History[edit]

Opposition to the Federalists, spurred by Democratic-Republicans, reached new

heights with the Democratic-Republicans' support of France, which was still in the
midst of the French Revolution. Some appeared to desire in the United States an
event similar to the French Revolution, in order to overthrow the government.[8]
When Democratic-Republicans in some states refused to enforce federal laws such as
the 1791 whiskey tax, the first tax levied by the national government, and
threatened to rebel, Federalists warned that they would send in the army to force
them to capitulate.[9] As the unrest sweeping Europe spread to the United States,
calls for secession reached unparalleled heights, and the fledgling nation seemed
ready to tear itself apart.[9] Some of this agitation was seen by Federalists as
having been caused by French and French-sympathizing immigrants.[9] The Alien Act
and the Sedition Act were meant to guard against this perceived threat of anarchy.

They were a major political issue in the elections of 1798 and 1800, controversial
then, and remaining so today. Opposition to them resulted in the highly
controversial Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, authored by James Madison and
Thomas Jefferson. Prominent prosecutions under the Sedition Act include:

James Thomson Callender, a Scottish citizen, had been expelled from Great Britain
for his political writings. Living first in Philadelphia, then seeking refuge close
by in Virginia, he wrote a book titled The Prospect Before Us (read and approved by
Vice President Jefferson before publication) in which he called the Adams
administration a "continual tempest of malignant passions" and the President a
"repulsive pedant, a gross hypocrite and an unprincipled oppressor." Callender,
already residing in Virginia and writing for the Richmond Examiner, was indicted in
mid-1800 under the Sedition Act and convicted, fined $200, and sentenced to nine
months in jail.[10]:21120
Matthew Lyon was a Democratic-Republican congressman from Vermont. He was the first
individual to be placed on trial under the Alien and Sedition Acts.[1] He was
indicted in 1800 for an essay he had written in the Vermont Journal accusing the
administration of "ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation, and selfish avarice." While
awaiting trial, Lyon commenced publication of Lyon's Republican Magazine, subtitled
"The Scourge of Aristocracy". At trial, he was fined $1,000 and sentenced to four
months in jail. After his release, he returned to Congress.[11][10]:10208
Benjamin Franklin Bache was editor of the Philadelphia Aurora, a Democratic-
Republican newspaper. Bache had accused George Washington of incompetence and
financial irregularities, and "the blind, bald, crippled, toothless, querulous
Adams" of nepotism and monarchical ambition. He was arrested in 1798 under the
Sedition Act, but he died of yellow fever before trial.[10]:2729, 65, 96
Anthony Haswell was an English immigrant and a printer of the Jeffersonian Vermont
Gazette.[12] Haswell had reprinted from the Aurora Bache's claim that the federal
government employed Tories, also publishing an advertisement from Lyon's sons for a
lottery to raise money for his fine that decried Lyon's oppression by jailors
exercising "usurped powers".[13] Haswell was found guilty of seditious libel by
judge William Paterson, and sentenced to a two-month imprisonment and a $200 fine.
[14]
Luther Baldwin was indicted, convicted, and fined $100 for a drunken incident that
occurred during a visit by President Adams to Newark, New Jersey. Upon hearing a
gun report during a parade, he yelled "I hope it hit Adams in the arse."[15]
[10]:11214
In November 1798, David Brown led a group in Dedham, Massachusetts, including
Benjamin Fairbanks, in setting up a liberty pole with the words, "No Stamp Act, No
Sedition Act, No Alien Bills, No Land Tax, downfall to the Tyrants of America;
peace and retirement to the President; Long Live the Vice President."[14][16][17]
Brown was arrested in Andover, Massachusetts, but because he could not afford the
$4,000 bail, he was taken to Salem for trial.[16] Brown was tried in June 1799.[14]
Brown pleaded guilty, but Justice Samuel Chase asked him to name others who had
assisted him.[14] Brown refused, was fined $480,[16][18] and sentenced to eighteen
months in prison, the most severe sentence ever imposed under the Sedition Act.[14]
[16]
Contemporaneous reaction[edit]
The Democratic-Republicans made the Alien and Sedition Acts an important issue in
the 1800 election campaign. Upon assuming the Presidency, Thomas Jefferson pardoned
those still serving sentences under the Sedition Act,[10]:231 and Congress soon
repaid their fines.[19] It has been said that the Alien Acts were aimed at Albert
Gallatin, and the Sedition Act aimed at Benjamin Bache's Aurora.[20] While
government authorities prepared lists of aliens for deportation, many aliens fled
the country during the debate over the Alien and Sedition Acts, and Adams never
signed a deportation order.[10]:18793

The Alien and Sedition Acts were never appealed to the Supreme Court, whose right
of judicial review was not clearly established until Marbury v. Madison in 1803.
Subsequent mentions in Supreme Court opinions beginning in the mid-20th century
have assumed that the Sedition Act would today be found unconstitutional.[21][22]

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison also secretly drafted the Kentucky and Virginia
Resolutions denouncing the federal legislation, though many other state
legislatures strongly opposed these resolutions.[23][24][25] Though the resolutions
followed Madison's "interposition" approach, Jefferson advocated nullification and
at one point drafted a threat for Kentucky to secede.[26] Jefferson's biographer
Dumas Malone argued that this might have gotten Jefferson impeached for treason,
had his actions become known at the time.[27] In writing the Kentucky Resolutions,
Jefferson warned that, "unless arrested at the threshold," the Alien and Sedition
Acts would "necessarily drive these states into revolution and blood." Historian
Ron Chernow says of this "he wasn't calling for peaceful protests or civil
disobedience: he was calling for outright rebellion, if needed, against the federal
government of which he was vice president." Jefferson "thus set forth a radical
doctrine of states' rights that effectively undermined the constitution."[27]
Chernow argues that neither Jefferson nor Madison sensed that they had sponsored
measures as inimical as the Alien and Sedition Acts themselves.[27] Historian Garry
Wills argued, "Their nullification effort, if others had picked it up, would have
been a greater threat to freedom than the misguided [alien and sedition] laws,
which were soon rendered feckless by ridicule and electoral pressure"[28] The
theoretical damage of the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions was "deep and lasting,
and was a recipe for disunion".[27] George Washington was so appalled by them that
he told Patrick Henry that if "systematically and pertinaciously pursued", they
would "dissolve the union or produce coercion".[27] The influence of Jefferson's
doctrine of states' rights reverberated right up to the Civil War and beyond.[9] At
the close of the Civil War, future president James Garfield said that Jefferson's
Kentucky Resolution "contained the germ of nullification and secession, and we are
today reaping the fruits".[9]

The Alien Enemies Act in the 20th and 21st centuries[edit]

The Alien Enemies Acts remained in effect at the outset of World War I.[29] It was
recodified to be part of the US war and national defense statutes (50 USC 2124).
[29]

On December 7, 1941, responding to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin

Delano Roosevelt used the authority of the revised Alien Enemies Act to issue
presidential proclamations 2525 (Alien Enemies Japanese), 2526 (Alien Enemies
German), and 2527 (Alien Enemies Italian), to apprehend, restrain, secure and
remove Japanese, German, and Italian non-citizens.[29] On February 19, 1942, citing
authority of the wartime powers of the president and commander in chief, Roosevelt
made Executive Order 9066, authorizing the Secretary of War to prescribe military
areas and giving him authority that superseded the authority of other executives
under Proclamations 2525-7. EO 9066 led to the internment of Japanese Americans,
whereby over 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry living on the Pacific coast were
forcibly relocated and forced to live in camps in the interior of the country, 62%
of whom were United States citizens, not aliens.[30][31]

Hostilities with Germany and Italy ended in May 1945, and with Japan in August.
Alien enemies, and U.S. citizens, continued to be interned. On July 14, 1945,
President Harry S. Truman issued Presidential Proclamation 2655, titled Removal of
Alien Enemies. The proclamation gave the Attorney General authority regarding
aliens enemies within the continental United States, to decide whether they are
"dangerous to the public peace and safety of the United States", to order them
removed, and to create regulations governing their removal. The proclamation cited
the revised Alien Enemies Act (50 U.S.C. 2124) as to powers of the President to
make public proclamation regarding "subjects of the hostile nation" more than
fourteen years old and living inside the United States but not naturalized, to
remove them as alien enemies, and to determine the means of removal.

On September 8, 1945, Truman issued Presidential Proclamation 2662, titled "Removal

of Alien Enemies". The revised Alien Enemies Act (50 U.S.C. 2124) was cited as to
removal of alien enemies in the interest of the public safety. The United States
had agreed, at a conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1942, to assume responsibility for
the restraint and repatriation of dangerous alien enemies to be sent to the United
States from Latin American republics. In another inter-American conference in
Mexico City on March 8, 1945, North and South American governments resolved to
recommended adoption of measures to prevent aliens of hostile nations who were
deemed to be security threats or threats to welfare from remaining in North or
South America. Truman gave authority to the Secretary of State to determine if
alien enemies in the United States who were sent to the United States from Latin
America, or who were in the United States illegally, endangered the welfare or
security of the country. The Secretary of State was given power to remove them "to
destinations outside the limits of the Western Hemisphere", to the former enemy
territory of the governments to whose "principles of which (the alien enemies) have
adhered". The Department of Justice was directed to assist the Secretary of State
in their prompt removal.

On April 10, 1946, Truman issued Presidential Proclamation 2685, titled Removal of
Alien Enemies, citing the revised Alien Enemies Act (50 U.S.C. 2124) as to its
provision for the removal from the United States of alien enemies in the interest
of the public safety. Truman proclaimed regulations that were in addition to and
supplemented other "regulations affecting the restraint and removal of alien
enemies". As to alien enemies who had been brought into the continental United
States from Latin America after December 1941, the proclamation gave the Secretary
of State authority to decide if their presence was "prejudicial to the future
security or welfare of the Americas", and to make regulations for their removal. 30
days was set as the reasonable time for them to "effect the recovery, disposal, and
removal of (their) goods and effects, and for (their) departure."

In 1947 New York's Ellis Island continued to incarcerate hundreds of ethnic

Germans. Fort Lincoln was a large internment camp still holding internees in North
Dakota. North Dakota was represented by controversial Senator William "Wild Bill"
Langer. Langer introduced a bill (S. 1749) "for the relief of all persons detained
as enemy aliens", and directing the US Attorney General to cancel "outstanding
warrants of arrest, removal, or deportation" for many German aliens still interned,
listing many by name, and all of those detained by the Immigration and
Naturalization Service (INS), which was under the Department of Justice (DOJ). It
directed the INS not to issue any more warrants or orders, if their only basis was
the original warrants of arrest. The bill never passed. The Attorney General gave
up plenary jurisdiction over the last internee on Ellis Island late in 1948.

In Ludecke v. Watkins (1948), the Supreme Court interpreted the time of release
under the Alien Enemies Act. German alien Kurt G. W. Ludecke was detained in 1941,
under Proclamation 2526. and continued to be held after cessation of hostilities.
In 1947, Ludecke petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus to order his release, after
the Attorney General ordered him deported. The court ruled 54 to release Ludecke,
but also found that the Alien Enemies Act allowed for detainment beyond the time
hostilities ceased, until an actual treaty was signed with the hostile nation or
government.

In 1988, President Reagan and the 100th Congress introduced the Civil Liberties Act
of 1988, whose purpose amongst others was to acknowledge and apologize for actions
of the US against individuals of Japanese ancestry during World War II.[32] The
statement from Congress agreed with the Commission on Wartime Relocation and
Internment of Civilians, that "a grave injustice was done to both citizens and
permanent resident aliens of Japanese... without adequate security reasons and
without any acts of espionage or sabotage documented by the Commission, and were
motivated largely by racial prejudice, wartime hysteria, and a failure of political
leadership."

In 2015, presidential candidate Donald Trump made a proposal to ban all Muslims
from entering the United States (as part of the War on Terror); Roosevelt's
application of the Alien Enemies Act was cited as a possible justification. The
proposal created international controversy, drawing criticism from foreign heads of
state that have historically remained uninvolved in United States presidential
elections.[33][34][35][36] A former Reagan Administration aide noted that, despite
criticism of Trump's proposal to invoke the law, "the Alien Enemies Act... is still
on the books... (and people) in Congress for many decades (havent) repealed the
law... (nor has) Barack Obama".[37] Other critics claimed that the proposal
violated founding principles, and was unconstitutional for singling out a religion,
and not a hostile nation. They included the Pentagon and others, who argued that
the proposal (and its citation of the Alien Enemies proclamations as authority)
played into the ISIL narrative that the United States was at war with the entire
Muslim religion (not just with ISIL and other terrorist entities).