Alien and Sedition Acts

1798

The Federalist Congress, alarmed by French sympathies in the press, made it a crime to criticize the government and empowered the president to deport foreigners. Jefferson and Madison drafted the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions in protest. A young American republic discovered its first great civil liberties crisis. The acts expired or were repealed after Jefferson's election, but the debate over wartime restrictions on speech never ended.