The Federalists and the Sedition Act

The Sedition Act of 1798 famously expired on March 3, 1801, and presupposed to punish false and malicious statements in regards to the Federalist President John Adams and the majority-Federalist Congress, not in regards to the Democratic-Republican Vice-President Thomas Jefferson. That is usually talked about as proof of the Federalists’ partisanship in enacting the Act.

However what I hadn’t identified for a very long time is that the Federalists tried to reenact the Act in early 1801, when it might have outlawed criticism of the newly-elected Democratic-Republican President and Congress. The invoice was defeated within the Home by a 53-49 vote; almost all Federalists voted for it, and all Republicans voted towards it. The 4 Federalists who voted towards consisted of 1 (George Dent) who voted towards the 1798 Act, two who weren’t within the Home for the 1798 Act vote, and one who was within the Home in 1798 however did not vote.

The Federalists’ acknowledged arguments appeared to mainly be

1. malicious falsehoods in regards to the authorities are harmful and worthless and need to be suppressed,
2. the Sedition Act had truly been enforced correctly, and thus merited renewal, and
3. the Act protects speech by limiting common-law seditious libel to falsehoods, and by fixing a modest penalty for seditious libel.

There might need been some political posturing there, and maybe the Federalists thought that they had to do that to forestall costs of hypocrisy. They could even have thought that they had little to lose from the renewal, given the expectation that the brand new Administration wouldn’t implement the legislation, given its militant hostility to the legislation up to now.

Nonetheless, it struck me as value noting. (I wrote about this again in 2009, however one thing I learn this morning simply jogged my memory of it, so I assumed I might point out it once more.)