military expeditions. Genet also criticized George Washington's neutrality policy in harsh tones. Federalists accused him of being a spy and Republicans countered that the Federalists were involved in a conspiracy to ruin Genet.
This was the political climate when John Adams, a Federalist, became president in 1797. By July 1798 the Federalist-controlled Congress, with Adams's support, ordered U.S. naval operations to begin against France. In August Federalists enacted the Alien and Sedition Laws to prevent domestic violence and opposition they believed could result from the Quasi-War.
The program consisted of four laws. First, immigrants would have to wait fourteen years instead of the customary five to become naturalized citizens. Second, the president received powers to deport aliens in peace time. Third, a similar presidential power would be applied to enemy aliens located in the United States during a declared state of war. Adams did not exercise either of these powers, but several French officials fled for fear of deportation. Fourth, and most significantly, stiff fines and jail time awaited a person found guilty of writing, speaking, or publishing "false, scandalous, and malicious" content about the president or either house of Congress, or causing the American people to despise the federal government. This law produced federal prosecutions of seventeen writers, editors, and publishers. Only one of the accused was found not guilty. The laws expired with the defeat of Adams in the 1800 election. Adams's successor, Thomas Jefferson, pardoned all who had been punished under the controversial program.
The Alien and Sedition Laws illustrated the effect of public fear in wartime or, in the case of the late 1790s, "quasi-wartime." Federalists imagined Republicans would aid French infiltrators and saboteurs. Depictions of guillotines severing the heads of French citizens intensified the fears of people who recalled Genet's efforts only a few years before. What would stop more Genets from organizing cells to kill Federalists or launch slave revolts? In Federalist eyes, behind every Republican stood a potential French agent, and behind every immigrant stood a potential Republican voter. Federalists calmed themselves by crafting the Alien and Sedition Laws to strengthen internal security and weaken the opposing political party that appeared to foment domestic discord.
More fundamentally, these laws revealed a belief that an open, self-governing society is vulnerable in wartime to domestic attacks from its enemies, regardless of how distant they might be. The existence of peacetime liberties and freedoms, the argument went, must be reduced during periods of armed conflict or the openness that Americans cherish will be turned against them. The laws further showed an inherent tension in the life of the early republic between political disagreements-the signs of a healthy public discourse-and the waging of war. Republicans in the late 1790s maintained that Federalists wanted to control the levers of power and crush organized political opposition in the name of fighting a war.
The Federalists used the Alien and Sedition Laws to wage the Quasi-War of 1798 at home. The laws epitomized the divisive effects of the French Revolution among Americans in the 1790s, and foreshadowed tensions over civil liberties and war that characterized American life in succeeding generations.
Events of the Decade:
Napoleon Bonaparte and the Wars of the French Revolution; France vs. Austria, Prussia, Turkey Netherlands, Sardinia, Naples, Britain, Holland, Spain and Holy Roman Empire
Russia ends 2nd war with Turkey
Drought and famine in India
100,000 slaves revolt in Haiti
Whiskey Rebellion in U.S. by PA farmers against govt.
End of the War of the First Coalition-France vs. Prussia
First 11 amendments to U.S. Constitution + Bill of Rights
Indian Wars in US-Ohio & Delaware
Sir Alexander Mackenzie explores western Canada; blazes trails through Rockies to Pacific
1st U.S. census shows 3.9 million in 16 states and Ohio Territory
Population of China 275 million
The first of the laws was the Naturalization Act, passed by Congress on June 18. This act required that aliens be residents for 14 years instead of 5 years before they became eligible for U.S. citizenship.
Congress then passed the Alien Act on June 25, authorizing the President to deport aliens "dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States" during peacetime.
The third law, the Alien Enemies Act, was enacted by Congress on July 6. This act allowed the wartime arrest, imprisonment and deportation of any alien subject to an enemy power.
The last of the laws, the Sedition Act, passed on July 14 declared that any treasonable activity, including the publication of "any false, scandalous and malicious writing," was a high misdemeanor, punishable by fine and imprisonment. By virtue of this legislation twenty-five men, most of them editors of Republican newspapers, were arrested and their newspapers forced to shut down.
The Alien Enemies Act authorized the president to imprison or deport any alien associated with any nation that the United States was fighting in a "declared war."
The Alien Act authorized the president to deport any alien considered dangerous, even in peacetime.
The Naturalization Act extended the duration of residence required for aliens to become citizens, nearly tripling it from five years to 14.
The Sedition Act made it a crime to publish "false, scandalous, and malicious writing" against government or government officials.
The Naturalization Act, which extended the residency period from 5 to 14 years for those aliens seeking citizenship; this law was aimed at Irish and French immigrants who were often active in Republican politics
The Alien Act, which allowed the expulsion of aliens deemed dangerous during peacetime
The Alien Enemies Act, which allowed the expulsion or imprisonment of aliens deemed dangerous during wartime; this was never enforced, but it did prompt numerous Frenchmen to return home
The Sedition Act, which provided for fines or imprisonment for individuals who criticized the government, Congress or president in speech or print. The Alien Acts were never enforced, but the Sedition Act was.
A number of Republican newspaper publishers were convicted under the terms of this law. The Jeffersonians argued quite rightly that the Sedition Act violated the terms of the First Amendment and offered a remedy in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions.
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)
In 1798 the United States stood on the brink of war with France. The Federalists believed that Democratic-Republican criticism of Federalist policies was disloyal and feared that aliens living in the United States would sympathize with the French during a war. As a result, a Federalist-controlled Congress passed four laws, known collectively as the Alien and Sedition Acts. These laws raised the residency requirements for citizenship from 5 to 14 years, authorized the President to deport aliens, and permitted their arrest, imprisonment, and deportation during wartime. The Sedition Act made it a crime for American citizens to "print, utter, or publish . . . any false, scandalous, and malicious writing" about the Government.
The laws were directed against Democratic-Republicans, the party typically favored by new citizens, and the only journalists prosecuted under the Sedition Act were editors of Democratic-Republican newspapers. Sedition Act trials, along with the Senate’s use of its contempt powers to suppress dissent, set off a firestorm of criticism against the Federalists and contributed to their defeat in the election of 1800, after which the acts were repealed or allowed to expire. The controversies surrounding them, however, provided for some of the first testings of the limits of freedom of speech and press.
Alien and Sedition Laws
Enacted in 1798, the Alien and Sedition Laws were the nation's first legislative acts designed to stifle political dissent in wartime. Congress enacted four laws to discourage domestic criticism and protest of the "Quasi-War" against France. The laws set a precedent for strengthening national and public security at the expense of civil liberties.
The Alien and Sedition Laws sprang from American responses to the French Revolution. On one side, led by Alexander Hamilton and including most of the Federalist Party, were shopkeepers, merchants, and tradesmen who viewed the French Revolution, with its execution of opponents, abolition of many religious laws and practices, and forcible seizure of property from the nobility and aristocracy, as horrifyingly radical. They sympathized more with England than France, maintaining that French aid in the War of American Independence was an act of naked self-interest. Not so, retorted a large number of farmers, small landowners, laborers, and newly arrived European immigrants. Articulated through the emerging Republican Party and the speeches and writings of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison-authors of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions that would denounce the Alien and Sedition Laws-they viewed the French as brethren in a global march of democracy against monarchy, class-based privilege, and centuries-old traditions. The French Revolution, as they saw it, continued the American Revolution, and the 1778 treaties between the two nations were morally binding on Americans to support the French.
The controversy over Edmund Genet typified the dispute. Genet, French ambassador to the United States, traveled the United States to raise money for the revolutionaries, sailors for service aboard French privateers, and troops for military expeditions. Genet also criticized George Washington's neutrality policy in harsh tones. Federalists accused him of being a spy and Republicans countered that the Federalists were involved in a conspiracy to ruin Genet.
This was the political climate when John Adams, a Federalist, became president in 1797. By July 1798 the Federalist-controlled Congress, with Adams's support, ordered U.S. naval operations to begin against France. In August Federalists enacted the Alien and Sedition Laws to prevent domestic violence and opposition they believed could result from the Quasi-War.
The program consisted of four laws. First, immigrants would have to wait fourteen years instead of the customary five to become naturalized citizens. Second, the president received powers to deport aliens in peace time. Third, a similar presidential power would be applied to enemy aliens located in the United States during a declared state of war. Adams did not exercise either of these powers, but several French officials fled for fear of deportation. Fourth, and most significantly, stiff fines and jail time awaited a person found guilty of writing, speaking, or publishing "false, scandalous, and malicious" content about the president or either house of Congress, or causing the American people to despise the federal government. This law produced federal prosecutions of seventeen writers, editors, and publishers. Only one of the accused was found not guilty. The laws expired with the defeat of Adams in the 1800 election. Adams's successor, Thomas Jefferson, pardoned all who had been punished under the controversial program.
The Alien and Sedition Laws illustrated the effect of public fear in wartime or, in the case of the late 1790s, "quasi-wartime." Federalists imagined Republicans would aid French infiltrators and saboteurs. Depictions of guillotines severing the heads of French citizens intensified the fears of people who recalled Genet's efforts only a few years before. What would stop more Genets from organizing cells to kill Federalists or launch slave revolts? In Federalist eyes, behind every Republican stood a potential French agent, and behind every immigrant stood a potential Republican voter. Federalists calmed themselves by crafting the Alien and Sedition Laws to strengthen internal security and weaken the opposing political party that appeared to foment domestic discord.
More fundamentally, these laws revealed a belief that an open, self-governing society is vulnerable in wartime to domestic attacks from its enemies, regardless of how distant they might be. The existence of peacetime liberties and freedoms, the argument went, must be reduced during periods of armed conflict or the openness that Americans cherish will be turned against them. The laws further showed an inherent tension in the life of the early republic between political disagreements-the signs of a healthy public discourse-and the waging of war. Republicans in the late 1790s maintained that Federalists wanted to control the levers of power and crush organized political opposition in the name of fighting a war.
The Federalists used the Alien and Sedition Laws to wage the Quasi-War of 1798 at home. The laws epitomized the divisive effects of the French Revolution among Americans in the 1790s, and foreshadowed tensions over civil liberties and war that characterized American life in succeeding generations.
Events of the Decade:
Napoleon Bonaparte and the Wars of the French Revolution; France vs. Austria, Prussia, Turkey Netherlands, Sardinia, Naples, Britain, Holland, Spain and Holy Roman Empire
Russia ends 2nd war with Turkey
Drought and famine in India
100,000 slaves revolt in Haiti
Whiskey Rebellion in U.S. by PA farmers against govt.
End of the War of the First Coalition-France vs. Prussia
First 11 amendments to U.S. Constitution + Bill of Rights
Indian Wars in US-Ohio & Delaware
Sir Alexander Mackenzie explores western Canada; blazes trails through Rockies to Pacific
1st U.S. census shows 3.9 million in 16 states and Ohio Territory
Population of China 275 million