Alien and Sedition Acts: History of Censorship #3 Traditional Cache
Alien and Sedition Acts: History of Censorship #3
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From Wikipedia:
The Alien and Sedition Acts were four bills passed in 1798 by the Federalists in the 5th United States Congress. They were signed into law by President John Adams. Proponents claimed the acts were designed to protect the United States from alien citizens of enemy powers and to prevent seditious attacks from weakening the government. The Democratic-Republicans, like later historians, denounced them as being both unconstitutional and designed to stifle criticism of the administration, and as infringing on the right of the states to act in these areas.
Vice President Thomas Jefferson denounced the Sedition Act as invalid and a violation of the First Amendment of the United States Bill of Rights, which protected the right of free speech, and a violation of the Tenth Amendment .
Republican Press was often the target of the Alien and Sedition Act. Federalists viewed them as rebellious and opponents to "genuine liberty" for their many critiques of the administration. Matthew Lyon, a congressman of Vermont and editor of Republican Newspaper The Scourge of Aristocracy, was fined $1,000 and sentenced to four months in prison. Likewise, lawyer and physician Thomas Cooper was imprisoned for writings accusing the Adams administration of bias towards Britain.
Although the Federalists hoped the Sedition Act would muffle the opposition, many Democratic-Republicans still "wrote, printed, uttered and published" their criticisms of the Federalists. They strongly criticized the act itself and used it as one of their principal election issues. The controversy also had enormous implications on the Federalist party's later history and made a significant contribution to its demise. The Sedition Act expired when the term of President Adams ended in 1801.
Ultimately the Acts backfired against the Federalists. While government authorities prepared lists of aliens for deportation, many aliens fled the country during the debate over the Alien and Sedition Acts, and Adams never signed a deportation order. Twenty-five people, primarily prominent newspaper editors such as Benjamin Franklin's grandson Benjamin Franklin Bache and Congressman Matthew Lyon were arrested. Of them, eleven were tried, Bache died awaiting trial, and ten were convicted of sedition, often in trials before openly partisan Federalist judges. Federalists at all levels, however, were turned out of power, and over the following years Congress repeatedly apologized for, or voted recompense to victims of, the enforcement of the Alien and Sedition Acts. Thomas Jefferson, who won the 1800 election, pardoned all of those who had been convicted for crimes under the Alien Enemies Act and the Sedition Act.
I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too. - Thomas Jefferson
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