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Book

The Alien and Sedition Acts

Call Number

  • 342.082 A3989 (CEN, EAS, MBL, OSH, POW, WSQ)

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Edition

First edition.

Publication Information

New York : The Modern Library, [2025]

Physical Description

xxvi, 142 pages ; 20 cm

Summary

In the summer of 1798, backed by President John Adams, the United States Congress passed a series of laws that would come to be known as the Alien and Sedition Acts, testing the limits of a Constitution barely a decade old. Passed in anticipation of an impending war with France, the three alien laws -- the Naturalization Act, the Alien Friends Act, and the Alien Enemies Act -- extended the waiting period for naturalization from five years to fourteen and authorized the detention and expulsion of noncitizens, while the Sedition Act placed a federal ban on the publication of any antigovernment writings. Objections were passionate and swift. The Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, penned by Vice President Thomas Jefferson, warned that the "friendless alien has been selected as the safest subject of a first experiment; but the citizen will soon follow." Yet while three out of the four laws were soon repealed or allowed to expire, the Alien Enemies Act is still in effect today. Though it has been invoked sparingly, it was the basis for Japanese American internment during World War II -- and for President Donald Trump's deportation of Venezuelan immigrants to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador during the first one hundred days of his second term. The questions raised by the Alien and Sedition Acts at the end of the eighteenth century -- about immigration, the rights of the people in a time of war, the power of the government to define matters of national security, freedom of speech, freedom of the press -- are still very much matters for concern and debate today. --

Contents

  • Introduction / The Naturalization Act of 1798
  • The Alien Act
  • The Alien Enemies Act
  • The Sedition Act
  • The Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 / The Virginia Resolutions of 1798 / Answers of the several state legislatures
  • The Kentucky Resolutions of 1799 / Report on the Virginia Resolutions

Subjects

Added Authors

Qian Julie Wang