In addition to avowing that the presence of Britain as a threat to the survival of the United States of America had helped to stifle the self-serving ambitions of generations of Americans up through the 1820s, of course, Abraham Lincoln also argued in his speech to the Young Men’s Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois in January of 1838 that the Founders had likewise operated as a kind of socio-political binding agent throughout the first several decades of the existence of the American republic. Granted, he did not express himself in those exact terms. He did not say that Americans largely behaved themselves during the late 18th and early 19th centuries because they were either inspired by the example which the Founders collectively set or anxious of incurring the disappointment of the same. But the expressions that he did deploy seemed to convey this basic sentiment. When seeking to exhort his audience to make absolute obedience of the law the civic religion of the American people, for example, Lincoln pointedly asked his countrymen to, “Swear by the blood of the Revolution never to violate in the least particular the laws of the country [.]” “As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of Independence,” he went on to say, “So to the support of the Constitution and laws let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor [.]” Clearly, Lincoln believed that such an invocation would have a demonstrable effect. Clearly, he believed that the Founders existed in the shared imagination of the American people as a kind of morally positive – one might even say sacred – force to which subsequent generations ought to hold themselves in comparison.
Just so, when later lamenting the fact that the living memory of the Founders and the Revolution had, by the late 1830s, almost completely faded away, Lincoln spoke of the generation in question in the most reverent tones imaginable. He hoped, he said, that the scenes of the Revolution, “Will be read of, and recounted, so long as the Bible shall be read [.]” He described the Founders themselves as having been, “Pillars of the temple of liberty [.]” And when recounting the process by which these luminaries had been made to grow dimmer with passing time, he did so by way of language calculated to rend the hearts and stir the passions of his audience. The Founders, he said, were, “A fortress of strength” and, “A Forest of giant oaks” who had since been swept away by, “The all-restless hurricane” of time. It was a tragedy, as Lincoln described it, that the Founders had passed from the earth. They had done so much for their countrymen, inspired so man, and with their loss was bound to come a great emptiness in the American soul. Lincoln’s self-appointed task was to find some way of filling this emptiness in such a way as to maintain the internal cohesion that the Founders had once affected. But were the Founders as righteous as he claimed? Had their influence always been so uniformly positive? Had their behavior always been something to which their countrymen should aspire?
The answer to all of these questions, quite frankly, is no. It may well have been the case – indeed, it absolutely was the case – that by the late 1830s the Founders had achieved a level of cultural sanctification not at all unlike that which they enjoy here at the beginning of the 21st century. But this was very much in spite of the fact that the Founders themselves were, fundamentally, a group of human beings about which absolutely nothing could be said to be sacred, pure, or holy. They were, as a group, fiercely intelligent, and their wisdom, prudence, and foresight were often second to none. Indeed, one might fairly wonder if any other collection of farmers, lawyers, soldiers, and merchants could have accomplished what they accomplished in manifesting and preserving the world’s first constitutional republic. But in addition to being, in the 1770s and 1780s, some of the most impressive statesmen that mankind had ever seen, they were also, in the 1790s and 1800s, some of the most petty, self-serving, and opportunistic politicians that one is like to imagine. They bickered, to be sure, amongst themselves during the Revolution and its immediate aftermath. They disagreed over military strategy and diplomatic strategy, finance and logistics, the form their governments should take and where authority should be deposited within them. The whole saga of the Constitution, in fact, was one series of quarrels after another, from the Philadelphia Convention to the ratification debates to the final passage of the Bill of Rights. But none of these disputes came anywhere close in terms of their bitterness to those which characterized the two decades following the creation of the modern federal government in 1789. And nowhere else were the Founders’ sense of pride and their ambition even plainer.
Consider, by way of example, what is probably the most famous incident from the presidency of John Adams, the passage and signing of the Alien and Sedition Acts (1798). The legislation in question were initially proposed by the Federalists who then controlled both houses of Congress in response to repeated conflicts between the United States of America and the revolutionary French Republic. In reaction to the adamant refusal of the Washington administration to intervene in on France’s behalf in its ongoing war with Great Britain and the negotiation of a major diplomatic agreement between American and British authorities – i.e., the Jay Treaty (1795) – the government of the French Republic more or less came to the conclusion by the end of the 1790s that the United States had decided to take up the role of Britain’s junior partner. French privateers had been forbidden from taking refuge in American ports, American citizens had been forbidden from enlisting to fight in the French military, and previously flagging trade relations between the American republic and Great Britain had been shored up and reinforced. What more could the French do, under these kinds of circumstances, but treat the United States like the enemy that they had made themselves? American merchant vessels bound for Britain accordingly found themselves targeted by the navy of the French Republic, the end result of which was that the incoming administration found itself in a rather awkward position upon the inauguration of John Adams in the spring of 1797.
The American people, for the most part,
were supportive of the French Revolution, and wished for nothing less than a
renewal of the Franco-American alliance that had served them so well during the
late Revolutionary War. But while the opposition Democratic-Republicans – led
by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison – were likewise sympathetic to France,
the Federalists – of which Adams was the nominal leader – were ardently opposed
to any American involvement in the wars then raging in Europe. This changed
somewhat as French attacks on American shipping intensified, but Adams at the
very least remained devoted to pursing a path of peace. The United States, he
feared, would not survive a sustained conflict with any of the European
empires, and those who claimed otherwise did so from a place of determined
ignorance. As the Federalists became increasingly embittered towards the
French, however, and the Republicans increasingly suspicious of Federalist
intentions, Adams at long last attempted to strike a compromise. In a speech
delivered to a joint session of Congress in May of 1797, he announced a two-pronged
policy by which a peace commission would be dispatched to France for the
purpose of restoring relations between the French and American republics at the
same time that measures would be taken to increase the nation’s defensive
capabilities. The Federalists were pleased enough by this, seeing in the
military buildup Adams had promised almost exactly the response which they had
been demanding, but the Democratic-Republicans were furious. Not only had Adams
failed to express his support for the French Republic – an act which they felt
should have been a given – but he seemed to be putting the United States on a
footing for war with France. Yes, he had promised to send a peace delegation to
Paris, but what of it? Surely, they would not negotiate in good faith. Surely,
they would be instructed by Adams to engineer their own failure so as to
validate an aggressive response. What more could one expect from an
administration that had determined from the start to form an alliance with a
former enemy of the United States and make war on a former ally?
Adams’ peace mission, it turned out, wasn’t
just for show. On the contrary, their efforts soon proved to be exceedingly
consequential. The three commissioners – John Marshall (1755-1835), Charles
Cotesworth Pinckney (1746-1825), and Elbridge Gerry (1744-1814) – arrived in
Paris in October of 1797, at which time they were met with a rather brusque
response. Having first been kept waiting for several days after requesting an
audience with a representative of the French government, they were finally met
– for all of fifteen minutes – by the sitting foreign minister, a man named
Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754-1838). Rather than open
negotiations then and there, however, Talleyrand instructed the Americans to instead
meet at some later date with three of his hand-picked agents. When this second
meeting took place, Talleyrand’s adjutants at last made clear what it was the
new French government expected. By way of apology for the provocative words and
actions of President Adams, the American commissioners were told, the United
States would be required to pay a series of indemnities before any kind of
agreement could even be discussed. One of these payments would go to Talleyrand
himself, another would be directed to the French Republic as a whole.
Unsurprisingly, the Americans refused to proceed on such terms. Marshall and
Pinkney returned home immediately while Gerry remained in France, though with
little hope of making any kind of progress.
While the peace delegates obviously did
nothing at all to alleviate the tensions which were then daily mounting between
the United States and the French Republic, news of their treatment – once it
was finally made public in the spring of 1798 – more or less overturned
American public opinion and swung the balance of power firmly towards the
Federalists. President Adams, for his part, had wished to avoid such an
outcome. Conscious of the effect which France’s extortionate behavior would
have on the already deeply suspicious Federalists, he initially did no more
than announce that the attempt at negotiations had failed. Neither the
Democratic-Republicans nor the Federalists, however, were satisfied by this
explanation. The former believed that Adams was hiding information which cast
the French in a positive light and demanded that he release a full account of
the American commissioners’ actions in Paris. The latter, meanwhile, having
heard rumors of what had actually transpired in France, were only too eager for
the intransigent behavior of the French Republic to be made clear. Pressed from
both sides, Adams accordingly had no choice but to release the relevant
dispatches. The result, among other things, was a massive shift in public
opinion away from support for the French Republic and towards a war with the
same. The Federalists claimed validation and demanded an even larger military
buildup. The Democratic-Republicans, in the words of First Lady Abigail Adams
(1744-1818), were, meanwhile “struck dumb” and reduced to casting about for
some way to blame France’s insulting behavior on the President’s belligerent
attitude. This failed, unsurprisingly, and distrust of France became
widespread.
The Democratic-Republicans naturally refused
to abandon their previous position – notwithstanding the behavior of Talleyrand
and his agents – and consequently fell prey to a campaign of Federalist
fearmongering. Specifically, they and their supporters were accused of
conspiring with a foreign power to undermine American security and of using the
press to sow division and promote the dissolution of the American republic. In
Congress, these allegations took the form of a series of legislative proposals
intended to shore up the nation’s internal security and promote unity in the
face of what many in the Federalist orbit had come to believe was an inevitable
war with the French Republic. The result, within the span of about two weeks in
late spring and early summer of 1798, were four pieces of legislation which the
Federalists claimed were essential and Democratic-Republicans decried as
tyrannical. The Naturalization Act amended existing law to increase the “notice
time” immigrants had to wait between declaring their intent to become a citizen
and the beginning of the relevant legal process from three years to five and
the “residence time” they had to fulfill in order to finally become citizens
from five years to fourteen. The Alien Friends Act gave the President
unilateral authority to detain, imprison, or deport non-citizens who they
believed represented a threat to national security. The Alien Enemies Act gave
the President the same power over those inhabitants of the United States who
were citizens of a nation that was hostile to the same. And the Sedition Act made
it a federal offense to publish, “False, scandalous and malicious writing or
writings” that were critical of the national government. Collectively, these laws
were referred to as the Alien and Sedition Acts.
Some of these measures, it may fairly be
said in retrospect, represented little more than a vindictive, self-serving,
and paranoid attempt by the Federalists to secure their recent ascendency and
remove challenges to their power. Based mostly on the strength of their
rhetoric, the Democratic-Republicans had made significant inroads with a number
of immigrant communities over the course of the 1790s, the end result of which
was that most immigrants who attained citizens during that decade became either
supporters or members of the Democratic-Republican party. A natural side effect
of this development, of course, was that the Democratic-Republicans voter base
grew at a much more rapid pace during this era than that of the Federalists.
The emergence of certain policy issues could and did sometimes shift the
balance of power in favor of the latter notwithstanding their dwindling
percentage of support, but such developments were neither sustainable nor
dependable. Given enough time – and provided the naturalization laws remained
unchanged – the Democratic-Republicans would eventually swamp their Federalists
rivals. The Naturalization Act of 1798, while often spoken of in the same
context as the aforementioned Alien Acts and the Seditions Act, should
accordingly be thought of as part of a Federalist effort to blunt a much
broader trend. By slowing down the naturalization process, the Federalists doubtless
hoped to stunt the growth of Democratic-Republican support and buy themselves
more time to consolidate their hold on power.
The Alien Enemies Act and the Alien Friends
Act served a similar purpose, though they arguably spoke more to the present
crisis than the Naturalization Act did. The French government, the Federalists
avowed, was unabashed in its affection and support for Vice-President Thomas Jefferson
and made no secret of its displeasure at the news of his loss in the Election
of 1796. Bearing this in mind, it would not have constituted a wild flight of
imagination to suppose that if the French Republic sent its agents into the
United States of America for the purpose of gathering support for a renewed
Franco-American alliance, Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans would have made
for obvious allies. And what manner of mischief might this combination have
produced? Speeches? Pamphlets? Rallies? Insurrection? Some of these outcomes
were more likely than others, to be sure, but all of them – as far as the
Federalists were concerned – represented a potential threat to national unity.
And while it would have been difficult – though not impossible – to use
legislation to restrict the activities of American citizens, non-citizens were
comparatively vulnerable to coercive government action. The result, as
aforementioned, was the drafting and passage of such laws as would allow the
Adams administration to rob their Democratic-Republicans rivals of potential
allies in the form of foreign supporters. And if some of these foreign
supporters were American citizens-in-waiting? So much the better for the
Federalists, of course.
But while the Naturalization Act of 1798,
the Alien Enemies Act, and the Alien Friends Act were all bad laws –
permissible in a purely technical sense, but morally difficult to justify – the
Sedition Act was something else entirely. The restrictions which the act placed
upon American citizens were essentially twofold. First, it stated that,
If any persons shall unlawfully
combine or conspire together, with intent to oppose any measure or measures of
the government of the United States, which are or shall be directed by proper
authority, or to impede the operation of any law of the United States, or to
intimidate or prevent any person holding a place or office in or under the
government of the United States, from undertaking, performing or executing his
trust or duty; and if any person or persons, with intent as aforesaid, shall
counsel, advise or attempt to procure any insurrection, riot, unlawful
assembly, or combination, whether such conspiracy, threatening, counsel,
advice, or attempt shall have the proposed effect or not, he or they shall be
deemed guilty of a high misdemeanor, and on conviction, before any court of the
United States having jurisdiction thereof, shall be punished by a fine not
exceeding five thousand dollars, and by imprisonment during a term not less
than six months nor exceeding five years [.]
Section 2 of the
act then went on to state that,
If any person shall write, print,
utter or publish, or shall cause or procure to be written, printed, uttered or
published, or shall knowingly and willingly assist or aid in writing, printing,
uttering or publishing any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings
against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress of
the United States, or the President of the United States, with intent to
defame the said government, or either house of the said Congress, or the said
President, or to bring them, or either of them, into contempt or disrepute; or
to excite against them, or either or any of them, the hatred of the good people
of the United States, or to stir up sedition within the United States, or to
excite any unlawful combinations therein, for opposing or resisting any law of
the United States, or any act of the President of the United States, done in
pursuance of any such law, or of the powers in him vested
by the constitution of the United States, or to resist, oppose, or
defeat any such law or act, or to aid, encourage or abet any hostile designs of
any foreign nation against the United States, their people or government, then
such person, being thereof convicted before any court of the United States
having jurisdiction thereof, shall be punished by a fine not exceeding two
thousand dollars, and by imprisonment not exceeding two years.
The extent to which these represented wholly unjustifiable restrictions upon the behavior of American citizens should be patently obvious. Notwithstanding the linguistic vagaries peppered throughout – i.e., what does it mean to “unlawfully combine?” How does one define “intent to procure insurrection?” What makes a piece of writing “malicious?” Who are “the good people of the United States?” – the basic premise of the act was blatantly unconstitutional. As stated in the text of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution – approved by Congress in 1789 and ratified by the requisite number of states in 1791 – “Congress shall make no law […] abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” What more could be said of the Sedition Act than that it abridged the freedom of speech and of the press? That it prohibited the American people from being able to peaceably assemble, or to petition the government for a redress of grievances? How could there be a free press if publishers were banned from printing anything that could be construed as being “Against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States [?]” How were people supposed to organized themselves for the purpose of petitioning for a redress of grievances if they could be prosecuted for claiming, “To oppose any measure or measures of the government of the United States, which are or shall be directed by proper authority [?]” The implications of these measures were not slight, narrow, or of limited effect. On the contrary, they entailed the abrogation of rights otherwise guaranteed to the American people by the text of the Constitution. Congress did not – does not – have this power and should not have acted as though it did. And yet, for a time, the Sedition Act was law.
Granted, not many people were ultimately convicted under the terms of the legislation in question, and those that were received relatively light sentences. James Callender (1758-1803), a British editorialist who had written a book in which he described President Adams as a “Repulsive pedant, a gross hypocrite and an unprincipled oppressor [,]” was fined $200 and sentenced to nine months in prison. Matthew Lyon (1749-1822), an Irish immigrant and Continental Army veteran who had been elected to represent Vermont in the House, was fined $1000 dollars and sentenced to four months in prison for writing an essay for the Vermont Journal in which he accused the Adams administration of, “Ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation, and selfish avarice.” And David Brown (1740-1812), another former member of the Continental Army from Dedham, Massachusetts, was fined $480 and sentenced to eighteen months in prison – the longest of any of the imprisonments handed down – after he participated in a local protest against the Adams administration, plead guilty of sedition, and then refused to name any accomplices. These individuals suffered, to be sure; some of them fairly substantially. But the damage done to their lives and livelihoods was not the most troubling aspect of the passage of the Sedition Act. It was that a group of men, many of whom had but recently risked their lives in order to secure the liberties of the American people, then determined to arbitrarily suspend some of those liberties in the name of national security.
Consider, to that end, the names and
experiences of some of the Federalists involved in the formulation and passage
of the Sedition Act. There was John Adams, of course, who, as President, signed
the bill into law. By all accounts, though Adams was a famously prideful man
who was quick to take offense, he was not particularly supportive of the
prospect of punishing his fellow citizens for simply speaking their minds. That
said, he did decline to exercise his veto. The Federalists, circa 1798, held a
supermajority in the Senate but not in the House, meaning that an Adams veto of
the Sedition Act could not have been overturned. That Adams nevertheless made
the choice to sustain the legislation in question notwithstanding his personal
feelings on the matter would accordingly seem to say something about the
political calculus to which he felt beholden. He may not have felt that the
Sedition Act was strictly appropriate, but he seemed to feel to an even greater
extent the danger in bucking the party in whose hands lay his political future.
He was most certainly the Federalists’ preferred candidate for 1800, but under
the influence of a man like Alexander Hamilton they would surely have dropped
him if they felt he’d become a liability. Adams’ actions, therefore, were
categorically self-serving. He did not like that he was being asked to sign
into law a piece of legislation which purported to make the expression of
certain opinions a federal offense, but he did it anyway, almost certainly
because he feared that to do otherwise would spell the end of his political
career.
The Federalists who then controlled
Congress, while perhaps less concerned with the moral implications of the terms
of the Sedition Act, were nevertheless moved by much the same rationale as
President Adams. Namely, they were intent on preserving the power which they
had but recently been granted. And who were these men? Well, there was the
Speaker of the House, one Johnathan Dayton (1760-1824), without whose
cooperation the Sedition Act would surely not have been passed. A native of New
Jersey, Dayton began his service with the Continental Army in 1775 at the
tender age of fifteen, fought under Washington at Brandywine and Germantown,
suffered the brutal winter of 1777/78 at Valley Forge, was captured by
Loyalists in 1780, and was released in time to take part on the climactic
Battle of Yorktown in 1781. He thereafter studied the law, represented New
Jersey in the Continental Congress and at the Philadelphia Convention, and was
elected to the House of Representatives in 1789. Dayton was, in short,
everything that subsequent generations of American expected a Founder to be. He
had fought, and bled, and served, and debated, all for the cause of liberty and
justice. He understood firsthand that freedom was a precious thing which one
must be willing to die to defend and had personally helped to define the
Constitution which he later swore to uphold as a Congressman. In spite of these
qualifications, however, Dayton worked to undermine some of the liberties for
which he had so long fought and labored when he oversaw the passage of the
Sedition Act in the House. And for what? The perpetuation of Federalist power?
The continuation of his term as Speaker? Founders were supposed to be better
than that.
Many of Dayton’s fellow Federalists in
Congress were possessed of similar resumes. Theodore Sedgewick (1746-1813) of
Massachusetts had participated in the Quebec Expedition (1775), fought at White
Plains (1776), served in the Continental Congress and the Massachusetts General
Court, and famously sued for the freedom of an enslaved woman latter called
Elizabeth Freeman (1744-1829) before the Massachusetts Supreme Court in 1781.
Philip Schuyler (1733-1804), perhaps most famous as the father-in-law of the
aforementioned Alexander Hamilton, was one of the first major generals in the
Continental Army, helped plan the Invasion of Quebec, was nearly kidnapped by
the British in 1781, and was previously a long-serving member of the New York
State Senate. South Carolina’s Thomas Pinkney (1750-1828) joined the
Continental Army almost immediately upon concluding his legal education in
Britain in 1775, became an aide-de-camp to General Horatio Gates, was captured
at Camden in 1780, and served as America’s Minister to Great Britain between
1792 and 1796. And Virginia’s Daniel Morgan (1735-1802) was one of the most
respected commanders of the entire Revolutionary War, being a veteran of the
Quebec Expedition, Saratoga (1777), and Cowpens (1781). These were not men for
whom the concept of freedom was an abstract thing to be bandied about in salons
while passing the time of day. They had fought, and suffered, and served so
that they and their countrymen could enjoy those liberties to which they knew
they were entitled. They were Founders, surely, if the label has any meaning.
And they were also the ones who voted in favor of the Sedition Act; voted in
favor of abrogating the liberties of those with whom they disagreed
politically. It was, unequivocally, a shameful and self-serving thing to do,
and one which no record of prior service – however sterling – could ever
possibly excuse.
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