[Music] welcome back everyone when we left off the year was 1798 Congress had just passed the alien Sedition Acts which banned the publication of false scandalous and malicious writings against the government which when we look in the Constitution we look no further than the First Amendment which says that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press Congress has done exactly that given the government a power that was expressly forbidden by this constitutional agreement and so our question is what happens now what do we the people do if the federal government government ignores or expressly violates the Constitution which today we take it for granted that okay well just take it to the Supreme Court and let them decide that's how we do things in America today right the Constitution never expressly grants the Supreme Court that power as we'll find out very soon when we study Marbury V Madison and so the question facing uh Jefferson and Madison at this time was what do we do now the government has been EX in existence 9 years and is already spat in the face of this constitutional agreement that was made between the people and the states and so the solution that Madison and Jefferson craft is state interposition in the form of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions now it's interesting because Madison is finding himself in a bit of a dilemma sometimes it's hard to place him because just just a decade ago he was writing the Federalist he was telling people he said in Federalist 10 he wrote among the numerous advantages promised by a well- constructed Union none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction Madison believed that a strong central government would subdue the factions that had taken over some of the state governments he thought that surely a large Republic would be better off than a small Republic because you would have so many people such a diverse array of individuals and opinions that surely no one faction could take over the government what Madison didn't see coming was the political party system and so he's finding himself now seeing that a faction has taken control the federal government and decided to run with it and so Madison and Jefferson draft the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions which were protest resolutions from the state legislator directed to the federal government Madison wrote the Virginia resolution and Jefferson wrote The Kentucky Resolution let's look at what they have in common both of these resolutions Advocate the compact theory of the Constitution now the compact theory is it has nothing to do with this uh Constitution being so small uh you can get compact copies of this all the time from anywhere but a compact is an agreement anytime we make an agreement put our name to paper we make a compact and so the way that Jefferson and Madison are looking at the Constitution is that it's an agreement between the states it's a contract that was made that all parties are obliged to follow take for example uh you know when you get older you'll have a mortgage you'll have a car payment and so I signed a compact when I took out a loan on my place and so I have agreed with the bank that I'm going to pay a certain amount every month for a certain period of time now if the bank calls me up and says we're going to need an extra $200 a month well I'd probably tell them where they can put that $200 this is not something that I am interested in doing I already made an agreement with you and this is how Jefferson and Madison look at the Constitution as a compact between the states and so the Virginia Kentucky Resolutions both espouse this compact Theory and the idea of state interposition which to interpose is to stand between and so the idea is that the state governments sometimes need to stand between the federal government and the people of their states in order to protect the people so sometimes the states need to protect their citizens from the abuses of the federal government when that compact is violated now Madison in his Virginia resolution is very nice he declares a warm attachment to the union of the states and he says that the whole reason that we're even filing this protest is out of our warm attachment and it is our duty he says to watch over and oppose every infraction of these principles which constitute the only basis of that Union and he says that the government the federal government has taken a power that was not only not delegated to it but expressly forbidden and so what Madison sees the state of Virginia doing is filing a protest getting together with the other states to say hey federal government we made an agreement maybe you should honor it [Music] moving on to Kentucky an Jefferson went out west uh Kentucky which uh was on land that had been seated by Virginia but moving out west to a rougher sort of people more Jeffersonian sort uh when you look at Jefferson's and Madison's Pros you see that Jefferson is definitely more radical and Jefferson like Madison wants the state of Kentucky to interpose on behalf of its citizens in order order to protect its citizens from this unconstitutional Sedition Act but then again whereas Madison barks Jefferson bites and so Jefferson looks at the 10th Amendment to the Constitution and he says that look we have our Bill of Rights and the 10th Amendment clearly says that the power is not delegated to the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the states are reserved to the state respectively or to the people Constitution says this but then if the federal government ignores it then what do we do about it and so what Jefferson sees in the 10th Amendment is an implication that if the federal government ignores this contract then the states not only need to be able to protest but they need to be able to do something and that something is something that we refer to as nullification we haven't seen the last of this in US history just a minute and so Jefferson says because this 10th Amendment exists the Kentucky Legislature says there for the act of the Congress the United States passed on the 14th day of July 1798 which does abridge the freedom of the press is not law but is all together void and of No Force so since this compact has been violated the states have absolutely no duty to go along with this violation or to tolerate it in any form just like I said if the bank calls and says hey we need a couple hundred more this month on your mortgage or your car note I would tell them where to go you can't just decide to amend this agreement on your own and if you do that I will ignore you and that's what Jefferson is saying and so Madison didn't go quite this far but Jefferson did Jefferson uh you know being a rabid supporter of state's rights says that the state should be able to nullify this piece of legislation and we see Jefferson's frustration really bleeding out of this uh Kentucky Resolution when he says here that the Federalists say that people should trust that the government's not going to abuse this Sedition Act that surely the government will not take this Sedition Act to the extreme and prosecute well-meaning people well Jefferson says that look in questions of power now keep in mind this is Jefferson who's the Perpetual Optimist when it comes to The Human Condition and having faith in people when it comes to people in government and people that have power over others much different he says in questions of power then let no more be heard of confidence in man but bind him from Mischief by the chains of the Constitution and so Jefferson who need only look out his window to see what happens when one man has power over another isn't willing to yield this power to give this power up to a government and to let that government have power over him and so in doing so Jefferson is the father of the doctrine of nullification of the states ignorance of a federal law disregard may be a better word there because they certainly knew that alien Sedition Acts happened and this becomes a problem that is unsettled because Jefferson and Madison and their Republican party are going to be swept into the White House in Congress in 1800 so thing about nullification let's just sweep that under the rug and we will get back to that in about 30 years now although Jefferson believed that the state had a right to ignore federal law some people wanted to go even further there were some Republicans some Jeffersonian Republicans that were talking about seceding from the union after all this has only been going on for 9 years and this federal government has already been taken over by the Federalist Party and it is already disregarded and trampled upon the Constitution now Jefferson is angry as he is about uh this abuse of power by the federal government wrote to John Taylor of Caroline that this is not a very good idea Jefferson wrote to his friend and counsel him a little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over their spells dissolve and the people recovering their true sight restore their government to its true principles and so once again here is the real Jefferson although he wasn't a man who trusted government he was a man who trusted the people and so while he maintained that a state should be able to ignore an unconstitutional law he believed also in the power of the people to rectify the problems with their government so he tells John Taylor just wait till the next election there is no reason to get over excited and tear apart this Union so although Jefferson uh didn't have all these polite things to say about warm attachment to the union he certainly was attached to the idea of the Union of states and so sure enough Jefferson's faith in people paid off for at least Jefferson's faith in people to see things his way which it's often what faith in people is right and so in the election of 1800 we see Jefferson win a narrow Victory as we can see the state of New York is going to switch over to the Republican side otherwise the electoral map doesn't show a whole lot of movement but the jeffersonians are able to seize control of the government Through The Ballot Box not the cartridge box and also of Congress both the Senate and the house after 1800 have solid Jefferson sonian Republican majorities and so in 1800 Jefferson's elected president his party controls both the Senate and the house and so the issue of state interposition and nullification is going to go away for a while but it's not [Music] over who's that Thomas Jefferson that's right that's Thomas Jefferson