Similarities Between The Alien And Sedition Acts

Alien and Sedition Acts
During the late 1700’s a war was starting to brew with France. The president at this time was Federalist John Adams who was preparing North America for war. Adams and congress thought that the best idea would be to enlarge the size of the army in order to help decide the fate of North America if the war with France was to happen. In August of 1798 the war with the French became known as the “Quasi-War”. This is when the Anti-Federalists or also known as the Democratic Republicans started coming together and creating a party that went against Congress and John Adams. During this time Congress passed four laws and Adams reluctantly agreed. These four laws included the Naturalization Act, the Alien Act, the Alien Enemies
They were considered “aliens” because they were different. They looked different, spoke different, and acted different than most of the other americans therefore they saw them as a threat. The Alien Act and the Alien Enemies Act allowed the president to deport any immigrant that was not a legal citizen if they were thought to be committing any crimes. The Enemies Act was geared more toward the arrest of non citizens committing crimes, but they were also deported as well. The sedition on the other hand stated that any person who spoke bad about the government was to be punished or arrested. Typically the punishment was a fairly wealthy fine for speaking or publishing anything bad mannered toward the government or the officers. Immigrants suspected of being aliens or conducting any bad crimes and any person speaking bad about the government or its officers were the main provisions of the Alien and Sedition
The federalists and the Democratic-Republicans were going at one another. Neither side even trying to budge to understand what the other side was thinking or trying to say. The federalists were fighting for these laws to be passed which they ended up passing because they won the majority of the electoral votes. The Anti-federalists were furious they could not see how they were going to completely disobey the first amendment. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson were anti-federalist and they opposed these acts. They decided to come up with plans to take to congress that would completely invalidate these four acts. Virginia and Kentucky passed their settlements. After their resolutions were passed they started to get backlash from the federalists. They were trying to make them look bad and threaten them because they did not like their resolution so the two argued that the states could go their own way. These are now known as the Virginia and Kentucky Resolves. The political atmosphere was so heated during this time frame because so many people had different opinions about who was right and who was wrong and when someone or two people who did not agree with james adams or congress and came up with resolutions it caused the alien and sedition acts to become