Sedition Act Quotes
As a result was in 1799 he was indicted, convicted, and fined $480 and sentenced to 18 months in jail. In 1801, newly elected President Thomas Jefferson pardoned Brown along with all violators of the act.
The Federalist Party had controlled the Executive and Congress for the first 3 Presidential terms (2 for Washington and 1 for John Adams) but Thomas Jefferson and his Democratic Republicans were threatening to unseat the Federalists. Even with the Sedition Act, the Jeffersonians won and the Federalist Party was destroyed forever. Ironically, Jefferson and subsequent administrations saw advantages to the incumbent in the Sedition Act so did not repeal it. It was not until John Quincy Adams (John Adams’ son) had finished his Presidency and became a Congressman that he led the movement to finally repeal the hated Sedition Act.
The President refused since Lyon himself had not apologized and asked for forgiveness.
This law would certainly be held unconstitutional today but at the time it wasn’t even clear that the Supreme Court could nullify a law of Congress. Virginia and Kentucky both passed resolutions however, protesting the law and challenging its constitutionality. The $2,000 maximum fine was huge for the day—the equivalent of more than $1 million today. The reason was that one of the major targets of the law was wealthy printers and publishers, who could be impoverished for a violation. The Sedition Act was in existence until Jefferson ousted the Federalists who passed it (John Adams signed it) and pardoned all those who had been convicted under the law. The Sedition Act is used today as evidence that the Founding Fathers really did not intend that the First Amendment protect speech that is potentially harmful to the country. The counter argument is that the Sedition Act was passed by John Adams and his allies at a particularly vulnerable time in America’s early history. And it was one of the biggest reasons that Adams and the Federalists were defeated after a single term by Thomas Jefferson and the Democrats. The Federalists were so badly beaten that their entire political party was destroyed. The Whig Party evolved as the opposition Party to Jefferson and the Democrats.
With martial law came the authority to seize ALL guns in the colony for the emergency. This was not to disarm the general populace. It reflected the fact that there were relatively few colonists who owned guns as they were very expensive. The Governor could take those that existed and use them to defend against the rebels or whatever. There were more gun owners in the Revolution but still a minority. Even after the War of 1812 only 30% of Americans were armed, and that shortly decreased to 10% as there was no real culture of gun ownership in early America. This would come around the Civil War.
