A Sovereign People

by Carol Berkin

  69. John Adams to Maxwell Armstrong, August 13, 1798, FOL; John Adams to Robert Wharton, April 23, 1798, FOL; James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, June 10, 1798, JMP, Vol. 17, pp. 150–151; John Lathrop Jr., An Oration pronounced on the 4th Day of July 1798 at the Request of the Inhabitants of Dedham and its Vicinity, in Commemoration of the Anniversary of American Independence (Minerva Press, 1798); Cabot comment quoted in Stephen G. Kurtz, The Presidency of John Adams: The Collapse of Federalism, 1795–1800 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1957), p. 301.

  70. John W. Kuehl, “Southern Reaction to the XYZ Affair: An Incident in the Emergence of American Nationalism,” The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, Vol. 70, No. 1 (January 1972), pp. 21–49, quote on p. 23.

  71. George Washington to John Adams, July 4, 1798, FOL.

  72. AC, 5th Congress, 2nd Session, House of Representatives, April 24, 1798, pp. 1525–1526, May 18, 1798, pp. 1771–1772; see also Elkins and McKitrick, The Age of Federalism, p. 598.

  73. For an excellent discussion of the maneuvers to make Hamilton inspector general, see the editor’s “Introductory Note: From George Washington” [July 14 1798], PAH, Vol. 22, pp. 4–17.

  74. John Adams to Harrison Gray Otis, May 9, 1823, FOL.

  75. Fisher Ames to Timothy Pickering, quoted in Elkins and McKitrick, The Age of Federalism, p. 597.

  9: “There is reason to believe that the XYZ delusion is wearing off.”

  76. Memoir of Dr. George Logan of Stenton, ed. Deborah Norris Logan (Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1899), pp. 56, 67.

  77. “To the Citizens of the United States,” and the introductory note to it by the editor of the Aurora, in Logan, Memoir, pp. 55–56, 89–93; William Vans Murray to Timothy Pickering, August 13, 1798, and William Vans Murray to John Quincy Adams, August 24, 1798, in Ford, Letters of William Vans Murray, pp. 454–455. For An Act for the Punishment of Certain Crimes therein Specified, see 18 U.S. Code 953.

  78. For the Fries Rebellion, see Proclamation on Insurrection in Pennsylvania, March 12, 1799, FOL; for a full account of Fries’s Rebellion, see Paul Douglas Newman, Fries’s Rebellion: The Enduring Struggle for the American Revolution (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005); see also W. W. H. Davis, The Fries Rebellion, 1798–99; an armed resistance to the House tax law, passed by Congress, July 9, 1798, in Bucks and Northampton Counties, Pennsylvania (Kessinger, 2010); see also Harlow Giles Ungar, The French War Against America: How a Trusted Ally Betrayed Washington and the Founding Fathers (John Wiley & Sons, 2005), p. 208.

  79. See Thomas Jefferson to Edmund Pendleton, January 29, 1799, PTJ, Vol. 30, pp. 661–663. For a discussion of the legislation to suppress criticism of the administration, see Part 4 of this volume.

  80. John Adams to James McHenry, October 22, 1798, FOL; Enclosure on Relations Between United States and France, September 28, 1798, PTJ, Vol. 31, pp. 46–47; John Quincy Adams to John Adams, September 25, 1798, FOL; for Jefferson’s view on the Talleyrand letter, see Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, February 19, 1799, PTJ, Vol. 31, pp. 44–46. For a full discussion of Talleyrand’s new diplomacy efforts, see Bowman, The Struggle for Neutrality, pp. 334–359. See also Elkins and McKitrick, The Age of Federalism, pp. 643–690.

  81. AC, 5th Congress, 3rd Session, House of Representatives, December 8, 1798, pp. 2420–2422. For the message of February 18, 1799, and a translation of the Talleyrand letter to Pichon, see The Avalon Project.

  82. Timothy Pickering to Alexander Hamilton, February 25, 1799, PAH, Vol. 22, pp. 500–503; Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, February 19, 1799, PTJ, Vol. 31, pp. 44–46.

  83. For a discussion of the Convention of 1800 negotiations, see Bowman, The Struggle for Neutrality, pp. 386–411. For the nomination of Murray, Ellsworth, and Davie as commissioners or “envoys extraordinary” to France, see John Adams to United States Senate, February 25, 1799, FOL.

  Part IV: The Alien and Sedition Acts

  1. The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, ed. Jonathan Elliot (Philadelphia, 1891), Vol. 4, May 14, 1788, p. 330.

  1: “Many Jacobins and vagabonds.”

  2. See Michael Durey, “Thomas Paine’s Apostles: Radical Emigrés and the Triumph of Jeffersonian Republicanism,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, Vol. 44, No. 4 (October 1987), pp. 661–688.

  3. For the first naturalization law, see AC, 1st Congress, 2nd Session, March 26, 1790, p. 103; for the debate on the second naturalization bill, see AC, 3rd Congress, 2nd Session, December 22, 1794–January 8, 1795, pp. 1004–1009, 1021–1023, 1026–1030, 1033–1058, 1061, 1064–1066.

  4. For the debates in the House, see AC, 5th Congress, 2nd Session, May 3–May 22, 1798, pp. 1570–1582; 1725; 1776–1784.

  5. An Act Supplementary to and to amend the act entitled An Act to establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and to repeal the act heretofore passed on that subject. Statutes at Large, 5th Congress, Library of Congress American Memory, p. 566.

  6. AC, 5th Congress, 2nd Session, Senate, April 25, 1798–June 8, 1798, pp. 548–549, 554–559; 564–571, 573, 575.

  7. For this debate in the House see AC, 5th Congress, 2nd Session, House of Representatives, June 19–21, 1798, pp. 1973–2029.

  8. Constitution, article 1, section 9, clause 1. For Gallatin’s argument, see AC, 5th Congress, 2nd Session, House of Representatives, June 19, 1798, pp. 1973–1983.

  9. See, for example, Harrison Gray Otis’s argument on June 19, 1798, AC, 5th Congress, 2nd Session, House of Representatives, pp. 1986–1989.

  10. AC, 5th Congress, 2nd Session, June 16, 1798, pp. 1967–1968.

  11. For Otis’s comments, see AC, 5th Congress, 2nd Session, June 21, 1798, pp. 1986–1989.

  12. For Livingston’s comments, see AC, 5th Congress, 2nd Session, June 21, 1798, pp. 2005–2015; for Kittera’s comment, see AC, 5th Congress, 2nd Session, June 21, 1798, p. 2016.

  13. Statutes at Large, Vol. 1, Library of Congress, American Memory, pp. 570–572.

  14. AC, 5th Congress, 2nd Session, Senate, July 3, p. 598; House of Representatives, July 3, 1798, p. 2088.

  15. An Act Respecting Alien Enemies, The Avalon Project.

  16. President Woodrow Wilson used the Alien Enemies Act during World War I to require all enemy aliens to register and be detained if there was reasonable cause to believe they were aiding and abetting the enemy. President Franklin D. Roosevelt applied the act against Japanese, Italian, and German nationals during World War II. For a discussion of the use of this act in the twentieth century, see Robert H. Wagstaff, Terror Detentions and the Rule of Law: US and UK Perspectives (Oxford University Press, 2013), Chapter 2, pp. 39–60.

  2: “Deliver us from… the public floods of falsehood and hatred.”

  17. AC, 5th Congress, 2nd Session, Senate, June 23, 1798, p. 588.

  18. Quoted in James Morton Smith, “Background for Repression,” p. 44; Katherine Ann Brown and Todd Gitlin, “Partisans, Watchdogs, and Entertainers: The Press for Democracy and Its Limits,” in The Oxford Handbook of American Public Opinion and the Media, ed. Robert Y. Shapiro and Lawrence R. Jacobs (Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 76; Jon R. Bond and Kevin B. Smith, Analyzing American Democracy: Politics and Political Science (Routledge, 2013), p. 287.

  19. New Letters of Abigail Adams, 1788–1804, ed. Stewart Mitchell (Houghton Mifflin, 1947), pp. 96–97.

  20. Walter Berns, “Freedom of the Press and the Alien and Sedition Laws: A Reappraisal,” Supreme Court Review, Vol. 109 (1970), 112.

  21. For the full documentation on William Cobbett’s legal troubles, see Richard Ingrams, The Life and Adventures of William Cobbett (Harper Perennial, 2006).

  22. AC, 5th Congress, 2nd Session, House of Representatives, July 5, 1798, p. 2098. For Allen’s full comments that day, see pp. 2093–2101.

  23. George Washington to Oliver Wolcott Jr., May 29, 1797, PGW, Retirement Series, Vol. 1, p. 162; George Washington to Timothy Pickering, February 6, 1798, PGW, Retirement Series, Vo
l. 2, pp. 76–77; “Virginiensis” [Charles Lee], Defense of the Alien and Sedition Act (Philadelphia, 1798), quoted in Marc Lendler, “‘Equally Proper at All Times and at All Times Necessary’: Civility, Bad Tendency, and the Sedition Act,” Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Autumn 2004), p. 428.

  24. AC, 5th Congress, 2nd Session, Senate, June 23–27, 1798, pp. 588–592; July 2–4, 1798, pp. 596–599.

  25. For the complete House of Representatives debate on sedition, see AC, 5th Congress, 2nd Session, July 5–6, 1798, p. 2093; July 9–10, pp. 2133–2171.

  26. AC, 5th Congress, 2nd Session, House of Representatives, July 5, 1798, pp. 2093–2101.

  27. Ibid., pp. 2103–2104.

  28. AC, 5th Congress, 2nd Session, House of Representatives, July 10, 1798, pp. 2151–2152.

  29. Ibid., p. 2152.

  30. AC, 5th Congress, 2nd Session, House of Representatives, July 5, 1798, p. 2112.

  31. AC, 5th Congress, 2nd Session, House of Representatives, July 10, 1798, p. 2158.

  32. Ibid., p. 2171.

  33. For the vote, see AC, 5th Congress, 2nd Session, House of Representatives, July 10, 1798, pp. 2171–2172; An Act in Addition to the Act, Entitled An Act for the Punishment of Certain Crimes Against the United States, The Avalon Project.

  3: “Much good may… result from the investigation of Political heresies.”

  34. Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, June 7, 1798, JMP, Vol. 30, pp.143–145; George Washington to Alexander Addison, June 3, 1798, PGW, Retirement Series, Vol. 2, pp. 310–311.

  35. Boston Gazette of July 9, 1798, quoted in Vanessa B. Beasley, Who Belongs in America? Presidents, Rhetoric, and Immigration (Texas A&M Press, 2006), 50; Craig R. Smith, “The Alien and Sedition Crisis,” in Silencing the Opposition: How the US Government Suppressed Freedom of Expression During Major Crises (State University of New York Press, 2011), p. 15.

  36. For the Bache case, see Bruce A. Ragsdale, “The Sedition Act Trials,” Federal Judicial Center (Federal Judicial History Office, 2005), p. 20; and Gordon T. Belt, “The Sedition Act of 1798: A Brief History of Arrests, Indictments, Mistreatments, and Abuse,” online publication of The First Amendment Center, Newseum Institute, Washington, DC, p. 2.

  37. See Belt, “The Sedition Act,” pp. 11–12; Ragsdale, “The Sedition Act Trials,” p. 21.

  38. Belt, “The Sedition Act,” pp. 1–2.

  39. Terri Diane Halperin, The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798: Testing the Constitution (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), pp. 92–94. For this letter, see George Gibbs, Memoirs of the Administrations of Washington and John Adams, Edited from the Papers of Oliver Wolcott, Vol. 1 (William Van Norden, Printer, 1845), pp. 424–425. In 1800, Adams wrote an apology to Thomas Pinckney, admitting that he had come to a conclusion in his letter to Coxe that was wholly unfounded. See Adams’s explanation of the letter, John Adams to Thomas Pinckney, October 27, 1800, in Gibbs, Memoirs of the Administrations of Washington and John Adams, 425–426.

  40. George Washington to Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, August 10, 1799, PGW, Retirement Series, Vol. 3, pp. 233–235; George Washington to Timothy Pickering, August 4, 1799, PGW, Retirement Series, Vol. 3, pp. 221–223.

  41. Allan C. Clark, “William Duane,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington DC, Vol. 9 (The Society, 1906), pp. 14–62, quote on p. 14.

  42. Alice J. Retzer, “The Virginia Resolutions of 1798: A Study of the Contemporary Debate” (Honors Thesis, University of Richmond, 1969), p. 9.

  43. Ibid., pp. 30–31.

  44. Benjamin Michael Gies, “Kentucky’s First Statesman: George Nicholas and the Founding of the Commonwealth” (Master’s Thesis, University of Louisville, 2016), p. 100; Kentucky Gazette (Lexington), August 1, 1798; see also Nicholas’s accusation that Representative Robert Harper had disgraced himself by voting for the Sedition Act, in First American West: Correspondence between George Nicholas Esq. of Kentucky and the Hon. Robert G. Harper, member of congress from the district of 96, state of South Carolina, Library of Congress, American Memory; Clark County resolutions quoted in Ethelbert Dudley Warfield, The Kentucky Resolutions of 1798: An Historical Study (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1887), p. 42.

  45. Warfield, The Kentucky Resolutions, pp. 17, 41–42; Douglass Bradburn, The Citizenship Revolution: Politics and the Creation of the Union 1774–1804 (University of Virginia Press, 2009), 171; Kentucky Gazette (Lexington), November 10, 1798, quoted in Gies, “Kentucky’s First Statesman,” p. 100.

  46. Gies, “Kentucky’s First Statesman,” pp. 100–101; Kentucky Gazette (Lexington), November 10, 1798; Bradburn, The Citizenship Revolution, p. 169.

  47. Kentucky Gazette (Lexington), November 10, 1798, quoted in Gies, “Kentucky’s First Statesman,” 100.

  4: “I do not care if they fire thro’ his arse!”

  48. Belt, “The Sedition Act of 1798,” pp. 2–3, quoted in James Morton Smith, Freedom’s Fetters: The Alien and Sedition Laws and American Civil Liberties (Cornell University Press, 1956), pp. 251–252, 255.

  49. See S. Mintz and S. McNeil, “The Alien and Sedition Acts, ID 245,” Digital History, 2016; Belt, “The Sedition Act of 1798,” p. 9; James Morton Smith, Freedom’s Fetters, 271.

  50. For the House discussions of the Lyon-Griswold controversy, see AC, 5th Congress, 2nd Session, House of Representatives, January 30, 1798, pp. 955–957, February 1, 1798, pp. 958–960, February 2, 1798, pp. 961–962, February 5, 1798, pp. 964–965, February 6, 1798, pp. 965–968, February 7, 1798, pp. 969–970, February 8, 1798, pp. 970–980, February 9, 1798, pp. 981–1000, February 12, 1798, pp. 1000–1029, February 15, 1798, pp. 1034–1035, February 16, 1798, pp. 1036–1043, February 20, 1798, pp. 1048–1058, February 23, 1798, pp. 1063–1068.

  51. For a brief account of Matthew Lyon’s trial, see Aleine Austin, “Matthew Lyon’s Trial for Sedition,” in Retracing the Past, Third Edition, Vol. 1, ed. Gary B. Nash and Ronald Schultz (Harper Collins, 1994), pp. 128–129; see also Aleine Austin, Matthew Lyon, “New Man” of the Democratic Revolution, 1749–1822 (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1981); Ragsdale, “The Sedition Act Trials,” pp. 53–54, 56; Maeva Marcus, ed., Documentary History of the Supreme Court of the US, 1789–1800, Vol. 3 (Columbia University Press, 1990), pp. 292–294.

  52. The Aurora and General Advertiser, as quoted in Porcupine’s Gazette (Philadelphia), November 3, 1798; James Morton Smith, Freedom’s Fetters, p. 246.

  53. For biographies of Matthew Lyon, see J. Fairfax McLaughlin, Matthew Lyon, the Hampden of Congress, a Biography (1900; reprint by Forgotten Books, 2012); and Aleine Austin, Matthew Lyon, “New Man” of the Democratic Revolution, 1749–1822 (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1981).

  5: “The nullification of all unauthorized acts… is the rightful remedy.”

  54. Centinel of Freedom (Newark, NJ), December 18, 1798; See Douglas Bradburn, “A Clamor in the Public Mind: Opposition to the Alien and Sedition Acts,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, Vol. 65, No. 3 (July 2008), pp. 565–600; for a discussion of newspaper and petition opposition to the Alien and Sedition Acts, see also James Morton Smith, “The Grass Roots Origins of the Kentucky Resolutions, The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 2 (April 1970), pp. 221–245.

  55. James Morton Smith, Freedom’s Fetters, p. 236; see also Warfield, The Kentucky Resolutions.

  56. Draft of the Kentucky Resolutions 1798, The Avalon Project. See the Editorial Note to The Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, PTJ, Vol. 30, pp. 529–556.

  57. James Morton Smith, Freedom’s Fetters, pp. 240–241; Adrienne Koch and Harry Ammon, “The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions: An Episode in Jefferson’s and Madison’s Defense of Civil Liberties,” The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 2 (April 1948), pp. 145–176; see also the Editorial Note to The Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, PTJ, Vol. 30, pp. 529–556.

  58. Virginia Resolution, The Avalon Project. For an excellent analysis of Madison’s approach in the Virginia Resolutions, see the Editorial Note to Virgin
ia Resolutions, December 21, 1798, PJM, Vol. 17, pp. 185–191; see also Koch and Ammon, “The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions.”

  59. Quoted in Frank Maloy Anderson, “Contemporary Opinion of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions,” American Historical Review, Vol. 5, No. 1 (October 1899), pp. 45–63; No. 2 (December 1899), pp. 225–244.

  60. For the Kentucky Resolutions of 1799, see The Avalon Project.

  6: “No Stamp Act, No Sedition Act. No Alien Bills, No Land Tax, downfall to the Tyrants of America.”

  61. For the Brown case, see Belt, “The Sedition Act of 1798,” pp. 8–9.

  62. For the cases of Charles Holt and Jedidiah Peck, see Belt, “The Sedition Act of 1798,” pp. 9–11.

  63. For a full account of the Cooper trial, see Peter Hoffer, The Free Press Crisis of 1800: Thomas Cooper’s Trial for Seditious Libel (University Press of Kansas, 2011); Halperin, The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, pp. 85–87. See Cooper’s own account of his trial, An Account of the Trial of Thomas Cooper, of Northumberland; on a charge of libel against the president of the United States; taken in short hand. With a preface, notes, and appendix, by Thomas Cooper (April 1800; reprinted by Gale ECCO, 2010). For Hamilton’s 1800 evaluation of John Adams, see Letter from Alexander Hamilton, Concerning the Public Conduct and Character of John Adams, Esq. President of the United States (October 24, 1800), PAH, Vol. 25, pp. 186–234.

  64. See Ragsdale, “The Sedition Act Trials,” pp. 28–29, 62; Halperin, The Alien and Sedition Acts, pp. 87–91; for a biography of Callender, see Michael Durey, “With the Hammer of Truth”: James Thomson Callender and America’s Early National Heroes (University of Virginia Press, 1990).