 CRISIS IN FREEDOM: The Alien & Sedition ActsCRISIS IN FREEDOM: THE ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS BY JOHN MILLER John Chester Miller (1907-1991), born in Santa Barbara, California, and raised in Tacoma, Washington, was graduated from Harvard College. He earned his doctorate in history from Harvard in 1939, was on the faculty of Bryn Mawr College from 1939 to 1950, and taught at Stanford University from 1951 to 1973. His dozen books on early American history are admired for their authoritative scholarship, urbanity, and clarity.CRISIS IN FREEDOM: THE ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS (1951) covers the years 1798 to 1800. In a climate of undeclared war between the United States and France, the Alien and Sedition Acts were signed by President John Adams. The Alien Act gave the president authority to deport aliens judged by him to be dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States. The Sedition Act was designed to protect right-thinking citizens from attacks in the press. Twenty-four people, including James Thompson Callender, Thomas Cooper, William Duane, Anthony Haswell, and Matthew Lyon, were tried under these acts for seditious libel. Their trials took place in Vermont, Pennsylvania, and Virginia; Lyon, Haswell, Cooper, and Callender were found guilty. Summing up these historic events, Edward W. Knappman writes, in Great American Trials, that "On paper only, the terms of the Sedition Act were an improvement over traditional common law. But the fact that the federal government would enact a sedition law was a blow to freedom of the press." Our Price: $39.50 |
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