But, he cries, "the vengeance of an oppressed and insulted people is almost as terrible as the wrath of Heaven"; and, like a true partisan, Curtius predicts that this is about to fall on Marshall. Why, he asks, is Marshall so vague on the constitutionality of the Alien and Sedition Laws?[892] "Notwithstanding the magnitude ... of your talents, you are ridiculously awkward in the arts of dissimulation and hypocrisy.... It is painful to attack ... a man whose talents are splendid and whose private character is amiable"; but "sacred duties ... to the cause of truth and liberty require it." Alas for Marshall! "You have lost forever," Curtius assures him, "the affection of a nation and the applause of a world. In vain will you pursue the thorny and rugged path that leads to fame."[893]
But while "monarchist," "aristocrat," "British agent," "enemy of free speech," "destroyer of trial by jury" were among the more moderate epithets that filled the air from Republican lips; and "anarchist," "Frenchman," "traitor," "foe of law and order," "hater of government" were the milder of the counter-blasts from the Federalists, all this was too general, scattered, and ineffective to suit the leader of the Republican Party. Jefferson saw that the growing popular rage against the Alien and Sedition Laws must be gathered into one or two concentrated thunderbolts and thus hurled at the heads of the already quaking Federalists.
How to do it was the question to which Jefferson searched for an answer. It came from the bravest, most consistent, most unselfish, as well as one of the very ablest of Republicans, John Taylor "of Caroline," Virginia. In a letter to Jefferson concerning the Alien and Sedition Laws, this eminent and disinterested radical suggested that "the right of the State governments to expound the constitution might possibly be made the basis of a movement towards its amendment. If this is insufficient the people in state conventions are incontrovertibly the contracting parties and, possessing the infringing rights, may proceed by orderly steps to attain the object."[894]
So was planted in Jefferson's mind the philosophy of secession. In that fertile and receptive soil it grew with magic rapidity and bore fatal fruit. Within two months after he received Taylor's letter, Jefferson wrote the historic resolutions which produced a situation that, a few years afterward, called forth Marshall's first great constitutional opinion, and, not many decades later, gave the battle-cry that rallied heroic thousands to armed resistance to the National Government.[895] On October 5, 1798, Nicholas writes Jefferson that he has delivered to "Mr. John Breckenridge a copy of the resolutions that you sent me."[896] They were passed by the Legislature of Kentucky on November 14, 1798; and the tremendous conflict between Nationality and States' Rights, which for so long had been preparing, at last was formally begun.[897] Jefferson's "Kentucky Resolutions" declared that parts of the Alien and Sedition Laws were "altogether void and of no effect."[898] Thus a State asserted the "right" of any or all States to annul and overthrow a National law.
As soon as Kentucky had acted, Jefferson thus writes Madison: "I enclose you a copy of the draught of the Kentucky resolves. I think we should distinctly affirm all the important principles they contain so as to hold that ground in future, and leave the matter in such a train as that we may not be committed absolutely to push the matter to extremities, & yet may be free to push as far as events will render prudent."[899]
Madison accordingly drew the resolutions adopted by the Legislature of Virginia, December 21, 1798. While declaring the Alien and Sedition Laws unconstitutional, the Virginia Resolutions merely appealed to the other States to "co-operate with this state in maintaining unimpaired the authority, rights, and liberties reserved to the states respectively or to the people."[900]
The Legislature promptly adopted them and would gladly have approved far stronger ones. "The leaders ... were determined upon the overthrow of the General Government; and if no other measure would effect it, that they would risk it upon the chance of war.... Some of them talked of 'seceding from the Union,'"[901] Iredell writes his wife: "The General Assembly of Virginia are pursuing steps which directly lead to a civil war; but there is a respectable minority struggling in defense of the General Government, and the Government itself is fully prepared for anything they can do, resolved, if necessary, to meet force with force."[902] Marshall declared that he "never saw such intemperance as existed in the V[irginia] Assembly."[903]
Following their defiant adoption of Madison's resolutions, the Republican majority of the Legislature issued a campaign pamphlet, also written by Madison,[904] under the form of an address to the people. The "guardians of State Sovereignty would be perfidious if they did not warn" the people "of encroachments which ... may" result in "usurped power"; the State Governments would be "precipitated into impotency and contempt" in case they yielded to such National laws as the Alien and Sedition Acts; if like "infractions of the Federal Compact" were repeated "until the people arose ... in the majesty of their strength," it was certain that "the way for a revolution would be prepared."
The Federalist pleas "to disregard usurpation until foreign danger shall have passed" was "an artifice which may be forever used," because those who wished National power extended "can ever create national embarrassments to soothe the people to sleep whilst that power is swelling, silently, secretly and fatally."
Such was the Sedition Act which "commits the sacrilege of arresting reason; ... punishes without trial; ... bestows on the President despotic powers ... which was never expected by the early friends of the Constitution." But now "Federal authority is deduced by implication" by which "the states will be stript of every right reserved." Such "tremendous pretensions ... inflict a death wound on the Sovereignty of the States." Thus wrote the same Madison who had declared that nothing short of a veto by the National Government on "any and every act of the states" would suffice. There was, said Madison's campaign document, no "specified power" in the National Government "embracing a right against freedom of the press"—that was a "constitutional" prerogative of the States.