A School History of the United States

by John Bach McMaster

For five years past the Republican newspapers had been abusing Washington, Adams, the acts of Congress, the members of Congress, and the whole foreign policy of the Federalists. The Federalist newspapers, of course, had retaliated and had been just as abusive of the Republicans. But as the Federalists now had the power, they determined to punish the Republicans for their abuse, and passed the Sedition Act. This provided that any man who acted seditiously (that is, interfered with the execution of a law of Congress) or spoke or wrote seditiously (that is, abused the President, or Congress, or any member of the Federal government) should be tried, and if found guilty, be fined and imprisoned. This law was used, and used vigorously, and Republican editors all over the country were fined and sometimes imprisoned.[1]

[Footnote 1: The Alien and Sedition acts are in Preston's Documents, pp. 277-282.]

%237. Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions.%—The passage of these Alien and Sedition laws greatly excited the Republicans, and led Jefferson to use his influence to have them condemned by the states. For this purpose he wrote a set of resolutions and sent them to a friend in Kentucky who was to try to have the legislature adopt them.[2] Jefferson next asked Madison to write a like set of resolutions for the Virginia legislature to adopt. Madison became so interested that he gave up his seat in Congress and entered the Virginia legislature, and in December, 1798, induced it to adopt what have since been known as the Virginia Resolutions of 1798.

[Footnote 2: Kentucky had been admitted to the Union in 1792 (see p. 213).]

Meantime the legislature of Kentucky, November, 1798, had adopted the resolutions of Jefferson.[3]

[Footnote 3: E. D. Warfield's Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions. The Resolutions are printed in Preston's Documents, pp. 283-298; Jefferson's Works, Vol. IX., p. 494.]

Both sets declare 1. That the Constitution of the United States is a compact or contract. 2. That to this contract each state is a party; that is, the united states are equal partners in a great political firm. So far they agree; but at this point they differ. The Kentucky Resolutions assert that when any question arises as to the right of Congress to pass any law, each state may decide this question for itself and apply any remedy it likes. The Virginia Resolutions declare that the states may judge and apply the remedy.

Both declared that the Alien and Sedition laws were wholly unconstitutional. Seven states answered by declaring that the laws were constitutional, whereupon Kentucky in 1799 framed another set of resolutions in which she said that when a state thought a law to be illegal she had the right to nullify it; that is, forbid her citizens to obey it. This doctrine of nullification, as we shall see, afterwards became of very serious importance.[1]

[Footnote 1: The answers of the states are printed in Elliot's Debates, Vol. IV., pp. 532-539.]

%238. The Naval War with France.%—Meantime war opened with France. The Navy Department was created in April, 1798, and before the year ended, a gallant little navy of thirty-four frigates, corvettes, and gun sloops of war had been collected and sent with a host of privateers to scour the sea around the French West Indies, destroy French commerce, and capture French ships of war.[1] One of our frigates, the Constellation, Captain Thomas Truxton in command, captured the French frigate Insurgente, after a gallant fight. On another occasion, Truxton, in the Constellation, fought the Vengeance and would have taken her, but the Frenchman, finding he was getting much the worst of it, spread his sails and fled. Yet another of our frigates, the Boston, took the Berceau, whose flag is now in the Naval Institute Building at Annapolis. In six months the little American twelve-gun schooner Enterprise took eight French privateers, and recaptured and set free four American merchantmen. These and a hundred other actions just as gallant made good the patriotic words of John Adams, "that we are not a degraded people humiliated under a colonial spirit of fear and sense of inferiority." So impressed was France with this fact that the war had scarcely begun when the Directory meekly sent word that if another set of ministers came they would be received. They ought to have been told that they must send a mission to us. But Adams in this respect was weak, and in 1800, the Chief Justice, Oliver Ellsworth, William R. Davie, and William Vans Murray were sent to Paris. The Directory had then fallen from power, Napoleon was ruling France as First Consul, and with him in September, 1800, a convention was concluded.