A Sovereign People

by Carol Berkin

  As 1799 began, a now discontented John Adams assessed his situation. He had been stung and humiliated by his own cabinet, forced to appoint a man he despised to lead an army he did not believe necessary. He had witnessed the waning of his own popularity, as petitions demanding an end to direct taxation replaced flattering memorials. And he had come to fear that the steady outpouring of slander and criticism aimed at him by Republican newspapers could not be staunched, even by legislation. It was time, he concluded, to take control of his administration. He resolved that he would be his own man—and that meant he would be a statesman rather than a politician. He would act in the best interests of the nation, not the narrow interests of the party. He would not abandon the policy of preparedness, but he would repurpose it: he would use the nation’s enhanced military and naval strength as bargaining chips in negotiations with France.

  Adams was emboldened by his knowledge that, on the other side of the Atlantic, the political climate had changed. For many months he had doubted a French invasion of America was possible; after the crushing defeat of the French navy by the British in the August Battle of Aboukir Bay, he had declared to James McHenry that “there is no more prospect of seeing a French army here, than there is in Heaven.” The emergence that winter of a new coalition among France’s enemies made a war with the United States even more unlikely. It was no surprise, therefore, that Talleyrand was sending out feelers to William Vans Murray, the American minister to The Hague, in the hopes of rapprochement.80

  On December 8, 1798, in a speech to the new session of Congress, John Adams declared himself ready to entertain the possibility of a new peace mission to France. Two months later, on February 18, 1799, he stunned Congress by announcing his nomination of William Vans Murray as minister plenipotentiary to that country. Describing himself as a president “always disposed and ready to embrace every plausible appearance of probability of preserving or restoring tranquility,” he expressed his confidence that the new minister would receive the respect and honor that “the representative of a great, free, powerful, and independent nation” deserved. These were the very words Talleyrand had used to persuade Murray that the French desired to reopen negotiations.81

  Suddenly months of war preparation, taxes, and bellicose rhetoric seemed precipitous, even foolish. Small wonder that Massachusetts Federalist Theodore Sedgwick declared the decision ruinous or that Timothy Pickering proclaimed himself thunderstruck. Pickering took pains to assure Alexander Hamilton that the president had “peremptorily determined (against our unanimous opinions) to leave the door open for the degrading and mischievous measure of sending another minister to France, even without waiting for direct overtures from her.” The nomination of Murray now left the members of the cabinet “shocked and grieved.” Republicans, however, quietly rejoiced. Thomas Jefferson captured their response perfectly in a letter to James Madison. The president’s decision, he wrote, “silences all arguments against the sincerity of France, and renders desperate every further effort towards war.”82

  Federalist leaders in Congress tried to rally. They insisted that William Vans Murray was not up to the task and pressed Adams to add two more commissioners. At first, Adams stood firm, declaring they were interfering with his power to determine diplomatic policy. But he eventually complied. On March 8, 1800, three Federalists—William Vans Murray, Connecticut’s Oliver Ellsworth, and William Richardson Davie of North Carolina—were greeted by Napoleon in Paris. On September 20, after seven months of negotiations, an agreement known as the Convention of 1800 was reached. The US Senate approved the treaty on February 3, 1801. The quasi-war with France was over. So too was John Adams’s political career.83

  Epilogue

  THE XYZ AFFAIR and the quasi-war it prompted were the defining events of the Adams administration. The president’s decision to end rather than escalate the hostilities between the United States and France led to the revival of the Republican Party and contributed to the end of Federalist hegemony. But perhaps the most important consequence of the XYZ affair was the revelation that loyalty to the federal government had become the sine qua non of patriotism. The growth of this loyalty had been slowly emerging since Washington’s first term as president. In the Whiskey Rebellion, citizens had rallied to defend a man they loved and admired; in the Genet affair, they had defended the powers of the office he held. In the XYZ affair, it was not the president as much as the nation entrusted to his care whose honor Americans consciously rose to defend. They hailed John Adams for defending the honor of their country, and, in doing so, they discovered an identity they shared as Americans. Despite the many and deep ideological and policy differences between Federalists and Republicans, Americans of both parties were determined to show they were not, as the French Directory had claimed, a “divided people” who could be separated from one another or from their government. Instead, they insisted that their country had a national character that bound them together. “We ought all to be Americans,” wrote one Virginian, giving evidence that Americans were learning that no disagreements should run so deep as to permanently divide them from one another and no criticism they might have of their government should destroy their loyalty to it.

  In 1812, the nation would wage another war, this time against its former mother country. During that war, the tune to Robert Treat Paine’s “Adams and Liberty” was recycled by Francis Scott Keyes and became “The Star-Spangled Banner.” When peace returned, the nationalism that had been growing during the 1790s truly flowered. Instead of simply defending their sovereignty and independence, Americans created art and literature as well as political policies that proudly celebrated what they considered their exceptional destiny.

  Part IV

  THE ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS

  IN THE WAKE of the XYZ revelations, America began to prepare for what President John Adams would call “the half war with France.” But for the Federalist Party, there were other wars to be waged, too: first, a war with those “internal disturbers,” members of the Republican Party whose relentless criticism of the administration and its policies threatened to undermine popular support for their government; and, second, a war against foreigners whose radical ideas or loyalties to other nations fostered division within American society. As long as “the temple of our freedom,” as Charles Pinckney called the Union, was under siege, Federalists could not rest.1

  The Republican Party was no less involved in a war to save the United States, but it located that danger within the government itself. Republicans were convinced that the “monocrats” in power wished to take the country down the path to tyranny. They believed Federalists intended to so erode state sovereignty that Americans would find themselves living under a consolidated government run by a monarch and his minions.

  This Manichaean struggle between the two parties—a rhetorical and ideological battle for the soul of the country—allowed the eighteenth-century men involved to make sense of their political universe. It brought an intellectual order to disparate and complex events, to economic and fiscal policies, and to diplomatic decisions. It allowed both Federalists and Republicans to believe that their political stances and even their personal quests for power were synonymous with the welfare of their country. It also ensured that the eradication of one’s opponents seemed the only option.

  Historians have generally condemned the Federalists for their effort to eradicate, or at least greatly wound, their oppositions through the Alien and Sedition Acts. The party’s anti-immigrant bias and its effort to suppress dissent and the freedom of the press have been portrayed as a challenge to American values. These acts are seen as the forerunners of such modern abuses of American rights and liberties as twentieth-century immigration quotas, the Red Scare, Japanese internment camps, and minority voter suppression. The defeat of the Federalists in 1800 and the demise of the party soon afterward are interpreted as a well-deserved rejection of men determined to hold back the progress of democracy.

  But harsh judgment can sometime
s obscure more than it reveals. History might be better served by a closer look at the context for these acts, an analysis of their actual impact on immigration and freedom of the press, and a consideration of their positive role in establishing American nationalism. Above all, it would be wise to recast the nature of the crisis the Alien and Sedition Acts produced. It was, after all, a crisis in two parts, each with long-term consequences in American history: the first, the attempt to suppress liberties; the second, arising from the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions that defied these laws, the introduction of the concept of nullification that would eventually threaten the survival of the nation the Federalists had nurtured and sustained. If the first was the work of the Federalists, the second was the work of Jefferson’s Republicans.

  1

  “Many Jacobins and vagabonds.”

  —James Bayard, 1798

  THE SUMMER OF 1798 seemed an ideal time for Federalists to mount their crusade to wipe out the Republican opposition. In the spring, news of the infamous treatment of the American envoys by the French, and the fear of an invasion by that nation, had produced a strong outpouring of nationalism. With this came an outpouring of support for both President Adams and his administration. Republican popularity, by contrast, was at its nadir, diminished by the party’s Francophile reputation and its ineffectual attempts to defend the French Directory’s treatment of the envoys. In the midst of enacting legislation aimed at military and naval preparedness, the Federalist-dominated Congress struck: it passed a series of bills known collectively as the Alien and Sedition Acts.

  The first of these acts, the Naturalization Act of 1798, was intended to address what Federalists considered the disturbing growth of support for the Republican Party among immigrants, especially the Irish. They saw that much of the opposition’s recruitment success was due to the work of Irish, English, and Scottish radicals. These men, whose anti-British activism had sometimes led to charges of treason in their home countries, condemned a Federalist agenda they believed closely mimicked the oppressive policies of the British government. On arrival in the United States, they gravitated quickly to the Republican Party and worked effectively to persuade rank-and-file Irish and even German immigrants to join them. Their recruiting success helped a party that had been based in the South make inroads into New England and northeastern cities like Philadelphia. As editors of newspapers or as regular contributors to the partisan press, Irishmen like Matthew Carey, Matthew Lyon, John Binns, and William Duane, along with English radicals James Callender and Thomas Cooper, became leading propagandists for the Republican Party. In urban and country newspapers, these writers frequently published criticism and invective against Hamiltonian economics, Federalist foreign policies, and the character of individual Federalist officeholders. Meanwhile, the Irish and German immigrants created ethnic and nationalistic organizations that encouraged unity and reinforced anti-Federalist ideas. Federalists decided that delaying citizenship for these foreigners, and for the French refugees already residing in the United States, was their best hope to stem the rising membership of the opposition party.2

  Naturalization laws were not new, nor were they unconstitutional. Article 1, section 8, clause 4 of the Constitution granted Congress the power to establish a uniform rule of naturalization. The first application of this power had come on March 26, 1790, when Congress passed a liberal naturalization act. By its terms, immigrants could apply for citizenship after a two-year residence in the United States. The only restriction was that the applicants be “free white persons” of “good moral character.” On January 29, 1795, the Third Congress produced a revised naturalization act, increasing the residence requirement to five years. It also required applicants to give three years’ notice of their intent to apply for citizenship and to renounce any allegiance to a foreign prince or state. In the spring of 1798, Federalists in both houses of Congress declared it time to revise the process once again.3

  The debate in the House was acrimonious. South Carolina Federalist Robert Goodloe Harper preferred that there be no path to citizenship at all for an alien. Immigrants, he declared, simply caused trouble in the United States. Although New Englander Harrison Gray Otis was not prepared to go that far, he did want restrictions imposed on immigrants who had already attained citizenship. Although he was ready to allow them to own property, he thought it best to bar them from any participation in politics. They should neither be allowed to hold office, Otis argued, nor vote for legislators. Although neither of these two extreme positions was seriously considered, by May 21, the House had resolved to extend the waiting period for naturalization to fourteen years.

  The debate over what the former aliens’ rights as citizens would entail was not over, however. Federalist James Bayard of Delaware recommended that all new citizens should be restricted from voting in federal elections or serving in federal office. He alleged that “many Jacobins and vagabonds” had immigrated in recent years. His extremism, like Harper’s and Otis’s, reflected the Federalists’ genuine fear that the United States would fall to the French, not in battle but in the erosion of support for the Constitution and its federal government. Although the restrictions on political participation proposed by Bayard and Otis did not pass, Federalist fears of a coalition of immigrants and Republicans did win out. On Tuesday, May 22, the new House naturalization bill was read for the third time and passed.4

  On June 18, 1798, the same day that the president forwarded additional dispatches from the envoys to the Congress, President Adams signed into law the new Naturalization Act, which almost tripled the waiting time for citizenship. Under the new law, applicants were required to announce their intention to seek citizenship five years in advance of formal application to the courts. In addition, all white aliens, other than foreign ministers, consuls, or agents and their families and staff, were required to register within six months of arrival with the clerk of the district court or an equivalent government official. Any alien failing to register would be subjected to a fine, and any alien who drew complaints for being disruptive would be required to give surety of good behavior. The refusal to provide this surety would result in commitment to the common gaol (jail).5

  At the same time that the Federalist majorities in the Congress were delaying citizenship—and suffrage—for immigrants, they were contemplating how to protect the country from those aliens who might be directly “dangerous to its peace and safety.” On April 25, Connecticut senator James Hillhouse called for a bill that would include a provision for the deportation of those found dangerous to the security of the country. Throughout the month of May, the Senate debated the resulting bill and several amendments to it. At one extreme, it was proposed that the scope of the president’s power be enlarged to include the ability to expel any alien who had been imprisoned for “speaking, writing, or printing” dangerous ideas. At the other, it was proposed that the president be reined in by requiring him to provide the basis for any deportation and deposit a record of his actions in the office of the secretary of state for Congress’s perusal. Both amendments were voted down. But, as the debate progressed, the bill did take on a decidedly harsh tone. On Wednesday, May 30, the Senate agreed by a vote of 16 to 6 that any alien who refused or evaded an order to leave the United States should be punished with a term of life imprisonment and hard labor. On June 8, after several postponements and several proposed amendments, the Senate finalized its draconian version of what would come to be known popularly as the Alien Friends Act by a vote of 16 to 7.6

  Throughout May and June, the House engaged in overlapping debates on how to deal not only with troublesome aliens from friendly countries but with aliens from countries at war with, or threatening war with, the United States. At the same time, it had begun to discuss how to define, and to punish, sedition. But discussions of war preparedness issues such as the size of the provisional army and direct taxes overshadowed these issues of sedition. It was not until Tuesday, June 19, that a sustained House debate on the alien friends bi
ll began in earnest.7

  In the course of the long and dense argument over the constitutionality of such a bill that followed, the fractures and fault lines that separated the two parties emerged with startling clarity. The concerns that divided Republicans and Federalists echoed older arguments over the nature of the Union. Was it a consolidation of the states, as nationalists like Hamilton and Ames believed? Or was it a voluntary compact among sovereign states, as Gallatin and Abraham Baldwin would argue? The House debate revived old disagreements, voiced first during the ratification struggle, over which government, state or federal, best protected the people’s liberties. And it pitted those who believed restrictive, even punitive measures were necessary to keep the country safe against those who saw claims of vulnerability as ruses to increase the power of the executive branch and open the way to monarchy and tyranny.