A Clamor in the Public Mind: Opposition to the Alien and Sedition Acts
Author(s): Douglas Bradburn
Source: The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Jul., 2008), pp. 565-600
Published by: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture
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in the Public Mind:
A Clamor
to theAlien and Sedition Acts
Opposition
Bradburn
Douglas
AT the height of their success in the spring of 1798, as the Federalists
in
regulate
and
were
Congress
behavior,
aliens,
and
designing
a new
law
taxes
various
a new
to
and
naturalization
criminalize
war
bill,
seditious
to
measures
prepare
an
act
to
talk,
writing,
for conflict
with France, they claimed repeatedly that "all Americans" were united in
support of the administration. President John Adams encouraged such
sentiments,
and
one
asserting
its
voice,"
that
"all America
"determination
appears
to vindicate
one heart
to declare,
with
. . . the honor
of our
nation." Adams and his allies were enthusiastic and triumphal as hun
dreds of memorials of support poured into Philadelphia. As one news
paper declared, the wide support for Adams "created an enthusiastic
Americanism
that will
prove"
the
salvation
of
the
country.
As
another
noted, unanimity would be key in any attempt to "fix the country in a
settled and positive state by immediately declaring war."1
The claims of unanimity were wishful thinking. Even on the day of
President Adams's national fast, a day when twelve hundred youth of
Philadelphia presented him with a patriotic memorial, a "fray" created
confusion in the capital during which "it was dangerous going out." On
the same day, Adams was hanged and burned in effigy in front of the
in North Stamford, Connecticut,
meetinghouse
deep in the Federalist
at
is an assistant
Bradburn
of history
professor
Binghamton
State University
of New York,
and would
like to thank numerous
peo
Ted Cook, Ted Crackle,
Ron Hoffman
and the mem
ple, including A. J. Ashiethre,
bers of the Omohundro
Institute of Early American
and Culture
History
Colloquia
R. Scott Lien, Ajay Mehrotra,
Rebekah
Series, David
Johann
K?nig,
Mergenthai,
Peter Onuf, Mark
Eric Slauter, Rogers
Neem,
Schmeller,
Smith, and certainly not
and the members
of the Newberry
in Early
least, Alfred F. Young
Library Seminar
American
for their generous
also like
early readings of this article. He would
History
to thank the anonymous
readers for the William
and Mary
for giving cru
Quarterly
cial guidance
and aid in making
this article as effective as possible.
1
inWilliam
Austin,
ed., A Selection
John Adams,
of the Patriotic Addresses, To
. . . (Boston,
the President
States.
of the United
Together with the President's Answers
118 ("all America
Gazette
and
1798), 70 ("all Americans"),
appears");
Philadelphia
an enthusiastic Americanism");
Universal Daily Advertiser, May
1, 1798, [3] ("created
Kline's Carlisle
28, 1798, [2] ("fix the country").
[Pa.] Weekly Gazette, Nov.
Douglas
University,
William
and Mary
Quarterly,
3d Series, Volume
LXV,
Number
3, July 2008
WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
566
heartland. And within weeks of the passage of the Alien and Sedition
thousands of people swarmed into the small town of Lexington,
Kentucky, and passed ten angry resolutions that called the acts void and
Acts,
entire
the
Federalist
to the American
disgrace
"unconstitutional,
agenda
As
name."
the summer
the recent legislation spread from Kentucky
Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New
discontent
proof
and
of an
organized,
government
Rufus
popular
King,
could no
who
was
protests
extensive,
impolitic,
wore
on,
and
unjust,
on
the assault
to the crucial states of
York. With
evidence of
in numerous
ominous
states,
emerging
to Adams's
and
recalcitrant
opposition
one Federalist
longer be denied. As
serving
a
as American
reported to
in London,
ambassador
"Much Clamor has been made about theAlien & Sedition Bill, & a vig
orous Attack, in the Course of the Session . . .will be made on it, in
order to alarm the public Mind, & prepare the way for their Success, in
the
election."2
Ensuing
As
this
clamors
go
one
has
not
its due.
received
Historians
have
been too eager to hand 1798 to the Federalists, accepting their claims of
Note,
595-600). The
unanimity at face value (see Historiographical
most
and
visible
the
Resolutions,
Kentucky
Virginia
opposition to the
Alien and Sedition Acts, have never been placed in their true context: as
part
of
a broader
movement
of
petitioning
and
remonstrance,
the
con
certed effort of numerous local communities not only in Virginia and
Kentucky but also in Pennsylvania, New Jersey,New York, Vermont,
and elsewhere. In fact the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions broke lit
tle new ground in resolving that the laws should be deemed unconstitu
them null and void, or in examining
the real
tional, in declaring
2Thomas
et al.,
10, 1798, in Barbara B. Oberg
Jefferson to James Madison,
May
30: 343?45
2003),
of Thomas Jefferson (Princeton, N.J.,
("fray," 30:
William
15, 1798, [2] ("unconstitutional");
344);
[Lexington] Kentucky Gazette, Aug.
to Rufus
Dec.
in Charles
R. King,
8, 1787,
ed., The Life and
Bingham
King,
and Official His Public
Correspondence
of Rufus King Comprising His Letters, Private
2: 482).
Documents
and His
(New York,
("Much Clamor,"
1895), 2: 481-83
Speeches
account
see the [Frankfort,
For a contemporary
of the Lexington
meeting,
Ky.]
Palladium
21, 1798, [1]. See also Robert McNutt
of Liberty, Aug.
McElroy,
Kentucky
in theNation's History
(New York,
1909), 223; Lowell H. Harrison,
John Breckinridge:
refers to
(Louisville,
Ky., 1969), 74. "Alien and Sedition Acts"
Jeffersonian Republican
two acts
the "act concerning
Friends Act, and the
aliens," or the Alien
specifically:
to an act entitled
an act, for the
of certain
crimes
"act, in addition
punishment
the United
called
the Sedition
Act. Republicans
States,"
against
distinguished
to be unconstitutional,
between
these acts, which
and the Alien
they believed
Enemies Act and the Naturalization
Act, which
they considered
impolitic and unjus
some authors believed
tified but rarely thought of as unconstitutional,
the
though
an executive
Alien
Act was
Enemies
of judicial
and the
usurpation
authority
an attempt
to control
Naturalization
the policy
of migration
Act,
by Congress
left to the states. Unless
to
otherwise
and Sedition Acts
stated, I use Alien
explicitly
refer only to the Alien Friends Act and the Sedition Act.
eds.,
The Papers
OPPOSITION TO THE ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS
character
of
In
union.
the American
numerous
567
resolutions
county
and
local petitions, many groups of citizens had already made such declara
tions. The overwhelming focus on Thomas Jefferson and JamesMadison
as the originators of ideas and the organizers of any and all formal
protest against the Alien and Sedition Acts is mistaken and ultimately
misleading.
The clamor against the Alien
and
tant,
the
story,
deeply
clamor
and Sedition Acts was broad,
a
Neither
consequential.
was
a movement
composed
top-down
of many
nor
local
a
impor
bottom-up
polities?dis
tinct local publics?whose
differences are reflected by the diverse origins
of resistance in particular localities. And yet these distinct communities
shared a common language, touching on the importance of individuals'
natural rights and the role of the states in defending those rights,which
reflected widely held attitudes dating to the 1770s. As the opposition
unfolded throughout themid-Atlantic in the summer, fall, and winter of
1798, such shared sympathies were given added direction, amplification,
and force by a growing network of partisan newspapers that played a
creative role in framing the distinct local mobilizations,
instigating more
a
and
national
protests,
finally coordinating
petitioning drive. By the
of
when
1799,
Jefferson proclaimed enthusiastically that the "pub
spring
was
lic sentiment"
"on
the
creen"
and
that
now
"the materials
on
bearing
the public mind will infallibly restore it to it's republican soundness,"
the clamor had effectively stopped any hopeful Federalist attempt to
mobilize
the country for war with France.3 Ultimately, the protesting,
mobilizing, petitioning, and remonstrating against the Federalists during
1798-99 supplied the original momentum,
organization, and ideology
that
would
strip
in
majorities
Adams
Congress
of
and
the
presidency,
numerous
states,
and
overturn
the
move
the United
off a trajectory of consolidation
and centralization
in
the
Federalists
power.
designed by
Federalist
States
inaugurated
and
resistance to the Federalist program of the spring of 1798
Organized
almost
in local communities
in Kentucky and
simultaneously
began
The
Gazette
summoned
Virginia.
Lexington Kentucky
organized resis
tance before the laws were actually
on
the Fourth of
passed by calling
for
of
committees
and
July
meetings,
correspondence,
general mobiliza
tion to oppose Federalist policy and the rush to war. Within
a week
polemics
against
and individuals
3 Thomas
with
France
and
assertions
of
the
right
of
states
laws were being published
et al.,
Feb.
5, 1799, in Oberg
Jefferson to James Madison,
Papers
of
sentiment,"
31: 10); Jefferson to Archibald
Stuart,
Jefferson, 31: 9-11 ("public
now
13, 1799, ibid., 31: 33-35 ("materials
31: 35).
bearing,"
Thomas
Feb.
war
to disobey unconstitutional
WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
568
regularly in the Kentucky Gazette and Frankfort's Palladium
of Liberty,
the leading Republican newspapers in the state.4
Clarke County, Kentucky, led theway on July 24, 1798, with a series
of
there was
"to which
resolutions
only
one
voice"
dissenting
at an
out
to late
door meeting of nearly one thousand people. From mid-August
acts
in
the
martial
of the
Kentucky condemning
September, meetings
Federalists in Congress became general. Bourbon, Fayette, Franklin,
and Woodford
counties rapidly produced,
Mason,
copied, and cele
brated each others' resolutions at meetings with thousands of partici
pants. At the meeting held in Lexington, called at the time "one of the
ever held in the state of Kentucky," more than four thou
largestmeetings
sand people flooded the center of town, passed their own set of reso
lutions, and agreed to arm themselves in anticipation of possible violent
resistance.
two main
The
orators
of
the old
the day,
revolution
Virginia
and the new popular leader Henry Clay,
ary Colonel George Nicholas
more
than
and were carried away in triumph by the
for
four
hours
spoke
enthusiastic
crowd.5
By mid-September
Kentucky's
popular
resistance
became
generally
to the Atlantic states.William Cobbet
in the Porcupines Gazette
ridiculed and condemned
the Kentucky petitioners as country bump
kins, illiterates, and "savages," less sober than "the wild Irish." But for
known
the
newspapers,
Republican-leaning
Kentucky
remonstrances
that the principles of '76 had not been abandoned
letter, an anonymous Virginian
widely published
approved the activities of the emerging opposition
referred to the different county resolutions collectively
Resolutions.
ment
them
Though
as factious
party
in a different
by many,
as
the
these
light."
only
resolutions
were
violent,"
the
and
He
asylum
asserted,
from
thought
real
"friends
"Kentucky
and
foreign
In a
enthusiastically
in Kentucky and
as the Kentucky
of
is now
domestic
proved
in America.
by
to
"the
govern
liberty,
view
contemplated
troubles,
and
4
see for
Kentucky Gazette, July 4, 1798. For examples of polemics
against the laws,
to the Peace,"
instance essays by "A Friend
Kentucky Gazette, July 4, 11, 1799; "Letter
from Representative
John Fowler, Esq.," Palladium
of Liberty, Aug. 7, 1798, [2].
5
1, 1798, [3] ("to which");
Palladium
21,
Kentucky Gazette, Aug.
of Liberty, Aug.
at the
!798, [1] ("one of the largest"). For Henry Clay's
presence
meeting,
Lexington
see
in theNation's
to consider
continued
his
223. Clay
McElroy,
Kentucky
History,
consistent
with
those of the Republican
the alien and
politics
party that resisted
state numerous
sedition
laws. As he would
times throughout
his career, but particu
a
in Hanover
over
Co., Va.,
June 27, 1840, he worried
larly in
speech delivered
President Andrew
of executive
Jackson's
great expansion
power. As he said to the
"The whigs
of 1840 stand where
the republicans
of 1798 stood, and where
people,
the whigs of the revolution were,
for free institu
battling for liberty, for the people,
executive
tions, against power,
encroachments,
against
corruption,
against
against
See Calvin
Colton,
ed., The Works
monarchy."
ofHenry Clay, Comprising His Life,
and Speeches (New York,
1904), 1: 510.
Correspondence
OPPOSITION TO THE ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS
state
from
Another
persecutions."
supporter
to Georgia,"
"from New Hampshirr
would
the
hoped
569
rest of
the
states,
"be roused before it is too
late."6
Numerous Virginia counties soon followed with their own resolu
tions against the Alien and Sedition Acts. Such local remonstrances had
long been an important part of Virginia civic life; by the late 1790s,
county
court
number
of
militia
days,
musters,
and
ad hoc
committee
were
meetings
regularly producing formal complaints about the encroachments of the
federal government. During the prowar frenzy of the spring of 1798, a
resolutions
local
attacked
of war
supporters
with
France.
and remonstrances against the Alien and Sedition
Specific
new
and John Adams's
armies,
Acts, standing
powers
borrowing
in
in
Albemarle
County, encouraging speculation that
July 1798
emerged
"a certai[n] Oracle"
(Thomas Jefferson) was involved in the drafting.
soon followed from Amelia,
Resolutions
Caroline,
Buckingham,
resolutions
Hanover,
Essex, Goochland,
James City, Louisa, Orange,
Prince Edward, and Spotsylvania counties. Some, including
Dinwiddie,
Powhatan,
the
remonstrance
Edward
and
sent
wide
acts.
of
the
their
petitioning
Most,
representatives
the laudatory petitions
directly
complaints
to Adams.
of the next congressional
however,
to "use
such
their
as
the Albemarle
utmost
exertions
of Prince
"Freeholders
Democratic-Republican
county," mimicked
Others
of the Federalists
for a nation
called
session for the repeal of the
resolves,
to obtain
called
a
on
the
state
repeal."7
6
Palladium
Gazette,
Sept. 21, 1798, [3] ("savages");
Porcupine's
of
[Philadelphia]
9, 1798, [2] ("government
[Va.] Advertiser, Sept. 18,
party"); Alexandria
Liberty, Oct.
x798, [3] ("New Hampshirr").
7Winchester
of
"Freeholders
[Va.] Gazette,
Oracle");
Jan. 9, 1799 ("certai[n]
in the state of Virginia,"
Prince Edward
Alexandria
Advertiser,
county,
Sept. 25,
!798, [3]; ibid., Sept. 18, 1798, [3] ("use their utmost exertions").
Early antiwar reso
lutions included
those of a "numerous
of the people
of Henrico"
and the
meeting
in the [Richmond]
city of Richmond
Virginia Argus, Apr. 6, 1798, [2-3] (quotation,
. . . ,"
of "Capt Bernard Magnien's
of Grenadiers
[2]), and the antiaddress
company
22, 1798, [3]. The Jan. 9, 1799, Winchester
[Newark, N.J.] Centinel
of Freedom, May
Gazette
of the counties
that produced
lists many
In
addresses.
See also Proceedings
on the
different parts of Virginia,
subject of the late conduct of the General Government
see the
Aurora General Advertiser, Dec.
Co.,
(n.p., 1798). For Orange
[Philadelphia]
1, 1798, [2]. For Louisa,
ibid., Feb. 25, 1799, [2]. For Goochland,
ibid., Sept. 3, 1798,
see the
20, 1798, [1-2]. For Powhatan,
[2]. For Buckingham,
Virginia Argus, Nov.
. . . in
see Nathaniel
ibid., Sept. 25, 1798, [2]. For Hanover,
Pope, A Speech
Support
to the
He
the
Resolutions
Which
At Their
and
Presented
Hanover,
of
Prepared
of
People
.
.
.
in
the 17th Day
Favour
1789
Meeting
of October,
of the Sedition Act (Richmond,
never
received
the Prince
Edward
Co.
Va.,
1800),
31-37. John Adams
petition
itwas sent to Secretary of State Timothy
because
refused to forward
Pickering, who
to
see
it. For Pickering's
the original
Aurora General Advertiser,
response
petition,
Nov.
22, 1798, [2]. A call
6, 1798, [2]. For Prince Edward Co.'s
ibid., Nov.
response,
WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
570
The
local Virginia and Kentucky resolutions emerged from political
practices that reflected shared political traditions. In both states the
local
for
were
resolutions
court
and
days
approved
musters.
militia
at
preannounced
case
In each
usually
meetings,
orations
would
precede
set
resolutions, which would be either produced on the spot in a committee
created for the purpose as the speeches continued or drafted beforehand
by elected officials, local notables, or others closely tied to the Republican
party.
In 1798 Virginia almost all conflicts in local politics reflected a con
test of elites over who represented the true voice of the county. By the
late eighteenth century, numerous families could claim natural leader
ties of kin; these protests of the
ship through deep and overlapping
Alien and Sedition Acts, which were always presented as unanimous
of
declarations
the voice
of
the
people,
were
often
actually
openly
con
tested by local elites who supported the administration. Outwardly, the
forms of local authority essentially mimicked colonial deferential politi
cal behavior: great men still ruled. Yet the Revolutionary War experience
in Virginia shattered the placidity and unanimity of colonial Virginia
politics and led to an increasing "move away from deferential politics" to
a system based more in "conflict between
legislative factions over public
. . . issue-oriented
and
policy,
appeals
to constituents."
In
the
late
1790s,
this competitive politics was defined not by direct challenges from
below or from traditionally marginalized communities but by more visi
ble public conflict at the top and by popular agitation around compet
ing sets of leaders. A lingering veneer of deference could not hide the
increasingly organized, loud, and participatory politics.8
One telling example of how these factions failed to function within
older
modes
Albemarle
of
County
consensual
resolutions
expression
of May
was
the
1798.
Those
drama
surrounding
resolutions,
the
attacking
the pro-British policy of the Adams administration, had been passed at
court "with only one dissenting voice" At the June court,
the May
Colonel
and Justice of the Peace Benjamin
Brown
John Nicholas
to John
is in "Citizens
of Richmond"
petitioning
Clopton,
Esq.,
20, 1798, [2].
Advertiser, Aug.
8Michael
A. McDonnell,
Mobilization
in
and Political
Culture
"Popular
The
Failure
of the Minutemen
and the Revolution
from
Revolutionary
Virginia:
Below," Journal
85, no. 3 (December
1998): 946-81
of American History
(quotations,
The Politics
in
McDonnell,
979-80);
of War: Race, Class, and Conflict
Revolutionary
a
end of the 1790s represented
2007). The
Virginia
(Chapel Hill, N.C.,
period of the
voter
turnout
in early
this
highest
republican
Virginia
politics;
importantly,
increased participation
to the
a
largely disappeared
by the 1810s, speaking
growth of
new
of one-party
or, perhaps more
after the
harmony
correctly, hegemony
politics
destruction
in 1800. See Norman
of the Federalists
K. Risjord,
Politics,
Chesapeake
(New York,
1781-1800
1978), 534-72.
for nationwide
Aurora
General
OPPOSITION TO THE ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS
571
attempted to pass a pro-Adams address. Opposing Nicholas were Wilson
Cary Nicholas, his cousin, and Thomas Mann Randolph, Jefferson's son
each
in-law,
of whom
most
spent
of
the
in
"consumed
day
harranguing
the people." Finally, as recriminations turned personal, they decided to
vote and "the people" were divided with a large number, but not a majori
ty, standing with Federalist Nicholas, who had not been present at the
and Randolph
had staged a unani
May court. Wilson
Cary Nicholas
mous
of
condemnation
popular
the Adams
administration
senting the fiction of deferential authority and community
that
ideas
reinforced
each
other.
But
two
with
equal
claimants
in May,
pre
unanimity,
to authori
ty at the June court, the day was spent in faction and recrimination with
the divisions of the people open for theworld to see.9
In Kentucky the meetings against the Alien and Sedition Acts usu
involved
ally
and
tic,
more
many
spontaneous.
were
and
participants
No
elites
Virginia
more
were
ever
enthusias
raucous,
carried
literally
away
by the crowd as they were in Kentucky. At least four meetings claimed
in the thousands, so some kind of local organizing was
participants
whereas
occurring,
Virginia
more
never
meetings
recorded
of
participation
than a few hundred people. At the end of the 1790s, Kentucky
conflict
politics reflected a much more direct and open socioeconomic
than Virginia's as certain Kentucky elites (connected to great Virginia
political families) competed with ambitious newcomers over the direc
tion of state politics. In the spring of 1798, Kentuckians were deeply
divided
a movement
by
to
a new
call
state
constitutional
convention,
with George Nicholas
and John Breckinridge leading slaveholding large
planters against small farmers and nonslaveholders,
increasingly led by
Clay,
often
Yet
more
reflected
Lexington
Alien
assailing
real
meeting,
unity
where
shared
those
acts
fundamental
and
the
danger
than
Clay
supplied
beliefs
of
the yeomanry.10
to the Alien
opposition
and Sedition Acts
tions
in the name
aristocrats
the Kentucky
and
Acts
Sedition
remonstrances.
As
Virginia
after
Nicholas,
demonstrates,
spoke
the
a common
about
inherent
the
in gross
enemy. Both political
of
the
fac
nature
unconstitutional
abuse
the
federal
of
power.
Federalists certainly existed in Kentucky but, compared with Virginia,
their influence at the end of the decade was almost completely spent.
The letter by a Virginian "to his friend in Kentucky" extolling the local
resolutions recognized this fact explicitly, noting, "Your unanimity is a
most happy
thing for your country. There is nothing here but the most
9Details
are in the
of the June meeting
Virginia Argus, June 15, 1798, [3].
10 See for instance
of Fayette County,"
essay, "To the Electors
Henry Clay's
and Mary W. M.
16, 1798, in James F. Hopkins
eds., The Papers of
Apr.
Hargreaves,
1: 3?8; Harrison,
93, 113.
John Breckinridge,
Henry Clay (Lexington,
Ky., 1959),
WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
572
violent
altercations,
friends,
brethren
Outside
and heart burnings;
bickerings
and
Kentucky
the
Virginia,
first
German
and
immigrants
those
including
remonstrances
significant
emerged in the backcountry of Pennsylvania. Heavily
and
friends against
brethren."11
against
by Irish
populated
ethnic
western
enclaves,
offered a sustained and defiant opposition
voice to
Pennsylvania
Federalist war measures. Though the Federalist laws would help excite a
small rebellion by the spring of 1799, in the summer of 1798 numerous
Pennsylvanians sought the traditional redress of petitions to voice their
opposition. Two different strains of political behavior shaped the charac
ter of
in
resistance
Pennsylvania.
editors and elected officials were aggressively organizing
Republican
Pennsylvania; many of the earliest formal resolutions emerged in the
context
met
of
state,
federal,
to declare
local
as
elections
local
their candidates.
in the House
leader
Republicans'
and
and publicize
of
party
Albert
committees
numerous
received
Representatives,
the
Gallatin,
laudatory addresses from his constituency not only defending his status
as a naturalized American citizen and
supporting his reelection to the
House but also assuring him that his constituents did not support war
with France and declaring the alien and sedition bills "impolitic, unjust,
and
unconstitutional."12
A broader
most
type of political
form
radical
agitation
John
encouraged
Fries's
in Pennsylvania?which
tax
resistance
in the
in its
spring
of
not out of party politics but directly from the tradition of
1799?came
resisting taxes, land laws, and procreditor policies, dating to the 1770s if
not
The
earlier.
emerged
Northampton,
tax
direct
in
petitions
these
and
and
the
regions,
against
the
York,
particularly
often
included
stamp
tax,
considered
alien
and
the
strident
the
by
sedition
counties
of
attacks
farmers
laws
that
Lancaster,
on
the
to be
new
unfair.
Many of these petitioners would have called themselves Federalists,
if they claimed any party affilia
identifying with George Washington,
tion at all. Petitioners from York County passed four resolutions, only
one of which dealt with the Alien and Sedition Acts; the
remaining
three denounced the establishment and funding for the expanded army.
The petitioners
fall unfairly on
argued that the new taxes would
householders
Pennsylvania
argued,
"it
is
now
well
rather
known,
than
that
on
land
the
speculators.
owners
of
11Centinel
18, 1798, [2].
ofFreedom, Dec.
12
1, 1798,
Pa.] Herald
[Washington,
of Liberty, Oct.
and Sedition Acts
in Pennsylvania
petitions
against the Alien
Gallatin
As
houses
they
in
of the earliest
[2]. Some
were tributes to Albert
from his constituents
in Greene,
counties.
and Washington
Allegheny,
of laudatory
addresses
that critiqued
the Alien
and Sedition Acts can be
Examples
found in the Herald
8, 1798, and the Aurora General Advertiser, Dec.
of Liberty, Oct.
19,1798.
573
OPPOSITION TO THE ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS
Pennsylvania
will pay much more
the
than
property,
of
holders
in proportion
to the value of their
In
lands."
uncultivated
Lancaster,
Pennsylvania, at the beginning of March, petitioners decried the Alien
and Sedition Acts and also the creation of the "unequal tax on the peo
as that called the direct tax is looked upon."
ple of the United States
The direct tax, together with the stamp tax, "is sowing the seed of dis
contentment
among
the people."13
Liberty poles marked the growth of opposition to the government in
Pennsylvania. They were a potent symbol of revolution thatwould spread
even into Federalist New
England. The poles
through themid-Atlantic and
in
had been widely erected during the time of theWhiskey Rebellion
New
Pennsylvania,
for
protest.
symbol
Jersey, and Maryland,
Alexander
Graydon
and
they
remembered
remained
the
a
run-up
prominent
to Fries's
Rebellion from the summer of 1798 to the spring of 1799 in vivid terms:
ran in a vein
"The sedition which began in the county of Northampton,
counties
of
Berks
the
and
the
infection by
Dauphin,
spreading
through
means of liberty poles, successively rising in grand colonnade, from the
to those of the Susquehanna." The colonnade of
banks of the Delaware
at
not
end
the
banks of the Delaware because resisters to the
did
poles
Federalist drive forwar erected numerous poles in northern New Jersey as
well. The poles were prominent in eastern Pennsylvania by early 1799; the
to
associations
the sedition
"destroy
organizing
began
poles"
as Fries's Rebellion.14
the open
before
conflicts
that became
known
contests
In Dedham,
Similar
the country.
emerged
throughout
Federalists
months
the "ringleader" of a group who erected a liberty pole was
Massachusetts,
to Boston and held in jail for interrogation and eventually tried
brought
for
In Mendham,
sedition.
New
Jersey,
twenty-three
young
men
wearing
"black cockades" (the Federalist cockade) and "armed with pistols, swords,
and clubs" rode into town midday on August 11, 1798, stole the liberty cap
atop the pole, and cut down the liberty pole, which had been erected July
4. The
town
put
up
another
pole
and
cap
that weekend.15
13Aurora
General Advertiser,
Mar.
6,
Jan. 22, 1799, [3] ("now well known"),
of popular
resisters
in backcountry
tax"). For the character
[3] ("unequal
see
"'No wonder
the times were
troublesome':
The
Terry Bouton,
Pennsylvania,
of Fries' Rebellion,
67, no. 1 (Winter
1783-1799,"
Origins
Pennsylvania
History
21-42.
2000):
14Alexander
His Own Time, With Reminiscences
Graydon, Memoirs
of theMen
of
and Events
ed. John Stockton
Littell
393
1846),
of the Revolution,
(Philadelphia,
which
Gazette
and Baltimore
Federal
Feb. 6,
("sedition
Advertiser,
began");
Daily
the poles during theWhiskey
x799> [3] ("destroy the sedition poles"). On
Rebellion,
see Leland D. Baldwin,
a
Whiskey Rebels: The Story of Frontier Uprising
(Pittsburgh,
include "More, More,
Sedition
Poles!" Centinel
Pa., 1939), 83-85, 91. Other
examples
12, 1799, [3].
ofFreedom, Mar.
x799>
^Aurora
Piece, Aug.
General
28, 1798,
Advertiser,
[2] ("black
Nov.
22, 1798,
cockades").
[3] ^ringleader')-,
[New York]
Time
WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
574
Numerous
often
other
the attacks
steal
the
caps
that
was
cut
topped
scorn
the
elicited
poles
of armed
gangs
who
them.
Several
of Federalist
attempted
down
be
seen
could
poles
and
newspapers
to cut
the
"on
or
poles
the road
to Providence" with "the American Cockade, and tar and feathers below."
The editors of the Boston Columbian Centinel believed that themen who
would erect such poles were "born to be slaves, or to be hanged." In
erected a liberty pole at which they
Wallingford, Vermont, Republicans
a
Acts.
the
Alien
and
Sedition
burned
According to Federalist newspaper,
"the
pole
burnt
down,
to ashes
and
in
scattered
the wind"
by
a
group of "true republican federalists" known in the Republican press as a
Federalist mob. The same newspaper reported that "a spirit of insurgency
"was rising
similar to" the one exhibited by theWallingford Republicans
in the back part of New York state." Another Federalist newspaper cele
In
of a pole in Vassalboro,
Maine.
brated a similar destruction
Hackensack, New Jersey, a liberty pole that had stood in the town since
the heady days of 1793was shorn of its liberty cap and an eagle placed on
top. In Newark, New Jersey, a running battle between Federalists and
saw at least three different liberty caps placed atop the town
Republicans
liberty pole, each subsequently stolen.16 The politics of 1798 began to
resemble 1775: a spirit of insurgency.
In December
of Delegates
1798, as the Virginia House
approved
their
resolutions
and
the Kentucky
resolutions
legislature's
were
being
circulated in the east, Republican
congressmen in Philadelphia
signaled
their intention to challenge
the constitutionality
of the Alien and
Sedition Acts and moved for a repeal of all the war measures. These pro
nouncements, together with the example of Kentucky and Virginia, pre
cipitated
another
massive
drive
petitioning
so
that
throughout
January
and early February 1799 Republican
congressmen received hundreds of
petitions "praying for a repeal of the alien and sedition laws." In multi
ple petitions from Philadelphia and its immediate suburbs and numer
ous
remonstrances
Franklin,
and
York
Lancaster,
counties,
from
Mifflin,
more
lected from Pennsylvania
Berks,
Chester,
Montgomery,
than
eighteen
alone.17
Cumberland,
Dauphin,
Northampton,
Washington,
were
thousand
signatures
By late February
col
1799, Congress
16
to Providence")-,
Columbian
il, 1798,
Centinel,
[Boston]
[1] ("road
Aug.
Gazette
and Baltimore Advertiser,
Jan. 31, 1799, [3] ("pole was cut down").
are described
in the Alexandria
More
21, 1798; New
Advertiser, Dec.
liberty poles
York Gazette and General Advertiser, July 11, 1798;
United States
Carey's
[Philadelphia]
Federal
Recorder, July 19, 1798.
17Annals
of Representatives,
5th Cong.,
3d sess., 2985 (quo
of Congress, House
of the petitions
that are extant were published
in newspapers
and the
tation). Most
not exist. The
a debate
in Congress
about
the petitions
signatures do
figure is from
(ibid., 2785-3017,
esp. 2993).
OPPOSITION TO THE ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS
575
to consider petitions not only from Kentucky, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, and Virginia but also fromNew York and Vermont.
In northern New Jersey, local party operatives amplified and coordi
to the Alien and Sedition Acts that had originally
nated opposition
and Aaron Pennington,
with
the
liberty poles. Daniel Dodge
spread
were
the most important
of
the
Newark
Centinel
Freedom,
of
publishers
was not the most important partisan
The
Freedom
Centinel
of
players.
newspaper aligned with the Republican party, not the most widely circu
lated nationally or the most widely read. In 1798 the weekly newspaper
was only two years old but it served an important readership in the
was experiencing
the first signs of an
region around Newark, which
to
state. The
the traditionally Federalist-controlled
organized resistance
a
Centinel of Freedom illustrates the work being done by
growing net
work of newspapers aligned with Republicans
throughout the county,
including the Philadelphia Aurora General Advertiser, theWashington,
Pennsylvania, Herald of Liberty, the Frankfort, Kentucky, Guardian of
Freedom, the New York City Time Piece, the Richmond Virginia Argus,
and others, which were increasingly partisan and more closely tied to
the Centinel of
politics on the ground and in the legislatures. While
Freedom was publishing pro-Republican
articles, Pennington's brother,
served as a leader of the Republican
faction in the New Jersey
William,
needed
For
legislature.
constant
the
attacks
on
was
the
governor
of New
Jersey,
beaten in August 1798, and both editors were
Pennington
with
libel.18
seditious
charged
and Pennington were aggressively
1798, Dodge
By mid-December
Aaron
to
attempting
publicize
and
emulate
the
spreading
resistance
to
the
and Sedition Acts. On the front page of the December
18, 1798,
edition, the Centinel ofFreedom reproduced the Kentucky Resolutions,
10, 1798. In their edito
passed by the Kentucky legislature on November
rial essay, the editors enthusiastically supported the legislature's method
Alien
and
principles,
noting:
"We
most
sincerely
congratulate
our
readers
on
in which the Legislature
the spirited, firm, and decided manner
of
declared
their
have
sentiments
Kentucky
respecting the Alien and
Sedition Laws?sincerely
hoping, that the Legislatures of other States
will follow their example, and thereby obtain a repeal of those obnox
ious acts, which evidently violate the Constitution." They celebrated the
resistance of the "different counties of the states of Virginia, Kentucky,
18For
see Carl
in northern New
Republicans
Jersey,
an
The Genesis
Republicans:
Jersey's Jeffersonian
of
Early Party
of partisan
Machine,
1789-1817
18-40. For the network
1964),
(Chapel Hill, N.C.,
see
"The Tyranny of Printers": Newspaper
in the
Politics
newspapers,
Jeffery Pasley,
of
Va.,
(Charlottesville,
153-75. For the beating
2001),
Early American
Republic
see the Centinel
Aaron
Pennington,
of Freedom, Aug. 7, 14, 21, 28, 1798.
E.
Prince,
the rise of the Jeffersonian
New
WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
576
and the back counties of Pennsylvania" and called for action. The "real
of New Jerseymust act in the same fashion "by convening
Republicans"
together
tate, and
there
repeal the Alien
of
violation
or
township
of
your
request
in either
and Sedition
county
public
as convenience
meetings,
agents,
Laws, which
of
by way
may
dic
to
remonstrance,
have been enacted
in open
the Constitution."19
The same issue of the Centinel of Freedom printed an unnamed
"New Song" that reinforced Dodge
and Pennington's call for petition
were
common
in
newspapers of the early Republic, which
ing. Songs
often
reserved
muse's
spaces?the
particular
corner?for
new
and
poetry
songs. They could be innocuous, ribald, or banal and were often overtly
were crucial to the culture of America and,
political. Political songs
indeed, Atlantic politics at the end of the eighteenth century, and they
played a significant role in the agitations of 1798.20 As tangible as cock
ades or liberty poles formarking affiliations, songs were often as impor
tant as pamphlets for the transmission of political ideas and prejudices.
The year 1798 was important in American political songwriting,
an anthem to aid
with Joseph Hopkinson's
"Hail Columbia"
becoming
in the Federalist ascendancy in the spring. Numerous
imitators followed
and the new song offered in the December
18, 1798, Centinel ofFreedom
intended to serve this cultural politics of singing. Unlike most that sim
ply
satirized,
lampooned,
or
agitated
generally,
this
new
song
was
a
protest calling for specific and direct action?petitioning?which
reflected and reinforced the political mobilization
of the moment.
in
first
the
the
with
Presented
author identified only as "ANeedy
person
War-Worn
Soldier" who distinguished himself immediately from "the
well born," the song begins powerfully:
I grub all the day while the well born can feast
But they can afford the enjoyment
Our rulersmay feast on six dollars a day
The
poor
must
be
tax'd,
their
extortions
to pay
And when we against them do any thing say
They trump up a bill of sedition.
The soldier then recounts his experience of the Revolutionary War and
its aftermath. For the soldier the war began as a rich man's fight but
19Centinel
18, 1798, [3].
ofFreedom, Dec.
their full due as part of the
Ibid.,
[4]. Songs have not yet received
political
but see Simon
P. Newman,
and the Politics
Parades
Street: Festive
culture,
of the
Culture and the Early American
"The
1997); Jeffrey L. Pasley,
(Philadelphia,
Republic
and the Words:
Cheese
Political
and Participatory
in
Culture
Popular
Democracy
20
in Beyond
to the
the Early American
the Founders:
New
Republic,"
Approaches
Political History
ed. Pasley, Andrew W.
Robertson,
of the Early American
Republic,
and David Waldstreicher
2004),
31-56, esp. 39.
(Chapel Hill, N.C.,
577
OPPOSITION TO THE ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS
became his own through his sacrifice and service in the cause of "free
dom and right." Yet he received no cash for his service but worthless
paper, which he needed to sell "at two-pence per schilling" to feed his
sick children and distressed wife. Shocked by a government that funded
the national debt while "robbing the soldiers," he laments his fate and
decides, "What a fool is the poor man for fighting." At this point the
tone
song
changes
the
ditures,
and
army,
standing
the Alien
attacks
and
and
"Fed'ral
Sedition
naval
Acts,
extravagance,"
expen
noting
that
clearly
spoke
the
laws are "aim'd at the vitals of freedom" and that "The good of the state
did not need 'em." Finally, the song calls for direct action:
Then
freemen
at
assemble
to
Resolve?and
congress
call,"
"liberty's
petition
That the law called alien, to nothing may fall,
And also the bill of sedition.21
Even
if the
song
was
not written
by
a war
veteran,
it
to
an important sentiment of popular discontent in the region. One of the
earliest petitions against theAdams administration and war with France in
the spring of 1798 came from a group ofNew Jerseymilitiamen inNewark
and Morristown,
attacking
the
address
pro-Adams
circulated
by
the
gen
eral officers of the New Jerseymilitia. As the militiamen
explained to
Adams, they believed the war fever was fomented by "the influence of
interested commercial characters, joined with those whose political princi
ples were not friendly to a republican form of government." They urged
Adams to separate himself from "surrounding flatterers,who are wishing
for
preferment,
or
for an
waiting
to
opportunity
on
speculate
the
soldier's
pay."22 Their petition, like the song, powerfully countered Federalist
attempts to linkmemories of theAmerican independence struggle with a
for a formal
call
declaration
Denunciations
across
large
parts
of
of
of war
self-interested
the mid-Atlantic
with
France.
commercial
states.
Laws
characters
in favor
had
of creditors
appeal
and
21 Centinel
classics
such as "Support
18, 1798, [4]. Forgotten
of Freedom, Dec.
on Columbia's
the Constitution,"
"The True American,"
"Ode
Favorite
Son,"
and Liberty,"
"A National
"Adams
"Adams
and Washington,"
and "Ode on
Song,"
were
the Landing
of our Forefathers"
and eventually
into
collected
widely
printed
"Federal
that
served to continue
the effusive patriotism
of the
popular
Songster[s]"
the war against France,
and an
spring of 1798 by urging support for the president,
ideal of national
and Country Gazette,
[Mass.] Herald
unity. See the Newburyport
a
12, 1799, [1]. In the Time Piece,
4, 1798, [1], Feb.
May
pro-Republican
literary
asserted
that "Hail Columbia"
could often be heard
newspaper,
angry Republicans
save the
as a consequence
"Rule Brittannia"
and "God
of
intermingled with
King"
street serenades
from Federalists
and refugees from Nova
Scotia.
See the
nightly
Time Piece, June 25, 1798, [3].
22 Centinel
June 12, 1798, [4].
ofFreedom,
WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
578
speculators, which diminished the money supply and increased taxation,
had bred resistance, court closings, petitioning, and even open rebellion
from the 1780s through the 1790s. The additional taxes promised by the
Federalists' 1798 program, which only existed to fund thewar effort, once
on stable
again promised real economic dislocation for people dependent
debt relationships. The soldier of the song spoke for the lower sort: the
common
laborers,
debtor
farmers,
or
lesser
artisans
who
the pre
ridiculed
tensions of the well born. In Newark, New Jersey, one such individual
was Luther Baldwin, the operator of a garbage
angered by the Sedition Act
scow. In perhaps the most venal application of the law, Baldwin, a friend
Brown
named
Clark,
and
a
person
known
only
as
"Lespenard"
were
indicted, fined, and eventually jailed for drunken comments made at John
Burnet's dram shop, in which they hoped for a certain celebratory can
nonade
to come
to rest
in Adams's
"a[rse]."23
new song in the Centinel ofFreedom represented an attempt to
people with sentiments like Baldwin, Clark, and Lespenard's,
in the triumphant message of the
had been marginalized
who
people
in the song did not go
Federalist
regime. The call for petitioning
The
mobilize
unheeded.
a month
Dodge
and
Pennington's
various
appeals
succeeded,
and within
nearly six hundred people met in front of the courthouse in
resolved
that theAlien and Sedition Acts were unconstitutional,
Newark,
and petitioned their state and federal legislators tomove for repeal.24
New York Republicans
and their newspapers had been outspoken
Acts from the moment of passage.
of
the
Alien
and
Sedition
opponents
New York Congressman Edward Livingston had given a strident speech
on the floor of Congress,
against the Alien Act
calling for resistance to
the law by "the people," a speech that circulated widely as a leading
23
Fetters: The Alien
and Sedition
Laws and
Smith, Freedom's
James Morton
Civil Liberties
(1956; repr., Ithaca, N.Y.,
1966), 270-74
271).
(quotations,
see Alfred
On New
York politics,
F. Young,
The Democratic
ofNew
Republicans
A
York: The Origins,
Hill, N.C.,
1762?1797
1967); Edward
Countryman,
(Chapel
in Revolution:
The American
Revolution
and Political
in New
York,
People
Society
York,
(1981; repr., New
1760?1790
1989); Bouton,
67: 21-39;
Pennsylvania
History
Thomas
Land and Liberty: Hudson
J. Humphrey,
Valley Riots in the Age of Revolution
and more
"A Road
Rural
Closed:
111., 2004);
(DeKalb,
Terry Bouton,
generally,
in Post-Independence
87, no.
Journal
Pennsylvania,"
ofAmerican History
Insurgency
3 (December
2000):
855-87.
24 The
some
as is evident
from a
song obtained
popularity,
slightly different
as late as 1811
"The Sedition Act," published
book
version, now named
by a Boston
a collection
or
seller advertising
of popular
(by the Gross, Dozen,
"Songs
Single)."
at the American
See "The
Sedition
Act, A Song,"
1811, broadside
Antiquarian
see the Centinel
Mass.
For the Newark
Jan.
Society, Worcester,
petitions,
ofFreedom,
the resolutions were passed on Jan. 17, 1799, they were not
22, 1799. Though
pub
lished for five days. Similar
resolutions were passed
the
by Republicans
throughout
to the resolutions
at Newark
state, some of them identical
(ibid.,
Jan.
passed
22-Feb.
6, 1799).
American
OPPOSITION TO THE ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS
579
in the summer. By December
1798 New York
opposition
pamphlet
were
rapidly mobilizing and petitioning. By February, when
Republicans
the major petitioning to Congress was underway, the leading Federalist
newspaper could only beg New Yorkers to "reflect before they sign the
now circulated by the Jacobins of this city against
petitions which are
theAlien and Sedition laws."25
was one repre
Among the petitions circulating in New York City
to
one
sent from Irish
This
similar
"natives
of
Ireland."
petition,
senting
brazen?assertion
aliens in Philadelphia, was a bold?or
by noncitizens
of an authority to interpret the Constitution,
decrying what they
believed was the unconstitutional nature of the Alien Act and asking for
its repeal. The quick composition and circulation of the petitions also
in some of the urban
reveal thematurity of ethnic political mobilization
centers of the young Republic.
in Philadelphia
The Irish petition
nexus of civil society and partisan politics. The petition
at
the
emerged
the editor of theAurora General
drive was organized byWilliam Duane,
Advertiser, with the assistance of printers James and Mathew Carey, Dr.
a recent radical emigre and elected official of the
James Reynolds,
Hibernian Society, and a few Irish gentlemen, within several days of the
that Republican
congressmen of Pennsylvania
published announcement
would move for a repeal of the Alien and Sedition Acts. By the late
the
1790s, the Hibernian Society, whose president was Thomas McKean,
chief justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, had emerged as an
important bulwark of an increasingly organized political party; it con
nected recent immigrants in Southwark and the northern liberties with
Irish radicals as well as local and national Republican
party elites. The
Federalist majority in Congress at first refused to accept the petitions,
arguing that aliens had no right to petition, before finally sending them
to committee.26
In upstate New York, Jedediah Peck, a member of the New York
Assembly, was charged under the Sedition Act for circulating a petition
25Annals
of Representatives,
5th Cong.,
3d sess., 2887 ("peo
of Congress, House
Feb. 20, 1799, [2] ("reflect before
[New York] Daily Advertiser,
ple");
they sign").
was
in many Republican
Edward
also published
and copied
speech
Livingston's
In February
for some of the language
of
1799 he was called to account
newspapers.
to
his speech, specifically
"that the States ought to resist the law, the people
ought
to God
resist the law, and he hoped
the people would
resist the law." See Annals
of
of Representatives,
5th Cong.,
3d sess., 2893.
Congress, House
26
to
Irish Republican
efforts
recruit signa
Ibid., 2883-2906
2883).
(quotation,
tures at
churches
led to a riot at Saint Mary's
resulted
which
Church,
Philadelphia
in a trial, the publicity
of which
led to increased
circulation
of their petitions.
See
"'True Americans'
and
of Foreigners':
'Hordes
Bradburn,
Nationalism,
Douglas
Ethnicity,
Historical
and
the Problem
29, no. 1
Reflections
of Citizenship
2003):
(Spring
in the United
19-41,
esp.
31-37.
States,
1789-1800,"
WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
58o
a
against the Alien and Sedition Acts. Peck's problems emerged from
contest
in
Otsego County between William Cooper
political
developing
and
a
him,
competition
class
reflecting
and
divisions.
generational
demanded
and received deference and ruled the county as a
Cooper
land
speculator, developer, and judge. He publicly threatened any
large
one circulating a petition against the Alien and Sedition Acts with two
years in prison and a two-thousand-dollar fine. Peck turned against the
Federalists because of their prowar stance and was beginning to emerge
as the chief representative of the tenants, smallholders, and independent
yeomen of upstate New York due to his martyrdom during the petition
ing
true
movement.
He
of
inheritor
presented
the American
as
himself
a new
Revolution,
man
a democrat,
and
against
the
acts,
which
tion by the Kentucky
to
the
acts
related
was
at first
and Virginia
directly
to
done
without
agitations. Most
the
preten
Cooper's
attacking
sions to rule the county like the patriarchs of old.27
Of the New England
states, only Vermont organized
any
petitioning
necessary
inspira
reaction
Republican
extraordinary
a
imprisonment
of
Vermont Congressman Matthew
Lyon under the Sedition Act in the
summer of 1798. Lyon, who had been a particularly hated member of the
party for his Irish descent, his extreme republicanism, and
Republican
his outspoken
insolence toward traditional New England
elites, had
finally earned the eternal contempt of the Federalists in 1797 for spitting
on Connecticut
Congressman Roger Griswold. The brawl that resulted,
set in the not-yet-hallowed
halls of Congress and featuring Griswold
a
cane
while
Lyon scrambled to defend himself with
hickory
brandishing
a set of fire tongs, almost led to their expulsion from the House
of
to
mere
Act
The
Sedition
Federalists
allowed
go beyond
Representatives.
formal censure of Lyon; convicted of sedition, he was imprisoned and
the summer and fall of 1798, Lyon became a
heavily fined. Throughout
cause and while in jail was over
for
the
martyr
symbolic
Republican
to
seat
in
House. With
his
the
reelected
their congressman
whelmingly
in
jail,
Vermonters
sent
numerous
petitions
to Adams
and
Congress
a lack of representation and
complaining of
protesting the unconstitu
nature
tional
of the Sedition Act. Ultimately, most of Vermont's peti
tions were brought to Philadelphia by Connecticut agitator and itinerant
preacher John Cosens Ogden, who in January 1799 began to write for
the Aurora General Advertiser. Though Adams summarily rejected the
petitions he received, theVermont petitions to Congress were ultimately
27
see
Smith, Freedom's Fetters, 391-93. On Jedediah Peck and William
Cooper,
Democratic
York, 273-74,
509-14,
567; Alan Taylor,
Republicans
ofNew
Fathers to Friends of the People:
in the Early
Personae
in
Political
Republic,"
Federalists Reconsidered,
ed. Doran
Ben-Atar
B. Oberg
and Barbara
(Charlottesville,
Young,
"From
Va.,
1998),
225-45.
OPPOSITION TO THE ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS
and took their
presented by Livingston, New York's ardent Republican,
numerous
place
would
alongside
also
circulate
one
others.
the most
of
The
Vermont
aggressive
581
Assembly
of
defenses
the
minority
constitu
tional arguments of the Kentucky Resolutions.28
In other states the evidence of sustained and organized petitioning
and remonstrance against the alien and sedition laws is more difficult
to find. This lack of formal opposition reflects the importance of local
as crucial organizers
as
tangible evidence and
politics and of newspapers
and amplifiers of dissent. But in some states the character of local poli
tics and the power of the government effectively stifled dissent, assuring
to the Alien and Sedition Acts could not become
that any opposition
widespread.
Tennessee and North Carolina offered critiques of the alien and sedi
tion laws. The legislature of the General Assembly of North Carolina, for
instance,
an
passed
tional, a resolution
But North Carolina
therefore
less
had
resolution
abrupt
declaring
the
laws
unconstitu
senate.
that failed to pass the Federalist-dominated
had no Republican-leaning
newspaper in 1798 and
to
ability
a
organize
popular
or
movement
with the version of events being described by Federalists.29
In Tennessee
Federalists,
antagonism
and to Adams
to
the
characterized
eastern
establishment,
the consensus
compete
to
of nearly
the
the
28Matthew
were
to
that they would
Lyon and Roger Griswold
required
pledge
"no act of violence"
for the remainder of the session. See Annals
of Congress,
2: 1040).
House
of Representatives,
2d sess., 1040-43
5th Cong.,
(quotation,
Lyon's
was the
numerous
attacks on the Sedition Act;
subject of
Republican
imprisonment
was
a
to
one of the most
letter from "General
Mason"
notable
Lyon
published
in the Republican
1, 1798, [2].
press. See the Aurora General Advertiser, Dec.
widely
commit
See
also the Daily Advertiser,
Feb.
and the peti
16, 1798. On
John Cosens
Ogden
see Alan V. Briceland,
to Adams,
"The Philadelphia
the New England
Aurora,
of 1800,"
and
the Election
and
Illuminati,
Magazine
Pennsylvania
of History
100, no. 1 (January 1976): 3-36, esp. 9-11, 16-17. See also "Protest of the
Biography
in the
Vermont
the 5th of November
1799. 9 o'clock, A. M.,"
Minority:
Tuesday,
to Frank
of
the
and
Anderson,
Maloy
Opinion
appendix
"Contemporary
Virginia
American Historical
Review
Resolutions,"
5, nos. 1-2 (October-December
Kentucky
1899): 45~63> 225-52.
29 On
see Stewart's
in North
the proceedings
Carolina,
[Lexington]
Kentucky
votes were
to twenty-one
Feb. 26, 1799. The General
Herald,
Assembly
fifty-eight
was
to
senate.
it
in
for the resolution,
nine against
the
and
There was no
thirty-one
in
North
Carolina
until
the
of
the Raleigh
newspaper
Republican
organization
there was no local antiadministration
newspaper,
Register in 1799. In places where
a Federalist
the meaning
of events and policies
could be considerably
contained
by
"Cheese
and theWords,"
42. See also Thomas
press. See Pasley,
Jefferson to James
tions
the New
"There
has been a general
concerning
Hampshire
legislature:
the members
that they could hear but one side of the question,
among
complaint
and a great anxiety to obtain a paper or papers which would
put them in possession
et al.,
of both sides" (Jefferson to Madison,
Feb. 5, 1799, in Oberg
Papers of Thomas
Madison
Jefferson, 31: 9-11
[quotation,
31: 10]).
WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
582
entire political world of the new state, and one would expect to find
similar to that in Kentucky. Tennessee
also had an anti
opposition
in the
Adams newspaper,
indeed one of the most radical newspapers
a
in
which
Knoxville's
1799 call
country,
song
published
Rights ofMan,
new
a
in
resistance
is thin
The
revolution.
of
Tennessee
for
evidence
ing
but not unimportant. The grand jury of the Hamilton
district (one of
two districts) in Tennessee,
eastern
representing the most populous
a
series
of
resolutions
that
of
the
declared
the
alien
state,
passed
region
and
general
memorial"
Tennessee
ous
laws
sedition
for
"unconstitutional,
and
compact"
seek
and
a
legislature
extremely
repeal.
on
acted
short
oppressive,
the state
on
called
Yet
no
these
sessions
of
evidence
and
derogatory
to "draw
legislature
to
exists
suggestions.
the
legislature,
Tennessee
suggest
was
and
the
to our
a
up
that
the
notori
emergency
session of December
1798 was no doubt dominated by the impending
need to find a replacement for Senator William
Blount, who was being
in
for
the
so-called
impeached
implication
Spanish Conspiracy. In addi
tion the state governor was infamous Indian fighter John Sevier, who in
the summer of 1798 was striving hard to get a commission as a brigadier
new national army and therefore desired to silence any
general in the
over
local anger
the Federalist legislation. Local ambition could trump
ideological sympathy, and any attempt at resolutions in the legislature
was no doubt
squashed by Sevier's faction. As a recent study of Tennessee
in
the early Republic
shows, the population was still small
politics
a
in
the
late
for
handful of political elites and land specula
1790s
enough
tors such as Blount, Andrew Jackson, and Sevier to control
political
processes
dancy
within
in state
the
state,
politics.
newspapers proclaimed
same
treatment
and
at
Nevertheless
this moment,
by
early
Sevier
1799
had
rumors
a clear
ascen
circulating
in
that the alien and sedition laws had received the
in Tennessee
as
they had
in
Kentucky
and
Virginia.30
30Aurora General
Advertiser, Nov.
of Tennessee
of the political
leadership
well as the Federalist
prowar measures
It is clear that much
9, 1798, [2] (quotation).
considered
the Alien
and Sedition Acts as
to be
the interests of the country.
against
as a
the letter of William
Charles
Consider
Cole
who
Clairborne,
representative
from Tennessee
voted against
the Federalist
the "awfully
legislation.
Remembering
world
of 1798, Clairborne
"The Alien
Law had sub
wrote,
tempestuous"
political
to the uncontrolled
and persecution,
jected the unhappy
fugitives from Tyranny
will of an individual, who was inflated with power, and thirsted for still greater pre
Sedition
Act had fettered the freedom
of the Press, and awed
into
rogative: The
and his Rights. Armies
and fleets were
Silence, many of the Lovers of Man,
raised;
were
were
Forts and Arsenals
alliances
&
after; Debts
erecting;
Foreign
sought
Taxation
with rapidity, and many hungry Parasites were
fat on
multiplied
growing
the sweat and labor of the
to Andrew
See Clairborne
20,
Jackson, Mar.
people."
1802, in Sam B. Smith and Harriet
eds., The Papers
Chappell
Owsley,
of Andrew
1: 284-86
1: 284-85).
Tenn.,
(Knoxville,
1980),
Jackson
John Sevier
(quotations,
to
was
that Tennessee
to Federal
boasted
enthu
George Washington
coming around
OPPOSITION TO THE ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS
New
charges
had some liberty poles, a few burned
England
of
a few
and
sedition,
In Massachusetts
petitioning.
tive in
crushing
any
hint
antiadministration
the
of
one
When
effigies, many
extraordinarily
anonymous
no
but
newspapers,
was
government
resistance.
583
effec
correspon
to a Republican
of the General Court's
newspaper complained
the
and
of
Kentucky Resolutions, asserting that it had
rejection
Virginia
the two editors
of
the
the
destroyed
sovereignty
people ofMassachusetts,
these sentiments, Thomas
and Abijah Adams, were
who published
immediately indicted for criminal libel by the grand jury of the Supreme
Court of Judicature. Though Thomas Adams died before he could be
tried, Abijah was sentenced to thirty days and fined five hundred dol
is clear from
lars.31 In fact the Federalists' strength inMassachusetts
their quick and definitive repression of any semblance of dissent.
The resolutions and petitions (and the liberty poles) emerging in the
different areas of the country were products of often quite diverse local
political cultures. Grievances listed in the petitions were not all the same
or framed in the same way.
Regional differences, differences related to
dent
the
socioeconomic
concerns
ences colored
of
and
petitioners,
particular
ethnic
differ
the individual petitions and shaped the structures of the
arguments. Sprinkled throughout the county resolutions of Kentucky
and Virginia were common complaints of upper-South Republicans who
consistently
felt
England-dominated
ests
at
the
resolutions
expense
with
themselves
cowed
by
an
eastern,
commercial,
federal government bent on serving private
of
the
expressions
country's
celebrating
welfare.
Kentuckians
agriculture
over
insisting on the natural right to navigate theMississippi,
for western
plained
goods.
Petitioners
from Madison
County,
paired
commerce
New
inter
their
and
themain outlet
Kentucky,
that "the extension of commerce had been too much
com
the darling
"A Military
ardor &
diffuses
itself throughout
the
siasm, noting,
Spirit Warmly
as six
State of Tennessee,
And As Many
of Cavalry
have tendered
their
companies
et al., eds.,
Services."
See Sevier toWashington,
Dec.
25, 1798, in Dorothy
Twohig
The Papers
Retirement
Series
Va.,
(Charlottesville,
3:
1999),
of George Washington:
3: 286). Sevier was eventually
commissioned,
285-86
(quotation,
though Washington
at one
about his qualifications,
"As to Severe,
consistently worried
asserting
point:
was
I ever heard
the only exploit
of his performance,
of Indians"
the murder
to James McHenry,
2: 610-12
2: 611]).
(Washington
Sept. 14, 1798, ibid.,
[quotation,
For the character
at this time, see Kristofer
of politics
in Tennessee
Ray, "Progress
on the Southwestern
and Popular
Frontier:
Middle
Tennessee,
Democracy
of North Carolina,
diss., University
(Ph.D.
Hill,
1790-1824"
2003), 66-103.
Chapel
31
Feb.
trial became
in part
Chronicle,
18, 1799. The
[Boston]
Independent
another public
examination
of the Virginia
and Kentucky
the logic of
Resolutions,
which
the leading Republican
lawyers of Boston
agreed with entirely. Abijah Adams,
libel
criminal
however, was not tried under the Sedition Act but under common-law
See Anderson,
American Historical
Review
procedures.
extensive detail on the trial (ibid., 58-63, 225-29).
5. Anderson
gives much
more
WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
584
object of the federal government," and the petitioners from Mason
County, Kentucky, decried an "undue influence which the commercial
of citizens
class
over
have
becomes
influence
our
administration,"
to
subordinate
the
believing
that
agricultural
that
"until
no
interest,
lasting
numer
happiness can be enjoyed by the citizens of America." Whereas
ous Pennsylvania backcountry petitioners complained about the unequal
direct tax, theminority of the Pennsylvania legislature criticized the lack
of Pennsylvanians in positions of high influence in the Adams adminis
tration.
Of
Supreme
a
a
participation
of a Pennsylvanian
was
of James Wilson,
absence
retirement
on
the
seen
as
It was unfair and insulting to "the honest
attachment"
in
the
the
Englanders.
of native
pride
small
with
which,
clique of New
was
note
particular
Court,
that
the
"so
administration
important
of the
a
state
Federal
should
so
have
Government."
And the various petitions from the Irish inhabitants of the United States
focused most of their complaints on the new Alien Act and Naturalization
Act
and
also
unique
expressed
about
arguments
the
unfair
treatment
of
the Irish by the Federalists. Noting
that "misrepresentations"
and
"unjust impressions, concerning the Irish residents in the United States,
and the Irish in general," may have contributed to the creation of the
Alien Act, the petitioners defended their reasons and purpose for immi
States. Irish immigrants had readily accepted
grating to the United
American offers of asylum and had "committed their persons, families,
credit, and properties to the faith and hospitality of the country." They
were committed to the great American principles of civil and religious
liberty. But they were particularly offended because the "blood of the
Irish flowed in your service here."32
The diversity of the petitions and the petitioners marked the con
tent as well as the process of their resistance to the Alien and Sedition
Acts.
whereas
were
Some
petitions
others
took
shape
more
in a
the
product
of grassroots
rough-and-ready
democratic,
organization,
urban,
and
ethnic political milieu. Some mimicked
the consensual local politics of
an idealized colonial rural past. Others
an uneasy coalition of
mingled
frontier democracy with established
forms of public debate. Some
emerged
from
a
spirit
of
resistance
still
directly
connected
to
the
con
flicts of the 1760s and 1770s. Others resulted from mature party poli
and were written by party
ticking created by election campaigns
32 Palladium
of commerce");
Kline's
18, 1799, [2] ("extension
of Liberty, Sept.
. .
Carlisle Weekly Gazette, Feb. 6, 1799, [2] ("honest pride"); A Memorial.
of the sub
inWilliam
States of America,
the United
scribers, natives of Ireland,
residing within
. . . in
A Report
Duane,
consequence ofA Memorial
of the extraordinary transactions
from
. .
certain natives of Ireland to
a
Congress, praying
repeal of theAlien Bill.
(Philadelphia,
their persons,"
4, "committed
3, "blood of the Irish,"
1799), 3-6 ("misrepresentations,"
see the Palladium
Co.,
5). On Mason
of Liberty, Sept. 4, 1798, [2].
OPPOSITION TO THE ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS
585
activists. And yet Federalist and Republican observers ignored these dis
tinctions as they damned or praised an apparently unified movement.
At the top Jefferson generalized reflexively as he watched the peti
tions pour into Congress. Reporting from Pennsylvania toAaron Burr in
New York, Jefferson expressed pleasure that "the public opinion in this
state
is
Lancaster
rapidly
are
coming
changing
even
round,
sides."
Here
the German
the
counties
a
of
assumption
of York
two-sided
and
con
test limited and framed the meaning of the opposition
for Jefferson.
Federalists
Dangerously
competed against virtuous and
wrongheaded
true Republicans
for the public's allegiance. At his most enthusiastic,
Jefferson imagined a complete transformation of American politics as he
saw "the public mind" responding to republican principles, a trend he
thought would continue "if the knolege of facts can only be dissemi
nated among the people." With this letter he enclosed a bundle of pam
as have been misled."33
phlets for distribution "to such
The newspapers helped turn a diverse opposition
into a coherent
movement
by
tying
the
petitions
and
remonstrances
to
their
circulation
of theVirginia and Kentucky Resolutions. The press linked the political
citizens, such as the soldier in the song, with the
angst of marginalized
elite action of the Kentucky legislature (and Jefferson), collapsing the
diverse
class,
ethnic,
and
regional
origins
of
the numerous
petitions
into
one real republican interest. In Congress, similarly, all the petitions were
lumped into a group and dealt with as a whole; even the petitions from
Irish nationals were essentially undifferentiated from the hundreds of
other petitions from citizens against theAlien and Sedition Acts.
But
the
invented
by
mind,
public
was
not
creation
of a
interest
singular
republican
merely
the newspapers,
fantasies
of a unitary
conjured
by Jefferson's
or
a seditious
Federalists
spun
by anxious
fearing
conspira
the ethnic,
and
local
differences
socioeconomic,
regional,
cy. Though
were
the petitioners
of
real, opponents
among
some
common
concerns
Acts
nevertheless
shared
the Alien
and
a
and
willingness
Sedition
to see
their complaints as widely held and representative of fundamental objec
tions. Thus the Albemarle County petitioners connected themselves to
the popular recorded resistance throughout the United States with spe
cial toasts to Pennsylvania's Gallatin, New York's Livingston, and the
New Jerseymilitia companies that voiced their opposition to the rush to
war. Protestors also had the
practical benefit of being an opposition
movement. They were criticizing, not
building anything, so the differences
within their perspectives and immediate interests were easily subsumed
33 Thomas
et al.,
Burr, Feb. n,
1799, in Oberg
Jefferson to Aaron
Papers
of
31: 22); Jefferson to Archibald
Stuart,
Jefferson, 31: 22-23
("public
opinion,"
13, 1799, ibid., 31: 33-35 ("public mind,"
31: 35).
Thomas
Feb.
WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
586
within
common
the
their
of
language
their
and
complaints
the
common
anger.
the remonstrators claimed affinitywith an international
In addition
and
of
perspective
universalist
transformation
revolutionary
of
the world,
celebrating
the
French and the rebelling Irish. They toasted, "The spirit of Seventy Six;
May it prevail all over theworld." When Samuel Brown of Kentucky first
described the local remonstrances to Jefferson,he emphasized the interna
tional context of their fight against the Federalist legislation. Brown
hoped that the state legislatures would give "solemnity to the voice of
the people" but, whatever happened, "Republicans ought not to despair"
because "The Irish are fighting for us" and "the French can never be
conquered." The voice of the people that Brown invoked was speaking
the language of revolution; the Irish were in the field, and the French
were still
in what he clearly considered
the same cause as
engaged
to
America's in 1776. The popular politics surrounding the opposition
the Alien and Sedition Acts, that spirit of insurgency, speaks to this
point well. The localities and states that resolved and petitioned to vari
ous
authorities
resembled
the mobilizations
of
the
and
1760s
1770s.34
The liberty poles that sprang up in Pennsylvania recalled patriotic resis
tance and appealed to the universal ideals of the revolution against a
Federalist
of
policy
The Tennessee
whose
centralization
and
Rights ofMan
was
masthead
celebration
and the New
embellished
with
a
of national
Jersey Centinel
cartouche
character.
of Freedom,
representing
the
rights of man draped across the globe, spoke to an active belief among
that they still lived in a revolutionary age and were
many Americans
continuing
The
bolic
role
their
struggle
against
of the
rights
the articulation
of
invocation
in
the ancien
r?gime.
more
much
played
The
grievances.
petitioners
of man
than
a sym
were
refer
ring not to any one of the French declarations of the rights of man and
citizen or to Thomas Paine's defense of the French Revolution
but to
inalienable
natural
that
considered
believed
existed
broadly
they
rights
before and without government and that united the principles of 1776 to
own
their
moment.
their
asserting
Almost
natural
all
right
to
petitioners
assemble.
began
Typical
their
were
complaints
by
the
petitioners
from Buckingham County, Virginia, who claimed "that the people have
an inherent
right, peaceably to assemble together" and "express their
34 Alexandria
12, 1798, [3] ("spirit of Seventy
Samuel
Six");
et al.,
in
[Aug. 27, 1798],
Oberg
Papers
of Thomas
to the voice,"
of
30: 510?11). For the mobilization
Jefferson, 30: 509-11 ("solemnity
the summer of 1774, see Jack N. Rakove,
The Beginnings
Politics: An
ofNational
Brown
to Thomas
Interpretive History
Greene
Marston,
(Princeton,
N.J.,
Advertiser,
Sept.
Jefferson,
(New York,
1979), 27-34;
Jennifer
of the Continental
Congress
and Congress:
The Transfer
1774?1776
King
of Legitimacy,
3I3~I7
1987), 69-75,
OPPOSITION TO THE ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS
or
approbation
regulation
tary."35 Their
or
of
disapprobation
all
and
whether
civil,
was
framed
regulations,
resistance
whole
587
or measures,
measure
every
commercial,
by first
or mili
political
principles.
petitioners began specifically attacking theAlien and Sedition
Acts, employing the notion of absolute rights attached to individuals
a radical shift
applying traditional understandings of law and
promised
in
American
society. The people who supported, drafted, and
privileges
When
remonstrances
in
and
resolutions,
memorials,
petitions,
a
a free
the
of
of
potent
reinterpretation
meaning
of jury trial that was
and
revolution
radical,
absolute,
right
the many
signed
advocated
1798-99
press
and
the
refer
to constitutional
ary.When
they attacked the constitutionality and validity of the Alien
and Sedition Acts, itwas never simply a question of constitutional rights,
or so-called civil liberties, but a broad concern for universal human
case understood as the revolutionary principles of the
rights, in this
man. It is important to emphasize that these arguments did not
of
rights
rights
as
are
they
often
delineated
as
today,
some
but rather understood
the
thing granted by the Constitution,
Constitution as a definition and limitation of the powers of government
to interfere
The
with
the. essential
petitioners
did
not
natural
and
need
of man.36
rights
of
expressions
positive
or
statute
con
stitution to define rights that they preferred to understand as natural
and inalienable. Indeed the voices of resistance often emphasized
the
lack
a need
of
Kentucky,
prove
as the
"the
explicit
itwas
existence
of
to
be
restrained,
but
to resort
is one of the invaluable
by despotic
which
only
jurisprudence,
not as
from prior
restraint,
ment
the government
against
a
to
that a man
had
right
to the
of
operation
relating
35
novel,
modern,
criticize,
fear
the
of
and can
assertions
Such
and
a
free
as
press
could
a
of consequence.
publish
Their
and
on
censure,
the government
absolute,
as
raised
the limits of eighteenth-century
really understood
a notion
that anyone
without
happiness"
rights of man,
governments."
to
such
Or,
speech."
free communications
"the
argued,
County,
documents"
of
and
press
the freedom of the press well beyond
reprisal?was
to our
con
they
in Mason
to written
so essential
right
of
remonstrances
of what
guarantee
the petitioners
"unnecessary
"freedom
enjoy
County
As
a natural
thoughts and opinions
never
constitutional
man.
right of
resolved,
ability
Montgomery
an
of
a basic
sidered
without
opine
fear
of
free
press
any
any
senti
belief?
subject
governmental
revolutionary.37
20, 1798, [1].
Virginia Argus, Nov.
36 For a
see for instance
H.
Robert
The Tempting
view,
Bork,
contrary
of
America:
The Political
Seduction
(New York,
1990), esp. 223-27.
of the Law
37 Palladium
21, 1798,
ibid., Aug.
of Liberty, Sept. 4, 1798, [2] ("unnecessary");
for a few eccentric
Before 1798, save perhaps
[2] ("free communications").
examples,
the furthest libertarian
of the meaning
of a free press in America
interpretations
WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
588
concern
This
plaints
to
Kentucky,
the
for
leveled
against
the
of man
rights
the Alien
in
polemicists
was
Act. To
the
easily
com
to
extended
in
the earliest petitioners
opposition
to
and
newspapers,
the
authors of the final remonstrances to Congress, the Alien Act seemed a
gross abuse of federal power. At stake was the right of trial by jury, pre
a sacred
sumably
Constitution,
right of man
as
petitioners,
Republican
least
right?at
for citizens?protected
by
the
amended
but which the petitioners also argued was an inalienable
to aliens. The alien law was considered by all
applied
the Woodford
remonstrance
County
asserted,
"an infringement on the rights of humanity." The dissenting minority of
the Pennsylvania legislature argued that the alien law greatly expanded
the power of the presidency "at the expense of the powers of Courts and
the
and
Juries,
Here
of man."38
rights
remonstrances
made
the
never made
that Federalists
Federalists
Constitution
was
"the Constitution
the
had
of
for
rights
of
aliens
absurd.
to
not
parties
as
granted
As
the
a matter
the
laws,
not
their
Utopian
for Aliens,
of
who
conse
it, but remain in the country, and enjoy
as matter
favour and permission." Another
tioners
those
not
for Citizens,
made
have no Rights under
benefit
were
the
patently
could be rescinded at any time. As one Federalist wrote:
of favor, which
quence
considered
aliens
again,
no
but
rights
and
again
repeated
and
therefore
about
arguments
and
notions
of
of
but
right,
Federalist,
rights.
merely
as matter
"Juricola," chided
He
was
surprised
of
the peti
that
so
the constitutional
people did not know "how to distinguish
are always derived
which
of
of
citizens
from
the
aliens,
privileges
rights
many
from
the
gratuitous
however, Federalist
and
visionary
indulgence
of municipal
regulations."
Fortunately,
"minds had not then been corrupted by the delusive
doctrines
of universal
citizenship."39
libel.
for seditious
asserted
that truth could be used as a defense during prosecution
context had evolved from the famous
in the American
This
argument, which
Zenger
case in colonial New York, was an
of a free press that broke from a
interpretation
a free press as one free from
defined
common-law
definition, which
prior restraint
or censure.
of freedom of the press was more
Such a radical vision of the meaning
more
has recognized
than scholarship
(see Historiographical
widely held and
popular
Note,
598-99).
38 Palladium
Kline's
Carlisle
21, 1798,
[2] ^infringement");
of Liberty, Aug.
of the powers").
Weekly Gazette, Feb. 6, 1799, [2] ("expense
39Winchester
was made");
Gazette, Mar.
13, 1799, [1] ("Constitution
Juricola,
to distin
"For The Centinel:
No.
1," Winchester
Gazette,
Jan. 9, 1799,
[3] ("how
of State Timothy
"he must
be ignorant
Secretary
complained,
guish").
Pickering
was established
for the protection
indeed, who does not know that the constitution
of American
and not o? intriguing foreigners."
See the
and
Citizens,
security
Alexandria
Advertiser, Oct.
15, 1798, [3].
OPPOSITION TO THE ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS
petitioners against the Alien
Though
notion
the
of American
age
revolutionary
an
as
freedom
than
rather
589
and Sedition Acts presented a
of
expression
an
exceptional
the universal
creation,
of
principles
never
were
they
a
purely libertarian, in terms of simple assertion of individualism against the
as they
Even
of
the
power
government.
emphasized the importance of indi
vidual rights, they understood themselves to be part of important collectivi
tieswith specific interestsand often specific identities?as important as their
national affiliation?namely, as part of truly sovereign states. The rights of
their respective stateswere as important as the rights of individuals for the
maintenance
of
republican
in America;
government
in fact,
the maintenance
of the proper scope of the states in the federalUnion was understood to pro
tect
the
of man.
rights
saw
They
as a strict dele
settlement
the Constitution
gation of powers to the federal government and repeatedly emphasized the
importance of the Tenth Amendment, "the powers not delegated to the
United States, by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are
to the
reserved
states
or
respectively,
to the
As
people."
the petitioners
from
Spotsylvania County, Virginia, asserted, "the constitution of the United
States contains a limitation of power, to be exercised in the form and manner
therein
preferred;
never
and
expressly enumerated
own
constitution
can
intended
the use
authorize
in it?that
of any powers
the people of America,
a confederation,
to establish
and
are
but what
in framing their
not
a consoli
dated government." The petitioners from Suffolk County, New York, agreed
that the general government had only "defined and limited powers" and that
itwas
not
"consistent
with
their
political
and
happiness,
the preservation
of
their liberties, that this general government should legislate in every possible
case." In Essex County, New Jersey, the local resolutions declared that "any
assumption of power or authority that transcends" the delegated authority of
the Constitution "is an invasion of the rights and sovereignty of the states,
and can produce no law of any binding force."40
So the petitioners' specific critique of the Alien and Sedition Acts
should never simply be understood as a libertarian standard for freedom of
the press or an expansive notion of the rights of individuals in society but
as a
challenge to a perceived federal usurpation of power, which they
believed
Dinwiddie
libels
any
is not
attempt
to
enforce
the
acts
implied.
The
from
petitioners
County, Virginia, for instance, asserted, "thepower ofpunishing
expressly given"
to
the
and,
Congress
therefore,
was
not
a
power
that the federal government possessed. The petitioners from Suffolk County,
New
York,
similarly
agreed
that
there was
no
enumerated
power
"to pass
laws
inflictingpunishments, for libels." And if the "necessary and proper" clause
could be expanded to imply a power to prosecute libels, "itwould defeat the
40 Aurora
30, 1799,
General
[3] ("defined
("any assumption").
not
20, 1798, [2] ("powers
Advertiser, Nov.
Jan.
delegated"),
and limited powers");
Centinel
Jan. 22, 1799, [3]
of Freedom,
WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
590
object which the constitution has in view of establishing a general government
with limited powers." The Alien Act, in this regard,was also considered a
in the federal
expansion
dangerous
to control
power
those
under
state munici
pal jurisdiction. In addition to concerns that the alien law would diminish
immigration and themovement ofwealth into Pennsylvania, petitioners from
Cumberland County worried that the law was specifically interferingwith
state policy by "curbing the freedom of emigration to the different states,
which their respective legislatures have thought proper to admit." Here the
petitioners referred to Article i, Section 9 of the Constitution, traditionally
associated with protection of the slave trade until 1808.As the SuffolkCounty,
New York, petitioners also argued, the passage in question provided that
no law
or importation of such
affecting the "migration
Congress should make
as
now
states
the
of
shall
think
any
proper to admit." As they
persons
existing
are
and "by the
and
laws of the several
"aliens
states,
practice
persons"
is now admitted."41
into this country
their migration
an
These
reveal
of early
arguments
aspect
important
Republican
noted,
could be
political culture: many citizens insisted that the Constitution
read and interpreted without any special legal training. And when they
read the Constitution,
they interpreted it literally; aliens were people,
was
to specific enumerated powers, and the
in
limited
fact
Congress
Tenth Amendment
reserved all unmentioned powers to the people and
the states. The shared vision of union articulated by the petitions,
and
memorials,
remonstrances
the Alien
against
and
Sedition
Acts
repre
sented a widely held understanding of the proper relationship between
national power, the natural rights of individuals, and the rights and sov
ereignty of the states. The rights of trial by jury, freedom of assembly,
and
freedom
of
rights
but protected
of nature.
of
tionships
ment
to
many
speech?and
the Constitution
States
their
own
on
encroach
reserved
citizens,
the
more
not
besides?were
the power
and
any
of
power
the
to
regulate
attempt
by
states would
the
the
by
granted
by it; the rights themselves were
municipal
federal
inevitably
the
rela
govern
work
against the distinct interests of the sovereign people of the states. A strict
construction
therefore
the Revolution,
The
them
null
was
idea that people
and
essential
the natural
void
was
an
rights
for
the maintenance
of man,
and
republican
should resist unconstitutional
oft-repeated
sentiment
of
the
fruits
of
government.
laws and consider
in numerous
county
reso
lutions. In Bourbon County, Kentucky, petitioners asserted that the right to
criticize public measures was "one dictated by the laws of nature" and noted
"that
all
laws made
to
impair
or
abridge
it, are void."
The
Lexington
resolu
tions used similar language, arguing that the right of speech was "ines
timable" and that "all lawsmade to impair or destroy it are void." In Essex
41Aurora
General
30, 1799, [3] ("to pass
ing the freedom").
Advertiser,
laws,"
Dec.
"migration
6, 1798, [2] (*'power of punishing
libels'), Jan.
or
Jan. 10, 1799, [3] ("curb
importation"),
OPPOSITION TO THE ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS
County, Virginia, Republicans
of
sovereignty
...
the people
591
claimed that any laws that "encroach on the
are
in their
nature
void,"
in Richmond
and
petitioners suggested that the laws had "no binding force, and are not enti
tled to the respect or obedience of the people." Other resolutions in
Kentucky and Virginia simply called on citizens to use all their energies to
ensure that such laws would not operate. As the petitioners from Amelia
County,
resolved:
Virginia,
"any Act'
is, we
the Constitution,
violating
con
ceive, a nullity, and ought not to be carried into effectby any person acting
in a civil or military capacity; but on the contrary,we think it to be the duty
of every citizen to oppose [every] attempt to violate the Constitution,
whether such attempt be made by private individuals, or by those clothed
with public offices or acting as public functionaries."42 That theAlien and
Sedition Acts should be a nullitywas apparently self-evident.
Northern petitioners used similar language; as the editors of the New
JerseyCentinel ofFreedom noted, any law that violated the Constitution "of
course
the
becomes
acts
possessed
a
The
nullity."
no
"binding
of Essex
resolutions
force."
Exactly
County,
how
such
New
Jersey, said
unconstitutional
laws became a nullity was leftfor the reader to imagine, but the implication
was that citizens were not required to obey such laws. In Mifflin County,
Pennsylvania, petitioners' condemnation of the Sedition Act went as far as
any of theVirginia or Kentucky remonstrances. They resolved: "The free
communication of thoughts and opinions is one of themost valuable rights
of man, and cannot be abridged or restrained without an infraction of the
liberties of the people and the law of nature; therefore all laws restraining
the freedom of speech and of the press, are nugatory and void."43
Americans, inmany different forums, had been declaring laws null,
it should be no surprise that
void, and of no force for a generation;
numerous
courts
were
groups
could
declare
and
Federalists
so in this case.
to do
eager
laws unconstitutional
and
Republicans
disagreed
was
over
Everyone
therefore
whether
agreed
void;
the
that
where
courts
were
the only places that could decide on the legality of law. In the late 1790s,
no
such
genre
as
constitutional
law
existed.
Federalists
were
moving
toward such a special designation inwhich the constitutionality of laws
could be decided only by qualified judges in particular courts, but this
success was still on the horizon in the 1790s.
The claim that theAlien and Sedition Acts were void and of no force
more
is
easily related to the resistance to the British Parliament in the 1760s
and 1770s than to the later uses of the nullifiers. In fact itwas precisely on
42 Palladium
21, 1798, [2]
of Liberty, Sept. 4, 1798, [2] ("one dictated"),
Aug.
on the sover
Aurora General Advertiser, Dec.
7, 1798, [2] ("encroach
20, 1798, [2] ("no binding
12,
Advertiser,
force"); Alexandria
eignty"), Aug.
Sept.
1798, [3] ("any 'Act'").
43 Centinel
Jan. 22, 1799, [3] ("binding
ofFreedom, July 17, 1798, [2] ("of course"),
force"); Aurora General Advertiser, Jan. 23, 1799, [3] ("free communication").
("inestimable");
WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
592
the grounds of natural rights and their own interpretation of the imperial
British Constitution that the numerous colonial assemblies of 1765 rejected
and effectivelynullified the Stamp Act. The Virginia and Kentucky legisla
tures, when
they
for
process
met
at
the behest
county
and Sedition Acts,
numerous
the
executing
the numerous
of
to do about the Alien
decide what
sentiments
that
to
petitioners
a
simply supplied
the
offensive
laws
should be considered nugatory and void. The Virginia Resolutions as passed
excised language that stated that the alien and sedition laws were utterly
null,
void,
of no
and
or
force
effect,
the
only
retaining
severe
less
unconsti
tutional critique of the bills. But an examination of the newspaper circula
tion of theVirginia Resolutions reveals a startling fact:when the resolutions
were
the unamended
circulated,
an
Virginia,
omission
was
version
to
equivalent
the
one
the only
famous
printed
of two
printing
outside
radical
unpassed Virginia resolves against the Stamp Act. The main innovation of
theVirginia and Kentucky Resolutions lay in their assertion that the sover
eign states possessed a right and a duty to adjudge the constitutionality of
federal laws and, ifneed be, to declare federal laws void, an opinion widely
held among Republicans throughout the country.44
The
were
immediate effects of the clamor against the alien and sedition laws
various.
were
laws
The
not
immediately
Federalist
repealed.
dominated assemblies dismissed the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions
as dangerous and ridiculous; the Pennsylvania Assembly asserted that the
arguments
destructive
in
advanced
of
the purest
the
resolutions
principles
were
of our
"a
state
measure,
revolutionary
and national
compacts."
The petitions sent to Congress were dismissed by a Federalist-dominated
committee
that
not
could
matter of established
pretation
acrimonious
on
their
fathom
the
arguments
law and precedent,
side.
remonstrance"
The
committee
of
the
against
bills;
as
a
the Federalists had past inter
noted
that
was
the petitioners
the
made
"vehement
of
"principles
and
of
that exotic system which convulses the civilized world," a system that for
too long had been "the bane of public as well as private
tranquility and
order."
"any
As
citizens
established
and
principles
representatives,
of law or
the
committee
to
government
could
the
not
suggestions
yield
of
44
most historians
credit for the more
Though
give James Madison
tempered
in the
was
in
fact
the
it
result of a successful
chal
Resolutions,
argument
Virginia
in the Virginia
House
of Delegates,
led by George
lenge by the Federalist minority
Keith Taylor
and Henry
Lee. For the circulation
of the un
Harry"
"Light-Horse
version
see for instance
amended
of the Virginia
the Aurora
General
Resolutions,
22, 1798; Centinel
Advertiser, Dec.
Jan. 8, 1799; Herald
of Freedom,
of Liberty, Jan. 21,
of the arguments
of the Virginia
and
1799. For sympathetic
Republican
readings
see the Centinel
Carlisle
Resolutions,
Jan. 29, 1799; Kline's
Kentucky
of Freedom,
Weekly
Genius
Feb.
Gazette,
of Liberty, Mar.
6,
1799; Daily Advertiser,
7, 1799. See also Anderson,
Feb.
22,
American
1799;
[Morristown,
Historical
Review
N.J.]
5.
OPPOSITION TO THE ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS
593
modern theory." Instead theywould revel in their national heritage and
"transmit to posterity the civil and religious privileges which are the
birthright of our country." Here the Federalists would challenge modern
theory with nationalism and the established principles of law and gov
ernment.
order,
Once
tradition
it was
understood
again
and precedent,
against
as
a contest
that
the visionary
rights
law
pitted
of man.45
and
Jefferson's hopes, the 1799 elections reflected a
Despite Thomas
outcome
for
mixed
but the ball had been set in motion.
Republicans,
Federalists succeeded in holding their own in Congress. Significantly,
the most
extensive
victories
for
Federalists
came
from
areas
that
show
little evidence of engaging in this mobilization
against the Alien and
sent
Sedition Acts. Georgia, North Carolina,
and South Carolina
to Congress. North
Federalists or people assumed to be Federalists
Carolina had no Republican newspaper until 1799. Republicans achieved
victories inKentucky and Vermont, won overwhelmingly in Pennsylvania,
and made slight advances in northern New Jersey and New York. Virginia,
where
clear
the proadministration
candidates
to this
generalization,
exception
some
gained
it is a case
but
ground,
that must
is the
be
one
quali
fied. Virginia stood at thismoment between a politics still dominated by
great local personalities and one verging on democratic ideological and
interest politics. Patrick Henry, Henry Lee, John Marshall,
Bushrod
were great men and extremely
and George Washington
Washington,
active Federalists in the elections of 1798. Crucially, unlike most non
Virginian proadministration candidates, Henry and Marshall had made
a point of publicly
denouncing theAlien and Sedition Acts. In the final
analysis, George Washington was upset by the closeness of some of the
results. "The Elections of Generals Lee and Marshall are grateful to my
feelings. I wish however both of them had been Elected by greater
majorities; but they are Elected, and that alone is pleasing."46 Outside the
45Kline's
Carlisle Weekly Gazette,
Feb. 20, 1799, [2] ("revolutionary
measure");
of Representatives,
5th Cong.,
3d sess., 2992 ("vehement
of Congress, House
and acrimonious").
Seth Cotlar
that the Federalist
attack on international
argues
ideas in 1798 succeeded
in cowing
the jeffersonians
into
revolutionary
abandoning
their more
radical democratic
See Cotlar,
assertions.
"The Federalists'
Utopian,
Transatlantic
Cultural
of 1798 and
Offensive
the Moderation
of American
in Pasley,
Democratic
and Waldstreicher,
the
Discourse,"
Robertson,
Beyond
But rumors of the demise
of radical
international
Founders,
274-99.
revolutionary
ideas in 1798 have been
a similar
Robert H. Churchill
makes
greatly exaggerated.
on
claim that depends
evidence
and emphasizes
radical republican
impressionistic
ism and moderate
See Churchill,
Fries'
Nullification,
republicanism.
"Popular
and the Waning
of Radical
Rebellion,
1798-1801,"
Republicanism,
Pennsylvania
no. 1 (Winter 2000):
105-40.
History 67,
46
to Bushrod
et al.,
in
5, 1799,
George Washington
May
Washington,
Twohig
4: 51-52 (quotation,
4: 51). For election
results, see
Papers
of George Washington,
Annals
Noble
E.
Cunningham
1789-1801
Organization,
Jr., The Jeffersonian
(Chapel Hill, N.C.,
a
The Formation
Republicans:
Party
of
turnout, see
1957), 133-35. For election
WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
594
immediate
of
effects
and
the petitioning
the
resolutions,
clamor
against
in the early
and Sedition Acts reveals how politics worked
as
to
match
their
and
ideals
traditions
Americans
Republic
struggled
with their burgeoning, albeit limited, democracy.
cannot be completely seen as either a bottom-up
This mobilization
the Alien
or
a
story;
top-down
the early Republic,
tion
of
a
party
itmust
be
seen
as a
process
of
politics
in motion
in
a representative politics before the institutionaliza
system.
editors
Newspaper
were
key
actors,
yet
so were
the elites, and none of them could function or gain influence without
the participation of hundreds of local citizens giving voice to their com
the politicking was intensely local,
plaints in formal petitions. Though
ideas mattered, and those ideas became the glue that held a national
movement together. The shared ideas of the petitioners?against
theAlien
and Sedition Acts, about the nature of rights and the Constitution, and
about the importance of local governance within the Union?masked
their diverse interests and subsumed their peculiar grievances, forming a
consensus about basic principles that was successfully invoked in politi
cal campaigns leading to the revolution of 1800. But the opposition to
the
was
Federalists
Republicans
fractures
many
clearly
and
just
transitioned
break
of
class,
them
that:
into
region,
apart
a
an
movement.
Once
opposition
coalition
after
their
1800,
governing
interest
and
show
would
ethnicity,
in multitudinous
Nevertheless
ways.
Jefferson understood his election in 1800 to be the effect of a "mighty
wave of public opinion. In this
forgotten clamor against the Alien and
Sedition Acts, we can glimpse the first swelling of the tide.47
of Federalist
candi
Politics,
546. Even with strong mobilization
Risjord,
Chesapeake
or in
House
of Delegates
retained a large Republican
dates, the Virginia
majority,
is not materially
"the strength of parties
varied"
words,
(ibid., 547).
John Marshall's
see
For evidence
of Patrick Henry's
in John Henry,
denunciation,
Scrap Memo,
Historical
"Patrick Henry
said in his
Mss2H39633ai,
Society, Richmond:
Virginia
at Charlotte
in March
Court House
for the
1799 where he was a candidate
speech
Laws were only the fruit of that Constitution
'The Alien
and Sedition
Legislature
see William
of which
the adoption
he opposed.'"
On Marshall,
C. Stinchcombe,
Charles T. Cullen,
and Leslie Tobias,
eds., The Papers ofJohn Marshall
(Chapel Hill,
N.C.,
1979), 3: 496.
47 Thomas
21, 1801, in Albert
Jefferson to Joseph Priestly, Mar.
Edition
ed., The Writings
of Thomas Jefferson, Definitive
(Washington,
10: 227-30
10: 229).
(quotation,
Ellery
D.C.,
Bergh,
1907),
Note
Historiographical
The
an
old
idea that the Federalists enjoyed almost total support in 1798 is
are
"Americans"
argument.
seen
as
universally
up
caught
in a
prowar frenzy. Recent scholarship on the cultural politics of the early
Republic has too easily repeated this old refrain, so that 1798 once again
has become the reign of the witches, with the public sphere, for all
purposes,
important
successfully
captured
by
See
enthusiasts.
prowar
In theMidst
David Waldstreicher,
of Perpetual Fetes: The Making
of
American Nationalism,
1776-1820 (Chapel Hill, N.C.,
1997), 152-73;
Cotlar, "Federalists' Transatlantic Cultural Offensive of 1798," 274-99;
"'Look on This Picture . . .And on This!'"
Andrew W. Robertson,
in the United
Partisan Images of Otherness
and
Nationalism,
Localism,
no.
American
Review
Historical
States, 1787-1820,"
106,
4 (October
in
Rainbow Hale,
2001): 1263-80; Mathew
"'Many Who Wandered
Darkness': The Contest over American National
Identity, 1795-1798,"
Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal \,no. 1 (Spring 2003):
127-75,
esp.
174-75.
What
of
1798 really reflects, however, is a competing mobilization
different groups of Americans. Proadministration Federalists began sign
ing petitions in support of the Adams administration in the spring of
1798 in the wake of the XYZ affair (a petitioning that continued into
early 1799) and by June 1798 numerous antiadministration Republican
to the Alien
factions began their opposition
and Sedition Acts.
of 1798-99.
Scholarship has largely missed this opposition mobilization
one
Morton
has
the
extensive
local
Smith,
scholar,
James
Only
analyzed
in Kentucky in the context of the Kentucky Resolutions,
mobilization
and little has been made of a similar local opposition that characterized
Virginia and no one has discussed, in any sustained fashion, the signifi
cance
of
states.
the
extensive
Smith,
in the
in wonderful
without
numerous
ments
Smith,
detail
any broader
concerns
petitioning
text on
classic
that
and
Sedition
northern
Acts,
presents
the origins and use of the bills but leaves readers
sense
of
of
the
the defense
Fetters.
He
to
opposition
attorneys
from leaders such as James Madison
Freedoms
numerous
characterized
the Alien
one
produced
the
in the
acts
cases
and Thomas
article
that
from
apart
a few
and
the
com
Jefferson. See
represents
the only
sustained modern investigation of the grassroots origins of the Kentucky
Resolutions.
See Smith, "The Grass Roots Origins of the Kentucky
William
and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 27, no. 2 (April
Resolutions,"
nave
on Smith's essay
I
built
1970): 221-45.
by supplying more context
for the political dynamic of the local Kentucky remonstrances and by
placing
them
into
the broader
story
of
resistance
throughout
the
country.
WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
596
Bits and pieces of that broader story can be found in some of the litera
ture
of
state
For
politics.
the most
the
part,
of
absence
of
analysis
deep
in the politics of 1798 reflects an
theVirginia and Kentucky Resolutions
lack of interest in the politics of 1798 among historians
understandable
examining the legacy of states' rights ideas from the time of the Anti
to the Civil War. See for instance the treatment of the
Federalists
in classics such as Jesse T. Carpenter,
and
Kentucky Resolutions
Virginia
The South as a Conscious Minority, 1789?1861: A Study in Political Thought
(New York, 1930), 43-44, 140, 201; William W. Freehling, Prelude to
The Nullification
Controversy in South Carolina, 1816?1836
The
See
also Manisha
Sinha,
207-10.
(New York,
1965),
Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South
Carolina (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2000), 21-29.
The history of the concept of states' rights and state sovereignty in
the 1790s is often told as the birth of the regressive philosophy that it
would become, an interpretation of the Constitution by interests hoping
to hold the line against assaults on slavery and restrictive civil rights
Civil War:
From
laws.
War
the Civil
to the New Deal
the
insistence
tive
force
on
the
the
of
of
sovereignty
in American
promises
to
to Jim Crow
the
resistance
states'
stubborn
or the local resistance to the integration of education,
history,
Enlightenment.
a
states
rearguard
the
But
has
often
action
states'
been
as
a
nega
the
progressive
articu
arguments
against
rights
seen
lated in opposition to theAlien and Sedition Acts and understood to be
a critique of the Federalist national plan of 1798 are better understood
by their intellectual origins than from the hindsight of nullification and
secession.
However
their
changed
the
concerns,
later
the
proponents
original
of
proponents
states'
of
the
rights
idea
might
of the
have
sover
eign rights of states grounded their arguments in the principles of popu
in the most
lar sovereignty, equality, and natural rights embodied
revolutionary
states were
sentiments
for many
of American
Americans
the first
independence.
cause
and
The
most
rights
immediate
of
the
con
It is noteworthy that though Jeffersonians
sequence of independence.
developed a justification for state resistance and nullification based on
is, as a defense of the natural rights of
revolutionary principles?that
individuals against federal encroachment?high
Federalists developed a
theory
of
the
right
to
secession
at
the Hartford
Convention
as
a consti
tutional check on majoritarian
threats to property. It is not surprising
that John C. Calhoun, whose ideas of nullification seemed absurd to
studied at Yale under Federalist Timothy Dwight, whose
Madison,
brother Theodore was later secretary of the Hartford Convention.
See
James M.
Origins
Gordon
Banner Jr., To theHartford Convention: The Federalists and the
1789-181$ (New York, 1970);
of Party Politics inMassachusetts,
S.Wood,
The Radicalism of theAmerican Revolution (New York,
OPPOSITION TO THE ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS
597
1992), 268. Theodore Dwight was a constant defender of the Hartford
Convention
and explicitly connected the nullification doctrines of the
to
conventioneers
South
Carolina's
nullification
he
which
convention,
fears.
supported, though he denied the legitimacy of South Carolina's
See the appendix to Dwight, History of theHartford Convention: Which
led to theWar ofi8i2 (New York, 1833)
For historians of the early Republic, any sense of more widespread
and immediate resistance to the Federalists' program is dwarfed by ques
tions surrounding Jefferson's and Madison's
participation in the elabora
or federal constitutionalism.
tion of an oppositional
Saul Cornell, for
example, has a long discussion of the new "oppositional constitutional
one paragraph of which mentions
ism" of Jefferson and Madison,
the
in
local
mobilization
Kentucky. Cornell argues that popular, or
popular
plebeian, political activism disappeared in the United States by the mid
but in fact
Rebellion,
17905, after being discredited by theWhiskey
much
of
the
sents
the
against
agitation
acts,
and
symbolic
otherwise,
repre
these different plebeian
the
attitudes
toward government,
and
that
Cornell
earlier
finds
the
Anti
Constitution,
among
rights
Federalists. See Cornell, The Other Founders: Anti-Federalism and the
1999),
Dissenting Tradition in America, 1788?1828 (Chapel Hill, N.C.,
230-42, 245, 253-73. The most recent study of theVirginia and Kentucky
Resolutions similarly does not investigate the broader context of the reso
lutions
in
own
their
moment,
to
again
preferring
Madison,
study
Jefferson, and a few others. See William
J.Watkins
Jr., Reclaiming the
American Revolution: The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions and Their
Legacy (New York, 2004). The most useful and convincing recent review
of the importance of the opposition to theAlien and Sedition Acts in the
context
of Jefferson
is Peter
S. Onuf's
study,
but
the
story
ably limited to a problem of "Jefferson and his political
The Language
Onuf, Jefferson s Empire:
of American
(Charlottesville, Va., 2000), 80-108 (quotation, 96).
For
many
scholars
origins of theVirginia
"the
capstone
of
the
who
have
recently
written
and Kentucky Resolutions
Jefferson-Madison
collaboration"
on
the
is understand
friends." See
Nationhood
late
1790s,
are best understood
with
the
as
no mention
of the popular resistance to the acts that preceded and offered legitimacy
to the actions of the state
legislatures. See Joseph J. Ellis, Founding
Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation (New York, 2000), 199. This tack
is also taken in the notable work by Adrienne Koch and Harry Ammon,
"The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions: An Episode in Jefferson's and
Madison's
of Civil Liberties," WMQ
Defense
5, no. 2 (April 1948):
on
Scholars
still
In
their
work.
145-76.
James Rogers Sharp's
rely heavily
and Kentucky Resolutions
study, the Virginia
emerge wholly as the
of the leading Virginia
product of the strategic decision
political
WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
598
and John Taylor of Caroline County?to
figures?Jefferson, Madison,
in the states. See Sharp,
check "the progress of Federalist domination"
in Crisis (New
American Politics in the Early Republic: The New Nation
The Rise of
Haven, Conn.,
1995), 194. Similarly, see Sean Wilentz,
American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (New York, 2005), 75-83. In
some studies, such as John C. Miller's popular classic on the Alien and
Sedition
Acts,
the details
of
resistance
to
the
acts
are
restricted
to news
paper critics of Federalist uses and abuses of the Sedition Act. See Miller,
Crisis inFreedom: The Alien and Sedition Acts (Boston, 1951).
Historians who have searched the episode of the Alien and Sedition
Acts for their influence on the history of civil liberties in America have
on the Sedition Act and its relationship to the First
largely focused
to the Constitution. Most aggressive has been Leonard W.
Amendment
Levy, who in a series of essays suggests the importance of the opposition
to the Sedition Act in pushing the meaning of a "free press" beyond the
common-law
of
assumption
a
free
press
from
restraint
prior
and
even
beyond the "truth" standard that had famously been asserted during the
on Levy but differs
Zenger trial in colonial New York. This article builds
in crucial ways. First, Levy draws from a few notable pamphlets and
tracts, particularly Hortensius
[George Hay], An Essay on the Liberty oft
thePress . . . (Philadelphia, 1799); Tunis Wortman, A Treatise, Concerning
Political Enquiry, and the Liberty of the Press (New York, 1800); St.
George Tucker, Blackstones Commentaries: With Notes of Reference, to the
Constitution and Laws, of theFederal Government of the United States and
1803), 1, pt. 2, n. G,
of the Commonwealth
of Virginia (Philadelphia,
11-30 of appendix.
meaning
Levy understands
of a free press
Levy,
"Liberty
Levy's
emphasis
and
largely
the First
the changing
as a creation
of
interpretation of the
political
Amendment:
"expediency."
American
See
1790?1800,"
Historical Review 68, no. 1 (October 1962): 22-37 (quotation, 36). See
also Levy, Legacy of Suppression: Freedom of Speech and Press in Early
American History,
i960), which he revised and
(Cambridge, Mass.,
a
in
his
Free
Press
(New York, 1985). Though
Emergence of
expanded
on
the
defensive
expediency
of
the
new
"libertarian"
standard is certainly correct, the broad opposition to the Sedition Act
drew on crucial revolutionary conceptions of the place of natural rights
in American
that dated from the Revolution
republican citizenship
itself,which animated the widely held belief in an absolute notion of
free speech. It is also important to note that not all the Republican
lead
never
a
view
shared
the
that
should
have
ership
republican government
role in restraining seditious libel. It is clear, for instance, that Jefferson
never
professed an absolute standard for freedom of the press; he was
more concerned with the
dangerous expansion of federal powers that a
federal
common-law
prosecution
of seditious
libel
implied
for the
OPPOSITION TO THE ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS
existence
sovereignty, and claims
of the states'
to
prosecutions
assenting
For
greatly
exaggerated.
at
state
the
that
arguments
as
level
he was
599
for
of his hypocrisy
are
president
a
hypocrite
therefore
on
issue
the
of a free press, see Levy, Jefferson and Civil Liberties: The Darker Side
Mass.,
1963); Joseph J. Ellis, American Sphinx: The
(Cambridge,
Character of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1999). For a more balanced
statement
of
Jefferson's
the
about
opinions
of
meaning
a free
see
press,
Dumas Malone, Jeffersonand the Ordeal of Liberty, vol. 3 o? Jeffersonand
His Time (Boston, 1962), 390-94. For our purposes, it is important to
note that the popular Republican
absolute understanding of the mean
a
the
of
free
press represented
powerful impetus for the transforma
ing
tion of American thinking on that essential liberty.That is, the popular
constituencies of the Republican
party did not need to get their ideas
from Jefferson.This fact speaks to the broader importance of the popu
lar opposition to the Alien and Sedition Acts in suggesting the intellec
tual problem of searching for the meaning of American civil liberties in
the "original intent" of the framers of the Constitution.
The present
in
of
of
the
American
free
society owes
expansive meaning
speech"
"right
more to episodes
to
the
the
Act?
Sedition
popular opposition
including
and many
to any
it does
others?than
At the same time, it iswidely
Acts
were
deeply
unpopular.
It
particular
assumed
is an
intent
refrain:
easy
of any
that the Alien
the
framer.
and Sedition
Federalists
over
reached during the war hysteria of the spring of 1798, and their arro
gance ultimately led to their downfall. Somehow the opposition to the
Alien and Sedition Acts played a part in the revolution of 1800. The
most
recent
article
on
the
Sedition
Act
notes
vaguely
that
"it
played
some role in bringing on the defeat of the Federalists in the 1800 elec
tion." See Mark Lendler, "'Equally proper at all times and at all times
necessary': Civility, Bad Tendency, and the Sedition Act," Journal of the
Early Republic 24, no. 3 (Autumn 2004): 419-44 (quotation, 421). Many
have followed Noble E. Cunningham
the
Jr. in describing
as
cam
and
"the
Resolutions
the
of
Kentucky
Virginia
opening guns
paign of 1800." See Cunningham, Jeffersonian Republicans, 129. There is
also a strain of work that consistently argues that the Virginia
and
were
not
in
Resolutions
the
the
of
eventual
defeat
Kentucky
important
Federalists. Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick also describe the Virginia
as an
and Kentucky Resolutions
opening shot in the presidential elec
tion of 1800 but one that failed to have any real effect on either consti
tutional theory or the 1800 elections. See Elkins and McKitrick, The Age
of Federalism (New York, 1993). Here they closely follow a broad tradi
tion of American political history, dating to Edward Channing, who
scholars
declared
it was
impossible
to "trace
any
connection"
tions and the overthrow of the Federalists.
between
See Channing,
the
resolu
A History
of
WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY
6oo
the United States (New York, 1917), 4: 232 (quotation). In fact Elkins and
a
as
McKintrick
"something of
regarded discussion of the resolutions
In
inter
their
and
McKitrick, Age ofFederalism, 721).
digression" (Elkins
pretation the Federalist party lost national influence not because their
ideas
about
the
national
state,
and
citizenship,
were
the Constitution
rejected in a broad and popular political movement but because of the
in the spring
political mistakes of John Adams and Alexander Hamilton
and summer of 1800, "a sequence of political madness" (ibid., 732).
This article builds on important new work that has focused on cultural
practices in the early Republic and expanded the location of the political,
including Newman, Parades and Politics of the Street, andWaldstreicher, In
Midst ofPerpetual Fetes. One recent collection highlighting such work is
the
Pasley, Robertson, and Waldstreicher, Beyond the Founders. For a broader
see the introduction to Beyond the
historiographical discussion of the trend,
Founders, 1-28;William G. Shade, "Commentary: D?j? vu All Over Again:
Is There a New New Political History?" ibid., 387-412. Some scholars of
popular politics, including those interested in the political culture of the
early Republic, too often attempt to artificially separate the popular from
the
elite
or
extravagantly
assume
that
the
only
truly
ideas
popular
are
antiestablishment ideas and thus beyond the ken and control of politics
Some of the new political work
associated with the elite Founders.
some
as mere
of the pertinent literature of the early Republic
rejects
"founder's
chic,"
the
same
old
studies
of
the
same
old
great
white
males
that have always attracted the attention of historians and the public. See
Pasley, Robertson, and Waldstreicher, Beyond the Founders, 1-9 (quota
tion, 1). But this critique unfairly lumps histories that are clearly deriva
tive of current (and old) scholarship and intended for popular readers
with imaginative histories still opening important new avenues to help
find the meaning of crucial personalities and ideas in the founding of
theAmerican nation. The Founders are the elite of the elite but they are
crucial to any proper telling of how politics worked
in the early
was
as
a
in
the
and winter
fall
Jefferson
party
Republic.
acting
organizer
was using his influence to
of 1798; George Washington
change the
are still
dynamic of elections. Their ideas, interests, and motivations
crucial. Scholars can attempt to contextualize and clarify the specific
importance of the Founders without denigrating the substantial work
to help understand
the meaning
of the past. Important
being done
recent works that focus on the Founders include Lance
Banning, The
Sacred Fire of Liberty: James Madison
and the Founding of the Federal
Politics
1995); Jack Rakove, Original Meanings:
Republic (Ithaca, N.Y.,
and Ideas in theMaking
of the Constitution (New York, 1996); Onuf,
s
Jefferson Empire.