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Historical Background

The Formative Years—Visions and Prospects of Nationhood (continued)

LIBERTY AND AUTHORITY—OPPOSITION OR SEDITION?

The Federalists nominated Vice President John Adams to succeed Washington and diplomatic hero Thomas Pinckney as his runningmate. The Democratic-Republicans, the Jefferson-Madison party, backed Jefferson and Aaron Burr. Hamilton did not fully trust Adams, so he maneuvered to have certain Federalist electors vote for Pinckney but not Adams. Pinckney would become President and Adams would remain "buried" in the Vice-Presidency. The plan backfired when Adams' New England supporters discovered Hamilton's plan and withheld their votes from Pinckney. As a result, Adams won—by a mere three electoral votes—and Jefferson became the Vice President. Handicapped by a Cabinet that answered to Hamilton, a hostile Congress, and his political enemy Jefferson as Vice President, Adams pursued a lonely course for the next 4 years.

Foreign affairs were a major problem. The British and French were locked in the wars of the French Revolution. Great Britain was not particularly solicitous of the rights of American ships, but the major obstacle to peace was France. Its Government, angered by the Jay Treaty, demanded that U.S. ships discontinue carrying British goods and threatened to hang any U.S. seamen found serving on British warships. In 1798, by which time Franco-American relations had badly deteriorated, Adams sent C. C. Pinckney, Elbridge Gerry, and John Marshall to France to effect a reconciliation. The French Foreign Minister, Talleyrand, humiliated the United States by refusing to receive the delegation. Through agents known as "X," "Y," and "Z," he demanded a bribe of $250,000, a $12,000,000 loan, and a formal apology for Adams' public criticism of France. In return, he hinted at concessions, but promised nothing beyond acceptance of the delegates' credentials. In reply to Talleyrand's agents, Pinckney reportedly said "no, no, not a sixpence." When the President turned the negotiators' report over to Congress and the word of the XYZ affair spread, the public rallied to the defense of the Government and the President. "No, no, not a sixpence" became "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!" War with France seemed imminent. Hamilton and most Federalists favored war as a way of uniting the country and building a strong Army and Navy. The Jeffersonians, controlling roughly half the votes in Congress, opposed war, as far as they dared, but public opinion was bellicose. If Adams had asked for a declaration of war, the antiwar party could not have stopped it.

John Adams, first Vice President and second President of the United States. He was also the progenitor of a distinguished American family. From a lithograph by John Pendleton, after a painting by Gilbert Stuart. Courtesy, Library of Congress.

Between 1798 and 1800 Franco-American relations further deteriorated. The United States, having an Army of only 3,500 men and a Navy of but 3 frigates, was not ready for war, but increasing depredations by French picaroons, or privateers, on U.S. merchant vessels caused Congress to enact a series of defensive measures. Though neither nation declared war, between 1798 and 1800 they fought a sea war in the Caribbean and off the South Atlantic coast. By 1800, 14 U.S. warships, under Secretary Benjamin Stoddert's 2-year-old Navy Department, augmented by hundreds of privateers, had cleared the French picaroons from U. S. waters. And, for the first time since the War for Independence, the United States had a naval hero. Capt. Thomas Truxtun, commanding the Constellation, had beaten one French frigate, L'Insurgente, and severely mauled another.

In 1798 Elbridge Gerry returned from France with the news that the French Directory wanted to explore the possibilities of peace. The French hoped to reoccupy Louisiana and to use U.S. shipping to counteract Britain's naval supremacy. War with the United States was thus inimical to French policy. In November 1799 Adams sent three Envoys to France. By the time they reached Paris, Napoleon had gained the ascendency and was anxious to make peace. By a convention signed in September 1800, France agreed to the abrogation of earlier treaties, notably the historic Franco-American alliance of 1778, and endorsed the principle "free ships, free goods." Congress ratified the convention in December 1800.

Bitter political frustrations found release in the Federalist Alien and Sedition Acts and in the Democratic-Republican response, the Kentucky Resolutions and the Virginia Resolutions. As the Democratic-Republicans continued to oppose war with the old ally in the War for Independence, France, and the Federalists drew closer to the old enemy, Great Britain, rational discussion of political differences between the two parties degenerated into an ever more shrill exchange of insults. The Democratic-Republicans caricatured the President as the "bald, toothless, querulous Adams," and Federalists called their opponents "the refuse, the sweepings of the most depraved part of mankind." Partly to silence opposition, partly to tighten controls over aliens in preparation for war with France, in 1798 Federalist legislators, without the active support of Adams or Hamilton, pushed the Alien and Sedition Acts through Congress. Three of the four acts dealt with immigration and the rights of aliens. Of these, one never went into effect; another was never enforced. The third, the Naturalization Act, extended the residence requirement for aliens seeking citizenship from 5 to 14 years. The fourth act, "An Act for the Punishment of Certain Crimes," was the notorious Sedition Act. It prohibited oral and written expressions of a "false, scandalous, and malicious" character respecting the Government or its officers on pain of fine and imprisonment.

"Congressional Pugilists" depicts Representatives Matthew Lyon, a Democratic-Republican, and Roger Griswold, a Federalist, clashing in Congress Hall in 1798. Griswold allegedly insulted Lyon's record during the War for Independence. This clash, though extreme, reveals the acrimony between the parties that prevailed at the time. From a cartoon by an unknown artist. Courtesy, Maryland Historical Society.

In one minor sense the act was a victory for free speech. Where common law let the court decide whether a statement was or was not libelous, the Sedition Act required that malicious intent be proved and that the defense could win acquittal if it would prove the truth of "libel." The great injustice of the act was its application. Federalists used it to defend the Federalist President against unfair attack without extending its protection to the Democratic-Republican Vice President, the object of equal censure.

In the best known of the prosecutions of Democratic-Republicans under the act, Matthew Lyon, outspoken Congressman from Vermont, defended himself by challenging its constitutionality. Lyon lost his case and went to jail, where he became a popular hero and won reelection. In the meantime, Democratic-Republican leaders took up the matter of constitutionality in the Virginia Resolutions and the Kentucky Resolutions. James Madison drafted the Virginia Resolutions (1798), by which the Virginia legislature announced its belief in the unconstitutionality of the Alien and Sedition Acts. Jefferson, in the Kentucky Resolutions (1789-99), went further. He maintained that the acts were null and void per se and that a State should nullify or refuse to comply with them. The two resolutions had no legal effect, and the acts remained on the books.

Amid all the turmoil, in October of 1800 John Adams and the 132 Government officials and clerks packed up and the next month left the temporary Capital, Philadelphia, for the incomplete but permanent Capital on the Potomac. The Capitol was unfinished, and workmen's shacks sat near the "President's House." But at last the Government had a permanent home.