From: Barbara Lamar (barbaralamar@sanmarcos.net)
Date: Sun Aug 31 2003 - 15:54:50 MDT
Robert B. wrote:
> Now *that* is a pretty slick piece of legislation -- who the hell drafted
> this thing -- Ashcroft & Co.? If so they are bad/evil people.
:-)
Here's a bit more on the 1798 acts. Few people today would doubt that the
acts were motivated (at least in part) by domestic politics, although the
excuse made by the Federalists was that they were needed to protect the U.S.
against nasty foreigners. Note that the Republicans of that time were more
similar to the Democrats of today than to present-day Republicans.
Barbara
======================
http://www.bartleby.com/65/al/AlienNSe.html
1798, four laws enacted by the Federalist-controlled U.S. Congress,
allegedly in response to the hostile actions of the French Revolutionary
government on the seas and in the councils of diplomacy (see XYZ Affair),
but actually designed to destroy Thomas Jefferson’s Republican party, which
had openly expressed its sympathies for the French Revolutionaries.
Depending on recent arrivals from Europe for much of their voting strength,
the Republicans were adversely affected by the Naturalization Act, which
postponed citizenship, and thus voting privileges, until the completion of
14 (rather than 5) years of residence, and by the Alien Act and the Alien
Enemies Act, which gave the President the power to imprison or deport aliens
suspected of activities posing a threat to the national government.
President John Adams made no use of the alien acts. Most controversial,
however, was the Sedition Act, devised to silence Republican criticism of
the Federalists. Its broad proscription of spoken or written criticism of
the government, the Congress, or the President virtually nullified the First
Amendment freedoms of speech and the press. Prominent Jeffersonians, most of
them journalists, such as John Daly Burk, James T. Callender, Thomas Cooper,
William Duane (1760–1835), and Matthew Lyon were tried, and some were
convicted, in sedition proceedings. The Alien and Sedition Acts provoked the
Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions and did much to unify the Republican party
and to foster Republican victory in the election of 1800. The
Republican-controlled Congress repealed the Naturalization Act in 1802; the
others were allowed to expire (1800–1801).
=================
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Aug 31 2003 - 16:06:28 MDT