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First Parties, Part III

© John S. Cooper

As the end of John Adams' term approached, Federalists felt their chances of re-election were poor and getting worse. The Federalists genuinely believed that a Democratic-Republican victory in 1800 might well mean the end of the republic. In an effort to prevent this disaster, they passed a series of laws known as the Alien and Sedition Acts. These acts increased the residency requirement for citizenship from five to fourteen years to keep the new immigrants from voting, gave the president the power to deport dangerous aliens on his own discretion and without judicial action, and made it illegal to criticize the president or the federalist-controlled congress.

The Democratic-Republicans responded by passing the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, authored by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. These resolutions, passed by two states where the Democratic-Republicans controlled the state legislatures, presented the best argument yet supporting the States' Rights Theory of government. This approach to government said that the federal government was created by the sovereign states, and that the states were therefore superior to the federal government. The states, therefore, had the right to rule on any law passed by Congress and declare it null and void, and not in effect in that state. This was called nullification.

The legislatures of Kentucky and Virginia passed these resolutions explaining nullification and justifying it. They also suggested that states might declare the Alien and Sedition Acts unconstitutional, but stopped short of actually doing so. When the Democratic-Republicans won control of the White House and Congress in the election of 1800, they quietly allowed the Alien and Seditions Acts to expire. But the bell had been rung and could not be unrung. These documents would be quoted and cited many times by southerners as proof and justification of nullification, especially in the period prior to the Civil War. While Jefferson and Madison wanted to cause all the trouble they could for the Federalists, they did not want to be one of the possible causes of the dissolution of the Union.

The Federalists lost the election of 1800, as well as the next three elections; they never again controlled the White House of Congress after the War of 1812, the Federalists ceased to be a major national party due to their opposition to the war. The Democratic-Republicans became the only national party for a short period, until they split into the National Republican Party and the Democratic Party (the same Democratic Party of today).