Thomas Jefferson Quotes
The Alien & Sedition Acts are a nullity as absolute and palpable as if Congress had ordered us to fall down and worship a golden image.
These laws promulgated during the Adams administration were hated by Jefferson. When he assumed the Presidency he pardoned all who had been convicted under that law.
Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1826, 3rd President of the United States (Democratic Republican, VA), Quoted in James Parton, “The Presidential Election of 1800”, The Atlantic Monthly, July 1873
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Commonly referred to as the Kentucky Resolution.
President John Adams, once he became President, was greatly disturbed by the insults and attacks on him and his Federalist Party by many newspapers who preferred Thomas Jefferson and his view of democracy and freedom. Many of his supporters were also concerned about the new different immigrants that were coming to America in large numbers—–namely Roman Catholics. Adams and his Federalists passed the Alien and Sedition Acts which not only worked against new immigrants but was the first major attempt at government censorship of the press in American History. Ironically, these laws—–a blight on American democratic history—–were finally repealed in large part due to the effort of Adams son, John Quincy Adams, who served int the House of Representatives after his presidency and had always been an inveterate foe of the laws that his father had instituted.
The legislation to which he was referring was the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which had recently been enacted. This quotation illustrates how deep virulent racism was then embedded in American society—especially the South.
Marshall is famous for, as Chief Justice, establishing the principle that the Judiciary can override Congress and the Executive in determining Constitutionality. However, as this quotation illustrates this principle had been discussed in open debate on the ratification of the Constitution. It was not simply a grab for power by a Chief justice; he uttered this quotation long before he ever suspected he would be a judge but actually spent much of his career in the executive and legislative branch of government.
President George W. Bush, during the War on Terror, asserted the authority to contravene laws passed by Congress and signed by a previous president. He further, argued that he did not have to inform Congress when he ordered steps that broke the existing laws. His position was based on his claim that there were inherent Presidential powers in wartime granted by the Constitution and the Congress could not override the Constitution.
Bush, more so than any other president, claimed executive powers that had never been claimed by other presidents even in wartime. At the time the senator made this statement, the Supreme Court had ruled against the President on several of his claims and others were pending. The powers ranged from the right to hold even American Citizens incommunicado without filing any charges or going before a court or even allowing a court to review the action if the President Claims the person was an “enemy combatant” or “terrorist”; to the right to spy on American Citizens phone calls in America without any court review and even went so far as to claim the right to question Americans or other suspected enemies by methods that are classified as “torture” by most nations and is even illegal by the American Military Regulations for interrogating prisoners.
Actually it was Thomas Jefferson who had drafted most of the language. This attack was aimed at President John Adams, the big supporter of the unpopular Alien and Sedition laws, and the man Jefferson was intent on unseating at the end of his first term. He did and destroyed the Federalist Party in the process.
In WWI Congress had passed a law that prohibited anyone from undermining or interfering with the war effort. The defendants had passed out anti-war literature to young men heading for military service. The court then overlooked the First Amendment and came up with a strange logic where the “clear and present danger” was the test of whether the First Amendment would apply. The anti war pamphleteers went to jail. Today, we look back on this and find it very surprising but this is yet another example of erosion of freedom and civil liberties when the nation is at war. By the 1950s, the Supreme Court had reversed itself and the First Amendment was restored to its original intent.
Thomas Jefferson was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He had previously served as the second vice president of the United States under John Adams between 1797 and 1801. The principal author of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson was a proponent of democracy, republicanism, and individual rights, motivating American colonists to break from the Kingdom of Great Britain and form a new nation; he produced formative documents and decisions at both the state and national levels.
