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A Clamor in the Public Mind: Opposition to the Alien and Sedition Acts
Douglas Bradburn
| AT the height of their success in the spring of 1798, as the Federalists in Congress were designing a new naturalization bill, an act to regulate aliens, a new law to criminalize seditious writing, talk, and behavior, and various taxes and war measures to prepare for conflict with France, they claimed repeatedly that "all Americans" were united in support of the administration. President John Adams encouraged such sentiments, asserting that "all America appears to declare, with one heart and one voice," its "determination to vindicate ... the honor of our nation." Adams and his allies were enthusiastic and triumphal as hundreds of memorials of support poured into Philadelphia. As one newspaper declared, the wide support for Adams "created an enthusiastic Americanism that will prove" the salvation of the country. As another noted, unanimity would be key in any attempt to "fix the country in a settled and positive state by immediately declaring war."1 |
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The claims of unanimity were wishful thinking. Even on the day of President Adams's national fast, a day when twelve hundred youth of Philadelphia presented him with a patriotic memorial, a "fray" created confusion in the capital during which "it was dangerous going out." On the same day, Adams was hanged and burned in effigy in front of the meetinghouse in North Stamford, Connecticut, deep in the Federalist heartland. And within weeks of the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts, thousands of people swarmed into the small town of Lexington, Kentucky, and passed ten angry resolutions that called the acts void and the entire Federalist agenda "unconstitutional, impolitic, unjust, and a disgrace to the American name." As the summer wore on, the assault on the recent legislation spread from Kentucky to the crucial states of Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. With evidence of discontent and popular protests emerging in numerous states, ominous proof of an organized, extensive, and recalcitrant opposition to Adams's government could no longer be denied. As one Federalist reported to Rufus King, who was serving as American ambassador in London, "Much Clamor has been made about the Alien & Sedition Bill, & a vigorous Attack, in the Course of the Session ... will be made on it, in order to alarm the public Mind, & prepare the way for their Success, in the Ensuing election."2 |
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As clamors go this one has not received its due. Historians have been too eager to hand 1798 to the Federalists, accepting their claims of unanimity at face value (see Historiographical Note, 595–600). The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, the most visible opposition to the Alien and Sedition Acts, have never been placed in their true context: as part of a broader movement of petitioning and remonstrance, the concerted effort of numerous local communities not only in Virginia and Kentucky but also in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Vermont, and elsewhere. In fact the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions broke little new ground in resolving that the laws should be deemed unconstitutional, in declaring them null and void, or in examining the real character of the American union. In numerous county resolutions and local petitions, many groups of citizens had already made such declarations. The overwhelming focus on Thomas Jefferson and James Madison as the originators of ideas and the organizers of any and all formal protest against the Alien and Sedition Acts is mistaken and ultimately misleading. |
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