Alien and Sedition Acts

Based on Wikipedia: Alien and Sedition Acts

In 1798, the young American republic did something remarkable: it made criticizing the president a crime. A newspaper editor who called John Adams "blind, bald, crippled, toothless, and querulous" could be thrown in jail. A drunk man who shouted that he hoped a cannon shot would hit the president in the backside was fined a hundred dollars. And a farmer who put up a sign calling for the "downfall to the Tyrants of America" spent eighteen months in prison for it.

These weren't the actions of some distant monarchy. They were laws passed by the United States Congress, signed by a Founding Father, and enforced by federal courts. The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 represent one of the earliest and most dramatic tests of whether America would actually live up to its promises about free speech—and for a few turbulent years, it didn't.

A Young Nation Picking Fights

To understand how America ended up criminalizing political speech just seven years after ratifying the Bill of Rights, you need to understand the mess the country had gotten itself into with France.

France had been America's crucial ally during the Revolutionary War, providing loans, soldiers, and naval support that made independence possible. But after the war ended, the new American government found itself broke and unable to repay those French loans. In 1793, Congress simply stopped paying.

Then things got worse.

In 1794, the United States signed the Jay Treaty with Great Britain—France's mortal enemy. From the French perspective, this was a betrayal. They were in the middle of fighting a coalition of European powers, and their former ally was now cozying up to their main adversary. France retaliated the only way they could: by having privateers seize American ships in the Caribbean and along the East Coast.

President John Adams tried to resolve the crisis by sending diplomats to Paris. What happened next became known as the XYZ Affair, one of history's strangest diplomatic scandals. The French foreign minister, a man named Talleyrand, apparently demanded a bribe before he would even begin formal negotiations. When this news reached America, it sparked outrage—and also a lawsuit.

The Philadelphia Aurora newspaper had published Talleyrand's version of events, and the Adams administration charged its publisher, Benjamin Franklin Bache, with seditious libel. That's right: Benjamin Franklin's grandson was among the first Americans charged with criticizing the government. He died of yellow fever before he could stand trial.

Four Laws That Changed Everything

The conflict with France escalated into what historians call the Quasi-War, an undeclared naval conflict fought primarily in the Caribbean from 1798 to 1800. The Adams administration, controlled by the Federalist Party, believed that France's military successes in Europe had been helped along by the appeal of French revolutionary ideals. They feared that French agents and sympathizers would try to undermine the American government from within.

Their solution was the Alien and Sedition Acts: four separate laws designed to restrict immigration and limit free speech in the name of national security.

The first was the Naturalization Act, which raised the residency requirement for citizenship from five years to fourteen. At the time, most immigrants supported Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic-Republican Party, the Federalists' political opponents. Historians generally agree that the real purpose wasn't national security—it was keeping likely opposition voters from becoming citizens.

The second was the Alien Friends Act, which gave the president power to deport any foreigner he deemed "dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States." No trial. No appeal. Just the president's word. Thomas Jefferson called it "a most detestable thing... worthy of the 8th or 9th century."

The third was the Alien Enemies Act, which granted even broader powers during wartime—the authority to arrest, relocate, or deport any male over fourteen from an enemy nation. Unlike the others, this law had bipartisan support. It also had no expiration date.

That last detail matters enormously. The Alien Enemies Act is still on the books today.

The fourth and most notorious was the Sedition Act, which made it illegal to publish "false, scandalous and malicious writing" against the government, Congress, or the president. Notice who's missing from that list: the vice president. At the time, the vice president was Thomas Jefferson, the Federalists' main political rival. Apparently criticizing him was still fair game.

Jailing the Press

The Sedition Act wasn't a theoretical threat. Federal prosecutors used it aggressively to silence critics of the Adams administration, and the targets were almost exclusively newspaper editors aligned with the opposition.

Matthew Lyon, a congressman from Vermont, was the first person to contest charges under the new laws. His crime? Writing an essay accusing the administration of "ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation, and selfish avarice." While awaiting trial, Lyon started a new magazine called "The Scourge of Aristocracy." He was fined a thousand dollars—equivalent to nearly a hundred thousand dollars today—and spent four months in jail. When he got out, his constituents reelected him to Congress.

James Callender, a Scottish pamphleteer living in Virginia, wrote a book called "The Prospect Before Us" in which he called Adams "a repulsive pedant, a gross hypocrite, and an unprincipled oppressor." Jefferson had actually read and approved the manuscript before publication. Callender was convicted, fined two hundred dollars, and sentenced to nine months in prison.

Anthony Haswell, a printer in Vermont, reprinted someone else's claim that the federal government employed Tories—loyalists to Britain. He also published an advertisement for a lottery to raise money for Matthew Lyon's fine. For these offenses, he spent two months in jail.

Then there was Luther Baldwin, whose case sounds like something from a comedy sketch. During a parade in Newark, New Jersey, President Adams passed by and cannons were fired in salute. Baldwin, who was drunk, shouted that he hoped the shot would hit Adams in the backside. He was indicted, convicted, and fined a hundred dollars.

The harshest sentence went to David Brown, a farmer from Massachusetts. Brown had led a group in putting up a liberty pole—a traditional symbol of resistance—with a sign reading: "No Stamp Act, No Sedition Act, No Alien Bills, No Land Tax, downfall to the Tyrants of America; peace and retirement to the President; Long Live the Vice President."

Brown couldn't afford the four thousand dollar bail. At trial, Justice Samuel Chase demanded that he name others who had helped him. Brown refused. He was fined four hundred eighty dollars and sentenced to eighteen months in prison—the longest sentence handed down under the Sedition Act.

The Opposition Fights Back

The Alien and Sedition Acts didn't go unopposed. Protests erupted across the country, with critics calling the laws an unconstitutional power grab that violated the First Amendment.

Vice President Thomas Jefferson, working in secret, drafted what became known as the Kentucky Resolution, arguing that states had the right to nullify unconstitutional federal laws. James Madison wrote a similar resolution for the Virginia legislature. This was dangerous territory—the idea that states could simply refuse to follow federal law would later be used to justify secession and civil war. But Jefferson was so alarmed by the Sedition Act that he warned the legislation might drive states "into revolution and blood."

Northern states pushed back against the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, passing counter-resolutions arguing that only the courts had the power to interpret the Constitution. This debate over who gets to decide what's constitutional—the states, the courts, or some combination—has never fully been resolved.

Meanwhile, the Federalists accused their opponents of shielding French agents and sympathizers. One Federalist pamphleteer, William Cobbett, claimed that Irish republican immigrants were plotting slave revolts in coordination with revolutionaries in Haiti. Against the backdrop of both the Quasi-War with France and the ongoing Haitian Revolution, these fears had real power, however unfounded they might have been.

William Duane, who had taken over the Philadelphia Aurora after Bache's death, offered a different vision of America. In a letter to George Washington, he argued for "an entirely civic concept of American citizenship, one that might encompass the Jew, the savage, the Mahometan, the idolator, upon all of whom the sun shines equally."

The Election That Changed Everything

The Sedition Act was designed to expire in March 1801, just after the next presidential inauguration. The Federalists probably assumed they would win reelection and could simply renew it. They assumed wrong.

The prosecutions backfired spectacularly. Rather than silencing opposition, they generated sympathy for the accused and outrage against the government. Matthew Lyon became a folk hero. Subscription lists for opposition newspapers grew. The heavy-handedness of the prosecutions made the Federalists look exactly like the tyrants their opponents accused them of being.

In the election of 1800, Thomas Jefferson and his Democratic-Republicans swept into power. John Adams himself later named William Duane, the Aurora editor his administration had twice tried to prosecute, as one of the three or four men most responsible for his defeat.

Upon taking office, Jefferson pardoned everyone still serving sentences under the Sedition Act. Congress repaid their fines. The Alien Friends Act and the Sedition Act were allowed to expire. The Naturalization Act was repealed, returning the residency requirement to five years.

Only the Alien Enemies Act remained.

The Law That Wouldn't Die

For more than two centuries, the Alien Enemies Act has sat in the United States Code, waiting. It grants the president extraordinary powers during wartime: the authority to detain, relocate, and deport citizens of enemy nations. It was invoked during the War of 1812, when President James Madison used it against British nationals. It was invoked during World War One, when President Woodrow Wilson used it against citizens of Germany and the other Central Powers. A 1918 amendment removed the provision limiting the law to males.

But the most consequential use came during World War Two.

On December 7, 1941, the day Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt issued three proclamations under the Alien Enemies Act targeting Japanese, German, and Italian nationals. But the law's scope was actually much narrower than what followed. The infamous internment of Japanese Americans—some 120,000 people, most of them United States citizens—was carried out under a different legal authority entirely, Executive Order 9066, which Roosevelt issued in early 1942.

The distinction matters. The Alien Enemies Act, by its terms, applies only to nationals of enemy countries during wartime. It doesn't apply to American citizens, regardless of their ancestry. The internment of Japanese American citizens was a separate atrocity, carried out under different laws, though the two are often conflated in historical memory.

German Americans and Italian Americans were also interned during World War Two, though in much smaller numbers. The Alien Enemies Act provided the legal basis for detaining actual German and Italian nationals, while broader wartime statutes were used against citizens of those ancestries.

The Act Returns

For decades after World War Two, the Alien Enemies Act remained dormant. The United States fought wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan without invoking it. The law seemed like a historical curiosity, a relic of an earlier era's paranoia.

Then, in March 2025, President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act as authority for expediting the deportation of foreigners. This marked the first peacetime invocation of a law that, by its explicit terms, applies only during "declared war" or when a foreign nation threatens or attempts an "invasion."

The invocation is subject to ongoing litigation. Courts are being asked to decide whether the Alien Enemies Act can be used outside the context of a declared war, and if so, what limits apply to presidential power under its provisions.

What The Acts Tell Us

The story of the Alien and Sedition Acts is usually told as a cautionary tale about government overreach, and it certainly is that. But it's also a story about how political opposition can be more powerful than political persecution.

The Federalists had every advantage: control of Congress, the presidency, and much of the judiciary. They used that power to jail their opponents and silence their critics. It didn't work. The prosecutions created martyrs, the martyrs created sympathy, and the sympathy translated into votes.

There's also something striking about the speed of the reversal. The Sedition Act was law for less than three years. Within a decade of its passage, the party that had championed it was in terminal decline, and its victims had been pardoned and compensated. American democracy's immune system, however imperfect, eventually rejected the infection.

But the Alien Enemies Act survived, and its survival raises uncomfortable questions. What powers should a president have over noncitizens during wartime? Who decides when the nation is sufficiently threatened to justify those powers? What happens when a law written for one purpose gets used for another?

In 1798, the Federalists argued that national security required limiting free speech and controlling immigration. Their opponents argued that such measures were un-American. The debate, it turns out, never really ended.

It's still going on today.