![]() The Los Angeles Times editorialized: "The citizens of Cochise County have written a lesson that the whole of America would do well to copy." They placed these workers-many of Mexican descent-on railroad cattle cars without food or water and left them in the New Mexico desert 180 miles away. In Cochise County, Arizona, armed men, under the direction of a local sheriff, rounded up 1,186 strikers at the Phelps Dodge copper mine. In July 1917, labor radicals offered another ready target for attack. Another Socialist, Kate Richards O'Hare, served a year in prison for stating that the women of the United States were "nothing more nor less than brood sows, to raise children to get into the army and be made into fertilizer." Debs, who urged socialists to resist militarism, went to prison for nearly three years. Political dissenters bore the brunt of the repression. The government prosecuted over 2,100 people under these acts. Congress passed the Sedition Act of 1918, which made it a federal offense to use "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the Constitution, the government, the American uniform, or the flag. The piece of legislation gave postal officials the authority to ban newspapers and magazines from the mails and threatened individuals convicted of obstructing the draft with $10,000 fines and 20 years in jail. In June 1917, Congress passed the Espionage Act. "If there should be disloyalty, it will be dealt with a firm hand of repression." There were "millions of men and women of German birth and native sympathy who live amongst us," he said. In his war message to Congress, President Wilson had warned that the war would require a redefinition of national loyalty. ESPIONAGE AND SEDITION ACTS FREEThe prosecutions fueled furious debate over the meaning of a free press and the rights that should be afforded to opposition political parties in the United States.Printable Version The Espionage and Sedition Acts federal courts prosecuted at least 26 individuals under the Sedition Act many were editors of Democratic-Republican newspapers, and all opposed the Adams administration. Legacy of Alien and Sedition ActsĪll told, between 17, U.S. ESPIONAGE AND SEDITION ACTS SERIESWhen he failed to get one, he retaliated by revealing the first public allegations of Jefferson’s long-rumored relationship with an enslaved woman, Sally Hemings, in a series of newspaper articles. Sentenced to nine months in prison for his “false, scandalous, and malicious writing, against the said President of the United States,” Callender wrote articles from jail supporting Jefferson’s campaign for president in 1800.Īfter Jefferson won, Callender demanded a government post in return for his service. Lyon won reelection while sitting in jail, and would later defeat a Federalist attempt to kick him out of the House.Īnother individual famously prosecuted under the Sedition Act was the Democratic-Republican-friendly journalist James Callender. He was convicted, and the judge sentenced him to four months in prison and a fine of $1,000. Lyon acted as his own attorney, and defended himself by claiming the Sedition Act was unconstitutional, and that he had not intended to damage the government. Jefferson wrote: “he several states who formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction and that a nullification, by those, of all unauthorized acts….is the rightful remedy.” James Madison authored the Virginia Resolution in collaboration with Thomas Jefferson, who also authored the Kentucky Resolution.īoth argued that the federal government did not have the authority to enact laws not specified in the Constitution. The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions were passed by the legislatures of their respective states in response to the Alien and Sedition Acts. It was set to expire on March 3, 1801, the last day of his term in office. But the Federalist majority pushed it through, arguing that English and American courts had long punished seditious libel under common law, and that freedom of speech must be balanced with an individual’s responsibility for false statements.Īdams signed the Sedition Act into law on July 14, 1798. ![]()
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