hello and welcome to our lecture revolution of 1800. today we're going to be looking at how politicians responded to laws they believed were unconstitutional in the early republic while they're still trying to figure out what you do when a law appears to be unconstitutional we'll also look at how jefferson's policies as president differed from adams's and how jefferson's policies differed from what he believed before he was president so sometimes being in that office changes the way people see the world and how the president should use his power and jefferson is certainly illustrative of that and finally and most importantly really what is judicial review because that's incredibly important to understanding our constitutional system today so with the election of 1796 uh we have the first partisan election and the first contested election in u.s history so bipartisan i mean that we have two different parties they're openly identifying with one of two parties as they vote john adams ran as a federalist the party of george washington against thomas jefferson a democratic republican and again that party has nothing to do with either of the major parties today neither the democrats or the republicans today are related to jeffersonian republicans those democratic republicans of the 1790s jefferson feared that the corruption decadence and waste of monarchy and aristocracy could corrupt the american government under the federalists hamilton's financial plan strengthened the executive branch and this reminded jefferson of pre-revolutionary british corruption in britain and france he saw hamilton's plan as a danger to liberty and democracy it's just too much power in that federal government to jefferson washington and hamilton's use of a standing army to suppress domestic revolt in the whiskey rebellion seemed quote yet another step to bringing tyranny to america despite the fact that that tax was passed by a congress that had direct representation from the people jefferson's opponents accused him of atheism and of not having much real experience adams's opponents mocked his weight and backing a federal power calling him king adams adams won the election but the election results revealed the geographic base of certain parties federalists held on to new england and the mid-atlantic states so this is what we used to call the middle colonies once they're states we call them the mid-atlantic states adams received all the northern electoral votes except for pennsylvania's remember the they're a bit more western and they have the the whiskey rebellion there so they're not real happy with washington or adams jefferson received the south votes the problem is the constitution was not written with political parties in mind they didn't like political parties they didn't foresee parties happening so the candidate with the most votes became president and the candidate with second most votes became vice president so adams vice president was thomas jefferson the second place finisher this would be like if hillary clinton was donald trump's vice president it wouldn't work would it so the vice president was literally the leader of the opposition party now they'll fix this later because obviously this is not going to work washington issued a farewell address although it wasn't a speech it was actually a 6 000 word essay partially written by hamilton and given both to congress and to newspapers to publish it was mostly a denunciation of partisanship it said that the united states itself would be endangered if parties continued to be characterized by quote geographical discriminations northern and southern atlantic and western he said that quote this spirit of partisanship is inseparable from our nature having its roots in the strongest passions of the human mind it exists under different shapes in all governments more or less stifled or controlled or repressed but in those of the popular form in other words in a democratic system it is seen in its greatest rankedness and is truly their worst enemy sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction more able or more fortunate than his competitors turns this disposition right this partisanship to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty partisanship opens the door to foreign influence and corruption which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another so he warns against partisanship he warns against how that kind of opens the united states to outside influences uh he also warns against any permanent foreign alliances so there is a concern about the united states getting dragged into a war in europe when they're too weak to really participate in those kinds of wars and when they might end up being a british colony again if they lose that kind of war now key members of adams's cabinet adams is a federalist but key members of his cabinet were loyal to hamilton who's also a federalist so we call the the federalist loyal to hamilton the high federalists this is the most ideologically extreme group of federalists so you can kind of think this of the way we think of like tea party people versus the whole republican party like they're still republicans and yet it's just a more extreme version ideologically and that's the same thing we see here high federalists are still federalists but they're more ideologically extreme than the rest of the party so this group supported manufacturing subsidies so direct payments to businesses that made goods and direct intervention in the economy they think the united states needs to be involved the government needs to be involved in kind of getting that economy going and making sure that it's working well for the people now the french were still upset by j's treaty and the betrayal of the french us alliance so when a new french government the director regained control because in the french revolution they kept overthrowing what government they had and a new government would pop up so this new government the directory gains control and it denounced jace treaty as evidence of an anglo-american that is british united states alliance against the french the french directory that government saw adams is just kind of a dupe a puppet of the british now france had actually supported jefferson against adams in 1796 in that election but it backfired because americans didn't really like the idea of a foreign nation telling them how to vote in their election now the french directory turned hostile towards the united states when the party that it wanted to win didn't win the election so once adams is in office uh the french directory government does not like the us so they end the commercial treaty of 1778 and they began seizing american ships again if they were trading with the british the french directory declared that any american sailor found on british ships and remember britain is impressing some of these people forcing them to serve would be executed so if they find an american on a british ship even if they're being forced to serve by the british navy the french say they're going to execute these americans by adams's third month in office france had seized more than 300 american ships so adam's trying to keep the peace here trying to kind of follow in washington's footsteps sent three commissioners to paris to negotiate the problem and try to avoid the war because much like washington he thinks the united states is too weak too young to go to war with the european power now when telling congress what happened to these three commissioners that went to france adams only identified the french negotiators as monsieur x y and z this is like calling somebody mr x mr y and mr z he's not telling you what their actual names are now before they would negotiate x y and z demanded a quarter million dollar bribe and a 12 million dollar loan and that is just to get them to the table to start talking about a deal right the u.s senate published the story of what came to be known as the xyz affair in april of 1798 and americans were outraged many including hamilton and his high federalists wanted war against france newspapers declared millions for defense but not one cent for tribute in other words they don't want to pay this bribe to france not even one cent they would rather pay millions to go to war against them federalists saw a huge surge of support for them and their very anti-french position but atoms like washington before him did not want war so in the fall of 1798 american pirates and shippers waged a quasi war or an undeclared war with france so they're fighting even though the governments have not declared war and that's not supportive of government policy so they're fighting with france and the caribbean preparing for the eventuality of an actual war congress upgraded the navy and over republican opposition to expanding the military federalists tripled the size of the regular army to ten thousand men and created a special provisional army of fifty thousand so they really are gearing up for the possibility of war here congress put george washington in command of the provisional force but he declined to leave retirement except in an emergency but he insisted that hamilton who had survived you know that terrible winter at valley forge and had fought with him in the revolution be put in command of this army so it forces adams to accept hamilton as the leader of this military even though adams and hamilton though in the same party are not getting along now to pay for this expanded army because militaries are expensive and wars are always expensive federalists passed the 2 million direct tax of 1798. it was a tax on land enslaved people and dwellings or buildings the tax was unpopular and federalists didn't like the criticism they received over it and in fact they overreact to this criticism in response federalists passed four laws in the summer of 1789 known collectively as the alien and sedition acts the alien and sedition acts were extremely controversial the first three alien acts were aimed at immigrants specifically irish and french refugees who supported or voted for democratic republicans so you can think of this as the two parties getting competitive and so federalists are trying to go after those groups that have supported their opposition the democratic republicans they're trying to take some political power away from them the first alien act said that the president could deport immigrants whose nation of origin was at war with the united states so if the u.s went to war with france the president could deport all french immigrants regardless of how they felt about the war just at will the second alien act said the president could expel any immigrant he suspected of subversive activities now subversion means to overthrow the government from within so this would be accusing an immigrant of trying to overthrow the us government from inside the united states and the president can do this under the alien act without any proof right so all he has to have is an accusation or to make an accusation against an immigrant and he can expel them from the country without any proof any due process which doesn't exactly seem constitutional now doesn't the third alien act was the naturalization act and this extended the residency requirement for citizenship and in many places for the right to vote not all states restricted voters by making them have to be citizens but some did and so this extends the residency requirement for citizenship from five years to 14 years the federalists say that these immigrants coming into the nation are more likely to vote for democratic republicans which is true and so to try to stop that from happening instead of coming up with plans that would make these people want to vote for the federalist party they're trying to disfranchise them to take away their voting rights so if you extend that residency requirement from five years to 14 years that's another nine years before those people can vote in most states now federalists including washington blamed immigrants for the whiskey rebellion too and they thought that the immigrants coming into kind of the western parts of the united states we're giving farmers their radical ideas despite the fact that most of the actions taken in the whiskey rebellion were just carbon copies of the american revolution so they're kind of targeting these immigrants now now the sedition act was the fourth and most controversial of these acts it made it a federal crime to engage in any conspiracy against the government or to utter or print anything quote false scandalous or malicious against the government obviously that is unconstitutional but the federalists consider themselves to be the government they thought their opposition was against the united states of america not just against their party they don't recognize a legitimate partisan opposition against them newspaper editors could be fined or jailed for publishing articles with the intent to defame the government congress or the president so if they're too critical of the current government they can throw them in jail now what's supposed to prevent that from happening the first amendment right but they're just kind of ignoring that because they are are not recognizing that this is legitimate partisan opposition and they're seeing this as somehow subversive trying to overthrow the government and they are the government now critically the law did not restrict people from criticizing the vice president now why would they have written it that way well the vice president was jefferson he was a democratic republican so they passed this law basically saying you can criticize the vice president democratic republicans all you want you just can't criticize the party in power which is atoms and the federalists so it's an attempt to silence the political minority and it clearly violates the first amendment but the supreme court is barely functioning at this point it's unsure of its powers and all of its justices so far were appointed by washington and adams they're federalists and federalist judges in the lower courts were blatantly partisan in how they were enforcing this act 25 individuals mostly republican newspaper editors were arrested 15 were indicted and 10 convicted including benjamin franklin's grandson who unfortunately died of yellow fever before he could even be brought to court on the issue so this is a serious unconstitutional attack on the free press people were imprisoned over it and the constitution was supposed to protect political minorities from elected majorities pushing them completely out of power and taking away their rights like free speech so outrage democratic republicans not really knowing where else to turn turned to the safety of state legislatures still dominated by their party where they addressed the unconstitutionality of the alien and sedition acts they passed resolutions challenging the entire centralizing program of the federalist of putting more power in the federal government and the result is really the first significant articulation of a state's rights position in u.s history so proceed to the next part of the lecture page to see a clip from hbo's mini-series on john adams in which jefferson the vice president confronts adams the president about the alien and sedition acts and note which arguments each man makes to support his side