Josephine Riesman // Writer

An academic paper by
Josephine Riesman
Age 16

In 1798, the still-young United States of America was no longer an “asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe,” as Thomas Paine had once remarked.i With a possible war against revolutionary France on the horizon and murmurs of internal rebellion echoing through the halls of Congress, three laws were passed with the expressed intention to corral and suppress the so-called “turbulent and disorderly of all parts of the world…[who have] succeeded in the overthrow of their own governments.”ii Those laws were the Naturalization, Alien Enemies, and Alien Friends Acts, known collectively as the “Alien Acts.” The man who spoke those words quoted above was a leader of the Federalist Party, the ruling party of the time. When looking at this violent transition in policy towards immigrants, one is forced to ask: what motivated such a shift? The Federalists argued that the acts were a response to foreign-born threats to American survival and sovereignty. The opposing viewpoint came from the Democratic-Republican Party, which argued that no such specific threats existed. The story of the acts reveals the more accurate interpretation of the two: the Alien Acts were not a response to a specific or legitimate threat to the American republic, but instead were the result of a mixture of partisan ambition and xenophobia. It was this lack of a substantial foundation that led to the Acts’ eventual failure.

The backdrop to the Alien Acts was the French Crisis, and an overview of its nature is necessary in order to understand their origin. By the late 1790s, the French Revolution had evolved from an internal revolt against an absolute monarchy into something wholly different. The revolutionary French Directory had declared war on Great Britain, had established satellite regimes in Holland, Venice, and Switzerland, and actively supported rebellion across Europe.iii But the influence of the revolutionary conflicts was not limited to Europe. The USA was struggling to maintain neutrality, but saw its merchant ships captured and its treaty obligations in question. When President John Adams sent three emissaries to France with the intention of securing a neutrality treaty, the Directory informed them that a monetary tribute was required. When this information began to be distributed to the public on April 3 of 1798, in the form of the so-called “XYZ” dispatches, American indignation ran high, and battle lines were drawn. The Republicans had formerly supported France’s efforts to combat tyranny and absolutism, but now found themselves on the defensive as anti-French sentiment flowered among the populace. As patriotic songs and such slogans as “Millions for defense, but not a cent for tribute” rang across the nation, the Federalists suddenly had an opportunity to make themselves out as the defenders of American liberty against two enemy forces.

First, there was the Republican Party. In the House, they held 48 seats to the Federalists’ 51, and the Senate had a similar ratio.iv The Federalists thus had a majority in both houses of Congress, but that majority was by no means overpoweringly secure. It was in the Federalists’ best interests to use any advantage they could to set back Republican influence. This is the best explanation for the vituperative attacks made by the Federalists in response to the French Crisis. In terms of foreign influence, Federalist leader Alexander Hamilton claimed that Republicans’ “womanish attachment to France” signified a conspiratorial desire to plunge the nation into anarchy.v Representative John Allen of Connecticut declared: “Were France herself to speak through an American mouth, I cannot conceive what she would say more.”vi They were called “Gallic devotees,” “saboteurs,” and “traitors,” among other insults. Theodore Sedgwick, the Federalist whip in the Senate, gave the best explanation for these attacks: he believed that the French Crisis would “afford a glorious opportunity to destroy faction.”vii In short, Federalists hoped to defame the Republicans to the point of destruction as a political power.

Equally dangerous in the minds of the Federalists was the European-born population of America, which one Federalist Congressman described as “that crowd of spies and inflammatory agents which overspread the country like the locusts of Egypt.”viii Exact numbers are hard to find when it comes to the immigrant population, but it has been estimated that the German- and French-born populations alone accounted for around 70,000 people.ix This was a sizable number, and Federalists gave the impression that, at any moment, they might unite and rise against the American republic. Most offensive to Federalists were the “Wild” Irish. As Federalist Senator Uriah Tracy put it, the Irish were “the most God-provoking democrats this side of Hell.”x The United Irishmen had members living in exile in America, and they were seen as a constant threat to the Federalists. But, however much the Federalists derided foreigners in the wake of the French Crisis, they were never able to pin a specific plot on them. There was an ultimately baseless rumor that some number of French and Irish intended to burn Philadelphia, but beyond this, there are no records of any specific plot.xi Because of this dearth of threats from the immigrant population, it is more likely that a mixture of xenophobia and political opportunism drove the Federalist Party to set the Alien Acts into motion.

The first shot in the battle over immigrant policy came in the form of a debate over naturalization. The naturalization process was an inextricable element of the party system of the time. The majority of immigrants coming to America had fled oppressive and absolutist regimes in Europe, and saw the conservative Federalists as representative of the ideals they had left behind. Most immigration channels went to New York and Pennsylvania, where Republicans held much sway. So, once immigrants became naturalized citizens and thus gained the right to vote, they turned out in huge numbers for Republican candidates.xii The Federalists must have known that to cut off this voting base would be a powerful move. They had successfully raised the amount of time necessary to be a resident before citizenship from two to five years in 1795. But, on April 17 of 1798, Representative Joshua Coit of Connecticut proposed a reevaluation of the Naturalization Law.xiii The Federalist-led committee came up with a draft for revision. The Federalist proposal for the new Naturalization Act sought to cripple the voting base of the Republican Party by making citizenship a fourteen-year-long process, and even went so far as to forbid naturalized citizens from having the right to vote or hold office. The Federalists justified this proposal by saying that it took at least fourteen years for immigrants to become worthwhile members of society, and that since Congress could set the term of residency, it had the power to negate any and all elements of naturalized citizenship.xiv The Republicans saw these excuses as flimsy at best, but unfortunately, they were outnumbered. Although the efforts of such Republican leaders as Albert Gallatin (himself born in Switzerland) resulted in the striking of the portion that withheld voting and officeholding rights, the bill was passed into law on June 18.

But the battle was far from over. Almost immediately after the proposal of the Naturalization Act, the Federalist camp pushed for a more pronouncedly controversial act. On April 19, Representative Sitgreaves of Pennsylvania formed a committee to draft legislation dictating governmental powers over aliens in times of war. The bill they drew up would later become known as the “Alien Enemies Act.” The proposal stated that, in the event of a war, the President would be given the power to deport without trial any and all citizens of the enemy nation that he deemed dangerous.xv In addition, the original proposal contained a provision that would make it a criminal offense to house any offending alien. Once the bill was introduced, it was met with fierce opposition. Although Republicans agreed that some provision should be made for the removal of some aliens in times of war, they had two central objections to the bill: its unconstitutionality, and its ambiguity. In the area of constitutionality, it gave the President a power that had been in the hands of the states (that of handling offending residents), gave the President an unchecked power over the judiciary, and took away due process of law. In the area of ambiguity, there was no definition of the terms of punishment for Americans who housed aliens, and no specified time limit on the deportations. Representative Harrison Gray Otis summed up the Federalists defense of the measure: in times of war, the United States had no time to “boggle about slight forms.”xvi Clearly, since no war had been declared and no evidence of any organized front that would oppose the US in the event of a war could be produced, this act was also born of a xenophobic zeal. The Republicans saw the bill as an attempt to take away states’ rights and attack individual liberties, and thus combated it. Again, they were not able to pull enough votes to fully prevent the bill from being passed, but the version that President Adams signed on July 6 had a more specific wording and lacked the section that would punish American citizens.xvii

However, the Alien Enemies Act had a key flaw in the minds of many Federalists: it required a declaration of war for its implementation. They cited the fact that European nations such as Holland had been made into satellites of the French Directory through insurrections that never involved a declared war. Using this as evidence, the Federalists sought to create a law that would combat internal opposition during peacetime. Just over a week after the Naturalization Act had become law, and scant days after the proposal of the Alien Enemies Act, the Senate received a proposal for an “Alien Friends” Act. The more aesthetically pleasing title masked a far more severe set of proposed powers. It was eventually combined with the Alien Enemies Act to form an omnibus Alien Act. Its content was essentially the same as the Enemies Act, except that it allowed the President to deport “all such aliens as he shall judge dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States.”xviii This third and final of the Alien Acts received the most vigorous opposition on the part of the Republicans. Although they failed to prevent its passage into law on June 25, they forced Congress to debate for a full two days over the constitutionality and ethics of both the specific act and the whole of the Alien Acts.xix

The arguments given in these two days of debate revealed the general stances of the two parties throughout the ordeal. The Republicans, led by Albert Gallatin and Edward Livingston, articulated four principal points of opposition to all three of the Alien Acts: (1) the Constitution did not enumerate control over alien friends as a federal power, (2) the clause that was intended to preserve the slave trade meant that any federal act that could inhibit immigration was prohibited by the Constitution until 1808, (3) even if there could be some Congressional control over aliens, the methods of prosecution in the Alien Friends Act were so arbitrary as to make it unconstitutional, and (4) the Federalists could produce no evidence of a legitimate threat to American stability in the immigrant population, thus making the measures unnecessary. The Federalists, led by Harrison Gray Otis, shot back with this point: there was a crisis at hand, and drastic measures were necessary. As long as the Republicans could not prove that there was no potential for an immigrant uprising, the government was obliged to honor the Alien Acts. The Federalist majority won out, and the laws remained, but the basic flaw of the Federalist argument was apparent: it was wholly based on fear, and not hard evidence.xx

So, with the three Alien Acts passed into law, what happened? The interesting fact is that not even one single person was ever prosecuted under the acts. The principal reason for this was that none of the catastrophes predicted by the Federalists actually occurred. President Adams signed a treaty with France in late 1799 that secured American neutrality and ended the French Crisis. With this, the Alien Enemies portion of the Alien Act was made useless for the time being. No immigrant uprisings occurred, so there was never an opportunity for the President to justify a use of the Alien Friends portion of the Act. And the Naturalization Act never actually applied to anyone by the time it was repealed in 1802. It is also important to note that much of the next period of time in Congress was spent debating the Sedition Act, which sparked far more public outcry, accusation, and debate. But this does not mean that the Alien Acts had no effect on America. Over a dozen shiploads of immigrants fled America’s shores during 1798 and 1799, fearing the wrath of the nativists in power.xxi But in general, the Federalists actually achieved the opposite of what they had intended. Once the period of impending crisis was over, they found themselves without any immigrant support they might have ever potentially won, and many immigrants were driven by anger to become citizens and vote Republican.xxii Republicans had been galvanized into a more streamlined party with nearly universal party-line voting.xxiii In addition, many non-immigrants now saw the acts for what they were: the products of baseless accusations and fears. When immigrants and non-immigrants alike voted in the elections of 1800 and ousted the Federalists from power, the Alien Acts surely played a part in their decisions. The new Republican-dominated government let the Alien Act run, unhonored, to its expiration date in July of 1800, and the Acts were finished not with a bang, but a whimper.

When looking back on the story of the Alien Acts and their part in the downfall of the Federalist Party, a difficult question is raised: since no specific threats from the immigrant population were ever uncovered, what drove the Federalists to push for such controversial and constitutionally questionable measures? Was it an ambitious attempt at scaremongering in order to solidify their dominance and attack the Republicans? Or did they honestly fear that foreigners were plotting against them within the bosom of the nation? Unfortunately, it is virtually impossible to disentangle the two. As is often the case in political debates, the documents that have survived show speeches and statements that can be construed as either clever manipulation or as honestly-held belief. In all likelihood, it was a mixture of the two for the Federalist Party. But in the final analysis, the distinction between rhetoric and truth in the context of the Alien Acts is somewhat immaterial. The fact remains that the Federalists essentially bet all they had on the fear of an immigrant-led rebellion. When the dust settled and no rebellion occurred, the Federalists emerged not as defenders of the public good, but as men who had let fear and ambition guide them and the legislative process.

***

BIBLIOGRAPHY

"AP American History Exam Section II: Document-Based Question." N.p.: College Entrance Exam Board/Educational Testing Service, 1977.

Chambers, William N. Political Parties in a New Nation. New York City: Oxford University Press, 1963. 135-140.

"Common Sense." N.p.: Thomas Paine, 1776.

Miller, John C. Crisis In Freedom: The Alien and Sedition Acts. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1951.

-----. The Federalist Era. New York City: Harper & Row, 1960.

Morison, Samuel E. The Oxford History of the American People. New York City: Oxford University Press, 1965.

Smith, James M. Freedom's Fetters: The Alien and Sedition Laws and American Civil Liberties. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967.

The Avalon Project: The Alien and Sedition Acts. Aug. 2000. Yale University. 15 Oct. 2002

<http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/alsedact.htm>.

i Thomas Paine, Common Sense.

ii John C. Miller, The Federalist Era (New York City: Harper & Row, 1960), p. 230.

iii John C. Miller, Crisis In Freedom: The Alien and Sedition Acts (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1951), p. 51.

iv William N. Chambers, Political Parties in a New Nation (New York City: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 138.

v College Entrance Exam Board. 1977. AP American History Exam Section II: Document-Based Question.

vi James M. Smith, Freedom's Fetters: The Alien and Sedition Laws and American Civil Liberties (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967), p. 15.

vii College Entrance Exam Board, op. cit.

viii Crisis in Freedom, p. 41.

ix Ibid., p. 44.

x Smith, op. cit. p. 24.

xi Crisis in Freedom, p. 45.

xii Ibid., p. 43.

xiii Smith, op. cit. p. 26.

xiv Ibid., p. 28.

xv The Avalon Project: The Alien and Sedition Acts.

xvi Smith, op. cit. p. 37.

xvii Ibid., p. 47.

xviii Avalon Project

xix Smith, op. cit. p. 60.

xx Ibid., p. 90.

xxi Samuel E. Morison, The Oxford History of the American People (New York City: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 354.

xxii Smith, op. cit. p. 193.

xxiii Chambers, op. cit. p. 140.