D
dave h
Guest
And what did this have to do with civil rights?
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How did the Alien and Sedition Acts help maintain the Federalists in power?
J
joseph
Guest
The Alien Act empowered President Adams to arrest, detain, and deport any non-citizen he found to be a danger to the security of the nation. The individual was given no right to a hearing and no right to present evidence in his defense. The Republicans objected that this was unconstitutional; the Federalists responded that aliens had no rights under the United States Constitution because they were not part of "We the People." The Sedition Act effectively made it a crime for any person to criticize the President, the Congress or the Government of the United States. The Republicans vehemently object that the Act violated the First Amendment; the Federalists argued that in time of war it was essential to stifle criticism of the government because if the People lost confidence in the government they would not make the sacrifices war demands.
The Federalist prosecutors and judges used the Sedition Act exclusively against Republicans, especially against Republican congressmen and editors who criticized the President. Although the Federalists argued that this legislation was necessary because the nation was on the brink of war, the real reason the Federalists wanted it was to silence Republican criticism and thus to ensure that Adams would defeat Jefferson in the election of 1800.
The plan backfired. The American people rose up in protest against these Act and elected Jefferson. This led to the demise of the Federalist Party. Jefferson pardoned all those who had been convicted under the Act. Fifty years later, Congress declared that the Sedition Act of 1798 was unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court has never since missed an opportunity to declare that the Act was unconstitutional in the "court of history."
There are (at least) two lessons we can learn fro this episode: First, clever politicians will often take advantage of a wartime atmosphere to enact policies that will serve their partisan ends. Second, it will often fall to the People themselves to protect their civil lliberties. They cannot always rely on elected officials or judges to protect them for them.
http://lessig.org/blog/2004/12/the_alien_and_sedition_acts_of.html
When Americans have gone to war, measures to protect national security have often conflicted with civil liberties guaranteed in the Constitution. This conflict, inherent in American political culture, first appeared in 1798 during America's quasi-war with France. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions were part of the Democratic Republican response to the Adams administration's attempts to curb civil liberties during that war. Drafted secretly by Thomas Jefferson (the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 and 1799) and James Madison (the Virginia Resolutions of 1798), the Resolutions were a formal protest by the legislatures of Kentucky and Virginia against the Alien and Sedition Acts that the Federalist-dominated Congress had passed in 1798 in the name of protecting national security.
Among other things, the Alien and Sedition Acts created a registration and surveillance system for aliens residing in the United States, provided the executive branch with the authority to deport aliens seen as a threat, and potentially made any criticism of government a crime. These acts deeply divided the nation between those who saw them as a reasonable response to a crisis situation and those who viewed the restrictions as dangerous, politically motivated, and unconstitutional. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions held that the Alien and Sedition Acts should be null and void because they violated numerous provisions of the Federal Constitution.
The resolutions reflected the fears of many Democratic Republicans that these acts' suppression of civil rights represented the final stages of an effort by Federalists to, as Madison put it in the Virginia Resolutions, transform the "republican system of the United States into an absolute, or at best a mixed monarchy."
http://www.bookrags.com/research/civil-liberties-kentucky-and-virgin-aaw-01/
The Federalist prosecutors and judges used the Sedition Act exclusively against Republicans, especially against Republican congressmen and editors who criticized the President. Although the Federalists argued that this legislation was necessary because the nation was on the brink of war, the real reason the Federalists wanted it was to silence Republican criticism and thus to ensure that Adams would defeat Jefferson in the election of 1800.
The plan backfired. The American people rose up in protest against these Act and elected Jefferson. This led to the demise of the Federalist Party. Jefferson pardoned all those who had been convicted under the Act. Fifty years later, Congress declared that the Sedition Act of 1798 was unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court has never since missed an opportunity to declare that the Act was unconstitutional in the "court of history."
There are (at least) two lessons we can learn fro this episode: First, clever politicians will often take advantage of a wartime atmosphere to enact policies that will serve their partisan ends. Second, it will often fall to the People themselves to protect their civil lliberties. They cannot always rely on elected officials or judges to protect them for them.
http://lessig.org/blog/2004/12/the_alien_and_sedition_acts_of.html
When Americans have gone to war, measures to protect national security have often conflicted with civil liberties guaranteed in the Constitution. This conflict, inherent in American political culture, first appeared in 1798 during America's quasi-war with France. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions were part of the Democratic Republican response to the Adams administration's attempts to curb civil liberties during that war. Drafted secretly by Thomas Jefferson (the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 and 1799) and James Madison (the Virginia Resolutions of 1798), the Resolutions were a formal protest by the legislatures of Kentucky and Virginia against the Alien and Sedition Acts that the Federalist-dominated Congress had passed in 1798 in the name of protecting national security.
Among other things, the Alien and Sedition Acts created a registration and surveillance system for aliens residing in the United States, provided the executive branch with the authority to deport aliens seen as a threat, and potentially made any criticism of government a crime. These acts deeply divided the nation between those who saw them as a reasonable response to a crisis situation and those who viewed the restrictions as dangerous, politically motivated, and unconstitutional. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions held that the Alien and Sedition Acts should be null and void because they violated numerous provisions of the Federal Constitution.
The resolutions reflected the fears of many Democratic Republicans that these acts' suppression of civil rights represented the final stages of an effort by Federalists to, as Madison put it in the Virginia Resolutions, transform the "republican system of the United States into an absolute, or at best a mixed monarchy."
http://www.bookrags.com/research/civil-liberties-kentucky-and-virgin-aaw-01/