John Adams and the Sedition Act (war, Roman, England, Washington)

[markg91359]

Few of the Founding Fathers have as much importance as John Adams does.

He was at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia and voted for independence, affixing his signature to the Declaration of Independence.

He served as a diplomat to France and the Netherlands during the Revolutionary War and succeeded in obtaining a loan from Dutch bankers that helped finance the War.

He was the first ambassador to England after it signed the Treaty of Paris recognizing American independence.

He was the first Vice-President and second President of the United States.

Yet, as President, John Adams did one thing that to this day, I find utterly incomprehensible. He signed into law a statute known as the 'Sedition Act". This act punished newspapers who criticized public officials of the United States. In fact several journalists were fined or sent to prison for criticizing the President. How could a man who supported the Constitution and Bill of Rights fail to see the gross violation of the First Amendment that this law was? The First Amendment states that:

Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press.

How could the Sedition Law be seen as anything else? I'd love to here some replies.

[NJGOAT]

I don't think there is anyway one can really spin the Sedition Acts as anything but unconstitutional. The only reason they were never challenged in court is because judicial review by the Supreme Court had no precedent until 1803. Even then the Supreme Court was packed with Federalist judges from Washington's time.

I think the only real discussion would center on why Adams signed them. In that case, I think Adams was a very worn down man and was trying to reach compromise within his own party. While Adams was a Federalist, he was not a High Federalist and this was the block that was pushing these acts and preempting anything Adams tried to do. He basically had to carry favor with the High Federalists to get anything done and much of his Presidency was reduced to going along with what that block wanted with minor input from Adams himself.

Basically, Adams was to beaten and worn down at this stage in his life to fight and attempt to control the more radical elements of his party. I think he breathed a large sigh of relief the day he got to leave the White House and head home.

[Grandstander]

Originally Posted by NJGOAT

I don't think there is anyway one can really spin the Sedition Acts as anything but unconstitutional. The only reason they were never challenged in court is because judicial review by the Supreme Court had no precedent until 1803. Even then the Supreme Court was packed with Federalist judges from Washington's time.

I think the only real discussion would center on why Adams signed them. In that case, I think Adams was a very worn down man and was trying to reach compromise within his own party. While Adams was a Federalist, he was not a High Federalist and this was the block that was pushing these acts and preempting anything Adams tried to do. He basically had to carry favor with the High Federalists to get anything done and much of his Presidency was reduced to going along with what that block wanted with minor input from Adams himself.

Basically, Adams was to beaten and worn down at this stage in his life to fight and attempt to control the more radical elements of his party. I think he breathed a large sigh of relief the day he got to leave the White House and head home.

You've explained Adams awkward position well. The orginal Federalists, while they held executive power for the first 12 years of Constitutional America, did not really conceive of themselves as a political party, rather they saw themselves as a poitical philosophy. Consequently they were not organized on the basis of winning elections, they were organized on the basis of administering a government. When the Democrat-Republicans came into being, they were actually the first party, the first group in America which banded together for the sole purpose of winning elections.

When the center of conflict had been Federalist vs anti-Federalists, that was a battle of ideas fought in position papers. The birth of a political party altered that dynamic to a battle which would be fought with propaganda, hyperbole and character assassination.

I get the feeling that Adams viewed such doings as beneath his dignity. His fellow Federalists viewed it with alarm, as a corruption of what they imagined the democractic process would be, which was one where the elite of the nation offered their services for administering the masses, and the masses got a say so regarding which member of the elite would be leading. The Democrat-Republican Party struck them as a conspiracy to frustrate the elite and allow the common, less idealistic sorts to get their hands on political power.

I think that was the impulse behind the Alien and Sedition Acts, and it helps to explain why Adams was willing to go along with them.

This was an age where the American experiment in republican government was still in the test drive stage. What strikes us today as a manifest and outrageous violation of the Bill of Rights, wasn't so clearly established in 1798.

[Grandstander]

...as an added note..

The American republic, when new, did not have much in the way of models on which to base their specific procedures. Most Federalist and anti-Federalists looked to the Roman Republic as their guide, but each side placed emphasis on aspects which were in line with their thinking. For the Federalists, they took the lesson that the Roman Republic died when a few ambititious men learned how to displace Senatorial power with popular support from the legions and from the street mobs. Thus they believed that it was important for America to limit democractic practices so as to avoid rule by the exploitation of popular hysteria by self promoting persons.

And that was how they viewed the Democrat-Republicans when they organized themselves into a political party...as people looking to ride to power via manipulation of the unenlightened and uneducated. They feared the rise of a neo-Caesar. Preventing that was what the Alien and Sedition Acts were designed to do....at least in their minds.