History of Journalism in the United States/Chapter 13

by George Henry Payne

CHAPTER XIII

ADAMS AND THE ALIEN AND SEDITION LAWS

Attitude of the new President—The control of the press—Oppressive laws—Severity of penalties provided for violation — The President's responsibility—Trial of Duane—Dr. Thomas Cooper—His Defense—Duane's later history—The Boston Chronicle indicted—Laws defended by Oliver Wolcott.

Having followed the career of John Adams in the pre-Revolutionary days, when, with Sam Adams, he made the Boston Gazette the official organ of the patriots, the student of journalism might well expect that his administration of the office of President of the United States would be marked with a distinctive course in the matter of the Fourth Estate. And so it was, for in the second year of his term there were passed laws, intended to shackle the press and oppress the editors, that aroused a spirit of indignation that contributed not only to his own downfall but to the extinction of his party.

To understand the character of Adams, we must recall that, even at the time when the Massachusetts Spy and the Boston Gazette were vigorously fighting in the cause of the Revolutionists, he was not the exponent of an entirely unshackled press. In one of his interesting and most illuminating letters, written at that time to his wife, he declared that it was a pity that the papers were not more guided and controlled. Even then he overlooked the fact that the fight for independence was a fight against that very guidance and control, the absence of which he lamented. In this casual expression one sees the germ of the Alien and Sedition Laws which brought about his downfall.

It has been said in his defense—in fact, it was said by Adams himself—that these notorious laws originated not with him but with Hamilton and his friends. However true this may be, they could never have been the laws of the land, had it not been for Adams. The fact is that this famous legislation grew out of the failure of Adams and other Federalists to properly understand public sentiment.

The exposure of the famous X. Y. Z. dispatches, showing an attempt on the part of Talleyrand and his friends in Paris to hold up the ambassador of this government for money, brought to Adams and the Federalists strong popular support in 1798, and turned national sympathy away from the French party. Republicanism was at its ebb; New England was carried in phalanx by the Federal Americans, as they called themselves, and John Jay was re-elected governor of New York by more than 2,000 votes over Livingston. Newspapers that had been neutral began to support the administration, while the Aurora and other strong Republican papers suffered heavily in circulation.^[1]

For a brief time Adams was the hero of the hour. It was then, in what now seems a moment of madness, that the Federalist leaders conceived the Alien and Sedition acts—aimed, because of the unpopularity of France, against French ideas, and particularly at "Popular Liberty and free speech."^[2]

Jefferson, from the vantage ground of the Vice-presidency, was closely watching his opponents in their hour of triumph. To Madison he sent word that this onslaught on the principles he held dear was about to occur.

"One of the war party," he wrote, "in a fit of unguarded passion, declared some time ago that they would pass the Citizens' Bill, the Alien Bill and a Sedition Bill. Accordingly, some days ago Cort laid a motion on the table of the House of Representatives for modifying the Citizen Law. Other threats pointed at Gallatin, and it is believed they will endeavor to reach him by this bill. Yesterday, Hillhouse laid on the table of the Senate a motion for giving power to send away suspected aliens. . . . There is now only wanting to accomplish the whole declaration before mentioned, the Sedition bill, which we shall certainly soon see proposed. The object of that is the suppression of the Whig press. Bache has been particularly named."

The Alien act, which has been characterized as "without parallel in American legislation," permitted the President to order out of the country all such aliens as he should deem "dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States." Any alien who was found in the country after receiving such an order was liable to imprisonment for three years.

The Sedition act of July 14, 1798, made it a high misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of $5,000 and five years imprisonment, for persons to unlawfully combine or conspire against the government, or to write, print, publish or quote any false scandal or scurrilous writings against the government of the United States, the President or either House of Congress. Through the efforts of Bayard, a Federalist at that, an amendment was added, amending the common law of libel by permitting the truth of the matter contained in the publication to be given in evidence as a good defense. It will be recalled that this contention, revolutionary in law, was first made in this country by Andrew Hamilton at the trial of John Peter Zenger. But at the time that this amendment was put on the books of the United States Government, it was accepted in only two states, and it was not until after Alexander Hamilton's own great defense of Harry Croswell, as we shall see later, that, by enactment of the Legislature, such a defense was made possible in the State of New York.

The historian Schouler calls attention to the fact that the Alien and Sedition acts, "born in a single session," were not passed in the midst of fierce revolution nor while the country was in any great danger. The lawmakers were animated, unquestionably, by a spirit of revenge and a desire to suppress and intimidate those newspapers and writers who had in the past subjected them to forceful, vigorous criticism.^[3]

It is true that the press tended toward coarseness and sometimes indecency, but the Jefifersonian press had no monopoly of either. In fact, no one then writing could compare with Cobbett in either bitterness or vulgarity. There is no doubt that many of the leading editors had been exiled from foreign countries, and the scurrility with which they handled one another was such that at the seat of government "hardly a week passed without a scuffle in which one at least of the leading editors was concerned."^[4]

What particularly enraged the Republicans when the laws were passed, was the fact that the juries summoned by the marshal were all Federalists, and only Federalists were selected to try those who were indicted. Ten Republican editors and printers were tried and convicted under the Sedition act, and many others were tried but not convicted.^[5]

It is stated, and doubtless the statement is true, that " Mr. Adams' participation respective to the Alien and Sedition laws was confined to his official act of signature."^[6] But this in no way excuses him, for by his very signature he made the acts his own. Had his previous utterances been of a more democratic nature, it would not have been possible to have fastened on him the odium for this political mistake. Moreover, his active interest in prosecutions under the Alien and Sedition acts shows that he welcomed this unpopular legislation. It was to him that Pickering, the Secretary of State, gave a thoroughly Federalist description of Duane.

"The editor of the Aurora, William Duane," he wrote to the President, "pretends that he is an American Citizen, saying that he was born in Vermont, but was, when a child, taken back with his parents to Ireland, where he was educated. But I understand the facts to be, that he went from America prior to our revolution, remaining in the British dominions till after the peace, went to the British East Indies, where he committed or was charged with some crime, and returned to Great Britain, from whence, within three or four years past, he came to this country to stir up sedition and work other mischief. I presume, therefore, that he is really a British subject, and, as an alien, liable to be banished from the United States. He has lately set himself up to be the captain of a company of volunteers, whose distinguishing badges are a plume of cock-neck feathers and a small black cockade with a large eagle. He is doubtless a United Irishman, and the company is probably formed to oppose the thority of the government; and in case of war and invasion by the French, to join them."^[7]

"The matchless effrontery of this Duane," wrote back Adams in August, 1799, "merits the execution of the Alien Law. I am very willing to try its strength on him."^[8] This is hardly the temper of a guileless President being imposed on by the wicked Hamilton, as some of his biographers picture him.

Duane absorbed much of the attention of the distinguished President and his Secretary of State, all of which would go to show that they were as eager to prosecute under the Alien and Sedition Acts as any of the Federalist Congressmen had been to put them upon the books. In Duane's case Adams felt a particular interest, for he afterwards said that Bache and Duane had directed their criticism against him, not because of the principles he was identified with, but because he had, in his negotiations with France, antagonized Dr. Franklin, who had come to hate him.^[9]

Not even the presence of yellow fever, which was again severe in 1799, prevented the furious political war. To add to this, the passage of the Alien and Sedition Laws led to disorder, not only in Philadelphia but in othersections of the country. Duane, who had taken an active part in the endeavor to have petitions signed for the repeal of the laws, was indicted for seditious writings. Several months later he was set upon and beaten. Democrats gathered around the office of the Aurora, ready to fight those who had attacked Duane, if they returned. One Democrat visited the office of the younger Fenno, editor of the Gazette, and assaulted him.^[10]

Shortly after the trial of Duane, Dr. Thomas Cooper was arrested for criticism of the government under the provisions of the Sedition Law. It was alleged that he had libeled President Adams in an article published in the Sunbury and Northumberland Gazette, of which he was the editor.

One reads so much of the scurrility, vileness and indecency of the press in those days that it is but fair that one of these editors should be allowed to testify in his own defense. Cooper was found guilty. The famous, or rather infamous, Judge Chase, before sentencing him, questioned him as to his financial condition, declaring that he would be influenced by Cooper's ability to pay the fine himself, if the members of the political party with which the editor was associated were not pledged or willing to take up the burden.

"Sir," responded Cooper, "I solemnly aver, that throughout my life, here and elsewhere, among all the political questions in which I have been concerned, I have never so far demeaned myself as to be a party writer. I never was in the pay or under the support of any party; there is no party in this, or any other country, that can offer me a temptation to prostitute my pen. If there are any persons here who are acquainted with what I have published, they must feel and be satisfied that I have had higher and better motives than a party could suggest. I have written, to the best of my ability, what I seriously thought would conduce to the geneial good of mankind. The exertions of my talents, such as they are, have been unbought, and so they shall continue; they have indeed been paid for, but they have been paid for by myself, and by myself only, and sometimes dearly. The public is my debtor, and what I have paid or suffered for them, if my duty should again call upon me to write or act, I shall again most readily submit to. I do not pretend to have no party opinions, to have no predilection for particular descriptions of men or of measures; but I do not act upon minor considerations; I belong here, as in my former country, to the great party of mankind."

Duane, for whom Cooper was sponsor, has been very roundly abused, and unjustly so. This is understandable when it comes from contemporaries, or from a man like John Quincy Adams, whose father had suffered so much at Duane's hands; it is not quite so understandable when it comes from historians of this generation. Duane occupied a conspicuous and important place in American life, and it is not true, as one historian has said, that "his friendship (almost intimacy) and his loyalty to Jefferson, constituted his claim for recognition."^[11]

His latef history, like that of most of the early political editors, was unhappy. With the advent into power of Jefferson, Duane opened a store in Washington, in the hope of obtaining the government printing. Gallatin endorsed his application,^[12] and Jefferson himself promised to help him in the matter of purchasing supplies.^[13]

The various prosecutions under the Alien and Sedition Acts, together with the time he had spent in prison, had reduced his business considerably. In a letter to President Madison he recounted that, in addition to his own family, he had taken care of the progeny of the descendants of Benjamin Franklin. But through all his applications for assistance, he showed himself to be independent, and more deeply interested in the cause of the party with which he was associated than in his own personal affairs.

Later in his life his son, William J. Duane, began to take interest in politics, and became a member of Jackson's cabinet. But the correspondence of the elder Duane reveals him, in November, 1824, broken down, and complaining that he had been unable to borrow any money.

One of the papers that fought the Alien and Sedition acts openly and with vigor was the sturdy old Independent Chronicle of Boston. When the laws were enacted, the Legislature of Virginia passed resolutions denying their constitutionality, and sent copies of their resolutions to all the Legislatures. Massachusetts, however, took the side of the President, and passed a resolution upholding the laws and condemning the Virginia resolutions. The Chronicle protested against the point of view, held by the Massachusetts Legislature, that denied to any of the states the right "to decide" on the constitutionality of the acts of Congress.

"As it is difficult for common capacities to conceive of a sovereignty," the paper declared,^[14] "so situated that the sovereign shall have no right to decide on any invasion of his constitutional powers, it is hoped for the convenience of those tender consciences who may hereafter be called upon to swear allegiance to the State, that some gentlemen skilled in Federal logic will show how the oath of allegiance is to be understood, that every man may be so guarded and informed as not to invite the Deity to witness a falsehood."

This, and a paragraph in praise of the legislators who had favored the Virginia resolution, led to the indictment of Abijah Adams, the bookkeeper of the paper, as Thomas Adams, the editor, was sick in bed, and the authorities had instructions to indict some one. Abijah was sentenced to thirty days in jail, whereupon the paper scoffingly announced that, although the bookkeeper was in jail and the editor on his back, the cause of liberty would still be upheld.

Another victim of the displeasure of the administration was Matthew Lyon, by some described as the "Wild Irishman," by others regarded as one of the sturdiest of American patriots. He was in the army that captured Burgoyne, and when peace was restored set up a sawmill, a paper-mill and a printing press near the foot of Lake Champlain, and in 1793, published a small newspaper which he at first called The Farmers' Library and later changed to the Fairhaven Gazette. He was elected to Congress, and distinguished himself in the House of Representatives by declining to march to the President's house to make the usual formal call of respect.

Lyon was one of the first of those brought to trial under the Sedition law. He had addressed a letter to the editor of the Vermont Journal in reply to an attack on his own course in Congress, and it was this letter that led to his indictment. The principal count was founded on the following passage, which reads very mildly to a later generation:

"As to the Executive, when I shall see the efforts of that power bent on the promotion of the comfort, the happiness, and the accommodation of the people, that Executive shall have my zealous and uniform support. But whenever I shall, on the part of the Executive, see every consideration of public welfare swallowed up in a continual grasp for power, in an unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation, or selfish avarice; when I shall behold men of real merit daily turned out of office, for no other cause but independency of spirit; when I shall see men of firmness, merit, years, abilities and experience, discarded, in their application for ofBce, for fear they possess that independence, and men of meanness preferred, for the ease with which they can take up and advocate opinions, the consequences of which they know but little of; when I shall see the sacred name of religion employed as a state engine to make mankind hate and persecute each other, I shall not be their humble servant."

He was tried by a judge distinguished for his vigorous Federal temper, and conducted his own defense, alleging that the articles complained of had been printed before the law was passed. He was convicted, however, and sentenced to four months imprisonment, "and to pay a fine of $1,000 with costs of persecution (sic) taxed at $60.96."^[15]

As the Federal marshal might lodge him iii any jail in the state, Lyon was taken to Vergennes. The use of writing materials was denied him and he was informed that, despite the severe cold of October and November, he would have to buy his own stove if he wished to heat his cell. His friends offered to give bail to the amount of one hundred thousand dollars, but this was refused. While he was in jail he was reelected to Congress.

His revenge was sweet, for it is said that it was by his vote that Jefferson was made President of the United States in 1801. He went to Kentucky in the same year and represented that state in Congress from 1803 to 1811. During the war of 1812 he ruined himself, financially, in building gunboats for the government.

It will be seen that they were rather sturdy characters that the misguided Federalists sought to punish.

Hamilton himself appears but once as prosecutor un der the laws that he was charged with having inspired. Greenleaf's Daily Advertiser had been changed to the Argus and was then edited by David Frothingham; it was, as it had been during the administration of Washington, bitterly anti-Federalist. A paragraph appeared in this paper to the effect that Mrs. Bache had been offered "six thousand dollars down" to suppress the Aurora, but that the indignant widow had refused, declaring that she would never dishonor thus the memory of her husband, "nor her children's future fame by such baseness; when she parted with the paper it should be to Republicans only." Hamilton was named as the person back of the offer.

The day after this was printed Hamilton had Frothingham indicted and, despite the fact that it was shown that he had copied the paragraph from another paper, he was found guilty, fined $100, and sentenced to four months imprisonment.

By the Jefferson party the direct charge was made that the laws were an attempt to punish those who either sympathized with France or were in communication with French patriots, or, to be still more general, those who had attacked the Federalist administration.

The defense of the Federalists showed their failure to understand the seriousness of their transgression against modern political theory; the lack of understanding is nowhere better shown than in the defense, of the Sedition Laws by Oliver Wolcott, Secretary of the Treasury under Washington and Adams. The fact that censorship of the press had, in the past, been tolerated and encouraged, gave them, as they believed, a historic justification for the violation of popular rights.

"Those to whom the management of public affairs is now confided," concluded Wolcott, "cannot be justified in yielding any established principles of law or government to the suggestion of modern theory."^[16]

Even Washington, in a letter to Alexander Spotswood, said that it was time that the country had laws against those aliens who wrote and spoke "for the express purpose of poisoning the minds of our people."^[17]

Unfortunately for Wolcott and Adams and the other Federalists, the "modern theory "was ensconced more firmly by the attempt to check it than by any other measure since the similar endeavor on the part of George the Third.

But the political insanity of the Federalists did not end with these attacks on the press and on aliens, which added large forces to those who already believed that a tenet of the Federalist faith was the belief that "there ought to be in America only two sorts of people: one very rich, the other very poor."^[18] Fisher Ames expressed the bitterness of the Federalists when he wrote in 1803: "Democracy cannot last." Dennie, the editor of the Portfolio, declared: "A Democracy is scarcely tolerable at any period of national history,"^[19] and this paragraph was reprinted by the Federalist papers.

As if this were not sufficient handicap for a party about to go to the people for a verdict, the leaders quarreled openly among themselves. Hamilton administered the final coup de grace to Adams. A few weeks before the election in 1800 he devoted himself to penning a severe attack on the President, though whether he intended that it should be public property before the election is a question. In any case, Aaron Burr, of all persons, succeeded in getting copies of the sheets of Hamilton's composition as they were set up by the printer, and scattered them through the anti-Federalist press. In the last week of October the pamphlet itself was released and made certain the defeat of Adams and the election of Thomas Jefferson. William Duane, writing to his friend, General Collot, who had been driven to the other side of the Atlantic by the Alien Law, said: "This pamphlet has done more mischief to the parties concerned than all the labors of the Aurora."

The anomaly of Hamilton's using Burr, the man by whom he was afterward killed, to bring about the elevation to the presidency of his bitterest enemy, Jefferson, is not more strange than the manner in which John Adams passed out of political life. One would have expected from the glorious associate of Sam Adams, the man who urged Edes and Gill to hold fast and not be swayed from the true path of patriotic printers, that he would have sensed the folly of the course on which he had embarked. That it was Hamilton, the brilliant editorial writer and manager, who administered to him the final stroke, shows how uncertain and temperamental were the ties. But one leaves the second president with the feeling that he was a lovable old blunderer, and a fine, God-given American, the very best of that great New England stock.

1. Schouler, History of the United States, i, 400.
2. Ibid, 404.
3. History of the United States, i, 411.
4. Wharton, State Trials, 23.
5. Bassett, Federalist System, 264.
6. Works of John Adams, i, 562.
7. Works of John Adams, ix, 4.
8. Ibid, ix, 5.
9. Ibid, ix, 619.
10. Scharf and Westcott, History of Philadelphia, i, 497.
11. Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, xx; second series, 257.
12. Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, xx, second series, 258.
13. Historical Magasine, iv, 63.
14. February 18, 1799.
15. White, Life and Service of Matthew Lyon, 19.
16. Gibbs, Memoirs of Administrations of Washington and John Adams, ii, 85.
17. Writings of George Washington, ii, 345.
18. Pellew, Life of John Jay, 275.
19. Adams, History of the United States, i, 85.