JEFFERSON PROTECTED FIRST & FIFTH AMENDMENTS
3/5/2026When it comes to the First and Fifth Amendments, I’m a Jeffersonian Jeffersonian.
The amendments are two of the ten in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights. Thomas Jefferson didn’t write them, since he hadn’t yet returned to the U.S. after serving as Minister to France by the time James Madison proposed the Bill of Rights in Congress in June 1789.
But Jefferson heavily influenced Madison’s authorship, urging Madison to make sure a guarantee of personal liberties was incorporated into the Constitution. Jefferson’s fingerprints are all over the First and Fifth.
The First Amendment stipulates that Americans enjoy the freedoms of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition. The Fifth, among other provisions, guarantees U.S. residents due process of law.
In 1798 the presidential administration of John Adams pushed through Congress the Alien and Sedition Acts, very early challenges to the guarantees of the First and Fifth Amendments. The nation, under a Constitution only 10 years old, had already split into two political camps, the Federalists led by President Adams (as successor to George Washington) and the Democratic-Republicans led by Vice President Jefferson.
(Before the 12th Amendment, adopted in 1804, the top two vote-getters for the position of chief executive earned the offices of President and Vice President respectively. In the election of 1796 Adams narrowly received the most electoral votes and Jefferson came in second. They were elected despite their leadership of opposing parties.)
After the French Revolution of 1793, Britain and France continued their military and naval belligerency that had been underway during the American Revolution. Various diplomatic and quasi-military disputes involving the United States with both empires led to the two American political parties choosing sides, with the Federalists favoring Britain and the Democratic-Republicans favoring France.
Adams’ Alien and Sedition Acts sought to punish Jefferson’s supporters. The Alien Act allowed the President to deport any noncitizens he considered to be a threat to national security. The Sedition Act provided imprisonment and/or fines for anyone convicted of stating or publishing false or malicious statements against Congress, the President, or any other branch of government.
The acts directly challenged Jefferson’s version of American freedoms, and he would not brook them. He called the Alien Act “a most detestable thing . . . worthy of the 8th or 9th century.”
The Alien Act shocked most Americans, and their voices of opposition were loud and vociferous. Consequently the Adams administration never actually charged anyone with a crime under it, so no one suffered the three years’ imprisonment it threatened. But a number of foreign nationals, fearful of arrest, did leave the country voluntarily, including some well-known French sojourners.
The Sedition Act, a cousin to the Alien Act, raised even a greater ruckus with the public. Under the act, Adams’ legal team prosecuted, convicted, fined, and imprisoned a handful of publishers and printers, at least one Congressman, a pamphleteer, and a particular drunken bystander over a period of three years.
(Significantly, the Adams administration prosecuted no one for demeaning the Vice President, who of course was Jefferson at the time.)
The guilty parties were not shy to state their opinions. One called the President “the blind, bald, crippled, toothless, querulous Adams.” Fortunately, or unfortunately, for him, that perpetrator died of yellow fever before his trial.
You just never know, though, what course history might take. Luther Baldwin, a garbage scow pilot at Newark, New Jersey, was witnessing a summer of 1798 presidential parade in Adams’ honor when Adams visited Newark. When the honorary 16-gun salute got underway, Baldwin, who had been drinking, yelled out that he didn’t care if the volley was fired through Adams’ arse (Baldwin’s word).
Under the Sedition Act, the statement earned the pilot a $150 fine, court fees, and jail time until he paid up. Big mistake for Adams and the Federalists. Baldwin immediately became a cause celebre across the young nation, and the Democratic-Republicans latched onto the issue for their presidential campaign against Adams and for Jefferson in the year 1800. The Baldwin episode is credited with helping Jefferson’s victory.
When Jefferson won the election, he pardoned everyone convicted under the Sedition Act and apologized to them on behalf of the government.
The Alien Act and the Sedition Act were allowed to expire at the end of Adams’ term in 1801. It was good riddance in the opinions of most Americans at the time.
But if the two acts remind you of today’s conservative attitudes toward foreign nationals and toward critics of government actions, you’re not alone. Me too.
What’s missing today is someone with Thomas Jefferson’s stature and persuasive power to bring today’s radical nationalistic bullying to heel.
Jefferson had his faults. He publicly castigated slavery as a “hideous blot” and “moral depravity,” yet during his lifetime he owned some 600 slaves. He proved himself unable to live his life without the perquisites of slave ownership. Like many of us, he fell short of what his conscience required of him.
But his public advocacy for civll freedoms was spot on, and rings as true today as it did more than 200 years ago.
This coming Independence Day will mark the 200th commemoration of the deaths of both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who died within a few hours of each other on July 4, 1826. That date, of course, was the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Regardless of President Jefferson’s personal faults, I’ll be proud on that day to call myself a Jeffersonian Jeffersonian. ♦
