Alien and Sedition Act

9 Key excerpts on "Alien and Sedition Act"

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  The American Revolution of 1800

  How Jefferson Rescued Democracy from Tyranny and Faction—and What This Means Today

  • Dan Sisson, Thom Hartmann, Thom Hartmann(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Berrett-Koehler Publishers

    (Publisher)

  The Alien Act conferred upon the president the power to remove aliens from the United States, to imprison or fine them, or both. Thus an alien who was deported as a result of the president’s personal decision would be deprived of a trial by jury and his fundamental rights under the Constitution. Although the Alien Act was directed against a limited number of persons, it nevertheless caused many to become suspicious about the administration’s intentions.

  The Sedition Act was considered more dangerous, and therefore more volatile, than the Alien Act. Under it the federal government intended to punish any combination or conspiracy against itself with a punishment of six months’ to five years’ imprisonment and a fine of $5,000. The law also gave authority to the government to punish anyone for “seditious writings.” These included any writings that might, in the eyes of the administration, be “false, scandalous, and malicious” against the president, Congress, or the government. This charge was punishable “by a fine of $2,000 and imprisonment not exceeding two years.” Thus while the Alien Act “was made contingent upon a declaration of war,” the Sedition Act was designed “to deal with domestic political opposition in time of peace.”8

  The Sedition Law, many felt, plainly violated the First Amendment to the Constitution. In effect, Adams and his administration were attempting to “chill” the presses.

  USING A LAW TO PERPETUATE A FACTION IN POWER

  Albert Gallatin, sensing this, revealed the administration’s blatant use of propaganda in a speech on the floor of the House. The purpose of the bill, he said, was “to enable one part to oppress the other.…Is it not their object to frighten and suppress all presses which they consider as contrary to their views; to prevent a free circulation of opinion; to suffer the people at large to hear only partial accounts, and but one side of the question; to delude and deceive them by partial information and through these means to perpetuate themselves in power?9

  Gallatin’s alarm was shared by more than a few of his fellow republicans. Jefferson saw the bill not only in terms of dividing the state legislatures but as a conspiracy against the Constitution:

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  The Safety of the Kingdom

  Government Responses to Subversive Threats

  • J. Michael Martinez(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Carrel Books

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 1 THE Alien and Sedition ActS I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. —THOMAS JEFFERSON,

  LETTER TO DR . BENJAMIN RUSH , SEPTEMBER 23, 18001

  A mericans who look back through the dark pages of history often are perplexed by the behavior of forebears who championed measures clearly at odds with the prevailing myth of the republic as a proverbial shining city on a hill. Yet the 1790s, the first full decade that the United States existed under the new US Constitution, teemed with danger and intrigue. The nation was less than a generation removed from the American Revolution, and its perpetual existence was hardly assured. For citizens fearful of an avaricious European power asserting its dominance over the American landscape, measures to lessen or avoid foreign subversion appeared prudent and necessary to the national interest. Concerns over alien, corrosive elements led to the first major backlash against subversion in the country’s history: passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts.2

  Background

  The laws were the result of a long train of events. Tensions, especially with Great Britain, reached a crisis early in the 1790s. The British still occupied forts in the Great Lakes region and continually impressed Americans into service as British sailors a decade after the Treaty of Paris had ended the war between Britain and her former colonies. By repeatedly encouraging Native American attacks against settlers in the western territories and interfering with trade in the West Indies, the English also threatened the well-being of citizens eking out a living on the frontier. The first US president, George Washington, was not a man to back away from a fight, but he recognized that a bellicose attitude toward the British could lead to disastrous consequences. Ill-prepared for war and mindful of the necessity of resolving ongoing disputes, his administration, propelled by a prominent Anglophile, Alexander Hamilton, negotiated a treaty that ensured at least a temporary rapprochement with Great Britain. Formally titled the Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Navigation, Between His Britannic Majesty and the United States of America, the agreement, hammered out by a well-known lawyer and statesman, John Jay, solved one set of problems while triggering others.3

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  For the People, For the Country

  Patrick Henry's Final Political Battle

  • John A. Ragosta(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • University of Virginia Press

    (Publisher)

  10

  In the summer of 1798, the Federalist-dominated Congress passed several laws intended to respond to the danger from possible foreign agents operating in the United States, the Naturalization and Alien Acts (called the Alien Acts). These laws made it more difficult for immigrants to become citizens (increasing the residency period from five to fourteen years, for example) and gave the president unilateral power to expel any alien, without benefit of trial, whom he believed was dangerous.

  While the Alien Acts were roundly denounced by Democratic-Republicans, gauging their impact is more complex. No one was actually deported under the acts. But over a score of prosecutions/deportations were contemplated, especially of aliens working on Democratic-Republican newspapers; several deportations orders were signed by Timothy Pickering, Adams’s secretary of state, although not executed. The laws certainly had an in terrorem effect, and a large number of Frenchmen—fifteen boatloads by one account—voluntarily left the country after the laws’ adoption.11

  Even more portentously, Congress adopted the Sedition Act of 1798, making it a crime to publish or speak anything “false, scandalous or malicious” against the president or Congress or to “unlawfully combine or conspire together, with the intent to oppose any measure or measures of the government.” In essence, the Sedition Act made it a crime to criticize the president or Congress (but, tellingly, not the vice president, now Thomas Jefferson). While the law made truth a defense against a claim of sedition, the “truth” of most political criticism simply was not readily subject to proof; opinions could be prosecuted. Those in opposition could literally be silenced with fines and incarceration.12

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  A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3

  • De Alva Stanwood Alexander(Author)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Perlego

    (Publisher)

  [87] Under the Alien Act persons not citizens of the United States could be summarily banished at the sole discretion of the President, without guilt or even accusation, thus jeopardising the liberty and business of the most peaceable and well-disposed foreigner. Under the Act of Sedition a citizen could be dragged from his bed at night and taken hundreds of miles from home to be tried for circulating a petition asking that these laws be repealed. The intended effect was to weed out the foreign-born and crush political opponents, and, the better to accomplish this purpose, the Alien Act set aside trial by jury, and the Sedition Act transferred prosecutions from state courts to federal tribunals.

  Governor Jay approved these extreme measures because of alleged secret combinations in the interest of the French; and, although no proof of their existence appeared except in the unsupported statements of the press, he submitted to the Legislature, in January, 1799, several amendments to the Federal Constitution, proposed by Massachusetts, increasing the disability of foreigners, and otherwise limiting their rights to citizenship. The Legislature, still strongly Federal in both its branches, did not take kindly to the amendments, and the Assembly rejected them by the surprising vote of sixty-two to thirty-eight. Then came up the famous Kentucky and Virginia resolutions. The Virginia resolves, drafted by Madison and passed by the Virginia Legislature, pronounced the Alien and Sedition laws "palpable and alarming infractions of the Constitution;" the Kentucky resolutions, drafted by Jefferson, declared each act to be "not law, but altogether void and of no force." This was nullification, and the States north of the Potomac hastened to disavow any such doctrine, although the vote in the New York Assembly came perilously near indorsing it.

  The discussion of these measures gave opportunity for the public opening of a great career in New York legislation—a career that was to continue into the years made memorable by Martin Van Buren and William L. Marcy. The record of New York party politics for forty years is a record of long and brilliant contests in which Erastus Root, if not a recognised party chieftain, was one of the ablest lieutenants that marshalled on the field of combat. He was a man of gigantic frame, scholarly and much given to letters, and, although somewhat uncouth in manner and rough in speech, his forceful logic, coupled with keen wit and biting sarcasm, made him a dreaded opponent and a welcomed ally. He resembled Hamilton in his independence, relying less upon organisation and more upon the strength of his personality, yet shrewdly holding close relations with those whose careful management and adroit manipulation of the spoils kept men in line whatever the policy it seemed expedient to adopt. For eleven years he served in the Assembly, and thrice became speaker; for eight years he served in the Senate, and twice became its president; for twelve years he served in the lower house of Congress, and once became lieutenant-governor. Wherever he served, he was recognised as a master, not always consistent, but always earnest, eloquent, and popular, fighting relentlessly and tirelessly, and compelling respect even when unsuccessful.

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  A Brief History of the United States

  • John Bach McMaster(Author)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • Perlego

    (Publisher)

  An army was raised and Washington made lieutenant general. The Navy Department was created and the first Secretary of the Navy appointed. Ships were built, purchased, and given to the government; and with the cry, "Millions for defense, not a cent for tribute," the people offered their services to the President, and labored without pay in the erection of forts along the seaboard. Then was written by Joseph Hopkinson, of Philadelphia, and sung for the first time, our national song Hail, Columbia ! [18] THE Alien and Sedition ActS.—In preparing for war, Congress had acted wisely. But the Federalists, whom the trouble with France had placed in control of Congress, also passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which aroused bitter opposition. The Alien Acts were (1) a law requiring aliens, or foreigners, to live in our country fourteen years before they could be naturalized and become citizens; (2) a law giving the President power, for the next two years, to send out of the country any alien he thought to be dangerous to the peace of the United States; and (3) the Alien Enemies Act for the expulsion, in time of war, of the subjects of the hostile government. The Sedition Act provided for the punishment of persons who acted, spoke, or wrote in a seditious manner, that is, opposed the execution of any law of the United States, or wrote, printed, or uttered anything with intent to defame the government of the United States or any of its officials. Adams did not use the power given him by the second Alien Act; but the Sedition Act was rigorously enforced with fines and imprisonment

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  Routledge Handbook on Immigration and Crime

  • Holly Ventura Miller, Anthony Peguero, Holly Ventura Miller, Anthony Peguero(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The perception and fear that immigrants may disrupt the social order dates back to the Colonial era, as first illustrated by the cases of Virginia and Maryland in the 1660s and 1670s (Hansen & Schlesinger, 1940). After the English Parliament approved the transportation of convicted felons to the Chesapeake Bay area, both colonies passed exclusionary laws in an effort to prevent such practices. Despite their efforts, Parliament overruled the restrictions and the policy of transportation continued well into the 18th century. Between 1717 and 1783, Britain sent 50,000 convicts to the American colonies, representing nearly 10% of total immigration during that period. This early tangle between national and local interests would foreshadow the often-tenuous relationship between the federal government and the states when dealing with immigration policy.

  Early Efforts

  Immigration policy was one of the many grievances American colonists levied at the British Crown in 1775 and was subsequently debated at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 (Bernard, 1980). Between 1790 and 1798, Congress passed five pieces of legislation referred to as the Alien and Sedition Acts, which, among other objectives, sought to create uniform policies for immigration, including establishing a rule of naturalization and a two-year residency requirement for aliens who were “free white persons” of “good moral character.” The following acts were blatantly more political, but affected immigration policy nonetheless. The Naturalization Act extended residency requirements for citizenship from 2 to 14 years and the Alien Friends Act (1798) allowed the President to imprison or deport aliens considered “dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States.” The Alien Enemies Act (1798) authorized the President to detain or deport male citizens of a hostile nation during times of war and was invoked a century and half later against Japanese Americans during World War II.

  In 1819, Congress passed legislation requiring shipmasters to deliver manifests enumerating all immigrants on board; the Secretary of State was required to then report these numbers to Congress annually (Bennett, 1963). However, as first established during the Colonial Period, immigration largely remained the purview of the States. Between 1820 and 1860, for example, states with large ports including Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, and Pennsylvania, all passed laws to reduce the costs associated with immigration (Bernard, 1980). New York passed inspection and welfare laws requiring shipmasters to report the name, occupation, birthplace, age, and physical condition of each passenger. Those with potential for becoming wards of the state could then be deported on the basis of these reports. Other cities used the fees collected from ships to maintain marine hospitals or deliver social services to immigrants. New York’s laws were challenged in City of New York v. Miln

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  Challenges to Democracy

  Essays in Honour and Memory of Isaiah Berlin

  • Raphael Cohen-Almagor(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  One of the manifestations of their extreme hysteria was to suppress all vestiges of protest or opposition to war. 20 The American statesman Elihu Root, who was awarded the 1912 Nobel Peace Prize, was wildly cheered when in a public speech he declared that in the streets there are people that should be dragged out at dawn and hanged. 21 Demands were raised to control people’s thoughts. Creel quoted President Wilson who declared that during a time of war, free speech is an insanity. 22 All this was occurring against the background of the federal government amassing power and influence in measures unprecedented in American history. The three basic laws used during the war to counter ‘disloyalty’ and promote patriotism were the Espionage Act, the Sedition Act and the Aliens Act. Close study of the language employed in those Acts does not reveal the extent of the dangers they presented to free expression and other constitutionally guaranteed rights. It was the way they were interpreted by district attorneys and the courts that made them such a threat to basic American freedoms. On 15 June 1917, only two months after the United States entered World War I, Congress passed the Espionage Act

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  Treasure State Justice

  Judge George M. Bourquin, Defender of the Rule of Law

  • Arnon Gutfeld(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Texas Tech University Press

    (Publisher)

  54

  The Sedition Act was designed to stop dissent. On May 28, 1918, the Anaconda Standard correctly interpreted its significance: “There is no freedom of speech any longer for the disloyal or pro-German. A man can talk all he pleases if he talks right.” Thus, an alleged violation of a federal law in a small town in Montana, a courageous decision by a judge who could not be intimidated by a patriotic mob, and the extraordinary hysteria that engulfed a state and a nation contributed in large measure to the passage of one of the most stringent anti–free speech acts in American history.

  The events of 1917–18 left an indelible impression on many of the primary actors involved. Burton K. Wheeler, for example, wrote: “One reason why I was oppose [sic] to F.D.R. packing the Supreme Court in 1937 was because of my experience during that time [World War I]—the local courts were crazy; only…Judge Bourquin and a few other local Federal Courts stood up.”55 Wheeler was correct; very few in the legal profession opposed the national hysterical “patriotic” orgy.56

  Brutal stifling of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution followed the passage of the Sedition Act of 1918.57 The act stemmed from local and national fears of radicals compounded by astute manipulation of patriotic feelings by business interests within a nation at war. President Wilson's Mediation Commission concluded that the unrest in the mining and lumber industries had not been the result of treasonable plots by the IWW but rather was triggered primarily by employers dealing with “unremedied and remediable industrial disorders.”58 The Justice Department, recognizing the wide scope of the act and the danger to individual liberties inherent within it, urged district attorneys to enforce the act with discretion. The department did not want wholesale suppression of legitimate criticism of the government.59

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  The Life of John Marshall, Volume 2

  Politician, diplomatist, statesman, 1789-1801

  • Albert J. (Albert Jeremiah) Beveridge(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Perlego

    (Publisher)

  [904] under the form of an address to the people. The "guardians of State Sovereignty would be perfidious if they did not warn" the people "of encroachments which ... may" result in "usurped power"; the State Governments would be "precipitated into impotency and contempt" in case they yielded to such National laws as the Alien and Sedition Acts; if like "infractions of the Federal Compact" were repeated "until the people arose ... in the majesty of their strength," it was certain that "the way for a revolution would be prepared."

  The Federalist pleas "to disregard usurpation until foreign danger shall have passed" was "an artifice which may be forever used," because those who wished National power extended "can ever create national embarrassments to soothe the people to sleep whilst that power is swelling, silently, secretly and fatally."

  Such was the Sedition Act which "commits the sacrilege of arresting reason; ... punishes without trial; ... bestows on the President despotic powers ... which was never expected by the early friends of the Constitution." But now "Federal authority is deduced by implication" by which "the states will be stript of every right reserved." Such "tremendous pretensions ... inflict a death wound on the Sovereignty of the States." Thus wrote the same Madison who had declared that nothing short of a veto by the National Government on "any and every act of the states" would suffice. There was, said Madison's campaign document, no "specified power" in the National Government "embracing a right against freedom of the press"—that was a "constitutional" prerogative of the States.

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