osition members of Congress, and
encouraged the Federalists to commit the government to actual
hostilities with the hated Democrats and Jacobins. Declaring the
treaties of 1778 to be abrogated, Congress authorized naval reprisals,
voted money and a loan, and so began what was called a "quasi-war,"
since neither side made a formal declaration. Adams, riding on the
crest of a brief wave of popularity, declared in a message to Congress
that he would never send another Minister to France without receiving
assurances that he would be received as "befitted the representative of
a great, free, powerful, and independent nation." "Millions for
defence, but not a cent for tribute!" became the Federalist watch-word;
and, when the little navy of a few frigates and sloops began to bring
in French men-of-war and privateers as prizes, the country actually
felt a thrill of pride and {176} manhood. For the moment, the United
States stood side by side with England in fighting the dangerous enemy
of civilization. American Federalist and British Tory were at one;
Adams and Pitt were carrying on the same war.

Unfortunately for the Federalists, they failed to appreciate the
fundamental differences between the situation in England and in the
United States, for they went on to imitate the mother country not
merely in fighting the French, but in seeking to suppress what they
felt to be dangerous "Jacobinical" features of American politics. In
the summer of 1798, three laws were enacted which have become
synonymous with party folly. Two--the Alien Acts--authorized the
President at his discretion to imprison or deport any alien, friend or
enemy; the third--the Sedition Act--punished by fine and imprisonment
any utterance or publication tending to cause opposition to a federal
law or to bring into contempt the federal government or any of its
officers. Such statutes had stood in England since 1793 and were used
to suppress democratic assailants of the monarchy; but such a law in
the United States could mean nothing more than the suppression by
Federalist courts of criticisms upon the administration made by
Republican newspapers. {177} It furnished every opposition agitator
with a deadly weapon for use against the administration; and when the
Sedition Law was actually enforced, and a half-dozen Republican editors
were subjected to fine or imprisonment for scurrilous but scarcely
dangerous utterances, the demonstration of the inherently ty