The Sedition Act Materials

Seven years after the First Amendment promised freedom of the press, Congress made it a crime to criticize the government, and prosecuted editors for doing it. The Sedition Act of 1798 is where free-press doctrine was first tested and nearly lost. Madison and Jefferson answered with the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, and the public answered at the next election. The episode is a permanent reminder that the right exists most when it is least convenient to power.

The slight, studious Virginian called the father of the Constitution, and the author of its sharpest defenses. His Federalist 10 and 51 are the spine of American constitutional thought: the argument that a large republic can control the mischief of faction, and that ambition must be made to counteract ambition. He later wrote the Bill of Rights into existence. Fourth President, lifelong student of how power is divided and held.