"
Addresses were printed begging aliens not to enlist in the provisional
army if any laws should be passed against them.
All action taken thus far to ensure the perpetuity and safety of the
Government against the strangers within its gates seemed to the
Federalists incomplete while this seditious press remained unbridled.
The crowning measure of the session of 1798, therefore, took the shape
of an addition to the early act defining crimes against the United
States. It provided fine and imprisonment for conspiring to oppose
measures of the Government, for advising insurrection, and for libelling
the Government, either House of Congress, or the President. The duration
of the act was limited to the end of the present Administration. As
originally introduced into the Senate, this "sedition act" declared
that giving aid or comfort to a Frenchman or to France was treason to
the United States, punishable by death. It was toned down in this and
several other particulars by moderate spirits before being enacted
into a law.
The opposition in Congress, called "Republicans" by themselves and
"Jacobins" by their enemies, had resisted these famous "alien and
sedition laws" at every step.
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