Shaping a New Republic

That is sedition

1798 → 1789

Newark, New Jersey Summer 1798

In the summer of 1798, President John Adams passed through Newark, New Jersey, and the town greeted him with a cannon salute.

A Newark patron There goes the President, and they are firing at his—

Luther Baldwin I don't care if they fire through his—

The dram-shop keeper That is sedition.

The tavern keeper meant it, and a federal court later fined Luther Baldwin for that joke.

Less than seven years earlier, the First Amendment had promised Americans freedom of speech and of the press. This is the story of how a republic built on liberty came to punish a man for a joke.

Untrodden Ground

1789–1790

The story began on April 30, 1789, in New York City, then the capital, when George Washington took the oath as the first president.

In his inaugural address, Washington said the fate of republican government was staked

George Washington …on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.

George Washington I walk on untrodden ground.

George Washington There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn into precedent.

Congress created executive departments, and Washington met with their heads as a cabinet, a body the Constitution never names. Alexander Hamilton ran the Treasury, Thomas Jefferson the State Department and Henry Knox the War Department, and Edmund Randolph became attorney general. The Judiciary Act of 1789 created federal district and circuit courts under a Supreme Court of six justices.

In the summer of 1790, Alexander McGillivray led Muscogee, or Creek, leaders from present-day Georgia and Alabama to New York. In the Treaty of New York, the Creek gave up some land, and the United States guaranteed them the rest.

Alexander McGillivray · letter, 1785 We want nothing from you but justice. We want our hunting grounds preserved from encroachments.

Georgia's leaders, who wanted more Creek land, attacked the treaty, and settlers kept crossing the new boundary. A 1790 law said Native land could be bought only by a treaty under federal authority, but it did little to stop settlers.

The Price of Liberty

1780s–1790

The government had paid Revolutionary soldiers with certificates, IOUs that speculators later bought for a fraction of their face value.

Imagine you were a veteran holding a hundred-dollar certificate, and a buyer offered you silver. Decide whether to sell or hold.

In January 1790, Treasury Secretary Hamilton proposed paying every certificate at full face value to whoever held it.

Alexander Hamilton, Treasury secretary It was the price of liberty. The faith of America has been repeatedly pledged for it.

He wanted to give the new government good credit, and to give wealthy creditors a stake in its success.

The federal debt came to about fifty-four million dollars, and the states owed about twenty-five million more.

In the House, James Madison, Hamilton's co-author on The Federalist, proposed sharing the payment with soldiers who had sold their certificates, but lost.

Hamilton also wanted the federal government to take over the states' war debts, a plan called assumption. Virginia and other states that had paid off much of their debt objected, and in April 1790 the House voted it down.

In June 1790, Jefferson invited Hamilton and Madison to dinner, and he later described the bargain they made:

Thomas Jefferson …as the pill would be a bitter one to the Southern states, something should be done to soothe them…

In return for a permanent capital on the Potomac River, the future Washington, D.C., enough southern congressmen switched their votes to pass assumption.

Necessary

1791

In February 1791, Congress passed Hamilton's bill for a national bank, and Washington asked his advisers whether the Constitution allowed it.

Thomas Jefferson · written opinion To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn… is to take possession of a boundless field of power…

Alexander Hamilton · written opinion …necessary often means no more than needful, requisite, incidental, useful, or conducive to.

Choose how to read the word necessary: indispensable, or simply useful for carrying out Congress's powers. Jefferson's narrow reading became known as strict construction, and Hamilton's broader one, which allowed implied powers, as loose construction.

Washington sided with Hamilton and signed the bank bill on February 25, 1791. The bank, chartered by Congress but mostly owned by private investors, held federal funds and issued paper banknotes.

To help pay the debt, Congress also passed Hamilton's excise tax on whiskey in March 1791. In December, his Report on Manufactures called for protective tariffs to shield infant industries, but Congress raised tariffs only modestly.

Jefferson came to see Hamilton's program as a plan for northern merchants and speculators, paid for by southern and western farmers.

Two Gazettes

1791–1793

By 1792, in Philadelphia, now the capital, rival newspapers attacked each other, one backing Hamilton and the other Jefferson. Hamilton even attacked Jefferson in print under pen names, though both still sat in the cabinet, and Washington begged them to stop.

This quarrel produced the first two political parties: Hamilton's Federalists and Jefferson and Madison's Democratic-Republicans, often called Republicans. Sort the evidence into each party's camp, and find the facts that complicate the labels. Federalists, strongest among northern merchants, wanted a strong central government; Democratic-Republicans, strongest among southern and western farmers, wanted a weaker one.

In January 1793, revolutionary France executed its king, and within weeks it was at war with Britain. The 1778 alliance that had helped win the Revolution still tied the United States to France. Federalists favored Britain, whose trade paid the tariffs that funded the debt, while Democratic-Republicans cheered France as a sister republic.

In April 1793, Washington chose neither side, in a proclamation that never actually used the word neutral:

George Washington · written proclamation …a conduct friendly and impartial toward the belligerent powers…

He believed the young nation was too weak to fight a European war.

France's new minister, Edmond Genêt, commissioned privateers, armed private ships, to raid British trade, and he tried to rally Americans against Washington's policy. Even Jefferson, France's best friend in the cabinet, agreed that the French government should recall him.

Republican newspapers soon attacked Washington himself, and on the last day of 1793, frustrated that Washington kept siding with Hamilton, Jefferson resigned.

Whiskey

1791–1795

In July 1794, a federal marshal rode to a farm near Pittsburgh to summon William Miller to court in faraway Philadelphia. Riding with him was John Neville, the region's federal whiskey tax collector.

Western farmers distilled their grain into whiskey, which was cheaper to haul over the mountains, so Hamilton's tax hit them hardest.

Rebels burned Neville's house, and in August thousands of armed men gathered just outside Pittsburgh and threatened the town.

Washington called up nearly thirteen thousand militia from four states and rode west with them, Hamilton at his side.

The rebels scattered before the army arrived, and Washington later pardoned the two men convicted of treason. Shays's rebels had faced one state's militia, but these rebels faced the whole federal government. The federal government had enforced its law, but many western farmers resented the march and turned toward Jefferson's party.

Washington blamed the uprising on what he called “self-created societies,” the Democratic-Republican clubs that cheered France and criticized his government.

The Price of Peace

1794–1796

In 1793 and 1794, the British navy seized hundreds of American ships trading with the French islands in the Caribbean. British captains also forced American sailors into the Royal Navy, a practice called impressment.

From forts it still held on American soil, Britain supplied the Western Confederacy, an alliance of Native nations in the Ohio country. In August 1794, General Anthony Wayne's army defeated the confederacy at Fallen Timbers, and the nearby British fort shut its gates on them. In the 1795 Treaty of Greenville, the confederacy's nations ceded most of present-day Ohio to the United States.

Washington sent Chief Justice John Jay to London, where in November 1794 he signed a treaty with Britain. Britain agreed to leave its western forts by 1796, but the treaty said nothing about impressment. Democratic-Republicans called it a surrender to Britain, and Madison led the fight against it in Congress.

The Senate approved the treaty by exactly two-thirds, and despite crowds burning Jay in effigy, Washington signed it to avoid war. The treaty kept the peace with Britain, and the bitter fight over it hardened the two parties.

Worried that the United States was drawing closer to Britain, Spain settled its own disputes with Americans in Pinckney's Treaty of 1795. Spain opened the Mississippi River to Americans and let them store goods at New Orleans for export.

Spain also held California, where since 1769 it had built Catholic missions along the coast. At Mission San Carlos, near Monterey, the missionaries forced baptized Rumsen and Esselen people to stay and work, and punished those who fled. Mission life also blended Catholic and Native ways, and some soldiers of mixed ancestry rose in rank and gained land.

By 1795, Britain, Spain, Native nations and American settlers all claimed a stake in the West. Open each place on the map to see who wanted what.

Fairly Out

1796–1797

In 1796, nothing in the Constitution kept Washington from seeking a third term, but after two terms he chose to retire. That September, he published his Farewell Address, written with Hamilton's help, in a Philadelphia newspaper.

George Washington the baneful effects of the Spirit of Party

He warned against political parties, especially parties divided by region, North against South or East against West. After four years of quarrels over France and Britain, he also warned Americans against foreign entanglements:

George Washington ’Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent Alliances

Democratic-Republicans saw the address as an attack on their party and on its friendship with France. Its advice against permanent alliances guided American foreign policy until after World War II, when the United States joined NATO in 1949.

In the election of 1796, the Federalist John Adams won seventy-one electoral votes, and Jefferson won sixty-eight. Under the original rules, the runner-up became vice president, so a Federalist president served with a Republican vice president.

On March 4, 1797, Washington watched John Adams take the oath, and the next day Adams wrote his wife what he had imagined:

John Adams Methought I heard him think Ay! I am fairly out and you fairly in!

Then Washington walked out as a private citizen, and power passed peacefully to his successor. His choice to leave after two terms set a tradition that lasted until Franklin Roosevelt broke it in 1940.

Not a Sixpence

1797–1799

Angry at Jay's Treaty, France began seizing American ships, so in 1797 Adams sent three envoys to Paris to make peace. Before talks could even begin, agents of the French foreign minister, Talleyrand, demanded a bribe and a loan.

Charles Cotesworth Pinckney We replied, it is no; no; not a sixpence.

In 1798, Adams released the envoys' reports, with the French agents' names replaced by the letters X, Y and Z. Americans were furious, and the popular slogan became “Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute.” Congress created a Navy Department, and an undeclared naval war with France, called the Quasi-War, began.

War fever strengthened the Federalists, and they turned on recent immigrants, many of them Irish or French, who mostly backed the Republicans. In June 1798, the Naturalization Act raised the wait for citizenship from five years to fourteen. Two Alien Acts let the president deport noncitizens he judged dangerous and detain enemy nationals in wartime.

On July 14, Adams signed the Sedition Act, which made it a crime to publish false, scandalous and malicious writing against the government.

The law protected the president and Congress from such attacks. Find the one federal office it left out. It left out the vice president, Thomas Jefferson, the leader of the Democratic-Republicans.

Matthew Lyon, an Irish-born Democratic-Republican congressman from Vermont, published a letter attacking President Adams:

Matthew Lyon an unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation, and selfish avarice.

A federal grand jury indicted Lyon under the Sedition Act, and he chose to defend himself at trial.

Lyon argued that the law was unconstitutional, that he meant no harm, and that his words were true.

Justice William Paterson told the jury that the law's constitutionality was not theirs to decide, and they found Lyon guilty. Paterson sentenced him to four months in jail and a fine of one thousand dollars.

He served his sentence in the jail at Vergennes, Vermont, and voters re-elected him to Congress while he was still there.

Void and of No Force

1798–1800

Lyon was not alone: nearly everyone charged under the Sedition Act was a Democratic-Republican editor, printer or supporter.

Vice President Jefferson answered the Sedition Act in secret, by drafting resolutions that Kentucky's legislature passed in November 1798.

Thomas Jefferson …whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force…

Madison drafted similar resolutions for Virginia, and both argued that the Union was a compact among the states.

James Madison in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil.

They turned to state legislatures because the Supreme Court had not yet established its power to strike down acts of Congress. In 1799, Kentucky went further, claiming that a state could nullify a federal law, an idea South Carolina revived in 1832.

By 1799, Hamilton, second in command of a new army, led the Federalists who wanted war with France. Adams believed the country was too weak for a major war, and without consulting his cabinet, he sent a new peace envoy to France.

The Convention of 1800 ended the Quasi-War and released the United States from its 1778 alliance with France.

The peace mission split the Federalists, and weeks before the election of 1800, Hamilton published a pamphlet attacking Adams's fitness for office.

A republic built on liberty had punished a man for a joke because its leaders came to see the other party as traitors, not rivals. Yet twice the man in power gave something up: Washington gave up the presidency, and Adams chose peace over his party's unity.

In the election of 1800, the Federalists who passed the Sedition Act faced the Republicans they had tried to silence. The experiment's hardest test was still ahead, because no party had ever handed the presidency to its rival.