The Alien and Sedition Acts weren’t designed for justice – just politics

By C.C. Borzilleri
Real Clear Wire

With the 1798 Alien Enemies Law in the news as the Trump administration attempts to remove foreign nationals from the United States without the typically required legal processes, a historical view provides a warning that we would all be wise to keep in mind.

The Alien Enemies and Alien Friends laws of 1798, and their partner in crime the Sedition Law (meant literally), were dreamt up by members of the John Adams Cabinet with personal rivalry, not national security, in mind. 

These laws were intended as tools for targeting foes of the Adams team: politically active men who spoke out against the president and his agenda. People who did not meet that criteria were typically safe from the law’s effects, notably women; gender biases that omitted women from official political roles also kept them away from the crosshairs of the 1798 laws.

Secretary of State Timothy Pickering, known by his hometown contemporaries as a quarrelsome man, kept up a no-holds-barred correspondence with fellow cabinet members and President Adams himself. Among other efforts, he pushed for the jailing and deportation of various political enemies who offended him.

One of Pickering’s letters to President Adams in 1799 listed seven foreign nationals whom Pickering was eager to see deported for their “mischief” in disagreeing with the Adams administration. Pickering was excited to learn whenever his political rivals had foreign heritage so that they might be brought to the president’s attention as potential deportees.

Prosecutions under the corresponding Sedition Law similarly reflected personal politics and biases of a few quarrelsome cabinet secretaries. The case of Ann Greenleaf – the only woman indicted under the law – should serve as a case in point.

Throughout 1799, Greenleaf was working as a newspaper editor and publisher in New York City. She was one of several dozen women working in that field in the late 18th century. Most of these women, including Greenleaf, entered these roles following the deaths of their husbands who had served as the previous editor.

Greenleaf’s paper, Greenleaf’s New York Journal and Patriotic Register, bore her name proudly on each front page. Each issue also declared that the paper was “printed and published (on Wednesdays and Saturdays) by ANN GREENLEAF at her printing office.” There was no question about who authorized the information that appeared in each issue.

Nevertheless, in the summer of 1799 when an article Greenleaf published offended Alexander Hamilton, the authorities in New York indicted her on his orders. Shortly thereafter, they dropped the charges. Continuing to pursue the case, Hamilton and his legal team refused to accept that she, a woman, might be in charge. When New York Assistant Attorney General Cadwallader Colden entered her printing office, he demanded to know who was really responsible for the publication of the article. 

In all other cases of prosecuting seditious libel under the 1798 law, the defendant was always the named publisher of the newspaper. The defendant was also always an outspoken male who was a political enemy of the Adams administration. Colden identified not Greenleaf – the clearly and proudly named publisher of the paper – but David Frothingham, her journeyman printer, as the guilty party. As the man who physically applied the ink to the paper on Greenleaf’s press, he responded to Colden’s line of questioning that he supposed he was technically responsible for the appearance of the offending article.

For Colden and his legal team, this was all but an admission of guilt, never mind that it was an entirely incorrect understanding of the print shop’s operations. Instead, political profiling and sex-based blindness drove Colden’s legal action. An assumption by the prosecution that Greenleaf, a widowed woman, could not be a legitimate political threat meant that she could get away with publishing the type of political opinions the Adams administration was targeting from her male contemporaries.

The use of the Alien and Sedition Acts to target a group pre-supposed to be hostile to Adams’s political agenda was based entirely on a desire to target political enemies. Particular people – men, Democratic Republicans, and news editors, to name a few – were the intended targets of the laws, not potential foreign agents in the ongoing Quasi-War with France.

Upon assuming office in 1800, President Thomas Jefferson allowed these laws to expire. And in the early 1830s, the Congressional Judiciary Committee overturned some of the convictions from years of the Sedition Law’s use, acknowledging the government’s overreach and unconstitutionality of the legislation.

As these laws from 1798 make their way back into public discourse, it is essential to know how they were both used and misused in the past. People have historically been targeted based on their sex and national heritage under these laws, laws that were weaponized against the American people in the name of national security. While the American founders offer us many pieces of wisdom and inspiration in political decision-making and compromise, it is incumbent upon us not to repeat their mistakes.

C.C. Borzilleri received her PhD from George Washington University in Early American history, with a focus on women and print culture. She is a fellow with the Jack Miller Center.

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