About this Book

This book covers the years 1798-1800 when the Federalists had become the party of extreme conservatism and were taking advantage of our undeclared war with France to brand the Jeffersonian Republicans as "pro-French traitors." Under cover of a war-emergency program, they attempted to proscribe their political enemies as enemies of the country. The fruits of this hysteria were the Alien and Sedition Laws which the Federalists rammed through Congress and which John Adams signed, forgetting his earlier pronouncements on the virtues of Constitutional liberties.