Taken from “John Adams” By: David McCullough
Contrary to the expectations of nearly everyone, Adams did not ask for a declaration of war against France. Had he done so, the Congress would assuredly have obliged. Instead, they turned their attention to enemies at home.
Another Philadelphia summer had arrived. The temperature in the last week of June was in the 90’s, “the weather so hot and close, the flies so tormenting,” Abigail wrote, she hardly had energy to move. “Not a leaf stirs till nine or ten o’clock … It grows sickly, the city noisome.” In two sweltering weeks, their popularity and confidence never higher, the Federalist majority in congress passed into law extreme measures that Adams had not asked for or encouraged. But then neither did he oppose them, and their passage and his signature on them were to be rightly judged by history as the most reprehensible acts of his presidency. Still, the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 must be seen in the context of the time, and the context was tumult and Fear.
Adams later spoke of the Alien and Sedition as war measures. It was how he saw them then, and how he chose to remember them. “I knew there was need enough of both and therefore I consented to them,” he would write in explanation long afterward, and at the time, the majority of Congress and most of the country were in agreement.
There was rampant fear of the enemy within. French émigrés in America, according to the French consul in Philadelphia, by now numbered 25,000 or more. Many were aristocrats who had fled the Terror; but the majority were refugees from the slave uprisings on the Caribbean island of San Domingo. In Philadelphia a number of French newspapers had been established. There were French booksellers, French schools, French boarding houses, and French restaurants. The French, it seemed were everywhere, and who was to measure the threat they posed in the event of war with France?
In addition to the French there were the “wild Irish” refugees from the Irish Rebellion of 1798 who were taught to include dangerous radicals and in any case, because of their anti British sentiment, gladly joined ranks with the Republicans. James Callender was sometimes cited as a prime example of this type, apart from the fact that Callender was a Scot.
Beyond that, the United States was at war – declared or not – and there were in fact numbers of enemy agents operating in this country.
The Alien Acts included a Naturalization Act, which increased the required period of residence to qualify for citizenship from five to fourteen years, and the Alien Act, which granted the President the legal right to expel any foreigner he considered “dangerous.” In the view of the Vice President, the Alien Act was something worthy of the ninth century. Jefferson and other imagined a temptuous John Adams expelling foreigners by the shipload. As it was, they need not have worried. Adams never invoked the law and despite the urging if the Secretary of State Pickering who did indeed favor mass deportations.
Of Greater consequence was the Sedition Act, which made any “False scandalous, and malicious” writing against the government, Congress, or President, or any attempt “to excite against them … the hatred of the good people of the United States, or to stir up sedition,” crimes punishable by fine and imprisonment. Though it was clearly a violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing freedom of speech, its Federalist proponents in Congress insisted, like Adams, that it was a war measure, and an improvement on the existing common law in that proof of the libel could be used as a legitimate defense. Still, the real and obvious intent was to stifle the Republican press, and of those arrested and convicted under the law, nearly all were Republican editors.
Such stalwart, respected Federalists as Senators Theodore Sedgwick of Massachusetts and James Lloyd of Maryland were strongly in support of the Sedition Act. Noah Webster, editor, author, lexicographer and staunch Federalist, declared it time to stop newspaper editors from libeling those with whom they disagreed, and to his friend Timothy Pickering wrote to urge the law be strictly enforced.
Even George Washington privately expressed the view that some publications were long overdue punishment for their lies and unprovoked attacks on the leaders of the union.
Vice President Jefferson, having no wish to be present for the inevitable passage of the Sedition Act, or anything more that might take place in such an atmosphere, quietly packed and went home to Monticello.
There were some Federalists who had mixed feelings about the Sedition Act, and John Marshall openly opposed. Were he in Congress, Marshall said, he would have voted against it.
Though Adams appears to have said nothing on the subject at the time, it is hard to imagine him not taking a measure of satisfaction from the prospect of the tables turned on those who have tormented him for so long. And if Adams was reluctant to express his views, Abigail was not. Bache and his kind would inevitably provoke measure to silence them, she had predicted to Mary Cranch. They were “so criminal” that they ought to be brought to court. “ Yet daringly do the vile incendiaries keep up in Bache’s paper the most wicked and base, violent and culminating abuse,” she wrote another day, sure that, “nothing will have effect until Congress passes a Sedition Bill.
It was not uncommon in Philadelphia – or in Massachusetts – to hear talk of the unrivaled influence Abigail Adams had on her husband and of her political sense overall. Fisher Ames once observed that she was “as complete a politician as any lady in the French Court.” That Adams valued and trusted her judgment of that in any of his department heads there is no question, and she could have been decisive in her persuading Adams to support the Sedition Act. ‘Bearing neither malice or ill will towards anyone, not even the most deluded … I wish the laws of our country were competent to punish the stirrer up of sedition, the writer and printer of base and unfounded calumny,” she wrote. And the key word to her was “unfounded.” She wanted proven lies to be judged unacceptable. This, she was sure, would “contribute as much to the peace and harmony of our country as any measure, and in times like the present, a more careful and attentive watch ought to be kept over foreigners.”
But it was also possible that Adams needed no persuading, and that in what she wrote to Mary Cranch, Abigail was speaking for both of them.
Questions:
What political party was John Adams affiliated with?
What did the Federalist and Republicans think about the Alien and Sedition Acts?
Why is it important to look at events like the Alien and Sedition Acts in the context of the time they happened?
What was George Washington’s opinion about the Alien and Sedition Acts?
Abigail Adams was said to be one of John Adams most trusted advisors. Why is this uncommon for the time and what were her thoughts on the Alien and Sedition Acts?
How did the Alien and Sedition Acts show strength in the Federal Government or help repel foreign invasion?
NOT in Reading - have to research on your own.
A response to the Alien and Sedition Acts was the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. Research and explain each of them.
Click on the link within the video to watch.