First Sedition Act Passed
The 1798 Sedition Act made it a crime to criticize the government or the president. President John Adams used the law to prosecute and imprison his political critics in what was the first great civil liberties crisis in American history.
The language of the law was vague and sweeping, making it illegal to: “. . . write, print, utter or publish, or shall cause or procure to be written, printed, uttered or published, or shall knowingly and willingly assist or aid in writing, printing, uttering or publishing any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States . . .”
The law is often referred to, in conjunction with a companion law, as the Alien and Sedition Acts.
The Sedition Act expired in March 1801, without a modern day-style test of its constitutionality before the Supreme Court. After being elected president in 1800, Thomas Jefferson pardoned the victims of the law who had been punished for criticizing President Adams.
The law should not be confused with the 1918 Sedition Act, passed on May 16, 1918, which became an instrument of the repression of dissent during World War I. (Actually the 1918 Sedition Act was an amendment to the 1917 Espionage Act which had already been one of the government’s primary tools of repression.)
Read the new book: Terri Diane Halperin, The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 (2016)
Learn more: Geoffrey Stone, Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism (2004)
Read: Charles Slack, Liberty’s First Crisis: Adams, Jefferson, and the Misfits Who Saved Free Speech (2015)
Learn more about the 1798 Sedition Act: http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/madison/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Sedition_Act_cases.pdf
Learn more about the 1798 Sedition Act prosecutions: http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/aliensedition/alienseditionlinks.html