cts House
of Representatives February 25, 1799]

The Federalists watched this Republican revival with grave misgivings.
What Jefferson called "the awakening of the spirit of 1776" was to
Fisher Ames an ominous sign of impending "revolutionary Robespierrism."
Federalists of the Hamiltonian brand unhesitatingly held the Republicans
responsible for the Fries Rebellion, which occurred in Pennsylvania. The
immediate occasion for these disturbances, to be sure, was the federal
house tax, but the rioting occurred in those eastern counties which were
ardently Republican; hence the outbreak could be denounced plausibly
enough as the result of Jacobin teachings. In some alarm the
Administration dispatched troops to quell the riots, and prosecuted the
leaders with relentless vigor. Fries was condemned to death, and the
President's advisers would have carried out the decree of the court, "to
inspire the malevolent and factious with terror"; but President Adams
persisted in pardoning Fries, holding wisely that there was grave danger
in so construing treason as to apply it to "every sudden, ignorant,
inconsiderable heat, among a part of the people, wrought up by political
disputes, and personal and party animosities." Such motives were not
appreciated by the circle of Hamilton's admirers. Why were the renegade
aliens who were running the incendiary presses not sent out of the
country, Hamilton asked Pickering. "Are laws of this kind passed merely
to excite odium and remain a dead letter?"

If the Administration made only a half-hearted effort to arrest and
deport aliens, it could at least not be accused of letting the Sedition
Act remain a dead letter. Some unnecessary and thoroughly unwise
prosecutions in the year 1799 were followed by a series of trials for
seditious libel in the spring term of the federal courts. All the
individuals indicted were either editors or printers of Republican
newspapers. The impression created by these prosecutions was, therefore,
that the Administration had determined to crush the opposition. What
deepened this impression was the obvious bias of the federal judges and
the partisanship of the juries, which it was alleged were packed by the
prosecution.

With one accord Republican editors lifted up their voices in defense of
freedom of speech, never losing from view, however, the political
possibilities of the situation. The more prosecutions the better, wrote
one editor significantly to a fellow vict