Looking Back or Forward?

By Deacon Mike Manno

(The Wanderer) – The beginning of a New Year is most often thought of as a time to look forward, make resolutions, and imagine a future sans the troubles of the past. I want to take a different tack and look back a bit, so if you will indulge me, let’s step on board the Wayback Machine with Mr. Peabody and Sherman and visit the early days of our Republic when a man named John Adams was the first president to sit in the White House — or as it was known then, the Executive Mansion.

Mr. Adams belonged to the Federalist Party which, for the time involved here, also controlled the Congress. The opposition party, the Republicans, the forerunner of today’s Democratic Party, was led by the man who succeeded Mr. Adams into the White House, Thomas Jefferson — maybe you heard of him?

Anyway that’s all you need right now to set the stage as the Wayback Machine reaches its destination.

In the spring of 1798 it appeared to the Federalist administration and Congress that war with France was imminent and it passed four “wartime” measures to curb seditious language and to deport “troublesome” aliens. Thus was born the Alien and Sedition Acts.

The first three dealt with aliens; one extended the time for naturalization, the second gave the president the power to deport or imprison “dangerous” aliens; and the third empowered the president to restrict, jail, or deport any enemy alien.

The more troubling act was the Sedition Act which prohibited the decimation of “false, scandalous, and malicious” statements “against the government of the United States, or either House of Congress, with intent to defame … or to bring them … into contempt or disrepute.” Violators convicted of such “disinformation” could face up to two years in prison and a fine of up to $2,000.

All four acts were scheduled to terminate at the end of Adam’s term, March 4, 1801.

One provision in the Act which was insisted upon by Federalist leader Alexander Hamilton, allowed those charged with sedition to plead the truth of their statements, a legal defense that was not recognized in common law and ultimately did not survive the Act’s expiration.

This began a series of prosecutions under the Act and under the common law of seditious libel. Prosecutions under the Act resulted in 25 arrests, 15 indictments, and 10 convictions. Under the common law prosecutions there were a number of additional convictions, eight involving newspapers.

Some of the cases were serious and some not-so serious. A few examples:

Matthew Lyon, a Vermont publisher and sitting member of Congress, was charged under the Sedition Act, not for what he published, but for a letter he wrote that was published by another newspaper which was critical of the president. He was imprisoned for four months and fined $1,000. Interestingly, he was re-elected to Congress while in prison and later elected to Congress from Kentucky, and still later was elected a Congressional delegate from the territory of Arkansas.

Anthony Haswell, editor of the Vermont Gazette, was arrested for negative comments made about the Federalist Party while trying to raise funds to pay Lyon’s fine.

The government indicted the editor of the Philadelphia Aurora, a leading Republican newspaper, for criticism of the president and when the editor died before trial, the government indicted his successor.

In New York another Republican paper, The Argus, published a story about Alexander Hamilton accusing him of a plan to buy and silence another newspaper. The editor charged died, but the government pursued the matter against his widow and one of the paper’s printers. The widow’s case was dismissed but the $8 a week printer was convicted and fined $100 and jailed for four months.

James Callender, who wrote a pamphlet critical of President Adams, was fined $200 and sentenced to nine months in prison.

And in South Carolina, a Dr. Thomas Cooper was fined $100 and sent to jail for six months for calling the president an incompetent. He actually tried to call Adams as a witness to prove the truth of his statement, but the court refused to issue the subpoena.

The editor of the New London, Connecticut Bee was fined $200 and imprisoned for three months for “aspersions” on the army; and the editor of the Mt. Pleasant, New York Register was fined $50 and sentenced to three months in jail for reprinting from another paper a “libel” of the president.

In addition, there were a few quacky ones: A man in Massachusetts was fined $400 and jailed for 18 months for putting up a “liberty pole” with signs on it protesting the Acts. And a man in Trenton, N.J. was fined $100 for saying that the he hoped the wadding of the canon used to salute President Adams would have hit Mr. Adams “in his breeches.”

The public’s outrage over the prosecutions under the Acts grew and contributed to Adam’s defeat by Jefferson in the 1800 election. The last election in which the Federalist Party was competitive and was the death-knell of that party.

Jefferson, as president, pardoned all those convicted under the Sedition Act and the Republican Congress reimbursed those who were fined with interest. While the Act was blatantly unconstitutional, no case was ever appealed to the Supreme Court. Since the expiration of the Acts at the end of the Adams’ presidency, there have been only a few court cases involving criminal sedition.

And, by the way, there was no war with France.

Isn’t it fun to ride the Wayback Machine and take a look at things the way they were then. Of course no one thinks that our government would try anything like that today — it would be impossible to do so considering how many media outlets there are now. One would have to have a key into the major media outlets and their sources to impose that control. They’d all have to be wired together by a computer, or something, for that to work. Fortunately that’ll never happen. Good for us that isn’t possible.