Fed Her A List? I Don’t Even Know Her!
American History 1
Professor Hilary Snuffleupagus
HI-103 IND02
October 22nd, 2006
Here, I talk about some Dirty Dick Rulers and things I would have no business involved in during the 18th Century.
Question: Explain the key issues in domestic and foreign policy that divided the Federalists and the Republicans.
The conflict with France mirrored an ideological war in America between Federalists and the Republicans. Altercations grew so personal that fighting became common in defending your honor. Federalists and Republicans saw each other as traitors to the principles of the American Revolution. Thomas Jefferson decided that Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, John Adams, and the Federalists were suppressing individual liberty in order to promote selfish interests. So he opposed John Jay’s Treaty because it was pro-British and anti-French, and he was disgusted by the army’s suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion. In time, issues forced people to take sides, and a group of the Revolutionary generation called the “band of brothers” began to fragment into die-hard fractions. Long-standing political friendships were destroyed in the partisan attacks. Jefferson was not innocent during this conflict, but more or less the cause of it. His no-holds-barred tactics directly contributed to the partisan tensions. As vice-president, his deviousness led the Republican faction opposed to Federalists John Adams, and he also plotted to embarrass the president. In 1797 Jefferson secretly hired James Callender, a journalist to write a pamphlet that described President Adams as a deranged monarchist who was strongly suggested in calling himself king.
The conflict with France only served to deepen the partisan divide emerging in the young United States. The real purpose of the French crisis all along, the Republicans suspected was to provide Federalists with an excuse to put down domestic political opposition. The infamous Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 lent credence to their suspicions. These four measures passed amid the wave of patriotic war fever, limited freedom of speech and the press and the liberty aliens. Proposed by Federalists in Congress, the legislation did not originate with Adams but had his blessing. Three of the four Alien and Sedition acts reflected native hostility to foreigners, especially the French and Irish, a large number of whom had become active Republicans and were suspected of revolution intent. The Naturalization Act extended from five to fourteen years the residence requirement for citizenship. The Alien Act empowered the president to deport “dangerous” aliens at his discretion. The Alien Enemy Act authorized the president in time of declared war to expel or imprison enemy aliens at will. Finally, the Sedition Act defined as a high misdemeanor any conspiracy against legal measures of the government, including interference with federal officers and insurrection or riot. What is more, the law forbade writing, punishing, or speaking anything of “a false, scandalous and malicious” nature against the government.
The purpose of such laws was transparently partisan, designed to punish Republicans. To be sure, zealous Republican journalists were resorting to scandalous
lies and misrepresentations. To offset the “reign of witches” unleashed by the Alien and Sedition Acts, Jefferson and Madison drafted the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. These passed the legislatures of the two states in late 1798. The resolutions, much alike in their arguments, denounced the Alien and Sedition Acts as “alarming infractions” of constitutional rights and advanced the state-compact theory. Since the Constitution arose as a compact among states, the resolutions argued, it followed logically that the states retained the right to say when Congress had exceeded its powers. The states retained the right to say when Congress had exceeded its powers. The states could interject their judgment on acts of Congress and reverse them if necessary. These doctrines of interposition and nullification, revised and edited by later theorists, were destined to be used for causes unforeseen by the authors of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions.
As the presidential election of 1800 approached, grievances were mounting against Federalists policies: taxation to support an unneeded army, the Alien and Sedition Acts, the lingering fears of Adams’s affinity for “monarchism,” the hostilities aroused by Hamilton’s programs, the suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion, and Jay’s Treaty. When Adams decided for peace with France in 1800, he probably doomed his once chance for reelection.