Abstract
The crisis of the Alien and Sedition Acts capped off the turmoil of the 1790s. Crafted in the summer of 1798, the Acts were the most illiberal legislation passed during the early national period. Ostensibly aimed at securing the home front as the Federalists braced for French invasion, the Acts served the much broader purpose of Federalist political hegemony. Through this legislation, the Federalists sought to restrain democratic-minded foreigners and silence all criticism of the national government. Procrustean conformity became the cardinal principle of Federalist politics.
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Notes
For a comparison of the British and American laws, see Manning J. Dauer, The Adams Federalists (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1953) pp. 157–9.
See 1 Stat. 566 (1798). The Naturalization Act as well as the other three Acts discussed in this chapter are reprinted in full in James Morton Smith, Freedoms Fetters: The Alien and Sedition Laws and American Civil Liberties (New York: Cornell University Press, 1956) pp. 435–42.
This reaction to the sudden rise in immigration supports the conclusion that the American tradition has not been immigration, but intermittent immigration. See Peter Brimelow, Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster (New York: Random House, 1995) pp. 30–1.
TJ to JM, April 26, 1798, WTJ 8:412. Though much of this book focuses on the efforts of Jefferson and Madison, “the survival of Republicanism at the seat of government” was in large part due to the efforts of Gallatin in the House of Representatives. See Dumas Malone, Jefferson and the Ordeal of Liberty (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, 1962) p. 359.
Quoted in Richard N. Rosenfeld, ed., American Aurora: A Democratic-Republican Returns (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997) p. 112.
For a general account of Baches life, see James Tagg, Benjamin Franklin Bache and the Philadelphia Aurora (Philadelphia, Penn.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991).
John Thayer, A Discourse Delivered at the Roman Catholic Church in Boston, in Ellis Sandoz, ed., Political Sermons of the American Founding Era, 1730–1805 (Indianapolis, Ind.: Liberty Press, 1991) p. 1358.
Leonard W. Levy, Emergence of Free Press (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985) p. 287.
Clyde N. Wilson, Foreword to St. George Tucker, View of the Constitution of the United States (Indianapolis, Ind.: Liberty Fund, 1999) p. ix.
See, e.g., Trial of Gideon Henfield, in Francis Wharton, ed., State Trials of the United States During the Administrations of Washington and Adams (Philadelphia, Penn.: Carey and Hart, 1849) p. 49.
Dumas Malone, The Public Life of Thomas Cooper (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1926) p. xiii.
For a general account of Callender’s life, see Michael Durey, “With the Hammer of Truth”: James Thomson Callender and America’s Early National Heroes (Charlottesville, Va.: University of Virginia Press, 1990).
James Haw et al., Stormy Patriot: The Life of Samuel Chase (Baltimore, Md.: Maryland Historical Society, 1980) p. 203.
Callender to JM, April 27, 1801, in Chauncey Ford, ed., Thomas Jefferson and James Thomson Callender (Boston, Mass.: Press of David Clapp & Son, 1897) p. 36.
See John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, The Right and Capacity of the People to Judge of Government, in David L. Jacobson, ed., The English Libertarian Heritage (San Francisco, Cal.: Fox & Wilkes, 1994) pp. 93–101.
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Watkins, W.J. (2004). Legislation and Persecution. In: Reclaiming the American Revolution. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-09794-1_2
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