Conservative Federalists saw in this situation a chance to smash the opposition. In June and July 1798 they pushed through Congress a series of repressive measures known as the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Alien Enemies Act gave the president the power to arrest or expel aliens in time of “declared war,” but since the quasi-war with France was never declared, this measure had no practical importance. The Alien Act authorized the president to expel all aliens whom he thought “dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States.” (Adams never invoked this law, but a number of aliens left the country out of fear that he might.)
Finally, there was the Sedition Act. Its first section, making it a crime “to impede the operation of any law” or to attempt to instigate a riot or insurrection, was reasonable enough; but the act also made it illegal to publish, or even to utter, any “false, scandalous and malicious” criticism of high government officials. Although milder than British sedition laws, this proviso rested, as James Madison said, on “the exploded doctrine” that government officials “are the masters and not the servants of the people.”
As the election of 1800 approached, the Federalists made a systematic attempt to silence the leading Republican newspapers. Twenty-five persons were prosecuted and ten convicted, all in patently unfair trials. In typical cases, the editor Thomas Cooper, an English-born radical, later president of the University of South Carolina, was sentenced to six months in jail and fined $400; the editor Charles Holt got three months and a $200 fine; and the editor James Callender got nine months and a $200 fine.
•••-[Read the Document The Alien and Sedition Acts at myhistorylab. com
Matthew Lyon of Vermont, holding tongs, and Roger Griswold of Connecticut, come to blows in Congress. After denouncing Adams' call for war against Spain, Lyon was convicted of violating the Alien and Sedition Acts. While serving a four-month jail sentence, he was re-elected.
World History
