Alien and Sedition Acts
The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 were a set of four United States statutes that sought, on national security grounds, to restrict immigration and limit 1st Amendment protections for freedom of speech. They were endorsed by the Federalist Party of President John Adams as a response to a developing dispute with the French Republic and to related fears of domestic political subversion. The prosecution of journalists under the Sedition Act rallied public support for the opposition Democratic-Republicans, and contributed to their success in the elections of 1800. Under the new administration of Thomas Jefferson, only the Alien Enemies Act, granting the president powers of detention and deportation of foreigners in wartime or in face of a threatened invasion, remained in force.
| Act | Purpose | Status |
| Naturalization Act of 1798 | To increase the requirements to seek citizenship. | Repealed in 1802. |
| Alien Friends Act of 1798 | To allow the president to imprison and deport foreigners. | Expired in 1800. |
| Alien Enemies Act of 1798 | To give the president additional powers to detain foreigners during times of war, invasion, or predatory incursion. | Amended in 1918 to have gender-neutral applicability, currently codified at sections 4067 through 4070 of the Revised Statutes. |
| Sedition Act of 1798 | To criminalize false and/or malicious statements about the federal government. | Expired in 1800. |
After 1800, the surviving Alien Enemies Act was invoked three times during the course of a declared war: the War of 1812, and the First and Second World Wars. Of these three invocations, the Alien Enemies Act is best known as the legal authority behind the internment of German Americans during both World Wars, as well as internment of Italian Americans and, to a lesser extent, Japanese Americans during World War II. In March 2025, President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act as his authority for expediting deportation of foreigners; this invocation is subject to ongoing litigation.
History
After the American Revolutionary War concluded, France was unable to provide further loans; Congress could no longer pay its soldiers. In 1793, Congress unilaterally suspended repayment of French loans from the war, and in 1794 signed the Jay Treaty with Great Britain. France, engaged in the 1792 to 1797 War of the First Coalition, retaliated by having French privateers seize U.S. ships on both the Eastern Seaboard and the Caribbean.President John Adams sent envoys to Paris but was purportedly confronted with a demand by French foreign minister Talleyrand for a bribe as a condition for opening formal negotiations. The publication in the Philadelphia Aurora of Talleyrand's account of what became known as the XYZ Affair initiated the first attempted prosecution under the Sedition Act. Charged with seditious libel against Adams and his Federalist administration, the Aurora's publisher Benjamin Franklin Bache died in advance of his trial.
The unresolved dispute with France evolved into the Quasi-War fought almost entirely at sea, primarily in the Caribbean and off the East Coast of the United States. Believing that French military successes in Europe had been assisted by the broader appeal of French revolutionary ideals, the Adams administration proposed the Alien and Sedition acts as counter to what they presumed would be a French strategy of domestic subversion.
Protests occurred across the country, with critics denouncing the Acts as an encroachment of the federal executive upon the powers of Congress and the judiciary, and a violation of the First Amendment the right to free speech, primarily intended to suppress the Democratic-Republican opposition As campaign material for his 1800 United States presidential bid, Vice President Thomas Jefferson, secretly authored a Kentucky resolution, seconded by James Madison in the Virginia legislature, asserting the right of the states to nullify the Acts as unconstitutional.. Unless repealed, Jefferson suggested the legislation might drive states "into revolution and blood".
Alarmed, the Federalists accused the Democratic-Republicans of shielding the subversive activities of French and French-sympathizing immigrants. The Federalist pamphleteer William Cobbett accused Bache's successor at the Aurora, William Duane, of orchestrating a conspiracy among United Irish émigrés. Convening in Philadelphia's African Free School, and admitting, together with "all those who have suffered in the cause of freedom", free blacks, the Irish republicans had formed a society dedicated to the proposition that "a free form of government, and uncontrouled opinion on all subjects, the common rights of all the human species". Against the backdrop of the Quasi War and of the Haitian Revolution, for Cobbett, this was sufficient proof of an intention to organise slave revolts and "thus involve the whole country in rebellion and bloodshed". In protesting the Acts, Duane had argued, in letter to George Washington, for an entirely civic concept of American citizenship, one that might encompass "the Jew, the savage, the Mahometan, the idolator, upon all of whom the sun shines equally".
With President John Adams naming Duane as one of the three or four men most responsible for his defeat, Jefferson's Democratic-Republicans ticket triumphed in the elections of 1800. Upon assuming the presidency, Jefferson pardoned those still serving sentences under the Sedition Act, and the new Congress repaid their fines.
Of the four original acts, by 1802 only the Alien Enemies Act remained.
The Acts
Alien Friends Act
The Alien Friends Act authorized the president to deport any foreigner that was determined to be "dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States." Once a foreigner was determined to be dangerous, or was suspected of conspiring against the government, the president had the power to set a reasonable amount of time for departure, and remaining after the time limit could result to up to three years in prison. The law was never directly enforced, but it was often used in conjunction with the Sedition Act to suppress criticism of the Adams administration. Upon enactment, the Alien Friends Act was authorized for two years, and sunset thereafter. Democratic-Republicans opposed the law, with Thomas Jefferson referring to it as "a most detestable thing... worthy of the 8th or 9th century."While the law was not directly enforced, it resulted in the voluntary departure of foreigners who feared that they would be charged under the act. The Adams administration encouraged these departures, and Secretary of State Timothy Pickering would ensure that the ships were granted passage. Though Adams did not delegate the final decision-making power, Secretary Pickering was responsible for overseeing enforcement of the Alien Friends Act. Both Adams and Pickering considered the law too weak to be effective; Pickering expressed his desire for the law to require sureties and authorize detainment prior to deportation.
Many French nationals were considered for deportation but were allowed to leave willingly, or Adams declined to take action against them. These figures included: philosopher Constantin François de Chassebœuf, comte de Volney, General Victor Collot, scholar Médéric Louis Élie Moreau de Saint-Méry, diplomat Victor Marie du Pont. Secretary Pickering also proposed applying the act against the French diplomatic delegation to the United States, but Adams refused. Journalist John Daly Burk agreed to leave under the act informally to avoid being tried for sedition, but he went into hiding in Virginia until the act's expiration. Adams never signed a deportation order.
Alien Enemies Act
The Alien Enemies Act was passed to supplement the Alien Friends Act, granting the government additional powers to regulate the activity of foreigners in times of war or invasion. Under this law, the president could authorize the arrest, relocation, or deportation of any male over the age of 14 who hailed from a foreign enemy country. It also provided some legal protections for those subject to the law. Unlike the other acts, this act was largely unopposed by the Democratic-Republicans.The Alien Enemies Act did not contain a sunset clause and has sustained force and effect, codified as sections 4067 to 4070 of the Revised Statutes.
Naturalization Act
The Naturalization Act increased the residency requirement for American citizenship from five to 14 years and increased the notice time from three to five years. Although the law was passed under the guise of protecting national security, most historians conclude it was really intended to decrease the number of citizens, and thus voters, who disagreed with the Federalist Party. At the time, the majority of immigrants supported Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans—the political opponents of the Federalists. It did not sunset, but was repealed by the Naturalization Act of 1802.Sedition Act
The Federalist-controlled Congress passed the Sedition Act by a vote of 44 to 41. The legislation made it illegal to print "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."The act was used to suppress speech critical of the Adams administration, including the prosecution and conviction of many Jeffersonian newspaper owners who disagreed with the Federalist Party.
The Sedition Act did not extend enforcement to speech about the Vice President, as then-incumbent Thomas Jefferson was a political opponent of the Federalist-controlled Congress. The Sedition Act was allowed to expire in 1800, and its enactment is credited with helping Jefferson win the presidential election that year.
Prominent prosecutions under the Sedition Act included:
- Benjamin Franklin Bache, editor of the Philadelphia Aurora, a Democratic-Republican newspaper, was the first to be arrested under the Sedition Act. In 1798, he was charged with libelling President Adams whom he had accused of nepotism and monarchical ambition and against whom he had supported the French position in the XYZ affair. Released on bail, he died of yellow fever before trial.
- In 1799, William Duane, Bache successor at the Aurora, twice faced charges under the Sedition Act: for his purported instigation of a "United Irish riot" in Philadelphia, and for an editorial that intimated that Great Britain had used intrigue to exert its influence with the Adams administration. In both instances, the prosecution case collapsed.
- Matthew Lyon, a Democratic-Republican congressman from Vermont, was the first individual to contest charges under the Alien and Sedition Acts in court. He was indicted in 1800 for an essay he had written in the Vermont Journal, where he had accused the administration of "ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation, and selfish avarice." While awaiting trial, Lyon commenced publication of Lyon's Republican Magazine, subtitled "The Scourge of Aristocracy." At trial, he was fined $1,000, and sentenced to four months in jail. After his release, he returned to Congress.
- James T. Callender, a Scottish pamphleteer who had fled to the United States after becoming embroiled in controversy due to publishing an anti-war and anti-corruption tract. Living first in Philadelphia, then seeking refuge close by in Virginia, he wrote a book titled The Prospect Before Us, in which he called the Adams administration a "continual tempest of malignant passions," and referred to the President as a "repulsive pedant, a gross hypocrite, and an unprincipled oppressor." Callender, already residing in Virginia and writing for the Richmond Examiner, was indicted in mid-1800 under the Sedition Act, and was subsequently convicted, fined $200, and sentenced to nine months in jail.
- Anthony Haswell was an English immigrant, and a printer of the Jeffersonian Vermont Gazette. Sourced from the Philadelphia Aurora, Haswell had reprinted Bache's claim that the federal government employed Tories. Haswell also published an advertisement from Lyon's sons for a lottery to raise money for his fine that decried Lyon's oppression by jailers exercising "usurped powers". Haswell was found guilty of seditious libel by judge William Paterson, and sentenced to a two-month imprisonment and a $200 fine.
- Luther Baldwin was indicted, convicted, and fined $100 for a drunken incident that occurred during a visit by President Adams to Newark, New Jersey. Upon hearing a gun report during a parade, he yelled "I hope it hit Adams in the ."
- In November 1798, David Brown led a group in Dedham, Massachusetts, including Benjamin Fairbanks, in setting up a liberty pole with the words, "No Stamp Act, No Sedition Act, No Alien Bills, No Land Tax, downfall to the Tyrants of America; peace and retirement to the President; Long Live the Vice President." Brown was arrested in Andover, Massachusetts, but because he could not afford the $4,000 bail, he was taken to Salem for trial. Brown was tried in June 1799. Brown pleaded guilty, but Justice Samuel Chase asked him to name others who had assisted him. Brown refused, was fined $480, and sentenced to eighteen months in prison, the most severe sentence imposed under the Sedition Act.