It is February 18th. Welcome to Episode 49 of History in a Year. Today, the fear of a foreign enemy pushes the United States government to turn against its own people. As American warships clash with the French Navy in the Caribbean during the undeclared “Quasi-War,” paranoia grips the capital. Alexander Hamilton’s Federalists become convinced that French spies and immigrant traitors are plotting a violent revolution in America. In response, President John Adams signs the Alien and Sedition Acts—some of the most oppressive, unconstitutional laws in American history, making it a literal crime to criticize the President.
STEPHEN:
Welcome to History in a Year: America’s First 250 Years.
LEAH:
Join us every single day as we journey from the Revolution of 1776 to the 250th anniversary of the United States.
STEPHEN:
You can find every episode and join the discussion at PointedWords.com. I’m Stephen.
LEAH:
And I’m Leah.
STEPHEN:
It is February 18th. Welcome to Episode 49. Yesterday, we watched the United States get slapped in the face by France during the XYZ Affair.
LEAH:
The French demanded a $250,000 bribe just to open peace negotiations. When the American public found out, they went ballistic. The rallying cry became: “Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!”
STEPHEN:
And they meant it. Almost overnight, the United States woke up from its pacifist slumber and started preparing for World War.
LEAH:
John Adams and the Federalist Congress poured money into building a real Navy. They rushed the construction of massive, state-of-the-art frigates like the USS Constellation and the USS Constitution.
STEPHEN:
And they didn’t just build them; they sent them out to fight. This is the beginning of what history calls the Quasi-War.
LEAH:
It’s called the “Quasi-War” because it was never officially declared by Congress. It was an undeclared naval conflict fought entirely at sea, mostly down in the Caribbean and along the American coastline.
STEPHEN:
For the first time since the Revolution, American ships were firing broadsides at a foreign power. And the new US Navy actually kicked some serious butt.
LEAH:
They really did! The most famous battle happened in February 1799, when the American frigate Constellation, commanded by Thomas Truxtun, hunted down and captured the French frigate L’Insurgente.
STEPHEN:
The American sailors were highly motivated. They had spent years watching French privateers steal American cargo and kidnap American crews. Now, they were finally allowed to shoot back. Over the course of the Quasi-War, the US Navy and American privateers captured over 80 French armed vessels.
LEAH:
But while the Navy was winning battles at sea, a very different kind of war was breaking out back home on dry land.
STEPHEN:
Alexander Hamilton and the High Federalists were thrilled by the naval victories, but they weren’t satisfied. They wanted a full, formal declaration of war against France. They wanted to march an army into Florida and Louisiana, which were controlled by Spain, France’s ally.
LEAH:
George Washington had been brought out of retirement to be the figurehead of this new provisional army, but Hamilton was the one actually running it. Hamilton saw himself as an American Caesar, ready to conquer the continent.
STEPHEN:
But President John Adams refused to declare war. He knew that an undeclared naval war was one thing, but a full-scale land war against the French Empire would bankrupt the country.
LEAH:
Adams’s refusal to declare war drove Hamilton absolutely crazy. It permanently fractured the Federalist party.
STEPHEN:
However, even though Adams wouldn’t declare war, he did share one massive fear with Hamilton and the rest of his party. And that was the fear of the “enemy within.”
LEAH:
The Federalists were terrified of the French Revolution. They had watched the streets of Paris run red with the blood of the guillotine. And they firmly believed that Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans were trying to bring that exact same bloody revolution to the streets of Philadelphia.
STEPHEN:
Paranoia completely consumed the capital. Federalist preachers literally gave sermons warning that a secret society called the Illuminati was infiltrating America to destroy Christianity and overthrow the government.
LEAH:
And they were deeply suspicious of immigrants. At the time, thousands of refugees were pouring into the United States. French refugees fleeing the revolution, and Irish refugees fleeing British oppression.
STEPHEN:
The Federalists looked at these immigrants and saw a massive threat. Why? Because when these poor, working-class immigrants arrived, they almost universally voted for Thomas Jefferson’s party.
LEAH:
So, in the summer of 1798, the Federalist Congress decided to use the cover of national security to destroy their political enemies. They passed four laws that are collectively known as the Alien and Sedition Acts.
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STEPHEN:
These laws are a massive stain on John Adams’s legacy. He didn’t draft them, but he did sign them into law, and his wife Abigail strongly encouraged him to do it.
LEAH:
Let’s break them down, starting with the three “Alien” Acts.
STEPHEN:
First was the Naturalization Act. This law took the waiting period for an immigrant to become a US citizen and extended it from five years to fourteen years.
LEAH:
The goal here was blatant voter suppression. They knew immigrants voted for the Republicans, so they just made it mathematically impossible for any new immigrant to vote in the upcoming elections.
STEPHEN:
Next were the Alien Friends Act and the Alien Enemies Act. These gave the President the unilateral power to arrest, imprison, or deport any non-citizen he deemed “dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States.”
LEAH:
No trial. No jury. No due process. If the President thought you were a threat, you were put on a boat.
STEPHEN:
Adams actually never used the deportation power, but the threat alone was enough. Hundreds of French immigrants saw the writing on the wall, packed their bags, and fled the country before they could be arrested.
LEAH:
But as bad as the Alien Acts were, the fourth law was the real constitutional nightmare. The Sedition Act. STEPHEN:
The Sedition Act made it a federal crime to write, print, utter, or publish any “false, scandalous, and malicious writing” against the government, the Congress, or the President of the United States.
LEAH:
If you criticized John Adams in a newspaper, you could be fined $2,000 and thrown in a freezing, rat-infested prison for up to two years.
STEPHEN:
Now, listen to the specific wording of that law. It protected the government, the Congress, and the President. Do you notice who is missing from that list?
LEAH:
The Vice President! Thomas Jefferson!
STEPHEN:
Exactly. The Federalists specifically wrote the law so that it was illegal to criticize John Adams, but it was perfectly legal—and encouraged!—to relentlessly mock Thomas Jefferson.
LEAH:
It was a blatant violation of the First Amendment. The ink on the Bill of Rights was barely dry—it had only been ratified seven years earlier!—and already, the government was ignoring the guarantee of free speech and a free press.
STEPHEN:
And the Federalists didn’t just pass the law; they aggressively enforced it. Adams’s Secretary of State, Timothy Pickering, scoured Republican newspapers looking for anyone who insulted the President.
LEAH:
Over two dozen Republican newspaper editors were arrested and charged.
STEPHEN:
One of the first targets was Benjamin Franklin Bache, the grandson of Benjamin Franklin. He was the editor of the Aurora, the most powerful Republican paper in the country. He was arrested, but tragically, he died of yellow fever before his trial could begin.
LEAH:
Another famous case was Matthew Lyon. He was a Democratic-Republican Congressman from Vermont. He was a fiery Irish immigrant, and the Federalists hated him.
STEPHEN:
Matthew Lyon actually got into a physical brawl on the floor of the House of Representatives! A Federalist congressman named Roger Griswold insulted Lyon’s military record, so Lyon spit directly in his face. Griswold responded by beating Lyon with a wooden cane, and Lyon grabbed a pair of fire tongs from the fireplace to fight back!
LEAH:
Right there on the floor of Congress! So, when the Sedition Act passed, Matthew Lyon was target number one.
STEPHEN:
He wrote a letter to a newspaper accusing President Adams of having an “unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp” and a “foolish adulation.” For writing those words, a sitting United States Congressman was arrested, dragged out of his home, and thrown into a 16-by-12-foot prison cell that didn’t even have a glass window to keep out the winter cold.
LEAH:
But the plan completely backfired on the Federalists. They thought arresting Matthew Lyon would silence him. Instead, it made him a martyr.
STEPHEN:
While sitting in his freezing jail cell, Lyon ran for re-election to Congress. And he won! He is the only person in American history to be elected to Congress while serving a prison sentence.
LEAH:
The American people were disgusted by the Sedition Act. They realized that the Federalists had gone too far.
STEPHEN:
Thomas Jefferson and James Madison saw an opportunity. They knew they couldn’t challenge the law in the Supreme Court, because all the judges were Federalists who supported the law.
LEAH:
So, they did something incredibly dangerous. They secretly drafted two documents known as the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions.
STEPHEN:
In these resolutions, Jefferson and Madison argued that the United States was a compact of individual states. And if the federal government passed an unconstitutional law—like the Sedition Act—the individual states had the right to “nullify” that law. They argued that a state could simply refuse to obey the federal government.
LEAH:
This was a massive escalation. George Washington read these resolutions and was horrified. He warned that Jefferson was laying the groundwork for a civil war.
STEPHEN:
And Washington was right. Sixty years later, the Southern states would use Jefferson’s exact argument of “states’ rights” and “nullification” to justify seceding from the Union and starting the Civil War.
LEAH:
The country was tearing itself apart. The Quasi-War was raging at sea, the President was jailing journalists, and the Vice President was secretly encouraging states to ignore federal law.
STEPHEN:
The climax was approaching. The Election of 1800 was on the horizon. It would be a rematch between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
LEAH:
Join us tomorrow for Episode 50. The Revolution of 1800. We witness the ugliest, most venomous political campaign in American history. We’ll see how Alexander Hamilton finally destroys his own party out of sheer spite, and how a bizarre tie in the Electoral College nearly breaks the United States forever.
STEPHEN:
I’m Stephen.
LEAH:
And I’m Leah.
STEPHEN:
You can find every episode at PointedWords.com. And this… is our story.