American Realities with Bill Youngs
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    • The Fair and the Falls >
      • Part I: Possessing the Falls >
        • Chapter One: James Glover: Purchasing the Falls
        • Chapter Two: Waiting for the Indians
        • Chapter Three: Harnessing the Falls
        • Chapter Four: "The World's Fair of the Northwest"
        • Chapter Five: The City Beside the Falls
      • Part II: Rediscovering the Falls >
        • Chapter Six: The Twilight of Old Spokane
        • Chapter Seven: Urban Blight and Urban Renewal
        • Chapter Eight: King Cole and The Heart of a City
        • Chapter Nine: Visualizing a World's Fair
      • Part III Redesigning the Falls >
        • Chapter Ten: From Spokane to Paris >
          • Tom Foley's Turn
        • Chapter Eleven: Wooing the Foreign Exhibitors
        • Chapter Twelve: Wooing the Domestic Exhibitors
        • Chapter Thirteen: The Environmental Debate
        • Chapter Fourteen: Building the Fair
        • Chapter Fifteen: Marketing, Money, and Management
      • Part IV: The Fair by the Falls >
        • Chapter Sixteen: Opening Day
        • Chapter Seventeen: A Mingling of Peoples
        • Chapter Eighteen: Days at the Fair
        • Chapter Nineteen: The Press of New Ideas
        • Chapter Twenty: The Final Tally
      • Part V: An American Environment >
        • Chapter Twenty-One: Spokane Falls, An American Environment
      • The Fair and the Falls Map

 Testing the Constitution: The Alien and Sedition Acts 


Overview:  By 1798 the United States had been independent for two decades, but the nation's political character was still evolving. The Constitution could not anticipate every historical circumstance. The Bill of Rights, ratified in 1791, guarantees freedom of speech.  But in 1798 laws known as the Alien and Sedition Acts were passed limiting that right. The essay examines what those laws were like, why they were passed, and what effect they had on American democracy. In this case it seemed that Americans must sacrifice either free speech or political unity. The Adam's administration chose the latter, provoking a nationwide debate about American institutions and inadvertently encouraging the growth of free speech and a two-party political system.

1. Defining sedition: President John Adams, national capital, Abigail Adams, Newark, "Behold the chief who now commands," Luther Baldwin, Federalists.

2. Political conflict leading to the Alien and Sedition Acts: Sedition, Alien and Sedition Acts, First Amendment, Alexander Hamilton, Hamiltonian program, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Hamilton-Jefferson opposition, Phillip Freneau's National Gazette, Republicans, Marquis de Lafayette, French Revolution, Jay's Treaty, John Jay, electoral college, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity," Reign of Terror, John Marshall, Talleyrand, XYZ Affair, patriotic fervor, "The Star-Spangled Banner," "Hail Columbia," Fisher Ames, "French Party," Benjamin Franklin Bache, Philadelphia Aurora, "Lightening Rod Junior," renewed information, Constellation, Constitution, United States, "High or Ultra" Federalist, Quasi War, Croyable, Delaware, Retaliation, nativism, Harrison Gray Otis.

3. The Alien and Sedition Acts in Practice: Naturalization Act, Alien Enemies Act, James Lloyd, treason, British Treasonable Practices Act of 1795, common law, John Allen, Roger Griswold, Matthew Lyon, The Scourge of Aristocracy and Repository of Important Political Truths, a Vermont jail in winter,  Justice William Paterson, U.S. Supreme Court, martyr, Virginia and Kentucky Resolves, the Convention of 1800, freedom of speech.


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