June 18, 1798 – U.S. Congress Passes the First of the Alien and Sedition Acts

From 1778 to 1783, France and Britain were at war. Both countries exerted pressure on the U.S. to join the war on their side. President Washington urged the country to avoid “entangling alliances.” But there was no agreement in the country. Historian Joel Richard Paul explains in his book Without Precedent, “supporters of neutrality coalesced into the Federalist Party [led by Washington], and critics of the administration formed the Republican Party, led by Jefferson.”

As tensions between the two parties increased, bitter acrimony increased, played out in the press. Adams condemned partisan tendencies “to go all lengths of profligacy, falsehood, and malignity in defaming our government.”

Furthermore, as James F. Simon observed in his history What Kind of Nation, “the fact that the majority of new citizens, primarily immigrants from France and Ireland, were joining Jefferson’s party was not lost on the Federalists.”

In the summer of 1798, the hard-line Federalists in Congress, supported by President Adams, passed four laws focusing on “patriotism” and the stifling of dissent.

John Adams, lithograph circa 1828 via Library of Congress

As the Library of Congress summarizes them:

These acts increased the residency requirement for American citizenship from five to fourteen years, authorized the president to imprison or deport aliens considered “dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States” and restricted speech critical of the government.”

The acts in order of passage were:

• An Act to Establish an Uniform Rule of Naturalization (Naturalization Act) June 18
• An Act Concerning Aliens June 25
• An Act Respecting Alien Enemies July 6
• An Act for the Punishment of Certain Crimes against the United States (Sedition Act) July 14

Passing the acts was justified as necessary to national security, but in reality the acts were aimed at silencing critics of the president. (Regarding the Naturalization Act, for example, at the time, the majority of immigrants supported Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans, the political opponents of the Federalists.)

The Act Respecting Alien Enemies, which gave the president the authority to confine or deport aliens of an enemy country during a state of war, was the most popular of the four. The least popular and most controversial was the Sedition Act, which provided for a fine of up to $2,000 and a sentence of up to two years in prison for “false, scandalous and malicious” accusations against the president, the Congress, or the government.”

As Robert Goodloe Harper, the Federalists’ leader in the House, stated, the purpose of the Sedition Act, passed on July 14, 1798, was “to protect the country from the enemy within, namely the Republican party.” (Simon, p. 51):

The Sedition Act, Harper said, was a necessary response to the treacherous tendencies of the French faction in the country – Jefferson’s Republicans.”

In fact, the claim was not without merit. Jefferson, who was the Vice President of the country from 1797 to 1801, had been meeting secretly with Edmond Charles Genêt, better known as Citizen Genêt, the newly appointed French minister to the United States. Jefferson was anxious for Genêt’s help to elect a Republican majority in Congress in return for support for an alliance with France and a removal of tariffs on French imports. Professor Paul writes:

Jefferson made clear that his enemies – the Federalists [which included President George Washington], particularly Adams and Hamilton – were France’s enemies. . . . From these conversations, Genêt formed the misimpression that the president was irrelevant and that an appeal to Congress, or to the people directly, would be more effective.”

Jefferson also secretly drafted the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions against the acts, asserting that, as historian Paul wrote:

. . . the Constitution was nothing more than a mere ‘compact’ among states, and as a consequence, each state had the right to nullify any federal law with which it disagreed.”

Thomas Jefferson

In any event, negative reaction to the acts helped contribute to the victory of Jefferson and the Republicans in the 1800 elections. Congress repealed the Naturalization Act in 1802, while two of the other acts were allowed to expire. The Alien Enemies Act, however, remains in effect as Chapter 3; Sections 21–24 of Title 50 of the United States Code. It was used by the government to identify and imprison enemy aliens from Germany, Japan, and Italy in World War II. (This was separate from the Japanese internment camps used to remove people of Japanese descent from the West Coast.) After the war they were deported to their home countries. In 1948 the Supreme Court determined that presidential powers under the acts continued after cessation of hostilities until there was a peace treaty with the hostile nation.

Most recently, Donald Trump used the law as as justification for his Muslim ban. In response, several Democratic senators have attempted to have the Alien Enemies Act repealed.

As for the Sedition Act, although that act expired, the US does have a law, enacted during the Civil War, against seditious conspiracy, (involving two or more people) outlined in Section 2384 of the penal code. Most recently, some members of both the Oath Keepers and of the Proud Boys were found guilty by a jury in the District of Columbia of seditious conspiracy and other charges for crimes related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Note: Sedition differs from treason (defined in Article III of the U.S. Constitution) in a fundamental way. While seditious conspiracy is generally defined as conduct or language inciting rebellion against the authority of a state, treason is the more serious offense of actively levying war against the United States or giving aid to its enemies.)