US History help!?

Question

Do you agree with the republicans that the Alien and Sedition Acts (1798) were a violation of the First Amendment? Were they necessary? Support your opinion.

Answer 1

There were actually four acts, The Naturalization Act; The Alien Act; The Alien Enemies Act; and The Sedition Act.

The Naturalization Act was the least problematic in a Constitutional sense in that it stipulated that an alien must prove 14 years of residence to be eligible for citizenship.

The Alien Act authorized the President to order the deportation of an alien whom he (the President) deemed dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States.

The Alien Enemies Act empowered the President in case of war to deport aliens of an enemy country or to subject them to important restrains if they were permitted to remain in this country.

The Sedition Act not only made it a high misdemeanor for any person to conspire to oppose any measure or to impede the operation of any law of the United States but also made it illegal for any person to write, print, or publish “any false, scandalous and malicious writing. . . . against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress . . . or the President. . . with the intent to defame . . . . , or to bring them, or either of them, into contempt or disrepute; or to excite against them, or either or any of them the hatred of the good people of the United States.

The two Alien Acts were clearly aimed at the French and pro-French foreigners in the United States, who were virtually unanimous in their support of the Republican Party. The Republicans attacked the laws as unconstitutional by first depriving persons of liberty without due process of law in violation of the Fifth Amendment and, second, that they contemplated the imposition of penalties without judicial process upon persons not convicted of any offense. Interestingly, The Enemy Alien Act yet remains on the statute books and in 1948 was held valid by the Supreme Court (Ludecke v. Watkins).

The Sedition Act posed a far more difficult constitutional problem. Without some understanding of Common Law history this becomes a little challenging for some people, however, sponsors of the law intended to re-enact English Common Law of seditious libel as a congressional statute. The Federalists contended that the First Amendment had merely incorporated the English common-law guarantee of ‘no prior restraint,’ which prohibited censorship before publication but which permitted very broad prosecution for ‘seditious libel’ subsequent to the publication of anything unfriendly to the government. English ‘freedom of the press’ thus meant little more than a prior right to publish.

There is far more to this subject than outlined here and it is well worth the time to study it, but the preceding (I believe) addresses in a very short form your question. The point is that the four acts comprising what is referred to as the Alien and Sedition Act, are neither entirely bad nor does the application of them exist outside of the political factions of the time.

Answer 2

I remember this from apush, so yes the Alien and Sedition Acts were a violation of the First. It was not necessary because most of the people actually targeted were not in a real sense enemies or spies, but rather people who had printed or said things that were deemed seditious by the Federalists.

Answer 3

Yes it was because it violated the right guarenteed to American citizens that we have freedom of press. The Alien & Sedition Acts took away that right by not having certain press against the president or his party printed.